Another blog from KIST

Christoph and Irene also have a blog - and with lots of great pictures.  Here is the link:
http://africa.markelic.de/

Yesterday we spent about 3 hours walking around Kigali, in areas we had not visited before.  We walked past a manufacturing  cooperative where people were making furniture, metal items, other stuff:  it was like a large, open warehouse.  In different sections people were working on making different things.  Much of the metalwork was being made from old steel drums, so it was also a recycling plant.  We walked through residential neighborhoods, on the paths that go through them.  It was down hill and up hill and down hill and up hill and then up hill some more - at about the 3 hour mark, a taxi drove by and we hailed it and went to the market at Amahoro and bought vegetables.  I bought some peppers from the same person from whom I had bought broccoli last time; he remembered me and said I am a regular customer and gave me a good price.  I think that is the way to go - become a regular customer of a few people.

It absolutely poured rain late in the afternoon.  Our rooms on the second floor are right under the metal roof so the rain sounds even louder there than outside.  We had a reservation at Heaven - Saturday night they show a movie and we decided it was time for hamburgers and a movie.  The movie was "You will meet a tall dark stranger" - good fun.

I am preparing to plant a garden.  This afternoon I hope to look for seeds and a small gardening tool.

Kigali adventures

This morning I went to the big market in the Amahoro section of Kigali with Toma, one of the other visiting faculty members.  The first part of the adventure was taking a mototaxi there - this is a very common form of public transportation that I had not yet tried.  These are motorcycle-taxis - the drivers carry an extra helmet and drive around Kigali just as a taxi would do.  They only carry one passenger each (a good thing) and are faster and cheaper than car taxis and much faster but more expensive than buses.  Here is a link with a picture and lots of description:  http://www.livinginkigali.com/transportation/taking-a-moto/

The market is huge, and has fabric, crafts, housewares, grains and beans, fruits and vegetables, fish, chicken, probably more.  We bought a huge amount of fruit and vegetables - we will have to do a lot of eating to use it all before it spoils. I got broccoli, cauliflower, chinese cabbage, tomatoes, a pineapple, and mangoes. The market is reasonably clean, well organized and the people are very courteous - they do try to sell you stuff but in a courteous way.  Communication was not difficult except one problem at the end - I wanted to get a mango and I am sure that I was told by several people at different stands that they were between 800 and 1000 francs each (it's 600 francs to the dollar).  Since we had bought some for 200 francs on the weekend, I thought that was too high.  But Toma convinced me to try one more place, and offer 500 francs - I had a 500 franc bill.  I did, and the seller happily put 5 mangoes in my bag.  So apparently these were 100 francs each ???

There were 3 very small boys who seemed to adopt the muzungu (that's me) - they led me around for a while holding my hands and tried very hard to get me to take a picture of them - I had no camera - their miming of the picture taking process was absolutely charming.  So I violated one of my rules and gave them each 20 francs.

We both had bought a lot so we took a car taxi back.

Book recommendation

I think

A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It by Stephen Kinzer

 is an excellent book for background on present-day Rwanda.  

Bargaining

There are more people living in the guesthouse:  Toma, who teaches in the school of architecture and is visiting from Italy, and Christoph and Irene who are from Germany.  Christoph teaches physics and Irene teaches computer science.  It is great having more people here - there are 10 rooms here plus public space, and we were sort of rattling around.  Yesterday we went out to lunch with Christoph Irene, Irina and Elena at Shokola which is a Moroccan restaurant.  It was very pleasant, and good food, but Toma had warned us that this might be the world's slowest restaurant - we were there about 3 1/2 hours - just for lunch.  Afterward we went to a very small market and bought a few mangos.  I asked the young man selling them how much they were; he said 250 francs and the 3 girls with him burst out laughing.  So Irene asked them what a reasonable price was and they said 200 francs.  I'm sure that was high but it's about 35 cents and that was just fine with me - the only time I am effective at bargaining is when I don't want the object at all so I just keep saying no and the seller keeps lowering the price.

Now we have mangos, and also avocados but those are from the trees on campus.  I love having all these avocado trees around.

Election Day

Today local elections were held.  There was a great deal of discussion all week about whether classes would be cancelled because people would be returning to their villages to vote.  Last night the Vice Rector Academic sent an email to the entire KIST community saying that people should vote early and that all classes should be held.  I held my class - it meets once a week, on Fridays, from 10 to 1 - I really did not want to miss an entire week of class.  I had over half the class 24 of 42 students, and we had a scheduled quiz.  Also I have been struggling to get students to turn in homework and today they did so I was very glad I had held class.  It was actually a very good class - a much better size.  And several stayed a little late to teach me some more Kinyarwanda.  I learned

icyumweru kiza = Have a nice weekend
muryoherwe = enjoy the meal
nawe = and you too

They had already taught me

ni ah'ubutaha = see you later

Here is a picture of the other class.