Our Last Day

We gathered for a delicious Indian dinner for our farewell after we arrived back in Kigali on Tuesday night. (Paul Almquist took the picture.) We all enjoyed the chance to eat a fare other than rice, beans, and potatoes. Wedneday morning we did last minute shopping, ate lunch at the African Bagel Company which is next door to the Thomas house. It employs widows so they can support their families. Gene, Kelli and I helped finish pack in the six bags we are taking to Portland for the Thomas family. It was a welcome sight to see the KLM plane and head home. - Nancy

Tuesday- the drive to Kigali

Today we packed up and left Musanze. We left with good memories.

Seeing how goods and people are transported was quite intriguing. We got one view of one of the volcanoes without the clouds covering part of it, and RFTC sent us off with gifts. The entire class gathered in the library as a farewell for us. David Thomas drove all of us in the mission's Toyota land cruiser with all of our luggage piled on the top in the luggage carrier. Kelli and I rode in the back -- not in the small seats -- and had good views out of the back. We arrived safely in Kigali after almost 3 hours in the car. - Nancy

Monday, Part 2

After exploring the region we stopped at the La Paillotte Restaurant in Musanze for a Western style lunch.

I was so pleased to have a mango smoothie. All in the group ended up ordering pizza which was very good. We are back to the Rwandan cuisine of rice, beans, and potatoes until we leave on Wednesday night the 18th for the US. - Nancy

Exploring in Rwanda

This morning David Thomas took us around the region of Musanze. We saw fields carved among the volcanic rock.

The corn field certainly didn't look like corn fields in Iowa. We went to the headquarters of the Volcano National Park which is the place that monitors the mountain gorillas. There are now 10 families and they allow 10 groups of 8 people in each group to trek to see the gorillas each day. The price is now 750 USD per day to go see the gorillas. Our family all went to see the gorillas about 24 years ago. It was fun to remember that day.

The Rwandan government gives 15% of all the revenue from the park to the local communities for schools and health services. There was a lovely gift shop at he park headquarters and each item had the number of the person who made the item and the profit goes to the person who made it. Our last stop was to Virunga Lodge which is a 5 star resort. The views of the lakes and the volcanoes were wonderful even though the day was overcast and hazy. The manager let us see one of the rooms and I would sure enjoy a night there. The only problem is the cost is between $750 and $1000 per night.

Rwanda is trying to get more tourists to boost the economy. With high class resorts I think they are on their way. - Nancy

Sunday's long church service

Church was to start at 9 am and end about 12:30. Today they had a record number of choirs, and the service ended at 1:30 pm. The leaders for the church wanted us to sit in the front on the platform but I begged off and said I wanted to sit in the congregation so I could take pictures. I got some decent pictures of the choirs but many were were blurry because the choirs here don't just stand and sing; they have choreographed dance moves and put on elaborate performances.

By sitting in the congregation I got to see lots of what was happened among the people who attended the service. There were quite a few mothers with babies on their backs. Young girls of 7 to 10 years would carry younger siblings on their backs; the young children who could walk exited and entered often. They would play outside and then come in for a bit. One side of the church had benches and the other side where I was sitting had chairs. The ushers kept seating more people on the benches. They moved the children to the ends and some had about an inch of the bench left for their seat. Finally they realized there were too many people so they brought in a large carpet and set it on the floor in front of first row of chairs and they had all of the children go sit on the carpet.

Paul Almquist preached and it was interpreted. We are lunch at the church and they fed over 50 people which included some of the visiting choirs. This afternoon we are at the guesthouse. All of us were given gifts

for helping with the library. The women got lovely baskets and the men were given nice carvings. Currently it is raining as hard as it did in Kuala Lumpur during a heavy downpour and the electricity is out. I was sitting on the covered wide porch in front of my room at the guesthouse and had to move inside because it is raining so hard I was getting wet on the porch.

