Photos From Akagera

In early 2011, we hired a likely 4WD, appropriated a map and descended into the Akagera valley to spot some animals and camp on the Tanzanian border.  Compared with some of the bigger parks in Kenya and Uganda, Akagera doesn’t receive much fanfare as a major destination but there was plenty to see!  We were able to bring our own car in through the gates and camp by ourselves anywhere in the park (though we were warned about camping near the hippopotamus).  After cooking an amazing sausage dinner, we finished of a bottle of wine and fell asleep with the wind whispering from Tanzania. An unidentified animal came sniffing in the middle of the night; it gave Annetta’s feet a fair bit of attention. We woke to a sulky day and jumped back in the car in order to surprise some warthogs en route to a crocodile beach…

Buffalo stare us down and wave us on...

did you know that Giraffes run like marionettes? Google it and see...

Baboons everywhere...They run in packs, sit in trees and generally cause as much chaos as they can...

Campfire and tent...tired campers and a couple of beers...

Sunset, y'll.

Sausages doing thir thing. Best enjoyed in a piece of bread with sauce. No problems...

We suprised a family of warthogs in the morning. The mother and babies ran away while the father stayed to let us know where things were at...

A zebra...

Crocodiles in the far north of the park.

A baboon peeing.

These little guys were everywhere hiding out...It became a challenge to see how many of them you could spot...

Yet Another Bus Trip : Burundi Part One

Yes there is sun and a clear sky; why not? I’m in Minnesota, making Mexican. We just came back from a two day hop, finding bears in the woods. Actually we were scouting for patches of land where we could throw a wedding party and get married under the lofty North pines in August.  We found a couple of spots as well and managed to scoff a bison burger and a litre of soda.  These two food items sit in your belly like a couple of cinder blocks. Next time I will probably eat the salad. Did yrs know that I went into Burundi a few months back? The trip was done on the fly, in celebration of me being around for thirty plus years and also because we figured it was not good enough to simply be near Burundi. Grab some jelly beans and read on why don’t ya? Or better yet, join us for a taco salad and some Booker T and the MGs in Prior Lake.

 ***

Confusing truck. Gas or milk?

Visa and Money. This currency was hard to come by and is utterly useless outside of Burundi.

The Burundian consulate in Kigali is both casual and empty. Once the old bloke with the gun on the door has waved us on in (We want to visit your country!), we wander into what feels like somebody’s under-furnished living room. There’s a ripped couch that looks suspiciously like my collage chair and a portrait of the current president. Arranging the visa is easy; once we’ve located a woman in the back room, we leave her with some photos, a passport and twenty bucks. She tells us that we can come back and pick them up in the afternoon, no worries. If only every other country was this easy. In all, we spend more time discussing marriage and culture then we do responding to questions relating to our motives in Burundi.

Rather than fly, we’ve decided to run with the potentially unpredictable Belvedere bus service between Kigali and Bujumbura.  We’ve seen this particular bus company before; one time while we ate Chinese across the lot from their ‘bus graveyard’. A bus had been sheared off from the front to the back, about halfway up. It was the kind of haircut you do not want to receive unless you are looking to lose the contents of your head.  Anybody who has followed my ramblings in the past will know that I don’t stop talking about bad bus drivers and crazy bus experiences. Africa is the holy grail of bus stories and the stories do not always end nicely.  I think that bus drivers in Africa consider themselves to be warriors and they are constantly battling to drive more aggressively, or faster, than anybody else on the road. Nevertheless, we decided to gamble our trip in someone’s sweaty young hands and resolve to sit near the back of the bus (I read somewhere that this is statistically the safest place to sit on a bus? Catch enough buses and I guarantee that you will entertain similar plans).

We stopped here and picked up 50 jugs of milk to ferry into Burundi. The operation was very well run. A little girl distracted the passengers by smiling at us and suddenly we were all surrounded by milk.

