Jamie’s compassion

Last night there was a sheep stuck in the cattle grid. Dark, cold, snow on the ground and in the sky, we carefully made our way down the drive through the slush towards our abode and there it was, this docile and benign mound of wool just stuck there like some insane gatekeeper standing out in a blizzard to greet the midnight arrivals. We almost didn’t see it. Indeed we would have walked right past, were it not for its instinctive (and rather short lived) attempt to avoid us, which of course was thwarted by the circumstances. Can’t just leave it there. It could freeze, or get run over. So I went back up to the hotel to enlist some good men to help me help the sheep. After talking the situation over with the kitchen staff and realizing that none of us had ever handled a sheep, in walks Jamie (the new trial manager from New Zealand).
Jamie, I said. You’re from New Zealand, have you ever handled a sheep?
Yes. Why? He replied suspiciously. (No doubt my question reminded him of an unrelated matter I had mentioned to him earlier, wherein as a prank I had planned to acquire a sheep and put it in someone’s bedroom.)
There’s a sheep stuck in the cattle grid, I said.
That was all I had to say, he was out the door, didn’t even bring his jacket. And there’s Jamie standing at the end of the drive in a snow storm in his white shirt and tie lifting this sheep out of the cattle grid. An image forever burned into my mind. The night we learned of Jamie’s compassion towards animals.

The weather in this country is so incredibly changeable. Arctic winds from the north have brought freezing temperatures and snow back to us. We are being told these conditions should last for about a week. It has been snowing here for three days, before that the rain hadn’t stopped in almost 3 weeks.

The poor weather conditions are becoming increasingly more bothersome as we look to prepare for our cycle trip. Our aim is to get as much riding in as possible on our days off, but in this weather it is difficult. Weather aside though, we have been slowly collecting all the gear we need and planning the logistics for the beginning of the trip. We have bought a pair of new touring bikes off the internet; if all goes to plan they should be arriving in the next day or two. Also, we bought some regional maps covering the north of France to get an idea in our minds of the start of our route. They cover all the way from Dieppe and the Normandy coast down to the Loire valley. Nicki is pretty excited about cycling through the Loire. And, sort of by accident, it looks like we might be cycling along the D-day coast on the anniversary of D-day. So we’ve marked these maps up mostly with campsite locations to get us started and as we head further south we will buy maps and plan as we go.

The list of stuff we still need:

Panniers
Cycle gloves
Water bottles / holders
Cycle shorts
Tools / spares
Sunglasses
A repair kit for my thermarest
Dry bags
Travel pillow
Extra sarong
Extra bike lights
Extra loud bike horn?

We are thinking of leaving here around the 20th of May (ish), then doing some touring in Scotland before we head south. The tricky thing there is that a lot of our camping stuff is down in Brighton, and we have a few things up here we wouldn’t want to carry on the bikes. This means trying to fit an extra trip to Brighton in sometime in the next month. Also, there is an area of Scotland called Wester Ross. It lies in the far North West corner of Scotland, and comprises some of the most rugged and remote terrain in the UK. I would love to go there before we leave

Contest

Greetings everyone from neverneverstan, the land of I can't tell you anything. Eventually I'm sure I'll be able to mention again where I really am but I'm playing it cool for the time being just to be sure. Things are going well here, wherever here is, I get to do stuff, and there's uhm, people, and things, and the people do stuff too, and it all might be really interesting or it might be really boring. Can't really say. Anyway.

Thanks to sister for planting the seed for this idea: The one-time-only Opsec Censorship Blog Mad-Lib contest is now underway! The rules are simple - all you have to do is take one of my previous blog posts and replace all the occurrences with your own ideas and send it back to me. This is completely no-holds-barred, any theme, content, subject matter, and/or language is acceptable. Entries will be judged by me, solely on the basis of how entertaining I find them. If I decide your submission is the best you'll not only get your entry posted in the blog, you'll also receive one of the following: A free dinner date at an awesome restaurant (if you're female) or a free night of drinking at an establishment of your choosing (if you're not). I'll be accepting entries until whenever I lose track of time and stop, so don't miss out - send your submission via email as soon as you can!

Hope to hear from everyone soon, bye for now!

