Wanted to share this: a very high-end coffee roaster in the US called Intelligentsia bought coffee from one of the coffee cooperatives (Kirezi) that we support here in Rwanda. You can check out the coffee at their website - http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/store/product/id/12029. You can buy the coffee online, or if you live in Chicago, New York or LA you can stop by their store as well! Let me know if you do!
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Nupur's Update, Part 1
Two months into our Rwandan adventure, and I feel like its time to start writing about our experiences so that our time here is documented in some way other than a disjointed series of photographs. It has been a smooth transition so to speak. In fact sometimes when I really think about it it blows my mind that we have quite literally uprooted ourselves and moved to a completely different world. Nothing about Kigali is anything like Cambridge, and nothing about our daily routines here resembles our life in Cambridge. But it doesn't seem like such a stark change. It actually seems very normal and natural that we are here in Kigali.
To be fair, Rwanda is a rather easy place to fit in (relatively speaking). As far as African countries go, this country is different. Most things work and most things are efficient. This is a poor country, but poverty isn't in your face. Even in the villages I have been to the houses have tin roofs (per my co-worker it is mandated by the government - and Rwandese generally do as they are told by the government). When there are paved tarmac roads, they are of very good quality. Every day you see roadwork somewhere in the city - and where there is road work there is always a Chinese man supervising the workers. Its a sort of imported Chinese efficiency - and it seems to work! But in many places there are no roads - just dirt tracks (that I worry will ruin our highly overpriced 1995 Toyota Rav4). The water bills are nicely printed and delivered to your house. The electricity works on a prepaid system where you buy credit (like for a prepaid cell phone) and punch the numbers into a meter at your house. The taxis are motorcycles, but you have to wear a helmet. In short, coming to Africa via Rwanda is a soft landing.
We are settling in to our life here. We live in a simple but beautiful house with a pretty garden. Its a big house (four bedrooms), which is a nice change from our two bedroom apartment in Boston. But its an old house so it has a lot of minor issues - leaking sinks (last week every single sink in the house was leaking), termites digging holes and building mounds in the garden, a couple of mealy bug infested lime trees, and centipedes living in the cracks. It sounds worse than it is, and we have managed to get most of the issues resolved (except the mealy bugs - which can be fixed by spraying the tree with soapy water - a simple but logistically challenging solution - how in the world do I spray a large tree with washing up liquid??!).
Our house was totally unfurnished (not even counters in the kitchen) and needed some work (we re-tiled the bathroom), so it took us a few rather tiring weeks to get everything in order. Everything here works on cash and so we had some adjusting to do - you can't just head out to the store with your debit or credit card and expect to buy everything you need. Also, the largest bank note is only worth about $8 - so when we bought our fridge, stove, microwave, and mattress it took the cash clerk about 30 minutes to count through the huge stack of bills that we handed her.
We were introduced to a Congolese carpenter (Desire) who made our dining table, bed, couch, coffee table etc. I found pictures of furniture and gave them to him on his flash drive. The bed turned out beautifully, the dining table is about 80 percent accurate. I had given him a picture of a couch from Room & Board complete with dimensions. I must have told him about eight times -"Desire, the couch needs to be perfect - it needs to be exactly like the picture." Shilesh thought I was being VERY repetitive. I was very very excited to see the couch - it was going to be the centerpiece of our living room. But when the couch arrived three weeks later I couldn't quite tell why, but it looked much much less impressive than expected. I called him to ask why he hadn't made the legs as per the picture and to my shock he told me that the file wouldn't open on his computer, and so he just made the sofa from his memory. Turns out the three seater sofa is about half the size I had asked him to make it. Oh well.
We have a really hard working and dependable guard/gardener/house worker (Felician) and a very lovely housekeeper (Grace). They are an enormous help - they keep the house clean and neat, wash and iron our clothes, cook, and generally make our life much easier. Felician doesn't speak a word of English, but we manage to communicate. The other day I found him spraying my clothes with Windex while ironing. When I asked him "Felician - what are you doing!?" he gave me a sheepish smile and said - "Shinex." I think he got the message. It was pretty hilarious.
Last weekend Shilesh, Felician and I planted tomato and eggplant seeds in the garden - it involved going to the market to buy seeds, going to a small shed with a cow to buy manure, digging dry caked up soil for about four hours, and then planting the seeds. All in all it was an exhausting but enjoyable process. The seeds should sprout soon and we should have a garden going pretty soon!
Azad has adjusted well to his day care - It's called "Little Bears" and their tag line is "A firm foundation and future for our children." Despite the fact that he enjoys it very much and is well adjusted, he continues to put on a dramatic show for us every single morning we drop him off. He is happily riding in the car until we arrive in front of the gate, at which point he starts bawling - "mommy, daddy, mommy, daddy." We thought he would stop after a couple of weeks, but six weeks in he still screams and cries every single time we drop him off. That said he really does have a wonderful time at the day care. He has learned a whole bunch of new songs that he likes to sing. One day after coming home from day care he said clear as day - "Thank you for the food we eat - AMEN"! The day care has managed to toilet train him, which I thought would be absolutely impossible. He actually goes without a diaper all day and pees at least a dozen times in the potty. A miracle! The only real issue so far has been a constant cough and cold for Azad, but hopefully that will subside soon.
Shilesh and I are both enjoying our jobs. I've managed to go out in to the countryside twice to visit farmers/coffee cooperatives. Both visits were fantastic, and I need to start getting out more often. Sitting at my desk staring at Excel spreadsheets is useful but not even close to as fulfilling and interesting as visiting a coffee wet mill, attending a cooperative meeting, or participating in a farmer agronomy training session. For one of my field visits I actually attended a composting training, so I now know how to make compost.