After the familiar routine of turning up early to get good seats and realizing that

Bananas for sale. It was a buyers market in Burundi. Bananas everywhere.

everybody has turned up even earlier to claim the best seats, we sit back in our crappy seats to stare at those who have arrived at the last minute and must sit in the isle. A mountain of goods has been packed into the last seat of the bus; these routes are really just trade runs for people supplying Burundi with things that come cheaper in Rwanda. Everything is a racket. This time we’re smuggling milk in vegetable oil containers. The bus starts and we tackle the southbound jaunt, pegging a moderate speed and laughing all of the way. A couple next to us rocks their baby against the swaying of the bus and we open the window to feel Rwanda’s breath on our foreheads. We’ve done this road before, all the way to the boarder, so we know what to expect. Imagine a road that threads the face of bald hills, banana plantations that cling to the edges of the hills, and mud and thatch huts that spew happy children from their gaping mouths. Goats and women use their feet to tattoo the mountain with meandering paths that resemble complex arteries when viewed from across the valley. Trucks lie on their sides around u-bend corners, victims of cowboy steering and faltering mechanics. It all exists under an extroverted sun.  Everything is a potential accident on the way to Burundi but we’re in crazy spirits today; the morning disappears alongside the rest of the country and suddenly we reach a sleepy valley, the border between Rwanda and Burundi, and the beginning of a new adventure.

 ***

Burundi has recently survived a civil war. However, unlike Rwanda which gained international notoriety as a consequence of the 1994 genocide, Burundi seems to have maintained a far lower international profile despite a history of dispute and violence since independence in 1962.The two countries share many similarities.  Hutu, Tutsi and Twa people have inhabited Burundi since early times and like Rwanda, relations between the Hutu and Tutsi people have been the basis for internal strife, resulting in a 1972 genocide that claimed between 250,000 and 300,000 lives, and a succession of coup d’états and grassroots violence between 1972 and 1993. In 1993, the first democratically elected Hutu president, Melchior Ndaday, was assassinated after three months in office.  His replacement, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was killed less than a year later, when the plane he was sharing with Rwandan president Juvénal Habyariman, was shot down over Kigali (an act which ‘sparked’ the 1994 genocide in Rwanda).  The rapid succession of deaths further aggravated relations between Hutu and Tutsi parties and led to a ten year civil war in which a further 300,000 Burundians lost their lives and approximately 550,000 were internally displaced. This is a phenomenal figure for a country that is less than half the size of Tasmania.  Although attempts at peace deals were made during the war, Hutu based parties refused to buy into them and it was not until 2006 that a ceasefire was signed and the de-arming process began.

***

It is hard not to mull this kind of information as you hop the border. The first democratic elections since the end of the civil war were rife with intimidation, perpetrated by the incumbent government.  Ultimately all six challenging candidates withdrew their applications. Forty-six grenade attacks occurred around the time of the election, which occurred less than a year ago. It saddens me to know nothing of this country before coming to Africa and I can’t wait to meet people and see how the country has progressed in the past six months.

The goats were killed on the spot....

While the border crossing in Rwanda is an exercise in efficacy, the Burundian side involves  a few hundred people all trying to get to a window the size of a postage stamp. While you might think that it’s the young men that you have to watch, in reality, the old ladies are far craftier and carry a mean shoulder barge. They pop up throughout the queue, appearing below your elbow, offering an orange peel grin and a mostly toothless smile.  Offer one a spot in the line and fifteen of them jump in, running like ducks. Even with the granny queue jumping, we reach the window within half an hour and present our passports to the enormous bloke that sits behind the grills. I love leaning in on situations where English has not been invited. The problems that arise seem gargantuan. In this case there is a dispute involving the guy on our

...and taken across the road to be eaten.

bus, who may or may not have the passenger list for the bus. Either way, he waves a pile of pages in front of us, trying to attract the officer’s attention. Old ladies scream at him and the officer ignores him. He continues to persist until the officer starts shouting as well.  Annetta and I are pushed against the grilled window. Meanwhile, our passports have disappeared and we literally do not share a common word of language with this man (except perhaps merci beaucoup, which will not be appropriate until we are given our passports back). Eventually, a young man with a likely smile and brand new uniform returns and we are through into Burundi.

Stay tuned for more on Burundi. I’ll be including some practical information within the next few posts because I think that it is important… for…people…to…know…things. Stay good and enjoy the sun folks. Woucher.

Joss is eating again.

Boys on bikes hang out under the flag.

Between beers

Kigali view, final night. We enjoyed a sad dinner under the stars...

