Memory

Memory is weird. I've spent the last two days grading two long assignments for my calculus class. Somehow the repetitive grading is giving me Kigali flashbacks. I had a sudden vision this afternoon of the view from my apartment balcony.

Life is fine back home in Maine. It is getting cold and dark now, and will get colder and darker in the weeks ahead.

In a little less than four hour's time I will leave Kigali. Today was a like a miniature version of my seven months here: interesting, fun, tedious, meaningful, pointless, frustrating, satisfying. As always, the weather was just about perfect. I just got back from a final run through the neighborhood. I will soon shower, pack a few remaining items, call a cab, and head to the airport. But first I will sit a moment and enjoy the scene from my balcony one last time.

Final Night

It is my last night in Kigali. The last week has been a bit of a blur. I have been quite busy finishing things up, and my head is filled with mixed thoughts. Rwanda is a complex place; it has been a difficult and intense and (mostly) rewarding seven months. I am sad to say goodbye to friends here and will miss quite a few things about Kigali, but I am very, very ready to be home.

The last few days it has been almost eerily quiet on campus. The last exams were Friday, and so there are almost no students around. The KIST science building is mostly dark at night. They have even turned off the streetlights outside the building. It is still easy to see, though, as the moon has been bright.

My exams are graded and I am well on my way to being packed. Tomorrow I will attende the presentations of the senior theses from 8:30 - noon. Then I will spend a few hours in the department taking care of lots of odds and ends. I expect I'll end up taking lots of photos with the graduating students and other faculty. I will then return to my apartment, finish packing, bid farewell to the guesthouse staff, and head to the airport. I expect it to be a busy and draining day, but I am looking forward to it.

I am, as usual, on the balcony. It is darker than usual despite the nearly full moon. A radio is playing somewhere and crickets chirp. I will miss the balcony. It is a peaceful place to work, to eat breakfast in the morning, to have a cup of coffee in the afternoon, and to just sit and think and try to make sense of it all.

The Final Countdown

I returned this evening from 11 days in Tanzania on safari. It was an amazing trip. The animals and the scenery were stunning. It was the most vactioney vacation I've taken in a very long time, in that I was able to almost completely unplug and not worry about work. There was nothing immediate or large that I was thinking about, so it felt like a real break.

I am now back in Kigali, on my balcony as usual. I have less than two weeks left before I return. I have a lot to do, but it seems manageable. There are 72 finals to grade and some final formatting and very minor edits for the book. I also have lots of odds and ends to take care of. So my days will be full, but things seem under control.

I am looking forward to my last days in Kigali---visiting my favorite places and doing some of my favorite things. I am also looking forward to being home.

Done

I succeeded in finishing all my grading by midday yesterday. Friday and Saturday I graded over 150 midterms. It went surprisingly quickly. My desire to be finished was a great motivator. Some caffeine and some excellent spicy tofu on Saturday night helped considerably.

Tomorrow Doreen and I leave for a 10-day trip to Tanzania. We will visit parks and will see elephants and giraffes and such. I am certain it will be fantastic. It is exciting to be going to game parks, exciting to see Doreen, and exciting to not have to worry (much) about work for 1.5 weeks.

All over but the grading

Classes for semester II have ended. I have given my last "midterms", or CATs as they are known here. I taught my last class on Wednesday. I gave a public lecture on Chaos today. The book is in my publisher's hands. I should be getting final proofs to review in a few weeks.

So all I have to do in the next few days is grade 166 midterms. It is a lot, but I think I can do it. Doreen arrives on Sunday. We leave on Tuesday for a ten-day trip to Tanzania. I then have 1.5 more weeks in Kigali.

I am on the balcony and am exhausted. It is similar to the feeling I get at the end of a term at COA. I know I need to get food. Today I have only eaten a danish, a cup of yogurt, and five crackers. I am probably too hungry to notice I am hungry. I can't quite decide where to go, nor can I gather the energy to start moving.

It is unusually humid. It actually feels sticky. The air is damp and still and it was hazy/smoggy today. There is music from the church and murmurings from the neighborhood. Soon I will go out into the calm night in search of food.

Hard to Believe

Somehow it is June and there is only a week left in the term. It is hard to believe that in the next week I need to grade 200 midterms. And I just finished a batch of 36 midterms. Also this week I need to help my three research students finish up their theses. It is hard to believe that all this will happen, but I trust that it will. And once next week is over, I think I will have smooth sailing for a while.

It is also hard to believe that I have been away for six months now and that I return in just one month. I am looking forward very much to returning, although I think it will be a bit of a shock. Mostly a good shock, but a shock nevertheless.

