Sometimes, things get lost in translation. This phenomenon probably accounts for at least ninety percent of my failures to communicate in Rwanda. But sometimes, even when you say all the right things, the response is still completely nonsensical.
Rwandan children are the masters at this sort of subtle mind game. Case in point? The Kevins. My housemates' five young children have been visiting for the past month. Normally they live in Gisenyi, but came to Rubona for part of the Christmas holidays. As three of them clustered around my door, watching me unpack from two weeks of GLOW/BE camp (see previous post for a full explanation as to why I was already in a fragile state of mind), I asked them their names.
"Kevin!" the first boy chirped.
"Wowe, wi twande?" I asked the second boy.
"Kevin!" came the immediate reply.
At this point, I probably should have just cut my losses, closed my door, and gone to bed. Instead, with a growing suspicion of inevitable failure, I turned to the little girl.
"Wowe, wi twande?"
"Kevin!"
Now, it doesn't take a sharp investigative mind to deduce that at least one person in this scenario was not being entirely truthful. Sure, the truth might have been out there, but my bed was nearer. So I politely wished the Kevins a good night, schooed Brandon away from my pillow, and went to sleep.
Speaking of Brandon, he has recently gone through a growth spurt. I think he might be entering the rebellious teenage years, as he has taken to sulking near my scarves. I just hope he doesn't start bringing home any lady friends. I am not ready to be a grandmother.
It's been raining something biblical in Rwanda the past month, and I was dismayed, if not entirely surprised, by how much of my mountain had eroded while I had been away. Thankfully the main road is still perfectly passable, if a little worse for wear.
One beautifully sunny morning last week, I decided to trek down to Rusumo and go to the market. This is more or less my weekly routine; by now I know all the shortcuts and goat paths--I just put my feet on autopilot and my brain on pause for the hour it takes to get there.
The path to Rusumo isn't necessarily bad or treacherous, but it certainly qualifies as rustic. Especially the wooden bridges. Wooden bridges that are essentially a few (or just one) tree trunks. Wooden bridges that I have crossed dozens of times without a problem. Until suddenly, there was a problem.
The most worrisome of the bridges sits about seven feet above a muddy, rocky stream. It is hastily composed of two wooden logs, spaced just far enough apart as to make it impossible to cross comfortably. I've crossed it in the rain, in the mud, wearing flip-flops--so on this sunny morning, wearing hiking boots, I got overconfident. They say that pride comes before a fall, but I didn't expect such a literal demonstration of the old adage.
One moment I was happily skipping across the bridge, the next I was lying flat in the stream, murky red water running rampant over my new jeans, and profanity and hysterical laughter running rampant out my mouth. Looking back, I can tell that I've been in Rwanda for far too long. My first thought wasn't "oh no, I hope I'm not hurt" but rather, "oh no, how am I going to walk through town with all this mud on me?!"
Fortunately, my tolerance for abject humiliation is fairly high, and there was no way I was walking an hour back to my village just to get clean clothes. So it was off to the market, looking like a creature from the lagoon, and feeling like one too. But don't worry mom and dad, aside from my ego, I only had a few minor bruises on my leg and shoulder...
Monday 12 December 2011
Tuesday 6 December 2011
Somehow not like American camp...
Sometimes you teach so hard your pants fall down. That’s why it’s important to always wear long t-shirts on days when you can’t find your belt. And make sure you have clean underwear. Unfortunately, here in Rwanda, clean underwear is something of a luxury, especially at Camp GLOW/BE. So hitch up your trousers, ladies and gentlemen--it’s time to spend a few weeks at holiday camp. Are you ready?! Well, no worries, we sure weren’t…
First, allow me to set the stage. Imagine a quiet hilltop, almost devoid of human life. It’s rained recently, and the grass squishes and squelches with every step you take. A few cows amble by, seemingly impervious to the cold and damp. On three sides, the hilltop is surrounded by lake Burera, whose blue waters have turned steely grey from the thunderclouds looming overhead. A handful of red brick buildings lay scattered across the field—the classrooms, dorms, offices, and cafeteria of E.S. Kagogo. And standing in the middle of the field, awkwardly trying to look like they know what they’re doing, are a group of Peace Corps volunteers. Welcome to camp. There are no buses out.
Camps GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) and the wisely abbreviated BE (Boys Excelling) are camps aimed at educating Rwandan secondary school students about leadership, goal-setting, HIV/AIDS, and life skills in general. We decided to go for the complete set, and held one of each, back to back, for two straight weeks. And here’s the thing—it was a crazy, disorganized, stressful two weeks…but the students never knew. They had an awesome time, learned a lot, and went away with new skills and hopefully a desire to start clubs at their schools.
Life was medieval for two weeks. It started with the flea-infested dorms, and while I never quite got around the instituting my chamberpot policy, the slippery slope down to the latrines made it more and more tempting with each rainstorm. I somehow managed not to fall down once during the entire camp, and yet I was still covered in mud by the end of every day. The Rwandans, of course, all looked immaculate. Even after a year, I still don’t know how they manage to repel dirt from their clothes and shoes. This is a mystery that deserves further investigation, and perhaps its own Discovery Channel special.
