That was fun!

(I asked Zae what I should title this post.  This was his* suggestion, because "it's a hook, and people will want to know WHAT was fun." 

* Zae is using he/him pronouns these days.  So now we're getting used to that.)

When Zae was one year old, we took a trip to Akumal with Ahya and Logan.  Sometime during this trip, we decided that when each of our kids turned 10, I would take them on a trip somewhere, and when they were 15, Caleb would take get a turn.  We've followed through: I took Mazie to Ghana and Sweden in 2018, and Athena and I went to Athens (and elsewhere in Greece) in 2022 (technically just after her 11th birthday).  Caleb and Mazie went to New Zealand in 2023, and now Zae and I are in Puerto Rico!

Why Puerto Rico?  Zae's main takeaway from my last kid trip with Athena to Athens was that Greece has a lot of cats.  As a big animal fan, and cat person in particular, Zae also want to go somewhere with cats.  He initially made a pitch for a place called Cat Island, rumored to be near Japan with a population of something like 200 cats and 5 humans.  Then someone told me that Viejo San Juan, in Puerto Rico, had lots of cats, and I successfully pitched Zae on coming here.  

We arrived on Saturday evening and spent our first 3 nights in San Juan.  On Sunday we took a scooter about 30 min from our place, the Dream Inn in Ocean Park, to Old San Juan, had breakfast (during which the neighboring table declared Zae to be "a whole vibe," rocking his Eminem blond buzz cut, gold chain necklace, sunglasses, and hat), and then explored the old city and found THE CATS.  There were a lot of them in a specific area and it's a whole thing... the National Park Service was proposing to get rid of them all, people protested, they're still there.  Definitely not as well cared for as the ones in Greece.  Another tourist, from Florida, showed up when we were there with treats for the cats... Zae got to feed them, and came away with a small scratch on one finger.  So then there was a trip to Walgreens... we're now a few days out and they seem to be fine.  All in all, probably not the best public health decision, but the kid got to see his cats and we made it out ok.

A whole vibe

Zae y los gatos de San Juan

Later that afternoon, we went to the Distrito T-Mobile area and the Toro Verde Urban Park to zipline, and then headed back to Old San Juan for dinner (at the proclaimed birthplace of the Pina Colada, kind of underwhelming).  There was a lively outdoor party in the streets and Zae got a henna tattoo.  Day 1 accomplished.

Monday was a little rainy.  We had planned to go to the beach, just a couple of blocks from where we were staying, but the rain kept coming and going in the morning.  So we hopped on a scooter again and went to get pedicures and then had lunch at a vegetarian restaurant (Berlingeri), which was a very yummy avocado stuffed with a homemade veggie "meat."  By then it had cleared up so we went to the beach in the afternoon.  The water was beautiful and warm.  Zae played in the waves and we watched parasailer/surfer guys do cool tricks.  

Scooting

Yummy stuffed avocado

Beach!

On Tuesday I got up and went to a lovely yoga class about a block from our hotel, and then came back and we checked out to pick up a rental car and head east for the second chapter of our trip.  We drove about 45 min to Luquillo, a beach with a big strip of food and drink kiosks.  Zae immediately made friends with two boys, King and Messiah, visiting from New Jersey.  Their mom is originally from PR and they've been here to visit many times.  We all hung out and chatted in the water for a while.  I bought a paddleball set from one of the kiosks and we all threw the ball around in the water.  

More beach! Luquillo

In the afternoon we drove another 45 min to our apartment in Fajardo.  We settled in for a bit and then walked to dinner.  Zae helpfully decided to add fish & shellfish to his normal vegetarian diet for this trip, and requested that we get the WHOLE LOBSTER for dinner, which was delicious.  After dinner we headed out on a nighttime kayaking adventure!  This was one of the things both of us were most excited about: Puerto Rico is one of a five places in the world with year-round bioluminescent plankton!  It turns out that due to a big wave of sargassum seaweed earlier this year, the plankton population was pretty wiped out and is slowly recovering, AND it was a full moon, so the glow wasn't as impressive as it can be.  But it was still cool - sparkly starlight in the water when we moved our hands around.

