Starting Over Again

So....it's been a long time since I've had time to blog and I still don't really have time, but I figured I would do it anyways, given a rare opportunity to use the internet since a priest in my village has loaned me a modem to connect.

Last week marked the end of training and the beginning of my life as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV), which means that I have had a lot of goodbyes to say in the past week. Before I even moved out, Fanny had already left to visit a friend in Uganda. I think she thought my plans were to leave on Monday since she was shocked to hear that she was leaving before me so it felt a bit strange to say goodbye with the roles reversed. I'm also terrible at goodbyes (having pretty much used up all of my capacity to be good at them three months ago when I left Colorado) so we mostly just woke up at 6:00 to look at each other awkwardly for a while only to agree that we would see each other again soon.

We were picked up early on Wednesday morning and, in a giant mess of moving 36 trainees from various homes (with various disastrous road conditions) and loading all of their worldly possessions into one giant moving truck right before a rain storm, we were off to Kigali. I had two days in the city before I was to be dropped off at my site, which meant that I power-walked all over the city to insure I could open my bank account, buy groceries and appliances, and order Chinese food (all of which is a lot more hectic when you don't own a car and you're in a foreign country). On Thursday, we were officially sworn in as volunteers at the US Ambassador's house. It was somewhat surreal, sitting there under a the shade of a canopy on a perfectly trimmed lawn, listening to a few of the volunteers make speeches in English, French, and Kinyarwanda that were being broadcast on national TV and radio...and then following the event with an American-style buffet. It felt nothing like the past couple of months and probably nothing like the next couple of years either.

On Friday, we started moving out at 7:00 am and, after a lot of crying and hugging and saying goodbye to other volunteers (some of which had to wait a couple of days before they would be taken to their sites) and dropping off another volunteer, I was officially home. Minutes before we arrived, the driver and I realized that we had no idea where there was a key to my house. I would have been panicked, but these things have a way of working themselves out when you're in Peace Corps and, sure enough, right when I pulled up to my house, out came Faustin, the boy I had been paying to look over my dog before I moved in. I could not have possibly hoped for a better welcome. I should preface this by restating that Rwandans are not known for their love of dogs. In fact, they are known for fearing and loathing them. But there was Faustin, coming out of my house to inform me that he had just been cooking beans and potatoes for Jellybean and asking for permission to stay awhile so he could finish making her lunch. I don't even take the time to cook for my dog in the states.

Faustin isn't the only Rwandan around here that seems to be counter-culturally infatuated with dogs. Not everyone loves Jellybean as much as he does, but they do seem to accept her as entertaining and harmless, making integrating into the community a lot easier than I thought it would be. It also gives me excuses to take frequent walks in the fields surrounding the village and, let me tell you, this place is beautiful. The soil is incredibly fertile since we are located right next to Volcano National Park and everywhere you look is covered in rich, green, rolling hills.

I'm also conveniently located right next to the church, which my neighbor Father Vincent tells me hosts up to 40,000 people (I'm not sure if that number got lost in translation or not, but the point is is that it's a LOT). This means that if I venture out into my back yard on Sunday morning, I can basically meet the entire surrounding area in the span of half an hour (which is exactly what I did yesterday). It also means that, whenever there is a wedding, I can feel free to invite myself, as per Rwandan culture, which has absolutely no problem with wedding crashers. Living in such close proximity to the church has other perks as well. For example, I have a constant soundtrack of African influenced hymnal music going if I ever need something to listen to, which sounds AWESOME. I also have a built in clock in the form of a giant bell outside of my house that will tell me when it is 6:00, 15:00, or 18:00 in case my clock ever breaks. The other perk is that my neighbors are decently wealthy, education, and excited to work with me. I made a point to go and visit the parish and the convent soon after my arrival and I was gifted with bread, milk tea, pineapple, fanta, and even the modem I am using to type this up right now when I mentioned that I didn't have a way to get in touch with my family. The generosity of the people around me is astounding.

One of my other favorite things about being here is my proximity to Congo, which has always been a serious interest of mine. There is a refugee camp about 15 minutes down the main road from the turn off to my village and I can feel a distinct difference in the culture here. Yesterday, I stumbled upon a group of teenagers dancing in the rain, which poses two contradictions to traditional Rwandan culture since Rwandans don't seem to like to dance nearly as much as Congolese and because they would never be caught dead in rain like the one we had yesterday. Sister Rukundo, one of the nuns I have befriended is also Congolese and spends a good deal of her time going back and forth between Rwanda and Goma, which is where she is fun. She reminds me a lot of Mupemba, our Congolese training director, who completely un-Rwandan in how load and confident and candid he was. She's also a veterinarian, which is a very odd thing to find here, which seems to have very little animal culture.

Of course, there's much more to being a PCV than sitting around and enjoying the benefits. I have a lot to do to lay the groundwork for the next couple of years. Some of it is just maintenance like training Jellybean to go to the bathroom outside as opposed to in the bathroom (which she seems to think is acceptable because she knows I do it) and to get some of the holes in my roof repaired. Most of it, however, is just about being a human being and making friends. Already, the people in my village seem to be super impressed that I can actually speak any Kinyarwanda at all, but I don't want to leave it at that. I'm making a point to get out in the village and start getting to know people beyond simply saying good morning to them. Today that will mean a lot of walking and greeting, but the people of my community have been so receptive and welcoming that I'm honestly looking forward to a three hour walk-and-talk all in Kinyarwanda. Faustin has also offered to help continue tutoring me in Kinyarwanda, but something tells me that I will have plenty of teachers and I've also realized that I actually know enough to hold a casual, if not more philosophical, conversation (thank you community-based training!).

Well, I guess I'm off!

Love Don't Cost a Thing....Or Does It?

Last weekend was a learning experience in two of the most important aspects of Rwandan culture: money and sex. Not to say that these are disproportionately important in Rwanda, but that they are important everywhere, but different in Rwanda from anywhere else I've ever really been.