By the end of the first night, everyone was so covered in bug bites that we all looked like the survivors of a nasty chicken pox epidemic. But we soldiered bravely on! The Rwandans that we were working with were absolutely amazing. We invited teachers from our schools and junior facilitators (Rwandan students) who had attended the camps last year. The junior facilitators especially were an inspiration. It was so wonderful to watch them step into a leadership role and really blossom as they worked with the students. Seeing them interact with the kids, and the way that the kids began to look up to them as role models, more than compensated for the bug bites, mud, rain, beans for every meal, and the rats.
Well, maybe not the rats. Continuing in the medieval theme, our boys camp had a few uninvited guests. Apparently, after the rats ate all my peanuts, they decided to move on to bigger and better prey. Peanuts are too easy. They just sit there, being salty. People, however……Fortunately, there is a shot for rabies. Unfortunately, there isn’t a shot for the trauma of watching a rat jump out of your bed one morning.
So, what else was interesting about camp? I went a week without washing my hair, and was complimented on my style. We had numerous dance parties (if and when the power was working), and I realized that even the students from the blind school and the deaf school can dance better than I can. For the talent show, the deaf girls performed a dance by putting the speakers on the floor and feeling the vibrations. It was one of my favorite moments from camp, for sure.
Another golden moment was doing condom demonstrations with the boys. You haven’t really lived until you’ve watched a Rwandan teacher trying to get a student’s attention by poking him with a wooden penis and shouting “Umva, umva!” over and over again. Teaching the kids how to do paper mache was also a lot of fun; I think over half of the boys made airplanes, which they then painted the colors of the Rwandan flag. That’s right, Camp BE was the official founding of the Rwandan airforce.
Mk folks, I’m heading off to Tanzania next week for a few weeks of adventures and relaxation at the beach. Happy holidays!
Wednesday 2 November 2011
You might be a PCV in Rwanda if...
Howdy folks! Sorry it’s been such a long time since my last blog post, but now that it’s the holidays, I might find myself in more frequent contact with the internet. October 22nd marked a huge milestone in my Peace Corps service—one year in Rwanda! So in honor of that momentous occasion, here is my personal list of things that I have learned, that have made an impact on me, or no longer seem odd. So without further delay…
You might be a Peace Corps volunteer in Rwanda if…
1. You refuse to walk outside in even the slightest drizzle
2. Pooping is your biggest accomplishment for the day…or the week…
3. 6:30 a.m. is sleeping in, and 9:30 p.m. is a wild and crazy night.
4. And for you, it is somehow easier, in the life, to become accustomed to speak English like this.
5. You refer to people as “that one there” and it no longer feels even a little rude.
6. You even occasionally refer to yourself as “this one here” and it just feels so right.
7. Your tailbone has been ground to dust thanks to hard benches and five-hour ceremonies.
8. You think that women look drab if they are wearing few than four distinct colors.
9. You can carry on an entire conversation using grunts and “mmmmmm” noises.
10. You passionately want Canada to give back The Ben.
11. You text while riding motos.
12. Text messages from MTN make you sad, because for a second you thought that you had friends.
13. All your socks have a permanent burnt sienna hue.
14. You put on the good-smelling sunscreen to disguise the fact that you haven’t bathed in several days—and that’s basically the only time you wear sunscreen.
15. You become fiercely territorial when there are unidentified abazungu in your village.
16. Rather than kill all the creeping and crawling critters in your house, you name them all and invent elaborate soap operas about their lives.
17. There’s no such thing as too much shine.
18. The majority of your budget goes toward buying toilet paper, candles, and phone credit.
19. The nuns at the bar all know your name.
20. You can keep a straight face even when your headmaster tells you that “you will come in your pants.”
21. You know that there’s always room for one more person on the bus.
22. But you have still elbowed someone in the face in order to get on the bus before them.
23. You feel no remorse about elbowing people in the fact while boarding buses.
24. The tall people in Kigali scare you.
25. You are not even a little freaked out when the village crazy runs up to you and tries to steal your umbrella from right out of your grasp.
26. You are at least one hour late to everything…and are still the first person to arrive.
27. You pray your god in bed on Sunday morning.
28. You recognize the four major food groups as salt, sugar, starch, and oil.
29. Your pillow, mattress, sheets, and hair all have scorch marks from reading in bed by candlelight.
30. You vow to never trim your toenails by candlelight again. Ever.
31. You have witness “Congo butt” in action on the dance floor.
32. Standing in your yard, staring at the road, is a perfectly acceptable way to pass a Saturday afternoon.
33. You can open a Primus bottle with virtually anything.
34. You can eat a jar of peanut butter in two days.
35. You have a major existential crisis and seriously contemplate quitting Peace Corps when you realize that you are tired of eating peanut butter.
36. You curse Belgium for leaving behind post-colonial politics but not waffles, chocolate, or good beer.
37. The only snap, crackle, and pop that you hear is the sound of insects exploding in your candle’s flame.
38. You hate your serial Mefloquine dreams, but you must know—who will win in the epically gruesome battle between 14th century Japanese samurai and the New York Yankees?!
