Holidays and hard work...

Turkey Day shenanigans have been had.  I will always remember this as the Thanksgiving that I walked a mile carrying ten liters of milk on my head.  And because this is Rwanda, it was most definitely an uphill journey.  So what was on the menu?  For the most part, we managed to scrounge up all the traditional dishes and trimmings: turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, gravy, apple crisp, pineapple cake (maybe that’s not so traditional…), chai, and apple cider.  And with a little creativity, we concocted a delicious cranberry-esque sauce out of the plum jam that boldly proclaims itself to be “for human use.”  I used it well.

There were about fifty of us cooking over the span of two days.  It seems a bit ridiculous to have that sort of manpower, but we cooked the entire meal without the aid of electricity.  Believe me, producing enough food to feed over 100 people, using only small charcoal barbeque contraptions is no mean feat.  It was most definitely a two-day operation that required much ingenuity.  By the end of it, most of us had contributed at least some blood, sweat, and tears.

To cook the turkeys, the guys dug a giant pit in the backyard of one of the houses, and we roasted those birds luau-style for about twelve hours.  It was a beautiful moment, seeing the fully cooked fowl being brought up from the depths of the earth, roasted to perfection!  Well, I think we may have surpassed perfection just a little and moved into the realm of slightly dry, but we were all just so glad to see meat that was not unidentifiable or trailing entrails that nobody cared.  The birds came special delivery all the way from Kigali, and it was well worth it for that little taste of home.

The residents of Nyanza probably thought that all the abazungu had gone completely insane in the days leading up to Thanksgiving.  We went to the market to purchase onions, and none of the vendors would believe that yes, we really did want 13 kilos of onions.  My favorite statistic, though?  90 kilos of potatoes.  It took an army of us to peel them all on Wednesday night.  We also had quite a time transporting all the food from our various houses to the training center; we attracted quite a crowd, walking down the road carrying charcoal barbeques and giant pots of stuffing.  And the word for “pot” has now been burned into my brain forever: isafuriya!

Some things, unfortunately, did get a little lost in translation.  As many of you may already know, my favorite ingredient in virtually anything is butter.  Well, we ran out of the butter we bought in Butare, and had to scrounge around Nyanza for a suitable substitute.   Here’s some helpful advice to anyone traveling to Africa: if you can’t find the word for butter, do not ask for “amavuta y’inkwa.”  We thought we were being so clever, asking for “cow oil.”  Well, what we got was…interesting.  It gave the stuffing a certain parmesan cheese flair that ,while not entirely unpalatable, was a bit of an unwelcome surprise.    But overall, this Thanksgiving was a smashing success, even if we didn’t buy the one pumpkin in all of Rwanda.

And now, insects.  Africa has not had nearly as many terrifying critters as I had been mentally steeling myself to encounter.  That being said, there is a certain bug that looks very similar to a giant worm with wings.  Louise, my resource family mom, explained to me that they are especially prevalent during the rainy season.  They are talented swarmers, but that is also their downfall.  One night, I was visiting Louise when the bugs got so bad that we decided it was time to take action.  We turned off the lights, lit a decoy candle, and waited patiently in the dark.  Soon, the bugs were all landing around the candle ands mesmerized by its glow, staggering drunkenly about the table.  Then it was an easy task to grab them, fling then on the floor, and squish them.  They make a satisfying crunch.  Afterward, we turned the lights back on, swept the bugs into a neat little pile, and lit them on fire.  It was a productive evening.

YesterdayI also got the chance to be productive in a more useful sort of way.  The last Saturday of every month is designated as "Umuganda," which is a time when the whole community gets together and works on clean-up or development projects.  Our task was to clear grass out of the dirt drainage ditches beside the road.  Our weapons of choice (or necessity, as the case may be)? Hoes.  Yes, there were many bad hoe jokes.  Let's just say that, being the talented hoer that I am, I definitely tapped that grass.  I now have blisters on my palms as proof of my morning of hard manual labor.  That makes up for me not being around to rake leaves, right mom and dad?  Those blisters make a nice complement to my laundry blisters.  In Rwanda, your hands are your washing machine, and the laundry soap is roughly the equivalent of acid.  My hands smell fresh and clean for an entire day after I do my laundry…you can always tell when someone has cleaned their clothes that morning, because the delicate scent of Omo powder swirls gently around them for the rest of the day.

