Hello World!

Well hello world!  I am finally giving this a quick update due to the demand of a certain person who shall not be named (Jack).  I am now at site in Rwanda and have been here for about 3.5 weeks, one month on Tuesday!  It’s hard to believe it’s been almost one month.  I remember during training one PCV told us, “the days will be excruciatingly long, but the time will fly by…” I think she’s right.  I do apologize for not updating sooner, but there have been a couple factors playing into that:

1. I moved to site…it takes some getting used to!

2. Site does not have electricity…blogging takes a back burner, sorry.

3. I’ve started teaching which means even though I work only 15 hours a week, I’m still lesson planning and trying to figure out how to actually teach these students something!

Also, many of you probably received an email from my mom (the wonderful woman that she is) telling you to not send me any mail because I need to open up my own PO Box.  For those of you who have already sent stuff, no worries I’ll still get it but don’t send anything else.  Hopefully within the next 2 weeks I will get back to Kigali with a couple other PCVs in my area and we are planning on opening up a PO Box.  When that happens I will let everyone know what my new address is because I expect everyone to send me treats and goodies from the States…which I’ll make a wishlist for eventually but other things take precedence right now!

Okay so, update on my life right now.  These first 3 weeks have been quite the rollercoaster of emotions, which all of the aunts and uncles that are RPCVs told me it would be.  So at least I was expecting it…kind of.  But moving to a new home in general is hard, add in an extreme language barrier, not knowing the bus schedules, trying to figure out the market, lighting a charcoal stove, etc etc etc yeah, it’s a little overwhelming and I have no shame in admitting that when I talked to Mom and Dad the 1st weekend after arriving, there were tears.  And guess what, they’re not the last tears.  This is going to be the hardest job I’ll ever love.  And I already love it, so that’s good.  There are days when I question my decision or when I just want to go to Santana Row with Heather and grab a salad, go people watching with Erikka, have a cuddle session with Beth Elyse or hang out with my amazing EMT girls.  But then a day like market day happens.  And market day is just a bundle of happiness because my town has never, and when I say never, I mean NEVER had a muzungu living with them before.  Yeah, they’ve had NGO’s but they’re different.  Now market day, everyone comes out to sell their foods, goods, etc. and when the town muzungu comes out, oh my, what a spectacle I make of myself.  Luckily now they’re starting to get used to me but they just get so excited to see me it’s hard not to turn my frown upside-down.  I’ll always come back home in a good mood, guaranteed.  They also just love that I’m actually trying to speak Kinyarwanda…granted when they start going off in fast Kinyarwanda I just give them a puzzled look, when then they burst out laughing because I don’t think they’ve ever seen someone who makes faces like I do (we can thank mother dearest for that inheritance).

Other good news, I think I’ve finally, kind of figured out the bus/transportation schedule.  Which is good, because that means I can now get to the PC Office to pick up the packages waiting for me there (hope there’s nothing perishable in them…) and can get around to visit people…eventually.  But to be quite honest, it’s difficult and lengthy to get off of my hill.  So I probably won’t be doing it that often…maybe like, once a month.  Which is really all I need to check mail, charge my computer and check stuff at the PC Office and get a small taste of civilization.  Which was quite overwhelming when I went to Kigali the other day.  You don’t realize how used to small town living you’ve gotten until you walk into a Western coffee shop (Bourbon coffee..amazing!) and get horribly overwhelmed.  Or, then proceed to go to the restroom and get slightly confused for about 5 seconds because there’s a Western toilet and running water…yeah, that happened.

So slowly by slowly I’m getting adjusted and figuring this out.  The town residents I’m getting to know and they’re getting to know me.  School is, going and is a challenge, but things are good.  I miss everyone in the States but not even for a second would I think about coming home, I’m in this for the next 2 years, with all the good and bad that comes with it.