I have been missing home, as usual. But the last week or so I've also been missing friends back in Maine more than I've felt of late. It will be good to reconnect and catch up. I look forward to sharing stories and thoughts, both to help me process and digest my experience here, but also to help me (re)adjust to life in Maine.

Today is graduation at College of the Atlantic. It is odd not to be there; I've been at every one since 1999. Next year I'll start a new streak.

A Sunday Afternoon Update

It is almost 3:00 on a Sunday afternoon. I am working in my office and watching a rainstorm approach. It looks different than most. It is wider and moving less quickly than usual. The airport, which is just a few miles to the east, is completely shrouded in rain. Here is is still dry, although it is windy and dark. It is hard to tell if the line of rain is moving, but I think it approaches slowly.

There have been a handful of things here that have been sources of growing frustration. They have left me somewhat sour. I don't want to blog about them, and so won't go into any detail. It is nothing major, and I am doing fine. But I am looking forward to being done with teaching.

I am definitely in the home stretch. There are only three weeks of classes left. During this time I need to do lots of grading of midterms. But I think the teaching itself is pretty much under control. I also need to help my three senior thesis students finish up. This will be a lot of work, but somehow it will get done.

After those three weeks Doreen arrives from the US, and my only work will be to grade the finals for my two classes. We will travel some in Tanzania, and will also likely do some traveling in Rwanda.

The line of rain seems be holding steady across the valley. The wind whistles around the building. There are windows in the office next door that don't really latch shut. They bang back and forth in the wind. It would not surprise me if someday they shatter.

Street preacher?

In the alley just to the south of KIST, which I can partially see from my balcony, a street preacher is holding forth. At least I assume he's a street preacher. I can't see him over the wall, but I can here someone talking. And talking. And talking. He's been at it for about 15-20 minutes and shows no sign of slowing down.

He is speaking in Kinyarwanda, so I can't understand what he is saying. There are occasional English phrases and I thought I heard a few French words, but I have no idea what he is talking about. From what I can see there is a crowd of a few dozen people who are listening to him. Five minutes ago there was a smattering of applause. Other than that the crowd is silent and motionless. They appear a little bored.

Thankfully he is not that loud. He is not amplified, and he is not even yelling. The preaching and singing and hollering from the nearby church is much louder, as are the calls to prayer that are broadcast through the neighborhood.

It is an odd place to be delivering a sermon, if indeed that's what it is. In Berkeley the street preachers usually set up on a reasonably busy corner. This is an street that is almost an alley. It gets very little traffic.

Yesterday was a day of cataclysmic rain. But it cleared in the afternoon and I was able to go for a nice run in the early evening. After a shower I zipped over to my favorite Chinese place and devoured a delicious plate of spicy tofu.

The end of the semester nears. Just four weeks left. It is the time of the term when the end is in sight. But it is not so near that one can just sprint to the end. I have a lot of work to do the next four weeks.

The preacher preaches on. His tone rises and falls. His cadence quickens and then slows. There are dramatic pauses. Sometimes I think he is done, but then he starts again.

Rain?

I am working, as usual, on my balcony. It is a little after 12:30am. It is cool and pleasant.

There is an unusual sound emanating from the south. I am pretty sure that what is happening is that it is raining heavily about a mile south of me. Here, I am on my balcony as usual, and it is dry. But the rain in the south is pounding the aluminum roofs in Nyamirambo, the neighborhood to the south of me.

The result is a remarkable sound. It is both soothing and gentle, and also a little eerie.

May Arrives

I spent last weekend in Kibuye, a lovely little town on the shores of Lake Kivu. I relaxed, went for a few walks, ate some decent food, and enjoyed looking at the lake and the clouds and the mountains across the lake in the Congo. I got some good work done on the book. The last stretch involves doing a final proofread and making the index. I am about halfway done with both tasks.

Getting out of Kigali was nice. I like Kigali a lot, but the change of pace was great. It was quiet and peaceful. It was a very relaxing, and yet also productive, weekend.

I returned to Kigali on Monday. Although I got a lot of work done on the book, I was behind in other tasks. So I've spent the last few days getting caught up. Tuesday was a holiday, so my classes didn't meet. Today I taught Atomic Physics. Next week will be midterms in both of my classes.

There is not much other news. I spend my days working, shuttling between office and home depending on where internet works. Sometimes I work downtown. I teach, I grade homework, and I work some more. It is not a bad existence, although it is a little dull at times. I will try to post some pictures of Kibuye later in the week.

It is a little past midnight and it is a pleasantly cool evening. The scene is the usual. I am on the balcony. I can hear crickets and someone is playing a radio over in the science building. There are more lights on than usual. Perhaps many students are studying for midterms. It is week five of a ten-week term.

