MikePerry

Under discussion:

Hotel Rwanda  (2004)

6/15

The flights from Grand Rapids to Minneapolis to Amsterdam went well, with the layover in Amsterdam being the most interesting because hardly. The layover in Minneapolis was only 1:30. In Amsterdam we had a real short layover. There was a guy who slipped in some puke right before the terminal. He fell right into it and then couldn’t get up because it was so slippery. I would imagine that he got a free flight or something.

6/16

The city was real dark and the ride there was interesting because all the cars and trucks spew out smoke pretty good. There was pretty tight security outside the hotel because it is right down the road from a place that was actually bombed a few years ago. The hotel was pretty nice, and there was a nice restaurant where we ate dinner and breakfast. I roomed with a guy from mars hill – and during the night he woke up and thought I was a local sleeping in the other bed so he got up and shook me and yelled ‘why are you in here?’. I slept through the whole deal and we got a laugh out of it in the morning.

6/17

On the 17^th, we ate breakfast and headed for the airport at around 9 – we took off at 10. The plane was kind of old looking and it smelled like BO. I had to switch with a bigger man who was sitting next to the emergency exit and was too big to fit out of it in case of an emergency.

The flight went good, jus kind of smelly at times. When we got out of the plane, I immediately realized that we were in Africa (I was wondering for a bit because the weather was so mild in Kenya). In the sun it is real hot, but in the shade it is pretty nice.

We arrived at world relief today at 2:20 (Rwanda time, which is 6 hours ahead of Grand Rapids). It is a really nice building, with a beautiful view of Rwanda. It is a lot more beautiful than the city in Kenya we stayed in. So far, we have just settled in and now we are just starting to work on setting up the equipment.

We set stuff up for around 5 hours or so and then took a tea break, as the custom is to take a tea break 2 times a day. We then went to a Presbyterian guest house for the night and went to a restaurant for dinner. We ate some African food including a dish that had bananas in it. The bananas were not sweet though because it was a weird kind of banana so it tasted like potatoes.

6/18

The next morning we ate at the hotel and had eggs, toast and pineapple. After we ate we set up some more equipment and set up some things on the server. At this time I started feeling sick and light headed a little bit. I’ve been drinking a lot of water and taking the malaria and asadufalous so hopefully these symptoms are from the medicine rather than from some sickness.

We then went to the ‘Gorilla’ hotel and had a meeting and lunch with The staff of World Relief and some other missionaries from some Wesleyan church. In the meeting I learned what all World Relief does. I was amazed to see that World relief does children service, microfinance, AIDS relief. After that, we went to the Rwanda Genocide memorial. Even though I’m a pretty unemotional guy, this place moved me. It is kind of cool seeing the actual streets and buildings that were in the movie as well.

            We then went to the guest house for World Relief – it was as nice as or nicer than the typical house in the US. We ate dinner there and watched an episode of Lost – which I brought.

06/19

Last night I slept like a log, except for when I had a mosquito buzzing by my ear. This morning I took a shower in a shower that had no shower curtains or shower walls so water got everywhere. As I got out of the shower and walked into my room, I heard singing and some sort of band playing in the distance. Apparently there is an African summit happening this weekend, and I think around 3 or 4 African leaders are attending. One of the world relief guys said that when political things like this happen, fighting can break out, but he doesn’t expect it to this time around.

Went to the Rwandan church for church today and the service was in Rwandan, so we had interpreters there to interpret the service. About 15 minutes into the service I felt light headed so I went into the bathroom – which was conveniently located to the right of where the pastor was preaching from. Because I was white, I think I drew a lot of attention to myself, and I think even the pastor paused for a second. There was a lady sitting next to the bathroom and she let me in. The toilet was basically a hole in the floor that you aim for. I don’t think I did a very good job. I was going to fill my water bottle up with water from the sink, but I asked a boy (who was probably like 8 or so) and he shook his hand vehemently and laughed.

