Failure to Launch

The second marathon lecture session went well. The students seem to be embracing the active learning style and are engaging in discussions. The lab session, however, was a nightmare.  It was meant to be an exercise to get them familiar with the IUCN website (the redlist of endangered species) and it required internet access.   Sure, I suspected the internet would be slow, but what I did not understand beforehand was that the students had very limited computer experience and their level of english fluency would make the exercise extremely painstaking. I decided to modify the lab mid course to make it shorter and easier and the good news is that they were able to finish, but boy, was it trying.

The weather seems to be shifting a little bit now. Instead of daily downpours, we are now on what seems to be an every other day or every 2 day rain schedule. I've gotten where I can *usually* tell when I leave the house in the morning if it will rain. If it is gorgeous and sunny outside early in the morning, that usually means rainstorms in the afternoon. Cooler and hazy in the morning, and the afternoon will be nice. Predicting the weather impacts what shoes I wear because the walk from town to our house are on dirt/mud roads. And they can really get awfully muddy fast in the rain.

We've made friends with another set of mazungos (white people) in town: a Flemish couple. The husband is volunteering with me as a teaching assistant for my class and hopefully will also be helping me with my field work once I start in Feb or March. I'm anxious about starting because the more I hear about Nyungwe, the more overwhelming the forest seems to me. First off, it is huge (1000km2). The terrain is very rough and steep and I wonder what I've gotten myself into trying to catch some of the most elusive animals in Rwanda in this huge forest! Wish me luck!

Okan is off to Kigali again tomorrow for phase two of the car search. He thinks he has settled on a car he likes but we are still in the process of amassing the wads of cash necessary for the purchase.  His bank account keeps getting frozen because they think someone is illegally using his account in Rwanda. Alas, it is just us trying to pull out money for the car. We've told the bank a million times that we will be in Rwanda for the year, but for some reason it still keeps getting frozen.

We hired a man named Martin to help with the cooking and cleaning at the house. He worked for Nicole and Simon (the other mazungo couple we know in Butare) a few years ago and they really liked him. He has been doing a great job and it's nice to have someone help with the shopping and cleaning. The shopping is especially hard because if we go to the market by ourselves, the price of food is about triple what it is if he buys it. Yesterday was his day off so I whipped up some cole slaw for the three of us to eat for supper. I wasn't sure if he would like it, but alas, he loved it and literally would have eaten the entire bowl if Okan and I weren't there.