Shilesh is enjoying his work too, and is in the process of setting up Rwanda's first Special Economic Zone (SEZ). He works directly under the CEO of the Rwanda Development Board (sort of a ministry), who reports directly to the Prime Minister and President. So its a position with very high potential for making a difference.
Here's a link to some pictures to give you a sense of our life here (http://picasaweb.google.com/shileshmurali/KigaliPics?feat=directlink). We'll keep you posted! Miss you all very much and look forward to hearing from you.
To be fair, Rwanda is a rather easy place to fit in (relatively speaking). As far as African countries go, this country is different. Most things work and most things are efficient. This is a poor country, but poverty isn't in your face. Even in the villages I have been to the houses have tin roofs (per my co-worker it is mandated by the government - and Rwandese generally do as they are told by the government). When there are paved tarmac roads, they are of very good quality. Every day you see roadwork somewhere in the city - and where there is road work there is always a Chinese man supervising the workers. Its a sort of imported Chinese efficiency - and it seems to work! But in many places there are no roads - just dirt tracks (that I worry will ruin our highly overpriced 1995 Toyota Rav4). The water bills are nicely printed and delivered to your house. The electricity works on a prepaid system where you buy credit (like for a prepaid cell phone) and punch the numbers into a meter at your house. The taxis are motorcycles, but you have to wear a helmet. In short, coming to Africa via Rwanda is a soft landing.
We are settling in to our life here. We live in a simple but beautiful house with a pretty garden. Its a big house (four bedrooms), which is a nice change from our two bedroom apartment in Boston. But its an old house so it has a lot of minor issues - leaking sinks (last week every single sink in the house was leaking), termites digging holes and building mounds in the garden, a couple of mealy bug infested lime trees, and centipedes living in the cracks. It sounds worse than it is, and we have managed to get most of the issues resolved (except the mealy bugs - which can be fixed by spraying the tree with soapy water - a simple but logistically challenging solution - how in the world do I spray a large tree with washing up liquid??!).
Our house was totally unfurnished (not even counters in the kitchen) and needed some work (we re-tiled the bathroom), so it took us a few rather tiring weeks to get everything in order. Everything here works on cash and so we had some adjusting to do - you can't just head out to the store with your debit or credit card and expect to buy everything you need. Also, the largest bank note is only worth about $8 - so when we bought our fridge, stove, microwave, and mattress it took the cash clerk about 30 minutes to count through the huge stack of bills that we handed her.
We were introduced to a Congolese carpenter (Desire) who made our dining table, bed, couch, coffee table etc. I found pictures of furniture and gave them to him on his flash drive. The bed turned out beautifully, the dining table is about 80 percent accurate. I had given him a picture of a couch from Room & Board complete with dimensions. I must have told him about eight times -"Desire, the couch needs to be perfect - it needs to be exactly like the picture." Shilesh thought I was being VERY repetitive. I was very very excited to see the couch - it was going to be the centerpiece of our living room. But when the couch arrived three weeks later I couldn't quite tell why, but it looked much much less impressive than expected. I called him to ask why he hadn't made the legs as per the picture and to my shock he told me that the file wouldn't open on his computer, and so he just made the sofa from his memory. Turns out the three seater sofa is about half the size I had asked him to make it. Oh well.
We have a really hard working and dependable guard/gardener/house worker (Felician) and a very lovely housekeeper (Grace). They are an enormous help - they keep the house clean and neat, wash and iron our clothes, cook, and generally make our life much easier. Felician doesn't speak a word of English, but we manage to communicate. The other day I found him spraying my clothes with Windex while ironing. When I asked him "Felician - what are you doing!?" he gave me a sheepish smile and said - "Shinex." I think he got the message. It was pretty hilarious.
Last weekend Shilesh, Felician and I planted tomato and eggplant seeds in the garden - it involved going to the market to buy seeds, going to a small shed with a cow to buy manure, digging dry caked up soil for about four hours, and then planting the seeds. All in all it was an exhausting but enjoyable process. The seeds should sprout soon and we should have a garden going pretty soon!
Azad has adjusted well to his day care - It's called "Little Bears" and their tag line is "A firm foundation and future for our children." Despite the fact that he enjoys it very much and is well adjusted, he continues to put on a dramatic show for us every single morning we drop him off. He is happily riding in the car until we arrive in front of the gate, at which point he starts bawling - "mommy, daddy, mommy, daddy." We thought he would stop after a couple of weeks, but six weeks in he still screams and cries every single time we drop him off. That said he really does have a wonderful time at the day care. He has learned a whole bunch of new songs that he likes to sing. One day after coming home from day care he said clear as day - "Thank you for the food we eat - AMEN"! The day care has managed to toilet train him, which I thought would be absolutely impossible. He actually goes without a diaper all day and pees at least a dozen times in the potty. A miracle! The only real issue so far has been a constant cough and cold for Azad, but hopefully that will subside soon.
Shilesh and I are both enjoying our jobs. I've managed to go out in to the countryside twice to visit farmers/coffee cooperatives. Both visits were fantastic, and I need to start getting out more often. Sitting at my desk staring at Excel spreadsheets is useful but not even close to as fulfilling and interesting as visiting a coffee wet mill, attending a cooperative meeting, or participating in a farmer agronomy training session. For one of my field visits I actually attended a composting training, so I now know how to make compost.
Shilesh is enjoying his work too, and is in the process of setting up Rwanda's first Special Economic Zone (SEZ). He works directly under the CEO of the Rwanda Development Board (sort of a ministry), who reports directly to the Prime Minister and President. So its a position with very high potential for making a difference.
Here's a link to some pictures to give you a sense of our life here (http://picasaweb.google.com/shileshmurali/KigaliPics?feat=directlink). We'll keep you posted! Miss you all very much and look forward to hearing from you.
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