Oh, and I finally got around to figuring out what my address is! It will probably change once I move to Higiro, but for now, it is:

Peace Corps Rwanda

BP 5657

Kigali, Rwanda

Amahoro! (That means "peace" in Kinyarwanda…and yes, it is pronounced exactly like you think it is.  New favorite word? Absolutely…).

One month later...

First of all, a few words about socks and toothpicks.  I was expecting there to be huge culture shocks when I moved to Rwanda.  After all, how could there not be? But what’s really been most surprising to me has been the little things that catch me off guard and remind me again and again that I’m not in Kansas anymore.

            Rwandans are immaculate dressers.  I don’t know how they do it.  It’s like they have an aura about their pant cuffs that repels the ever-present gooey red mud.  I can barely walk ten feet without looking like I just trudged my way through an episode of Dexter, while the Rwandans manage to always look freshly pressed and ironed, even during the rainiest of days.  More than once, I’ve felt as though my entire wardrobe is completely inadequate, especially for any sort of professional setting.  Then I discovered The Socks (and yes, this is a phenomenon that deserves capitalization, even when spoken aloud).

            The Socks cannot be purchased in a neatly wrapped ten-pack, the way we do back in the States.  Instead, you go to the market and delve into a pile of used (some more obviously than others) clothing, trying desperately to find a matching pair.  The matching is important, but the actual appearance of The Socks does not seem to matter all that much.  For example, I was sitting in a bar with my one of the teachers at my school and some of his friends.  One of these men was the lieutenant in charge of the army outpost near my village.  This was not a man to be trifled with.  In fact, he was a bit intimidating.  Then I looked down and saw something bright pink peeking out from the top of his shoe.  Closer inspection (done with the utmost tact and subtly, of course) revealed that his socks were not only pink, but decorated with a frolicking kitten motif.  Suddenly, I felt a little more at ease.  I’m pretty sure that The Socks will continue to be an ongoing source of quiet enjoyment for me over the next two years.

            Dinners here can sometimes be somewhat awkward.  There’s the language barrier to deal with, and the simple fact that the food is occasionally completely disgusting.  Thankfully, toothpicks are able to alleviate some of the uncomfortable silences that I’ve experienced over the last month.  I never used toothpicks back home, aside from testing to see if my muffins were finished baking.  However here in Rwanda, toothpicks are a big deal.  After each meal, we sit around the table, filling the postprandial silence by picking our teeth and avoiding eye contact.  Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but there is a definite lull in the conversation, when everyone arms themselves with a little stick of wood and starts digging away at their teeth.  And each person has their own unique technique--some people start from the back and work their way forward, some go right to left or left to right, some hide their actions behind one hand, some chew and spit, and still others sporadically pick between sips of the traditional after-meal icayi.  I’ve yet to find the technique that feels right, but I’m sure I’ll know it when I do.

            And now on to more important matters!  I’ve been in Rwanda for an entire month!    Training has been intense, not only due to content, but also owing to the fact that I have very little free time or alone time.  Last week, though, we got our first taste of what life was going to be like come January, when we spent five days visiting our permanent sites.

