24 August 07
Colobus Monkeys
Okay, a lot has happened in my last weeks in Tanzania. For one, thing, I was not in Tanzania for the whole time. I went to Rwanda for a week. While I was there, I went to the Nyungwe forest for a Colobus monkey hike.
Check out the pictures here.
The walk through the forest was really beautiful, with long vistas down into thickly wooded valleys and out onto the hills after hills for which Rwanda is famous.
When we got to the monkeys, there must have been 100 of them jumping and crashing through the trees. They make loud guttural grunts and high pitched yelps. They break off branches, large and small, and tons of leaves as they chase each other. It’s amazing to watch them leap onto little branches that seem much too small for them. Alphonze, my guide, said they can jump 20 meters. He also said they eat only the leaves of the trees that they’re in and some fruits. They don’t drink. Despite that, they do “make pee,” as Alphonze put it, down on unsuspecting people. Alphonze, the two trackers who follow the monkey troop everywhere, and I, were just missed.
They have heads, beards, armpits, and toes of white, but are otherwise jet black. Their babies are pure white. Their only predators are chimpanzees and eagles, who can steal babies.
We walked back to the place where the main road meets the turn off to the ranger station and there I waited for another mini bus to take me to Gikongoro where my stuff was waiting in a hotel room. It’s not a very busy road (though nicely paved, like nearly every road in Rwanda), and it was about 15 minutes before any vehicle passed.
While I waited, a little kid appeared out of the heavy mist and drizzling rain, barefooted and short-panted, with arms tucked into shirt for warmth. I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. “She” chattered to me in Kinyarwanda in a friendly way, but I couldn’t understand anything, of course. Then she noticed that one end of my bootlaces was hanging rather low and was frayed a bit. She said something more in her sweet voice, gently scolding me a bit, it seemed, and tucked it up into my boot. The little shoe-less one was worried about the condition of my laces. She then headed off again.
After another ten minutes, there was a dala dala heading east, and I climbed aboard.
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24 August 07
Last Day at ICTR / in Africa
Well, my internship ended today with me presenting some legal research that I’d done. And my flight leaves tonight.
I have had a great experience. But I’m also ready to get home to Jerri.
I mean to do an entry or two about the week I spent in Rwanda and the trip back to Mlalo that I took. But I might not get to it until I get home.
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6 August 07
Karemera et al comes to the end of the trial session
I’ve been lucky in my internship to be on a case that was in session while I was here.
The cases are scheduled to have 6 weeks in court, then that much time off again while the trial teams prepare for the next session in front of the bench. The trial session for my case began on June 12 and just ended last week. This meant I’ve been able to spend a lot of time in court, watching the lawyers direct and cross examine the witnesses. That, of course, has been very interesting, and educational.
Now that the session is over I’ll have more time for legal research and other work, and that will be good, too. I’m also trying to get a spot on the UN plane to go to Rwanda, but it’s often booked up and so far that hasn’t worked out. Oh, well.
Here’s a news story about the end of the session for my case.
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6 August 07
Minnesota Fats
That’s my Hash House Harriers nickname!
I was excited to finally get one last Friday after another awesome run on village roads and narrow forest paths. I got the name because I’m fat, of course.
Actually, the run’s religious advisor, Muhatma, asked me to say something about myself so that they could come up with a name, and I no sooner mentioned “Minnesota” then he came up with that name.
It’s weird that people from around the world tend to have heard of Minnesota Fats even if they know nothing about the state. Especially because it was later revealed that Muhatma didn’t even really know who Minnesota Fats was. He thought he was a blues singer.
Minnesota Fats was actually, a pool player, of course, but I realized I didn’t know anything more about him. So I looked it up. Turns out he actually had no connection to Minnesota. But he was fat.
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6 August 07
Meet some of the cast
I finally took some pictures around the house.
Follow this link to my Web album and you’ll find:
- A picture of me with my four roommates after our farewell dinner at a local food and drink establishment. We were wishing farewell because some of them are leaving this week.
- A picture of Johanne the askari/gardener/peanut butter gourmand.
- The dog Jackie, alias Simba.
- The dog Rafiki, alias Tom.
- The new dog that appeared mysteriously at our house. Her name is Philipsi Hamna. “Philipsi hamna?,” is the way the daladala drivers say “No one for Philips road?” in Kiswahili. I thought it sounded nice, and since I first spotted the new dog, I named her.
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6 August 07
Waterfall hike
Two weekends ago (somehow I’m very behind again) I went on a hike to a waterfall a few miles from Arusha.
The guide’s name is Moses; he’s a local young man who is studying to get a college certification in guiding. I’d say he’s already pretty good. My co-hikers were Kyle and Allison, a Canadian couple. Kyle is studying law at McGill and has been an intern with me this summer at the ICTR. Allison is finishing up a development project in Kenya. She’s been there for several months and will now also be studying at McGill.
The hike is a climb over several big hills to Moses’ home village. Then you go down into a lush river valley and wade up the river, past several small waterfalls, to the one really big one at the end. It’s about 150 feet high and quite pretty.
I was smart enough to take lots of pictures, so I’ll let them and the captions tell the rest of the story.
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20 July 07
Another news story on the trial
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20 July 07
Misadventures with the Stay-Puft Mooshmallow Man
On my birthday, July 17, there was nothing exciting except a 6.0 earthquake. But on July 12, a roommate whose actual birthday is July 14 and I threw a party for ourselves at the swanky pad of a bunch of other interns.
On that same day, hours before the festivities were to begin, Kristen, another roommate who had stayed home sick, happened upon Johanne, the house watchman, in the house with his fingers literally dipping into the peanut butter tub. Gross.