View from our balcony in Fajardo

Yes, we have

Langosta!

The tour company had us leave our phones at the office before we left and took pictures for us.  Their photos weren't great... hard to take good ones at night, I suppose.  Anyway, these are evidence that we did do the thing. 

On Wednesday we had an all-day adventure to the island of Culebra! We got up early and drove south about 30 min to Ceiba, stopping at a coffee shop called Suenos de Azucar (Dreams of Sugar) for breakfast sandwiches and a pastry. In Ceiba we met up with the tour group and caught a ferry to Culebra.  Once we arrive, our first stop was Tamarindo Beach for snorkeling. Back in March when we went to Hawaii, we went to Hanauma Bay, the first place I ever snorkeled on a trip with Mom and Ty and Logan when we were kids - it's beautiful and calm and filled with colorful fish.  Nonetheless, Zae had a terrible time - their mask and fins weren't fitting right and they were nervous about touching the reef in the shallow water (which the park staff strongly warn you not to do, to protect the reef). It wasn't quite as bad as Caleb's worst snorkeling experience (many of you have probably heard him tell the story about being peed on by his brother Michael after getting stung by a jellyfish), but in both cases, I was determined to convince them that snorkeling is wonderful. Caleb and I went to Grand Cayman when I was pregnant with Mazie and we've had several other amazing snorkeling adventures since then, and Zae's Culebra experience was also a snorkeling success! The water was pretty deep so no worries about hitting the coral, we borrowed good equipment that fit Zae well, and they gave us floaties to wear around our bellies, which made the swimming part easy. And we saw turtles and giant stingrays! I followed this one big turtle around for a while, watching her graze and come up to the surface, and when I looked around the group had disappeared. I thought I saw them farther out, so I swam towards them, only to realize that that was another group, and ours had gone back to the shore. I made it back expecting Zae to be worried but they were fine.

Ferry to Culebra

Cool dude, still a vibe

Stingray

Turtle!

After snorkeling, we went to Flamenco Beach, apparently ranked as one of the top five beaches in the world? I'm unclear on the ranking system, but it certainly was a gorgeous white sand beach with crystal clear turquoise water. It turns out our friends from New Jersey who we met on Tuesday had also booked a ferry to Culebra for Wednesday, and we ran into them as we were heading out snorkeling at the first beach, and then saw them again and Zae got to play with King and Messiah at Flamenco Beach. We had some yummy food (shrimp kebabs and a veggie burger) and even yummier piña coladas, and then it was time to go. Napped on the ferry ride back to Ceiba, drove back to our place to shower, and then went to a nice dinner at a restaurant called Sabalos and had mahi mahi and a very delicious bread pudding for dessert.

Flamenco Beach

Zae with King & Messiah

The kid & me at dinner

Bread pudding!

Next up: Thursday!  The adventure for the day was a trip to El Yunque rainforest.  Meetup time was 10:45am in Luquillo, 20 min or so from our place, so a slower morning.  Zae wasn't feeling great in the AM (he's convinced he's developed an egg intolerance and blamed the bread pudding from the night before), so I went over to the place I'd scouted out for breakfast (Las Vistas Cafe) planning to get takeout.  When I got there, the owner told me she doesn't do takeout orders - she takes pride in her food and it just isn't good packaged up and reheated.  When I told her I had a kid at home who wasn't feeling well, she said she could do the pancakes to go, but if I wanted anything, I'd have to eat it there while they made the pancakes.  So she installed me at a table (with a beautiful view) and I had tea and fruit and eggs there, and then they gave me Zae's coconut banana pancakes and sent me on my way.  The pancakes met with Zae's approval, and then we headed over to the meetup spot for our rainforest tour.  