That’s all for now, hope that satisfies all of you who have been bugging Mom to tell me to update.  Hopefully I’ll figure out a more normal schedule to update and post pictures, but give me some time and slack…I’m in Africa. Mwirirwe! (Til next time)

10 Days (well actually now 4) til Xmas…Part II

What can I say…it gets difficult to update this thing all the time.  Let’s see…since Thanksgiving lots of things have been going on.  We had some intense Kinyarwanda training followed by starting up model school.  Now, you don’t know language training until you’ve had 4 hours a day, for 5 days straight of a language which has 16, yes 16, noun classes (in case you didn’t know, English has a grand total of 2).  So that was fun and I felt like I could kind of speak the language after that…until I went out in public and realized, nope, I still have no idea what anyone is saying or how to say anything meaningful besides “I’m a volunteer!”

Ah, such is life.  But then we started up model school.  And model school is 3 weeks of teaching students who are voluntarily coming to school during their summer break.  It gives us a chance to lesson plan and actually try to teach.  We’re teaching in teams of five, each one with a different name of an animal in Rwanda.  My group, Gorillas.  It’s been a good experience to get to practice teaching, seeing what sorts of things fail and what actually works.  Definitely better than just being thrown into the whole teaching game.  That’s been going on for 2 weeks and we just started our 3rd week (and final) week.  That’s model school in a nutshell.

5 Days until Christmas…there’s snow all over the USA and guess what…it “snowed” in Rwanda too!  Yes, that’s right.  Yesterday we went on a nice (but long) field trip to Nyungwe National Park which is a rainforest.  We got to go on a nice little hike of the rainforest, which was beautiful, and then it started raining.  Yeah, it started raining in the Rainforest…go figure. But, we saw monkeys and trees and it was really very enjoyable.  Pictures to come soon.

Next post: Care-Package wishlist.  Full of all sorts of goodies.  I expect to receive random, wonderful packages from many people!

10 Days til Xmas? Part I

There’s just something about it being in the 70/80s, sunny, random thunderstorms which makes it very weird to think that we are almost halfway through December.  And, even weirder to think about, we Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) get sworn in as real PCVs in less than a month.  Time has been flying by but it feels like we’re been here forever.

It’s taken me a while to update, I know, and many things have been going on.  All 68 of us went to our site visits for one week, we managed to make an American Thanksgiving in Rwanda and now it’s December and Christmas is next week.  Wow.

So to start off, let me tell about my site visit.  On November 15th, we all departed in small groups with our amazing LCFs as guides to show us where our sites for the next two years will be.  From Nyanza, my site is roughly 2.5 hours away by matatu, express bus and then a motorcycle taxi.  So first, we had to take a matatu bus (African taxibus…slash see how many people you can fit into the bus) to a stop called Kirengere.  From there we hopped onto an express bus (like a commuter bus in the states) and took that to the lovely small town of Buhanda.  And then from Buhanda I got to take a mototaxi, with my camping pack on my back, to my site about 20 minutes away scaling at least 5 Rwandan hills.  Let’s just say, it was quite the core workout.

My site is right on the edge of the Southern Province of Rwanda in the district of Ruhango, sector Kabagali.  I will be teaching at a day school, called Munanira School Complex, which is a little walk away from my home in the center of town, called Muremera (yes, Rwanda is a country of many tongue twisters).  As of right now, my town does not have electricity or running water.  However, electricity it set to come within one year…so we’ll see how that actually goes.  My house is right in the town center and is part of a duplex.  I live in 1/3 of the home while my host mama and her family live in the rest of the house.  Unfortunately, I have no pictures at this time, I thought it would be wise not to bring my camera with me to site visit.  I’ve got a nice, big and open sitting room which is painted bright yellow.  Then there’s my bedroom, painted bright blue with green trim and a nice big bed.  Awesome bonus.  Also inside the house I’ve got an indoor “shower” (another room to bucket bathe in).  Then, going out my backdoor there’s a cute little courtyard with some veggies and herbs growing in it.  I’m looking forward to trying my hand at making them grow and trying to grow some American plants.  Then there’s another building which has my kitchen (aka empty room to cook in), outside “shower” and the latrine.  My conclusion…after two years I will have amazing thighs. Think about it.

