Site Visit in Rango

As usual, I apologize for the delay in posting about site assignments and everything; I was incredibly busy preparing for the trip and then I got to my site and found out that there is no internet available within an hour of my school. This will be the last post in which I apologize for taking forever to write; otherwise I will be apologizing for the next two years. So what is this “site” I keep talking about? A Peace Corps site is the village in which a volunteer works during their service. My site is in Rango (the umudugudu, or village), Mareba sector (like counties in the US), Bugesera District (kind of like states), Eastern Province (regions). I am a one hour bus ride south of Kigali and then another hour moto ride southwest off the main road to Rango.

            Rango is a small village with no more than five stores (all of which sell the same things – sugar, soap, flour, and phone credit), two churches, and many small mud brick houses that have been plastered in cement. The market is in the sector next to Mareba, Ruhuha (about a 30-40 minute walk from my house in Rango), on Tuesdays and Fridays. The market is huge; it is the market that the big hotels and restaurants in Kigali come to buy animals, vegetables, and fruits for the week. Ruhuha is also where the police headquarters is. Though Ruhuha is bigger than Rango and you can find the most basic goods there, I have to travel an hour to the main town, Nyamata, for things like internet, mail, cheese (very important), plastic buckets and cooking supplies, and quite possibly toilet paper (I didn’t see any while I was in Rango or Ruhuha). To go to the bank, I have to travel into Kigali, which is another one hour bus ride from Nyamata, which is just such a long and annoying trip in mini-buses that are meant for 15 people, but actually squeeze about 23 adults, many children, and everyone’s belongings in. I’ll probably make that trip once a month and spend the vast majority of my free time in Rango.

            So what did my week in Rango look like? I left Monday morning at seven for Kigali with two other girls that are in Bugasera District and an LCF who would help get us to our sites. It was about a two hour trip from Nyanza in a nice sized bus to Kigali. Once in Kigali we squeezed into a mini-bus and annoyed all the other passengers with our huge hiking backpacks, purses, and motorcycle helmets (yes, Peace Corps gave us all flashy helmets that help us stand out even more than we already do). I was lucky enough to sit in the back row, which almost went out the back of the bus when we hit a speed bump too fast and the trunk door flew open (we had to hold onto the row in front of us as ours went backwards). Once we regrouped, we continued onwards to Nyamata where we dropped off Thais and Allison. From there I jumped on a moto after putting on my flashy helmet and headed to Rango to meet my headmaster. My LCF said it would take only ten minutes to get to my school, which was unfortunately 10 Rwandan minutes, which works out to be about an hour in American time. Please just picture me on the back of a moto with a 50 pound backpack, a purse, and a HUGE silver helmet – I looked ridiculous. Every time we went up a hill I thought I was going to go backwards off the bike; my abs and hip flexors were working overtime to keep me on that bike. We eventually made it to G.S. Rango, which will be my school for the next two years.

            My headmaster was there to meet me and we went to his house, where I spent the week with him and his wife. They were both so kind and ready to share their culture with me; it really made the week the best one I have had here in Rwanda and probably one of the best cultural exchanges I have ever been a part of. Monday afternoon we went to visit another teacher and his family and then that night, after dinner, my headmaster and I sat down to make a schedule for the week, which is when he decided to throw a curveball at me; he wanted me to teach English throughout the week. I have limited teaching experience and only three weeks of Tech training under my belt, so to say the least I was a little overwhelmed. Luckily, Tuesday is a market day so I got out of teaching then, but I did end up agreeing to teach an hour on Wednesday and two hours on Thursday to an S3 (the equivalent of 9^th grade in the US) class. They were already having a couple hours of math and science every day and the headmaster thought it would be a great idea to throw in some English, so with my six hours of experience in lesson planning, I threw together two lesson plans.

