Mwaramutse!

Well, here I am.  To all of you who have been religiously checking this and being like “It’s been almost 3 weeks and she hasn’t updated anything yet!” please excuse my tardiness but understand I’m quite busy with Pre-Service Training (PST) and internet comes in 2 forms here in Rwanda: 1- Internet cafe, where privacy is severely not there. 2- USB modem, which one of my roommate’s has and we do communal time on.  However, even with the availability for internet, it’s not as fast as back in the States.  Think dial-up and that’s Rwanda on a good day!

That said, don’t get me wrong, I am loving this so far.  Here was our view during our first few days in Kigali (capital city):

Tell me that isn’t an awesome view?!  Rwanda is most certainly the land of a thousand hills (slash land of never ending hills).  Our first few days were spent in Kigali where we had to do lots of administrative things, started getting massive amounts of shots and let the in-country staff finish getting ready for our arrival at our training site in Nyanza.  We arrived in Kigali the evening of October 21st and stayed in a compound there until Saturday afternoon when we departed for our training site.

Nyanza is a beautiful little (and by little I mean 250,000 persons) city full of life.  Unfortunately, I have no pictures of Nyanza at this point in time.  It’s not very polite to take pictures of people without their permission and I don’t want to seem too much like a tourist since I’m here for two years.  Thus, the camera tends to stay locked away.  I’m sure as time goes on I’ll take it out more, but sorry, nothing right now.  When we arrived in Nyanza our group was split up into our Peace Corps Trainee (PCT) houses and I am in one of the smaller houses with only 4 trainees and 2 Language/Cross-Culture Facilitators (LCFs).  Our house name is Ibvyshimo, meaning Joy.  Very fitting since we all tend to be happy, upbeat and there’s always laughter happening for some reason.  Unfortunately we have no furniture except for our beds.  But we have an epic tile floor which is just screaming for dance/yoga parties.  Here’s where I (and roommate Caitlyn) will be spending our nights for the next 3 months: In case you’re wondering, I’ve got bottom.  And yes, those puke-yellow things are mosquito nets (YAY malaria!) and I choose to think of them as a “princess bed” instead of a deterrent for mosquitoes and other things.  For the first couple weeks, we had no pillows BUT today was our lucky day and everyone finally got pillows.  They are “Rwanda foam” which really means they form to your head after about 4 days and then never change.  But it’s a pillow, so it’s no problem.

Since it’s so difficult to really sum up everything that’s happening, what’s new (umm…everything) and what I’m doing I think I’ll just leave you all with some things which will hopefully entertain you:

1) It’s like we’re in Hollywood…but hilly.  So then, Hillywood.  We get stared at 24/7 with the calling “muzungu!” (white person!) all over the place.  And small children are like the paparazzi.  They come tearing out of nowhere screaming “muzungu, muzungu!” and then proceeding to either a) stop about 2 feet away from you and stare or b) grab/hug you anywhere.

2) When asked if it flooded in Rwanda during the heavy rains, our LCFs responded with “No, it does not flood…but sometimes the rivers get indigestion when it rains too much.”

3)”Yego” meaning “yes” is an acceptable response to just about any question or statement.

4) When riding a bike, muzungu’s get called “muzungu” at a rate of 1 call per minute per miles per hour.  Aka, the faster you go, the more you get yelled at.  And then they ask you if it’s a race.

5) Rules of the road?  Nope.  Haven’t seen a single speed limit sign, driving is an art of honking your horn and speeding around slower vehicles.

6) Bucket baths are awesome.  And yes, there is a competition to see who can use the smallest amount of water to wash themselves, including their hair.

Oh, and Kinyarwanda is the language we’re learning.  It’s a bantu language like Swahili (but not like Swahili) and is quite a challenge but we’ve got awesome LCFs to teach us the language and help us in preparing for going into our sites at the start of the new year.

Til next time!

**NOTE: So, I wrote this awhile ago and am now just uploading.  I’ll try to get one up on my site visit which happened last week soon!**