Rwanda 2020

Today was a very important holiday in Rwanda: The celebration of old and current heroes. In the morning, the community gathers to tell stories about those heroes. There are three different kinds: Inema, Inienza, and the last one I already forgot again. Damn it! Laura (classmate), Alice (my friend from the guesthouse) and I went to a local community meeting up the road. People sat and listened to a number of men telling stories about different heroes. Everything was in Kinyarwanda, but this is what I got about the colonizing story: The colonizers or Wazungu (many white people/ foreigners) came to the African continent and drew lines arbitrarily, creating nations where there had been tribes before. They named them Kenia, Uganda, Zambia, ... and went on to rule them directly or indirectly.  The story showed one thing very clearly and nicely: Rwandans are very aware of the many negative things that colonization brought with it and questions the ridiculous way of distri...

JUST REALIZED THAT SOME OF THIS INFO IS NOW ON THIS BLOG TWICE, EXCUSE MY INCREDIBLY BAD MEMORY. BUT MUCH MORE INFO HERE! We made it! After having our forehead temperature checked, we were allowed back into the country. Ebola-free. Wir haben es tatsächlich geschafft! Nach Messung der Stirntemperatur an der ugandisch-ruandischen Grenze wurden wir zurück ins Land gelassen. Die Fahrt verlangte mir um einiges mehr an Magenentspannungsübungen ab, aber Dank der Anti-Spei-Tabletten war es kein größeres Problem. Our day at Lake Bunyonyi was spent very pleasantly, with a walk, a boat ride, nice views and cold beers. Unfortunately, just when we were about to take the trip back to our hotel, a storm of crazy magnitude unfolded in front of our eyes. We sought refuge in the Hotel we had been at half the day already, drank strong ginger tea, found some cards to play and finally had dinner, cause the storm would not cease. Next to the obvious issue of getting completely soaked, we were even more...

Also celebrating Martin's birthday today. He's a Ugandan friend of Beth's.  Walked around the lake for a while with beautiful views. When the road got too muddy, it rained a lot yesterday, we took a boat to reach the way up one of the viewpoints. Finally some cute animals!  After less than 8 hours on the lake, I already feel as relaxed after a two week holiday. It's really quiet and there are no other tourists around. Just ordered some curry and already on my first Nile Premium for the day. Prost!

A really bumpy taxi ride and a good night's sleep later, this is to what we woke up. Will take a walk around now. How lovely. Proof that I'm here too, and not just posting photos off the internet:

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 t...

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 ...

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...