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)