Long Time, No Write

Greetings. Thank you for checking in. Since it has been about six days since my last entry, I have many adventures to share.

The first of which is that this past weekend Karen, Aaron and I traveled to Guitarama to hang out with our fellow interns stationed there. On Saturday morning, we went to the market, which had many sights to behold, including a trisected bleeding cow in the back of a pickup and assorted clothing and electronics stores. Overall, it was clean, and though I did not buy anything, I was tempted on many occasions. After a delicious lunch, Saturday afternoon consisted of a hike through urban and rural Guitarama. The destination of our trek was determined as thusly:

Caleb: “I really like that flat-top tree over there.”
Me: “Okay, let’s hike to it.”

The walk was deceptively short, only taking about forty-five minutes, but the forty-five children that we collected along the way made it fulfilling. As we came across a schoolyard, we settled the children down for an invigorating game of Duck-Duck-Goose. I always got stuck in the middle; not that I’m bitter or anything. Then, Sunday morning we attended church, a four-hour Kinyarwandan Pentecostal church service. Not my favorite Guitarama moment, but an experience nonetheless. Shortly after the service, the three of us left for Kigali. Riding in a taxi the size of a Volkswagen Van, we sat comfortably along with the other 19 people that were cramped in with us. After cutting off the circulation to my legs, I read a chapter of Paradise Lost, which held me over until we arrived.

Since then, work has been relatively slow. Monday, Aaron and I had a meeting with the World Food Programme to discuss their operations in the resettlement camp we visited last week. The headquarters was nice; I almost asked how much food they could buy if they sacraficed their immaculate gardener, but thought better of it. However, the meeting was short and sweet: "we only do what the district tells us, go talk to them."

So today we did. I slept most the way there and back, but while we were in the town, we had a decent time. After a scrumptious and relatively inexpensive lunch, we talked to the district head in charge of good governance. Though the lady in charge of the resettlement camp was gone, this fill-in was informative. He gave us a house-building project proposal and basically told us that, other than that, not much was being done for the people in that camp. He said that the government would welcome our assistance. There was also another project proposal for agriculture that we wanted to study, but that gentlemen was gone as well and he was the only one with that paper. Aaron and I concluded that we need to show them what a computer network is. Oh well.

Outside those two meetings, I have done nothing for Food for the Hungry all week. Normally, this would have bummed me out, but I have been busy preparing for something else. The
State Department informed me that my Security Clearance information is due next Monday, and they sent this information to my parents a week and a half before the deadline. Thank you US government. A full Security Clearance is mandatory in order for me to work with the State Department this fall in Rome. So if that does not get completed, then the second half of this blog will not exist. Needless to say, I have been scrambling to pull everything together, and between emailing my mom for information (thanks mom) and intermittent internet, it has been difficult. But I am almost done, hence my ability to finish this blog, and hopefully will have it turned in to the US Embassy tomorrow.

So that is all. Hopefully, I will be able to update sooner after this security clearance is done. Thank you for reading! God bless!