Merry Christmas Day!

On Christmas Eve I received 4 packages!!!! It really felt like Christmas as I opened each one, and thought of the friends and family who sent them. Thank you all soooo much!

Bob, Sara and Taylor included stockings in my package for me, Chewy, Danny and Fox! (I didn't have Ama yet when they sent the package). There were many, many ornaments (THANK YOU PEG!!!) - I didn't have a tree so I cut a branch off an avocado tree an decorated that!


There were also wheat thins and other great snacks that are unavailable here. I spent part of the afternoon organizing my food into boxes of sweet, salty and meals - I am now an official food hoarder...


I was instructed NOT to open the stocking until Christmas morning so this morning I ran to the green couch where the stockings had been "hung" with care - and low and behold Santa brought me a thermos, a pine Yankee Candle, a flashlight and a Santa pez dispenser! Each of the dogs got a great chew toy too! Although Fox didn't really know what to do with his, so Ama took it...



Kris, my favorite middle cousin, sent these great ornaments with pictures of everyone in the centers - a GREAT reminder of our Christmas's together! I especially liked the picture of Jay asleep!


Lisa Tucker sent me a package with a WONDERFUL bound book of photos from last summer's MWL mini-reunion in Three Lakes. Feels like you guys are here with me now!By the way, when are you coming to deepest darkest Africa for a visit???!!!

There were all manner of goodies in Lisa's package - I stocked my larder! She also sent the first 2 seasons of "Weeds" (watched the first 2 episodes with my friend Jeff from Imbabazi). Hilarious!

Gail Hall sent puppy treats and clickers for Ama (Gail, she learned "sit" in 2 tries!!!). Ama was a little frightened of the squeak toy at first, but now it is one of her favorites. If there were sound on this blog you could hear the squeaks just now!

Gail also sent packages of nice SOFT Kleenex (Yay!), many wonderful snacks including tuna, some fun reading material, and a picture of Vignir that is now on my bulletin board!

The rest of the morning I spent preparing my contribution to the Christmas dinner I was attending at Katie and Glen's house (Katie is the director of Karisoke Research Center). I had a cake mix I brought from when I was home in October, so I mixed that up and put it in the oven along with the oven thermometer I brought back. It was hard to keep the oven at 350, but I did my best.

While the cake was baking, I began to prepare artichoke dip with fresh artichokes I got last week. Finding the heart in a fresh artichoke is hard work (I googled food network for advice)! I had 5 artichokes and after 30 minutes of cutting and pulling off the outer leaves and another 30 minutes of boiling.... I had 4 bites of artichoke.... which I enjoyed.... but no dip for the party!

Back to the cake. I had 2 round cakepans, and one of the cakes got a bit burned on the bottom, but I didn't let this lessen my determination. I scraped off the burned part, and started in on the icing. Last week in Kigali I found "icing sugar" and thought I was home free (I bought 2 different kinds just to be safe)! Sugar, milk, vanilla and butter - what could go wrong? Well.... let me tell you. First batch was very granular - it wasn't really powdered sugar.... I set that aside and made another batch with the other package. This batch ended up too thin, but not too granular... Hmm. I decided to mix the two batches, thinking that the thick, granular batch would thicken the thin batch. I was out of sugar now so this HAD to work. Alas, it was still too runny and now the whole thing was a little gritty with sugar granules. At this point I decided to just try to ice the cake with a "drizzle. A good thought, but when I put the top layer on the bottom layer, with "drizzle" in between, it slid off and crashed on the plate. Yikes. Thinking quickly I grabbed a toothpick and tried to tooth-pick the top layer to the bottom layer. That seemed to be working, so I drizzled some more icing over the top. It was looking okay! I thought I might actually end up with a nice cake, when the top layer started sliding again, ripping a hole in the top layer where the toothpick was... Ugh. Now what to do???? I have repaired cakes with icing at home, but this batch was too thin... hmmmm. I thought, maybe if I cook it the icing will thicken. Bad idea. It turned into crystalized candyish goop. I tried to repair the cake with the goop anyway, but alas, it only made matters worse.

Here's the aftermath of my culinary attempts:


Here's the "finished" product...

Not horrible, and will likely taste good, but not attractive enough for a dinner party! I think I'll cut it up and we'll eat it here at the office next week...

Here's what I brought instead:


Dinner at Katie and Glen's was great - we had good conversation, watched 18 month old Anabel enjoy her new toys, drank mulled wine, ate turkey, stuffing, potatoes, sausage, beans, Christmas pudding with cream, cheese and chocolate! I'm still not hungry this morning!

When I got home last night I skyped with Bob and the kids, Peg and Jim and Mary Ann while they were opening presents at Jim's. I talked to Anna Lynn and Linda, and left messages for Leigh Ellen and the Jores (I'll try again tonight!).

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday, and that your cakes turned out well, and you enjoyed time with family and friends.