Saturday marked our third and final Umuganda (community work day) during training. Last month, most of our families opted out of Umuganda, which meant that most of us spent the morning at home, doing laundry with the door locked for fear that we might be found out. My family was ditching as usual this month, but this time it was because of the legitimate reason that the wall to our compound had mysteriously caved in and they needed to take the time to fix it. Since I wasn't needed at home, I decided to go to Umuganda without them. However, this time was nothing like our first experience when which we built two full roads in the course of a morning. We arrived at the Umuganda site, meant to be the construction of a new district office, to find about 20 men sitting on a mound of dirt watching two others shoveling dirt to mix cement. We stood around being gawked at for a while before we decided to use one of the hoes we had brought with us to teach our audience to limbo while they waited. About an hour in, there still wasn't much to do and it was becoming clear that that wasn't likely to change and, at this point, some of us went home to do laundry. The most productive part of the day came when we loosened some of the soil near the construction site to plant crops, but this was a pretty short lived activity and I was beginning to understand why my family normally seems to opt out of going.

Umuganda is a great idea in theory, but, like many theories, isn't so hot in practice. On some days, like the day of our first Umuganda, having a large labor force put to work for a morning can be a huge driving force in development. However, it is almost impossible to expect that kind of outcome every time because the projects the community has real need for are constantly changing and not always the kind of projects that can easily be accomplished by large groups of unskilled workers. The construction project we were supposed to participate in this weekend is an excellent example of that. It also seems that Umuganda is more for the poor than for the rich. If you are wealthy, you can afford to pay the fine for refusing to attend (not that it's often enforced) and maintain your status in a society that frowns upon getting one's hands dirty. Also, if you are wealthy, there is a good chance you live in Kigali, which has far less need for Umugandas and which is also where I ended up on Sunday.

Kigali is a world already entirely different from rural Rwanda: the roads are mostly paved; electricity is a standard rather than a luxury; and there are foreigners everywhere, which means that people are acclimated enough to Americans that they don't stop what they are doing to watch them like they normally do in the country and like they did on Umuganda. Honestly, I feel like this contrast causes me a little bit of culture shock. A friend of mine pointed out that the vast economic disparity is probably one of the best indications of Rwanda's development. Granted, it is hard to see the inequity just between the nation's capital and the majority of it's citizens outside of major cities (so dramatic that you can find urban Rwandans eating burgers and milkshakes in the city, but only the wealthiest can regularly eat rice in the countryside), but in a few years, the wealth could start to spread.

We came into Kigali with two purposes: to stock up on Western food and to attend a wedding for Kassim, one of Peace Corps' teacher trainers for ESL and the man I will report to when I move to my site.

The wedding was beautiful; it would be hard to find a more brightly colored gathering. Women came dressed in their brightest garments with beautiful wraps for their hair. The men wore Western tuxedos that sparkled in the sunlight, but the color scheme of the wedding were decked out in it. They wore shiny yellow, gold, and bright green with golden head bands that I could have never pulled off in my life, but they definitely knew how to work. As always, the bride was the most decked out of anyone in all of the same colors as her bridesmaids, but with much more fabric and a gorgeous gold-embroidered green hi-jab. The guests were seated (men on one side and women on the other) under giant white canopy tops that provided plenty of shade, but started to overheat from the hot air rising off of all of the guests below them. Everything was decked out in the bride's colors, creating so much of a spectacle that a Western couple in a nearby guest house stopped what they were doing to watch the ceremony from their balcony (I wondered if they were aware of how much of a spectacle they were themselves by wearing shorts and a strapless dress, clothing that is certainly not appropriate by Rwandan standards and especially by Rwandan Muslims). Even the juice that the bride and groom pored for each others' family members in a gesture of coming together was dyed florescent green and yellow to match the theme.

We weren't able to attend the actual wedding at the mosque, but the dowry ceremony which takes place before the wedding when the family of the groom traditionally presents the family of the bride with a cow is a crucial step in getting married in Rwanda. Kassim's family is relatively well-off and urban so they didn't actually present the bride's wife with a cow (as they would in the country side), but they did present them with a large enough sum of money to buy a cow if they wanted and several other gifts as a symbolic gesture. The gift that struck me the most was a bottle of Coca-Cola, which was pretty telling of how rapidly Rwanda is developing, but also of the way that corporate American junk food is taking over the world. After the prayers had been made, the gifts exchanged, the juice pored, every member of each family had been greeted by the couple, and some photos had been taken, it was time to eat. We were served fanta by women in giant, billowy, Aphrodite-like dresses and then helped ourselves to a giant buffet full of food with infinitely more spice than we are accustomed to getting at home (which is none).

It dawned on me how much emphasis the dowry ceremony, as an expected precursor to the wedding, places on the transactional nature of marriage in this country. Certainly, judging by Kassim's smile last Sunday, this particular marriage was more about love than it was about money, but the conversation I had with my host sister later that night about the monetary aspect of Rwandan marriages told me that Rwandans still place a lot of import on the ability of the husband's family to provide which is indicated in paying for the wedding and in presenting the gifts at the dowry ceremony. To a certain extent, the transactional nature of marriage is present everywhere (and it certainly used to be much more prominent in the states), however, the concept is still a bit foreign to me as an American, having grown up hearing people swap vows to love each other “for better or for worse” and “for richer or for poorer” values that naturally extended to the engagement and the wedding ceremony as well.

