two months and counting...

As I think I've mentioned previously, I won't have any furniture until late April or early May. So for Easter dinner I just spread a blanket on the floor of my empty dining room and Mandi (a volunteer for Chantal's homes) and I enjoyed a floor picnic of homemade spaghetti and chocolate chip cookies -- both a special treat!

Saturday marked my second full month living in Rwanda. At the moment, I feel like it’s a bit of an overstatement to say I’ve been “living” in Rwanda because of the number of days spent on the road in the last few weeks. I’ve been home exactly 12 days in March, causing one of my coworkers to ask me on Friday why I am bothering to rent a house right now. I was sort of wondering the same thing.

Since I last wrote, Spring arrived in the West, most places celebrated Easter (I say most because Ethiopia won’t celebrate Easter until sometime in April and for all I know there are other countries with different schedules as well), and I visited Tanzania and Kenya. I was supposed to be in each place for about 3 days but got stuck in Tanzania for 2 extra days. I love Tanzania, but I was only going to have a very short time at home between there and Kenya before the glitch and so was a bit frustrated to spend my Good Friday and Saturday trekking back and forth from the airport, leaving me at home for only about 36 hours before heading out again.

Now I am settled in back at home and am looking forward to about three straight weeks without travel, which will be very nice. I spend a large percentage of my travel time in meetings, and while the meetings are often productive and worthwhile, I struggle to find an interesting way to write about those! But in all my comings and goings, I’m continually noticing or experiencing things that make me wish someone else was there with me so we could commentate on them. Things such as…

the woman really needed her coffee

My last morning in Ethiopia, the hotel dining room was very busy. A UN peacekeeping group from Uruguay had stayed in the hotel the night before and they were all trying to get their breakfast so they could get on the road again toward wherever they were going. Things were hopping and the dining room staff were running around frantically. Among the guests was also a North American woman who did not seem to be what one would call a morning person.

One of the wait staff came near and she called out loudly to him, “Can I get some coffee?” The man nodded and headed off, ostensibly to get the coffee. Approximately 45 seconds went by. Another staff person happened to pass near the table. “Um, I need some coffee!” the woman said again. Again, the person nodded and headed in the same direction as the first one. Another 45 seconds or so passed, and yet a third staff member happened to be near the woman’s table. She marched up to the person and said, “This is the third time I’ve had to ask for coffee. Is anyone ever going to bring it?”

The new woman headed off, only to be greeted at the kitchen door by the other two staff, both carrying coffee. They evidently sorted out among themselves what was going on and the woman “finally” got her coffee. It just made me think about how often all of us say things that are true strictly speaking, and yet don’t really accurately represent the situation.

Incidentally, I got my coffee instantaneously. It seemed that coffee-fetcher number two had a coffee that no one needed...

pronouncing each and every the other letter

The languages of all the African countries I have visited so far are basically phonetic. So when people learn English, they can find the spellings a bit of a challenge at times. This leads to words such as clothes having two syllables rather than one, and a personal favorite: “froo-eet joo-eese” (fruit juice). A Ugandan friend of a friend of mine refers to this as “pronouncing each and every the other letter.”

Another favorite for me is the word “because.” Often a pivotal word in sentences as a person explains something, the word can be dramatically drawn out and every letter gets its turn. Several of my friends and co-workers across the region are especially good at this, transitioning into their explanation with a nice long “be-cah-oose.”

please madam...

Internet problems have been a nearly constant part of trying to get work done in the office ever since an electrical storm knocked out our connection within my first week or so of arriving in Rwanda. When things get especially bad, I have the option of going to the Rwanda field office, about 10 minutes away, to download emails.

On one particular day, I had left to have some lunch and came back to find that the IT person had left a sticky note for me at my desk that read: "Please madam it is advisable that you go to the Rwanda office where connection exists. The equipment has failed."

Frustrated as I was by the ongoing connection issues, this note made me smile.

caution: high waters ahead

Waiting for my ride in the lobby of the Impala Hotel in Arusha, Tanzania, I sat watching people go to and fro. This is actually something I do a lot when I’m traveling -- in airports, lobbies and hotel restaurants, since I pass many hours by myself sometimes.

