safari away from me...

i thought that once you get to africa there are elephants that pick up your bags and monkeys help with room reservations but that's not true at all. you have to pay a lot of money to see them.

on sunday, russ, dr doll, and our roommate ventured to akagera national park. we got to drive around in a land cruiser for 6 hours in the hot sun. we saw baboons, giraffes, zebras, waterbucks, an elephant, hippoplatymuses, bushbucks, impala, and tons of birds including a bateleur, "considered the most beautiful raptor in the whole wide world" according to me.


but we did get to see an elephant with a urinary tract infection, he just peed and peed and peed, while trapping a group of local fisherman in their houses. i think he was looking for something to cool the burning.









i failed to mention that i have hives all over my body from an allergy to cassava, regretfully. butt not as bad as my colleague.


two of the funniest animals ever invented

striped donkeys like in tijuana

moth vs pain

i was walking down the street in nyamata trying to remember the day's soccer lineup when i serendipitously noticed a blackboard with the times of each match ... so i thought. on closer examination i noticed that some of the normal world cup games had been changed. todays first match seems like an easy one for "portugar" because i heard that "moth korea" is having a bad year. im unfamiliar with the teams of the second match, "switzrland" beat spain earlier, but id put my money on "chir." the last game is sure to be a difficult one for honduras, i would advise them to wear shinguards cuz "pain" is coming for 90 minutes and they're angry.

after buffing up on today's match-ups i remembered i wanted to get my "hairs cut," luckily there were two "saloons" nearby the texas and new mexico. i would like to say to all you ladies tired of spending too much on haircuts, may i present rwanda.




you can get your haircut like tupac or beyonce, washed, ears cleaned, hair on your neck burned off, and styled with mousse to look real swell for 500Rwfrancs (<$1USD). they really like to clean your ears like 5 times even when you squeal like a girl. then you can have baby powder thrown in your face and dust off for no extra charge (or apparent reason).
but you come out looking like one of the three stooges (pick one)!!!!!!!

the island of rwanda: 1000 hills and feet in two worlds

rwanda for many of us is inextricably tied to the genocides of 1994, when hutus slaughtered 800,000 tutsis and sympathizers in 100 days. but since that time the world has started to pay attention to this small central african nation. international aid money flows copiously, evidenced by the inability to walk two blocks in the capital without seeing the headquarters for some ngo or international aid organization, with startling results. the country is orderly, stable, safe, and functional, though completely surrounded by countries of varying degrees of development. before arriving i had heard stories of rwanda as a backwater in the 70's-80's so my expectations were low, but during my travels here i heard reports that rwanda was "not like africa," and "like being at home." on the way from tanzania our small van was boarded by two armed escorts and told not to stop for anything because the area was unstable, then our bus promptly got a flat tire. a couple of us got out and looked nervously around while the bus drivers anxiously changed the tire with 8 people still inside hoisted on a precarious-looking jack made for a small go-kart. upon arrival from tanzania i was amazed--it was an immediate transformation. kigali, the capital, is a bustling big city with western style supermarkets, coffee shops, restaurants, and skyscrapers (kinda) with western style prices.
i arrived late in the evening and tried to check into a cheap hostel with the help of pascal, the project's accountant. turned out everything was 20$ or more for simple accommodation. i couldn't afford to pay, so pascal offered to let me stay with him. that settled, i offered to buy him dinner so i wanted to go to the bank and withdraw some cash. he informed me that since it was after regular business hours you can't withdraw cash with international cards. WHAT!! i argued that this city with all the amenities you can't get cash from an atm, but it seems so western, and i'd heard that rwanda was one of the most business-friendly nations in the world. pascal explained that though they'd come far, when you start at the bottom of world GDPs and move up 50 places you are still at 150. these things take time. to think that 16 years ago there were kids walking the streets hacking to death their neighbors to where they are today is astounishing. though in appearance the country is very western with all the luxuries, but the mentality of the people remains very "african."
i was welcomed into pascal's home and we discussed the differences of the american and african mind. he thought it unusual that i would assume that i was burdening him by staying at his home. rwandan culture assumes that travelers will be taken in without any reluctance or hesitation to the length of stay. in the states we are ready for visitors to leave as soon as they arrive.
we discussed his upcoming wedding which will have 600 guests (SIX HUNDRED) minimum. i wondered if his father was a very rich man to pay for the weddings of his 17 children from 2 wives. he said the opposite--the guests, many of whom he has never met, bring money which is used to pay the costs. his father, in fact, pays only for the eldest children until they are on their own feet, when they in turn are responsible for covering the school fees, food, clothes, etc., for the younger children and so on.
his father, he explained, had so many children that he forget some of the children's names and with birthdates he was hopeless. we also talked about the size of the family he wanted, at least 4. the more children, the more love you have. i argued that with less children you are able to focus more attention and resources on them. he found my argument off base. he added that his mother couldn't believe that rich men like bill clinton and george w bush would only have one or two children. it was difficult to explain that large families aren't indicators of wealth in the US. i added that socially and environmentally this is a less sustainable approach (very western of me). we left this discussion alone.
that night pascal prepared the house before going to bed. shutting the door behind the night guards, drawing the curtains over the barred windows, locking the doors, dead-bolting, putting two padlocks on the door, then locking the hallway door and finally locking the doors to our rooms. needless to say, i sound like a janitor if god forbid i need to pee in the middle of the night.