Of course, the Rwandan notion of romance is pretty different from what I'm used to in general. In an HIV conference we had today, students were asked to relay their expectations in romantic relationships. Before they ever listed love or trust, they listed family, which is the primary expectation of love and marriage. This also provides a lot of explanation for the heavy emphasis on the financial security necessary for supporting a Rwandan-sized family (sometimes with up to 15 children) and why sex and money are thought to be so much one in the same (so much the same that there is a noticeable spike in the HIV positive percentage of males in Rwanda around the age of 44-45, when they most commonly become financially independent and wealthy enough to pay for prostitution). This is changing rapidly. The Kagame administration has placed heavy emphasis, not only on development, but also on health and family planning, which means that family size is on the decline, hopefully creating more time for married couples to enjoy a bit of romance in their lives.

The Thanksgiving Episode

Thanksgiving came the day after we had completed a month's worth of Model School and it could not have come at a better time. I had taught four different classes in four weeks. I had gone from completely failing to execute a listening and critical thinking exercise using a VOA special English news piece on a flying car (and seriously reconsidering whether or not I should ever be a teacher) to being able to successfully teach a lesson on metaphor and ambition centered on “Waka Waka,” the theme song to the World Cup. I definitely felt like I deserved a bit of a celebration.

Celebrating holidays away from home is probably one of the most difficult aspects of Peace Corps. For most of us, this Thanksgiving was the first one we had ever celebrated without family and that definitely made it tough (and made me thankful for all of the holidays I have been able to celebrate at home). However, being around the training staff, many of whom have moved away from families themselves in order to teach us has served as a constant reminder to me that I am not the only one making sacrifices. Our training director, Mupe, has a son who is battling sickle-cell anemia and his longing to be with his family on Thanksgiving were clearly just as strong as anyone else's.

The good news is that Thanksgiving was a hit. We actually managed to prepare dinner for over 50 people using charcoal. The preparation began when Peace Corps delivered 8 live turkeys to the training center the day before. We (and by “we” I mean other trainees that are NOT vegetarian, like me) had to slaughter them with only minimal assistance by a local hired to show us the ropes, scope out their entrails, and pluck them overnight so they would be ready to go in the morning. Then, the turkey crew had to get up at 5:00 the next morning to build a giant, underground coal oven to roast them in. Over the course of one day, we put together enough mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, and mac n cheese to feed a small army. It was awesome to be able to enjoy good, American style cooking, but it was even better to be able to celebrate with so many people. I've never celebrated Thanksgiving with anybody besides my parents and it really felt like being with family to be together as a group this year. That's not an easy feeling to recreate.

After a full day of celebrating, cooking, and dance parties (and having spent the night sharing a mattress at the training center the day before after getting a bit stranded when the Peace Corps vehicles couldn't drive me home until well after dark), I was definitely looking forward to being able to crash in my own bed. It just wasn't going to be that easy. Right as the Peace Corps driver was about to drop me off at my house, the car got stuck in a huge ditch. We got out to investigate and my friend Jon went around the side of the car to see what was wrong and found out by literally falling into the same ditch the car was stuck in. So, instead of going to sleep, we got to spend the next hour trying to help lift and push the car out of a ditch that was literally less than a stone's throw from my house. It might have seemed like a scene straight out of a horror movie, but this was honestly one of my favorite experiences so far. I actually managed to take the situation so lightly that I even got my camera out of my bag to take pictures while we were working (for the sake of your viewing pleasure of course). I suppose the ability to find humor in trying to haul a car out of a muddy pit on the side of a deserted Rwandan road in the middle of the night is up there on my list of things to be thankful for this year.

The Happy List

Adjusting to the Rwandan way of life is a distinct challenge for an American. Rwandans are persistently communal in every aspect of life. Americans are not. This means two things for an American trying to enter a Rwandan community: First, it means that, as an outsider, you will not be trusted until you earn it; Second, it means that you have to throw much of your individualism to the winds in order to fit into the community and to get anything done. Fortunately, we have now been here long enough that the community is starting to recognize us and to appreciate the fact that we do have a valuable role in the community as teachers and that we have been able to gain an understanding of the communalism of the people we are living with and been able to begin to embody some of it ourselves.

The hardest thing for me to adjust to has been to accept that communalism is a necessary aspect of getting anything done in this country. Like showering for example. It is quite the process. First, the family makes multiple trips during the course of the day to fetch water. Then, my host sister heats the water and stores it inside of the house. Then, my host mother fetches the water from inside the house. I rinse my bucket out and she fills it with hot water. Next, she will instruct either one of the children or myself to fetch cold water to add to the hot water. Sometimes I am allowed to pore this for myself, but on other occasions, she insists on doing it for me. Next, she instructs whichever family member is around to open to the door to the bathing room. If I am lucky, I can carry my own water and clothing into the room, but on other occasions, I'm not fast enough. It takes the participation of up to 6 people in order for me to shower. By American standards, this is horrifically inefficient. In Rwanda, it is the only way that makes sense because Rwandans insist on doing literally everything together. An American would never sacrifice speediness in order to include the efforts of the entire family in a task. However, in Rwanda, everything is done together, no matter how slowly, and each family member is included in each accomplishment of the day, regardless of the cost of timeliness or independence. Not many Westerners can claim that they are willing to make the same accommodations simply to be inclusive.