There is no time to think. Last month we slid through a collection of banana tree Mountains and descended into Bujumbura where Lake Tanganyika slithered at my ankles and a crocodile threatened to bite me. Now I am back in Hanoi where all the great adventures started with a slug from a bottle of Bia Ha Noi. There is slow-dance breeze stirring through Hanoi alleys. The sky, which up until a week ago was sewn tight, is now loose and spilling sunny days that tumble out like plastic balls and hit us as we burn down the dyke road on the way to teach the kids. It is a great and honest hit of joy and worth swimming in, even if I occasionally cop a lungful of durian fruit from the basket girls on the side of the road. Durian strikes like a shot of horseradish in the nostril and leaves you floating in a wind tunnel of rotten fruit. People who tell me that it tastes better than it looks are deceptive and mean. I was served it once and it tastes like sweat.

Kigali-Nairobi-Doha-Bangkok-Hanoi-Guangzhou-Los Angles-Minneapolis-Brisbane-Minneapolis.

This plane schedule has been and will be, my next five months. Between there and here, lie a complicated raft of

Tourism students posing by the edge of the university. We have just enjoyed an enormous Rwandan buffet and we'd all rather be sleeping.

realizations, beers, good-byes and dodgy planes. I want to discuss them all but I am not sure where to start. How does it feel to take off over Kigali in the belly of dawn and watch street lights and friendships fade slowly away into Africa? Bloody strange. Leaving one life and descending on another is painful this time. Our mate Hesron accompanied me to the airport and cried as I broke customs. We had to persuade another friend not to come at all; he was waiting in a bar some one in Remira and threatened to turn the take-off into a party. We can all teach each other something and my friends in Rwanda were excellent scholars.

I am spending two months in Hanoi and I am saving again. When I am asked what I do for a living, I usually tell people that I am a professional saver.  I’m not necessarily good at what I do but I take a certain scruffy pride in what is achieved at the end of the day.

Fortunately for me, I am staying with Malcolm and his girlfriend Quynh, and we regularly go on wild jaunts into the down-town rabbit holes and sidewalk restaurants where food can be found for cheap. There is a bowl of something warm at the end of every dead-end in Hanoi and it is usually served by an ancient lady who sizes us up, sits us down and presents us with a bowl of verve. Dumplings on the side and beer in a cup

Hesron teaches me how to peel a banana. I spend most of the lesson posing before realising that if I don't peel it, I can't eat it.

of ice. Malcolm’s Vietnamese is more than likely and he throws it around with glee. I hasten to add bits and pieces of my half-built dialect. Men stare at me suspiciously while the women grin and pretend to understand. We pile mouldy bank-notes around plastic tables and leave with the breeze.

I’ll be flying towards Lake Itasca by June. You’ll see me if you live in Minneapolis; I’ll be the Aussie with the grin attached to his unshaven face. Here and all around there, I’ll be getting married to a girl from the Midwest who gave me a box of Marconi and cheese when I looked after her cat. Life moves in crazy circles and then you find some honey (!).

For now I am happy and hope that you are as well. There will be more to come in Africa, much more, but first I have to read a pile of books, eat some bun cha and listen to some Angolan funk. Kiss a friend on the cheek and stay rad.

Enormous concert in Kigali. Annetta and Joss proceed to round all of the bands up and take them out for beers.

After I threatened to steal one of Rwanda's Mountain gorillas and bring it back to Vietnam, my students felt that they had to buy me a fake one that looks stoned and weighs as much as an average sized sheep.

Bunyonyi Part One: on the road

Heading into the mountains, Rwanda style

Catch a bus to Bunyonyi  . Start with a moto-taxi into the Nyabugogo bus depot while the sun finds dust on the hills across Kigali. There ‘ll be a breeze if you leave early enough and you’ll feel like you are about to take off across the city. Weave your way through the hundreds of buses that rest in Nyabugogo and find the international ticket offices; they’re thrown against the back of a half finished storm drain and if you fall in there you’re going to need a ladder and a life-jacket to find your way out.

You can lick the dust off the streets like icing sugar...it doesn't taste very good though.

