Waking this morning to an Islamic call to prayer was one of the most unexpected things in this country. I'd like to take some time and talk about other unexpected things that have occured as well.

First of all, watching the Discovery Channel and reading National Geographic, I came here with an expectation of mud huts and goat roasts. While goat is eaten, and some people do live in mud huts, Rwanda is a far more developed country than I expected. Even the rooms we are staying in have hot water (sometimes) and we can walk up to the gas station to buy a can of Pringles and a Coke.

Rwanda is also strangely clean. Non-biodegradable bags are illegal and members of the community take part in county wide clean up projects. Unlike Mexico and parts of the U.S., there isn't trash strewn everywhere.

Rwandans also have an interesting way of showing physical affection. Homosexuality is illegal in Rwanda, so the sight of strait men walking hand in hand is a common sight. Even today, we walked past a police station, and civilians would hold hands with the police officers...something that would never happen in Bellevue.

Walking by a group of prisoners working on a plantation today, we smiled and waved. The prisoners were wearing orange, which meant that they had not admited to the crimes they had commited during the geonoside. The strange thing was, these prisoners were not fenced in. There was only one guard, and many of the prisoners using machetes for cutting grass and pineapples. Like out of some movie, after we waved, many of the men smiled and excitedly waved back, including the guard who was cradling his machine gun.

However, some things I've seen have been totally along with what we see and hear on the TV. I remember watching shows on Africa and seeing people singing and dancing all the time. I thought to myself that the reason they were doing that was because they had cameras pointed at them. However, the first night we spent in Kigali, we could hear a group of women singing down the street. This was a familier sound by the end of our stay in Kigali. Even today, a bus drove by, and everyone on the bus was clapping their hands in unison.

While Rwanda is wonderful, many of us are excited to get back home.

Lots of love to my family and friends,
Eliot