I Appear Therefore I am

Some of you may have wondered if it was actually me doing this blogging and digicaming, given that I was noticably (at least to my mother) absent from all of my previous photos. The proof, my friends, is in the kasava, and here I am eating some kasava, pili pili (local hot sauce), chicken, and fried fish for lunch today at a local buffet called Africa Bite (pronounced bi-tee) with Julie and Lauren (taking the picture). I've already gotten pretty attached to the pili pili, as it's on my table every night at home. Strangely enough, I had the opportunity to become attached to it some months ago when Ted Alcorn brought me some from his trip to Kigali. For some reason, at the time I decided it was too hot (a conclusion I almost never reach) and it sat basically untouched for months. Kristin, Rachel, and Alexis: you've got a red bottle of joy waiting for you in that fridge.

Proving my existence once again, I've now been working at the ORI office for four days, and I'm really enjoying myself. As I mentioned before, one of my main responsibilities will be to prepare some assessment tools for ORI to measure the students' computer skills. It's clear that those skills are critical to obtaining employment here in Kigali, so the more effective ORI's computer training can be, the better. I've also started to meet and interact with some of the students, and they're all dynamic and impressive young people. Obviously I communicate better with those who speak English, but all of them greet the staff with a handshake and a smile any time they come through the office. I had a long conversation with one student about his goal of becoming a strong leader (he was carrying around a book on effective leadership, and had lots of love for Barack, America's next great leader). Tomorrow I have a meeting with the president of the student body to talk about her goals for the Student Government Association and to help her and her officers develop a good plan to reach them. On Saturday, I'll be attending this month's meeting of the SGA, and I plan to do a blog entry for ORI's blog afterwards. I'll be sure to post the link here once it's up.

Today I also got to visit two of our partner orphanages, where we distribute and collect applications for the ORI scholarships. The visits were brief, but the kids were smiling and seeing the orphanages definitely added to my understanding of the ORI operation.

Here are a couple other photos:

This is where The Game went when Fifty kicked him out.

Besides motos, matatus are another main way people get around here. They're vans that serve as city buses and they are always packed with people. I'm still too intimidated to take because I don't know how to tell where they're going or when they'll stop. Most of them have some sort of hand-painted graphic or slogan on the back (Che and Jesus tend to me most popular). This one goes out to Penny Hardaway, Grant Hill, and Dwight Howard.

More updates this weekend I hope.