Las Vistas Cafe, with 2 grackles trying to steal food

I didn't fully understand when I booked the tour that they had one tour vehicle that was apparently already full, so our car and a couple of others met the tour bus at a fruit stand in Luquillo and then we caravanned up to the rainforest.  The roads were very narrow and windy - hardly room for two cars to pass each other - so it was helpful to have a car to follow.  We made it up just fine and then hiked with our group up into the forest, stopping along the way to learn about some of the local plants.  One of the coolest ones is a little ground cover plant called morivivi, which closes up and "dies" when you touch it, and then comes back to life.  

Morivivi!

After hiking up through the forest for about 30 min, we hiked down to a river, and then climbed up along the bank to a natural water slide!  It was kind of an ordeal to get our big group of about 20 people (many from PR originally but living in the US, and a couple of other families from North Carolina, New Jersey again, and Kansas City), with varying fitness levels, all the way up to the slide.  Zae was a little nervous about going down it - he did fine in the end but said he didn't like it.  I thought it was fun.  Then we made our way back down, jumped off a not-too-high cliff into a swimming hole, and had a yummy feast of mangos, pineapple, papaya, and avocado by the river before heading back.

Bamboo!

Waterfall!

Climbing up to the slide

Fruit!

The fruit stand where we met up in the morning had açai bowls and I told Zae I'd get them one after the tour. As we were driving back I realized it was pretty far out of our way to head back there instead of just driving back to our place, so I looked up another spot that had açai bowls and navigated to that. I was very confused when the navigation took us all the way back to our apartment, showing that the juice bar we were trying to go to was right behind our building. However, it was up a very steep hill with no way to get to it... when I looked at the map more closely, I saw that it was in a resort that was indeed right behind our place but only accessible via a 12 min drive back out and around. But I had promised Zae the açai bowl, so we got back in the car and drove around to the resort entrance, only to be told that only resort guests were allowed inside! By this time it was about 4 pm and I couldn't find any other açai bowl options nearby... the fruit stand would have been another 45 min round trip, and I wasn't up for that anymore. Zae was disappointed, but I looked up another place that was supposed to be open Friday AM at 9 and promised we'd make that happen. We headed back toward our place and settled for an early dinner of mofongo, a Puerto Rican specialty we hadn't tried yet: mashed green plantains shaped into a cylinder with garlicky, buttery shrimp on top. Plus more piña coladas. All very yummy. We had a lazy evening, watched the last Harry Potter movie and a little bit of the Broncos-Raiders game, and went to bed.

Mofongo con camarones al ajillo (y piña coladas)

Which brings us to today, Friday, our last day!  I got up around 7 and went for a little walk, and then got somewhat packed and got Zae up.  We drove over to the juice bar and got there at 8:45 - luckily, it was actually open and we both got delicious açai bowls, which we took over to Seven Seas Beach and ate while we watched the waves.  Then we headed back to our place and swam in the pool for a little bit before heading back up to pack up.  

View from my morning walk

Açai bowls on the beach

Right as we were about to walk out the door I got the message that Aunt Missy passed away last night.  She had been battling lung cancer for a while and Dad and Karen came out last week to visit.  On Saturday when Zae and I were headed to PR, the Hansen-Bandy crew had a wood piling gathering at her house - I was sad to miss it and had Mazie and Athena go, and Ahya went too.  I hadn't seen her since she had gotten sick... I got the sense that she didn't want a big deal made of it and there weren't any other gatherings I was aware of.  But I wish I'd made a point to go and visit at some point.  When I got the news, I sat down on the bed in our apartment and Zae came and hugged me.  We stayed like that for a bit and then had to get moving.  Goodbye, Missy.  I love you and have lots of great memories of laughing together.  Your mac & cheese was the highlight of many a Thanksgiving for my kids, and I'm grateful to you for watching our chickens while we were in Rwanda.  Hoping we'll be able to gather as a family and share more Missy memories in the near future.