            My village is called Higiro, and has about 3000 people in it.  It’s in the Southern province, seven kilometers from the Burundi border.  That’s right...I can see Burundi from my house.  It’s about 45 minutes away from Butare, which is a large college town containing ice cream and peanut butter.  And the easiest way to get from Butare to Higiro?  Motorcycle taxi.  Yup, I am now officially a bad-ass biker chick.  Or as bad-ass as I can manage to be, while wearing my giant Peace Corps issued moto helmet.  The moto drivers perhaps lean a bit toward the lunatic end of the spectrum when it comes to driving skills, but that might also be partly due to the fact that the road out to my village is unpaved and could kindly be called rustic.  At one point, we got delayed for several minutes behind a herd of cows.  And because it’s Rwanda, everything is on a severe incline.  One of my moto drivers would slow down and make the sign of the cross every time we successfully made it to the top of a hill.  I’m pretty sure that many a Muzungu has found religion on the back of a moto taxi...

            Higiro was just starting a week of umuganda when I arrived.  Umuganda literally means “community work,” and the entire village was out planting flowers, fixing roofs, constructing latrines, and actually building a new addition to the primary school.  The district council tries to plan umuganda so that it coincides with the trimester breaks for school so that the kids can all be involved.  And they were out in full force, digging, planting, and just generally schmoozing. 

            The school that I’ll be working at is a secondary school, grades S1-S3, which roughly translates to 6-8th grade.  The ages of the students varies greatly, however: some are teen-agers, but there are a few that are older than I am.  Due to the genocide, many kids my age had their schooling severely interrupted for many years, and are just now trying to take advantage of the increased government emphasis on education.  Plus, many kids can’t afford to pay the school fees each year and drop out for awhile, or simply have to stay home some trimesters to take care of domestic obligations.  This is, of course, especially true for the girls.  Many of the students I talked to were extremely interested in starting an English club, and I would love to also be able to spearhead a creative writing, poetry, or journalism club.

            My village does not have running water or electricity.  I have now officially learned  how to bathe (and wash my hair) while using roughly two liters of cold water.  Yes, I feel accomplished! And not entirely clean.  I might have to go into Butare once a month or so  simply to have a real shower.  I was told that Higiro was supposed to have water and electricity last year, but that the government funds never materialized.  I was also told that this should be fixed by January.  Then again, I was told that a lot of things were going to be happening in January.  I have a healthy degree of skepticism about all that--maybe next, Rwanda will join the E.U. in January!

            My house is right down the road from the school.  It’s also directly across from the medical center, which I find reassuring.  There are already potatoes planted in my backyard, so the leprechaun in me did a little happy jig.  And my view is absolutely spectacular.  I get to look out across the rolling hills and valleys, filled with misty banana groves.  Of course, my view is especially amazing right now due to the fact that it is unobstructed by such trifling obstacles as walls.  Yeah, my house is still under construction.  In fact, I think they started building it after I can to visit.  I distinctly remember walking by that way earlier in the week, and I’m pretty sure that there was no house there...So we’ll see what happens in January!

            Okay, I was going to write about what it takes to cook and do laundry here, but I’ve already written a ridiculous amount and will save that for another time.  So goodbye for now, far-away friends! And happy Thanksgiving!

Upate!

Hello friends, from the land of a thousand hills!  Already, my calves are becoming my most well-used muscles.  By the end of the next two years, I'm sure my they will look disproportionately toned.

So what's been going on in my life for the last week and a half? The quick answer is: a lot.  We arrived in Kigali last Thursday night, after 16 hours in airplanes, and a surprisingly painless layover in Belgium.  Walking across the tarmac into the airport, I didn't feel like I was in a foreign country yet, much less halfway across the world.  It was a bit of a shock, however, going from a cold and wet autumn to a warm and humid spring.  My system has mostly adjusted now (and don't worry mom, I haven't gotten a sunburn…yet…).

Kigali has a distinct smell that I noticed right away as soon as I got off the airplane.  There's a constant haze that hangs low over the city, and the whole area is permeated through and through with the aroma of woodsmoke.  But that's been no problem for me--I've survived more than my fair share of wildfire seasons!

