pictures from Akagera

Presidential news

The reason I went to Akagera was that my dad had to go to a PEPFAR retreat. PEPFAR is "President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief". There were lots of doctors and epidemiologists and nurses and other people. They had "sessions" all day and while I was invited to attend, I somehow was way too busy doing other things. Like painting my toenails.

I magically did have time to sit around with them in the evenings and drink refreshing beverages. I learned some interesting things during the dinner table conversations as well. Last night the new head of the CDC in Rwanda and the organizational boss of the retreat got into a battle about breastfeeding. I'm not super clear on the argument strategies that came into play, but I know that at one point the CDC guy was backing up his case by citing statistics about how many women have three nipples. Or more!

These PEPFAR guys are a riot, I tell you.

It was very fun.

One thing that I was really looking forward to about this trip was the baboons. Everyone I met who had been to this park before told me "watch out for the baboons!" and then they would tell me a story about a baboon doing something rude and obnoxious. Like stealing your sandwich or breaking into a conference room and eating all the dried condensed milk substance. Everyone said that the place was overrun with baboons! They are such a menace! Make sure you roll up your car windows and close your bedroom door all the way!

I thought the idea of baboons running wild in the hotel was pretty great.

But, too bad for me, Former President Bill Clinton is in Rwanda this weekend. Plus some other famous and important people, like Bill Gates and some CNN reporters and a big-name Harvard AIDS book writer man. The Bills did not arrive before I left, but the other people were there already. I didn't recognize them, or know who they were, but all of the PEPFAR guys were very excited.

I still don't really know who they are.

Anyway, because of all the impending fanciness, the hotel had taken extreme measures against baboons. I think they hired a bunch of local boys to chase the baboons away with sticks. Whatever they did was effective, I didn't see any baboons at all until we drove off of the hotel grounds and into the park this morning.

I saw a lot of baboons in the park, plus more animals:
Giraffe
Hippo
Warthog
Impala
Water Buffalo
Egret
Crane
Alligator
Lemur

and some others I think. We followed elephant tracks for a while but we did not see any elephants. And we didn't see any zebras, because the zebras live too far away and we had to leave early before the roads would be blocked off because of Bill Clinton.

There's some kind of model prototype hospital clinic thing going on near the park. The Harvard AIDS writer guy was involved in that. Or started it, or is running it, or something. And Bill Clinton came to look at it, and then to stay in the hotel. The same hotel I just stayed at!

So, the whole way back to Kigali I kept having to pull way over to the side and roll up my windows because all these huge police trucks and SUVs with tinted windows and buses and other fancy cars kept speeding past me going the other way. Motorcades like that on windy dirt roads are really annoying; they would get past and it would take practically 500 hours before the dust settled again. Good thing that car has air conditioning or I might have died.

Now I'm back in my parents' house, fooling around and doing nothing in particular. I guess I should compress some more video. I'm hoping my dad will come back from the office soon so we can go out for Indian food. Mmm, mutter paneer!

More travelling adventures

I'm driving to Akagera this afternoon and staying there until Saturday. Again, internet access is unlikely.

Zanzibar was excellent. If anyone is looking for a quick getaway to the opposite quarter of the globe, I highly recommend it. I went snorkling and looked at colorful fish and ate Indian food and Zanzibari food and Italian food. And gelato!

So, adieu once again, until Saturday. Have a good weekend!

Zanzibar is pretty

vacation squared

Apparently, I am going to Zanzibar tomorrow.

"Tomorrow" means Friday afternoon of my world. My plane leaves for Nairobi at 2:00 Kigali time. Which is 8:00 am in Washington, Boston, New York, etc. And 7:00 am in Minneapolis and St. Paul. And 6:00 in Missoula and Billings. And 5:00 in Portland and San Francisco and LA. I could keep listing cities but you probably are already annoyed by the whole thing.

Time zones confuse me. I have to think very carefully about the earth and rotation and geography before I ever can remember if I am ahead of or behind people.

Now it's easy, I am ahead of everyone. Except maybe not Japan and Singapore.

Anyway, last weekend when we were hanging out at the Embassy like we always do, because we are so tight with the ambassador, there was some other guy there that my dad knew.

