I like the freedom that comes with being an intern. Freedom in the sense, that you have no set schedule and freedom in that you are allowed to explore and learn from your surroundings, take for example last weekend.
Mike the other summer intern is leaving in a week to return to the states, so for the past month we had been scheming trying to plan a grand adventure before he departed. One of our co workers alerted to the fact that the Nile river begins in Uganda and that there are opportunities to congregate with other muzungoo (Name less white person), load yourself up in rubber boats, paddle until the river attempts to eat you, only knocking you from your boat sending you further downstream where you repeat this process for several hours. All I needed to hear was white water rafting and Nile, I would figure out the logistical details later. In my mind there is nothing cooler than being able to tell people I conquered Rwanda and the Nile on my summer vacation, plus if you’re into using cheesy lines to meet women this should probably be at the top of the list.
For the last 2 weeks when we were not working we were hammering out the detail on our trip to Uganda, it was Uganda or bust. To see how this trip might go, the weekend before last we had planned a shorter excursion to the rain forest, with the idea being that we would go on the much advertised waterfall hike; in reality it was a chance for Mike to see a waterfall and me to look for monkeys. Pulling this off would prove to be an all weekend ordeal with Saturday spent traveling to the capital where we would buy tickets for a special bus, not the short bus, but the only bus that went to the rain forest, or so we thought. Having to wake up at dawn and wait for the bus to come collect us at the gas station in Butare, we were surrounded by people in their Sunday best waiting for rides to church while we were dressed in shorts and sneakers, we stood out. When the bus finally arrived it was packed to the brim only two seats remained with three passengers needing a ride. The correct response to that situation is don’t deliberate throw your body in the seat while tossing your bag in the other, so as to save it for your buddy. It worked out for Mike and I, however the young lady also needing a ride was not going to stand for it and proceed to screech at us in her language bringing the bus to a standstill, the best I could do was ease up and create a crack that she could hover in until someone got off.
It important to note that this is the first time we had taken public transportation by ourselves, we soon realized that we had no idea how to tell the bus to stop and that we were operating under the assumption that it would stop at the rain forest and let us off, that was a big assumption. About an hour into our trip we found ourselves traveling through the middle of the rain forest, where we saw many monkeys from inside the bus, not what I was going for but I figured the bus would stop at any minute to let me out. It did not, instead it proceeded to travel towards the Congo. Anyone following world affairs can tell you this is not a place you want to be. Luckily for Mike and I the bus stopped before we reached the boarder. Immediately we got off and bought a bus ticket home. Having lunch on the Congolese boarder it was apparent that if we were to pull off the trip to Uganda, we would have to up our game a little and come at our trip with a better plan.
With only a week left to plan we decided to not take any chances and booked ourselves two VIP tickets on the Jaguar bus line, they guaranteed us that we would indeed reach Kampala, Uganda the city where we would be picked up the following day and taken to river base where we would finally locate the windmill we had been chasing for so long. Preparing for this trip we were aware that traveling time would be 12 hours from Butare to Kampala, in our mind it was okay we were traveling VIP. Again making assumptions we thought VIP meant luxury. VIP in Africa means you get a bottle of water 6 hours into the trip The trip to the Ugandan boarder was not bad, the roads are good and the scenery is quite nice, with my Ipod in hand I barley even noticed the loud church music that was being pumped through the speaker.
Some things to note about Rwanda, plastic bags are outlawed, the roads are in good condition and citizens are required to perform community clean up the last Saturday of every month as a result Rwanda is a clean and comfortable country to live in. Uganda has none of the above; once we crossed the border in the bus it became apparent that things changed drastically. Roads became rough and sometimes nonexistent and we were inundated with vendors trying to push street food on us, something that is also outlawed in Rwanda. It’s not that Uganda is a bad place, it’s not; but the differences between the two countries are too apparent not to write about.