The days here start early.  Because we're so close to the equator, the sun rises around five thirty and sets again around six at night.  I pretend to complain like everyone else, but the cheerfully obnoxious morning person in me is secretly rejoicing.  Where we stayed in Kigali is very near a mosque, and more than one day I woke up to the morning call to prayer.  It was nice to lay in bed and just listen, then wait while the sounds of the city slowly emerged with the sun.  Rwandans are very big on cleanliness, and there was a constant stream of women out sweeping the sidewalks each morning with their twig brooms and chattering softly in Kinyarwanda.  The roosters were not so quiet.  I have a very satisfying sense of personal vengeance whenever chicken is served at dinner.

I've gotten my first experience sleeping under a mosquito net! Malaria isn't nearly as prevalent in Rwanda as in many other African nations, but we still have to take anti-malaria drugs and use mosquito nets at night.  The anti-malaria drugs have given me some of the strangest dream in my entire life; at least I won't be lacking for any sort of entertainment while I'm here!  Everyone is feeling a bit under the weather from a combination of stress, medication, and vaccinations.  I've lost track of the number of shots that I've had to endure since getting here, but it's almost made up for by the fact that the doctor is French beyond belief. Almost, but not quite.

We were only in Kigali for three hectic days before heading out to Nyanza, so I didn't get a chance to see too much of the city itself.  We were able to go for a few walks, but mostly just stayed at the training center.  Whenever we did venture out, we got stared at.  A lot.  This, more than anything else, has taken a lot of getting used to.  The old women especially have this look that they give you--it's not necessarily antagonistic, it just seems to say, "why are you here?"  The little children, on the other hand, will run up to us and grab our hands, chanting "Muzungu!", which is their word for foreigner or white person.  It's not a derogatory term, but it took me a while to stop flinching every time someone shouted it at me.

And now for what you all really want to know--how are the bathrooms?  Well, better than I expected!  I haven't taken a hot shower yet, but it's warm enough outside that a cool shower is actually kind of refreshing.  At least, that's what I keep telling myself.  All the roads, even the paved ones, are covered in a thin layer of red dirt, and the dust gets everywhere.  Every time I wear flip-flops, I come home to find my feet coated in the stuff.  It's already stained my khaki pants.  And when it rains, all the dust turns to a thick sludgy substance that gets everywhere. The rain here is incredible.  We're not in the rainy season yet, but there have still been a few torrential downpours.  Unlike Seattle, though, it will only rain for a few minutes, then the sun will come back out and bake the land back into submission.  I managed to get caught in a downpour the other day--it lasted for the entire five minutes I was outside, then stopped as soon as I made it to my destination.  In the late afternoons and evenings, there is often lightning and thunder, thanks to the heat and the humidity.  And the stars at night are incredible.  Often, the electricity fails by mid-afternoon, so the town is mostly dark and the stars are out in full force.  Next time I'm in Kigali, I want to track down a star chart so I know which constellations I'm looking at.

We spent most of our time in Kigali doing the standard orientation rigamarole.  At one point, a small group of us went down into the more central area of town, where merely crossing the street is an exercise in recklessness.  You have to be willing to simply step out in front of oncoming traffic and stare down anyone who looks like they aren't about to swerve.  It's especially tricky because the main form of transportation is the motorcycle taxis that weave in and out of traffic at breakneck speed.  The buses, however, are hilarious.  They're really just glorified vans, stuffed full to bursting with people.  The best part about them is their names, and the random English slogans they have printed on their sides and back windows.  There's the "Sorta Tours" buses, the "Volcano Tours" buses, the "Beyonce" bus, and my personal favorite, the very sage "No gain without the pain" bus.  I want to ride that one, but I'm afraid it might hurt me.

For me, the most difficult part of our time in Kigali was when we visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial.  It's actually two structures--the memorial courtyard outside and then the museum exhibits inside.  Unlike most of the other genocide memorials in Rwanda, this one isn't built on a site that has any special significance; instead, the government and the people decided to bury all the people who were killed in Kigali during the genocide at that spot and have it serve as a memorial.  It was sobering to walk into the courtyard and know that there were over 250,000 people buried around me.  The coffins themselves, most of which hold the remains of multiple people or entire families, are covered by giant raised slabs of concrete.  One of the concrete slabs had a glass window in it so you could look down and actually see the coffins below.  I didn't look long, only for as long as it took to put a red rose on the grave and move on.  The museum itself had three different sections to it: the first part focused on the events of the genocide in Rwanda, the second part focused on other notorious genocides throughout the 20th century, and the last part was dedicated to the children that were killed in Rwanda.

