Monthly Archives: May 2013

I went from running through sand at sea level to the complete opposite – running hills a mile high. Spoiler alert: t’s not any easier.

Rwanda is known as “le pays des milles collines” (land of 1000 hills), and they aren’t kidding. There are nothing but hills as far as the eye can see. And it’s beautiful! [ADD PICTURE] But you forget all that pretty quickly when you try and go for a run, as I did my 2nd day in Kigali. Although, actually, the hills pale in comparison to the lung-tightening, persistent breathlessness that is the result of not being accustomed to the altitude.

I tried it again a week later when I got peer pressured into running a 5k “fun run” affiliated with the International Peace Marathon in Kigali. And it was fun. Except maybe for the running part. Which was tough. There were hills and yep, we were still a mile up.

BUT I’ve always loved the atmosphere around marathons, and Kigali was no different. Well, it was a little different. The organization of the event was more of a go-with-the-flow type of thing.

The races all started and ended at Amahoro Stadium, which you may have heard of as a site where thousands of Tutsi refugees took shelter during the 1994 genocide (one of the few places where they survived).

The half-marathon (or, as they call it here, the “semi” marathon) started first, with zero fanfare, outside of the stadium. There wasn’t really a start line, and definitely no starting gun – somehow people figured out where to stand and then a guy basically yelled “go!”. From what I could tell, it worked.

The “semi” marathon starting line

The start of the “semi” marathon

Then everyone trooped back into the stadium for the start of the marathon. The 100 or so runners got to start on the track with a bit more fanfare than their semi-marathon compatriots. There was an emcee with a microphone this time, there was a section for the media (it was empty, but still…), and after multiple announcements imploring the runners to avoid running into a camera that was set up in the middle of the track, the minister of something yelled “go!” into the microphone. Success!

Finally, it was time for the fun run to get going. By this time we’d been there for almost an hour and a half and the lovely cool morning had disappeared into a still lovely, but HOT morning. Half a mile in I was sucking wind. About a mile in I decided to walk and try and get my breath back, then realized that’s easier said than done at high altitude, so I figured I should just start running again and get it all over with as quickly as possible. Once I succumbed to the idea that I just wasn’t going to be able breath well for the next 20 minutes, it actually got less bad and I managed to plod along the rest of the way and reconnect with the group from the embassy at the finish line with minimal problems. So, mission accomplished, although I was toast for the rest of the day.  But someone did point out it was my first international race, and that’s kind of cool! Also, apparently if you get used to running at altitude you get really fast when you go back to sea level. I don’t think I’m going to be in Rwanda long enough to benefit from that nice side-effect, but it’s good to keep in mind for future reference…

The finish line!

So far, I’ve spent more time in the embassy than I did while in Mauritania, which has its pros and cons. I’ve written several press releases, read through applications for exchange programs, and participated in a panel deciding which candidates would get to be nominated for the International Visitor Leadership Programs (IVLP). But I did get to venture out into the real world during my first week in Rwanda for an event at a girls’ boarding school in Kigali.

One of the big programs that’s going on while I’m here is “Everybody Reads Rwanda”. Basically, the Public Affairs Section of the embassy bought about 500 books and distributed them to schools, libraries, and other groups of people around the country. People read them, and then participate in book discussions led by someone from the embassy. It’s all part of an effort to help increase English language ability (in both reading and critical thinking). [Side note: the government of Rwanda recently added English as an official language. Here’s an article from 2008 when the switch was announced. As you can imagine, simply declaring English as an official language does not mean that everyone can automatically speak it. So, the U.S. Embassy has a number of programs to help out in this area.]

But back to the book discussions. This year, embassy staff selected “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” by Mitch Albom. Now, if you know me, you might be able to guess that this book isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I realize it is a very popular book that resonated with a lot of people, so I’m sucking it up and going with it. And it’s actually been very interesting to see just how profoundly the Rwandans who have participated in the book discussions were affected by it.

Which brings me back to my out-of-embassy excursion. I was sent as the embassy representative to the book discussion at a girls’ boarding school. 19 girls, all of whom seemed to be around 15 or 16, had read the book and came prepared to discuss it.

First of all, the school was beautiful. It was a series of one-story, red brick buildings, connected by paths of loose stone gravel and bordered by manicured lawns and plenty of shade trees. We had the discussion in what I think was a library, though there were sadly very few books to be seen (a common problem here and another reason for the embassy book program). I wasn’t sure what to expect, with less-than-fond memories of literature analysis from my own high school experience. BUT these girls were all over it. After a minute or two of hesitation and shyness, they all jumped in and, almost without exception, actively participated for almost TWO HOURS. I had a list of prepared discussion questions, but I didn’t need to use them – the girls themselves came up with questions they had about the book and then proceeded to discuss those questions AT LENGTH. Many of them had several pages of notes in front of them that they had taken while reading. It was really cool to see how into it they were. Literary discussion is much better when there isn’t a “right answer” to one’s interpretation of the work. I always thought that was ridiculous and a sure-fire way to shut down any discussion.

