I’ve spent the last couple days in Guatemala and Nicaragua, and it’s shocking to me how much my brief time seeing each country’s rural areas has, in a sense, reminded me of my two weeks in Rwanda two years ago. One of the local Nicaraguans who worked with our service project group for this Enrichment [...]
Photo Friday: Iby’Iwacu, Rwanda
March 2, 2012 By 43 Comments
While preparing for my photo presentation for BlissDom last week, I’ve began the laborious task of culling through tens of thousands of photos I don’t even remember taking over the past two years, when I stumbled upon a set taken in Rwanda when I visited back in 2010. The beginning of my trip to Rwanda [...]
Photo Friday: Lake Kivu, Rwanda
November 5, 2010 By 15 Comments
The second stop on my overland tour through Rwanda in the spring was in Gisenyi, where we stayed at the Lake Kivu Serena and spent a day cruising around the lake by boat. OK, not this boat, per se, but a proper speedboat. Towering above the Gisenyi end of the lake is the active Nyiragongo [...]
Photo Friday: Kigali, Rwanda
September 3, 2010 By 12 Comments
I’m doing a video interview today with the Friends of Rwanda, and this prompted me to dig into my Rwanda files to see what I had yet to publish. After my week traipsing about the countryside, I returned to Kigali for four days. The first couple were spent holed up in my hotel, thanks to [...]
Photo Friday: Nyungwe Forest, Rwanda
May 28, 2010 By 14 Comments
Something really cool happened while we were in Rwanda in March: The first five-star lodge in the whole country opened, and we got to be some of the first guests. This is monumental, as it’s a step in the right direction for building up Rwanda as a tourist destination once again, after the war in [...]
Photo Friday: Children of Rwanda, Part III
April 9, 2010 By 28 Comments
This is the final installment of a three-part series documenting the faces of Rwandan children, following Part I here and Part II here. Someone—from Rwanda it should be noted—commented on my last Photo Friday: “May I just ask, why is it always kids from the village, and the poorest? What about the middle class? I [...]
Photo Friday: Children of Rwanda, Part II
April 2, 2010 By 29 Comments
After a five-hour (unsuccessful) chimp-tracking mission in the Nyungwe Forest, we pulled up to a pygme village on the edge of the jungle. I was expecting very small people, but…they weren’t. Maybe a little shorter than your average person—I’d say the women were between 5’2″ and 5’4″—but it was hardly visible with the children. I [...]
Rwanda: Man vs. Gorilla
March 30, 2010 By 43 Comments
I’ll be frank, prior to my trip to Rwanda, my knowledge of the country spanned what happened in 1994 and…gorillas. I knew of Dian Fossey and her life’s mission and her untimely demise, and I also knew that her work was the country’s biggest tourist attraction. (OK, so maybe I didn’t actually realize that until [...]
Photo Friday: Children of Rwanda, Part I
March 26, 2010 By 24 Comments
We’ve covered much of the country by this point, and everywhere we go, the children wave enthusiastically, calling out heartbreaking “hellos!” as you pass, chasing the vehicle as far as their little legs will carry them. These faces are so beautiful, their skin so perfect, their teeth a straight, white line. If I were a [...]
Someone’s Popular in Rwanda
March 25, 2010 By 15 Comments
You’d almost think they elected him for their own president. (Rather, Rwanda is the first country in which women in government comprise the majority (at 55 percent). Empowering women in Africa, for the win!)
