Dream, Plan, Travel, Repeat.

I was browsing through some old files and realized that I wrote quite a few notes from various parts of the world for my O & E section that were never posted. So, consider this an O & E “international edition.” (Notes from Italy are coming soon.)

•    In Hyderabad, India, there appears to be a trend of photographing your baby/toddler in a variety of costumes, such as a doctor, a god(dess), a policeman, or even (my favorite) Gandhi. Some people put all of the images together to create giant posters to hang in their homes. Very, very funny.

•    I passed by a kindergarten in Kenya that had painted the alphabet, and images that corresponded with each letter, on its exterior walls. What image do you think they used for the letter “G”? A giraffe? Nope. They used a gun.

•    While a friend and I lounged on a beach in Lamu, a Kenyan man told us a nice story about the baobab trees that can be found around the country. One legend says when a god gave each animal a tree or bush to plant into the ground, the hyena planted the baobab tree upside down (which is why its branches appear to be roots). When the hyena realized his mistake, he began laughing and continues to laugh to this day.

•    A friend I traveled with in Tanzania had a Swahili phrasebook that provided sentences for interactions with market vendors, waiters, taxi drivers, and so on. One of the sections was for sexual interactions. Phrases that you could murmur to your Swahili lover whilst in the throes of passion included “Easy lion!” and “It helps if you have a sense of humor about it.”

•    In Kigali, Rwanda, you can make a “cell phone call” by stopping one of the young men and women wandering the streets with full-sized desk phones that are somehow wired to the mobile network.

•    Pigeon is a popular dish in Egypt. I consider myself an adventurous eater, but I couldn’t bring myself to try pigeon, a bird that I believe is popularly known in the US as a “sewer rat with wings.” I am also amused (and a little disgusted) by the similarity between the Arabic words for “pigeon” (hamam) and “toilet” (hammam). Coincidence? Probably not.

•    Cairenes have an awesome(ly scary) way of asking for directions: rather than safely pulling over and directing their question to one of the thousand pedestrians on the street, they will drive alongside another car and, as the two vehicles weave unsteadily down the road, converse with the other driver for a minute or two.

Yes, the title of this blog entry is excruciatingly boring, but I couldn’t think of anything clever (or even “clever”) and I’m running out of time at the internet cafe. Sorry.At this moment, I’m in sunny Dar es Salaam, a large city on Tanzania’s coast that Lonely Planet describes as “the country’s capital in all but name.” (The actual capital of Tanzania is a rather dull inland city called Dodoma– southern Californians will understand the two cities’ relationship if I compare Dodoma to Sacramento and Dar es Salaam to Los Angeles.) Tomorrow, if I can survive the awful touts swarming around the ticket offices, I will take a ferry to Zanzibar. And after that, you may never see me in the United States again because I will take up permanent residence on that island paradise and spend my days drinking coconut milk and gazing at the turquoise ocean from my swaying hammock.So that’s what I’m up to at the moment. But I also need to write about the rest of my trip in Rwanda— I hardly want to leave all of you with my robbery story as your final impression of the country.During my last few days in Rwanda, I visited some of my former organization’s rights education classes for their female program participants. The classes, which I attended both in Kigali and in a small rural town located several hours east of the capital, were conducted in Kinyarwanda; thankfully, a wonderful woman who works as a vocational trainer offered to translate for me. Topics discussed among the groups I visited included business etiquette (such as the importance of marketing, self-presentation, and honesty in trade), the value of women’s work at home (or, why unpaid work still contributes to a family’s prosperity), and reproductive health (which initially involved lots of giggling by women with babies on their laps who were too embarrassed to say “vagina,” but later developed into earnest conversations about menstrual cycles, pregnancy, and infertility.) I found the women’s discussions fascinating—and, through our enthusiastic translator, they seemed to have found me pretty interesting too. Besides being asked if I was married, if goat meat was popular in the United States, and how Americans spend their summer days, I was asked questions related to the classes, such as how business was conducted in America and if my father helped my mother with housework. (Ted, they applauded when they heard that you cook and help clean up the house.)What sticks out the most in my memories of meeting these women, though, is the appreciation with which they spoke to me of their ability to participate in the organization’s programs. At the end of the classes, it was common for women to provide me with testimonies of how their lives have improved since they joined the organization—using money from their overseas sponsors, one woman has built herself a kitchen, another sends her children to school, another has a small garden plot of tomatoes, and yet another has purchased bricks for her future home. Some came to the classes holding letters or pictures from their sponsors. All the women who talked to me—all of whom had experienced innumerable tragedies and obstacles over the years—spoke of hope. And that was wonderful to hear.Other brief memories of Rwanda……I saw the president and his motorcade of black and gray SUVs speeding down a village road, scattering children and animals out of their way. While I have great respect for the progress Rwanda has made while under the president’s leadership, I really question the necessity of his driving (as my driver estimated) some 200 km/hr through a busy countryside……I recently received an e-mail that asked, “Can you tell who is Hutu and who is Tutsi?” The answer: no. And very few people that I met volunteered this information. I think, with the government’s strong encouragement, people are doing all that they can to erase the divisions of the past and re-define themselves as “Rwandan.” On that same note, I often found myself looking for evidence of the genocide; to me, it didn’t seem obvious that genocide had occurred. But then I would hear bits and pieces about others’ past—how some had come to Rwanda at the end of 1994, returning with their families from years of exile in nearby countries; how so many young men and women have AIDS; how 14 and 15 year-old boys were studying at a nearby school for orphans; how a woman who once had nine siblings now has only two. It’s clear that scars run deep through the society, and while so much progress has been made, there is still so much work to do to make Rwanda whole again.…for my final night in Rwanda, I had a delicious dinner (or really, a feast with a dozen dishes or so) with David’s aunt, uncle, and cousins. I was so happy to be invited to their home, and felt equally thankful for all the opportunities I had while in Rwanda to interact with Rwandans—to dine with them, and to hear their stories and debates while sharing some of my own. I think I learned more about their country while among them for a week than I could have learned as a typical tourist in a year.And that’s all for now. Once I get my hammock arranged, I’ll write from Zanzibar.

Last night, following five years of travel through sixteen countries, it finally happened-- I was robbed. Goodbye, digital camera. I'll miss you.It was the perfect scenario (for that bastard robber, I mean). It was dark, I was alone at a ... [Continue reading this entry]

Today, I visited the Kigali office of an organization I worked for in Washington, DC. In my former position, I spent so much time writing about the organization's overseas programs and listening to other staff members talk about them that ... [Continue reading this entry]

I fell in love with Rwanda at 20,000 ft. From my airplane window, I stared at the gorgeous countryside surrounding Kigali—rolling green hills divided into thousands of rectangular garden plots edged by banana trees that, from the sky, look like ... [Continue reading this entry]

I visited the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda today, the Arusha-based court established by the United Nations to try individuals alleged to have participated in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.Over two hours, I sat in on two different cases. In ... [Continue reading this entry]