39. You walk around your house with small objects balanced on your head.
40. Your first reaction to MTN’s free calls after 11 promo was “if anyone dares to call me that late, I will end them.”
41. You cry at the sight of Cheez-Its.
42. You find it easier to agree with people that “it is the change in the climate which has made you so ill.”
43. You hate the dry season, until the rainy season begins. Then you hate that too.
44. You no longer think “this country needs more cowbell!” every time the primary school kids ring the bell in-between classes
45. “It it’s not oozing pus, it is not a problem” is your personal health motto.
46. You’ve seen every Cecil B. DeMille ever made, dubbed in French with Kinyarwanda commentary.
47. It’s always a good morning, and you are always fine.
48. The preschoolers in your village are all trained to hug you.
49. Hugs become slightly awkward because you failed to realize that preschoolers grow quickly, and that many of their faces are now uncomfortably level with your crotch.
50. You no longer give clothing the sniff test, because you know that you’re going to wear it anyway.
51. You refuse to reply to anyone that screams at you from beyond your response radius.
52. Depending on your mood, your response radius can extend for your entire district, or only as far as your arm hair.
53. You actively forget umuganda. Just like everyone else in the country.
54. It’s weird to see grown men walking beside each other and not holding hands.
55. You no longer believe that rabbits are cute. You believe that they should be roasted on a stick.
56. You sometimes play your radio very softly so that the neighbors won’t know that you’re home.
57. You are always the sweatiest person in the room.
58. You’re a little bit in love with your fake fiancé, but you know that he/she is way out of your league.
59. You own Obama-theme footwear.
60. You look at a plate of greasy, salty fries and think, “this needs mayonnaise.”
61. You have found mold in very improbably places.
62. You frequently eat an entire pineapple and spend the rest of the evening poking yourself in the belly and singing the SpongeBob SquarePants theme song.
63. You are determine to streak the tea fields.
64. You do a double-take when you see someone carrying a backpack on their back instead of on their head.
65. You talk to goats.
66. Chamberpots are suddenly very practical.
67. You fade your yego like you were born here.
68. Everyone knows your routine. And everyone comments if you deviate from it.
69. You no longer look at the menu, because what you order is not likely to be what you get.
70. You talk about anything on a bus because no one can understand you.
71. It’s extremely embarrassing when there’s a surprise Ugandan on the bus who can understand everything you say.
72. You have come to accept the fact that, just because it claims to be an internet café, that is no guarantee there will be an internet connection. Or a computer.
73. Your favorite game is to see how many Disney lyrics you can slip into everyday conversation.
74. Your most reliable source of protein is the fruit flies that drown in your coffee.
75. You wear your tight jeans and discover that your ass can literally stop traffic.
Mk folks, I’ll try to update again soon with actual information about my life…
Friday 2 September 2011
My Umbrella
It's raining. Again. I have discovered, quite by accident, a surefire way of judging the probability and duration of an afternoon storm. If, by two o'clock, the humidity has helped me to achieve 'fro status, then yes, it will rain before dark--but in one torrential, half-hour downpour. If there's a good deal of frizz in the morning, then it will drizzle on and off for the entire day. And if my hair actually looks normal? Well, then I am most likely in Kigali, having recently washed (and thoroughly rinsed) my hair with water that doesn't have penguins lurking in its chilly depths.
An umbrella is essential in this country, no matter the season. My shoulders are constantly peeling from sunburn, no doubt helping to reinforce the myth that muzungu skin falls off when you touch it. And yet, I just can't bring myself to use an umbrella for shade purposes. Growing up in Yakima, sunburn was simply a fact of life. After all, it IS the Palm Springs of Washington. Hiding yourself beneath an umbrella would be the ultimate admission of defeat. Before I moved to Seattle, I could probably have counted on one hand the number of times I had used an umbrella--for its intended function, that is.
My umbrella here is in a shameful state of disrepair. The secret to opening it is to enlist the aid of some ignorant sap, then stand back with a ready supply of bandaids. I know I'll have to get a new one soon if I want to avoid being captured by the rain for extended periods of time. My options are, unfortunately, limited to:
-The Painfully Plaid Print
-The Giant Beachball Motiff
-The Assault Against Victorian Sensibilities
The first would make an excellent tribute to my Scottish ancestry, but it emits a faint and alarming odor of haggis when opened. The second is certainly colorful, but do I really want astronauts to be able to spot me from space? And the last...well, do I really need a parasol that is pinker and frillier than any underwear I have ever owned?
So, loyal and occasional readers, I have an immodestly selfish proposal for you: tell me which umbrella to buy. Two weeks from today, I will be in Kigali and can make the necessary purchase. I'll even post an action shot with the umbrella on this blog so y'all can see exactly what you've done to me. Choose wisely. I'm going to look ridiculous no matter what, but at least this way I can shift the blame onto someone else!
An umbrella is essential in this country, no matter the season. My shoulders are constantly peeling from sunburn, no doubt helping to reinforce the myth that muzungu skin falls off when you touch it. And yet, I just can't bring myself to use an umbrella for shade purposes. Growing up in Yakima, sunburn was simply a fact of life. After all, it IS the Palm Springs of Washington. Hiding yourself beneath an umbrella would be the ultimate admission of defeat. Before I moved to Seattle, I could probably have counted on one hand the number of times I had used an umbrella--for its intended function, that is.