Coming to accept the Rwandan facts of life means that each day gets easier. Small annoyances cease to frustrate me like they did in the beginning and everything is cast in a more positive light. Rwanda is even beginning to smell better. Whereas I used to only smell pit latrines and petroleum, I can now distinguish the sweet scents of wood-burning fires and native flowers. As I'm starting to see more and more of the positives of being here, I thought it might be productive to share a “Happy List” for this weeks post. The following list is comprised of some of my favorite things about Rwanda so far:

1. Sir Bad Ass- The first time we saw Sir Bad Ass, we were all headed to our first Umuganda (community work day). There we were, jam-packed 15 to an 8 passenger Peace Corps vehicle, with all of our tools in tow, and stinking of BO, while we bumped unglamorously over unpaved terrain when, out of nowhere, Sir Bad Ass entered our lives. He was riding a giant, red motorcycle with a matching red helmet...which he had decided to leave on his handlebars instead of wearing. In about seconds flat, he had passed us, but it was certainly not the last we would see of him. Ever since this momentous event, he has continued to surprise us. Often he can be spotted on the original Sir Bad Ass motorcycle. Other times, he can be seen driving a shiny new SUV with his wife, riding in a taxi, or riding on the back of a bicycle. Sir Bad Ass has been spotted with so many different accessories that he's almost like a Barbie Doll. The only major difference is that he gets to pick the accessories and that all of them are bad ass.
2. The Candy Shop- Believe it or not, we can find chocolate in the middle of rural Rwanda! Even better, this chocolate is located in a boutique run by two of the sweetest women in all of Rwanda, who we call the Candy Shop Girls. They not only serve us chocolate (for only 100 a piece!), but they also carry delicious chapati and often have delightfully fluffy bread rolls (which aren't too common in Rwanda). The Candy Shop is the best place to go after a rough lesson to sit in the back room, drink sweet milk tea, and unwind.
3. The Paint Job- Naturally, having a giant influx of Peace Corps trainees has to have an impact on the local economy of the training site. However, I never realized how large this impact might be until Fidel, the owner of the bar we frequent, gave his place a paint job. Over the course of a week, the bar went from ordinary concrete, to white, to orange, and was given an elaborate, green, yellow, and blue trim. That's the power of purchasing.
4. The Chicken Dance (and many others)- As I've mentioned before, I have managed to teach my host siblings a variety of catchy English song/dances including the Hokey Pokey, the Macarena, Head-Shoulders-Knees-and-Toes, and the Chicken Dance, which,thanks to my friend Michele, the kids that live near our training center have also learned. Every day, the flock the trainees making high pitched chirping music to the melody of the Chicken Dance until we stop and dance with them. It always brightens my day.
5. A Goat Called Maybe- I've already written an entire blog post about Maybe the goat, so I won't elaborate here, but she definitely makes the list.
6. Eggs for the Sick- As many of you know, I consider food to be the ultimate form of affection....and at the topmost tier of food-oriented affection is fried eggs. After my first bout of food poisoning, I found that, while Rwandans and I strongly disagree about what qualifies as good food almost 99% of the time, we agree when someone has recently been ill because being ill means you get fried eggs in a salty tomato sauce (and you don't even have to share!). Let's just say that this was by far my favorite meal so far at my homestay.
7. Mwitwande Kid- There are honestly way too many screaming children in my life to differentiate between many of them beyond those that I have in the classroom and those that I know at home, but some of them stand out. One of those stand out children is called the Mwitwande Kid. This poor child only seems to know one word: “mwitwande,” which means “what is your name?” And they never get tired of saying it. Literally every day, there she is on the side of the street to watch us walk to class and every day she's asking us repeatedly what our name is....regardless of our response. The current record is 14.
8. The Definition of Homophobia- It's pretty clear that the majority of clothing worn by rural Rwandans have been donated (and then resold) from America. As a result, most of them have some pretty ironic messages. I can't tell you how many shirts I've seen that read “Hooters” or “Brother of an American Soldier.” But, by far my favorite yet, was one that read “Ho-mo-pho-bi-a: Insecurity about being heterosexual.” Homosexuality is illegal in Rwanda.
9. Host Family- Since I mention them in the vast majority of my posts, I guess it goes without saying that my host family has been one of the better parts of my experience so far. The best part is is that it is always growing. My host mother has had literally 13 children, which means that new family members are always stopping by and sometimes even spending the night. Because it is traditional for Rwandan families to share the task of child-rearing and because my host mother has had so many children of her own, the number of children living at the house is constantly expanding. We went from having Paciente, to Paul and Paciente, and most recently added Samueli to the batch. My life at home has gone from a quiet, calm home with three women to a playground with children running everywhere, screaming, and trying to tickle me when I'm not watching. Life is good.
10. Stars- I don't know how many of you have seen a map of the world at night, but it basically shows a planet with a landmass almost entirely covered in electric lighting...until you reach Africa, the dark continent. Fortunately, while the lights in Africa are virtually nonexistent, the amount of stars you can see to that seem to be the exact inverse. Stars in Africa = Awesome!
11. Flowers from children- As I'm writing to you, I'm sitting here in Rwanda with multiple flowers in my hair that have become a daily gift from the kids on the walk from my home to school. It's good to feel loved.
12. Fresh cucumbers- Yay! Now that they're in season, I can make delicious chapati wraps!















13. The views on my morning run-

Peace Corps Presents: Model School

Our introduction to Model School was something like a parachute drop into a sea of children. Two weeks ago, we were simply thrown into Rwandan classrooms to teach, for the most time mercifully in pairs. However, three days into teaching, it was no longer acceptable to co-teach with your partner and you were completely on your own to sink or float in front of the classroom. And let me tell you, teaching here is simultaneously the most rewarding and frustrating battle of my experience thus far.

After a week and a half of teaching, things are starting to fall into place, but it is also becoming clear that we really have our work cut out for us as teachers. Not only will we face challenges in the classroom, but we will face challenges in the education system as a whole. Rwanda only recently switched over to an Anglophone system and it's educational structure isn't quite developed for it. The National Exam is full of errors, some of them as egregious as asking students to answer questions on the feeding habits of elephants....as part of a reading comprehension unit based upon a passage about malaria. But, I suppose that's the same as standardized testing anywhere.

