A Note on Personal Relationships – Struggles and Successes of Maintaining and Forging Relationships in the U.S. and Rwanda

I would argue that maintaining relationships in the U.S. and forging new ones in Rwanda has been one of the greatest challenges I’ve faced in Rwanda. I had heard that maintaining a connection with home was difficult and that making true friends in a very reserved society like Rwanda is no easier and I can say that both have proven true. After being in Rwanda for nearly eight months (can you believe it’s been that long cause I can’t!), I have found communicating with friends and family at home has been a struggle. It is so hard to maintain a connection when our lives are so different; all of my friends are doing their thing in cities up and down the East Coast, while I’m off living in an African village. It’s not easy for them to understand what my life is like here and I have a hard time hearing about their seemingly exciting urban lives which I often find myself envying. Even when I look on Facebook and see they are off to a concert or the theater or out on the town for a night, I can’t help but think about how our lives have diverged. A crazy night here in Ruhuha is going out until 7, baking cookies with the girls on a charcoal stove, watching movies, and laughing a lot – far different from the lives twenty-something year olds are living in Boston, D.C., or NYC.

Then you fall to the problem of talking and communicating. I often find myself calling home only to be told to call back another time or being told that they will call me soon now that they have my number or send me a letter or package and then I go months without hearing from them. I have yet to get a piece of mail from a friend – Facebook posts and messages are nice, but there is something special about getting a letter ($1 to send) or a small package ($15). My family has done well and I’m always so happy to hear from them, but I always get jealous when I hear from a fellow PCV how they got an awesome letter, newspaper articles, or a flash drive full of music and movies from their friends. After talking with some other PCV friends, my concerns over and frustrations with maintaining friendships in the U.S. seem to be pretty common and a big stressor for a lot of volunteers during their service; for the first couple of months people are super supportive but then interest just dies down and it’s really easy to drift apart. So, if I could enter a plea to those of you in the U.S. – please try to stay in touch. I miss you all dearly and try to communicate as best I can, but would like it to be more of a two-way street. I don’t want to come back in two years and be strangers.

Now on to making friends – real friends – in Rwanda; it’s not easy. There are three people (one English speaker, one French speaker, and one Kinyarwanda only speaker) who I totally trust and know I can go to with any problems or just to hang out. One of them, I spend hours laughing with every week. Unfortunately, they are all Mamas, so despite the fact that I am very close with them, we have very little in common because our lives are so different. I am desperately in need of young single girlfriends, but that is also a struggle because most of the girls my age are still in Secondary School, at university, or have finished their secondary studies and still live at home and are treated very much like children. Even for me, people call me a girl and it is difficult for me to get people to take me seriously despite the fact that I am capable of taking care of myself and have finished university. But that doesn’t mean that I’ve given up and I’m starting to make some progress. Last week I was visiting a family in the village and a single nurse was there and turns out she lives in Ruhuha, so I am determined to befriend her. As mentioned in my previous post, last night I had a meeting with a group of girls and I shamelessly made it known that I need some single friends and if they ever want to do anything, to let me know. Please don’t think I’m lonely cause by no means is that the case, I just miss the sort of friendships I had in the U.S. with all my girlfriends and would very much like to find one or two close girlfriends here. Mamas are great, but they have kids, a lot of housework, and other obligations that prevent them from filling the void completely. Last week two female volunteers from Bugesera came to visit for the night and reminded me how fun it was to have a girls’ night with friends who are my age. I know I’ll have to tread carefully because I am still the outsider and people have many different reasons – good and bad - for wanting to get close to me, but at this point not having young friends seems to be the only thing lacking here.

One really exciting development has been the changes in the relationship between me and my host family. Mama and Papa Robert are very private people and despite our cordial relationship, we never really talked much unless there was a problem. A couple weeks ago I had a bad cold and Mama Robert brought me food and tea multiple times a day. I’ve started bringing them food that I bake or American food that is sent to me. I had never been invited to visit them or do anything very personal…until this weekend. Last night I was invited to have dinner with Mama, Papa, and Providence (their truck driver who lives here too) at their house. It was really nice; we talked a little and watched t.v. for a bit after. Then, this morning Mama invited me to have tea and bread for breakfast. This may not seem like much, but I’m excited about these baby steps and really hope that we will become a lot closer over the coming weeks and months.

