In March, I have returned to the States after spending an incredible seven weeks documenting the lives and reporting of an impressive group of journalism students. To take the next steps -- to edit the 50-hours of footage down to 90-minutes -- will require some tough choices, a very skilled editor and of course further funding to pay the editor.

If you happen to be in Brunswick, ME tomorrow night you can support our film AND enjoy some delicious spumante and presecco.

Here are the details:

Where: The Gelato Fiasco, 74 Main Street, Brunswick, ME
When: Wednesday, 21st, 8 pm
RSVP: rsvplehayfashionpress@yahoo.com

They confiscated my Rwandan mayonnaise in the Brussels airport. That, and the extreme jostling and bumpiness over Montreal were the only hassles I encountered during my flight home from Rwanda.

There were two legs to my 25-hour return: Kigali to Brussels and Brussels to New York. For the first flight I contorted myself into the most comfortable position possible given that my legs are long and my seat mate's elbow kept drifting over the armrest into my zone. I proceeded to conk out in exhaustion and sadness for the duration of the flight. Occasionally, I awoke to accept the miniature liquor drinks offered to me by the kind stewardess who seemed receptive to my desire to numb the pain.

The sleep did me well because by the the time I had forfeited my precious jar of mayonnaise to the vigilant anti-terror security guards at the Brussels baggage conveyor belt I was actually starting to get excited about my re-entry into the Brooklyn world I had left behind. I spent most of the flight to New York watching the movies on demand that for some reason all seemed to be period romance films. I was glad Atonement was an option but the film stalled 50 minutes in. I attempted to watch Shakespeare in Love, but got too irritated with Gwyneth's accent to continue so instead turned to Elizabeth which was a joy to watch if only for Cate Blanchett.

Everyone seems glad to have me back which feels nice. Today, I celebrated my return with what I intend to be a marathon of Asian dining. I kicked it off with bibimbap -- the Korean comfort food I've been longing for from a land where it does not exist. Tomorrow I will enjoy izakaya (Japanese pub fare) and Wednesday it's on to either some Vietnamese Banh Mi or maybe I'll just go straight to the raw stuff and pig out on some sushi.

bibimbap all up close and personal

But tonight I kick off the birthday party marathon where alcohol, not food is king!

I took my last cold shower this morning. It's my final day in Rwanda -- and not even a full one at that.

Tonight, I board a 8:50 pm plane to Brussels. By tomorrow afternoon I will be home in Brooklyn. According to the party planning committee an impressive series of homecoming events await me. If all goes as planned I'll be dining on some delicious izakaya and catching up on all the flicks that I've missed since I left 6 weeks ago!

Last night I said my good byes at a farewell party in our yard. What better way to bid Rwanda adieu than with a spitted and roasted goat and cold Mutzig draft. I have been wanting to prepare a whole goat in my backyard for several years now, but in Brooklyn goats are hard to come by. So I jumped at the opportunity to try my hand at this feast. Pablo sent out the invitation proclaiming that my Odyssey had come come to an end and quoted from the Odyssey:

Ulysses now left the haven, and took the rough track up through the wooded country and over the crest of the mountain till he reached the place where Minerva had said that he would find the 'goat'herd, who was the most thrifty servant he had. . . .

As he spoke he bound his girdle round him and went to the sties where the young sucking 'goats' were penned. He picked out two which he brought back with him and sacrificed. He singed them, cut them up, and spitted on them; when the meat was cooked he brought it all in and set it before Ulysses, hot and still on the spit, whereon Ulysses sprinkled it over with white barley meal. The 'goat'herd then mixed wine in a bowl of ivy-wood, and taking a seat opposite Ulysses told him to begin.

"Fall to, stranger," said he, "on a dish of servant's 'goat'. The fat goats have to go to the suitors, who eat them up without shame or scruple; but the blessed gods love not such shameful doings, and
respect those who do what is lawful and right.

Sticking with the Greek theme, we hired a mural painter to paint a Trojan Horse on the wall of our home. Mutzig beer flowed freely from a keg and Matilde and our friends at Papyrus provided a full spread of food. We danced to the music of a dj who lives on our street into the night.

Keeping with the Odyssey theme, we hired a mural painter to cover our wall with a Trojan Horse

Today, I joined the Hash Harriers -- the Kigali running club to do a run up and around Mount Kigali. The views from the hilltop were magnificent -- on one side of the mountain top the city of Kigali was visible; on the other the rural mountains and rivers were illuminated by the sun. It was a great way to end my stay here, though the run was delayed by an hour making it a tight race to catch my flight to Brussels. We'll see if I make it or if I'm stuck here until the next flight out on Tuesday. As much as I will miss this place, I'm hoping for the former.

I don't know how many times I took the Volcano bus back and forth between Kigali and Butare over the course of the last six weeks. After I return home to the States I will go through all my receipts to get the total tally. Whatever the number, I could now drive the route blindfolded.