With the lack of paved roads the trip became a tad more uncomfortable, but I was dedicated, all I could think about was conquering the Nile, nothing would keep me from that. Occasionally the bus would stop when we would meet traffic in road side villages, giving the street vendors to opportunity to sell us food through the opened bus windows. Having my bottle of water and some crackers I was not all that hungry, Mike on the other hand became tempted and bought a cob of roasted corn, a snack I had enjoyed many time in the Caribbean, I myself almost indulged, but the bus pulled away before I had the chance. I did not know it at the time but I would be thankful for this later.
Preparing for this trip we were told that, once we reached the outskirts of Kampala we would hit serious traffic where we would sit for about an hour. 11 hours into the trip we hit serious traffic, I was pretty sure this was the outskirts of Kampala but one could never be too sure. Mike on the other hand was not going to wait around to find out, you see the corn he enjoyed earlier decided to take its revenge, or maybe it was Raymond, either way within seconds of hitting traffic Mike Jumped up, told me to take care of the luggage and said he had pressing matters he needed to attend to . Before I knew it Mike was off the bus and searching for a washroom in what I hoped was the outskirts of Kampala; otherwise he was searching for a washroom in a random village in Uganda, I had no plan on what to do if that was the case. Luckily for us both we were indeed in Kampala and the youth hostel where we would spend the night was only a few miles from where mike bailed out.
Uganda is an hour ahead of Rwanda in time, we were unaware. The rafting company was to come for us at 7 the following morning, I had my alarm set for 6 Rwanda time. I was still asleep when the rafting company arrived and poor Mike had been taking care of pressing matters all night, but I had come too far to give up now. Throwing some clothes on, Mike and I stumbled to the bus where we would travel another hour to river base completing our quest.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
New Guard, Roomate, and Raymond
So it’s been two weeks since I have written anything new. In that time I have been working on an entry about a trip I had taken to see some coffee processing. Every time I sat down to work on it I found it dry and boring to write about, which in my experience means that if I am not having fun writing it, you’re not having fun reading it. It’s not that the process itself is boring; actually I am a gear head and like to know how things work so for me getting to spend a weekend experiencing that, proved to be one of the best weekends I have had. Needless to say I have received quite a coffee education in the past weeks. I’ll continue to work on that entry and see if I can’t work out the bugs.
Much has happened since I last wrote so where to begin? In one of my first entries I had written about our gate keeper, the lush. Well he is no longer the gate keeper, after much discussion between my roommates and I, it was decided that while he provided hours of entertainment he provided us with no accountability. That was an interesting dilemma for us; we had his termination letter but we always felt that his pension for alcohol made him unpredictable.
In the islands I would liken it to a Dr. Jekly and Mr. Hyde affect, when the guys were off the rum they were your best friends and very pleasant to be around, when they were on however, you really couldn’t predict how they would act, same principle applies here. Since the university employs him it was decided that the university should present him with his walking papers while we stand back and watch.
Having no TV or Internet for entertainment, all we have are our books and daily stories to keep us going at nights. When the day came for the university to let the guard go you might as well have billed this as the pinnacle of our week, if we had pop corn we would have popped it and beer, we would have drank it, as we watched to see how crazy the guard might get. To our surprise when the news was delivered instead of fireworks all we got was a fizzle. What we didn’t realize is that the guard wanted to quit more than we wanted him gone and that when the ax was dropped all he requested was back pay for holiday not taken. That was anticlimactic, no one told us the rules for the guard such as days off and lunch hours, because of that we never gave him a lunch hour and never let him leave the premise. He stated that he felt like he was in prison and was happy to leave. When the day finally came for his departure, he was singing church hymns about being free while dancing around the yard, not what I expected at all. I will miss the hours of trying to translate what he is saying and most of all having him stand at attention and salute me every time I enter the gate, maybe I can get my roommates back home to do that.
The new guard, while not as charismatic as the old fits better into our little family, him and Israel have a developing friendship which makes for a more efficient household and also we know the gate keeper rules so we no longer keep prisoners.