            Tuesday morning I woke up with the cow next door and started my day by introducing myself to the students and staff at school and then heading to Ruhuha to meet with the Police Commander and then on to the market. At the market I bought two live chickens and a lot of fruits and vegetables. Because I’m not allowed to jump on a bike taxi without a helmet, I walked home while my headmaster’s wife road a bike with all of our purchases. After lunch, I had the chance to visit my future home, which is in the compound of the largest church in town. For now, I will only say that there is great potential in this house that has yet to be realized (hopefully it will be by January). It is a three room house with an outdoor kitchen/shower building and a squat latrine. There is no running water (the water source is about 15 minutes away) and right now there is no electricity, though I have been told that I will have it by January. From the house I went to meet with the umudugudu leader, who will be an important contact to have in the community if I ever have any problems or concerns. He was very nice and I am looking forward to working alongside him over the next two years.

            The rest of the week was kind of uneventful. On Wednesday I taught for an hour and then explored the community by myself for a few hours. During my walk I was mobbed wherever I went and received many wedding proposals (this is extremely common for young American girls). I stood my ground and was able to escape many awkward conversations and got to meet some great women and girls. I visited two homes; the first was home to a young woman with a new baby (who was so happy to see me, she peed all over my dress), and the second was home to the family of a 17 year old girl who had shown me around. They were so nice and had many questions, which were asked and responded to in kinyafranglish (Kinyarwanda, French, and English). From there, I went home and in the afternoon I went with the headmasters wife to get prices for furniture. Thursday, I taught two hours about how to give a presentation and public speaking. Between classes I was able to observe two other classes to see how Rwandan teachers conduct their classes, which I found to be very interesting. I had the rest of the day free and just hung out at home and helped cook meals. Thursday night I went out with the headmaster and his wife for brochettes (meat on a stick) and potatoes. I was SO full by the time we finished, but of course dinner was waiting for us as soon as we got home. In true Rwandan fashion, I pretended to be hungry and forced down two plates of food (it seems to be an insult if you don’t take more food). With a very full stomach, I sat through the nightly prayer session and then was more than happy to head off to bed.

            Friday was a day of travel back to Nyanza after a morning full of food. We ate breakfast at 8 and then the headmaster’s wife decided she wanted to make ubugali (AKA fufu, cassava bread – a very gummy mass of cassava flour mixed with water), so at 9:30 we made ubugali and soup and by 10 we were eating lunch. I got back around 3 PM and immediately left for the local restaurant to catch up with everyone and do an informal debrief on our week’s adventures. Everyone had such different experiences so it was exciting to hear about the challenges and successes at our individual sites.

            Now, after five days back in Nyanza, we are back to the usual grind. We start model school next week and will be teaching four classes a week for the next three weeks, so we have a lot of prep work to do before (three week plan, weekly plans, class management plans, and individual lesson plans). On top of that, language is being kicked up a notch and we are working towards more immersion work. With six weeks to go in training, we had our mid-PST assessment and were able to give feedback to Peace Corps, which was received positively and acted upon immediately.

            Last thing to talk about – THANKSGIVING! What might a group of 68 Americans living in rural Rwanda be doing for this food-heavy holiday? Cooking turkeys, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, gravy, pumpkin pie, apple cider, and apple crisp, of course. The turkeys were brought in from Kigali and will be cooked in a 5’x 7’ pit with charcoal and everything else will be cooked over charcoal. The local staff will not be helping, so it will be up to the 30 person Thanksgiving team and sub-teams (I’m on Team Stuffing!) to pull this off and cook a Thanksgiving meal for about 120 people. I will definitely let you know how it goes; I’m sure there will be plenty of amazing stories to share.

            I will conclude the post now with high and hilarious points from my week at site:

High and Hilarious Points of the Week

- a chicken flying up the wall then at my face after Thais tried to scare it away.

- a 4 month old baby peeing on me while I was chatting with her mom.

- learning how to prepare a chicken (yes, I killed it, plucked it, and then chopped it up for dinner)

- being told I’m hungry and then fed every time I yawned

- walking home without tripping thanks to the full moon

- successfully teaching three hours of English and living to tell about it

- having French to back up my limited Kinyarwanda; so few people spoke English, while most educated Rwandans also speak French in addition to Kinyarwanda.