The Rwandan classroom, however, is dramatically different from anything I have ever experienced in America. Of course, this is partially because I grew up in a Montessori school, which is in and of itself, different from any other system of education. However, it seems that most of the credit can be given to the distinct cultural differences Rwandans and Americans have when it comes to hierarchy and respect. American students are rude...and often encouraged to be if it means that they are using critical thinking and engaged in the classroom. However, in Rwanda, manners take the precedent. This means that the typical school day has been starting off with me asking questions to an audience that often gives me a deer-in-the-headlights look, or even worse, averts their eyes, for several minutes before they finally realize that I really do want them to engage in my lesson. Even then, the most noise that is made is the sound of the Rwandan equivalent of a finger snap, which is really just a flick of the wrist that results in a noise that I would equate with the sound of hundreds of small fish being flung against concrete....and is hardly an encouraging sound. And neither is the sound of rain in the morning. It means that all of the crazy American teachers will show up to class on time only to discover that they will not be teaching because too few students have actually shown up to school. Hence, a Rwandan fear of the mud creates a rain day.

Rwandan students are accustomed to a fairly dry form of teaching. They expect their teachers to walk into the classroom, write some notes on the board, and maybe perform a fill-in-the-blanks exercise, before walking back out. However, with the right attitude and lesson plan, the silence can, in fact, be broken. After spending the greater part of a 50 minute lesson to describe what a game is and to ask my students if they liked games and wanted to play one, I was finally able to introduce them to charades. Each day has been a battle to engage them in something to make them think...or even better, to have fun. However, I have proven that Rwandan students can, in fact, complete a crossword puzzle, and do, in fact, enjoy listening to music in the classroom. I highly doubt if any of my students understood how listening to “California Gurls” and jotting down the words they understood was integral to their understanding of the English language, but they were definitely willing to take the class time to do it.

For all of the children there are in Rwanda, there are very few activities that seem to cater to them. It is not considered acceptable to play with them or to be goofy-a reality that hit me with a fellow trainee told us that her host family had informed her that she would need to stop singing and making animal noises at children when she was married and too much of an adult to behave that way anymore, which can only be expected from a culture that has no word for “fun.” As for the stigma, I'll keep my reputation as an immature and crazy white person if it means that the kids will still like me. Nothing brightens my day like going home to the three screaming children who now live at my house and performing the hokey pokey on what feels like repeat. Really. I think that's the ticket to anything in life; maintain a childlike outlook and it all looks good from there.

A Goat Called Maybe

Last night I came home to discover the newest addition to my household, a brand new little baby goat! I was thrilled and instantly started talking to the kids of the family asking what we should name it...to which Paciente responded, "Maybe." Of course, this response was probably due to her misunderstanding my question and trying incorrectly to say the English word for "baby," but the name still has an ominous ring to it as the only reason to own a goat in this country is to eat it. This quickly snapped me back to reality. Or my current reality (as I guess I should call it) and in this reality, goats are for eating, not for adoring and it's totally weird that I was distressed by the fact that Maybe would be spending their first night away from their mother outside, alone, and bleating loudly close to my bedroom window. In Rwanda, there is absolutely no such thing as animal rights as we know it in the states. People don't really own pets so much as they own meat and produce animals. Even those animals are treated dramatically differently from pets at home. A cow is the ultimate symbol of status, but is typically kept in a pen just large enough to turn around in and standing in its own waste. So two nights ago, when I pulled out pictures of my life at home, it was hilarious to my family to see multiple pictures of dogs, most of which were wearing some form of clothing and even funnier to them when I explained that my dog sleeps on my bed with me.

The Rwandan perspective on pets makes perfect sense. It's fairly impractical to have pets here, especially when they're not actually turning the profit. Dogs in particular are taboo because they are said to have scavenged the bodies of the dead post-1994. It just brings to light another area in which I am different here. In my life, animals have largely been a luxury, rather than a necessity, which makes me stand out when I look at animals because I find them cute and everyone else only looks at them when they're thinking about their next meal. Not that I plan on changing anything, my hippie-buddhist ideals and a strong belief that all sentient beings are equal is not really something that I can see ever going away. However, I am going to have to accept that it will be a long, uphill battle to explain the reasons I have decided to have a dog at my site without being culturally insensitive.

Until next time!
Catie

To Teach or To Be Taught

As of two days ago, I have officially become a teacher in a Rwandan school! As part of our training, we were literally dropped in a classroom with a partner and expected to just teach. Surprisingly, our first few days went relatively smoothly. We played music every day, had students answer questions about "California Gurls,' taught all of the "Wh' questions, completed a crossword as a class, and took some time to discuss pictures out of Time Magazine (thanks, again, Mom and Dad for sending that). Being a teacher is a welcome change of pace to our otherwise routine lives and has given me the opportunity to do what I really want to be doing in Rwanda, which is to get students thinking and to expose students to the limitless possibilities the world has to offer. Before I get to sucked into playing that role though, I think it is important to reflect on the things that I have been learning, rather than paying attention only to the things I will teach. The best way to reflect on that is to write about the homestay experience, which has, by far, been the best teacher I have had yet.

Living with a host family is hardly what I would call easy and it is full of awkward miscommunications. I haven't forgotten the first day, on which I spent 10 minutes trying to explain to my host mother that I don't eat meat and thought I had succeeded...only to find that they had cooked it especially for my arrival later that night. On another occasion, I used the wrong broom (one that is apparently meant only for the walls of the house) to sweep my floor, which almost resulted in a shouting match between my host mother and I before Fanny was able to intervene and tell me that she wasn't trying to keep me from cleaning altogether. Once you start to get past moments like these, your homestay starts turning into a place that you can actually begin to be comfortable. In the time that it has taken for me to get to know her, my previously malicious old grandmother has transformed into a goofy old woman, who loves nothing more than being able to spend time with her grandkids.

Now that I've opened myself up to them, it seems that my host family teaches me something new each day. Sometimes this comes in the form of practical lessons, like how to effectively wash your clothing by hand (I can now say that some of my whites are whiter than they were even at home) or how to make fries over a wood-burning fire.