My umbrella here is in a shameful state of disrepair. The secret to opening it is to enlist the aid of some ignorant sap, then stand back with a ready supply of bandaids. I know I'll have to get a new one soon if I want to avoid being captured by the rain for extended periods of time. My options are, unfortunately, limited to:
-The Painfully Plaid Print
-The Giant Beachball Motiff
-The Assault Against Victorian Sensibilities
The first would make an excellent tribute to my Scottish ancestry, but it emits a faint and alarming odor of haggis when opened. The second is certainly colorful, but do I really want astronauts to be able to spot me from space? And the last...well, do I really need a parasol that is pinker and frillier than any underwear I have ever owned?
So, loyal and occasional readers, I have an immodestly selfish proposal for you: tell me which umbrella to buy. Two weeks from today, I will be in Kigali and can make the necessary purchase. I'll even post an action shot with the umbrella on this blog so y'all can see exactly what you've done to me. Choose wisely. I'm going to look ridiculous no matter what, but at least this way I can shift the blame onto someone else!
Tuesday 30 August 2011
And then middle school happened
I’m coming up on the one year mark here in Rwanda. With that in mind, I think it’s time for a serious, introspective look back at the last 10 months. What have I learned? How have I changed? Well, if part of the Peace Corps experience is about finding yourself, then I think I would have been better off leaving certain waters uncharted. I’ve been in Rwanda for a long while now, getting to know the people and the culture, meeting with incredible challenges, overcoming obstacles—all those sorts of things that are supposed to lead one to a fuller understanding of oneself. So here’s what I’ve come to understand about myself thus far: I am a 12-year-old boy. And I’m kind of okay with that.
I can picture you now, leaning away from your computer, scratching your head or beard in consternation, contemplating just how this gender-bending regression came about. The short answer? When you live in a place where the thought “I wonder if this means that I have dysentery” is a weekly occurrence, certain things are just inevitable.
The life of a 12-year-old boy is oddly liberating. Let me give you an example: back in America, going about my life as a 20-something woman, I would never have even considered waiting a week between washing my hair. Fortunately, a 12-year-old boy has no such qualms. Of course, the teachers at my school did manage to call me out on it: “Eh, Katerina, you hair is so smart today! You have washed!” It’s a good thing they didn’t see me over the last break. I had to beat back the OPEC inspectors that kept showing up at my door, battling over the drilling rights to the oil field that was my scalp.
Of course, not all my regressions have been so obvious. Some I prefer to keep well hidden. Did you know that you can wear the same underwear four days in a row, using the NI-BI method? For the uninitiated amongst you, that’s: Normal, Inside out—Backwards, Inside out. And as far as socks go—well, when they can stand up on their own, it’s probably time to wash them. Unless I have something better to do, of course.
Food hygiene is another area of my life that sometimes strongly resembles a middle school cafeteria. Time moves more slowly in Africa, and Rwanda is no exception. Thanks to this mystery of equatorial gravity, the five second rule has become transformed into the “hmmmm…there are no ants on it yet…” rule. And that’s not even a rule. It’s more of a guideline.
During training, we were taught to religiously bleach all of our fruits and vegetables before eating them, preferably while wearing a Haz-Mat suit. Raw foods were completely out of the question. Now, I’m not suggesting that it’s a good idea to buy a cabbage at the market and chow down right then and there—although the reaction of the locals would be priceless—but there’s caution and then there’s just paranoia. I lovingly wash and pineapples and grudgingly rinse my carrots.
On a serious not, maybe that is one of the most important things that I’ve learned in the last year—compromise. What’s really important? What’s really necessary? What do you actually need to do to not just survive but enjoy life in a place that’s so far removed from everything you’ve ever known? In short, how do you cope?!
That’s when a 7th grade mentality comes in handy. Peace Corps does require an incredible amount of maturity and ability to navigate the unknown. But getting by here also requires that you acknowledge the absurdities of this life and laugh about things like explosive diarrhea. I know that the day I can no longer laugh about things like that is the day that I need to go home. And honestly, I think that 12-year-old boys are best equipped to find the hilarity in otherwise difficult situation. And I’m proud to be one of them.
Let’s talk about latrines. When I first got here…well, that scared me. I thought “no way. There’s no way I will ever get used to using one of these. I will simply not pee for the next two years.” Yes, latrines can be completely disgusting. But not to the mind of the adventurous 12-year-old male! After visiting many volunteers, I’ve found that it’s easier to view a latrine not as a petrifying plunge into the unknown, but in the way that an anthropologist might examine a unique or rare artifact. Thus far, I have encountered:
--The leaning latrine of Rusumo (Chris)
--The “Martha Stewart would be so proud” latrine (Ally)
--The “oh wait, you’ll need a headlamp” latrine (Heather)
--The “only hobbits can enter here” latrine (Allister)
--The “go ahead. Just try to make it in that tiny hole. I dare you” latrine (Andrew)
And that, my friends, is when a little immaturity goes a long way.