When I got back from the bathroom I felt even more lightheaded, and I asked for someone’s water who was sitting next to me. Johno’s wife (Johno works for world relief and his wife is from the UK and is a missionary in Rwanda) saw that I was pale and sick looking and offered to take me to her office for water and to rest. I was so thankful she was there because I would have passed out in church. When we got to her office, she had a boy that does errands for them go and get some water for me. We talked while we were waiting for water, and she said that it is common for foreigners to get sick because of the high altitude and lack of water.

After church the team went to Johno’s house and had drinks and talked. After that we went back to the guest house and ate some lunch.

We then worked like dogs in the hot Africa sun till 7:55 Rwanda time.

After we decided that it was time to call it quits for the night, I went online and sent Jen and mom/dad an email about what’s been going on in Africa. I then talked with Jen online for a little bit (too short) and we then all headed to the guest house to eat. We had grilled cheese and vegetable soup. We ate, chatted and called it a night.

6/20

Today we worked on the network pretty much all day. We ate lunch at the guest house, and ate dinner at a really nice pizza place. It was called the new cactus, and it was almost as nice as a nice restaurant at home, in the middle of poverty. Outside as we were leaving, there were people selling African masks.

6/21

Today the teams split up, I am going to Burundi, and another team is going to Goma, Congo a city with a volcano right above it. A few years back there was an eruption, sending lava through the city.

We took off from Kigali international airport at 11:00am for Bujumbura, Burundi. The flight wasn’t too bad, it lasted only 1 hour. We had the same flight crew as when we went from Kenya to Kigali, Rwanda. We went to the office right from the airport. This place is much more rural than Rwanda. People were burning the grass in front of their houses instead of cutting it. On the way to the office, I kept my laptop bag in the bed of the pickup truck we drove in. About halfway through the trip, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that a motorcycle was driving very close to our truck. Just then the kid (13 years of age maybe) riding on the back of the bike reached out to grab my bag. In a panic I opened the window in the cab and the kid got scared and backed off. That bike trailed for around a mile and then we lost them. If I would have lost that bag, I would be in the middle of a civil war ridden east African country with no passport, money, computer or vaccination papers. That was close.

We went to the office for around 4 hours and set up the wireless access point and some of the computers. After that we had a guy who spoke little English take us to the Sweedish Mission where we were staying for the duration of the Burundi stay. I have never felt so alone as the first 30 minutes in the place where we were staying. The driver pretty much dropped us off and said ‘bye’. Everyone around us didn’t speak English, and we had no idea where we were, no idea who to contact, and no idea what to do. There was a UN guy staying in the same building, he was from Korea. After a while a few guys from the World Relief training seminar who knew English came and talked with us. I showed them a picture of jen and there were muy impressed. We ate dinner at the eating building.

At night we heard some gun shots, about 5 shots from a rifle I think.

6/22

Today we worked on the office all day. We got almost it all done except for mapping some network drives. We shared the dial up connection among 12 computers on the wireless lan that we set up. We then ate at Dan Brose’s house for dinner. His house reminded me of a south American drug cartel’s house. They talked a lot about the World Relief stuff and the visit Laura Bush is doing in August.

6/23

There were no gunshots last night. We got up and ate breakfast at the eating building. We then went to the office for a few hours to get some last stuff done. We were hard pressed for time, and we pretty much ran out the door 30 minutes before the flight. The flight was not too smooth, as soon the plane was off the ground, it banked hard to the right. After a bumpy 13 minutes, the jet started descending. The flight took a total of 30 minutes.

When we got back, we ate at the guest house for lunch. After that, we went to the Kigali office to finish stuff up there and then we ate at Johnos  house. We then crashed at the guest house.

6/24/05

Today we went to the national park and saw many wild animals in their natural habitat. We were guided by a ranger. The ride up to the range took about 2 and a half hours, and the sights on the way were beautiful. I don’t think ive seen any banana trees in my life before, but I saw them today, by the thousands. There were very little modern looking buildings, most of the buildings were made of clay and had sticks as the support structure. There were some brick farmers that made bricks for a living. Any kids we saw on the streets were elated to see us.