Tomorrow I will head to the embassy to do some photocopying. And my afternoon is booked with student meetings. In the evening I will probably go to my Chinese restaurant and get some spicy tofu.

Time passes

It is a cool evening in Kigali. The sky is a dark blue/gray and I hear students talking over in the science building, crickets and crows chirp, and the evening call to prayer just finished echoing through the neighborhood to the south.

It has been a slow day -- one of those days where relatively minor inconveniences annoy me more than they should. The book creeps closer to completion. The first proofs were submitted on Monday. I am now working on the index and will do one final proofread. I get the proofs back from the publisher in a week and a half. Then I enter final changes and it's over. I don't know how extensive the final changes will be. Any changes will be about formatting or spacing. The copy-editing phase is done.

Classes went ok this week. Things move along. Next week will be light in terms of teaching. Tuesday, when I normally teach my mathematical physics class, is a holiday so class will not meet. We will make up the class in a few weeks. The following week I will give midterms in both of my classes.

A week from Monday I think I need to have my regular and supplemental exams written for both of my classes. The tests aren't administered until mid-June, but the exams need to go to an external reviewer for approval. So I need to write the exam with about half of the class not having been taught yet. I don't like this system at all. It means that I write the exam guessing at what I will cover. I much prefer for a class to unfold organically, especially the first time I teach it. But that's not the way it is here. So I'll guess at what I'm going to get through. It is hard to avoid "teaching to the test" with this system. But it is what it is.

The next two weeks or so will be busy with exam writing and book work. I think I may spend the weekend away from Kigali. A change of scenery might be rejuvenating and energizing. And I'll need a lot of energy to push through the next few weeks.

Moving Along

I continue to work on my book. It is nearing completion. I spent much of Friday and Saturday re-sizing the axis labels on the majority of the figures. The text has a total of 333 figures, so this was not a small task. I now need to proofread a few additional sections, work on some spacing issues, and lighten some of the photos. Then it goes back to the publisher for a quality check. While this is underway, I will make the index. Then I clean up anything the publisher finds in the quality check, and it is done. There is still a lot of work to do, but I am moving along.

There is little else to report. Classes yesterday and today went ok. It is the rainy season, so there are occasional heavy rains. But it does not rain all the time. So far rainy season has been very pleasant.

(Doreen took the above picture when we were exploring the pyramids in Cairo in March.)

Not much new

There is not much new to report. I have been working entering lots of final edits and making many small changes to figures in my book. I am in the home stretch. This weekend I will make the index. I've been working just about non-stop on it all week. It will be great when it is done. Just a few more days.

This morning there was steady rain. It was dark and cool, for Kigali at least. I had breakfast on my balcony, but I needed an extra layer so stay comfortable. But as the day progressed it cleared. This afternoon from my office the view was spectacular. I felt as if I could see 1000 hills from my window alone. It is now a perfect evening. The sun has set and there are some purple clouds in the sky. It is comfortable out, although I suspect tonight will be a little bit chilly. I will probably wear a light jacket when I head out into the night for my usual Friday-night tofu.

Eighteen

This week marks the 18th anniversary of the start of the genocide. On April 6, 1994, the plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down while landing at the Kigali airport. This was followed by 100 days of unthinkable violence and murder. Estimates vary, but most put the number at around 800,000 killed.

The 6th was a Friday. At the exact moment that the plane brought down eighteen years ago, I was having a plate of spicy tofu at my favorite Chinese restaurant. I was just a few miles from the airport.

This week is a memorial week. There are no classes, and many businesses and offices are open only for a half day. The city is quieter than usual, but not as much as I had expected. I went for a run today at dusk and the streets were no more or less busy than is typical.

Most of the time, I feel the genocide is everywhere and nowhere. Rwanda has made amazing progress since 1994. Kigali is clean, pleasant, and safe. There has been very little violence the last decade and poverty rates are declining. At the same time, I feel that the shadow of the genocide is subtly everywhere. Eighteen years is not that long ago.

Heron

There is a nice heron that hangs out on campus. Sometimes I see it hunting around the guesthouse. Last week I finally got a few decent pictures of it.

I am almost certain it is a Black-headed Heron (Andea melanocephala). According to my bird guide, black-headed herons like to hang out in grasslands and drier areas in addition to wetlands. The heron I see prowls around in dry drainage ditches. I assume it is looking for insects.

Scents

When I was in Cairo I bought some soap at a nice store that sells a bunch of natural products. The soap is basil scented. It smelled nice, and the soap looked to be high quality. They had many other scents, but basil seemed new and interesting, so I got a little bundle of four bars of basil soap.