There were more than one other guys that my dad knew. But I am just talking about this one specific one. His name is Gary. He's from Montana. He was working in Kigali at USAID two years ago when my parents got here, but now he doesn't live here anymore. You might think there would not be that many people from Montana who have worked at the USAID mission in Kigali, but you would be wrong. Just like you might not think there would be that many people from Montana at the Linguistics department at Gallaudet University. But you would be wrong again.

Back to Gary. He doesn't live here anymore. BUT, he was back for a visit and while we were all hanging out on the lawn at the ambassador's house, Gary mentioned that Kenyan Airlines is having some kind of blowout sale on trips to Zanzibar.

Or something.

All week there was much tentative planning and hemming and hawing and not much decision making. Until finally today, we have plane tickets!!!! And at least one hotel room for one of the nights.

My dad and I are going for no reason. Except to get extra stamps on our passports and go swimming in the ocean. I'm super excited to go swimming in the ocean. It's going to be warm and picturesque. I can't wait. I love swimming in the ocean.

We'll be back on Tuesday. I don't really have a clear conception of what internet access in Zanzibar is going to be like, plus I probably won't have time anyway because I'll be so busy swimming and looking picturesque on the beach.

THEN, the day after we come back, Wednesday, we're going to Akigera. It's a national game park. This one doesn't have any gorillas but they have other things. I don't even care anyway because I already saw gorillas, that is so old news to me.

So we'll hang out at that other park for a few days and come back to Kigali on Saturday. I think. I have no idea what date that is, the 16th? Something close to that. As of tomorrow I am all done with my actual official research. I might do some kind of make-up sessions the week after next but I doubt it. I will probably have too much else to do, like watching Law & Order and drinking beer.

Just kidding. I already watched all the Law & Order. Now I'm on the first season of Lost.

SUMMARY: I am going on a fun adventure. I don't know if I will have internet access. Don't be scared if I don't write anything on the internet. If I do have internet access, I will write things. And everyone who has internet access themselves should write me emails so when I finally have internet access again I will feel popular and in demand.

Okay, time to go be fancy with some Germans! Auf wehedersehn!

independence

I had the day off today, but it isn't because I'm American. The 4th of July is apparently a holiday of some sort for Rwanda, too. It's Liberation Day. It's the anniversary of when the RPF finally took Kigali back, "ending the war".

For reasons of which I am not aware, the Americans celebrated the 4th of July on the 1st of July. We all went over to the Ambassador's residence and wore patriotic clothing and ate hamburgers.

Confusingly, the 1st of July is also a holiday in Rwanda, and it is called Independence Day.

So the American Independence Day, which is July 4th, was celebrated on the Rwandan Independence Day, which was July 1st, while Rwandan Liberation Day is celebrated on July 4th, but not the American Independence Day because that was already celebrated on Rwandan Independence Day.

On none of these days did anyone light any fireworks. So I really don't see the point.

Anyway, for these reasons, I had the day off.

Saturday afternoon: red, white and blue

What I do all day

The details of my research project are not necessarily very interesting to most people so I usually just say "I'm videotaping kids signing things". Actually, I am slightly more organized than that.

I'm working with four groups of students. I have 4 six-year-olds, 6 11-year-olds, 4 14-year-olds, and 4 18-year-olds. I also ended up including one adult Deaf Rwandan who teaches at the school because he wanted to.

I do different things on different days, but in general each kid does three different things: first, I do a one-on-one session where I show pictures (or for the older students, a word list in Kinyarwanda) and find out what the sign is for the things. The word list is a standard one that linguistics projects all over use. It's called the Swadesh list, named after whatever guy invented it. The one I'm using is modified for signed languages. It still isn't that appropriate; it includes things like "ice" that don't really exist here, and doesn't include some things that are basic concepts in Rwanda but not in the US. So I use that list but am flexible with it. I also have been getting alphabet and number/counting systems from people.

Secondly, each group sits around together and looks at the pictures/words and discusses what the sign is for that.



Sometimes the group comes up with a sign none of the individuals used, and sometimes they all argue about it.



They also argue about what is happening in the pictures, and there is usually a lot of extraneous discussion as well. And bossing each other around about not participating enough. "You're just sitting there! Sign!"



