This past weekend saw the three day Mountain Gorilla Rally come to town. Even though it had nothing to do with gorillas driving (too bad, that) it was still an interesting concept: rally racing on the back roads of Rwanda… what fun, eh? Sponsored by the big Kenyan bank, KCB, it was promoted like a…
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I still can’t deal with the notion of having servants. In addition to obsessively cleaning our car every morning, our wonderful guard, John, will pounce and clean the occasional pair of shoes left outside. Oh, he’ll also clean my mountain bike after a muddy ride unless I specifically tell him to please leave the patina…
Sometimes, photography is a bit like I imagine fishing: it’s the shot you didn’t get or couldn’t take for whatever reason that sticks with you more than the ones that successfully clicked. Part disappointment, part the thought of what could have been. Earlier this week I was working on a story at the referral hospital…
Another week in Kigali, another Sunday spent on the mountain with good company and horses… ah, but I repeat myself. Lea rides at “Fazenda Sengha” the only real “stable” in all of Rwanda. Until recently, they were down to two horses (one, really — Licky is ancient and worn out, and should be allowed to…
African wildlife is vastly overrated. Instead, Lea and Lucas just adopted two bunnies and a guinea pig from one of Lea’s classmates. This is Fluffy… or Furry… or something like that. I am not wise in the ways of bunny names. But it’s like with cats — they don’t come when you call, so who…
Nonsense. This is Rwanda — every season is busy season. But still, with the return of the rains, there’s a renewed push to prepare the fields for a second harvest. it seems ridiculous that there’s still subsistence farming going on right here in Kigali, but the pace of development is such that new neighborhoods are…
Tradition and protocol are important aspects of life in a foreign country. Do’s and don’ts, can and can’ts, accepting – or at least respecting – the different ways of doing things in these parts. And so it was that I spent a morning learning the intricate steps involved in getting an oil change in Rwanda this…
The “small” rainy season in this neck of the woods started on Saturday. Suddenly, it became quite apparent why the main roads have massive four foot deep culverts on the side. It’ll help green up the place, but it also had the novel side effect of emptying the streets of people, which is almost unheard…
(The elusive RAV4 in its natural habitat. Only a few hundred are left roaming the plains of Eastern Africa; the rest have been domesticated or killed for their lean meat and the delicious timing belts, which are ripped from the still living beast and used as an aphrodisiac in sacred fertility rituals). Did you know…
(Spoiler alert: this gets ridiculously geeky. You can ignore this post with impunity if you’re just here for the gorilla babies and mountain biking trip reports). Right up there with food, water, and air, Internet access is obviously an essential requirement in life, particularly when you’re stuck in Rwanda for six months. The prevailing way…