Locate a ticket. You need to go as far as Kabale and it will only cost you 5000 RWF. Joke about the muzungu price with the young bloke on the counter and wish him a good day. All of the prices are fair here but be sure to get your ticket. The bus won’t be where you think it is and will ask that you meet it somewhere nearby. It has trawled the long route from Bujumbura and has the swagger of a dog with sharp teeth and big balls. It will disregard everything in its way and lurch into a gas station while Rwandans scramble to throw their luggage on board. There is no logic here and you should count yourself lucky to have chatted with a pretty young Rwanda lady who shrugged her shoulders and smiled a lazy smile while explaining the racket.

Befriend a passenger if you can. He’ll trade English with your Kinyarwanda and pretend not to notice when you pronounce everything as if you have a flank of beef in your mouth. Don’t sit near the front of the bus. You don’t need to see the windshields of other vehicles as the bus driver flirts with the mathematics of mountain corners. Anything on the road is considered opposition. You probably shouldn’t look into ravines either. Other passengers have been burnt

The taxi bus racket. We didn't catch one of these to Uganda but you can if you want. Sadines in a can? That's right, baby!

up on the way down. There are wreckages lingering amongst the plantation branches.

Assert yourself in the custom’s line on the boarder. Be respectful of the Rwandans officials and laugh at the jokes of the Ugandans. Weave amongst the trucks on the bridge over neutral territory and smile when you can. Avoid the temptation to flee into Uganda without paying; you’ll probably be shot if you do. Share a few shillings and buy a chapatti; avoid the beef steak and chips in a bag. It is exactly what it is.

Get ready to be thrown from the bus in Kabale. They won’t stop for you to get off. This isn’t personal; it is simply that they are involved in a race with other buses and they’ll be flying until they kill somebody or reach Kampala. Once you’ve negotiated a taxi, prepare to relax by the lake in Bunyonyi. This is the entire reason for your motivation. You’ll find a slow current here and the type of bliss that you haven’t discovered since you were floating in Lake Kivu.

Use the internet if you need to know where any of these places are. Get out there and discover the beauty of everything that isn’t you. Remember to bring some music to share. Live life, have fun and enjoy fruit. Next week: part two.

This is what we see when we arrive...

Moto-taxi mate, Kigali, Rwanda. After a bit of friendly haggling, we fly. Just becareful and ask him to drive slowly. Otherwise he will drive quickly and that is not always fun.

A photo says…307 words: Gashora!

Today is both sticky and Friday. This means a late shower and a beer, probably at the same time. Earlier, I was mired in university work but now I am singing to myself in tune. There is a fair amount of rain getting about the suburbs; a storm is bouncing from one hill to the next and will probably settle by the side of our billet. We’re hoping that it slides into the valley later so that we can jump reggae-flavoured motos and head to Remera for a party and some wine.

Gashora Girls English classes

A particually heavy English lesson involves a discussion on favourite sodas.

Rave-up

I found this job via the internet and was lucky to get an interview with the headmaster. Sometimes you know that something is brilliant right away and this is how it was for me; a mob from Seattle opening an academy for girls and offering community English classes as a preface for the main experience. I was lucky to be offered a spot and a small gang of us drove south from Kigali to introduce ourselves to one hundred bemused Rwandan teenagers. Our classroom was the cracked floor of an open planned community hall. Fellow teachers will understand that this was a dream gig; a basketball court-sized classroom, no walls, no electricity and no curriculum. Instead, a group of Americans, Kenyans, Rwandans (and myself), a whiteboard, some pens and a view of Gashora lake where you have to watch the banks for marauding hippopotamuses.

Daily challenges included the class size (with a splendid average of 88 students) and a lack of punctuality (the girls turned on their own time; it was not uncommon see a gaggle of them roll in a couple of hours into the four hour lesson). Every few weekends a vicious storm would stagger in sideways from Burundi. This was the kind of experience where the rain wandered in to slap you and the wind persuaded chairs and tables to dance in the air, Fantasia style. One weekend a table leapt up and bit me as I tried to subdue it.

Smiling because I am trying to dance.

Thankfully, no hippopotamus ever bothered to find us. We taught every weekend for three months. The Headmaster acted as chauffeur while three of us colluded to offer the girls something fresh every week. We eked out a curriculum and, hopefully taught the girls how to jump on their confidence. At the very least, we taught them how to play, ‘What’s the time, Mr.…Crocodile?’

