Dave's Rwanda Trip, 20081015, Butare & the University of Rwanda
Again, pictures are here, assuming I can get them uploaded. The internet has been particularly flakey recently.
http://www.thecathouse.homeftp.net/Filez/20081015
The first pictures are some books that one of the professors suggested Mandy look into. Faster to take snapshots than to copy down titles. ☺ I also made the interesting observation that books written in French tend to have the title on the spine starting at the bottom, while books in English tend to have it starting on the top.
Next are some pictures of the Hotel Ibis, that we’ve stayed at twice now. It’s right where the Volcano Express stops in downtown Butare. The university itself is a few kilometers further south on the main road, but easy to get to via taxi or minivan, or not too long walk. The hotel is a great place not only to sleep but also for visiting with Profs and general hanging out. Again we had two meetings there in the covered outside dining area.
Next are pictures of the university itself. It’s an open and airy place- much like you would expect to see in southern California or other warm places. The main building was built just before the 50s, you can tell by the style and age of some of the components, but it seems very functional, and in many ways it reminded me of the law quad. Sheltered on the inside with pretty walkways and trees (Is that an Avocado tree there? We saw another elsewhere, and the avocado salad at the restaurant was exceptionally fresh. ☺) The surrounding buildings were clearly more recent, and the campus was expanding much like ours usually is.
The students were also quite reminiscent of UM - young adults, dressed in a more westernized style, not nicer than people in downtown Kigali, but definitely nicer than most of the people in downtown Butare. They were healthy and energetic, and generally seemed happy and excited about life more so than some of the crowds we saw downtown. They were also friendly, at least some of them. As Mandy and I were looking for our first meeting there, one offered to help us find Georges’ office (good thing too, not much in the way of labeling here), and then stayed to chat with us for some time, and soon was joined by two more classmates. They were all students of Georges, it turned out, studying linguistics. One was excited about his coming career in translation - a valuable and in-demand task in a country with three primary languages.
The meetings with professors went well, one at the Ibis last night, 2 planned at the University and one random addition when we met an ex comp-lit prof. there, and then once more at the Ibis (a favored meeting spot of professors who don’t want to be swarmed by students, it turns out ☺). I enjoyed listening in to the conversations, the ones in English I was able to jump in on and ask tidbits of questions here and there, the ones in French I just listened to and worked on my French comprehension. (Mandy is impressively fluent.) Many notes were taken, and of course more questions were asked than definitively answered, leading to much more research to do in the future, but maybe her thesis will center on getting the reader to think about the right questions more than about answering any of them. When dealing with people, nations, etc., that probably is more the way to go anyway.
We did some more shopping at the craft store right across from the Ibis, and another shop nearby. Lots of cool sculptures and baskets created by local artisans.
The rides out and back were after 6, so it was dark soon, and we were both times treated to gorgeous full moonrises. The landscape remains beautiful at night, often with a mist surrounding the hills which rise in waves seemingly infinitely off into the distance. It’s a very beautiful country. Alas my camera can’t capture night images from a speeding bus.
Slow day today- Mandy’s unfortunately feeling ill. Not sure if it’s a bug of some sort, or the side effects of the Malarone we’ve been taking every day to combat malaria (there has been one irritating mosquito buzzing in our room every night it seems). So we’ve been mostly putzing around the Magnolia, doing some packing of all of our souvenirs, deciding on some things to leave behind. We looked into shipping, but it looks to be expensive and difficult due to customs requirements (fumigating anything wood, for example) according to FedEx anyway (yup, they’re here too ☺), so the current plan is to pack well and bring an extra bag to check.
Locks are weird here - you rotate two full circles, with the deadbolt moving a little bit each time. It’s as if each lock has 2 settings, “locked, but only just barely” and “locked with an extra centimeter of deadbolt to spare”. And they all seem to be like that- very strange.
Also, if you’re ever here, I definitely recommend the buffet dinner at Chez Robert - yummy. Lots of fresh avocado - reinforcing my theory that the tree I saw at the university was, in fact, an avocado tree. Plus it had plenty of vegan stuff that Mandy could eat as well. It occurs to me that in addition to being right by the Magnolia where we’re staying, it is also right across from the Hotel des Mille Collines, one of the snazziest in town, so they’re probably tuned for high class clientele.
Not sure when this will get posted - the internet has been down all day, and my computer also chose this moment to die (Bad hard drive? It’s making weird noises, I’m not sure). But fortunately Mandy’s MacBook is running just fine, and LiveJournal doesn’t care which computer I post from. ☺