July 17

Today is Saturday and a free day. Around 10:00, Jennifer, Matt, Ella, Brandon and I walked to the market at Karambo. On the walk, we saw people carrying or herding pigs, chickens, sheep and goats. The market we went to is part flea market (clothes, shoes, etc.), part food market. Some of the things I saw : tiny fishes drying in the sun, to be eaten whole (caught last night - they fish mostly at night); cassava roots, which are ground into meal; spicy green peppers and orange peppers; pineapple, avocado, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes; a Lebron James sports jersey, Obama brand pants, rope being woven from dried freshwater seaweed. Some of the food was still alive, such as chickens and rabbits. And strangely, there were live guinea pigs. I find it hard to believe that Rwandans are keeping guinea pigs as pets when they can barely earn enough to feed themselves, so.....um....I guess they are eating the guinea pigs. There were hoardes of children running around unsupervised, and they tended to congregate around the 5 of us because we were a novelty. It was kind of suffocating, the number of people who would crowd around to watch everything that you did. It tended to keep me moving and not doing too much shopping, so that I could avoid the little "eddies" of people. I had been warned to watch my pockets. Sure enough, at one point, I found my money pocket unzipped by little hands, but they didn't get anything! I didn't dare to take any pictures there, because I didn't want to create a stir or even make my camera visible. The most entrepreneurial Rwandans will ask you for money if you want to take their picture, and who can blame them? Ella bought a pineapple, Brandon an avocado, Jennifer a big stalk of sugar cane, and me, some toothpaste. Afterwards, we stopped in a "duka" for sodas and bought some fried bread to nibble on - like donuts or fritters - very tasty!

Then we walked on to Kumbya, the lakeside retreat for missionaries that I've been to a couple of times. More local children followed us on the walk, and Jennifer kindly gave them candy. Matt and Brandon gave the local kids their water bottles. After that, the local kids wouldn't stop trailing us and became increasingly insistent and demanding, because they wanted more stuff! Finally we arrived at the lake, leaving the local children at the gate, and Lisa arrived at the same time in an SUV containing expat kids, more adults, and a picnic lunch. This made 13 of us total at the lake. Most of the folks swam in spite of the schistosomes (see photo)....everyone just says they will take the medication to treat it..... but Lisa and I sat on the bank and talked (another photo). Lisa's husband Matt stretched out to relax in the shade, and her daughter Chelsea was our official photographer for the afternoon. We saw more monkeys today! One was a mother with a baby clinging to her underside. There is an unusual tree at Kumbya with red spiky flowers - never seen anything like it (one more photo). Somehow, all 13 of us squeezed into the one SUV for the drive back to the mission/hospital. I was prepared to walk back (one hour) with Ella and Brandon, but Matt was determined that we could all fit. Thankfully several of the children were small. It was like a clown car. We had a bit of an incident when we arrived at a trench - about 2 feet wide and 3-4 feet deep - where some workers were digging to lay fiberoptic cable. There was an Asian man in charge of the crew, and the incident quickly drew about 30 local people to the scene out of curiosity. Well, we needed to cross the trench in the vehicle, so after some argument, the workers agreed to lay 2 boards down for the SUV tires. I closed my eyes while the overloaded SUV struggled over the gap, and somehow we made it across without slipping off the boards! (Matt's good driving, no doubt.) All in all, it was a very interesting day in Africa!