Munanira School Complex is a short walk up the hill from my house.  I’m kind of happy I don’t have an extremely long walk to school.  Currently, the school is under construction while the students are on vacation, so hopefully it will be done by January when school starts!  Similar to my house and town, my school does not have power either so things are limited to the daylight.  It’s a primary and lower secondary school for grades P1-P6 and S1-S2.  They will be adding S3 in during my second year of service.  I’m the first PCV (and muzungu) to be coming there…ever.  So my headmaster is ecstatic, the teachers seem happy to have me and the small children scream “UMUZUNGUUUUU!!!!!!!” from as soon as they can see my not-so-pale-anymore-but-still-not-dark skin.

For the 5 days that I visited, it was jammed full of walking around, meeting people, going to the closet towns nearby, going to the market, eating, sleeping and lots of pantomiming and trying to speak Kinyarwanda since my town doesn’t quite do the whole “Icyongereza” thing.  Iki bazo ariko (it’s a problem BUT) I’m learning slowly by slowly.  The good news is, I now know when are where 3 markets are during the week (so in theory I won’t starve) and I know the nearest place with electricity (Catholic church).  It’s the important things in life to try and survive in a country you know nothing about.  Then on Friday, it was up to me and me alone to manage getting back to Nyanza on public transport.  Luckily, a nice papa took me under his wing and made sure that I got back to my umudugudu (village) safe and sound.

And that was site visit, in a nutshell.  There’s really lots to tell, but I think it will be best to talk more about my site as I start living there and really becoming part of my community.

Thanksgiving

Yes, we managed it.  Turkey and all.  The menu contained:
-Turkey, cooked via charcoal pit
-Mashed potatoes (45 kilos)
-Mashed “sweet” potatoes (45 kilos). They’re sweet potatoes, but not the kind we know in US
-Stuffing
-“Cranberry Sauce” actually plum jam but we were creative
-Green Bean casserole with onion rings in a beer batter.
-Apple Crisp and Pineapple/Mango Crisp
-Cookies with frosting

It was an all day extravaganza, with PCTs broken up into teams to make the whole thing possible.  Potato peeling occurred the night before due to the fact we had 90 kilos of potatoes to peel, cut and cook.  And after much hard work, funny looks from our Rwandan cooks and digging up the turkeys a couple times to see if they were done our feast was finished and ready to eat!  It was a really fun night, full of cross-culture, lots of laughing and fun followed by a dance party to finish of the night.  We like to party, we like, we like to party.

Stay tuned for Part II…to include things happening from Thanksgiving to current events!

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!**

Ready, Set...Go?

8:15pm - Give up on finishing packing and run away to the ambulance barn to get an hour of doing nothing productive.  A huge win and much needed break from the day.

10:55pm- Finish packing carry-on (camping backpack) and take everything on a trial run.  I look like a pack mule...do not mess with me I will pummel you with my large backpack.

So here I am, all packed and ready to go.  Two mid-size bags to check, each 37lbs (yeah, I didn't max out the 80 lb. limit, no big deal) and one heavily packed camping backpack to carry on.  And here is what I've concluded from this extravaganza:
1) My mom is a packing guru...I have no idea how she did it and in so little time.  I could not have done it without her.

2) I am still in denial about leaving tomorrow.  This is not actually happening.  I'm not waking up in 5 hrs to take one of my last hot, running water showers and use a hair dryer and straightener for the last time.  Nope, it's all a dream, not really happening.

3) After lugging all this stuff around, I am going to be a small house.  Insanity workout, you ain't got nothing on Peace Corps luggage hauling.

And now, with those final thoughts, I'm off to continue watching my movie's download onto my computer (Hook, Heavyweight and Sweet Home Alabama....solid gold) and head off to bed to wake up in a few hours and embark on the adventure of a lifetime. Goodnight world!

T-4 days...

Everyone says it's important to have a blog.  Make sure you make a blog.  We want to follow your blog.  A blog will help you keep track of the next two years.  Yada, yada, yada.  So yes, I've made a blog and I will use it.  However, as a disclaimer to everyone out there who reads it...please remember these thoughts are my own and not those of the Peace Corps.