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!