I first set foot on the continent of Africa in 1971.   Exchange students from all 9 University of California campuses were loaded onto one plane and sent to Europe, from where we all were divided into smaller groups and sent on to our specific countries of destination.   Mine was Kenya.  I was part of a…Read more »

So a few weeks ago, right after Peace Corps decided to relocate me and had contacted my current landlord for an extension on my house until they found me a new site,  I got a text from my landlord asking how I was, and saying that on December 17 he would be in town for…Read more »

His name was Brez, although I didn’t know this when I first saw him.   Another  two year old boy at the bus station, wearing a mustard T-shirt, and cute little miniature sports shoes, was waiting for the bus with his mother and father.  Like Moses, he too was intrigued by a bin of sweets and…Read more »

So last week, Peace Corps Rwanda finally decided relocate me to another work site where,  hopefully,  there  will be students and/or faculty with whom I can work.  I don’t think that they realized that the college where I was assigned was not accredited, and I don’t think people at the college  expected students to suddenly…Read more »

About a week and a half ago, someone from Peace Corps Rwanda called to see if I was interested joining a team of two-year volunteers who were editing the new curriculum for Rwandan public schools for week-long workshop.  The project sounded interesting and, since there were still no students at my work site to teach…Read more »

Being a Peace Corps volunteer requires a willingness to allow someone else, specifically the U.S. federal government, to control some of the most intimate material aspects of your life – your home, your sustenance, your freedom of movement, your professional identity – for duration of your service.  The only thing that remains truly and utterly…Read more »

 So…. Recently, someone whom I first met, and studied with,  45 years ago as an undergraduate student studying Kiswahili and sociolinguistics in southern California, tracked me down and contacted me by email.    He was the only linguist anywhere in the area with whom I could study Kiswahili and our mutual obsession with maneno ya Kiswahili…Read more »

Previously,  I wrote about the difference between high and low context cultures in an earlier blog entitled “Molasses Monday”.  Contrary to my previous experiences in low context cultures, the molasses effect I experienced upon arriving at my work site has still not receded, although it has changed in both density and color. Over the last…Read more »

Today I learned my address:   Ntuuye mu intara y’amajyepfo mu karere ka ruhango mu murenge wa ruhango mu kagari ka nyamagana mu mudugudu wa gataka. In other words, I live in Gataka village in the Nyamagana cell in the ruhango sector of the ruhango district in the Amajyepfo (try pronouncing that) province.  I don’t know…Read more »

Well, I had written a blog entry for this week but I am going to save it.   Given how many of us in the U.S. feel about what is happening in our own sociopolitical system, I believe that it is more important than ever before for us to  take the time to step out of…Read more »