Rwanda 2020

16.30 Arrival at the bus does not bode well. But I am hopeful it'll be an enjoyable ride. Already took two pills against motion sickness. Bei Ankunft am Bus musste ich ertstmal schlucken, der Bus sieht nur so halb vertrauenswürdig aus. Aber ich hab schon zwei Pillen gegen Reisekrankheit geschluckt, das sollte eine angenehme Reise werden. 16.45 Fixing some last things on the bus, like the insulation. Letzte Reparaturen an der Isolierung des Busses.  17.05 Departure from Kigali First bought to of what I thought were vegetable samosas. Only to be disappointed on the bus. Went back and bought some sweet fried dough. Going on a cross country bus ride without food doses not seem nice. Los geht's! Hab mir erstmal zwei Samosas mit was ich dachte sei Gemüsefüllung gekauft. Fehlanzeige. Nochmal schnell aus dem Bus und stattdessen ein paar frittierte Teigballen kaufen. Ohne Essen gehe ich auf keine Überlandfahrt!  Beth, Laura and I are now on our way to

Had a meeting at the Ministry of Infrastructure this morning. Security is very tight at all the government buildings, but the amount of people with machine guns is rather frightening to someone who never sees one up close usually. Heute morgen war ich im Infrastrukturministerium für ein Meeting. So viele Sicherheitsvorkehrungen, sprich Maschinengewehre sieht man als Deutsche wirklich nie. Zum Glück bleiben die mir fern, so gefährlich sehe ich wohl nicht aus.  The meeting was very informative and everyone so helpful and accommodating. It's research heaven really.  Das Treffen war super informativ und ich bin sehr glücklich wie hilfreich alle sind. Ich bin sozusagen im Forschungshimmel.  Most interesting observation: The ministry of infrastructure has the most interesting installation of electrical outputs. Rather than being on the walls or the ceiling, they run in rows straight across the floor. A real big tripping hazard for people stumbling through life like myself. Di

Every last Saturday of the month is "helping each other day" - Umuganda. Jeden letzten Samstag im Monat ist "anderen helfen Tag" - Umuganda. Many people were also standing around us to socialize and look at Laura's and my feeble efforts to hack away weeds. Laura, my classmate, and I went with Muhaya, my landlord to a spot a short way away from my place, and weeded a little part of a road. There were already some people at work and some sort of village elder was there to oversee the work. The spot for cleaning is also picked by the village elders (city district). Cleaning starts at 9am and goes on till the site is finished or about 11am. Helping the community out was very nice though, and everyone was very interested to see the Muzungus (white people) helping. We were definitely subject of many photos. The work was very tiring though, and I don't think we really helped a lot. But maybe the gesture was already enough... Laura, meine Kommolit

While it is not my usual Sunday activity, I figured that going to mass was a good way to get to know local religious practices. Wow, was I surprised when the service lasted 3 1/2 hours! It had also already started at 9am, when I arrived, but more people slowly trickled in for another hour or so. In the end, all the blue and white plastic chairs were packed. There was much singing by different choirs, young, old, from different churches and a lot of people were very animated, throwing up their hands and singing along or calling Halleluja and Amen. Certainly a lot more engaging than Catholic mass in Germany... The choirs are a large part of the service, over half the time was taken up by people singing. Often one person singing first, and then the choir answering, which made it all the more energetic.  Wer mich kennt weiß schon, dass ich normalerweise keine sonntägliche Kirchgängerin bin. Aber ich dachte mir, so könnte ich bestimmt ein bisschen mehr über meine Nachbar/innen rausfinden