Over lunch I had to go to Mr. Muschi’s (the landlord’s) hardware store to pay the utility bill and the beer bill, so I volunteered to investigate a bit. I was wondering whether Johanne (pronounced Yo-Hanni) was really hungry because we weren’t feeding him, so I wanted to confirm that we weren’t supposed to provide food.
“Ehh?!,” said Mr. Muschi (using that special, high-pitched East African word/sound that translates, roughly, as “are you f*ckin’ kidding me?!”), “He’s supposed to be independent.” I didn’t go on to actually tell Muschi about the PB incident because I don’t want Johanne to get fired.
Then I asked Mix Master Moosh (as I’ve begun calling him) whether he could help me get some beer for the party that night, and two minutes later we’re driving all over town in his truck and then delivering the beer to the house where the party would be. I really like Moosh Potatoes (as I also call him) because he has so much gusto. I guess I have a soft-spot for the enterprising, go-get-‘em, small business owners of the world.
Mooshterpiece Theatre (I call him that, too) also said he would find the roomies and I a taxi driver who would charge one consistent low rate for driving from town to the house. That’s an important thing because the taxis don’t have meters, so one is always bartering and, after doing so unsuccessfully, getting overcharged. He (Mooshtery Science Theater 3000, that is) also said that we should just ask Lilly, the maid, to cook food for us once in awhile and she would do so. It’s her job, the University of Mooshigan assured me.
The party ended up being really fun, despite – or perhaps because of, I can’t decide which – my successful procurement of stout beer (with the help of the Intercontinental Ballistic Mooshile, of course), that we used in a stomach-churning concoction of stout, whisky, and cream liqueur known as the Irish Car Bomb.
I think I am now, officially, too old for that kind of thing. (But check out this picture of me chugging one!)
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20 July 07
A Walk Around Arusha
Okay, I’m way behind in the blogging, but I’ll make an effort to relate some of the more interesting events of the past few weeks.
To start with, I had the most extraordinary day two Sundays past. I decided I really should finally explore the villages around my house, so I started walking off the paved Nairobi/Moshi Road into a banana field, and I was soon chatting with a shortish man carrying a leather Bible case and outfitted smartly in dress pants and button-down shirt.
He asked me where I was from, etc., and the next thing I knew he insisted that I come to his house. His name was Simon Mark. His English was minimal (though better than my Kiswahili, it goes without saying), and he had particular problem with possessive pronouns. He showed me around by saying, “This is your farm. This is your house. This is your wife.” I’m by now familiar with the famous African hospitality, but until I realized what he was trying to say, his spirit of sharing seemed extraordinary. He had a very good accent, so it was easy to understand the words. They just weren’t precisely what he meant.
I met Simon’s wife, though I regret I don’t remember her name; his little daughter Rachel, a smiling wisp of a thing, four-years old, who I really thought might expire from laughing at me and the absolute Mzungu-ness of it all; the older daughter, Lightness; and the nephew, Julius, who was a bit younger than Simon and spoke more English.
I also met the Bibi (grandmother), and she seemed impressed that I said “Sikamho,” the traditional greeting of respect for an elder, and bowed a bit. She stood and smiled at me for a long time. Midway through the introductions, Simon informed me, his voice lowered and his face serious, that “Father, you are dead.”
The house we were in had a corrugated metal ceiling and the walls were framed out in sticks, but the process of filling up the hollow walls with stones and packing them with cement was not begun, so that it was really just the suggestion of a future dwelling. You could see right through the walls, and 20 kids must have been gathered to look in at me. The family had other, finished buildings, but I think Simon wanted me in the new house. There were two comfortable chairs, and a little table on which they placed, for Simon and me, tea with sugar, three cornmeal muffins, and sliced oranges. It tasted nice.
They showed me a lot of family pictures that they kept in a big paper envelope and badly worn plastic album. They also insisted I take two pictures with me. One is of Simon with the movie projection equipment he uses as part of a church project to show “Jesus Fill-ums” around at different villages. The other is of the whole family before the father’s grave on the day of his funeral. Little Rachel clearly didn’t appreciate the solemnity of that occasion, as the pictures shows her smiling her usual zany grin.
The generosity was so touching because the family obviously has so little. As we waited for the tea, and Simon and I had run out of words that we both knew, Julius brought a worn out brochure from Ngorongoro Crater, a Tanzanian national park, for me to look at. On one see-through wall they had two posters from seed companies.
After leaving the Mark family I walked on for miles through several different village, into a bar for beer and chipsi miyai (an omelet with French fries in it, if you can believe that), and up a big hill. It was a great roll-your-own cultural tourism program.
I ended the day by watching a movie in a little building in Ngulelo, the village closest to our house. I’ve often noticed the soundtrack from a movie, usually some type of martial arts picture, blaring out from one of the brightly painted concrete buildings that make up town centers. I had gotten curious earlier in the day, so I decided to check it out. I walked in through a curtain and saw that there must have been 150 people packed into a small room watching a little TV with terrible resolution. It looked as though every bench was full, but a person who was apparently in charge (he took my 100 shillings, in any event) directed the people on one of the benches to squish even closer, and I just managed to wedge my big white ass between them.
The movie was horrible, an ultra low-budget Mad Max type of affair involving fistfight competitions in a post-apocalyptic desert. It was called Eternal Fist. It was dubbed into Swahili, but whenever the Swahili interpreters on the tape cut in, the entire original soundtrack—music, sound of people getting punched, etc.—cut out.
I loved it.
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18 July 07
Shaking Things Up On My Birthday
It was even reported by the Associated Press!
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