When we came back from our hike yesterday, it was past the lunch hour at our hotel and the restaurant wouldn’t open again until two hours later. Instead we went to The Antlers lunch cafe and souvenir store across the road, (where I had bought an island-made wool hat earlier as I had forgotten to bring a hat) and the lunch there was so good that we ended up going back today too for lunch, and coffee and Easter-decorated Victoria cake after. 
And reviews on Tripadvisor here.
We somehow didn’t manage to book our guided tours until our last day, so we did both the Jura Whisky Distillery tour this morning, and then “Alex the bus” drove us around the island and told us about its history, nature, and everyday life. I personally found Alex tour more interesting than that of the distillery, but I’m not really a whisky drinker. Alex stories about the life on Jura were fascinating – it wasn’t an easy life for the inhabitants, and the landlords, the Campbell family, didn’t exactly make it easier. (But with a curse thrown at them, justice was allegedly served in the end.) Many people also left for the U.S. In the 1800s, some of them with a resettlement grant from the British Government. Today, life is different of course. While Alex told us that when his wife grew up there, people shopped clothes and other things when the traveling salesman came by, and then the day after everyone were wearing the same clothes, today with internet, everything can be ordered and reach the island within a few days. It takes maybe 5 hours to get to Glasgow by ferry and bus, but there are also flights there from the mainland so people can go for a day if needed. So in a way, it’s possible to have all conveniences. But finding work still seems to be a challenge, and also keeping many of the necessary services alive such as certain ferry routes, food services, and a little convenience store. Jura attracts about 20,000 visitors a year, but the permanent population is no more than 200 people and it’s difficult to get permits to build on the island as there are a lot of restrictions in place to protect the landscape. A challenge to find a balance as the population also needs a sustainable size to keep the island inhabited. Three fascinating and informative hours on the as you can see! I recommend anyone who visits the island to give Alex a call and book a tour 
The tour ended with a visit to the little church where they had a fantastic photo exhibition of the life and the people of Jura from the late 1800s and onwards.
The weather was a lot better today and so we decided to go for a hike. Neither A nor I are frequent hikers, so we picked a medium leveled hike of about 5 miles, that ended up taking about 3 hours. It was perfect! The landscape was gorgeous and the view was spectacular once we reached the top of the hill behind which the loch was located. Here are some pics:
After a lot of climbing, we finally reached the lake.
After a Scottish breakfast at the Anchor Hotel this morning, we booked a taxi to the Ferry Terminal in Kennacraig as no busses connected until much later in the day. Well on the ferry, we bumped into a woman that had been on the bus yesterday, and who was on her way out to this part of the country for the first time. It turned out that she was on het way to her first day of work in the cafeteria on the ferry. She was a bit nervous and it was quite sweet. But what a fantastic job to be on that ferry! The ride took about two hours hours and the view was spectacular, even though it rained a lot. Andreas and I drank coffee and caught up on everything that had happened since last time we met.
The stop in Port Askaig was quick and all we had time to do was to walk the 30 meters or so between the ferries. The little hotel where we were supposed to have stayed was right there in the harbor by the ferries, and both Andreas and I thought when we saw it that our involuntary overnight in Tarbert might not have been a bad thing after all, since the little town where we had stayed seemed a little more happening than Port Askaig.
Once we reached Jura, the bus schedule seemed to have a lunch break and wouldn’t leave until about 2 hours later, so we called the hotel who called “Alex the bus”, who picked us up 20 minutes later and gave us a tour on the way up to Craighouse and the hotel. He offered a guided tour during our stay, which I think we will take him up on before we leave.
We are now back at the hotel (The Jura Hotel, which is lovely by the way) after walk up to the little cemetery in an abandoned croft village a bit up the hill. It’s raining a bit, but it’s not too cold and the fog and the mist somehow adds to the beauty of the landscape. A little tired after our walk, and with a book and a small glass of Jura Whisky at the hotel pub (which is seemingly the only pub in village), and with the rain tapping on the windows, we both feel like this trip is already everything we expected!
I didn’t spend many days in the U.S. after my trip to Rwanda, before taking off again; 2.5 to be exact. Had I known I would be traveling for work, I would have planned better, but I didn’t at the time when I booked my holiday and so I barely had time to repack before I was on my way out to Dulles again, heading for six day’s holiday in Scotland. Why Scotland? I’m not sure how the idea came up exactly, but my travel companion Andreas and I started to form some kind of vision of a journey through Scotland when we were in San Francisco a few years ago, and then a few months later National Geographic Travel had an article on the Hebrides, and this trip has been in our thoughts ever since.