The organization that runs the school is called Rwanda Girls Initiative. Information can be accessed via THIS train line: http://www.rwandagirlsinitiative.org/ . It is well worth hopping off and checking them out. This is the kind of teaching racket that I will be remembering forever and re-telling in 111 years to kids that will probably be way cooler then myself.

Enjoy yer weekend and please stay rad.

The entire class pretend not to be posing.

A photo says 168 words: Christmas!

Friday at number eight: three of us attached to computers in different parts of the house. The sun is having its way and a belligerent loudspeaker just drove past. I wish I could report something more exciting, like a peeing monkey in the front yard or an assault of giant mamba snakes. However, I’m already thinking about a beer and the only thing more relaxed then my afternoon is…

Christmas at Kacyiru!

The spirit of the red devils enters number eight...

Queensland via Rwanda. Actually the ham may have come from Dubai. The t-shirt came from Vietnam and the frying pan came from China. The idea for the cookies came from America but the ingredients came from Uganda. Sometimes it is hard to think local.

Christmas overseas is about cobbling together traditions. My only Christmas tradition involves the frying of pineapple with ham. We served it sizzling early Christmas morning while Rwandans throughout Kigali attended mass church services. A ‘Born Again’ student of mine recently told me that people who sit at home and eat on Christmas day are ‘bad people’. I decided not to tell him about the half litre of Indian ‘Christmas’ brandy that we picked up in town. By the end of that indulgence we were ready to race into the city and watch the Boxing Day test at midnight on whatever media we could unearth. Emily made an effort to investigate one of the giant Rwandan church services and was rewarded with a moving ceremony, involving a choir and an enthusiastic drum troupe.  Annetta and I stayed home and wrapped presents. Our best effort involved Hesron and a Manchester United jersey. Finally, Christmas wouldn’t have been complete without fifty cookies, a well baked chook and a celebrationary nap.

A photo says 202 words

This blog continues to suffer identity problems. What is it trying to do? Who is it trying please? How is meant to be read? Where is it meant to be put? Why am I bothering to write it?

In an attempt to answer these questions and also to save my time and more importantly, the time of my friends and other characters, I am adopting a new format where I will pick a random photo from the many millions that are stored on my computer, and sling it at the world with an accompaniment of 200 or so words. That way, if you’re interested, you can snack on the go without regret. It is a win-win situation for everybody. I should add that many of these photos were taken by Annetta with the exception of all the crappy ones, which were probably taken by me on a bus at night. Without further procrastination:

Masindi, Uganda

This man would rather that we didn't look at him

A lime green bus dropped us off in Masindi, which is the Ugandan equivalent of an 18^th century American frontier town. You could stage a decent stakeout here. Our hotel was a double story haven that served beans and rice. We enjoyed a beer beside a picket fence while dust danced through the streets and a Ugandan stalked us, trying to sell us a taxi ride to see a Pride of Lions and a Waterfall (Queen Elizabeth national Park). We did not feel comfortable taking photos. This man hissed at us when we showed him our camera. We told him that we admired his shoes. He disappeared into dust yard and returned with a live goat strapped to his bike. At 7 pm every night, the entire town locates a TV to watch the nightly news. Instead of joining them, we found the hotel where Hemmingway stayed between plane crashes in 1953. The bar seemed like a tomb for the ghosts of colonialism. We hoofed back in complete darkness, waving at the five pairs of white eyes following our progress. On the way back, I jumped into a drain to avoid being run over and cut my knee up like a mango.

A duo of Blog

This adventure is still rising to the winds.  I am challenging myself to write shorter posts because the state of things being as they are, no one has the time to read 800 words about some bloke’s kitchen. Therefore, strictly 300 words per serving. Don’t be greedy. Friday in Kigali was delivered to us with a side of sun but there is a fair sheen of sulk on the day as I write this. The sun has left for America and we are left with a city still struggling to contain its own dust. No pictures yet. In fact they will probably come tomorrow, with the mail. Happy adventures!

