Gunfights and Sunburns: Tales from a Bordertown Vacation

Despite the somewhat negative title we actually had a really great vacation in Gisenyi. We spent three days there that each went something like this. Wake up, eat breakfast, walk to beach hotel, lay out, order coffee, read, drink coffee, read, swim, lay out/read, swim, order drink, play cards, layout/read, eat something, sleep/layout, swim, dry off, walk back to guest house, shower, eat dinner, play cards, go to sleep. Not too bad. There were only three negative aspects: 1) the gunfight near our guesthouse (which is not unlike Worcester except in Worcester you are not concerned about guerrillas spilling over the border from the DRC or New Hampshire); 2) being verbally ravaged by primary schoolers who could make a drill sargent blush; 3) taking my malaria medicine (which makes me sensitive to the sun) and laying out for a day without putting sunscreen on my legs (see picture). We thought about crossing over into DRC for a day but there really isn't anything to do there just for a day besides getting another stamp in our passports for $35. If we had had time it would have been fun to climb the volcano and camp out in the crater. Also apparently you can see gorillas in DRC for a discount price from Rwanda but you also have to be careful of the other guerrillas.

Now we are back and hard at work. I'm actually getting to do some work for my personal research and Becky is spending most of her time entering data for her work.