More observations...

Not having a camera is making me cranky. The other day, we passed a young man carrying a huge number of eggs which I wanted to photograph and it was before Eddie lent me hers. I asked my driver how he sells those and my driver looked at me and said, "one by one." I thought he was going house to house selling raw eggs, or selling a half dozen at a time to women on the street. Nope, these are boiled and people buy them on the street, one or two at a time, and eat them for breakfast, lunch or snacks.

One of the guys in the office was sneezing the other day and I noticed that I was the only one saying , "Bless you." I asked if they had a tradition of saying something and in Kinyarwanda, they say: Urakire (oo-ra-chir-ay) which means, "Get rich." And they respond, "Twese," (tway-say) which means, "all of us." I like that. Eddie reminded me that in German, Geshundheit, means "good health."

My friend Michelle sent me a note to google "puff adder," a deadly snake found in Africa. She sends me the nicest notes. So, I checked it out...yes, we have these here in Rwanda and there could be some in Akagera, where we are going tent camping this weekend. Didn't need that picture swimming around in the back of my mind! Going any way. Eddie has new sleeping bags, a new tent and a new blow up mattress...never been used and we are going to try to test them out after work today, pack, do laundry and grocery shop. Oh, on the Akagera newsletter, they mention that they have had a ton of animal poaching going on and they have also found some horrendous amount of marijuana being grown there illegally.

It occured to me this morning that I can effectively swear in about 10 languages. Not quite sure what I can do with this knowledge...most of the places I go, the women don't swear. And really, when does one need to swear in Kinyarwanda, Urdu or Amharic??

Yesterday, at the gym, Eddie lost her purse. We had quite a frenzy and the hotel staff opened the lockers, checked everywhere and NO purse. We knew she brought it into the locker room because she locked the car, and put the key away. She got to the point where we were going to have to call the police, to report the loss because she is an Embassy employee and her passport, badge, house keys and more were in the purse. But we decided to have the staff open every locker (not easy, no master key) once more. This process went on forever and finally, the purse was found locked in a different locker than she had been using. Quite a process but we were pretty sure it wasn't stolen...this is an incredibly honest group of people here. It has been a really bad last 10 days for lost items...my camera and keys, her purse.