Rwanda, now

As I mentioned earlier, we live on a mountain. You can see the top of the city’s only skyscraper, a few mountains over. By unlocking our front gate, we find ourselves on a newly paved road. We share suburbs with the president, his Excellency Mr. Paul Kagame. In honour of his landslide re-election (a joyously peaceful affair with only one grenade attack and not a single fatality), he has ordered a gang of Chinese chain-smokers to rip all of the roads up and redo them all in shades of success and progress. As a result of this, we can generally expect to encounter a fair to middling amount of chaos on our way to work. The Chinese do not sleep. They supervise as many as one thousand Rwandan laborers via a complicated set of cigarette-waving signals.  It seems to me that the Chinese are under an incredible amount of stress. They never smile, although one of them offered Emily a ride home in the back of his truck once. She declined. The workers come cheap. 800 Francs will buy you one day worth of labouring. This amounts to roughly a buck fifty. It is a little pile of change in a country where everything costs. I have no idea how people survive, clinging to the sides of these mountains. They amuse themselves while they work by making fun of me when I pass. Occasionally they try various French off-cuts on me. I don’t have the heart to tell them that my French is still to be born. Occasionally I try fledgling Kinyarwanda on them and they look at me as if I am curious kangaroo that has just wandered into their lives. Life requires time and I must keep running if I am to catch up.

Uganda, then

Uganda International is a single double story building which looks a little bit like my old school. The plane we land in seems to be as big as the airport itself. Immigrations is a single room filled with shouting Ugandans and hoards of lost looking tourists. I am interviewed by a smiling man who asks me what business I could possibly want to conduct in Uganda and then gifts me with a visa. Everybody is flirting. The customs gang is asleep at the wheel and we slide our cargo silently beyond them. A softly-smiling Ugandan taxi-fiend shows us our names on a scrap of paper and leads us to a beat corolla. He is unhappy because he does not have ticket he needs to get out of the car park. The whole of Lake Victoria lies beyond on the airport. From the plane, it looked like droplets of paints splashed across a dusty floor. There is a period of uncertainty before our man rigs something and we find ourselves in Uganda racing along the edge of the lake towards Kampala. Of course we are going much too fast and on the wrong side of the road. I try and enjoy the serenity of the lakeside, while Ugandans flee the side of the road to avoid our hungry tires. Grim soldiers in pick-up trucks pass us, guns in hand. The driver finds a loose thread of reggae on the radio and we have a soundtrack. Kampala looms like a grim mound of stones on our horizon. The lake disappears to our left and we are swallowed into the suburbs, which are a messy collection of stone boxes trailing off from the sides of the highway. Meat stalls flank the shoulder and grinning men place their sweethearts atop rickety bicycles, paying no attention to the mayhem that pursues them on the road.  Next stop: A hotel!

Llamatown in Prague

This post finds me chewing on two minute noodles and fresh milk. It is quite outside and the police did not wake me up

We climb a famous tower on a hill. The view is sensational. Then we climb back down again.

last night with their intensive training, which usually takes place right outside our house at three in the morning. Kigali is slumbering and I am getting ready to hoof it up into the mountains with Annetta and Action Aid, as a part of their highly energized ‘Fun week’ program.  This consists of kids from schools in the sticks performing traditional dances, playing games, listening to speeches, and as a reward, receiving  bottles of Fanta and  Rwandan doughnuts ( For a Rwandan doughnut recipe, please see my other bog, ‘Cooking things that taste better then they look’).

None of this has anything to do with Prague, except that Annetta and I flew there a few months ago, in keeping with our heavy sponsorship of WhizzAir. Since I can’t stop time moving into other experiences and events, I have decided to construct a few wobbly sentences in honor of our weekend in Prague, and serve them to you in ‘Postcard form’, with a mug of foaming Czech beer. Those of you who do not like Czech beer should probably wait by the door.

1 of the 1000's of spires in the Prague castle

Google tells me that the Czech Republic receives nearly 20 million tourist visitors per year, making it one of the most popular destinations in Europe. Indeed, we find that we can’t swing a hotdog with out hitting an American tour group or a pair of heavily boganised Australians waxing on the virtues of getting pissed before going out. The beauty of this incredible city is that none of this seems to matter-we are all, to a degree, are lost in our own worlds, as we scan the skyline for fairy tail spires and ogle historic sculptures that seem to lie around like motorbikes do in Vietnam.  By the time we are finished, we don’t even regard statues that are under seven foot, are not nude/or in an action pose, and are not older then colonial Australia.

