a goat

I don’t know why this man had a goat on his bicycle, but it makes a good picture for my next statement. I am going to buy a goat. Not in Rwanda, but when I get back to Denver...unless I decide to try to get a goat through customs. According to Russell Rainey, renowned outdoorsman and founder of Christ in the Tetons, goats are the new llama. Yes, that’s right: they can pack up to 40 pounds and can eat along the trail, so they make excellent backpacking companions. Since I’m unemployed, I hope to get some good pack trips in this summer and having a goat means I don’t have to carry as much. I wonder how fast they hike – as quick as a bunny, perhaps?

The prospect of goat ownership in Denver proper has previously been researched by Nathan Michels, so I defer any question of legality or logistics to him. All goat name suggestions can be directed to me at mollie.richardson@gmail.com and yes, “Billy” is far too prosaic.

the jungle and the congo

I recently took a road trip that landed me in the dense Nyungwe jungle, which is presumably what all of Rwanda looked like prior to cultivation (nearly every inch is now farmland). The jungle had an almost eerie feeling; even as you drive through it feels quiet, dark and isolated. I’m pretty sure I would believe anything about its potential inhabitants and would not have been surprised by wild mythical creatures if they had crossed the road in front of us. I’m even a little creeped out by the monkey man on the entrance sign – what is that? It also adds to the intrigue that all of the park rangers carry AK-47s and that we were just a stone’s throw from the Congo.

Jungle flower that I fear could eat me, jungle monkey that is hopefully harmless, and just-outside-the-jungle accommodations that were actually quite lovely...












Speaking of the Congo, we thought it would be fun to cross the border, despite the travel warning and unrest that currently characterize the country. I’m a sucker for cool passport stamps. I’ll say very little about this venture other than there may or may not have been a skirmish and nearly some actual trouble with the Congolese border mafia. The alleged incident may have been a photography issue that I am choosing to blame entirely on the Indiana Jones characters you see below. Seriously, guys?


This foot bridge is the official border cross from Cyangugu.


And here we are immigrating or emigrating (?) back into Rwanda.

tea and coffee

I have been a coffee lover/addict for many years now and thanks to Anna Kendrick I also have a mild appreciation for that other common hot beverage. Last week I had the pleasure of field tripping to see the root of both - "crop to cup," if you will. The tea fields, which are primarily in the Western province are absolutely beautiful and the processing plant we toured was quite an experience. We thought about buying a 62 kilo bag on the spot, but it would've had to ride on the roof rack and we thought we might lose it on the bumpy, 3 hour, dirt road trek. Wise decision I think.



The coffee tree/plant is not as breathtaking as the tea fields, but the washing station for the coffee beans might be in my top five favorite tours ever. They simply use gravity and water to separate the different grades of beans, which seems to be primarily a matter of ripeness and density. Of course, it also requires of good bit of man power and hand-sorting during the drying stage. In some ways it was simple and yet I certainly couldn't have thought of it. Either way, I decided it was a good reason to become even more of a coffee snob. I have previously resisted indulging my tendency toward coffee snobbery because I don't want to get to the point where I can't drink gas station coffee on a road trip - always trying to keep my options open. However, being in a country where they grow some of the world's best coffee (yeah, its not just Columbia anymore kids), makes me think I should suck it up and just be elitist. Funny enough, Rwandans don't really drink much coffee, which is one of the obstacles to progress for some of the farmers - hard to know, much less improve, your product if you don't consume it.


If you live in Boston or DC, make sure to visit Bourbon Coffee when they open in the fall - Rwandan owned and operated and they pay farmers double fair trade!

where the wild things are

Apparently, some of the wild things stay in Kenya and Tanzania, but that's no excuse to miss a safari opportunity in Rwanda! Last weekend, I ventured to the Eastern part of the country to a National Park called Akagera with the Brogdons and a few other folks including Russell Rainey, Rebekah Lewis and Lindsay Trotter. We saw giraffes (which might be my new favorite animal), zebras, buffalo, birds, hippos, a warthog, babboons, and cows. Unfortunately, the pacyderms were nowhere to be found, but all in all it was a great day. Our tour guide was slightly sub-par, considering he actually fell asleep during the safari and repeated the only fact he knew to the point of hilarity. It went something like this and always included several dramatic pauses and appropriate hand motions:

"that is a zebra." (long pause and a gesture toward the zebras, as if we hadn't seen the black and white striped creatures only 20 yards away).

"It has a single hoof (another long pause)...like a...horse."

Following this astounding insight he would shape his hand like a hoof and paw into the air, clearly driving the point home.One of the great things about Akagera is that they let you get out of the car, which we did here to stretch our legs and perform a little wild African yoga.


All in all, its a pretty rough life here, suffering in Africa. I mean, look at those dark clouds rolling in as I try to lounge by the pool and some of us obviously need to work on our tan.

For those of you still concerned for my welfare, I'm including a great shot of the Brogdons - the family currently housing, loving and feeding me. Aren't they fabulous?

another day

After three weeks here, the days - sights, people, life, work - feel pretty normal so I guess that means I'm settling in. The great part about the newness wearing thin is that you actually get to see things closer to what they are and it gives me more space to breathe it in. Even though I'm working, it still feels a little like vacation and I'm trying to maintain a sense of just being/abiding and letting the experience do the work. In a lot of ways, it has been restorative for me to be away from my normal life and to visit a slice of the global development world. It is also a great challenge, as it forces me to confront a prevailing reality that has, does and will continue to pull me out of an otherwise comfortable hibernation. I am, however, cheating the game a little by being here for a few months - long enough to feel present but short enough to avoid some of the more difficult issues and transitions.

During some more of my recent field excursions, I was able to get a little deeper into the rural parts of Rwanda, near the Congolese border. We paid a visit to one of Opportunity's poster-child clients, who started with just enough of a loan to buy a single bag of sorghum and is now running a full harvesting and processing operation that employs twenty some-odd people. The picture above is the walk between the stream where the Sorghum is washed/soaked and the area where it is dried. You can see a few boys carrying the large bags of sorghum on their head. The picture below shows a few of the women washing and soaking the sorghum in the stream. The entourage of children is a typical escort for "mizungus" (kinyarwanda for white, aka rich people).

This next shot is out the back window of our land rover as we left one of the villages - you can see how the kids like to chase the car and a few of them even hung on to the spare tire as we made our way back to the main road.




And finally, a roadside stand where we stopped to buy some bananas and pineapples on the way back into Kigali. Kind of reminds me of buying fruit or vegetables on the side of the highway in Arkansas...except not.