Posted by Today is market day. When I ride to work the road is filling with women (plus a few men) in bright colored fabrics carrying their produce on their heads towards the market, located above my house. Unlike the people who live in my town, who often stare at me with what appears to suspicion, at…Read more »
Posted by They say that “home is where the heart” is and, although I would not say that my heart is quite fully here in Rwanda yet, I did notice last week when I came home from a three-day trip to Kigali, the capital, that I was happy to be “home” when we rounded the corner of…Read more »
Posted by The history of the world in a word. So today I was, of course, studying Kinyarwanda, and I looked up the word for “table”, which is amézá, with high tones on the second and third vowel, (but not to worry, I can’t remember that sort of detail yet myself). The dictionary noted that the word…Read more »
Posted by So I’ve been trying to figure out how to blog about what brings me the most joy these days so that I wouldn’t bore my readers to death. I mentioned it to another volunteer who arrived in-country with me, a professional woman in her fifties whom I thought, because she was doing on online TEFL…Read more »
Posted by Sugar Ant Wars* I do not live alone …. Each morning I wake to see whether my kitchen was as clean as I thought it was when I went to bed. A crumb, a drop of milk, a grain of rice, and I am greeted by throngs of very busy and very very tiny ants…Read more »
Posted by (For any readers who don’t know me, I have done feral cat rescue in the States for the past seventeen years and thought I was “done” with it, having left my last remaining five with dear friends for the duration of my time. ) All I can say at this point is that I must…Read more »
Posted by Today (September 1) is Kwita Izina, which is a ceremony based on the traditional Rwandan practice of naming newborns, when all the new mountain gorillas who are new to the families living in the Virunga mountains are named by various members of the international community, including various representatives from the fields of conservation and tourism. …Read more »
Posted by Saw my reflection in a mirror today for the first time since I can remember. Although I packed many things I thought I might need, and most of which are probably going to come in handy at one time or another, I did not pack a mirror. Mirrors are highly overrated, I think. I didn’t…Read more »
Posted by So one of my puzzlements when I applied for the position in Rwanda was why there were multiple institutions of higher learning in such a small country, which is just slightly bigger than the state of Vermont. My only point of comparison were the two other East African countries at whose universities I had studied…Read more »
Posted by Note: This post may only be of interest to those who are curious about my anticipated work assignment here. In cross-cultural studies, different cultures can be distinguished based on whether they are “low context” or “high context”. The distinction is used to describe cultures based on how explicit the messages exchanged are and the role…Read more »
THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED 
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