i am not a gorilla

Some who are reading this blog might remember how I shared about Rwanda at an elder board meeting one time at my church. Unbeknownst to me, I accidentally started talking about Rwanda's mountain gorillas as I brought up a slide of Laura Bush (who at that time had recently visited Rwanda). The whole room erupted into raucous laughter, and I remember wanting to disappear into the carpet. I thought people would forget all about it, after, say three years (it's almost been that), but no! Someone brought it up when I ran into them a month ago at church. Ah, the embarassment!

So you might understand why I am a little wary now to talk about gorillas, but I'll give it my best shot. If you ever come visit Rwanda as a tourist, you may be told to go straight to the northern part of the country; one of the most tourist-friendly destinations in the country is Virunga Volcano National Park, home to the mountain gorillas.

One of the only places in the world that you can trek into the wilderness, led by a guide, and have a close encounter with the renowned mountain gorillas in the wild is located in this national park. The park spills over into the Congo and Uganda, but I have heard nothing but rave reviews from people I've known who have entered the park from Rwanda. Without exception, everyone I've talked to has seen several gorillas at close range, and speaks enthusiastically about the experience. One visitor even told me how her group watched a very heated exchange, from just a few feet away, between a male silverback gorilla, who wanted to lead his gorilla family one direction into the forest, and two big female gorillas, who wanted to go the other way. (In the end, the females won the argument, apparently. Not a fair fight, perhaps.)

The 1980s movie, Gorillas in the Mist, took place in Rwanda, chronicling the life and death of the anthropologist Dian Fossey who was working to protect the endangered animals. Today, there are only about 350 such mountain gorillas. It is very common to find the gorillas traveling together in groups, usually one lone male, two or more adult females, and all the offspring. A clear hierarchy is marked in the group: the silverback gorilla (or, oldest male) is typically the leader, and then the females fall into line behind him according to how long they've been part of the group. The children are usually ranked by age.

Tour guides here are very sensitive to the lifestyle of the gorillas, and tour groups are kept to a minimum, limited to small groups for short periods in the early morning hours. If you'd like more information, please visit http://www.rwanda-gorillas.com

Give me a heads-up if you think you might be interested in coming over to see the gorillas...I'd love to see you! But be sure to save your pennies. The cost of visiting the mountain gorillas for one hour in the misty morning is $500 for non-Rwandan residents. (And $40 for Rwandan citizens.)


(Thanks to Matthew Ayers for this photo, taken in the Rwandan forest where the gorillas reside)

pandemonium in kibera

This is an interesting Reuters photo that went out on international wires a couple of weeks ago. The setting of the shot is at a food distribution effort at the edge of the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya (Kibera is the largest slum in Africa and is home to one out of every three residents of Nairobi).

As you know, Kenya has recently been stricken with political/tribal issues, and we need to pray much for this land. The death toll is climbing, words like "ethnic cleansing" are being used, and there are whispers of civil war. At the same time, there are many stories of the church being mobilized to help stem the violence and provide much-needed relief. The photo above tells an interesting and realistic story about this effort.

Due to the calamities, there are thousands of hungry people all over the country. Kibera is no exception. In the photo, the man with the orange head sash was part of a security line at the food distribution, helping to keep order by keeping the crowds away from the food trucks. When the masses of people saw that the food was running out, they rushed the security line (that's when the photo was taken). The "muzungu" in the photo (muzungu = white person) is the country director of WR-Rwanda, Phil, who was helping to distribute food along with the WR-Kenya staff, other aid orgs, and lots of other church volunteers. When the security line was breached, Phil was knocked over, and the guy who looks like he's biting Phil's shoulder is actually just trying to grab a bag of food that Phil toppled onto.

Phil says that five seconds after this shot was taken, he was flat on his back, looking up into five or six media cameras snapping his downfall in the midst of the chaos. One of the security guys reached down to help him up, and the whole distribution team had to get out of there. All in a day's work.

Thank you for your continued prayers for peace in Kenya.