On other occasions, the lessons are more about gratitude and perspective. As an American, I am easily the most vulnerable and protected member of the family. On one night, I couldn't catch a taxi from the neighboring market village and showed up well after dark and well after when I said that I would be home. Fanny was panicked. She was terrified that something might happen to me because I was an American and that, if it did, she would go to prison for failing to protect me.

Of course, this makes absolutely no sense from an individualistic American standpoint, but from a Rwandan standpoint, it is perfectly logical. Not only is everything communal, but crime is considered to be especially communal since the genocide is still very much in living memory and was, itself, a communal crime. The failure of any community member to intervene is an instant indication that they may be responsible for any event that takes place, no matter how out of their hands.

Fanny's concerns also shed new light on my identity as an American and a citizen of the developed world. Identity is something that the privileged pay very little attention to, which is probably because it is so rarely a hindrance to them. However, when you make the shift from the developed to the undeveloped world, identity becomes infinitely more important. Not only do you have to consider the impact of your actions on the people who are responsible for you, such as your host family, but you also have to consider they way your previously thoughtless actions affect the community you are staying in. Frankly, foreigners are among the most interesting of topics for the isolated community in which we are training and this means that we are almost always watched. On more than one occasion, I have drawn a crowd who literally listened to my every word for multiple hours while I was trying to Skype with friends at home outside of the town's one location for wireless. This can be exhausting, but has made me incredibly grateful for the amount of difference I was exposed to growing up, which was, frankly, not all that much by American standards. It has given me the open-mindedness to see past the color of someone's skin and to view them as a human being, rather than an oddity.

With how much my family puts themselves out to care for me, I can hardly even begin to give back in the way that I wish that I could. For all the meals that they have given me, I have introduced them to PBJs (I'm planning on grilled cheese for tonight). For all of the language they have taught me, which is enough to navigate the village and survive, I have taught them the Hokey Pokey, Head-Shoulders-Knees-and-Toes, the Chicken Dance, and the Macarena, none of which they will ever need to get by in life. To date, my largest contribution to their well-being has been to bring fruit into the home and to encourage Fanny to go running with me. Last night, I tried the tactic of showing them photos of home and a map of the world, but the fact of the matter is that I will never be able to teach them as much as they have taught me without bringing them home. That's the real value of immersion. It's not that you learn a language or a couple of recipes, it's that you learn a whole new way of being. You lose the superficial parts of yourself that were really just byproducts of your environment and you determine the parts of yourself that are there to stay. I have no idea who I will be at the end of these two years, but Rwanda definitely has a lot to teach me.



(My host siblings performing the macarena)

It Kind of Reminds me of Ireland

Wow! It's been a long time since I've been able to write so I can't really include everything, but I guess I will talk about the most important thing that has happened so far, which was my visit to my site for the next two years. This was just like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Training is incredibly grueling and I was starting to feel a bit burnt out without having any tangible goals to work towards. Now that I have seen my site and feel confident that I will actually be able to enjoy my service there (complete with running water and electricity too!), this whole experience has gotten a lot better.

I live high up in the mountains and the terrain up to my site literally makes the mountains of Colorado look like cute little rolling hills it is so steep. This causes a lot of motion sickness on public transport, which can be a bit unpleasant, but I have yet to have someone throw up on me. My actual village is fairly close to Volcano National Park and the area is absolutely beautiful with moss-covered volcanic rock everywhere. It kind of reminds me of Ireland...or even Lord of the Rings when I can see the glowing lava of one of the volcanoes suspended in the night sky from my house.

Since I am so close to a lot of major tourist areas (volcanoes, gorillas, and even a beach!), it is easy to escape the curious looks I so often get during training and to go to market to get well-missed treats like cheese. That's not to say people in my village don't still treat me differently, but I have found that they are generally more welcoming and eager to talk to me than the population at the training site, which will be a welcomed change of pace.

My neighbors are...interesting. I live immediately next to a gigantic Catholic Church (another reason my site seems so much like Ireland), a local bar, and a primary school. Surprisingly, the bar causes me no problems at all, while the primary school will probably cause me the most problems during my stay. The kids have nothing at all to do after school and their parents and teachers don't really look after them, so they often resort to leaning in on the fence and trying to spy on the house all afternoon. Since the volunteer I am replacing is also leaving her dog with me, this could potentially create some problems down the road. Rwandans aren't necessarily the biggest fans of dogs and the kids can get a bit out of hand with her. I think I will be spending my first few months perfecting my Kinyarwanda to say "Why are you staring at me?", "I am no different from you", and "My dog cannot hurt you so don't be scared." I also think I will try to organize an after school sports or running program for the kids because if there was ever a group of children that needed one, it would definitely be these kids.

Living in a highly Catholic community will be a bit of an adjustment as well. Since I live so close to the church (and since the school I will be teaching in is Catholic), it is likely that I will have to integrate into the worship community to some extent. I had dinner with both the priests that live closest to me and the nuns that live a ways down the street and I have definitely decided that a friendship with the nuns will be beneficial to my psychological well-being. They are the friendliest women in the world and invited me to dinner, got a little tipsy, and then got dressed up and tried to teach me a traditional Rwandan dance. They also have bunnies...hundreds of bunnies...on their property. Granted, the bunnies are meant for sale and eating, but they are incredibly cute and fairly well-cared for so it is nice to be able to go and visit them.

The school I will be teaching at is probably the most unexpected perk of all. I will be teaching at a Catholic boarding school where the majority of the student body can be expected to go to university. I will also be teaching S5 and S6 (approximately Juniors and Seniors in high school), which is a bit more advance than I was expecting, but since my school is a science school, they will not be taking an English entry exam. This essentially means that I get to spend my time teaching having good dialogue and debates with incredibly smart students without the stress of standardized testing so I can determine what it is that I think it is most important for them to know. These kids are SMART too. Within the 15 minutes that I was able to talk to them during a tour of the school they have already asked me some heavy philosophical questions and I can't wait to see what they would say in writing assignments or debates. The one thing that is hard to handle is the boy to girl ratio. When I first arrived at the school, I thought it might have been all boys (something that would have been cause for a serious moral dilemma), but out of 400 students, there are 70 girls. These aren't great numbers, but they are an improvement and the girls are treated the same as the boys and have the same confidence and expectations that they will go to university. My headmaster is also big in the push for gender equality and is constantly reinforcing the message that male and female classmates should be supportive of one another, which was definitely encouraging to see.