I think it would have been easy to leave the memorial feeling completely disillusioned and hopeless.  And in a way, I did.  It's hard to see some of humanity's worst moments neatly cataloged and displayed.  The most moving part was the room dedicated to the children, where family members had donated pictures of the victims to the museum.  I think it really hit me when I realized that these children would be my age right now if they hadn't been killed.  It made me feel both incredibly lucky and incredibly overwhelmed.  But what's even more overwhelming is talking to Rwandans and learning how their country is healing and moving forward.  Obviously, I can't even begin to speak for them, and I'm sure that some of the things I heard have been broad generalizations, but there is such a feeling of hope in the country right now.  Maybe it sounds silly and corny, but I'm really proud that I get to be here at this time, to work with these amazingly resilient people, and maybe even do my small part to continue the healing process.

We're doing our actually training in the town of Nyanza.  The drive up here from Kigali was only about 80 kilometers, but it took about three hours.  I'm still getting used to African time, and the rather more fluid sense of scheduling that seems to operate here.  Schedules are a polite fiction that we all pretend to adhere to.  It's cute the way that it gets posted on the wall at the beginning of each week.  Anyway, the drive to Nyanza was long but absolutely stunning.  As I learned in Kinyarwanda, "Rwanda ni heza!" And it's true--the land is ridiculously green.  It looks like everything is just bursting with life and the desire to grow.  I've had the most amazing pineapple while I've been here.  And those of you who know of my tortured history with pineapples in foreign lands will understand the real impact of that statement…the best thing, though, might just be the avocados.  They are at least twice as large as the wimpy little things we get back in the states.  I could pretty much just live on them, and I might, as cooking is a very involved process.  There aren't ovens here, at least not in the sense that we would think of.  Instead, we've been using charcoal grills to cook everything.  It's a delicate balancing act, getting a pot of rice to cook over hot coals.  Even more fun is the fact that the cutting board is an exotic tool here.  Each trainee has been assigned a "resource family" who is supposed to help us learn more Kinyarwanda and acclimate to Rwandan culture.  The other night, our assignment was to cook dinner with them.  Suddenly, I was five years old again and bumbling about the kitchen.  But let me tell you, when someone hands you a carrot, a dull cleaver, and instruction to peel it by slicing toward your thumb, you begin to think inappropriately passionate thoughts about microwaves and peanut butter.  My resource family, though, has been pretty wonderful so far.  They have two little boys, Willy and John, and on my first visit, we discovered a mutual love of strange animal noises and karate chops.  I'm proud so say that I taught them to call me "Peace Corps Ninja."  This might be my best moment thus far…

We've been given mountain bikes and giant dorky helmets to help us get around.  It was funny--the people were finally not gawking at us very much, and then we got bikes and became a spectacle all over again.  In a moment of frustrated cultural insensitivity, I dubbed mine Sir Arthur Muzoomgu, the Muzungu-mobile.  I call him Arthur in public, and reserve his full name for special occasions only.  I haven't seriously ridden a bicycle in years, and the hills around Rwanda are not going to be forgiving on my poor, weak legs.  I'll definitely be working up to full mobility--but it was rather reassuring to see Rwandans walking their bicycles up the hills instead of pedaling furiously.

On an more technologically advanced note, I acquired a cell phone!  My number is 2500782848522, so y'all should call me sometime if you feel like hearing from another continent.  I don't have a Skype account yet, and since I don't have a computer, I probably won't bother.  So goodbye for now, and I shall try to update again when I have a trifecta of time, energy, and interesting news!