Last Thursday we took our final trip from Kigali to Butare to visit the National University and to say good bye to the journalism students we've been following for the last six weeks.

The relationships we built with the students has been one of the highlights of the trip and I look forward to seeing how their careers progress.

I stand outside a classroom at the journalism school with a 2nd year radio broadcast student

two 4th year broadcast journalism students reporting on Lake Kivu in Kibuye

A few weeks ago I was dining at Papyrus -- a restaurant in my neighborhood where I go to get a healthy dose of American hip hop, to pretend I'm in the Hollywood Hills, and to dine on delicious homemade pastas and pizzas made with cheeses produced at Masaka Farm -- a local farm outside of Kigali. (They also make a really yummy tiramisu made with the farm's ricotta. Keeping in line with the gas, coffee, and at times, electricity shortages -- more often than not, Papyrus has run out of the tiramisu. I've started putting a slice on hold when I first arrive to ensure that dessert is waiting for me when I'm done with my meal.)

A group of diners came to our table, including a guy who introduced himself as "a dairy man." He told me he is the man behind Papyrus's dairy products. (He's also the first Rwandan I've met who has tattoos.)

Ever since I visited the grocery store with the regional cheeses of Rwanda I have been wanting to take a tour of a fromagerie. When he offered to show me his farm and dairy processing plant, I couldn't say no. So, yesterday I went on a tour of Serge's dairy farm to see for myself how he makes the ice cream, ricotta, yogurt, mozzarella, butter and creme fraiche. Serge learned to make these products in Italy, the homeland of his wife.

What follows is a photo tour of my visit.

Serge the milk man in his Mercedes Benz milk truck

Our four-day marathon of 20-hour shoot days culminated in Kibuye -- one of the most beautiful places that I've been in Rwanda. We stayed at the Bethanie Hotel, right on Lake Kivu. We woke up early on Friday morning to tape the sun's rise up over the mountains that border the shore.

While the sun was still hidden and the sky remained dark, we scouted the property of our hotel looking for the perfect vantage point to capture the "magic hour."

We noticed that the door to a beautiful Italianate building on the hotel property was ajar. We approached the door and cautiously peered inside. The building didn't seem to be occupied so we walked in, following a dark hallway to another door. As the first light of the day glowed at the horizon line we opened another door which led to a balcony. We couldn't have asked for a better seat to watch the sun come up.

In Kigali, I'm living in the Voices of Rwanda House. During the day our living room is transformed into an office where a team of typists transcribe and translate video testimonies of Rwandans. VOR is an NGO committed to recording oral history as a form of transitional justice and as an effort to preserve the history of individuals and in effect, a country. Eventually, the video database will be used to educate high school students in the U.S. and around the world about genocide.

When the executive director, Taylor Krauss was starting the organization he arrived in Kigali expecting he would have no problem enlisting a team of typists to transcribe the interviews he was taping. He was wrong, but he turned this deficit into an opportunity -- an opportunity for himself and for Rwandans. In collaboration with a technology school in Kigali called E-ICT, he started a 6-week touch typing course to create a body of potential transcribers.

Yesterday, at the house we held a graduation ceremony to celebrate the first class to graduate from the typing certificate program. All the students graduated with distinction and many of the students already have found jobs. Several students are currently employed by VOR.

Inspired both by the students and the Krauss's efforts, I'm producing a documentary short called "TypingMaster 10-Finger Touch Typing," about the typists -- many who are orphans and survivors of the 1994 genocide and each with a big dream about where typing will take them.

My contribution to the graduation ceremony itself was as the executive in charge of decorating and as the chef on the dessert committee. Here is a photo of the cupcakes I made and assembled to resemble a keyboard.

The night ended with a game that is the Rwandan equivalent of Secret Santa, called cacahouette. Everybody draws a name of a person at the party and in two weeks (the night before I depart) we will all convene and give a gift to the person whose name was drawn. The intention of the game is to create an opportunity so that the relationship which started at the party continues on.

For more photos from the night continue reading...

We are throwing a party tomorrow night at our house and I have volunteered to bake a cake. Cake ingredients here are easy to find if you know where to shop. I made an excursion to La Galette, a German butcher that has hard-to-find ingredients like pure cocoa powder and confectioners sugar.

As I was leaving with my bundle of groceries a man approached me. He was carrying a bucket that once carried clothing detergent but today was filled with freshly picked framboise. Actually, they looked more like the jelly candied framboise than proper raspberries and they tasted like a cross between a strawberry and a raspberry.

When I brought them back to the house, one of the Rwandese women who works here said she used to pick them as a girl but hasn’t seen them since.