- walking around Nyanza and talking to random Rwandans about their lives for language class

- getting WIFI at the training center, so I don't have to pay for internet anymore

- going a solid 5 days without a single bug bite (possibly a new record)

Stay tuned for Thanksgiving shenanigans…

Sources of Happiness

• Learning to carry a baby on my back while at my host family’s house
• Wearing an igitenge (fabric wrapped around as skirt) and cooking Rwandan food (think starches and almost no vegetables) with my host family in their outdoor kitchen.
• Talking to the cute old lady who sweeps the drainage gutters every morning
• Walking past the old man by the training center that wears a crazy hat, no shoes, and carries a walking stick every day.
• Successfully having a basic conversation in Kinyarwanda
• The game of determining which type of greeting is about to happen in a split second. Rwandans have a million ways to greet (touch cheeks 3 times while hugging and then shaking hands, tight hug, distant hug, hand shake, and more), which causes great anxiety and excitement whenever I greet someone.
• Pineapples and avocados – they are so cheap (less than 50 cents for a pineapple and about 10 cents for an avocado) and so good. The cooks at Peace Corps learned how to make guacamole, which makes any Rwandan meal a million times more delicious.
• Looking at the mist-covered mountains when I walk out of my house every morning.
• Starting to understand 4 of the 16 Kinyarwanda noun classes.
• Looking up at the stars. I will fall into a ditch one of these days.
• Tide room. Our house is called Laundry House, so each room gave itself a name. We are Tide and the others are Woolite and Downy.
• Beginning a walk alone and ending with a following of children. They are the best language teachers and provide an immediate link between myself and the adults.

Squat Toilets and Infrastructure

Rather than spending a whole blog post discussing my day-to-day life,which besides the fact that I’m in Rwanda is rather uneventful (except for the occasional run-ins with inebriated locals and a pack of goats running down the middle of the road at you), I thought I would dedicate this post to my new Rwandan lifestyle and the shifts in comfort that have taken place over the last three weeks. Peace Corps has successfully transitioned us from the comfort of modern Western amenities to one step above the typical Rwandan and in a week we will fully transition to living with and as locals. So what does this near-Rwandan lifestyle look like?

I live in a cement house with a tin roof; it is large by local standards, but we also have twelve American girls (four per room – yeah, we have bunk beds) and three Rwandan LCFs (Language and Cross-Culture Facilitators). We have a huge fence around the property, which unfortunately the children have found a way to climb through the barred fence in the front yard and over the cement wall out back. We are lucky enough to have electricity, well most of the time, but we don’t have running water. Rwanda has made a huge effort to rapidly expand infrastructure since the genocide, but unfortunately rapid expansion often means poor quality. Though we have electricity, it goes on and off all day and we often go many nights without it. It’s really cool walking home at night and watching the lights go on and off throughout the mountains, but it really isn’t so great when you get back to a very dark house.

As for the water situation, we had running water for about five minutes one afternoon (some people heard the toilets filling), but besides that we just fill buckets outside and filter it for drinking or use it for bathing/washing. Each bedroom has a bathroom, but sadly mine doesn’t have a toilet; we have a squat toilet (think a hole with a ceramic block on each side for your feet). We all mostly use the latrine outside, which is quite literally a cement floor with a hole in the middle – it requires less maintenance than the one in our room. At the training center we have two bathrooms with real toilets and mirrors on the wall (the only time we actually see ourselves) and five latrines outside. Peace Corps let us use the bathrooms for the first few days, but then strongly recommended that we stick to the latrines outside (woohooo). The bathroom and water situation is always such a challenge, especially when walking around town, so I carry a full Nalgene of filtered water and a roll of toilet paper everywhere I go.

So what’s town like you may ask? It’s about three blocks of cement one-story buildings on the main road and a few dirt off-shoots. You can find just about everything in town or in the market (Nyanza has the largest market in all of Rwanda). Cadbury chocolate has been our most recent indulgence. There are three primary restaurants in town, which are where all 70 of us descend Saturday nights and all day Sundays when Peace Corps doesn’t feed us. Today in language class we started learning how to bargain in Kinyarwanda, which will hopefully help us get food in the market and cook for ourselves (on a charcoal stove) instead of walking forty minutes into town for food. On top of struggling in the market, we also have a hard time starting a charcoal fire in a country that does not have lighter fluid. All of these skills need to be perfected before we go out to our sites because once we are out there we are on our own and if it takes me over an hour to start a fire and another hour to boil water, I will just give up on cooking all together.