I'm finishing up this post from the plane home, somewhere over Texas, actually.  Reflecting a little on our trip... Puerto Rico was awesome and I'd love to go back.  Our trip was very laid back and focused on just spending time together and doing fun things, which we definitely accomplished.   Because we didn't have a ton of time and given Zae's interests, there are a lot of things we didn't really do or explore... the history of PR, music scene, other more foodie foods, other areas of the island.  We have neighbors in Louisville whose parents have a coffee plantation I wanted to visit, but it was on the other side of the island and didn't fit easily into our plans.  But that's ok.  I'm super grateful that Zae and I had this time together.  They are He is quite a unique human, still very much a kid (wanting to play on the playground near our beach apartment, body surfing on the beach), but also very mature (comforting me about Aunt Missy, making a point of thanking me for taking him on this trip and also for making him, which I do deserve at least 50% credit for).  Constant 6-7 comments aside, he was a joy to have as a travel buddy, and it's hard to believe this youngest kiddo is already so big - no more of these trips for me!?  We may need to update our plans... 20 year old trips?  Sounds good to me.  We'll be there before we know it.

So long, Puerto Rico!  That was, indeed, fun.

Here's are all the pictures.

Off on Safari and a Party Back Home

It is early on Wednesday again, our last full day here before we head home tomorrow night. (It also happens to be the 2 year anniversary of our initial arrival in Rwanda - hard to believe!) We've been packing a lot in and haven't had a lot of time for blogging. I'm going to attempt an efficient recap of our fantastic safari and our big event with the neighbors last night. [Spoiler: my recap did not end up being very efficient. So much so that I ran out of time to add pictures and post... now it's Thursday morning, our last day here!]

Safari!

As I shared last week, our first attempt to head out and see the golden monkeys was derailed when I came down with a bad stomach bug. Last Wed night as we were preparing for our Thurs AM departure, Zae threw up on the way home from dinner and was sick throughout the night. Miraculously, they finally fell asleep around 4am and were able to rally for a 10am departure, and we were off!  

We spent 3 nights in Akagera, one at the Ruzizi Tented Lodge on the edge of Lake Ihema and two at the Karenge Bush Camp up north. There are so many highlights it's hard to know where to start... here's a list, with some of Caleb's pictures thrown in.  (He quickly relearned his trick of taking pictures through the binoculars, which is how we wound up with these very impressive extreme close-ups, although some of the animals were nearly close enough to touch already!)

• Sunset boat ride on Lake Ihema Thursday night - hippos, crocodiles, SO MANY BIRDS, and two elephants that we were able to pull up right next to as they ate papyrus on the shore

• Hippos keeping us up with their grunting, which sounded like it was coming from inside our "tent" (no, it wasn't Caleb snoring)
• The whole Karenge experience - a couple of great nights of sleep (on a trip where sleep had been in short supply) in the newly renovated "tents," luxurious and still close to nature

Karenge Bush Camp

• LIONS - benefit of staying a full day at Karenge was that we got to do an early morning drive and found a pride of 7 lions lounging around on the edge of the Kilala Plain.  A little before sunset, Anaclet brought us back to the same area.  As we approached, we watched a lionness cross the road and head into the plain, where she joined two others who had made a kill (it was too far away to see what it was) and were eating.  We then got to watch as the two male lions and the 4th lioness in the pride all made their way down to share the meal, stopping to drink from a puddle in the road on the way.  Amazing!

Morning Lions

Evening Lions

The other great thing about this trip was having Kevine along. When we arrived in Kigali two years ago, one of our first activities was a walk up to Question Coffee, which became our most frequent hangout spot. Kevine was our barista on that first visit and subsequently became a great friend, throwing Zae a birthday party a few weeks into our trip and teaching us how to say "I love you" in Kinyarwanda. By the end of our trip, when we were setting up The Program to support our local families, we hired Kevine to help manage it for us, communicating with the mamas and managing the funds at SACCO. We've stayed in touch on WhatsApp, and when we were planning this trip, we invited her to join us on the safari. It was great to have her along - she and Zae shared a room (and stayed up too late gossiping together), and she made sure the trip was VERY well documented with lots and lots of selfies and material for promotional social media posts for Great Native Safaris. It was great to spend so much time and to share the experience of her first safari together! In related news, Kevine has been contemplating a career change and the day after we got back from the safari, she started a training with Anaclet to become a safari guide!