Basically, I can't wait to start teaching! I already have a million ideas churning in my mind about potential debates, about resume workshops, and about how I'm going to structure my classroom. Another volunteer mentioned that they hosted a debate on the importance of education vs. agriculture in Rwanda, which sounded like it was rather successful and sounds like it would be right up the alley of my students. On day one, they were already asking me questions about race and ethnicity in America and why I chose to give up the developed world to come to teach them. These are hard questions to answer, but I think the ongoing dialogue of hard question after hard question will be good for me and ensure that I come out of this experience a stronger and more thoughtful person.

(As a side note, a bit of research tells me that there is a caving site close to my house! Life is good!)

Week 2 (I rode my bike uphill in the rain to post this)

It’s amazing how much 14 days can change your life. I feel like I have been here for most of my memory, but it’s only been two weeks….two weeks of constant language training even on the weekends (enough that I can now successfully navigate a thriving Rwandan marketplace!!!), of living without electricity, and also two weeks of being surrounded by some of the most BOMB people I have ever met (the other PCVs) and our training director, Mupemba, a giant teddy bear from the DRC who tells us he loves us on a daily basis. I love what I’m doing and the people I am doing it with, but being immersed in such a new reality is not without frustrations. I don’t think it would ever be possible for me to actually record everything that has happened since the last time I wrote, but there are a few things that really stand out to me as important and those are the things that I have chosen to write about.

Umuganda: Saturday made me realize how much the Rwandan and American work ethics truly differ. It was Umuganda, a state mandated workday that takes place one Saturday a month. Everybody is required to attend (unless ill or otherwise indisposed) and to help out in major constructions and development projects across the country. Peace Corps decided that volunteers shouldn’t have to be left out. The idea of a white person doing work in Rwanda is, as I’ve mentioned) a foreign one and I could feel it on Saturday. The site of muzungus even carrying work tools was so preposterous that one woman actually came out of her house just to laugh as us and take our picture, a strange irony considering the fact that most volunteers feel uncomfortable taking pictures of Rwandans. This treatment didn’t go away for most of the day, but it was still completely worth it to get to work. In one morning, I helped to build not only one, but two, roads to farmers in the countryside. This was followed by a ceremony in which we were pulled into a crowd of dancing Rwandans and actively forced to attempt traditional dance moves….emphasis on attempt. Like all Rwandan ceremonies it seems, this one also included a large speech-making session in which anyone of any import whatsoever in the community was given time to speak and the economic head spoke for a grand total of 35 minutes…all in Kinyarwanda. Since that day, Rwandan speech-making has already become something I have learned to anticipate and taught me several lessons in patience.

Church: There are very few people in Rwanda who don’t attend church, but on Sunday, my family planned to be those people. My host sister claimed that she was too sick to go and that was that for her. I realized later that she might have had the right idea. Curious (and stubborn) as I am, I resolved to go to church even without my host family and tagged along with another volunteer instead. At first, I couldn’t see why my family was so reluctant to go. I have never heard such a beautiful choir in my life. The music was so rich and so moving that it constituted a god-like experience just to be in the room and listening. However, just as with Umuganda, the high I felt from a truly rich and beautiful cultural experience was significantly lowered, yet again, by Rwandan speech-making, this time followed by an English translation. The church service was over three hours of yelling (in mixed Kinyarwanda and English and with a slightly faulty sound system) and that pastor and I did not see eye-to-eye. He made the analogy that the degree of your love can be measured only by how much you give….and then went on to explain that he had recently thrown away a Blackberry that he had purchased on-sale for his wife because he realized that it was a knockoff and therefore not a worthwhile gift. It’s really not my place to say, but I felt that his message failed to recognize the material disparity between himself and his own audience. Still, I am moved by the amount of faith Rwandans seem to have. I won’t be converting anytime soon, but I will most likely be going to church again for the music and to gain a better understanding of my community.

Mud: It’s the rainy season here right now, which means that I have seen more rain in a day than I am used to seeing in a month of Colorado weather. It also means that I am almost always covered in mud from trudging between my house and the training. This would be frustrating enough by itself, but the reactions of my host family have managed to make it worse. The first time I came home this way my host family insisted on making me remove my shoes and put on a pair that belonged to one of them to wear inside the house so as to not get my feet dirty. Granted, getting your feet dirty here is no small thing. It can result in jiggers, an infestation of tiny bugs, in the soles of your feet, or several other nasty skin conditions we’ve been warned against, but this still doesn’t justify the deference with which my family treats me. If I ever want to integrate, I can’t be treated like a little princess every time it rains (which is pretty much every day) or my clothes get dirty. Therefore, every day is a battle to clean my own shoes and do my own muddy laundry.

Fanny: Fanny serves as a constant reminder of the real reasons I am here. On my last day in Colorado, Tanya asked me what it was that I was looking forward to the most about Rwanda. My instant response was that I wanted to find a Rwandan girl friend that I could really confide in, knowing that the success of my service would depend almost entirely on the relationships I build while I am here. Thankfully, Fanny is one of the most open people I have ever met and over the course of just a few nights we have talked about everything from boys to dropping your phone down the toilet. Fanny reminds me so much of all of the reasons I decided to do Peace Corps in the first place. She’s a complete free spirit, has a boyfriend her parents didn’t approve of (who is currently studying in China), loves to go out clubbing (and did for 6 months while she lived in Cape Town, SA with her brother), and studied chemistry and biology in school, hoping to someday become a doctor, but wasn’t granted the opportunity to go to college. Due to almost completely random circumstances, it seems like Fanny is restricted from having the kind of life she really wants in almost every way. And she just keeps on trucking, serving as a constant reminder of my own desires to be free of limitations because, let’s face it, that is a large part of the reason that anyone does Peace Corps.