And now we’re here! Since Andreas lives in Stockholm, we met up at Edinburgh Airport and took a bus to Glasgow (about one hour ride) where had lunch. We were then supposed to take a bus to Kennacraig and connect with a ferry to Port Askaig, where we were supposed to spend the night before taking a last ferry over to our end destination, Jura. However, the weather worked against us, or at least not according to our plans, and the bus driver told us that the ferry between Kennacraig and Port Askaig had been cancelled due to the strong winds. But we took a chance anyway, and got on the bus and started calling hotels in Tarbert (an area close to the ferry, where the bus driver said there should be rooms), and after three calls, we got a room at the Anchor Hotel – a lovely inn in the Tarbert Harbor. A few hours after we arrived, the storm came in and we were warned that the electricity might go out, but in the end, all we got was a cozy rain storm and some hail while we enjoyed Scottish ale pie in front of a fire place in a small local pub. Somehow it was exactly as I imagined Scotland. 
While my team spent much of their time going around the country and talking to farmers and institutions, I had a lot of meetings and events in Kigali and apart from the excursion to the lake on Wednesday, I didn’t have time to get out of the capital more than on Saturday, when I met up with part of my team who were already out talking to dairy farmers. One of the areas that we are looking at is how to sustainably and viably balance the needs of a growing livestock sector with the needs of other crop sectors with limited land available. It’s a challenge that many countries are likely to face in the coming years given the increasing demand for livestock products that come with income increases. But it was inspiring to hear the stories from the farmers we met of how getting a cow changed their lives and how, as their little herd grew, they were able to improve their housing, purchase health insurance, and send their children to higher education. Knowing the hard work and determination it takes to keep livestock, I was really impressed with the achievements of these dairy farmers!
These last pics are from a dairy cooperative and several of the farmers we met were part of this cooperative. The top and the bottom picture demonstrate different types of ttansport used for milk collection – obviously the difference in efficiency is enormous. The little sleeping calf was a new addition to one farmer’s herd, only seven days old.
Today, I had a series of meeting out by Lake Kivu (about 3 hours drive west of Kigali, and partially in the Democratic Republic of Congo) and directly after I had to connect to a phone conference with Washington DC and New Delhi. So I ended up connecting to a hotel wifi so that I could call in to the conference via skype and then sat for 1.5 hours on the hotel terrace, overlooking the beautiful lake while discussing agribusiness in South Asia before heading back to Kigali. A fantastic work environment! For anyone going to Rwanda, I can definitely recommend a stop at Lake Kivu – it’ amazingly beautiful!
On the way back, we stopped at King Ndaba’s rock (the folk tail about the rock is here) and these boys came up to entertain us with a song about the king. They sang really well in parts and had made a small instrument of a plastic bottle, a stick, and a string. Very impressive! There are clips with them on youtube, but they had improved a lot since. They even had appointed one of them as manager (their own word) to manage the money they got from singing. Very entrepreneurial!
I’m having a lovely morning in the office! The weather is warm and sunny outside but not too hot, and when I arrived in the visitors’ office space, someone had opened the window and a light breeze filled the room along with the sound of birds singing outside. It is so much nicer to work with fresh air around and in daylight, than in the large, artificially ventilated and artificially lit office environments that tend to be more common than not now a days, and my productivity is definitely up (especially with a cup of delicious Rwandan coffee). It’s kind of ironic, though, that fresh air and daylight feels like a luxury. I also have a theory on how these artificially climate-controlled environments affect our food habits, but more on that later. Tomorrow, work will take me to Lake Kivu for meetings, so I suspect that I can look forward to more fresh air.
I got a small, basic phone with a local sim card, and ironically it takes me forever just to send a text or make a call (to the amusement of my team). It’s funny how quickly we adapt to new technology!
I’m back in Rwanda. This time I’m here with a larger team and we are looking at different options to decrease volatilities and the impacts of risks in primarily agricultural production. I’m glad to be back because I really enjoy working in Rwanda. This time, I will get to see Lake Kivu, as I have meeting booked there. I also look forward to catching up with the two acquaintances from my Moldova days, who contacted me when I was here two weeks ago (the world feels really small sometimes). Admittedly, I also look forward to drinking lots and lots of Rwandan coffee, having tree tomato (tamarillo) juice, and visit African Bite – my favorite lunch place in Kigali. Here is a pic of Kigali; the rolling hills in the background illustrate why Rwanda is called The Land of A Thousand Hills!
For DCites (and DC visitors) who wishes to experience Rwandan coffee the way the Rwandans do, there is Bourbon Coffee on 21st and L Street NW – a Kigali cafe chain that has found its way all the way over to the U.S. capital and a few other American cities.
When I was in Rwanda little over a week ago, Rwanda New Times interviewed me after my presentation and the interview was published today. I thought the questions that they posed were very good and here is my take on some of the challenges for Rwanda’s agricultural sector and agriculture in general. 