As I watched, a cluster of three or four people walked by. Among them was a tall, somewhat portly gentleman. He was dressed for business in fairly typical trousers and a button-down shirt. But what made me notice him was that his trouser cuffs sat a good two inches above the tops of his shoes. I glanced up at the waistline of the trousers to find them -- yep -- hiked up nicely to mid-torso. As the group walked by, the gentleman, engrossed in conversation, grabbed hold of his waistband and pulled them up even farther.

random shoes

Driving from my house to the office, I pass a very busy spot where there is a petrol station and three roads converge. There is always a hubbub of pedestrian activity and I very often see people dart across the road when it’s questionable at best whether they had time to make it before a car, bus or motorcycle taxi ran them down.

On three occasions now, I have seen a lone shoe sitting right in the middle of the road at that spot. While I have no idea what is the real cause of these random shoes, when I see one I always get a mental image of someone running across the street with a vehicle bearing down on them, losing their shoe in mid-stride, and continuing on to safety with only one shoe.

which side of the road?

While Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania all drive on the left-hand side of the road, Rwanda and Ethiopia both use the right-hand side. Since our regional team represents all the above countries, discussions arise sometimes when we are all together about which side of the road is really the “right” one to drive on.

The last time we talked about this as a group, one of the gentlemen said that there is only one appropriate answer to the question of which side of the road do you drive on. The correct response? The side that the pothole isn’t on.

the real world

Last Monday, I needed to catch a flight to Kenya. A taxi was supposed to pick me up from the office at a set time. Twenty minutes after he should have arrived, I asked the person who had arranged it if she could find out what was going on. “Oh, he probably is just running an errand first,” she said, as though this was a valid reason to be late. “He shouldn’t have committed to the job if he wasn’t going to be able to get here on time,” I responded. At which point the individual smiled, shook her head and said, “Oh Phoebe, we live in the real world.”

Whatever world the taxi was in, I needed to catch my real flight and asked for another taxi to come. By the time the new taxi came, loaded my luggage and we headed out, the real world taxi had still not bothered to complete his errand and get to the office.

friendly checkpoints

The hotel I stayed at in Kenya is directly across the street from the Israeli embassy. As a result, security on the street is very, very tight. In fact, driving on the road is somewhat akin to driving through an obstacle course. Large barriers are placed at regular intervals so that a car has to weave in and out of them. Once these are cleared, several sets of tire-ruining teeth are also strategically placed and must be maneuvered through as well.

These barriers mean that for certain stretches, traffic can only go one direction at a time, further slowing down one’s progress. Evidently fully aware that such a street does nothing for the drivers’ patience, there are signs with cartoonish smiley faces reminding everyone that these are “friendly checkpoints.” When one finally clears the last barrier, those same funny smiley faces appear again, this time with the message “Thank you for visiting Nairobi’s safest street.”

continuing my key saga

Well, it had been a few weeks since I got locked in or out of anywhere so I guess that streak couldn’t last forever. This most recent key adventure may have been the best yet. While visiting the Kenya office, one day I excused myself and headed to washroom. I went in a stall and turned the key.

When I was ready to leave again, the key wouldn’t budge. I wrestled with it for several minutes to no avail. It was lunchtime and even if I hadn’t been extremely embarrassed at the thought of yelling at the top of my lungs to get someone’s attention, the possibility of anyone hearing me was slim anyway.

I looked up at the cement walls surrounding me and realized that the stall walls didn’t go all the way to the ceiling. Standing on the back of the toilet, I could just stretch one leg up to the top of the wall, pull myself up into that narrow space, and jump down on the other side. It was, however, extremely dusty up there and so when I showed up back in the meeting room with my clothes covered in dirt, I had some explaining to do.

It turns out that that particular lock has a history of deciding not to work from time to time, and I was not the first person to ever get trapped inside. I was evidently the first victim to decide to scale the wall, however, and the country staff were quite impressed with my skills.



Update: I mentioned a few weeks ago that I helped a neighbor, Rafa, get her small son to the hospital with a dangerously high fever. The little boy ended up spending the better part of the week there, but is now home and doing very well. Rafa and I have only succeeded in talking by phone so far, but hope to meet up for tea and a less panicky visit this evening so that we can get to know each other a bit under less stressful circumstances.