Despite the fact that I’m in Africa at the moment, time flies by; the end of my third fieldwork-week is near. Its Thursday afternoon and I just got home from my one-hour walk from Umurera village, where I do my research.
Tomorrow afternoon it will be time to travel back to Butare, where I can upload these words. Here in the rural area, my home is a kind of parish, with a bunch of French speaking, very curious, and burping, catholic nuns. They say I have to stay, because I don’t have a fiancé anyway. We’ll see : )
Doing my fieldwork is more, means more, than I can ever explain with words; I’m combining the very best of many things. Being outside most of day, in rural Africa, while smelling cows, walking through the small steep fields with red earth, ready for planting, while enjoying the beautiful, friendly Rwandan people as well as the tropical biology; birds, plants, insects, reptiles. One of the best things is that I even get the time and opportunity to use my camera quite a bit…
It is literally true when I say that in the past few weeks I’ve already eaten more fruit, than I did during the first 8 months of this year. (Don’t know if that tells you more about my life at home, or about my life here ;) Avocado on my bread in the morning, a whole avocado for lunch, and some more avocado to flavour the rice at night; its my personal guess that currently it is avocado-season. Of course there are also tons of bananas, passion fruits, papaya and something called a tree tomato. Still need to try pineapple. What I like is that almost everything I consume does not travel very far. The fruit that some people in the village offer me travels about 100 m from the tree to my mouth, and yesterday the family-cow was milked just so Moussa (my translator) and me, could drink something…
2 comments:
Och Lotje, wat ben je toch weer aan een heerlijk avontuur begonnen! Avocado is supergezond he, dat weet je - goed voor je haar, geloof ik. En wat smaakt het lekker als het rijp van de boom/plant komt. Hmmm.
Ik moest lachen om je verhaal over de nonnetjes. Als het niets wordt met je afstuderen, kun je hun aanbod nog altijd overwegen ;)
Wat houdt je onderzoek precies in?
Dikke zoen van Gerdien (die de blog zo nu en dan op WOG-momentjes leest)
Hee Lot!
Ik wist niet dat je een site had, maar heb hem nu gevonden :) Super tof en wat ben je toch een stoer wijf! Je doet het maar wel weer zo met die bus door Afrika! Ik vind het echt heel knap. Geniet van je tijd daar en weet zeker dat we elkaar geweldige verhalen te vertellen hebben zodra we terug zijn. Ik vertrek maandag!!! Heb er zin in.
Take care en geniet! XXX
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