Amakuru!

Office Party, Rwanda style!

Yesterday we had our MGVP Christmas Party complete with spaghetti dinner ala Leon, decorations put up by Noel and Jose, and background traditional Christmas music I put on my I-pod when I was home in October. We played the "white elephant" gift game! It was quite new to most of the group, and great fun. Poor Noel had 2 of his gifts stolen (one by me!), but he ended up with a GREAT gorilla painting by Eric, one of the artists who works with Julie at Art of Conservation.

Here are some pictures of our day:


Noel and Joselyn putting up the decorations.


The finished product!


Leon and Felician preparing the feast!


The Christmas feast.


Ama with her Christmas decoration!


And Ama eating her Christmas decoration...


Here's the MGVP team enjoying dinner.


Opening gifts was fun.


Here we are with our gifts. Me (obvious, I know), Innocent (from Art of Conservation), Felician (one of our guards), Clementine (former administrative assistant now at university in Kigali), Schadrack (current administrative assistant), Leon, Eric's wife, Eric (from Art of Conservatin), Noel (lab technician), Joselyn (data entry for MGVP) and Joseph (our porter for the forest). Great team!

At the end of the day, after almost everyone had gone home, Felicien, Leon and I washed the dishes and put the house back in order. There was little conversation, because my French and Kinyarwanda is so bad, but it was a comfortable, familiar, post holiday activity. I am so thankful for my Rwandan friends; my family away from home! But I miss you all!

Christmas Shopping

Going to Kigali today to drop John off at the airport and to do some last minute Christmas shopping - chocolate for the staff!

Christmas in Rwanda

This is the first time I've spent Christmas away from my family. And it is a little surreal to me that Christmas is less than a week away. The weather doesn't change much day to day, or month to month for that matter, and there are no Christmas tree lots, few lights and decorations, and no seasonal songs playing in Musanze town. BUT, I have 2 poinsettia trees - one in my front yard and one outside my bedroom window, and they both have beautiful red leaves, just in time for Christmas! The sunbirds and firefinches perch there regularly and look like ornaments. I put up decorations in my livingroom. And I'm going to have a little MGVP Christmas party next week, and introduce the "white elephant" Christmas present game to the staff! I'm having Christmas dinner at a friend's house - they have an 18 month old daughter so I'll get to watch her open a gift or two! And I'll let Ama open a new bone on Christmas morning. I'm playing Pachelbel's Canon as I write this. So I'm trying to get into the Christmas spirit. But I'll miss you all, and chilly Christmas morning opening the stocking gifts, and looking at the tree at night, and the endless Christmas songs, and Sara and Taylor relaxing after finals. Send me pictures.

Bob said he wanted to see more pictures of my house so here they are!


Here's the poinsettia outside my bedroom window.


I just planted some flower seeds in the backyard.


Here's the door to my office from the courtyard.


Chewy and the poinsettia outside my front door.


My vegetable garden.


Here's the inside of my office.


We have this calendar board for all MGVP scheduled activities.


Here's my nick-nack shelf (yes, I'm collecting even more nick-nacks Bob!)


I have these flowers outside my office. The begonia makes me think of Mom.


Here's my bulletin board with some pictures that are probably familiar to many of you!


These next few are my decorations - pretty festive!









Here's my dresser with photos to remind me of friends and family.


Immaculee, a friend here in town, gave me this plaque for Christmas. I love it!


Fox and Ama relaxing in the living room.


Ama has doubled in size since she came to me 2 weeks ago!

That's it for now! By the way, I darted my first wild gorilla Friday. She had a snare on her wrist. Amazing experience. I'll write about it on the gorilladoctors blog in January!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Like any other Sunday

It was Sunday morning. I’d slept in a bit, dinked around in the garden, and I had been invited to Fabien’s wedding today. He’s one of the 2 head gorilla orphan caregivers in Kinigi, and I was so very honored to be invited - I was beginning to be part of the community! I’d picked out the skirt and blouse I was going to wear, and was in the process of ironing when I got the first call. There was a professor from Princeton trekking gorillas today, and I was to have lunch with him at one of the resorts. What a dilemma. I did some quick calculating and figured I could go to the wedding but slip out early in time to make it to this lunch. It would work out just fine.

Then I got the second call. There was a silverback gorilla who was still in his night nest at 10am. NOT a good sign at all. Now all bets were off. No wedding, no lunch with the professor from Princeton. I was so sad to miss Fabien’s wedding, but I knew he would understand. He was a gorilla caregiver after all. I prepared to go to the forest to assess this silverback.

As I put my raingear, camera and fleece in my backpack, I had a million questions going through my head – had he been in a fight with another silverback? Did he fall? Was he coughing? Others sick? Will this require anesthesia?