Sorry if this blog seemed like I was complaining a lot; that wasn’t the intent. I really just want people at home to know how difficult it is for me to go without hearing from them and how I really miss the friendships I have in the U.S. – they are so very important to me and I am trying to recreate them here because of how happy they make me. Anyways, I am off to relax for a bit before Mama Luange and her 3 year old daughter, Luange, come to visit this afternoon. I miss you all and really hope to hear from some of you soon!!

Settling Into a Very Busy Rhythm

As many of you know, I am not one to keep much free time for myself; I like to stay busy and get involved in many different things. For the last five months I’ve been becoming more and more stir crazy; teaching sixteen hours a week was not enough and I was struggling to get other projects up and running. Well, I can now say that has changed for the better. I now have my hands in many different pots and there are some exciting prospects for secondary projects. So all and all, things are looking up and I’m more motivated and excited about the coming weeks and months.

                All in all, teaching is going well and I am starting to have fun with it. I teach listening and speaking to S1 and S2, which means that no one really cares what I am teaching; students take the national exam in S3 and the exam doesn’t test on listening or speaking, so in the eyes of the administration at school, what I am teaching is relatively inconsequential. So, I might as well have fun. I have my S2s working on making a newspaper in groups, which has been a huge challenge because it involves so many new skills and creative thinking on their part. The whole concept of anything being OK and correct in terms of titles, sections, subjects of cartoons, etc. is very difficult for these students who are often taught in a way that suggests that there is only one correct answer. My S1s are slowly improving; there has been an increase in participation from the students and marks on homework have increased all around – we’ll see how the first quiz of the term goes next week. Because I teach two, two hour, lessons four times each every week, I get pretty bored and sometimes feel bad for the students who are stuck with me at the end of the week because by that point I’m sick of answering the same questions a million times. So I’ve started to make myself laugh in class. A fellow volunteer told me how she makes her kids do jumping jacks as a punishment – the kids are embarrassed and the teacher gets a good laugh – so I’ve started to do something similar. I had a problem with kids doing work for other classes during English, so to nip that in the butt I now make students do push-ups if I catch them looking at their Biology book or copying Entrepreneurship notes. It is absolutely hilarious to watch and the kids are so embarrassed that they stay pretty focused on me for the rest of class. I have also gotten more strict, kicking students out if I have to tell them to stop talking multiple time or if there is any physical contact of any kind (hitting, punching, and stealing notebooks/pens was on the rise), but at the same time I feel the kids appreciate it. I put question buckets in classes at the beginning of the term and on a regular basis I get notes from students telling me how they love the class and if I’m out sick I get notes about them missing me. In a couple of classes I have finished the lesson to a round of applause which definitely feels good when you are tired of teaching for the day.

                So that’s about it for teaching students. I really wish I had my own class so I could really get to know the students and see them more than once a week, but I’ll definitely ask for a change next year. I teach Monday through Friday from 7:20 to 11, which is enough to leave me wanting a grande sugar-free vanilla americano, but now I’ve found myself working 10-12 hours Monday-Thursday, which leaves me wanting a triple shot americano. After teaching I usually do some marking for an hour before lunch and then eat with the teachers. After lunch I try to visit some people in the village or go to meetings with people to try to start secondary projects. Then, starting at 4 pm, I have to be back at school Monday-Wednesday. Monday afternoons is English club for students. On Tuesdays I teach English to the Secondary teachers. And on Wednesday, I teach the Primary teachers.