But fortunately, I am not enough of an expert on literary analysis to even pretend like I have “the answers,” so I was not at risk of falling into that trap. Result: even though I didn’t love the book, I loved hearing the girls’ ideas and opinions about it – in great English, I might add.

The “Everybody Reads Rwanda” participants at FAWE girls’ school in Kigali

Check! That’s right, folks, 3 flights, 4 airports, 2 continents, and 27-hours later, I made it to Kigali. And all in all, the trip was a success, pretty much all the way around. Myself, two carry-ons, one duty free bag, and, most miraculously, my two checked bags all made it from Nouakchott to Casablanca to Dubai to Mombasa to Kigali in one piece. The expeditor in Nouakchott, the check-in guy at the Nouakchott airport, the baggage handlers in Nouakchott, Casablanca, Dubai, and Kigali, and the check-in lady working for RwandAir in Dubai all deserve gold stars for achieving the near-impossible. Hopefully my good travel juju holds out indefinitely!

Kigali is BEAUTIFUL. I am staying with a friend from A-100 who is the Deputy Public Affairs Officer (DPAO) at the Embassy. This  is the view from his house:

The final leg of my Nouakchott-Kigali journey was on a new-ish airline called RwandAir Express. Now, I mentioned in a previous post that Royal Air Maroc was stuck in the ’90s, but if that’s true, RwandAir is stuck in the ’80s, complete with the non-smoking light that can actually be turned off (it wasn’t ever turned off, but still…) I definitely felt the plane rattle considerably on take-off and landing. The food quality was also kind of sketchy, but perhaps I was just too spoiled on Emirates Airlines and my perspective was skewed.

The plane was jammed with people, and the seats were crushed together in the style of U.S. domestic planes, except this flight was 8 hours, including a stop-over to drop people off in Mombasa, Kenya. The one saving grace was that I was so tired I actually slept, which I rarely can do on planes. And I needed all the strength I could get to contend with the crush of people getting off the airplane.

Bottom line – fatigue, cramped seats, icky food and pushy people all combined to make the final leg of the trip feel reeeeeeally long. Fortunately, the weather in Kigali was GORGEOUS, which perked me up immediately, as did knowing that the trip was finally over! After a confusing few minutes in the airport, where the airport worker first told the crush of people getting off the plane to wait in one spot, then changed his mind and made us all form a line in another spot (neither spot was conducive to a line, so it ended up just being a cluster of people shuffling from one side of the room to the other), I broke free and made it to passport control. Which was just one woman at a desk. The vast majority of folks on my plane were continuing on to Lagos, Nigeria – another example of the difficulties of African travel; we came from Dubai, and they were flying to Nigeria, but had to go all the way to Rwanda first!

But as I was saying, once I made it to the passport desk, everything else was easy peasy. Except the customs lady made me take my duty free items out of the plastic bag they were in. Evidently plastic bags are not allowed in Rwanda. I wonder what the customs people do with all those plastic bags they confiscate?

Best. Thing. Ever.

It’s a tiny room with a tiny bed, but it’s dark and air conditioned (the same cannot be said for the rest of the Dubai airport – it’s technically air conditioned, but for a high-traffic place, it wasn’t getting the job done) and you don’t have to worry about your stuff getting stolen while you sleep. Plus this one was really close to my gate. You pay by the hour and have a safe place to pass out.

It was tricky to get a good picture since the room was so tiny, but I did my best:

Best $54 I’ve spent in a while.

It is huge. Fancy, but too big. I’m not really a fan. Now, I could be jaded because I only got 4 hours of sleep before leaving Mauritania a billion hours ago, but I think even rested this place would not be my cup of tea. It took 10 minutes for the bus to drive us to the terminal, where it was entirely unclear where I was supposed to go to check in and pick up the boarding pass I needed. The only flights on the monitors were Emirates Airlines flights, and since I was transferring to RwandAir, I was SOL. I asked a friendly airport worker for help, and he told me to go upstairs to Terminal 1. Problem: there were zero signs showing terminal numbers of any kind. The only signs pointed to gate numbers. This is not helpful when you don’t have a boarding pass or a screen to tell you what gate your flight is leaving from. So my solution was to wander around the airport and hope I eventually stumbled on the right place. Maybe not the greatest idea, since, as I mentioned, it’s a HUGE airport, but it was the only one I had at the time.