Le Weekend

During the weekends, I’ve been trying to alternate between staying home in Shyorongi (first, because I like it here, and second, because I want my fellow Shyorongians to feel like I’m actually a member of their community, not just a weekday worker) and traveling throughout the rest of the country (first, because there is honestly sod all to do in Shyorongi, second, because the rest of the country is beautiful, and third, because I’ve got a great collection of fellow volunteer friends to catch up with). This last weekend was spent away, and it was one of my favorites yet.

I left Shyorongi on Thursday night, rather than Friday morning, due to an uncharacteristically trying week of classes that left me wanting to escape. Even though Shyorongi is only half an hour from the outskirts of Kigali, entering the capital feels like landing on another planet. Standing on the side of the muddy road in the rain while waiting for the bus in Shyo, being laughed at by a pack of hyenas/teenaged boys across the street while trying to deflect questions from a heartbreaking man who wants nothing more than fast-tracked United States citizenship, seems like a hazy dream while I’m sitting at Kana Khazana, an amazing Kigali Indian restaurant, having perfect lentils and chicken spooned onto my plate while chatting about novel writing with my buddies. I hated Kigali when we first arrived, and I still prefer the beautiful mountains and fresh air of Shyorongi, but I have definitely learned to appreciate the amazing convenience of the capital. As Jane says, Kigali is like Disneyland: crazy expensive and covered in a pleasant artificial lacquer of convenience and comfort.

However, just like Disneyland, Kigali makes me want to throw up after a day or two, so I was excited when Jane, Susan and I parted ways with the rest of the group on Friday and bought our tickets for the 2:30pm bus to Nyagatare, where we planned to spend the weekend with Zach and Evan. We commandeered the whole back row of the bus, which is a great victory (five seats between three people is basically akin to flying on Air Force One) and settled in for a comfy ride. We were slightly concerned when it took about an hour just to escape the borders of Kigali proper, which usually only takes about twenty minutes. The rest of the ride followed suit, and the journey that should have taken us about two and a half hours managed to take four. This is probably due to the fact that busses here just stop whenever anyone wants to get off, rather than stopping at a predetermined central location in each tiny town, so you stop to drop one guy off in front of his house, and then stop again fifty yards down the road to drop the next guy off in front of his house. This was infuriating, but here we don’t get infuriated, we just get belligerent, so to pass the time the three of us decided to sing the classics at full volume from the back of the bus. We belted out oldies like Build Me Up Buttercup, I Think We’re Alone Now, Lean On Me, and other greats, much to the delight of the locals, who often applauded our acappella efforts. We finished up with a prize-worthy version of All Shook Up just as we rolled into the Nyagatare taxi park. We tumbled off the bus, scooped up Zach and Evan from the Nelson Mandela Bar, and headed off to a great café where we ate mélanges (like a random mix of all the Rwandan favorites, including chips, mashed plantains, rice, pasta, beans, veg, etc.) and drank tea (the best tea I’ve had in Rwanda so far!) for just 900Rwf, or about $1.50 US. Afterwards we trooped back up to Nelson Mandela to relax and chat over surprisingly ice cold beers. I haven’t been able to see Z and E much at all since orientation because they live so far north, so it was a real treat to hang out with them. These guys manage to seem like opposites (Zach is pretty soft-spoken and reserved while Evan is louder and crazier) while still both being funny, uber intelligent, and excellent hosts. At around midnight, we got motos for the three-mile journey back to their house and went to bed.

