I have been taking pictures on and off the whole time, but I must admit I am self-conscious about photographing people. It comes from spending too many years with the Amish who do not allow photography. I will walk down the street and say “Boy, I should take a picture of that for so-and-so” but when I come back with the camera, the moment is gone.

So today I will begin my Saturday Evening Posts. Don’t worry, I have five more weeks to include everyone.

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

This is for my faithful New York City trainer Moses who spends every Monday and Friday morning with me. I know he was concerned that I would not find a workout facility here in Butare. Well, Moses, here it is! I don’t want you to think that I’ve joined, or even have gone in. I have to tell you that my diet (cereal and fruit for breakfast, little lunch, and fish or chicken plus a vegetable and starch for dinner) plus  walking everywhere has helped me lose 10 pounds.  Nancy has found her match in punning… I hope they are puns.

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Do not despair, son William, there is life after Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. After having watched the National Geographic shows on Africa, the thing that was immediately noticeably missing from Rwanda were beasts of burden. I have yet to see a donkey, an oxcart, a team of anything plowing the fields. The fields are plowed with tractors, and the smaller plots by teams of people with hoes. But William, the bicycle is King. The story goes that when the coffee co-ops were started, there immediately arose the problem of how to move the beans from the farmer to the washing stations to the drying and packing facilities. An inventive Belgian came up with the solution:  take old bicycles, extend the frame and build a carrying rack on the back.  You can then load this with up to 200 pounds of stuff, up to 6 feet high. The most impressive loads are plastic crates of 24 soft drink bottles, up to 8 of them. To move the goods, you walk alongside the bicycle, sometimes one person, sometimes two. So Will, instead of NYC bikes.com, it could be Butarebikes and you could send over container loads of old bicycles that you would have modified here, by our very competent Rwandan welding shops.

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Sister Kathy, salvation is possible here in Butare. This is the very impressive Cathedral that was built in the early 1930s to honor Queen Astrid, the 29-year-old Swedish wife of Belgium’s King Leopold III.  She died in an unfortunate car accident when she was 29 years old. It is the largest church in all of Rwanda. The mix of religions here is interesting. The best figures that I could find were from 2001 and do not represent the current state of a shift to evangelical and Adventist churches. The breakdown seems to be Roman Catholics 56%, Protestants 26%, Adventist 12%, and Muslim, growing from 6% and growing. The second Saturday I was here, I followed the crowd to the cathedral where I found the most impressive solemn High Mass in progress. Officiating was the Bishop, I think, and 3 or 4 priests, as well as assorted deacons and acolytes. The 30 person choir was accompanied by European pump organ like the one Andy Froelich had in his basement. In true 21st century style, it was amplified to fill the cathedral. There had to be 1000 people in attendance, and at least 300 listening from outside. I wish I knew what the occasion was on that Saturday morning.