Kigali Genocide Memorial: The Kigali Genocide Memorial is easily one of the most beautiful buildings I have seen in my time in Rwanda. Instead of the typical cement or adobe coloring, it has been painted bright white, a color that we rarely associate with death. However, the memorial is located at a site where approximately 259, 000 were killed during the genocide of 1994 and is surrounded by the graves of the dead. The memorial and museum contained very little information that was new to me, but they certainly did put the information in new perspective, now that I am actually here and in the same landscape in which it happened. For another, the museum is host to a child exhibit, which is full of large scale pictures of children and lists their favorite foods, sports, and songs….as well as their last words. More than anything though, I was frustrated to think about how little we did to stop the genocide when it was happening. We brought a large flower arrangement from the Peace Corps with the words “Never Again,” but these kind of promises have proven almost impossible for the world to keep. Rwanda hasn’t given up hope though. The museum doubles as an education center with an eye to genocide prevention. It will be interesting to see how the country moves forward in the next couple of years that I am here.

(Picture of Zack and I after an epic bike ride in the rain to access the internet)

First True Rwandan Week

It has only been a week and my fingers already feel uncomfortable on this keyboard. The last time I wrote, I was still in the developed world, but in the last week, I have gone from Belgium, to a hostel in Kigali, to a rural Rwandan home with no electricity or running water. I have filled out more papers and gotten more shots than I even care to count and jumped straight into a new language and a new life. That being said, the following entry is meant more to tell you what I have been doing than it is to tell you what I think or feel about it.

After arriving from Belgium, the Peace Corps volunteers went immediately to a Peace Corps hostIe in Kiglai where we spent the night and the following day getting the beginning of our vaccinations and taken care of and filling out papers. The very next day, we were packed in vans and dropped off at our new host families, which I have to admit was nothing less than intimidating. The only person at the house was my host-grandmother, Melanie, who speaks only Kinyrwanda and only speaks it very quickly. She welcomed me by speaking rapidly in Kinyarwanda while pulling me all over the house and then by cupping her breasts and laughing at the fact that I was wearing a bra. I was nervous, to say the least. Thankfully, there are three people in the house, including Fanny who is fairly good at English and only a little older than me, and Paciente, who is 6 and loves to teach me new words. “Ni byiza umucobwa,” that is what my host sister, Fanny, tells me on only my second night in her home. This means that I am a good woman and I am a good woman because I am helping her to dry off the dishes that she has already washed, outside and by hand, earlier that day. The fact that I know how to work at all is impressive to them because this is apparently not something that women in the United States need to do. In Rwanda, it is no small feat to get food on the table each day. My family can start cooking at 6:00 and still not have dinner on the table until 9:45, which means I am usually hungry for dinner. Of course, I can’t expect anything different since we have no electricity at the house so we cook over a fire in the dark. It takes a long time to do pretty much anything here. To get water, Fanny and I have to haul it from the watering hut back to the house, which we try to do at a run to minimize how long it is that we have to hold on to our jerry cans. This is added to by the fact that I have to bleach my water and filter it before it is deemed drinkable by the Peace Corps medical staff.

In grating contrast to the slow pace of the Rwandan lifestyle, my life as Peace Corps trainee is faster than anything I have ever experienced in the states. I get up at 5:45 every morning to run with some of the other volunteers, a time we try to savor because it attempts to let us feel like Americans. However, it is hard to feel like a normal American when you’re in Africa and everyone is staring at you or shouting “Muzungu” (a term which literally means “white person spinning in circles” after the first Belgian explorers in the DRC). It is also hard because my 45 minutes of daily independence are over the moment my run is. After that, it’s just a quick bucket shower and some bread with peanut butter and tea before I have a full day of language training, broken up only by lessons on the Rwandan school system and how to draw blood samples to test for malaria...or, a volunteer favorite, more shots. The moment my lessons are over, I go back to my home stay, where I will also find very little rest because I spend the night doing chores and learning new vocabulary until my family goes to bed and I study Kinyarwanda by lantern light.

Strangely, I wasn’t tired until today, when insomnia (induced by my anti-malarials, which also give me crazy dreams) woke me up at 5:05 in the morning. It’s hard to adjust, but the people that live here and the other volunteers are making it well worth the effort.

This barely begins to cover my life right now, but I think it is the best I can having only been here for a week. I will write next week with probably infinitely more insight.

All the best,
Catie

I Caved

Hey guys,

I finally decided that I actually DO think that my life is exciting to write about so I am starting a blog. I can't make any big updates right now, but this is where they will all be in the future couple of years I spend in Rwanda.

My first update, however, has nothing to do with Rwanda, but instead is about a little side trip that my Peace Corps group just took in Brussels (YES, WE ARE IN BELGIUM!) before beginning our 27 months together. We had some lengthy delays in NYC, which all ended up working out in our favor, making it possible to spend a day in Belgium eating waffles, drinking beer, and realizing how amazing it is going to be to work together for the next 27 months. This group is easily the easiest one I have ever tried to fit into and the energy among the volunteers is a huge comfort and inspiration to me. I know that these are the people I will need to lean on the most while I start to really experience Rwanda and the challenges of being a volunteer and so far away from home. I am so excited to be working with these people and also excited to be able to write home and share my experiences with my newest friends with some of my oldest.

SO MUCH LOVE!
Catie

P.S. Check out facebook if you want to experience some mad jealousy over DELICIOUS Belgian chocolate, waffles, and fried cheese balls.