When I woke up at 6am on Saturday, I fell in love with Z and E’s little patch of Nyagatare. The area just beyond their back porch is covered in lush trees that house more bird species than I thought existed in Rwanda, and there’s no traffic noise anywhere to compete with them. Zach (the other early riser in the group) showed me their garden, which was planted last year by the students using another volunteer’s seeds. They’ve planted way too many seeds for the small plot, so Zach is hard at work strategizing how to thin things out, but for now they’ve got basil coming in through the window, and some cucumbers will be ready soon. [As soon as the torrential rains calm down in Shyo for five minutes at a stretch, I hope to do a bit of gardening myself.] When the others woke up, we had a breakfast of corn muffins with blueberry jam (from a farmers’ market in Georgia) and cheese (from Kigali, courtesy of Susan) with cups of tea, which ranks among the best meals I’ve had so far in Rwanda. We hung around reading until it was time to start the walk into town for lunch. The walk in takes about an hour and is gorgeous. It had been hot all morning, so we were in short sleeves and had little (Evan and Jane) to no (me and Zach) rain gear, which is probably why the gods above looked down at the arrogant muzungus thinking they could predict Rwandan weather hours in advance and decided to send the most torrential downpour of softball-sized raindrops to gush upon us. At points, the rain was so strong that I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and by the time we got to town, we could easily have canoed down the ditches at the side of the road. We were as wet as if we had just climbed out of swimming pools, and in this totally presentable state we parked ourselves at the café for another mélange, this time with double portions of tea. Thankfully, my friends are Huckleberry Finn-esque in their capacity to appreciate adventure and find the humor in things, so all of us loved every minute of it and had no complaints. After lunch, we treated ourselves to moto rides back home, piling two per moto to lower the cost. Slipping and sliding along the mud roads in the pouring rain on a moto with Jane was terrifying, unforgettable, excellent. Back at home, we dried off, changed clothes and hunkered down in our sleeping bags for a marathon of the third season of Dexter, while the rain raged heavy outside. Sheer bliss.

The rain calmed down and fully stopped by late afternoon, so we set off to accomplish our one solid goal of the day: to see a monkey. Evan had heard that monkeys come out to play in the trees around the Akagera River at dusk, so we headed out at around 5:30pm for the two-mile trek to the river. After the day’s rain, the walk down the mud path was fully ridiculous. At one point, the path devolved into a knee-deep lake, which we had to wade through, steadfastly not thinking about what heinous diseases and creeping things were probably swirling around our bare ankles. We were heading towards the gorgeous orange sunset the whole time though, so had no real complaints. We eventually reached the serene river, and after about fifteen minutes of tree-scanning, we saw our prize: a lone monkey hanging out in the upper branches of a tree on the opposite bank, stretching out his long limbs just enough for us to see his monkey-ish silhouette against the sunset. Sweet success. We retraced our steps, this time in the dark, and the only really hairy part of the walk home was when we realized we were being pursued by a pack of longhorns, traveling just a little faster than us up the path. We thankfully lost them at an intersection. The electricity was on when we reached home, and Zach whipped up delicious spaghetti with fresh basil, garlic, and onions for us, after which we lapped up some more Dexter and finally slept.

The next morning, after more corn muffins and jam, I got the welcome news that the next day, Monday, was a holiday off from school. Getting news like that is an interesting process here; no one from my school mentioned anything about it to me, even though I talked to many teachers and students about a test I was planning to give on Monday and told all of the students that I would see them on Monday and that they had assignments due on Monday, etc. I heard a vague rumor from some of my friends that their schools had a Monday holiday, and once the rumor was confirmed for more than half of them, I finally sent a message to my Dean of Studies about it. I got a reply back right away, telling me that there was no school. So while I’m pleased for the extra day off, I wouldn’t have been averse to hearing about it ahead of time. It seems like you can get any information you want here if you ask the right questions, but it’s only through blind luck that you discover the right questions to ask. Anyway, the longer weekend took off the pressure for getting any work done on Sunday, so we didn’t have to rush home. The ride back to Kigali was pleasant (another conquering of the whole back seat of the bus) and fast (just three hours!), and after a late lunch in town I was back in Shyorongi before evening. I’m always happy to be home after a long weekend away, to come back to my own space and my routine. So now it’s Monday morning, and it’s raining to end the world outside but I’m warm and happy in here; I’ve got a cup of tea and bananas for breakfast, and plenty of time to work, and plans to visit my friends up the road in the afternoon. Happy for weekends like this, where I end up appreciating the whole country more, even my little spec of it.

tuesdays hair of the dog

again all appologies for my late blog lagging at the end of the line, lost in a stack of papers somewhere on someones desk (dog knows not mine as i have no desk), perhaps forgotten and found again and again until at last, at the last minute in my usual style this unedited collection of days remembered in type is offered up for who to read? anyone with a password

I am saddened by bens censored blogs. I enjoyed reading these entires and hope he can come up with way to continue to describe his situation to us without using any descriptive words or phrases, nor any informations on locations, dates, policies, procedures, equipment which might jeopardise security. Such as it is i suppose, truth be told i was surprised someone hadnt censored sooner. ben im sure you can make it work.