PS: I just read in Ev. Free's Newsbreak about Dan, a volunteer from the church who's headed out to Kenya in February to assist in reconciliation and relief efforts...please pray for him too....

a strange kind of liberty

If you received my updates while I was in-country in 2006, you may remember a situation I wrote home about regarding what many perceived as false imprisonment of two men for genocide-related crimes. Without getting into all the details, I wanted to joyfully report that one of the men was recently released, freed to go home to his family after spending over a year in jail. Fantastic news!

The other man, however, remains imprisoned. Friends of mine recently visited him, hoping to encourage him by bringing him some food and some words of hope.

The imprisoned man, who still maintains his innocence, ended up being a strong encouragement to my friends instead... He talked about how he was able to share the hope and love of God with other prisoners, and was able to minister to others in prison. He didn't shake a fist at God for allowing him to be imprisoned, but instead saw his imprisonment as an opportunity to serve and comfort those around him.

There are some things that bars just cannot contain.

the tutor's wedding

I may start learning Kinyarwandan (the local language), and a tutor came by today to introduce himself. As we talked, it turns out that he's getting married next month! And wow, marriage traditions here in Rwanda are very different than back home. My older sister is getting married in May (yay!!) and so this potential tutor and I exchanged information about cultural expectations. He was just as surprised at mine as I was at his:

1. If you like a girl in Rwanda, you pretty much decide right away if you want to marry her or not. Dating, at least traditionally, isn't very common here. (I write this with the caveat that as western culture infiltrates the country, this particular practice is changing a little bit.) Essentially if you start spending exclusive time with a woman here, everyone will ask almost right away when the wedding is.

2. Once you decide you want to marry a girl here, you give her parents a dowry, usually cows. Now, my soon-to-be brother-in-law (in the USA) is a great hunter, so he's given my parents some good steaks and such. But we're talking about real live cows. My tutor gave two good milking cows to his fiancee's parents (and now there are four milking cows, so the engagement must have lasted a while so far...I forgot to ask). Cows are highly valued in Rwanda. The tutor quickly explained, lest I should misunderstand, that the cows were not PAYMENT for his wife-to-be, but rather a gift of thanksgiving for such a wonderful girl. "Her parents made her," he explained with a smile, "for me."

3. The groom-to-be and bride-to-be are equally responsible for planning the wedding here. The groom is particularly responsible for "preparing the house" for his bride, preparing the meal for all the guests, and one other sizeable task that I can't remember right now. I told him that although in some cases there is a lot of involvement from the groom, traditionally brides in the US did the bulk of the wedding planning. He thought this was pretty odd.

4. Here in Rwanda, the bride and groom split the costs of the wedding; no parents of either party are involved in ceremony or reception costs, and in fact, the couple will generally present a gift of some kind to the parents during the ceremony (more cows?). When I told the tutor that generally the parents of the bride foot the bill in America, he was so surprised. "Why is this?" he asked, taken aback. I had never really thought about it, and so I told him my guess was that traditionally, the bride lived with her parents until she lived with her husband, and so the parents were responsible for her expenses (and for hosting the party) up until the point they handed her over to her groom at the wedding ceremony. (Anybody know about the tradition? I really have no idea where that comes from...just took it for granted.)

5. Last, it is apparently very common to invite everyone and their brother to the wedding, here. Nobody is excluded. I found out about my tutor's upcoming wedding as I was being extended an invitation to attend....after a five minute conversation about Kinyarwandan lessons. Apparently limiting the guest list is, literally, a foreign concept here....or at least it is in my tutor's case.

Interesting stuff! Never a dull moment, that's for sure. It has been a busy two weeks and I will give you an update soon about how child survival and newborn research is progressing....talk to you again soon!

umasambe (ooh-mah-sohm-bee)

Allow me to introduce you to Umasambe, the crested crane that serves as watch-bird at Phil and Becca's house.



I know nothing about crested cranes, so feel free to enlighten me if you have time to check out wikipedia. What I DO know is that this particular crested crane doesn't like strangers and will crow at people. I also know that at one point it was legal to domesticate crested cranes and keep them as pets here, but it isn't any longer. Of course, if you obtained a crested crane while it was legal to do so, you're permitted to keep it now...you just can't get any more. Unfortunately for Umasambe, he could really use a friend, so the law is somewhat inconvenient.