Not that my life is filled exclusively with potty humor. That’s only roughly 80% of what I laugh at. The other 20%? Well, myself. Coming to Rwanda, I definitely expected to be confronted with a fear of the unknown. And that hasn’t been so hard to manage. More difficult to face has been the fear of being the unknown. That might sound contradictory, but let me explain. I am the unknown quantity in my village. I’m white, I have freckles, I speak English, I hike, wear pants, and have a tattoo. Basically, I’m weird. I’ve been in my village since January, and some people still look surprised to see me when I walk to school each day. Some days it can be difficult to even leave my house, knowing that I’m to be stared at, or harassed, or treated like a zoo attraction. But other days, I barely leave my gate before a preschooler runs up and hugs me, or an old lady greets me with an enthusiastic “Komera, Katerine!” Being the unknown is so much more terrifying than facing the unknown. Talk about stripping you down to your most basic insecurities—the last year has been filled with those sorts of encounters. I’m still figuring out how to deal with it. I’m sure I probably will be until the day I leave.
So I take those little moments of ridiculousness and embrace then. I’m immature. It helps. A few weeks ago, I attended a three hour mass celebrating assumption day. After being crowded in a church, on a hard bench, the smell of incense clogging my pore and sinuses—well, I think all my fellow PCVs know exactly how I was feeling. Then Chris and I discovered something magical, the sort of thing 12-year-old boys revel in the world over. According to the calendar, the German equivalent of Mary’s Assumption day is…Maria Himmelfahrt. Say it aloud a few times. We sure did. And we laughed. A lot. And when it’s time to Himmelfahrt again next year…well, I’ll be ready.
Tuesday 9 August 2011
Because it is that one there
There have been certain times in Rwanda when I have thought to myself, “oh dear god, I am about to die.” Up until last weekend, all these moments involved public transportation, cows, cows interfering with public transportation, lit charcoal stoves interfering with my left foot, and a small tube of what looked deceptively like toothpaste but, upon closer inspection, was most definitely not.
On Saturday, however, I took doom into my own hands and headed up Bisoke with a group of other PCVs. For those of you with scant knowledge of Rwanda’s geography, the northern region of the country is more ruggedly mountainous than the others and is home to Rwanda’s five volcanoes. We set out for Virunga Park early Saturday morning, with high spirits and a zest for adventure. I imagine the Donner party felt the same at the beginning of its expedition.
Waiting for us at the information center was tea, coffee, traditional dancers, and an eclectic mix of white tourists is various states of serious hiking gear. I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I did not wear a hat. My pants were not duct-taped into my tube socks. I do not own tube socks.
While guzzling cup after cup of coffee (partly because it was so cold, and partly because I wanted to be able to say that I have peed on top of a volcano), we turned our attention toward watching the dancers. Or, more truthfully, we watched the tourists watching the dancers. It was meta-tourism at its finest. I’ve come to a conclusion about white people in Rwanda: we’re awkward. At the end of each number, the tourists would give a hearty round of applause. This is not how we clap in Rwanda. In general, we do not clap. But when we do, it is in perfect unison, often accompanied by soft trilling. The essential thing is that every claps at the same speed and volume. As a colleague once told me at a ceremony, “In Rwanda, it is important to crap together.” Even after nine months of living here, the easy interchange of “R” and “L” always finds new ways to amuse me.
We eventually got our guide and ventured forth into the park via the worst road ever created in the whole history of human existence. At the trailhead, we picked up a couple of armed guards whose job it was to keep the wild buffalo at bay. For the record, I did not see any buffalo. However, there was ample amounts of buffalo poop along the trail. At least someone in this country is managing to get fiber in their diet.
The trail begins easily enough, passing through pyrethrum and potato fields, gently sloping upwards and filling you with a sense of outdoorsy benevolence and general well-being. It’s not until you clamber over the stone fence and begin the real ascent that Bisoke starts to show its true colors. Its true colors are pain. The guide told me that the park remains open year-round, but I can’t imagine doing that hike during the rainy season. I slipped several times and had very much the dirty on my pants. And ankles. And shoes.
When I wasn’t busy becoming one with the mud and actually got a chance to check out the surroundings, it was pretty spectacular. For most of the hike, the vegetation was dense and jungle-like. The occasional viewpoint/ “oh dear lord I’m about to die whose bright idea was it to make this mountain so tall” viewpoint provided spectacular vistas of the Ruhengeri hillsides.
Then we reached the cloud-cover near the top. Until this point, it had been sweaty work going up, and I know I looked a hot mess. As Deverna so astutely observed, “I feel like I’m struggling, but then I look over at you and feel so much better about myself.” I would have been offended if it hadn’t been so true. But once we got under the cloud cover, things got cold. I never thought my lips would turn blue while living on the equator.
We reached the top, or as near it as we were allowed, and stopped to rest and admire the crater lake. With the sparse vegetation and rolling fog, the area looked oddly like the Scottish highlands. I kept waiting for a bagpiper to come wandering out of the mist because really, who hasn’t fantasized about shoving a bagpiper off a volcano?