The soap is nice, but the basil scent is a little odd. It's very pleasant, but when I shower I sort of feel like I'm showering with pesto or something. It's not a bad smell at all; it's just unusual for soap.

In other olfactory news, the entire KIST lawn on this side of campus has been cut by one guy with a weed whacker over the course of Friday and Monday. I don't know why. Usually it is done by hand by a team of workers with scythes. The total area is perhaps an acre. Maybe two. The weed whacker guy was working around the guesthouse this morning, which was somewhat annoying. But he finished, and now there is a nice summery cut-grass smell. I like it.

Finally, this weekend the guesthouse lost power for around 36 hours. This isn't typical. Usually power outages are 10-15 minutes. It wasn't that inconvenient, since I was working in my office, which had power and internet. And I have a headlamp and candles and a little rechargeable LED desklamp. So light was no problem.

The problem was the refrigerator. Suffice it to say that the fridge doesn't smell very good right now. I threw out my things that had spoiled, but there is some food that I don't think belongs to anyone, so nobody has thrown it out. Tomorrow I may lose patience and just purge anything that looks suspect.

Saturday rhythm

Today began with rain. Pounding rain in the middle of the night, cacophonous on the metal roof. There then followed alternating periods of drizzle and downpour. It persisted through midday. I got out of bed around ten. Shortly thereafter the guesthouse lost power. Usually power outages are only 15 minutes or so. This one has lasted all day.

It was quite cool in the morning. I had to put on another layer as I had my coffee on the balcony. The wind and the rain was hypnotic. The cool weather was a nice change. After a slow morning I headed to my office, where there was power and internet. I spent the day working, entering book edits and purging forbidden contractions. In the evening I went downtown and had a satisfying veggie burger. I then did some grocery shopping and returned for more work.

I am now on the balcony typing by candle light. Earlier it was bright. There was a lopsided half-moon and many stars. But the city is now shrouded by mist. It is damp, and neither warm nor cool.

In the air

It is Friday night and I am on my balcony. It was an unusually warm and humid day. It wasn't too bad, but it was just a little bit uncomfortable at times. The air is cooler now, but still heavy. There is lightning and thunder in the distance to the south.

I got up very early this morning to play ultimate frisbee. The game started around 6:30am. When I awoke the sky was an amazing mix of pink and purple. It faded quickly as it got brighter. I spent much of the day editing my book. I purged contractions, entered copy edits, and spent too much time thinking about when numbers should be written (four) and when they should be numbers (4).

Today apparently was the day to "mow" the grass at KIST. Usually this is done by hand. Teams of men with small scythes traverse the lawn and deftly trim the grass. But today it was done by a gas-powered weed whacker. The humid air carried the smell of cut grass up through my office window. It was a pleasant and familiar scent and it made me think of mowing the lawn back home in the summer.

I had an excellent Chinese meal for dinner at my favorite Kigali Chinese restaurant. The spicy tofu was better than usual. I then returned and did more editing. The next few weeks I will need to spend many hours at my desk, carefully entering final edits for the book.

The wind has picked up a little. Periodically the wind whistles through the trees. It's an unusual sound---it sounds cold and wintry. The lights of Kigali sparkle as usual. The thunder is gone.

Routine

I returned from Cairo Sunday morning and, to be honest, I felt miserable in every way. I had a cold and a stomach ache. I was exhausted from a long overnight flight (Cairo to Kigali with a plane change in Nairobi and stops in Khartoum and Bujumbura). I was sad to part with Doreen and missed home tremendously. I was not looking forward to the next three months.

I slept 14 of the next 24 hours, after which things started to look up. I was no longer exhausted, and my stomach and cold were much, much better. Things continued to look up the next few days as I got back into my routine here. I found myself taking surprising comfort in the familiar. I had a meal with friends at my favorite Chinese place. I went for a short run in the evening along my usual route. I saw colleagues in the Physics Department, said hello to the Dean, and greeted the staff at the guesthouse where I stay. My bed here is very comfortable and the nights are quiet.

It is, of course, so much easier starting teaching this term now that I have the previous semester's experience to draw on. I know my students, have a sense of how things are done, and I generally know what to expect from teaching here. I'm sure there are still surprises ahead. But I have a much better handle on things.

What's surprising to me, though, is how the familiarity of my little part of Kigali has helped me settle down and get back into a routine of sorts. It is not as if I understand Kigali---this is still a new and foreign and confusing place. And it is not as if Kigali or my room in the guesthouse feels like home. But it feels like something. Familiar. Comfortable, in a way. I have the places I go and the things I do.