what the %$#@!!!

this may only be interesting to fellow north carolinians but a kid on the bus this morning had a notebook and i happened to glance over and read the cover. to my dismay i read nashville and thought "huh that's funny, why would nashville be on the cover of a notebook?" next i read greenville "huh thats strange, but there are lots of greenvilles." next was nevada "huh that's funny, non sequitur, but it is africa." then i read waynesville "what the %$#@? really?" for you who don't know waynesville, at a population of 9000, "is the largest town in all of haywood county in western nc." then it says "seattle regular straight double knee red selvage (sic) american classic the basic. the basic. the basic. the basic. painter pant." i would really like to meet the advertising agency who thought this campaign would gain a market share of that difficult-to-reach, rwandan, english-illiterate demographic.
i have always found this type of thing hilarious like huge african men with shirts that say "this girl loves someone in missouri" or "ass, gas, or grass! no one rides for free" across the back of a little old lady scuffling along to mass or the brash american flag and eagle with lightning bolts (available at all gas stations and select nascar races) that says "i love jesus" on the head of an elderly muslim.

ok that was fun.

more than you wanted to know about cassava

ok, so cassava is a tuberous root, similar to the potato that is the staple crop for much of sub-saharan africa. its originally from south america, but has been cultivated in africa for hundreds of years and takes varying shapes as a foodstuff (including tapioca pudding) but typically ground into a dough and eaten as a filler, often served with stew or meat.

positives:

• it's drought tolerant
• can grow underground for 20 months
• very hardy
• has easily available starch

sounds good, right?

bummers:

• it rots quickly after harvesting
• won't save in the raw form
• contains naturally occurring cyanide

worse, cyanide concentrations increase in times of drought when, coincidentally, people are hungriest. so you must prepare it by soaking or fermentation, which removes the cyanide sufficiently to consume. this is all well and good on a small scale when you are consuming household size amounts but as a result of the efforts to improve food security, the village has formed an industrial scale processing plant which means industrial scale cyanide waste water. that's where we come in.


here's the processing plant

and here's the problem: what to do with toxic waste water?currently they are diverting it into a 15 meter deep collection well which will fill and they'll dig another, i.e. bad idea.

max, a med student from umass, looks pensively over the situation

ok, here's the process;
cassava harvested once from underground

a short shelf life means it needs to be close to end consumer

weekly, a truck collects cassava from local farmers and brings it to the processing facility


shares are weighed and farmers are paid 50 rwandan francs/kilo (10 cents USD)

sometimes goofy white people get in the way and waste your time by measuring and weighing stuff

women peel the cassava (imyambati in kinyarwanda) for 2.5 Rwfrancs/kilo


sometimes goofy white people get in the way and waste your time by measuring and weighing stuff again

sometimes goofy white people try to peel cassava and cut their fingers off

peeled cassava are washed in a tank to remove dirt and debris

sometimes dorky white people sample wash water for cyanide

clean fruit is loaded into the rasper behind the men and chipped into flakes

this is on the other side of the wall from the rasper. the square opening in the back wall is the outlet.

the chipped cassava is bagged and set into these soak tanks that draw out cyanide for 2-3 days. the capacity of these tanks are ~3 metric tons apiece.

pressing the soaking bags to remove excess water

normally cassava is spread on the ground or on tarps to sun dry. this has become the hitch in the process because of the time and space needed.

the facility has built greenhouses and drying racks to improve efficiency...


unfortunately the are made of impermeable plastic (unicef tarps) which doesn't allow air to circulate
the flakes must be turned and raked to improve air flow

flaked, sun-dried cassava

they allowed us some space to experiment with a new design made of poly "burlap" sacks...

sometimes dumb white people tear up a perfectly good drying rack and mess up a full day's work

happy workers covered in cassava dust at the mill

some white guy pointing out the obvious

varying sizes of flour

sometimes the great white nerd (me) tries to help clean the grinding mill

flour is bagged into 5 kilo bags and sold locally and in the capital, kigali, for 2000 Rwfrancs (2USD)


i hope you weren't too bored with that intro. i will be putting together a video of what we are doing and some projects. thanks for reading!!!