Tuesday AM - 3/11/08

I am well, healthy, tired, excited, focused, challenged, and a lot more. Maybe I can put some thought to what I'm "feeling". You should have no concern for me, just as long as I keep up the daily blog and/or email, and you'll know by what you read that I am alive and well.

Literally, Rwanda is a country very much in recovery AND growth, but on the seemingly right recovery and growth direction. President has an annually-updated document he authored - VISION 2020 - with major focal points of housing, medicine, commerce (taxes vary), transportation (incl. roads), utilities (power, sewage, water), education, military, and all have visible successes in one way or another. It has the still-visible history of being poor and under-developed - and an aire of "never forget" relative to the genocide; interspersed in Kigale and the suburbs (about 750,000 live in this area) are moden buildings and almost-modern buildings. Roads are surprisingly good, since only about 10% are paved, rest is dirt/clay/mud so 4-wheeling is safest way, while 2-wheel bikes & cycles are everywhere. Local taxi service is either a 2-seat, 125cc motorbike or a 12-passenger van-like bus, and you always have to haggle the price before you get in.

Breakfast yesterday was fresh fruits, bread, coffee, and scrambled eggs. Pretty groggy still, even after two cups of joe, definitely still recovering from long flights and time zone changes.

Meetings in our condo began about 9am, lasted until noon, when we all piled into a Land Rover and headed to the eastern province, near the border of Tanzania, to small community of Ramalama (sp?), where we met the Governor of the province (and his staff). He has actually just been promoted, and is in last days of Governor, about to become Minister of Education for the entire country. American-educated, very sharp and on top of everything. We delivered a ½ ton of seeds for Jatropha trees, to be planted over next 1-2 months. We were then treated to dinner at the Governor's villa – modestly large, complete with armed security and a full staff of hired help. Dinner was excellent – sausages, chicken, pork, beef shish-ka-bob like with bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, with a side dishes that looked like cooked bananas but actually tasted like potatoes. Language throughout the evening was mixture of English, French, Swahili and Rwandan, with many able to converse in all four – just not me. But its amazing what conversations you can follow in your own imagination......

Trip out to this eastern area - left early afternoon, took about 3 hours, as we were heavily loaded on top with the bags of seeds. Trip back also took 3 hours as we were in a downpour almost the whole way. The good news – back in our room safe. The ride was uneventful, save for having only one windshield wiper (thankfully on the driver’s side), and virtually no lights the entire way until we got into the capital city – with a lot of pedestrians on both sides of the road, walking on the asphalt until a car gets close and then stepping into the mud on the shoulder. I slept about 20 minutes in the car, but am absolutely exhausted and hitting the rack at just after 9pm. Didn't even get this posted until today because last night I was downloading a Windows update for the new laptop I brought here for another guy, and the one Ethernet connection we have ain’t the fastest in the world…..