Fortunately, in my research on the snoozecube (more on my experience with that later), I discovered that it was by a gate number in the same terminal that a previous email had indicated my flight would be in. Finally, about 30 minutes later, I found an info desk near the snoozecube, where they directed me to the transfer desk for RwandAir. It’s about 2am at this point; we landed at 1am. So, I found the transfer desk, but they weren’t going to open until 3am. Ugh. My grand plan had been to get my boarding pass immediately, then have a solid 3 hours of snoozing in the cube before my 6:15 flight. Instead, I snoozed for 45 minutes, then went to get my boarding pass. This is where the Dubai airport redeemed itself in the form of 2 of the nicest airport workers I’ve ever encountered. They were happy to help, printed my boarding pass, and when they realized my bags had been checked in Nouakchott, they looked up my bags, made sure they had made it to Dubai, and put a note in the system to ensure they accompanied me to Kigali. All of this was done cheerfully. This is now 3:30am, they have the night shift, which has to suck, and they’re being super friendly to a bleary-eyed American who has no idea what she’s doing (there was never a sign for RwandaAir, even at the check-in desk. I just had to keep asking people until I found the right place).

Anyway, after that, it was back to the snoozecube for another nap, then down the terminal for the last leg of the trip!

[This post was written on the second leg of the trip, from Casablanca to Dubai.]

I spent 4 hours at the Casablanca airport and found no potential candidate with whom I could embark upon the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Kind of disappointing. Oh well.

The Casablanca airport is a step up from the one in Nouakchott, but still nothing to write home about, so I won’t. I’m holding out hope for Dubai, though – Mom googled it and reports it looks swanky, so I’m prepared to be impressed!

Other than waiting forever to board and being pulled aside to have my passport rechecked with the other people who were transferring from Mauritania (could it be that the fine folks at Emirates Airlines don’t trust the airport workers in Nouakchott? Surely not), my time in Casa was uneventful. And the Emirates Airlines people made up for boarding super late by pulling away from the gate while flight attendants were still frantically slamming overhead bins closed. Despite not boarding until we were supposed to take off, we only left 15 minutes late – now that is speedy!

Also, the Emirates Airlines food is awesome. Chicken, cous cous, greek salad (complete with feta, but sadly no kalamata olives), mystery dessert (but creamy and good-I think it involved mango), topped off with wine. Pas mal. And the seats go back really far and the seatback TVs are bigger than my iPad screen and there are a ton of movie options. The cherry on the sundae, though, was the empty middle seat next to me! So, overall, a huge upgrade from RAM, which seemed to be stuck in the 1990s. Hopefully the good people at the Casa airport are also awesome and put my bags on this flight. On verra.

So on to those movies. After watching the first 15 minutes of that new Oz movie with James Franco, I threw in the towel due to bad acting, boredom, and the overuse of elements clearly designed to only be seen in 3D (although I am still totally in love with Zach Braff). So I moved on to “Parental Guidance” (Billy Crystal/Bette Midler movie that came out at Christmas time – not nearly as bad as the previews made it seem, but I’m still glad I didn’t pay $13 to see it. It was actually the perfect airplane movie.) Now I’m on to “Guilt Trip“, a decision based solely on my childhood love affair with Barbra Streisand. This is another one where the previews looked very questionable.

98 minutes later…

Verdict: another great airplane movie! Cute and fast-paced enough to hold my attention, but not quality enough to spend $13 on…

The last movie I watched was “Hitchcock“, about the making of Psycho – I saw that one in the theaters and it was completely worth the $13, so it was fun to watch again.

I hope I never get tired of long airplane flights. I have a lot of them ahead of me if all goes well, and if I can maintain my enthusiasm for kicking back and watching dumb movies, all the better!

RAM is not what you’d call the most up to date airline ever. It’s not nearly as bad as some of the reviews I read, but some things are still done old-school. For instance, even though they have TV screens that drop down from the ceiling every few rows, they haven’t gotten around to making one of those videos to explain the safety rules, as many airlines have done. Which mean the flight attendants have to do the heavy lifting. And on an airline that does everything in 3 languages, it’s extra heavy lifting! But man, are they coordinated! There were about 4 guys along the aisle, playing charades as a woman explained the safety rules over the intercom. They were pretty much completely in sync, like a well-choreographed dance performance. (Maybe at the middle or high school level, though – they weren’t THAT perfect). And since everything that was said was repeated in French, Arabic, and English, they had to do all the pointing and signaling, and fake-blowing in the life vest tubes three times! They put on such a good show that I paid attention, which, at this point, after the amount of travel I’ve done, I usually don’t do anymore. So kudos to the safety demonstrators on RAM.

Finally, as we were about to take off, one of the flight attendants walked through the cabin, spraying insecticide everywhere, while the intercom lady explained it was due to international regulations. One more new thing about traveling in Africa, I guess! Gotta love that DEET.

[This entry was written on the first of the many flights it took to get from Nouakchott to Kigali.]