From Akagera, which is on the eastern edge of Rwanda, we drove on Sunday all the way over to the volcanoes region in the northwest corner of the country, where we visited the gorillas at the end of our last trip. This time around we did the golden monkey trek on Monday morning, which was also great! Certainly not the same level as gorillas, but fun to watch the monkeys eating and playing and dramatically jumping from tree to tree!  

Unfortunately Zae wasn't old enough to join the trek so they stayed with Anaclet and visited the Ellen Degeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, where they have great displays and a fun VR gorilla encounter. 

We got home Monday night, had a nice dinner (just the 3 of us) at Choma'd, 

and then Caleb got up at 3 am for a council meeting, followed by a round of golf.  

Just like the old days.  And that brings us to yesterday afternoon, and...

The Party!

In planning for this visit, we knew a big part of our visit would be reconnecting with our neighbors here and we talked a lot about how to do that. Before we left, we threw a big party with lots of fruit and goat brochettes and Fanta and dancing. It was great overall, but also chaotic and a little tough - we ran out of food, and had to say "no" to other neighbors who wanted to come in and join us but weren't on our list of families that we had chosen to support with our program. For this trip, Caleb wanted to throw another party and I had some reservations. It was also important to me to be able to meet with the mamas in smaller groups to be able to hear more about their experiences and connect in a less chaotic environment. In the end, we ended up doing both. I got my small group visits (we did all but 3 of the mamas on the first day we were here, and the last 3 yesterday), and Caleb got his big party. In many ways, it was very similar to our last party, down to the visit to the fruit market on our way back from Volcanoes where we bought an enormous amount of fruit and the pre-party videos Theo sent me of the goats we bought about to be turned into brochettes. But we were also better prepared for some of the chaos. Kevine helped us hire two additional helpers (her sister and her cousin), which made things run a lot more smoothly. We had someone stationed at the gate with a guest list checking people in, and also started a "waitlist" for other families in the area who wanted to come in but aren't currently in our Program. We handed out plates of food with helped avoid the full feeding frenzy. And all of this is burying the lede, which is that everyone had a great time and was extremely appreciative. It was a great party, with food and dancing and lots of pictures and videos. With Kevine's help, I gave a speech, paraphrased below. Caleb got to announce that we increased most of the families' payments and added "blocked accounts," which are larger chunks of money that can't be accessed for a full year, but earn interest and can be borrowed against. Those announcements were met with much cheering. And the kids... it was just wonderful to spend time with them. While we did not set up our Program as a well controlled experiment and can't measure the counterfactual, the kids look healthy and happy, and the many, many expressions of deep gratitude from the mamas make it clear that what we've done has made a big difference in their lives. It's still not enough and there are still many more deserving people "outside the gate," but I'm glad we've done what we've done.

My speech to the families:

It's been great to be back "home" in Rwanda - thank you for welcoming us back. When we lived here two years ago, meeting all of your kids, and all of you, was one of the best parts about our experience, and seeing you again has been wonderful. I'm especially grateful that we were able to sit with each of you mamas and hear your stories about how you're doing and how the funds have been helping you. We appreciate all of the blessings and gratitude you've expressed.

I wanted to share a little more about what this project means to us and why we decided to start this program in the first place. Community is incredibly important to us - we believe that all of us, all people, are connected, and that we are all the same. When we lived here and got to know your children, they made us feel very welcome here and brought us a lot of joy. It was also hard for us to see that while our kids had the things they needed - food, school, other things - your kids often did not. Because we are all connected, their struggles, your struggles, hurt us too. So Caleb and I talked a lot together, and also with our families back home, about what we might be able to do. Some of our family members got to come and visit and meet your in person - others heard our stories and became connected to you that way. And because we have enough to share, we decided to try and help.