After a few photos and snacks, we began the treacherous descent. I’m fairly certain that every person fell at least once. I think that even Matt’s pants had so much the dirty by the time we were finished. Near the bottom, we got to see some wildlife. The guide stopped us and pointed out the ten or so golden monkeys romping about in a nearby field. Then it was back in the car and back on the worst road ever created in the whole history of human existence (which had somehow managed to become worse during the last five hours). Back in Musanze, there were showers (hot), beer (cold), food (Italian), and dramatic apologies to muscles (sore).
So in conclusion…was it fun? Yes. Will I take my family when they come to visit? No. Will I chuckle with malicious glee when other PCVs say that they are going volcano climbing? I think we all know the answer to that…
Saturday 6 August 2011
My attempt at the creativity
We all have one in our life. It’s the place on the main road where you go to catch a bus. It’s the place where you wait for hours and hours, and then for a few more hours. It’s the place where the hot sun slowly drains away your will to travel, and you begin to doubt your reasons for ever leaving your village. It’s the place that makes you happy to squeeze onto a twegerane and put up with the vomit therein entailed. My place is Cyome.
Today’s post is the end result of the worst day of travel I have ever had to endure. Any day that starts with a two hour wait in Cyome is bound to go badly, and fate did not disappoint. In an attempt to alleviate our boredom and save our sanity, Alanna and I started singing the blues. Literally. So, readers, here’s a rather poetic slice of life up in Ngororero district.
The Cyome Blues
Been sittin’ in Cyome for a long while.
Gonna be sittin’ in Cyome for a long, long while,
watching the crazy guy wanderin’ by,
swingin’ his level and scythe.
His shoes don’t match:
sandal on the right
rainboot on the left,
ready for anything,
but only halfway.
Waitin’ in Cyome, not a car for miles.
Watchin’ the river flow by for miles and miles.
Watchin’ the people watchin’ me.
Kids playin’ football in the street,
avocado pit ball—
Saturday’s market
bouncin’ quick off pavement
and cracked bare feet.
Sittin’ in Cyome beneath that sliver of shade.
‘Safe journey’ ‘Welcome to the west’
faded letters above my head.
Sun on my shoulders
sunburn on y mind
women with umbrellas go walkin’ by.
Down in the fields,
idle gossip busy hands,
no breeze to be found,
sweat and turned earth in the air
clingin’ the bicycles pedalin’ past
on tires worn bare.
And time shimmers still in these afternoon miles
the way life’s gone on in Cyome for a long, long while.
In other news, I discovered yesterday that I am in horrible shape. This was not necessarily an unexpected revelation, but the timing could have been better. Learning of your incredible patheticness while climbing up a volcano is not pleasant. But I'll blog about that another day...
Wednesday 27 July 2011
Cock-Blocked!! And other animal adventures...
Last week, some nice folks from Engineers Without Borders posed this insightful question: what is the most exotic animal you’ve seen in Rwanda? The honest answer is, of course, other white people. But Rwanda is not without its own unique set of creeping, crawling, flying, scuttling, and bleating creatures. So it’s time for an all animal edition of my blog! For those of you who are not such fans of the cute and fuzzy critters…well, you’re in luck. Those do not exist here.
Many of my fellow PCVs have adopted kittens or puppies. I too have acquired a pet. His name is Brandon, and I spent the first week of our cohabitation making futile efforts to stab him with a knife.
Imagine a large brown strawberry. Now picture eight spindly legs coming from it. That basically describes Brandon. The first time we met was when I rolled over in bed one morning and found my nose mere inches from whatever passes for a nose on a spider. Needless to say, I tried to kill him.
After several days of increasingly Shakespearean stabbing attempts, my arachnicidal tendencies began to move in the direction of blunt force trauma. I had the perfect shoe for it. It had recently been washed, all the better to show the splatter. There was one slight problem. Despite his size, Brandon is fast. I quickly realized that there was no way I was going to get him. Instead, we soon fell into a comfortable routine. Before blowing out my candle at night, I would pick up my shoe and make a few half-heartedly swipes in his general direction. Brandon would just sigh heavily, and saunter nonchalantly to a new location a few inches away.
Right now, he is hanging out next to my shopping bags. He doesn’t even pretend to move when I grab one of them. We’ve basically become an old married couple. As least I don’t greet him with a resounding “Honey, I’m home,”…yet…
Four-legged animals are mostly limited to goats, sheep, and cows. Back in March, the mama goats started popping out babies, and the hills were filled with frolicking little goat kids. There is nothing cuter than two little baby goats curled up around each other in a sunny meadow. It’s so sweet, it might even make Walt Disney vomit.
There are a few varieties of cow in mooing around Rwanda. In my village, we have the more traditional variety: stick-thin, with giant horns and a thirst for human blood. I was walking home from school one afternoon, innocently enjoying the warm sun, when a little girl ran past me, screaming. Now, my presence does sometimes provoke reactions of terror from children, but this seemed excessive. And the fact that the dudes in front of the barbershop were yelling too…well, I figured that something bad was about to go down. I turned, just in time to jump out of the way of the young bull that was barreling down the road, horns blazing. Following him, shouting wildly, and waving a giant stick, was the village cattle wrangler. Fortunately, the bull was caught before he did any damage other than the psychological kind.
