Left: Waiting for food at the Sankara Hotel rooftop restaurant in Nairobi, Kenya.

Right: Waiting for a wedding reception to start at a hotel in Accra, Ghana.

Shot with my iPhone while walking through a health clinic in Ghana.

Left: This snazzy chicken’s “Hello!” and upbeat attitude in the face of becoming the “tasty Chicken that you love!!” totally endeared me to this bird flu awareness poster in Accra, Ghana.

Right: Looks like Rwanda just got a huge shipment of Nutella and jam! Sometimes grocery stores in Kigali will be overflowing with one item and devoid of others. Last week Mr. P and I searched three stores for shampoo and finally found several bottles of just one brand in one store. This is life in a landlocked country that imports everything. (Not such a bad life, actually.)

The rain started during the Friday evening commute, the worst possible time for a storm no matter where you are in the world. There appeared to be little or no drainage system, so the streets quickly become flooded, with cars and people wading through hip-high water in some places. I snapped these iPhone photos from the shared van taking me and a man to the Kinshasa airport. He was taking pictures as were a lot of people in the street. Is this kind of flooding normal for Kinshasa? I have no idea. But it looked like a lot of people with very little sustained considerable damage to their homes and businesses.

Rwanda is famous for its gorillas, so of course there would be a gorilla at the marathon. Mr. P and I ran the 5K that started just after the marathoners set off.

Mr. P and I walked to the race start at Amahoro Stadium and got to see folks cordoning off the marathon route, which went right down the main road leading to our apartment.

MINISPOC (left photo), or the Ministry of Sports and Culture, helped organize and sponsor today’s races, which included the marathon, a half marathon and a 5K. Isn’t MINISPOC a funny acronym? All Rwanda ministries have acronyms like this, including the awkward MINECOFIN, pronounced “mini-coffin.” It stands for the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning.

And the marathoners are off! It looks like there are a lot of people jostling for position, but I’d estimate there were only 150 people running the marathon.

It’s a little hard to photograph while running, but I managed to capture these two boys running their hardest uphill during the 5K (left photo). One thing I found odd about this race was none of the spectators cheered, they just watched (right photo). When Mr. P and I walked home along the marathon route, I was the lone voice cheering on the runners.

One of the lead marathoners races to the finish.