                Since I’ve arrived I’ve really wanted to get involved in projects outside of teaching; community development is something I really love and working with the community that I live with seemed like a great way to get to know people. That has taken longer than I had hoped, but now project ideas are starting to fall into place. At school I’m starting to work on a school feeding program for Tuesdays and Thursdays. A couple of years ago Bugesera District suffered from a horrible draught and many families couldn’t feed their children, so the World Food Program stepped up and started a school feeding program at all the schools in the District. Unfortunately, this was just a program of handouts and when the WFP decided to cut the handouts to three days a week, they didn’t give any help to the schools to figure out how to supply food to their kids on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Though my headmaster has known about the cuts since January, a search for a solution did not start until last week when the cutback started. So, the kids now go all day with no food twice a week and the teachers complain more than any grown adults I’ve known. They like to say that with no food there is no life, which I suppose is true, but not eating lunch twice a week until 3 pm is not the end of the world. They and the students had become so accustomed to these handouts, that when it was cut they started to blame the school and said it had to feed the kids, but with the cuts, the schools did not get an increase in their operating budgets, so they don’t have money to buy food for nearly 700 people. So, along with some teachers and hopefully some parents, we are going to start working on a budget and figure out a contribution scheme for parents, teachers, and the school so that all parties are invested in the system and the sole responsibility does not fall on the parents or the school. I’m looking to put a Plan of Action together this week and begin discussing with the teachers and the headmaster to get a budget together. From there we can have a discussion with parents and teachers to determine who can contribute what. From what I’ve heard, the maximum needed to feed students twice a week for a month is about $1.20 US, so hopefully if the cost is divided amongst three groups, we can make this happen.

                Last week I had the opportunity to meet with the Social Affairs officer at the Sector Office and he helped to highlight some of the problems that I could help with in the community. Of course, the first thing he mentioned was teaching English, but I’m kind of trying to avoid expanding my English teaching; I know that I have a lot more to offer than just teaching people English and I’m getting pretty tired of my days being taken up with teaching English to students and teachers. He also discussed job creation for youth and women, HIV/AIDS, family planning, alcohol and drug awareness, all of which I would be very interested in working on. We decided that we would have a joint meeting with the Youth Council and the Women’s Council this Wednesday and discuss with them what they would be interested in working on. Stay tuned for more info on that later this week.

                Last night I had a meeting with a small group of girls who are my age. My reason for meeting with them was two-fold: I want more single girlfriends and I feel like this big push for girls’ education and gender balance serves girls who are going to school and for university educated women who are competing for jobs in bigger towns or the city. There seems to be a gap for girls who have finished secondary school and don’t continue on to university. There is no sort of support system or public campaign for low-level jobs for secondary school educated girls, one reason is because so many children finish secondary school and don’t continue to university leaving a huge difference between the number of available low-level jobs and the huge number of young adults looking for work in the villages and small towns. So I asked a shopkeeper who I have become very close with to help me put together a group of girls to see what they had to say. For the most part their ideas required a lot of money (starting a jewelry and women’s clothing shop), but one idea really stuck out – creating a cultural center where people can learn traditional dances, music, and crafts. These are skills that the girls are able to teach and it would provide them with a job and the community as a whole could benefit from it. I told them that I want to focus on ideas that will help give them a job or experience, but also be something that more than just this small group of girls would benefit from. Whether it is starting a public campaign to help the many prostitutes in Ruhuha or starting some sort of cooperative that could be used as a model for others, I want them to think of more than what they want and think of things that they could support and others will learn from. I don’t know if this will turn into anything, but we are meeting again on Thursday to see what else they were able to think of.

                Between teaching students and teachers, starting projects at school, and holding discussions in the communities, I am really busy and loving every minute of it. It is really nice to hear people’s ideas and see how our skills and ideas can work together to benefit people within a specific group or community. Usually when I come home at 6 every night, I function for maybe another hour/hour and a half and then I enter a semi-vegetative state and pass out by 8:30. By Friday, technically my day off, I try to sleep in to 8 or 9, but then I always find myself running to school to work on something or appeasing the many mamas who call during the week asking me to visit and I have to politely tell them I’m really busy. Peace Corps really is turning into a 24/7 job; even if I’m not doing any formal teaching or working on projects, I still have to be “on” – talking to people in the community in Kinyarwanda and visiting people. In the U.S. if I go to visit a friend or family I can relax and joke around, but here I’m still the foreigner and the differences in culture and language can often make visits exhausting and stressful. Going for a walk or running errands is also a challenge; people are yelling “muzungu”, or “Salah Salah” (that r in the middle is a struggle for Rwandans), talking to me in fast Kinyarwanda (cause a few too many people have spread the rumor that I’m fluent in the language). The smile has to always be there; anonymity is never an option when you are the only foreigner in a community. Though I might be singing a different tune in a month or so, for right now, I wouldn’t have things any other way.