Speaking of sites, we find out on Thursday where our sites are. On Saturday we have the day to prepare and figure out transportation, and then next week we go out to our sites for a four day visit to get our bearings and to meet our supervisors and umudugudu (village) chiefs. I don’t have a ton of details about the trip yet, but from what we’ve heard we are responsible for getting to our villages and we will stay in our houses if they are ready; if not we will stay with our counterpart (our mentor during our two years at site). We will have some medical, security, and tech surveys to complete to learn as much as we can about our village and provide Peace Corps with all the information they need in case of emergency (we have to draw a map to the house in case we have to be evacuated and if available we have to note an area where a medevac helicopter can land). It sounds a little crazy, but with 150 volunteers in Rwanda, Peace Corps has to plan and prepare for the worst case scenarios.

 I don't have much more to say except for PLEASE send me emails with info about current events and such (who knew there was a tsunami in Indonesia?!) because the internet is so slow we can't load CNN or BBC websites. Also, please send me emails - I feel incredibly disconnected from everyone at home and though it has only been three weeks, I want to hear about what everyone has been up to!

Boiled Potatoes and Pineapple

I wrote this about a week ago, but every day I have come to post it, the internet either doesn't work or there isn't any electricity. But I guess it's better late then never. The internet is SO slow, so don't expect pictures anytime soon. For your reading pleasure, enjoy the essay on my first 2 weeks in Rwanda:

Muraho! Hello! Sorry it has taken me over a week to post a blog; Peace Corps has been keeping us incredibly busy and any free time I have is spent studying or sleeping. You all probably want to know how Rwanda is and to put it simply, it’s beautiful. I walk out my door every morning and look out over the mist-covered mountains and cannot believe I’m actually here. And then I begin my walk to the training center (1.5 miles up hill, both ways, in the rain) every day and curse the altitude and the hills J No, but seriously, this country is gorgeous; we have amazing mountain views during the day and at night the stars, Jupiter and the Milky Way guide us home (we often trip or walk into someone because we are looking up too much).This post will hopefully not be too long, but I can’t make any promises; a lot has happened in the last week and a half and I really want to fill you all in.

            We arrived in Kigali on October 22 (I think) and went straight to the conference center, where we spent 3 days getting basic overviews of topics such as Safety and Security, Health, Administrative (banking, valuable storage, etc.), Language and Cross Culture, and Rwandan History. We went non-stop from 7 AM to 7 PM every day while in Kigali; Peace Corps had a lot of administrative stuff to take care of and we needed to have a basic understanding of exactly what is expected of us and what the next three months of training will require of us. We got shots, deposited valuables in a safe, and were given a “Walking Around Allowance” of 28,000 RWF for nineteen days (about $2.50 a day), which has been more than enough for me. Peace Corps gave us an intense medical kit that has everything you could ever need in it: malaria prophylaxis, malaria slide kit (yes, we have to stab our fingers and make blood slides for testing and yes, we had to practice) and meds in case we get malaria, bandaids, antibiotics, rehydration salts, ace bandage, sunscreen, dental floss, chap stick…literally, everything.

One afternoon we were able to go visit the Genocide Memorial Center, which is a museum as well as a cemetery for all the victims from Kigali City (they continue to add remains as more bodies are found, which continues 16 years later). There are currently 250,000 bodies buried at the center in large cement tombs. We each placed individual roses on one tomb and Peace Corps placed one large arrangement that read “Never Forget”. We then went into the museum, which documented the evolution of ethnic tensions in Rwanda, the execution of the genocide, the reaction (or lack there of) of the international community, and the gacaca courts (local trials that allowed victims and survivors of the genocide to seek justice over the perpetrators). After the history and seeing the graphic images of the atrocities, we walked through rooms of pictures of the victims; many of our LCFs (Language and Cross Cultural Facilitators) recognized some people in the photos and were extremely emotional, which certainly made the history even more real, but still incomprehensible for someone who did not experience it. Finally, on the top floor there was a room of children’s pictures and a brief bio. This is the room that I almost lost it in. Seeing pictures of little babies whose best friends were their sisters and mothers really touched close to home; I can’t imagine losing my whole family overnight. Children were targeted by the Hutus because they wanted to wipe out the next generation of Tutsis. They were so innocent and had yet to experience life and were killed because of ethnic hatred propagated by “mature” adults. I could write a whole blog post about the Center and the Genocide, so please ask questions if you want to know more.