When David Thomas arrives from Kigali we plan to go out to eat tonight and get some Western food. That will be a welcome treat after a week of Rwandan food. I'll hope the electricity and Internet are up sometime tonight before I head to bed. But yesterday the Internet never came back after the rain storm. - Nancy

Saturday - Valentine's Day in Rwanda

I am currently in the dark in my room at the Crested Crane Guesthouse. There has been no electricity for about an hour due to a thunder and lightening storm. It rained hard for a bit but is now just light rain. I'll try to send this to post as soon as we have power and the Internet is working.

(Notice the baby sleeping on the mother's back as she is shopping!) Today is Saturday so we had a free day. Kelli and I wanted to go into market in the center of town. We had arranged for a taxi to come and get us at 9am. There was no taxi by 9:30 so we decided to walk.

Walking, bicycle taxis, and motorcycle taxis are the normal modes of transport here. It was a lovely day with a breeze and not too hot, It took us about 50 min. to get to the market and explore. We found a car taxi to take us back to near our guesthouse but decided to stop and have lunch at a new hotel

about a 10 min.walk from where we are staying. We sat in a lovely garden and watched brilliantly colored humming birds feed on the tropical flowers and enjoyed seeing an iridescent blue lizard slither across the garden. After a week of Rwandan food we ordered a ham pizza that was delicious.

Others in the group opted for other activities, Doree and Carol stayed at the guesthouse all day and rested. The only problem with that was there was a large Rwandan wedding in the garden at the guesthouse and the music and speakers were extremely loud.(How does she balance the load?) I was thankful I was gone for most of the day. Gene and Paul went to the board meeting for the Rwandan Friends Theological College (RFTC). Ron and Carolyn Stansell and David Thomas were here for the meeting. It was fun to see Ron and Carolyn for a short visit. This evening we walked to RFTC to have dinner at 5:30 and learned it was to be at 8 pm. We were served tea, bread, and bananas and that was what we called dinner because we wanted to be back at the guesthouse before dark. I am ready to head home. I accomplished what I came to do and now feel like I am just biding time until Wed. Feb. 18 when we leave. By the way, the taxi we ordered showed up at 10:30 to get us. I understand he thought he should be paid for coming even thought he was 90 min. late. This was not Kelli and my problem as we had already arrived in town by then. - Nancy (By the way, the picture right below is of a driving school teaching parallel parking! ... and, the store is where we bought bottled water.)

Friday, the 13th ...

After 4 days on intense activity today has been a rather stress free day.

We arranged the library, put up signs on the book shelves (all 2 of them). We had an orientation for students on how to use the library. (Fred orienting students) I think for the majority of the students this was the first time they had been in a library, used a computer, and found a book of the shelf.

It's a start even though it is small. I cleaned up some of the catalog records and Fred networked the computers so students can search for books. We tried to install the OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) software and it would not install. The activation code we have was not accepted. Students can search using the main library software but that means records can be changed. Fred does not see this as a problem. At least the students have access.

We meet with the director of the school this afternoon and will eat dinner at our guest house tonight. We are hoping for a little bit of a change in the menu. Tomorrow some of us hope to go into town to explore some. Now that our project is finished we have some time to explore a bit. - Nancy

Project completed!

Today we had both electricity and Internet for the majority of the day. We discovered that the reason we did not have Internet in the afternoons was because there was not enough money in the RFTC account to keep it activated. Today we paid the head of RFTC (pix:Fred & Doree) more money to buy us more access to the Internet. It would have been nice to have known this on Monday. I told the director on Monday we would pay for more Internet access. We were so pleased to finish the job today. Everyone in the group worked really hard each day.