Rather then yupping it up in Hotels that we can’t pronounce let alone afford, we decide to ‘couch surf’ again, in hopes of meeting some locals and saving a little bit of cash. We turn out to be lucky beyond our wildest expectations, in meeting with Yaroslavl and his family, who live in massive house overlooking the hills, in Praha 5. Yaroslavl is the Manager of Prague Harley Davidson, and the dealership is connected to the front of the house. We spend way too much time hanging out with their cat, sharing beers from their bar and eating poultry and dumplings with them.

Prague is drowning in culture. Historically, it has been a centre for Bohemian and Baroque influences, among others. It

It was about 80 degrees on this bridge and these guys were struggling.

has been resided upon by Mozart, endured by a ‘tortured’ Kafka (who lived right by the river) and is the home to an imposing collection of museums, theatres (including many of the famous ‘black light’ theatres), Galleries, jazz clubs and street musicians. We manage to visit the Museum of contemporary art, scalp tickets to an orchestra from a gypsy woman, watch jazz cats melt on the ‘Karlův most’ bridge which connects parts of old Prague, and annoy tourists who are trying to have their picture taken underneath the Astronomical clock. Finally, no weekend away would be complete without consuming half a duck, a pig knee, a kilo of dumplings, Belgium chocolate, piles of sour cabbage and many, many beers. So.

This is my attempt to ‘write less’. I would say that the results are mixed. Stay tuned for more Llamatown in Rwanda. If you’re in Australia, put the greens through if you get a chance. After this many years of a two party system isn’t it time we ‘gave some one else a go?’

Cheers.

The best stained glass I have ever seen.

I have eaten large meals but this is ridiculous. Behind our smiles, we are shivering in our boots. That is half a duck right there.

Old Praha

Blue sky blues

I was of the understanding that if I wrote a few entries in this Blogosphere, it would catch like a plane propeller and start writing itself. This has not been the case, as I discovered recently when I logged on and found that I and Annetta were still drinking daring beers in Germany. Cripes! The reality is much murkier. We are now in Kigali, Rwanda, drinking different beers from different bottles and exploring the art of goat kebab. The secret, we are quickly learning, is to marinate the goat thoroughly in MSG, so that by the time the salty flesh touches our lips, it is falling off in moist chunks. Delicious. But wait, I am getting far too excited here. Our journey, which has touched the ports (airports, bus stations etc) of Copenhagen, London, Dubai, Addis Ababa and Entebbe, is worth telling in its own right. Subsequently, my, um, subsequent blog snacks will be broken up in to two parts. The first part will explore life as we are living it in the quiet suburb of Kacyiru. Here, you will find out about the price of beans, the daily police drill and the best means of expelling hookworm. The second part will take you on our journey up until Rwanda, where anything could (but probably won’t) happen. Either way, you will hopefully come out of the experience with a flying grin intact, ready to explore the world. Should your exploration bring you into my neck of the woods, please bring me some macaroni and cheese. I really miss it. Cheers.

Now

We live in Kacyiru, at number eight, Av De La Gendarmerie. A quick scan of our mountainous street will reveal that we are the only people on the street with a house number. I am not sure if we paid extra for this racket but wayward folk will always be able to locate us via our gate. We live directly opposite a fresh milk dairy; every morning we wander over with milk jug and receive a litre of fresh milk for sixty cents. Kigali is extremely hilly. It is worthwhile imagining that different suburbs exist on different mountain tops. To get to the middle of town from our house, we go down one side of the mountain and up another.

We say goodbye to our house in Lund, unaware that our forgotten Cholera medicine is still trapped inside...

We live right near the peak of our particular hill. The US embassy sits right at the top. You can see their massive compound-like structure from miles around, accompanied by a huge flag, which is in some ways comforting, at least for Annetta. I have to trek to Kenya, if I am to speak to representatives from Australian. Kenya is a long way away from number eight, Av De La Gendarmerie, so I am left with the part time assistance of the Canadians, which is better then a slap in the face and a kick to the shins.

Our house is a cozy three bedroom stone construction, which sits behind a high fence and a padlocked gate. There is a gazebo in the front yard and a jolly Congolese houseman out the back. His name is Hesron and he is possibly the nicest man in the world. There will be plenty more about him in good time. Meanwhile, have a look at our kitchen, or more precisely, at our cookers. There are three ways of getting things warm, or four, if you count the microwave which habitually electrocutes us.