Occasionally, the pigs appear in the compost pile. There are also rabbits, but I mostly only see them as Alice is hacking one to bits on the back porch. That doesn’t really bother me so much…although, I do wish she wouldn’t look quite so happy while doing it.
We also have geckoes in Rwanda, but not so many live in my village. One day, during umuganda, some girls found a chameleon lurking in the bean field at school. Batiste, one of the science teachers, showed the students (most of whom wouldn’t get near the thing) how it change colors depending on the background. I was tempted to hold it up to my skin and see what would happen, but I resisted the urge.
So, those are the major land animals that live in or around my village. But Rwanda also boasts an amazing variety of birds. Most of them are quite small, and come in almost every color imaginable: bright orange, emerald green, dark blue, electric yellow—you can always catch a glimpse of some spectacular hue flitting around amongst the trees.
There are also larger birds like hawks and ravens. I have a bit of a personal vendetta against the latter. They like to sit outside my window and pontificate at all hours of the day. “Gwark?” one will inquire. “Gwaaaaaarkkkkk!!!!” the others will agree. Then they will fly up onto my roof and riverdance for awhile. Just try to sleep with a group of ravens stomping around above your head. Just try.
However, because I have roughly the matury of a 7th grade boy, my favorite animal in Rwanda is the cock. Oh, the times I have explained to Rwandans that “rooster” might be a better word to use. Of course, then I would lose the opportunity to hear things such as “Does the cock exist in America?” or “I think, in America, the cock grows larger.” One day, as I was walking to school, a rooster ran into the road in front of me, impeding my progress. I had to laugh, because I had literally just been cock-blocked.
So, on that delightful note, I think I’m going to wrap things up for now. But readers, I have a question for you! What do you want to know about my life in Rwanda? I feel like so much happens in my life here that to really explain it all would take ten pages and be painstakingly tedious. So, aspects of Rwanda do ya’ll want to know about? I have no shame, so ask about any topic. Food? Religion? Markets? Things I have used for toilet paper? Let me know what you want to know, and I will do my best to answer your questions in my next post.
p.s. I wrote most of this blog while wearing a Burger King crown. Thanks mom and dad!
Sunday 3 July 2011
From point A to point B, with mild detours to points C, G-P, and R-Z: A tale of Rwandan transport.
I've heard it said that it's the journey that counts, not the destination. Such a statement was probably made as a sort of desperate rationalization of the Rwandan transportation system, given that here, the destination is not always reached, and the journey can stretch so long as to provide one with the opportunity to indulge in the entire pantheon of human emotions. Excitement, hope, awkwardness, frustration, rage, exhaustion, despair, and finally resignation--just try to travel anywhere in this country without experiencing at least half of these emotions.
I've blogged a bit about the buses here before, but today I want to take you all with me on the harrowing, uncomfortable, and often hilarious trip from my village into Gitarama. Every time I travel this route, something happens to surprise me, scare me, or just plain bewilder me. There's never a dull moment, that's for sure!
The average bus here might not be quite street legal in the U.S. There are larger, Greyhound-esque buses that run between the major cities, but they very rarely venture out to my main road. Instead, I usually take a twegerane (translation: "we squeeze") as far as Gitarrama, where I can get a slightly more reputable mode of transportation into Kigali. As much as I dislike riding on the twegeranes--they are more than aptly named--they certainly do provide ample opportunity for entertainment.
All the twegeranes have the same basic body. They are more or less glorified vans, with 20 seats. The number of seats is in no way related to the actual number of people that can fit in side. One of my favorite things about twegeranes is the way that they are decorated. I can't believe I was ever capable of functioning in a country like America where public transport didn't involve tassles and wall-paper and beads. Some of the decor looks disconcertingly like the inside of a slightly seedy New Orleans brothel.
Obviously, each bus has its own name plastered across the windshield in bright letters. About half of the names are religious themed, and most are in poorly conceived English. Jesus is caming? Er...sure. Many of the rest have something to do with celebrities or sports. I am still waiting for the day when the Chris Brown bus crashes into the Rihana bus. And my life will be complete the day I see the Kanye West twegerane cut off Taylor Swift in traffic.
Legally, the buses can only hold as many people as their are seats. Side note: it was very difficult for me to type that last sentence, as my fingers were hampered by my spasms of uncontrollable ironic laughter. Space is an illusion, bus space doubly so. This leads to an interesting litte conspiracy between the bus drivers, the bicycle taxis, and the traffic police.
As the buses trundle recklessly down the road, usually with passengers practically hanging out the windows, the drivers signal to each as they pass, especially if there is a police check point coming up. If there is, the bus pulls over and unloads passengers until the legal limit is no longer exceeded. Often, these excess passengers will hop a ride with a bike taxi, or be forced to jog down the road and meet up with the bus again once it passes the check point. It's quite possibly the most obvious things in the world, and makes me laugh every time.
There's usually about a fifty percent chance someone will vomit on the bus, an old lady will start screaming about her smashed tomatoes, the entire bus will be delayed several minutes while passengers bargain for pineapples out the windows, or you will either sitting on someone or having someone sit on you. The one advantage to this form of transportation? It's cheap, and it sure makes you appreciate walking!
