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.