I climbed in the truck and drove to pick up the tracker and porter who accompanied me. We then drove down a long, curvy lava strewn “road” to the “parking” area. It must have been a market day because I passed bag after bag of potatoes along the way, piled outside a small shop, on people’s heads, and 3-4 huge bags on bicycles that strong men were pushing up steep hills. We parked the truck outside a small village and started up the slope. It was about 60 degrees, overcast and windy as we headed up the slope to the edge of the park – I have a feeling my nose was bright red as it dripped steadily in the wind... And it was MUDDY. I was priding myself in how well I was keeping up with the tracker when I slipped and fell in the mud on the way up – sorta embarrassing. It took us only 30 minutes to get to the park edge. We were following the Susa River on the way up. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it rushing down the hillside. Then we came to the falls - absolutely beautiful. I still can’t quite believe I get to work here!

I had to take a pee at the wall at the edge of the park (too much coffee that morning). The trackers are used to this, but I was a little embarrassed. I said in my best English “I have to go have a pee…” and point to the bushes. The tracker said “Number one?” and I thought, did he just ask me that??!! I said, “Yes, number one - the short call.” And he somberly nodded his approval. I wondered what he would have said it was number two… I found a bush that is nicely situated to provide me with privacy from the trackers, but I imagine the whole valley could probably see my glowing white bum. Yikes.

It was another 30 minutes through the forest until we got to the group. As soon as we entered the forest the wind stopped and everything was quiet. We were in a bamboo area and there was moss hanging from bamboo, and bamboo going every which way making the path a little difficult to navigate, not to mention the ankle deep mud. But we kept going, and it wasn’t far until we came upon the silverback, laying on his side with 3 juvenile gorillas playing around him. He lifted his head to acknowledge me, but then laid back down. I was a worried. The tracker and I moved off to look at the rest of the group, and in about 15 minutes we saw the silverback moving in our direction. He was limping a little, but sat and ate well while we watched several others in the area. What a relief. We watched the group for about an hour, and once the tracker and I were both satisfied that he was okay, we headed back out of the park. We both thought he had probably fallen and hurt his leg, but not seriously. I learned later that he was back to normal the next day. Phew!

I’m doing a lot better with the altitude – still very slow as we climb, but this time we were at around 8800 feet and I kept up pretty well! The mood was light as we walked down the mountain. When we got back to the falls I stopped and told Joseph the porter I needed to be a tourist for a moment and took a picture. Joseph and the tracker laughed. And I practiced my Kinyarwanda on them. I now know to say “nitwa Jan” when the kids call me Mzungu (my name is Jan). I can say “muramutse”, which means "good morning". And respond with “yego”, meaning "yes, it is a good morning". Or to say “Amakuru” in greeting (Peace) to which one responds “Nimeza”, meaning "and also to you". Joseph and the tracker seemed to get a kick out of my trying to learn Kinyarwanda, and they tried to teach me so many words! I know I won’t remember them because I can’t write them down as we walk – the words are still so foreign to me. But it was fun. I told them about Amahirwe and they laughed at the name (it took me a while to get across the concept that I have a puppy with that name, but we eventually got there between my bad French, their a little better English, and pantomiming!). I told them that some days she is Amahane, and they busted a gut.

I am feeling settled in. I've learned to always expect the unexpected. I love this place and the people, and of course the gorillas.



Ugenda feeling stiff and sore.


Other family members enjoying lunch.


Susa falls.

Amahane

So, Amahirwe means Chance, or Luck.
Amahane means Trouble!
Either way she's Ama...
Needless to say, she feels MUCH better now, and is a normal, troublesome puppy!! I've given her my slippers in order to save everything else she chews on!

Here she is with Eric, a friend from Art of Conservation. Molly took this picture.

Updates

My friends Molly and John and climbing Sabinyo today - over 12000 feet!!! Maybe next year for me...

MGVP sponsored a training workshop for about 20 community people (including a Batwa group) on how to use a press that makes fuel briquettes out of discarded paper, rice hulls, etc. These briquettes will be used in place of charcoal so tons of benefit - reduced charcoal use, recycled paper use, a business for the people who own the presses and the people they employ! We brought over the first press from Congo to Rwanda. Very exciting! Pix soon.

I'm putting up Christmas decorations this evening - I can't believe it is already 2 weeks until Christmas!

Ama weighs 7 pounds already! Chewy has forgiven me, but only if Ama is not present (when I tried to introduce them he snarled fiercely and ran away, and didn't let me touch him for 2 days. He is a very sensitive boy). Fox is beginning to tolerate Ama; a very good sign! Dan hasn't met her yet (I worry that his cart will run her over!).

I was supposed to be on a live California Public Radio broadcast on Tuesday, but just as we were going on air I lost the internet connection (not uncommon here, unfortunately). But they decided to reschedule for next week. Fingers crossed for the connection!

New post at gorilladoctorsblog about Ndeze and Ndakasi. They are doing so well!

And Bob, I am wearing my new sunglasses at appropriate times!