Kutz's in Rwanda: Faculty and Safari

Hello again!

Faculty News

Classes do not start for two weeks, but this is my third morning in a row driving into town for faculty meetings. Consensus seems to be the order of rule in faculty meetings. It seems little or few decisions are made without consensus of the whole. Therefore, everything is discussed out to a nauseating length. Decisions just do not get made quickly. And it seems to be a social sin to conduct any business via email. What makes it more interesting is the local culture here where you do not publicly disagree with any supervisor. This makes the process painfully long. Every time the meeting facilitator makes a suggestion everyone agrees, but then later on behind closed doors, or between meetings and breaks the real discussion happens about what’s good what’s not good. So the meeting facilitator has to be especially skilled in drawing out dialogue – it takes forever. Faculty meetings are crazy. They last literally all day and every item of business seems to need to be approved by every faculty member. For example we are discussing content in modules (or syllabus) the department chair is projecting the syllabus onto the wall from his laptop and every faculty member in open public forum is critiquing and analyzing every item of the syllabus – line by line – what should be included what shouldn’t be included, content that should be covered, etc. it’s taking us like two hours to get through one syllabi and if the objectives should be listed numerically, round bullet points, or dashed bullet points… and there are many, many, many syllabus. I have never participated in a process quite like this before. What is most interesting is when faculty start getting frustrated and try to make their point they revert to their native language and everybody’s yelling back and forth in the language I don’t even understand… it is watching it like a tennis match. I can’t wait for classes to start… Wonder how that will go?

Safari News

I swear this guy wanted to eat me...
or thought I was his long lost twin or something.

King Fisher bird... the boys were thrilled!

Tuesday, January 22, we took Nathan and Jay on the Safari to Akegera national park. This was Nathan’s birthday present – his 12^th birthday was yesterday! Happy birthday Nate, you are growing to be quite a good young man. It was a long day in the car – nine hours total, but I can say that it was truly an awesome experience. We saw several different types of animals and birds. Both the boys were in their glory. Taking the Safari was just like I imagined it would be. If you ever watch the animal planet or Nat Geo Wild you’ll understand what I mean. We were in a Jeep riding on dirt roads through the savannas, Bush, and prairies of Africa driving right up behind the next to elephants, hippos, African river crocodiles, Cape Buffalo, Sea Eagles, baboons, different kinds of monkeys, hyenas, warthogs, zebras, giraffes, topes, antelope, Impala, and all kinds of other animals and birds that I can’t remember right now. It was truly an awesome experience. There were no glass walls, no fences, no borders or boundaries to keep us “safe.” When we saw an interesting animal – that was a safe distance away – we got out of the Jeep and walked as close as we felt safe to it took a picture, got back in the Jeep and would drive somewhere else. We stopped to eat our lunch in the savanna surrounded by the wild zebras, giraffes, warthogs, and hippos. Being out on the African savanna was truly an awesome experience. Standing in the Valley and looking around, in front of you were zebras, to the left of you were giraffes, to the other side were Buffalo, behind you in the river you could hear the hippos snorting and wrestling. I know I keep saying this, but it was a pretty awesome experience. The pictures do not do it justice. Keep in mind that these pictures you see here were taken with a digital camera we bought at Walmart, no super zooms, no wide-angle lenses… This is just a testimony of how close we actually were to the animals. At one point we were driving down the road and an elephant came out from behind a tree. We stopped, it stopped, the elephant looked right at us while standing in the middle of the road. We could not pass the elephant and our guide was getting nervous that the elephant was getting too close and would charge us. So we put the jeep in reverse backed up pulled behind a tree waited for the elephant to finish snaking on the tree that was in the road and then we continued on. It was truly a grand adventure. And if you ever get a chance to take a Safari – do it!