Greetings from Rwanda! All is well here and I am fine. My work is going well and I am actually ahead of schedule. I’ve had some great meetings so far with another one scheduled for Friday afternoon. Friday evening there’s a dinner party at Jennifer’s house. There are five Americans visiting Rwanda at the moment so we’re having a get together. I’ll meet more co-workers from North Carolina that I haven’t yet met there here. My first day here, I gave three bags of candy to the receptionist. They are big fans of chocolate here and all US visitors bri [View Full Entry]

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Here are some details about our relatively mundane Saturday... We started off grocery shopping at Nakumat, a Kenyan supermarket chain, located in a downtown shopping mall. Upon entering the parking lot, you pull up to a parking ticket machine where someone is standing and they push the button for you and then hand write the (military) time on your ticket. Next, you pull into a parking garage, which is normal except for the armed guards. We were looking for an electric tea kettle for our security guard because it gets chilly (65 degrees) here at night. Upon closer inspection, most of [View Full Entry]

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Welcome to the Cricket Without Boundaries Rwanda team blog! I am part of a group of 13 mad volunteers setting off for Rwanda on 6th November on behalf of the Cricket Without Boundaries charity. CWB has three main goals: •To spread cricket through coaching children and teaching adults how to coach •To link the sport to HIV/AIDS awareness and incorporate these messages into coaching sessions. •To bring together and empower local communities through cricket. Here we will bring you the highs, the lows, the tears, the tantrums and hopefully a whole lot of smiles and succ [View Full Entry]

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Attempt at posting two videos. [View Full Entry]

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On Wednesday this week, Alex joined the Board of the American Embassy Association of Kigali, the group that currently runs the commissary. To buy American products, like spaghetti sauce or diet pop, the commissary is the only place to go, and its conveniently located inside the Embassy. Saturday, Alex began a quest for fresh chicken. He met up with some friends and drove all over the city (rural areas) looking for the farmer with the big, American-style poultry. After 4x4ing down some one-way trails and passing by groups of mud huts, the farm appeared. After parking the car, he walked throu [View Full Entry]

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I've just been fired from blogging. -Alex Anyways, on Sunday we went to the Artist Village in Kigali. It was an outdoor mall of shops the size of large, walk-in closets and no indoor lighting. We were immediately taken as suckers and ushered into the nearest shop. Nothing has price tags, and we are VERY obviously mozungas (foreigners). Quickly, we learned that if you pause to look at something and especially if you stop to pick it up, it means you really really want to buy it. The next step is to ask the price, and due to our mozunga-ness, everything [View Full Entry]

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Some pictures Jenn took around our house. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2039673&id=1142697526&l=8c7285b4e9 Couldn't get them uploaded on this site for right now... Anyways, another week down. Hopefully we can post some more pictures and updates soon. Thanks for all the comments! [View Full Entry]

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On Friday, the Embassy trusted Alex enough to loan him a Land Cruiser so we have wheels for the first time. On Saturday, we drove all over the city of Kigali with two couples from Alex's work. We attempted to go to the farmer's market to buy vegetables and crafts, but it was closed due to a local election. Instead, we came to the shopping mall which is reminiscent of the Blazy Mall in Soldotna when it had Mugz. We are currently eating at a Starbucks-like cafe, where Alex got food poisoning yesterday, but the only place we have found with [View Full Entry]

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We flew into the airport on a Sunday evening. Looking out the window of the plane, there were so few lights that it looked more like flying over North Kenai than a city of almost a million people. We walked down the stairs onto the runway and into warm smoky air. Upon entering the airport, we were met by a U.S. Embassy employee who led us into a separate room with leather couches while he took care of our paperwork. In the airport lobby, we were met by Portia, the Embassy nurse, and her husband John, the director of the Peace [View Full Entry]

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For those of who you may be from the coffee world and reading this, here is a little more on the actual work that I’m doing here. For those of you who are not, well at worst you will be bored by this and at best you may learn a little something. The first project is an analysis of the effectiveness of The Ethiopian Commodities Exchange. The exchange was launched in April of 2008 in an effort to improve the former auction system for coffee and other commodities such as grains and sesame. Conceptualized and managed by one extraordinary lady, Dr. [View Full Entry]

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