Speaking of Israel, we like to teach him things, whether it’s explaining how the planets move around the sun or just working through his English workbooks with him. One night he was trying to grasp the concept of where all his housemates were from and the scope of the world in general, the world is big and there is lots of water, that’s general knowledge for me and something I take for granted, not for Israel however. Realizing this I hatched a plan to locate a map of the world and label the countries with the name of each housemate. When I carried this plan out, Israel looked at it for a second and then said “the world is big and there is lots of water” and then for the next hour proceeded to grill me and my housemates about our respective countries; that was a fun night.
Speaking of housemate we got an unexpected addition to our house. One evening me and Lenar were sitting around doing a whole lot of nothing when we got a call from the University informing us that our new roommate was on the way. We were unaware that we were receiving a new person. This could have been either been good or bad. My house mates and I all have our own quirks and with not knowing what to expect we were afraid of how this would upset the positive balance we have developed throughout the house. Turns out we had nothing to fear, Zahyid our new roommate is from Pakistan and is here to help the University role out the much talked about Wireless network on campus. He has useful skills, like knowing how to kill roosters and cook them.
My most favorite part of living in the island was street culture or hanging out with your groups of local friends on the street watching current events unfold before your eyes. The reason I like this so much is because at any monument one of your buddies could appear with a live rooster in hand and that usually meant we were about to have a cook out, and I was about to learn something useful like how to kill and prepare a rooster for dinner.
When Zahyid learned about my “bush skills” (killing live animals and having cooks), he states “that’s common place in my country and because I am new we will buy a live rooster and I will cook it.” It’s at that point I knew he would fit in and the rest of my roommates were about to learn something useful. It’s in Israel job description that we can at any point send him to the market to collect groceries and dry goods for us, well the day before we killed the rooster we surprised him with a request to go the market and buy us a live rooster that we were to kill the next day.
Israel is a little timid so he immediately had a problem with this… he stated that he would get the rooster as long as it didn’t bite him and that he would not kill it, agreeing to those conditions we sent him to the market for a rooster. I usually take lunch at a restaurant in town so as to practice my French; Israel must have seen me on his way back from the market because he entered the restaurant with this very big grin on his face as if he just accomplished something huge. Sitting there having my lunch he proceeded to show me this box and he goes take a look inside. Peering inside the box was the largest rooster I had ever seen, and I must have been the baldest white guy the rooster had seen because as soon as looked in the box the rooster felt obligated to crow very loudly, alerting all the customers and restaurant staff that we had just brought a live rooster into the building, everyone just stopped and looked at us, at which point I ushered Israel out and told him to try and find accommodations at the house for this animal we were about to eat.
Yi, our Korean roommate got wind that we were about to kill a rooster, and with Israel arriving home with rooster in hand he promptly stated, “that must be our dinner for tomorrow, we should call him Raymond, my boss is named Raymond and he gives me no direction, I do not like my boss” from that point on the rooster was named Raymond. We were glad that we were only keeping Raymond for a day; he felt it was his job to let the household know that the sun was beginning to rise at 4:30 that morning. When the witching hour finally arrived, everyone in our household was present for the event, even our new guard, who provided us with very valuable advice. This proved to be a fun break from work and my daily routine it also provided us an opportunity to share Raymond, with Mike the other Intern, as well as other local friends we had made. The night was spent enjoying our dinner, as well as with me and Mike making final preparations for our trip to Uganda in the following days.
Much has happened since I last wrote so where to begin? In one of my first entries I had written about our gate keeper, the lush. Well he is no longer the gate keeper, after much discussion between my roommates and I, it was decided that while he provided hours of entertainment he provided us with no accountability. That was an interesting dilemma for us; we had his termination letter but we always felt that his pension for alcohol made him unpredictable.
In the islands I would liken it to a Dr. Jekly and Mr. Hyde affect, when the guys were off the rum they were your best friends and very pleasant to be around, when they were on however, you really couldn’t predict how they would act, same principle applies here. Since the university employs him it was decided that the university should present him with his walking papers while we stand back and watch.