A view of Africa from an Aeroplane. We are eating ceaser salad and whinging about Dubai. We have not slept in 97 seven hours.

Our first option is an oven that enjoys eating electricity. The fun aspect of this is that our electricity is prepaid and runs on a meter. You can watch the meter tick down as electricity is used. The oven will cause the meter to run faster then a drunken man being chased by a bull. Our expat friends like to tell stories of how their electricity dies as they are cooking scones. Therefore, our oven is one of those things that we can look at but not touch. Our second option is the gas stove top. Gas is pretty expensive as well but lasts a lot longer then electricity and is becoming our go-to option. We can get a good stir-fry going on the stove top, or if the mood strikes, French toast. Our third option is the charcoal burner, which our friend Hesron excels at. To get this baby smoldering, you must pile up a handful of charcoal and then create a small fire around it. By blowing wind through the bottom of the burner, you are able to get a lovely nest of coals dancing. Then you simply put a saucepan on top and whatever you have in the saucepan will burn instantly. Modifying the temperature of a charcoal burner is a real art. It is far easier to add plenty of water to whatever you are cooking. About 50 tomatoes and 100 litres of water will produce a nice spaghetti sauce in just under five hours.

Then

Now let me explain our journey in painstaking segments. We left Lund on a Wednesday morning June 30th, after spending 36 hours trying to cram three rooms full of equipment into two suitcases. We gave our keys to the landlord, left the house empty and walked five blocks to the train station before realizing that we had left our Cholera medication in the fridge. I sprinted five blocks back, broke into our empty house and stole two doses of cholera medication. Annetta and I enjoyed the doses on the train, crossing the straight between Sweden and Denmark. As we choked it down, we watched tiny Swedish men on tiny Swedish fishing vessels, enjoying the tiny Swedish summer, below us.

We arrived in Copenhagen International ready to plead ignorance, innocence, or immunity regarding our bloated suitcases. We should have realized that Scandinavian airlines are the last airline to try this tired crap on. The ancient woman behind the counter glibly charged us per gram that we were over, while smiling from behind a liberally applied coat of make-up. Luckily she did not check our carry-on bags, which were crammed to the zipper with textbooks and trash fiction, and weighed the equivalent of a small Volvo.

Amazing 10th last day in Sweden. It really put on its Sunday best. This is my friend Yrsa and I, standing in front of two boats in a harbour. Booya!

We climbed into the sky, said goodbye to Sweden and found ourselves in balmy London, where we were efficiently denied a boarding pass to Dubai based on the fact that we did not have return tickets booked from Uganda. The lady on the counter recommended that we ‘land ourselves’ in England and purchase refundable return tickets from the front counter. The landing possess involved me struggling to answer thirty questions regarding my ‘business’ in the UK, while Annetta chatted breezily with her customs official. There is a distinct bias against ‘convicts’ trying to return to England from Australia. I will say no more. The next two hours were a chapter out of a nightmare, where no matter how quickly you try and run towards something, you cannot reach it. I guess it was also an episode of that reality show ‘Race around the world,’ where you must complete five tasks and jump on a plane to India before the end of the episode.  Eventually we established some tickets, collected our pass and hopped on board the biggest passenger jet in the world. I will leave it there, as we left the motherland, winging for Dubai and excitement beyond.

So this is part one. Expect this story to stretch on and on, as life does. If you persevere, then I believe it will get more

They told me that I would be flying in this to Uganda. I ran for the hills and hid under a stone for three days. They found me shivering and hungry, and admitted that the whole thing had been a joke. I love Air Ethiopia.

exciting, once I stop talking about heat sources and begin covering life in Rwanda beyond our kitchen. There will be all sorts of highs and lows. Expect to be taken into the mouth of the Rwandan Immigration system. Look forward to a ride on the Nile, in rubber tube with a bunch of Irishman. Get close to a black Rhino named ‘Obama’ and explore the dusty markets in Kampala. Life seems to serve me some tasty fruit. I hope it delivers the same fruit to your door. I am extremely grateful to anyone who reads this. If you pass it onto a friend, I will give you a hug, or if you are not close, my most humble thanks.

Enjoy.

PS: next blog, I promise to actually post some photos of Africa. I am still using up photos from Sweden. Make the leap.