One thing that has been important to us in this program is allowing you to be the ones to decide how the money is spent. When we were thinking about how we could help, we initially thought that we could find a way to buy food for you, or to pay your school fees. But in talking with you during this visit, it's clear that you have a lot of different needs, and that giving you control over how to use the funds was definitely the right decision. We heard that sometimes you need to buy food, and other times you need the money for rent. Maybe someone gets sick and you need to buy medicine. Some of you are saving up for larger purchases, like a motorcycle or a plot of land, or investing in your small businesses. You know what you need.

While we're still very committed to letting you decide how to spend your money, I do want to share a small idea or suggestion. This goes back to the idea that we are all connected, and those connections don't end at this gate. When we lived here, we understood that while we were inside of the gate and you were outside, we were still connected. Tonight, all of us are inside the gate together, but there are still many, many families outside who are just like us, and we're connected to them too. The hardest part about this project has been knowing that we can't help everyone. On this trip, we were able to add 4 more families to the program, and we hope to keep growing. But there will always be families outside the gate. 

So this is where our request or suggestion or hope for all of you comes in. For us, it has been a gift and a blessing to be able to share what we have. Now that you have a little more, my hope is that you will also have opportunities to share and be generous. From your stories, I know that some of that is already happening. This might look like you buying food from your local businesses, which helps them, or paying your school fees, which helps make sure that your teachers can get paid and the school can provide for all the children. Maybe you will have a friend who is sick or hungry, and you will be able to help them get medicine and food. Whatever it looks like, my hope is that if you are strong, you can help your whole community to be stronger too. 

New Years Report

We're about a week into our trip, minus the two solid travel days, so about 5 days into our Rwanda visit.  There have been some predictable ups and downs... we arrived Saturday night, spent the day Sunday meeting with our neighbors who are a part of The Program, as it's being called (our direct payments scheme... more on that later), and went to Heaven for dinner, during which I came down with a rough stomach bug that wiped me out all day on Monday.  We had planned to go up to the volcanoes area Monday afternoon and then go trekking to see golden monkeys on Tuesday AM, but I wasn't feeling up to getting out of bed (let alone sitting in a car for several hours) until Monday night, so we had to reshuffle (we'll add the monkey trekking to the end of our safari trip, which starts tomorrow).  Tuesday was New Year's Eve.  Caleb went golfing in the morning and Zae and I walked to Question Coffee and then all the way over to the golf course to meet him for lunch.

In the afternoon, Kevine came over and we talked to Theo for a while to hear how he's doing and plan for our party with the neighbors that we have planned for next Tuesday.  We had dinner with Kevine, Anaclet, and Lambert at Khana Khazana...

and got home around 10:30, in time for a rousing New Year's Eve celebration consisting of Caleb staring at his laptop and trying to keep himself awake to complete his end-of-year banking transactions.  We did step outside at midnight to count down and take in the sounds of Kigali - fireworks, cheering, music.  

Today has been quiet - I wrote some and worked a little, and Caleb got a new tattoo!  

There is a LOT more to write about The Program and the neighbors and all of that... in trying to remind myself what we shared before when we were setting this all up, I went back to this post and yeah, all of this still resonates.  The longer story will come, but the short one is that the mamas we are supporting are tremendously grateful and appreciative.  By their (often very emotional) accounts, the funds our network, through the Dickinson Family Foundation, has been giving them on a monthly basis since we left have been lifechanging, allowing them to pay school fees and buy food and pay rent and start businesses and save up for larger purchases like a motorcycle and even land.  Several of them said that we've done what their parents or families couldn't do for them by supporting them and giving them reliable resources to meet their needs.  So we certainly have done some good.  And.  There are many more families that are not being supported, and that may be causing some tension and conflict.  It's still complicated and the need is still massively bigger than anything we can address even with our big generous network.  

Looking forward to our safari and more time with Anaclet and Kevine, who is coming along for her first safari.  The adventure continues.

A few pictures of Zae and the abana (kids). 

Zae & Mugisha

Esther holding baby Pamella, Zae holding Danika (neighbor Odette's baby)

Zae & Diane

Yassipi!