Having no TV or Internet for entertainment, all we have are our books and daily stories to keep us going at nights. When the day came for the university to let the guard go you might as well have billed this as the pinnacle of our week, if we had pop corn we would have popped it and beer, we would have drank it, as we watched to see how crazy the guard might get. To our surprise when the news was delivered instead of fireworks all we got was a fizzle. What we didn’t realize is that the guard wanted to quit more than we wanted him gone and that when the ax was dropped all he requested was back pay for holiday not taken. That was anticlimactic, no one told us the rules for the guard such as days off and lunch hours, because of that we never gave him a lunch hour and never let him leave the premise. He stated that he felt like he was in prison and was happy to leave. When the day finally came for his departure, he was singing church hymns about being free while dancing around the yard, not what I expected at all. I will miss the hours of trying to translate what he is saying and most of all having him stand at attention and salute me every time I enter the gate, maybe I can get my roommates back home to do that.
The new guard, while not as charismatic as the old fits better into our little family, him and Israel have a developing friendship which makes for a more efficient household and also we know the gate keeper rules so we no longer keep prisoners.
Speaking of Israel, we like to teach him things, whether it’s explaining how the planets move around the sun or just working through his English workbooks with him. One night he was trying to grasp the concept of where all his housemates were from and the scope of the world in general, the world is big and there is lots of water, that’s general knowledge for me and something I take for granted, not for Israel however. Realizing this I hatched a plan to locate a map of the world and label the countries with the name of each housemate. When I carried this plan out, Israel looked at it for a second and then said “the world is big and there is lots of water” and then for the next hour proceeded to grill me and my housemates about our respective countries; that was a fun night.
Speaking of housemate we got an unexpected addition to our house. One evening me and Lenar were sitting around doing a whole lot of nothing when we got a call from the University informing us that our new roommate was on the way. We were unaware that we were receiving a new person. This could have been either been good or bad. My house mates and I all have our own quirks and with not knowing what to expect we were afraid of how this would upset the positive balance we have developed throughout the house. Turns out we had nothing to fear, Zahyid our new roommate is from Pakistan and is here to help the University role out the much talked about Wireless network on campus. He has useful skills, like knowing how to kill roosters and cook them.
My most favorite part of living in the island was street culture or hanging out with your groups of local friends on the street watching current events unfold before your eyes. The reason I like this so much is because at any monument one of your buddies could appear with a live rooster in hand and that usually meant we were about to have a cook out, and I was about to learn something useful like how to kill and prepare a rooster for dinner.
When Zahyid learned about my “bush skills” (killing live animals and having cooks), he states “that’s common place in my country and because I am new we will buy a live rooster and I will cook it.” It’s at that point I knew he would fit in and the rest of my roommates were about to learn something useful. It’s in Israel job description that we can at any point send him to the market to collect groceries and dry goods for us, well the day before we killed the rooster we surprised him with a request to go the market and buy us a live rooster that we were to kill the next day.
Israel is a little timid so he immediately had a problem with this… he stated that he would get the rooster as long as it didn’t bite him and that he would not kill it, agreeing to those conditions we sent him to the market for a rooster. I usually take lunch at a restaurant in town so as to practice my French; Israel must have seen me on his way back from the market because he entered the restaurant with this very big grin on his face as if he just accomplished something huge. Sitting there having my lunch he proceeded to show me this box and he goes take a look inside. Peering inside the box was the largest rooster I had ever seen, and I must have been the baldest white guy the rooster had seen because as soon as looked in the box the rooster felt obligated to crow very loudly, alerting all the customers and restaurant staff that we had just brought a live rooster into the building, everyone just stopped and looked at us, at which point I ushered Israel out and told him to try and find accommodations at the house for this animal we were about to eat.
Yi, our Korean roommate got wind that we were about to kill a rooster, and with Israel arriving home with rooster in hand he promptly stated, “that must be our dinner for tomorrow, we should call him Raymond, my boss is named Raymond and he gives me no direction, I do not like my boss” from that point on the rooster was named Raymond. We were glad that we were only keeping Raymond for a day; he felt it was his job to let the household know that the sun was beginning to rise at 4:30 that morning. When the witching hour finally arrived, everyone in our household was present for the event, even our new guard, who provided us with very valuable advice. This proved to be a fun break from work and my daily routine it also provided us an opportunity to share Raymond, with Mike the other Intern, as well as other local friends we had made. The night was spent enjoying our dinner, as well as with me and Mike making final preparations for our trip to Uganda in the following days.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
A Long Way To Get
I have been out in the field learning about coffee processing leaving me little time to work on a new entry, one is in the works. Until then here are some lyrics to a song by Bob Schneider.
