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…).