I awoke yesterday morning to discover that while our pantry was stocked with the delicious Rwanda coffee beans ready for percolating, the refrigerator was without milk. I took a stroll up the dirt road to my local “bodega” to stock up on a box of the stuff. While I was there a delivery of fresh sausage links arrived. Of course I had to try one.

Yesterday, I had a tapas style lunch of sausage, cheese, bread and olives. It’s been a nice departure from the brochettes et frites which have become a staple in my diet.

On Tuesday, George Bush arrived to spend 10 hours on Rwandan soil. We were taping students who traveled from the University to Kigali to cover Bush-related stories for their university radio station and print publication.

The students did vox pop interviews, asking people on the street what they thought of the Bush visit. Other students worked on stories about how the president’s visit will influence education and prevention of malaria and HIV/AIDS in Rwanda.

But my favorite story of the day is one my roommate told me. A Rwandan was asked whether or not he likes George Bush and if so, why he does. The man said he likes George Bush very much. The reason: “because of all the money that Rwanda gets from the Clinton Foundation.”

It was a great day for all and I think it gave the students a sense of all the running around that is a required of journalists.

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is eating french fries that have been deep-dipped into a pot of mayonnaise. In Rwanda, french fries come with nearly every meal so this decadent indulgence is fast becoming habitual.

In most countries the frite would be the highlighted ingredient -- made better only with the richness of the greasy condiment. But in Rwanda the mayonnaise is so good that the frite is merely a vehicle by which to transport the spread from bowl to mouth. The mayonnaise here tastes lightly of lemon -- hollandaise sauce's close cousin. The rich buttery yellow comes from the dark orange yolks. The slight crust that builds around the edges is worthy of its own name. I'll even admit that I've been caught scraping off the congealed build up and devouring it as a delicacy as rich as fois gras.

Why is the mayonnaise so delicious in Rwanda? It's a question I have asked all the waiters and chefs I've encountered. No one knows the secret, but I have my theories. As with all things delicious, ingredients is key. After oil, the main element in mayonnaise is the egg.

There are choices when buying eggs in Rwanda. All are small -- two sizes larger than a quail egg, one size smaller than the Grade A Extra Large egg found in America. The choice comes with color. Brown eggs come from chickens that are fed fish feed. The resulting yolk is a pale white color, basically albino cholesterol. The white eggs are an entirely different entity altogether. They contain the yolks used for Rwanda's amazing mayonnaise. Occupying the majority of the space inside the white egg shell is a dark orange yolk sunnier and denser than the flesh of a pumpkin. It is the egg flavor and a hint of the native lemons that punches through the oil and sets this mayonnaise apart.

It's clear that the mayonnaise here hasn't been pasteurized and warm mayonnaise is quite common -- evidence that it has never seen refrigeration of any kind. In this way, perhaps I'm tempting fate. But considering all that I've eaten thus far, it's impressive that my stomach remains content and without incident.

This morning we got up early to follow a student working on a story about a new evangelical church outside of Butare.

The service was held in a skeleton of a building with dirt floors and a holy tin roof (pun alert) at the top of a long hill. There were no crosses, no bibles or church programs, but there was a keyboard, amp and an old IBM computer from the mid-90s set up on a table with extension cords running through the banana trees to god knows where. Since the "church" has no doors to lock, the usher's job is to haul the equipment to the building every week.

It was a typical evangelical service -- complete with tongue talkers, praise & worship music, dancing and personal testimonies about being saved. It's a great story to follow since Evangelicalism is such a huge part of the culture here.

This afternoon my cameraman and I did an 1 hour 15 minute run through the countryside just outside of Butare. We ran past marshes where rice grows, through rural villages, up and down hills, racing against the impending darkness. We ran out for 30 minutes, then reached a village, hugged a couple of kids for good luck and then turned back. Children who had seen us run by earlier joined us for a portion of the return trip in what became a brief impromptu running club. At one point we had about 25 kids trailing us, many of them barefoot.

The run home offered a breathtaking view of the distant mountains. And if nothing else we can count the trip as a location scout for beauty shots. We'll definitely return to film the beautiful sunset and distant misty mountains.

With all the missionaries running around here it is inevitable that tee-shirts donated by well meaning Christians in the States would wind up on the backs of Rwandans. There seems to be an endless number of tee shirts created for church barbecues or the one I saw today that said "Westwood Baptist Church Summer Hummer." I'm not sure what a hummer is in the context of a Baptist Church, but I'd love to find out.

The fun is also in spotting tee shirts designed for a very specific population, but worn by someone outside the intended demographic -- like the teenage girl with the "World's Best Grandfather" tee.

Valentine's Day isn't that big of a deal here in Rwanda. Despite this, stationary shops in Butare offer a plethora of choices when it comes to Valentine's Day cards. They were so delightfully over-the-top that my cameraman and I each bought two. In about three weeks our sweethearts will receive evidence of our love in a combined effort of the U.S. and Rwandan postal service (and all the post offices in between).