So, I’m on the way to Kigali via Casablanca, Dubai, and Mombasa, Kenya. The adventure continues. Getting to the airport in Nouakchott and through check-in & security was a breeze, thanks to the friendly embassy expediter. I think I need to hire one of these guys full time, to just move slightly ahead of me and deal with any obstacles that present themselves. It’s fantastic.

Anyway, the driver picked me up dark and early (and after only about 4 hours of sleep due to a late dinner the night before, boy, did I feel it!), then proceeded to a hotel to collect 2 coast guard guys who were also on my flight, having spent the last week working in Nouadhibou, a town a few hours north of Nouakchott. Upon arrival at the airport, we met the expediter, who helped the 3 of us navigate the airport, something we probably could have handled, but at 5 am on 4 hours of sleep, it was nice to have an expert to whisk us through. (Also, the expediter helped me get the check-in guy to check my bags all the way through to Kigali so I wouldn’t have to pick them up and re-check them in at any point along the route. This made a huge difference in my level of happiness throughout the journey!) So, my bags were checked through, although I’m putting the odds of them both arriving at the same time I do at about 20%. That’s a lot of airports to get through.

Anyway, everything went well at the airport, then my new coast guard compatriots kept me entertained with increasingly wacky/bawdy/borderline inappropriate tales of their time in the service while we waited to get on the plane. After about an hour and some considerable confusion over which line to get in to board the place to Casablanca and not the one going to Brazzaville (there were no announcements and both flights were boarding through the same doorway, so it basically amounted to walking out onto the tarmac and picking the plane that said “Royal Air Maroc” on the side in big letters), we figured it out and took off pretty much close to on time.

Taking off from Nouakchott was incredible. I didn’t have a window seat on the flight in, so I didn’t fully appreciate the scale of Nouakchott, dwarfed in comparison to the vast desert surrounding it, but holy cow! The city all of a sudden just dead ends into a massive expanse of nothing but sand. It’s kind of eerie. Unfortunately my camera was stuck in the overhead bin so I didn’t take a picture, but the juxtaposition of the tiny city and the gigantic desert is really remarkable. It truly gives you an appreciation for just how remote many places are! Later, I did get this one of the mountains as we flew over Morocco.

And this is a shot over the desert – the plane window wasn’t really clear, but the colors are sand, ocean and sky. That was it for most of the way between Nouakchott and Casablanca.

So the journey has just begun. As Frost would say, I have miles to go before I sleep – literally. When I get to Kigali, I will have traveled about 9,300 miles, more than twice as far as the actual distance between the two cities! But things are off to a good start, and getting better – there’s a coffee cart coming up the aisle! Yay!

I just wanted to share one more example of the fun things work I did during my second week in Mauritania. Something you may not have expected: Ed Schultz factored into my job.

A free press is a relatively new thing in Mauritania; the government only loosened the strings about a year or so ago. But the issue now is apparently a widespread lack of ethics. Journalism hasn’t really been professionalized, and credibility is an issue. So it was decided that I, as a former “journalist”, would lead a discussion about a free press and the responsibilities that come with it.

I thought I’d beef up my presentation a bit by finding a segment I wrote while working on “The Ed Show”. Spice things up a bit and reduce the amount of time I would be required to talk. 🙂 So I went on a hunt to find a good segment. Immediately, a problem presented itself.

I quickly realized many of my segments were not appropriate for public diplomacy purposes. (Turns out, “Psychotalk” isn’t what you’d call “diplomatic”. Try to contain your shock.) My research also allowed me to relive this shining moment in my career. when you google “Kelli Long” and “Ed Schultz”, that’s the first result. My MSNBC legacy boils down to sparkly green nail polish. Boys and girls, if you dream big, you too can be on the internet painting a TV host’s fingernails.

But back to the point. I ended up finding a useable segment I produced on “Occupy Oakland”. Ed interviewed a protester who was caught in the line of fire when the police violently disrupted the protest. It was pretty much straight reporting followed by the interview.

The discussion took place at the local university and went quite well. I started with a spiel about freedom of the press (the gist being – it’s awesome), then explained what my job used to be and showed the clip. I talked a little bit more about the “Occupy” thing in general and then opened the floor to discussion. Everyone was super enthusiastic and they made really smart points. We talked for about an hour and could have gone on much longer. A number of folks in the group were aspiring journalists, and we talked about everything from peaceful protests to writing techniques. They even brought up the issue of ethics and responsibility in journalism all on their own, asking about how news outlets establish credibility. (Before you jump to conclusions about my response, I did not take a dig at Fox News. I’m a diplomat now, I don’t do that anymore. :-P)  So, all in all, a productive day!

Oh also – in case anyone was worried that I would miss the Ed Schultz radio show during my time overseas, fear not. It is regularly played on the radio part of AFN. There is no escape.

One last thing – Ed is back on MSNBC starting Saturday evening, check  your local listings…many of my friends still work for the show, so you should watch!