Tomorrow we will have an orientation for the students. (pictured below are some of the students getting oriented on how to check out books) Finally, there's a picture of me at my computer. - Nancy (Detail on pix at the top: Left to right: Nancy Woodward (who went on short notice to take Raelene Fendall's place), team from West Chehalem Friends Church -- Doree Votaw, Gene Mulkey, Kelli Kobs, Carol VanWagner, seated -- Fredrick Amwoka Lukoni (librarian of Friends Theological College in Kenya, who provided expert technical assistance). WCFC pastor Paul Almquist, team leader, took the picture.

Making Progress - Wed.

The Internet worked all morning (By the way, we start out with breakfast!)

and the electricity only went off once today so we made lots of progress. We have about 520 books entered and on the shelves. In the afternoon the Internet was off most of the time so we began to arrange the books so they are in order on the shelves. We have about 150 to 200 more books to enter but these will be slow to enter into the RFTC catalog because the majority of them do not have any catalog records that match them. They have to be entered the old fashioned way - line by line. It would be nice to explore the area a bit. Musanze is the take off-point to see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda. We can see the volcanoes that are up the mountain from the town. The volcanoes are often shrouded in clouds. The book "Gorillas in the Mist" is aptly titled.

We eat lunch and dinner with the students at RFTC. Some speak English but most are now learning the language. The Rwandan government is transitioning from French to English for all schools.

The picture is of some of us walking from the school to the guest house; however, the street in front of the RFTC Library has a steady flow of walkers. Many of the women carry a pot on their head or have a baby on their back.

Our cook is delightful!(pictured to the right) It is cool here at night but great for sleeping. Pictured below is my room. - Nancy

Hope after a day of frustration - Tues., Feb. 10

Yesterday I was a nuisance and kept asking the director of the school if he would please contact the Internet provider to get the issue resolved. His first reply was that it can take a week or a month to get it fixed. I said our group would pay to get it fixed. We explained that having the Internet was essential for us to get the work done and we had paid too much money to come and not be able to do our work. I stopped in his office 4 times during the day and stayed until he called the Internet provider. The technician finally came about 6 pm and we had Internet at quitting time. The Internet did work. We get the catalog records from a program called EZCAT and download them into the school's library catalog.

Today was a very good day of work. The Internet worked for much of the day. The electricity only went off briefly for 3 times, but we got lots done. If we have as good a connection tomorrow we will make even more progress. We have about 300 books cataloged and 200 of them even have spine labels. Weather here is nice and cool. We had a good rain storm today. Last night I did my hand laundry.I had brought a backpack clothes line and and a few clothes pins. Pictured is one of the students and her baby.

We had dinner about 6 pm so made it back to the guest house before it was dark. The sun goes down quickly near the equator so there is no twilight. It's dark by 6:45 pm. The group is compatible and we each seem to have found our roles and are productive. Picture below is of Doree and Fred at 10:00 a.m. tea time -- a very important time in African culture. - Nancy

Monday Feb. 9 - Day of Frustration

Today was the reality of being an a 3rd world country. The purpose of this trip is to setup the library at Rwanda Friends Theological College. We have the books,

the software the computers and need power and Internet access. Today the power was out for 3 times and we had no Internet access all day. We should have been able to enter at least 300 books today and only have 81 entered.

The guest house in Kigali never had water except from about 1 to 4 am. I finally figured out that my legs itched so much because there were bed bugs in a blanket that was at the end of my bed. I never needed it as a cover but my lower legs and feet touched it some and I was good food for bed bugs. Here in Musanze we have hot water, and so far no bed bugs. The issue here is food. The meals are very delayed and we finish after dark and the path from the school where we eat to the guest house is very uneven and dark. Even with a flashlight it is difficult to see the large rocks. Two in our group are over 80 and I am so concerned that one of them will fall. Tonight after the meal and arriving at the guest house we decided that if the meal at the school was not ready by the time to eat and leave before dark, we will return to the guesthouse and eat there. Entrees for each meal at the school are rice, beans, potatoes (very tough beef). I am hoping we have Internet tomorrow but it is very unstable in this region. We are here for another week. I can only hope that things get better. - Nancy