A Long Way To Get
Bob Schneider
I've got a mountain to climb before i get over this hill
i've got the world to unwind before i ever sit still
i've got a hard row to hoe before my seed is sown
i've got a long way to get before i get back home
i've got so much to put down before that's all she wrote
i've got so much to give before my heart ain't so broke
i've got to find myself before i can ever be alone
ive got a long way to get before i get back home
and theres an ocean of reason that i cant explain
and theres the weight of the world like a ball and chain
and theres a big black hole inside me that i've fulled up with stones
i got a long way to get before i get back home
theres a man ive never met who looks a lot like me
theres a little place called heaven that i'll probably never see
theres a thing called peace of mind that i have never known
ive got a long way to get before i get back home
A Long Way To Get
Bob Schneider
I've got a mountain to climb before i get over this hill
i've got the world to unwind before i ever sit still
i've got a hard row to hoe before my seed is sown
i've got a long way to get before i get back home
i've got so much to put down before that's all she wrote
i've got so much to give before my heart ain't so broke
i've got to find myself before i can ever be alone
ive got a long way to get before i get back home
and theres an ocean of reason that i cant explain
and theres the weight of the world like a ball and chain
and theres a big black hole inside me that i've fulled up with stones
i got a long way to get before i get back home
theres a man ive never met who looks a lot like me
theres a little place called heaven that i'll probably never see
theres a thing called peace of mind that i have never known
ive got a long way to get before i get back home
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Volunteers and my first trip to the market.
So it’s been raining for three days, I was told that we are moving into the dry season, I remain skeptical. Rain usually provides me an opportunity to catch up on my reading and the little bit of paper work that comes with this intern gig and while it does those things and more, it should be pointed out that the only paved road in this country is the main highway going to the capital.
While I spent my time in the Caribbean dodging vehicles and stray dogs, I find that my walks to and from work consist of me navigating mud puddles. Just like knowing which mango trees are best for escaping stray dogs, here its soft ground vs hard ground.
There is not a whole lot to write about. I accomplished my task of getting the financial data from the coffee cooperatives, however because of the rain the internet has been down so I was not able to share the success with my counterpart in the capital, exciting none the less.
As you may or may not know, the Peace Corps is back in Rwanda for the first time in 15 years. Coincidentally Lenar is friends with many of these new volunteers. Saturday, Lenar, invited Trish a volunteer who lives in a nearby village over for dinner. Now, Lenar is not opposed to volunteerism, however, he is amazed that people will willing join an organization that advocates bathing in a river and living in a grass hut. While I did bathe in a river, my Peace Corps accommodations were not at the grass hut level. Swapping Peace Corps stories made the night interesting, it gave me a feel for what it must be like to live in a small Rwandan village. What struck me is the difference in the level of development among the Caribbean and East Africa. While I had running water and cold storage in my village, volunteers in Rwanda are forced to adjust to a life without those luxuries. I was fortunate that the challenges I faced as a volunteer were primarily cultural, while I did experience the occasional water and electricity outage, having to live a life without those things would have been challenging.
Dinner with Trish, also gave us a great opportunity to visit the local market. Local markets in Africa, just like in the Caribbean are social phenomenon. They are outdoors and serve as a place where people from the village or city in my case can catch up on the best gossip and daily news. I have been thinking lately that I must add to the social aspect of the community by providing humor for all those that have been watching the muzungu (Local word for nameless white person) roam the streets of Butare. You see for the last week and half I have been carrying around a look of amazement on my face, my trip to the market was no exception.
