BLACK AMERICAN COMEDY

One thing that has surprised me about Kigali is how little of an obvious black market it has. Kampala, in Uganda, has a HUGE black market that dominates the sidewalks. When I was there last summer, you could buy the Sex and the City Movie on DVD next to a copy of the last Harry Potter book and several of Michael Jackson's albums stuffed with printed album art on any street corner. There are no blankets with bath soap and CDs for sale in Kigali. The only black market that I have noticed is the DVD market, and it is very bizarre.
Usually, enterprising street salesmen carry DVD packages for Biblical films and Gospel performances, but a unique one caught my eye yesterday. Among the tales of Mary and Joseph was a DVD package that screamed "BLACK AMERICAN COMEDY." I assumed it was the title of a satirical film, perhaps made here, in Hillywood, as the Rwandan film industry is called. Upon closer review, it revealed itself to be "The Fighting Temptations," of course, Cuba Gooding Jr.'s seminal work, costarring Beyonce. The words "BLACK AMERICAN COMEDY" were literally ten times the size of the film's actual title on this DVD case.

Beyonce's body of work aside, I have had a very interesting week since we last spoke. This weekend I got very sick, and stayed in most of the weekend through Monday. Almost everyone in the guest house got whatever I had. I will spare you the details. Saturday, however, I went to my first ever football match!! Rwanda vs. Zambia! And it was an African Cup semifinals game! The game ended 0-0, though, and Zambia moved onto the next round. The Rwandan National Team (the Amavubi Stars) fought hard, and it was actually very fun, for a girl who doesn't give two hoots about football.

As for work, it's been pretty slow at the Centre Sante this week. I stayed home Monday for fear of infecting babies with whatever it was that I had, and Tuesday I administered polio vaccines as usual. Today there was absolutely nothing to do there. Yesterday (Wednesday) I had a home visit in the morning way way out in a rural area adjacent to the military camp. There was this great AIDS awareness poster up in one of the towns along the camp border: a man in camoflage and a woman are looking at each other with confused expressions, and the text screams "USE A CONDOM!" Anyway, the home visit yesterday required that I help this woman with AIDS do her washing. So I washed her family's clothes with some other members of the association. It was interesting. Rwandans use more soap than I have ever seen in my life.
On the bus to the home visit town yesterday, a woman got on in front of me with a very light-skinned baby in her arms. She turned around and feigned handing the baby off to me, saying "this one's yours!" That happens a lot. At the clinic, whenever we get a light-skinned baby in the vaccine room, the nurses tell me they must be my children.

Tomorrow I am leaving for a trip to Gisenyi, near the DRC border, to spend the weekend alongside Lake Kivu. It is supposed to be a beautiful lake beach, and I am super excited!

Also, World AIDS Day is coming up (Dec. 1st)!! I can't wait to see what Kigali does in terms of awareness events and campaigns.

That's all for now!