February 18th

'nae bother! it dinae mata tae me. but if ie'were up tae me, id haf t'ho tin outa n pu in a wee gas burner outside. ts jus no in line wi the current technology. nae bother. ah il jus ga n tal i tom n fi wa na hablena be. bye the noe!'

So we've been having this problem with the arger in out house. The arger is supposed to perfrom the double function of being a stove and heating water for the radiators in our house. The problem is that while it does heat, it does so with the side effect of filling the house with smoke and soot. A shame, because otherwise the house is set up quite comfortably. The above quote is from the engineer who came to fix our stove. He was pretty awsome. A scotsman, he was a very loud talker with such a thick accent that most of the time i had no idea what he was saying. As the root of the problem has yet to be discovered, he as well as others have been here several times attemping to remedy the situation without success, ultimatley only making more mess for us to clean up. On his last visit it seemed he had given up and said the arger should be replaced. But as he says nae bother. He had a device with him that could read gas levels in the air and he said there was no carbon monoxide in the house and that the situation was not bad for our health.

Febrary 25th

i step out of the kitchen and stand in front of the hotel. My black leather shoes sink into several inches of snow, and the cold and the blizard flurry around me - a cold welcome after the smokey heat of the kitchen. I warm my hands against a half pint of roibus tea, the hot amber liquid visble through the glass as i stare through it out towards the loch, thinking about the events of that morning and the possible application of cluster theory.

the power had gone out some time inbetween my leaving the green house and when i walked in to work just before 8am. There were 10 people in for breakfast and 2 servers, inge (sounds like inga) and myself, scheduled on. by 20 past 8 no chef had arrived and the power was still out, i began to wonder what kind of breakfast would be served.

I stepped out for a moment im not sure why. When i returned Tom had shown and had obviously dealt with power outs before. The stove tops were gas so he got those going to boil water. We took the scones over to his house to cook in his oil powered arger. Then i went off to help jim set up a generator. After passing up a couple that didnt work we found a good one and got it going. Jim brings it over with the tractor close to the hotel. Run the cord ovens are on toasters working. By the time i got back to serve, a few guests had arrived and the scones ready for them. As the remaining diners filtered in we lit the fire in the bar and set up some candles. Service continued as usual save the dark kitchen. As breakfast wrapped up tom said something like 'It's really great having it so quiet in here isn't it? you dont notice it when its there but without the hum and buz of all the fridges and lights you can really tell the difference.' We all agreed. Then as Inge left the kitchen to take toast to a table she said, 'Silence is golden'.

February 22nd

I had a day off and nicki was on a split. If you google map us - monachyle mhor, fk19 8pq, scotland - you'll see that, as the crow flies, loch lomond is 15-20 miles west of our hotel. This was our target destination when we set off early afternoon this day.

We cycled as far as we could. About 2 miles of tarmac followed by another four miles of 4wd track winding its way up through a wide valley to the west. At the end of the 4wd track we left our cycles and set off on foot to hike up to a low point on the ridge at the end of the glen, from where we hoped to have a view of loch lomond. This was before the snow came last week. The terrain was mostly frozen wild grass, with snow on the north faces and the ridges. It was sunny and cold. We went from fully bundled up while biking to hiking in shorts and tshirts through the sun. By the time we reached the top of the glen the temperature had dropped and we were back to wearing thermals, trousers, fleeces, jackets and scarves hats n gloves.

At the saddle the terrain really flattened out to reveal our view to the west. As we were not using a real map, we were not sure what the terrain would actually be like once we reached this point. As it turned out there was a mountain inbetween us and loch lomond. however, we were able to see loch katrine to the south, and we had reached the end of the glen. We rested, ate, enjoyed the last of the sun and began to head back to work.

On the way back we talked to a sheppard who said it was possible to reach loch lomond without having to go over the moutain we saw. To do this we would have had to head north before reaching to saddle at he top of our glen to loop around, and bring a proper map.