The name "Umasambe" actually means "crested crane" in Kinyarwandan, the national language of Rwanda. So, it's kind of like naming your dog, "Dog." (Except for Umasambe sounds cooler.) Umasambe will eat bread from your hand if he trusts you, but he does have a pretty sharp beak, so you have to watch your hand. He's about four feet tall, good-sized.

Stay tuned for further Rwandan wildlife updates...

embassies, meetings, and first birthday cakes...

The rest of last week flew by! I did make my first trip to the US Embassy here on Thursday (and got a great security briefing...it turns out Rwanda is one of the safest places to be in East Africa right now. They say!).

I also made my second trip to the US Embassy the very next day, on Friday! This time, it was to pick up a big box of research materials that I had sent ahead of me; I received a message Friday morning to come pick it up. The Embassy closes at 1 pm on Friday, however, which I didn't know, and I arrived at about 1:20. Thanks to some very accomodating Rwandan guards, and the chief security officer who was still in his office, I managed to get the box anyhow.

This might seem like a small thing, but I was thrilled....not only is it inconvenient to make multiple trips to the Embassy, but the matter was complicated by the fact that there is a new US Embassy building being built in Kigali, and they are moving to their new home starting this week. My box would have disappeared into Embassy oblivion for who-knows-how-long, had I not been able to recuperate it on Friday! So I was very grateful. :)

I also had a meeting at the BASICS office last Thursday. BASICS is the other organization with whom I'm working while here, associated with the Rwandan Ministry of Health, and focusing on newborn care. Then on Friday I was in meetings much of the day at World Relief; the theme for the year at World Relief-Rwanda is "Complete Transformation," and the meeting centered around identifying organizational objectives. My own personal objectives are to finish formulating a research and project approach for the year! I have meetings this coming week with UNICEF as well as with USAID, and we'll see how things go.

The WR office here is short-staffed right now, due to loaning of personnel to the WR offices in Nairobi to assist in the recent crisis there. Please keep the situation in Kenya in your prayers, as it is still volatile.

In other news (and answered prayer!): I will be living with Phil and Becca during my time here in Rwanda! They were very generous to offer me a room for the coming months. I am so comfortable there at their home and will be looking forward to the steady stream of international guests that they are constantly hosting. Also, Hilde from Holland is living there right now too, so I am learning lots of fun stuff about social life in Kigali and all the fun places in town to hang out.

On Saturday night, Becca and Phil invited their friend Innocent to a birthday dinner. Innocent is an orphan from Burundi, finishing high school here in Rwanda and living with a Rwandese family. Innocent's birthday was today, the 21st, and Becca baked a carrot cake for him to celebrate! Here's a picture of the cake:



Here's a picture of Phil and Becca (and two of Innocent's "adopted" family) singing Happy Birthday to him (Innocent is holding the cake):



As we sat down to enjoy the cake, we discovered that this was Innocent's first birthday cake! Hard to imagine not having a birthday cake before your 22nd birthday... I guess we all have many things to be thankful for!

Talk to you again soon....

the hyenas have a wedding

On those rare meteorological occasions when the sun is out while it's pouring rain, my first response has always been to look for the rainbow.

Not here.

Yesterday I was working at the World Relief offices in Kigali, mainly looking up recent research articles about newborn health. Sarah (who's an American) happened to be in the office I share with Melene when the rain started to come sheeting down from the sky while the sun was shining brightly across the valley. (I am even posting a picture here of the view, looking out from the World Relief offices...see how hard it's pouring!!) "Oh," Sarah said, "the hyenas are having a wedding. That's what they say here."

What?

Melene (who of course is Rwandan, and was sitting right there too) confirmed that what Sarah said was true. Instead of indicating the need to look for rainbows here, this kind of weather prompts certainty about hyena weddings.

Hmmm. That's...different! So I asked Melene where that story came from. She just laughed and said she didn't know.

So, the next time the sun is shining when the rain is falling...you'll know that hyenas are being wed somewhere nearby. Don't forget you heard it here.