At the market you can find almost anything you need, whether it is bath towels, cleaning supplies or vegetables. The market in Butare is unique in that it has its own army of seamstress. Now you’re probably sitting at home thinking of ladies creating a pair of drapes with a nice electrical singer, sewing machine. As my brother would say “that is absolutely not the right answer”, the machines they are working with are pre World War II, complete with a foot pump for automation, as a matter of fact it’s the same type of machine my great grandmother had in her house in the late 1920’s. This blew my mind, because the only other ones I had seen were at the Smithsonian and my grandmother’s house.
Still with the look of amazement on my face, walking through the market I found the butchers block, where you can get fresh cuts of meat. The only other time I have seen an outdoor butcher was when I was in Trinidad doing some research on local markets, and even still that was amazing due to the lack of cold storage available to these producers. This was no exception, here it was 4 in the afternoon and the various cuts of meat along with the more obscure parts of the cow such as liver and tongue were displayed in the hot sun ready for purchase. I was reminded by a local, that the market opens at 8 AM, so if I was thinking about purchasing meat locally that I probably needed to do it at 8 AM.
My trip to the market and dinner with Trish made for a full and productive weekend; let’s just hope that the rest of my time in Rwanda will be equally as enjoyable.
While I spent my time in the Caribbean dodging vehicles and stray dogs, I find that my walks to and from work consist of me navigating mud puddles. Just like knowing which mango trees are best for escaping stray dogs, here its soft ground vs hard ground.
There is not a whole lot to write about. I accomplished my task of getting the financial data from the coffee cooperatives, however because of the rain the internet has been down so I was not able to share the success with my counterpart in the capital, exciting none the less.
As you may or may not know, the Peace Corps is back in Rwanda for the first time in 15 years. Coincidentally Lenar is friends with many of these new volunteers. Saturday, Lenar, invited Trish a volunteer who lives in a nearby village over for dinner. Now, Lenar is not opposed to volunteerism, however, he is amazed that people will willing join an organization that advocates bathing in a river and living in a grass hut. While I did bathe in a river, my Peace Corps accommodations were not at the grass hut level. Swapping Peace Corps stories made the night interesting, it gave me a feel for what it must be like to live in a small Rwandan village. What struck me is the difference in the level of development among the Caribbean and East Africa. While I had running water and cold storage in my village, volunteers in Rwanda are forced to adjust to a life without those luxuries. I was fortunate that the challenges I faced as a volunteer were primarily cultural, while I did experience the occasional water and electricity outage, having to live a life without those things would have been challenging.
Dinner with Trish, also gave us a great opportunity to visit the local market. Local markets in Africa, just like in the Caribbean are social phenomenon. They are outdoors and serve as a place where people from the village or city in my case can catch up on the best gossip and daily news. I have been thinking lately that I must add to the social aspect of the community by providing humor for all those that have been watching the muzungu (Local word for nameless white person) roam the streets of Butare. You see for the last week and half I have been carrying around a look of amazement on my face, my trip to the market was no exception.
At the market you can find almost anything you need, whether it is bath towels, cleaning supplies or vegetables. The market in Butare is unique in that it has its own army of seamstress. Now you’re probably sitting at home thinking of ladies creating a pair of drapes with a nice electrical singer, sewing machine. As my brother would say “that is absolutely not the right answer”, the machines they are working with are pre World War II, complete with a foot pump for automation, as a matter of fact it’s the same type of machine my great grandmother had in her house in the late 1920’s. This blew my mind, because the only other ones I had seen were at the Smithsonian and my grandmother’s house.
Still with the look of amazement on my face, walking through the market I found the butchers block, where you can get fresh cuts of meat. The only other time I have seen an outdoor butcher was when I was in Trinidad doing some research on local markets, and even still that was amazing due to the lack of cold storage available to these producers. This was no exception, here it was 4 in the afternoon and the various cuts of meat along with the more obscure parts of the cow such as liver and tongue were displayed in the hot sun ready for purchase. I was reminded by a local, that the market opens at 8 AM, so if I was thinking about purchasing meat locally that I probably needed to do it at 8 AM.
My trip to the market and dinner with Trish made for a full and productive weekend; let’s just hope that the rest of my time in Rwanda will be equally as enjoyable.
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