Then lastly, people from the same age group are in pairs and they watch a Tweety and Sylvester cartoon ("Canary Row", again used in lots of linguistics projects all over) and tell each other what happened in it. I ended up doing this part multiple times because the first time around everyone just wanted to watch the cartoon and (especially the littlest ones) couldn't really remember what happened afterwards. By the second and third go-rounds everyone got very melodramatic and descriptive, which is not only good data but also hilarious to watch.




The six-year-olds also decided that whoever was not watching the clip had to cover their eyes tightly so as not to peek.



So the beginning of each time has one six-year-old poking and tapping and sometimes punching another one, who is sort of twisting around doing six-year-old blind dance moves to entertain themselves. (I had them sitting on the floor because the chairs are too big for them). I start laughing again every time I have to look at any of it for editing or compressing or whatever.



At the end, I've been left with some random amounts of time so I have everyone draw pictures. They also all drew for a while at the beginning to get used to me, the room, etc. Then they all wanted to tell the camera about what their drawings are of. This is when I get the most genocide-related narrative. I also have all the drawings. Some of them are really scary. Some of them are really silly. I am inventing new research/teaching project for making books with the kids, writing a story and illustrating it and binding it. Maybe next year.



Then when I get back in the fall, I'm doing an independent study to begin analysis. My analysis will be recording the configurations of the hands that I see using a notation system that my smart professors invented. "Phonology" for signed languages means how you produce the sign. Not related to sound, but conceptually equivalent to phonology in spoken languages, which studies how you produce a word. Basically. I'll figure out what handshapes are the most common, if there are any handshapes in Rwanda that are not in ASL, etc. There are a couple of general theories related to signed languages that will get tested against this data too.

Phonology!

more pictures of things

happy hour

I drink water all the time these days and I don't know why.

All my snarky comments about equatorial weather, before I left, were really just for effect. I knew that Rwanda's weather compares favorably to almost everywhere else, but I like to make dramatic statements regardless of their veracity.

The weather here is, in fact, lovely. It is never colder than 65 and never hotter than 85 (these numbers are based on my internal thermometer, not on any actual statistics. Who believes statistics anyway. Not me.) It sort of briefly rained one day so far. Today was as bad as the weather gets: it was overcast and only 70.

Plus, I never do anything very strenuous. I get up, sit on the balcony and drink coffee, drive to school, sit in a classroom and videotape children, drive home, sit at a desk and compress video, go downstairs, sit on the balcony again and drink beer and watch birds, go upstairs and compress some more video, and go to bed.

So I don't really understand my unquenchable thirst. You might be tempted to blame it on all the coffee and beer, but why would that suddenly cause me to drink two gallons of water a day? I am only exaggerating a little tiny bit. Right now it is 6:38 and so far today I have drunk five liter bottles full of water. Plus some glasses of water too. And only two cups of coffee at 8:00 this morning: not that much!

Partly it is probably because I am not drinking any milk. AT ALL. Normally I drink about two gallons of milk per week, all by myself. I think I would drink more than that if someone else were in charge of grocery shopping, because I also usually run out of milk a couple of times a week and have to go to the liquor store on the corner to buy more. And they only sell whole, which is delicious, but unhealthy. Or so I've been told. I buy it anyway, I need the milk!

One time when I was in college I tried to drink a gallon of milk in an hour. I couldn't do it. Then my challengers gave me another half an hour and I would still retain my glory. I couldn't do that either. I made it to maybe one glass left in the jug and then I threw up. A lot. It was disgusting.

I didn't die, though, or have to be rushed to the ER for lactose poisoning. Which convinced me that lactose poisioning was all just a lie invented by Keith to start an argument with me. I'm not sorry, though, because in the end I got a fair amount of glory out of it all anyway.

During the whole episode, a lot of discussion was had about how much of various liquids various people had consumed and/or seen other people consume. And someone claimed that drinking too much WATER would give you "electrolyte poisoning". I semi believe this, because "electrolyte" sounds scientific.

Based on these facts, I am going to switch from water to beer now. I am only trying to use preventative health care skills! I don't want to get any electrolyte poisioning!