Sunday morning we had a few sessions in the morning and then loaded the buses for Nyanza, which is a large town about 2 hours south of Kigali, where we will be spending the next three months. I am living in Laundry House with twelve other girls and three LCFs. We have charcoal stoves to cook on, no running water (YAY bucket baths!), squat toilets (a hole in the ground), bunk beds, water filters that make the water taste horrible, but luckily we have electricity. The house is actually really nice and we have all pretty much adjusted to our new daily routines, though bug bites are proving to be an ever-present challenge. Since arriving in Nyanza about a week ago we have had training every day. Breakfast is at 7, so we leave the house around 6:45 to get there close to on time and then usually we come home after dinner, which is a solid 12 hours later. Everyday we have language class (about 3.5 hrs) and tech training for teaching, while about once a week we have sessions on health, safety and security, and cross culture.

The cross cultural component has been filled by time with our resource families (basically host families that we eat with twice a week, but don’t live with). I have a mother named Dina and six siblings. I am pretty sure only one of the children goes to school (despite school being free for the first 9 years, schools still require students to contribute money each trimester, so many families cannot send all the children to school) and he is also the only one in the house who speaks a little English, while the others only speak Kinyarwanda. I will be having dinner with them every Wednesday and Friday and hopefully spending a couple more afternoons a week with them. They have a small cement house with no electricity, three cows, a bunch of rabbits, chickens, and a lot of fruit and vegetable plots. We spend a lot of time practicing Kinyarwanda and English, but I’m hoping that soon we will be comfortable enough to go on adventures in the community so I can practice the language more. To demonstrate the challenge of communication here, I will share a funny story: On Saturday I showed up for dinner and sadly they were not expecting me (the schedule changed this week and they thought I was coming Friday, so had prepared a meal for me then), so I was lucky enough to have cold boiled potatoes, pineapple, and a Fanta for dinner. Meanwhile my friends were all eating meat, cassava bread, pineapple, beans, rice, and beer. For the most part I am completely dependent on the Resource Family Coordinator to tell them when I’m coming and sadly he hasn’t managed that successfully yet, so I am working on learning the days of the week and time, so I can inform them myself. Hopefully they will be expecting me this week!

In other news, we got bikes! After doing road/drainage maintenance in Nyanza Saturday morning for umuganda (required community service once a month for everyone over 18), we played a couple hours of soccer and then in the afternoon the Peace Corps distributed brand new Avalanche mountain bikes to all of us with helmets, pumps, lights, repair kits, and locks. If the bike is stolen, we have to pay for the loss, but they are really nice and once we are all used to the hills, they will hopefully prove to be useful means of transport. Sunday was Halloween, so we of course had to celebrate. Everyone in Laundry House dressed up as ninjas and we made numchucks out of cardboard and duct tape and met up with a majority of trainees at a bar in town that has one of the sketchiest “clubs” I’ve been in, but hey it was fun to be super American for a few hours. Six AM came a little too early Monday morning though; Rwandan coffee is not strong enough to help fuel a trainee for the day, but I survived.

I know this post has been all over the place, but so much has happened and I’m sure I’ve forgotten to mention all of the high points, but once I get into more of a routine (right now we are all gasping for air and free time), I will keep this updated on a much more regular basis and target my posts to discuss certain issues/events. I want to share everything I learn about this dynamic country and hopefully encourage a dialogue between you all and myself over the next 27 months. We haven’t really had the opportunity to leave the Peace Corps bubble yet, but from the little time I have spent out in the community I know that the next two years will be incredibly challenging, but also incredibly rewarding. I look forward to sharing it all with you and hope that you will keep me posted on happenings in the United States. I miss you all and cannot wait to hear from you!

Love,

Sarah