As much as it pains me to say this, if I am honest, my time as a Peace Corps Response Volunteer in Rwanda has been a source of great disappointment to me.  I expected to become part of one community for a year, make a substantive and sustainable contribution in that setting, and, most importantly…Read more »

Dear readers, I realize that this post is out-of-sequence in terms of real time, assuming of course that time actually exists, and we all know that it doesn’t.    But now that I have finished my work here in Rwanda, and have a little free time to get caught up on unfinished business before I…Read more »

Today I took my last walk through the little town where I live – Tumba.  This is the first time that I am leaving a place where I have lived with no sense, one way or the other, as to whether I will ever be back.  In the past, when I have left a place,…Read more »

The Art of the Bicycle Rwandans excel at what I call “the art of the bicycle”.    We in the U.S. have a very limited idea of what bicycles are for.     In a country where very few people have personal vehicles, the use of a bicycle to transport goods has developed into a true art form.…Read more »

Long before western sociologists began talking about how our experience of reality is a social construction, mystics in Asia described the phenomenon, as the title of this post, a well-known quote from the Dhammapada, a collection of Buddhist sayings that dates back at least to the 1st century BCE (Before the Common Era),  attests. One…Read more »

I could feel the disbelief in the gentle twinkling of the tiny fingers that were stroking my arm as I sat squished against the side of the mini-bus traveling through town.   I reflected on the fact that the only white skin I’ve seen in more than a month was my own, a pale and somewhat…Read more »

So, as I roll into day seven without any water and day five without any electricity, I notice that my initial annoyance with living in what appears to be the only (small) area of Huye and its environs that does not have a consistent water or electricity has dissipated.  I have thrown out the food…Read more »

Et votre passport?  (and your passport?) Je vous ai deja donnée.   (I already gave it to you, polite, to a woman) As the woman behind the little glass window in front of me began to shuffle through an unseen pile of papers behind the counter which separated me from entry into the Comoros Islands, I…Read more »

Mama….. I turned to see a young man holding out his hand for money. Oya,  I shake my head and continued on my way, but he persists, pushing my shoulder. Gusaba ni umuco mubi  (Begging is a bad habit).   He stops for a moment, perhaps he is surprised that I know how to say that…Read more »

They say that this is the most rain in 36 years in Rwanda.  All I know is that it never stops.  Indra, the Hindu god of the heavens, lightning, thunder, storms, rains and river flows appears to want us to take notice of him, to what end I do not know. The world outside my…Read more »