I've blogged a bit about the buses here before, but today I want to take you all with me on the harrowing, uncomfortable, and often hilarious trip from my village into Gitarama. Every time I travel this route, something happens to surprise me, scare me, or just plain bewilder me. There's never a dull moment, that's for sure!
The average bus here might not be quite street legal in the U.S. There are larger, Greyhound-esque buses that run between the major cities, but they very rarely venture out to my main road. Instead, I usually take a twegerane (translation: "we squeeze") as far as Gitarrama, where I can get a slightly more reputable mode of transportation into Kigali. As much as I dislike riding on the twegeranes--they are more than aptly named--they certainly do provide ample opportunity for entertainment.
All the twegeranes have the same basic body. They are more or less glorified vans, with 20 seats. The number of seats is in no way related to the actual number of people that can fit in side. One of my favorite things about twegeranes is the way that they are decorated. I can't believe I was ever capable of functioning in a country like America where public transport didn't involve tassles and wall-paper and beads. Some of the decor looks disconcertingly like the inside of a slightly seedy New Orleans brothel.
Obviously, each bus has its own name plastered across the windshield in bright letters. About half of the names are religious themed, and most are in poorly conceived English. Jesus is caming? Er...sure. Many of the rest have something to do with celebrities or sports. I am still waiting for the day when the Chris Brown bus crashes into the Rihana bus. And my life will be complete the day I see the Kanye West twegerane cut off Taylor Swift in traffic.
Legally, the buses can only hold as many people as their are seats. Side note: it was very difficult for me to type that last sentence, as my fingers were hampered by my spasms of uncontrollable ironic laughter. Space is an illusion, bus space doubly so. This leads to an interesting litte conspiracy between the bus drivers, the bicycle taxis, and the traffic police.
As the buses trundle recklessly down the road, usually with passengers practically hanging out the windows, the drivers signal to each as they pass, especially if there is a police check point coming up. If there is, the bus pulls over and unloads passengers until the legal limit is no longer exceeded. Often, these excess passengers will hop a ride with a bike taxi, or be forced to jog down the road and meet up with the bus again once it passes the check point. It's quite possibly the most obvious things in the world, and makes me laugh every time.
There's usually about a fifty percent chance someone will vomit on the bus, an old lady will start screaming about her smashed tomatoes, the entire bus will be delayed several minutes while passengers bargain for pineapples out the windows, or you will either sitting on someone or having someone sit on you. The one advantage to this form of transportation? It's cheap, and it sure makes you appreciate walking!
Saturday 18 June 2011
Amakuru? I'm a haiku!
Nachos, beer, cookies
One word in Kinyarwanda:
Umudugudu!
Greetings big wide world! The past weekend has been a time for lazy indulgence and brave culinary adventures. I headed up to Rulindo for a few days to chill out and take advantage of friends with computers and electricity. After two days of hiking, Gleeing, and frisbeeing, Keira and I made a nacho-fueled decision to stay up way past our bedtimes and make cookies. Warning to the faint of heart--the following account contains a scene of graphic egg-cracking. Some of you may wish to skip to the end...
We started out with a recipe. It was a good recipe, the sort of soccer moms from Ohio gave unanimous rave reviews on allrecipes.com and the like. Simple chocolate chip cookies. Simple and delicious. Simple, and fool-proof. Simple, but not Rwanda-proof.
We should have known that any recipe that called for a preheated oven and the use of an electric blender was doomed to failure. While the flames of the imbabura gently flickered, creating a (in retrospect) glow of warm foreboding, I began to assemble the ingredients. Surprisingly, we had everything we needed, aside from white sugar, an oven, a blender, and a cookie sheet.
It was all going so well. The Blue Band was creamed into the sugar, and the splash of vanilla helped to mask the offensive ambiance coming from my unwashed socks. I felt accomplished. After an eight month hiatus, I was Baking again. Those of you who survived the Great Muffin Invasion of 2010 will appreciate how difficult it has been for me to not putter around the kitchen on a lazy afternoon.
Then disaster struck. Refrigeration in not exactly common in the country (my school actually has a P6 science text book that describes a refrigerator the way a zoologist might describe an exotic species of bird). Although most food keeps far longer than I would have believed possible back in the states, you still run of the risk of getting the occasional bad egg. Literally. I suspect that a bad egg was the inspiration for the original stink bomb. Within a few seconds, my sweet, sugary confection had been transformed into a reeking, rancid puddle of fail. It only took a few more seconds for the smell to permeate the entire living room.
But, in the true spirit of the intrepid Peace Corps volunteer, Keira and I decided to forge on ahead, with new eggs and a more cautious outlook on life. No more sugar? Sketchy eggs? Lack of measuring utensils? Suddenly that simple recipe, so revered by housewives the world over, became simply laughable. This is Rwanda, and we don't need no stinking recipes.
Fast-forward three hours, when the first batch of cookies was finally removed from pot-in-a-pot-on-a-charcoal-fire of an oven (prior to tonight, it was my firm belief that any device requiring that many hyphen won't be successful. It just didn't seem possible). Then something miraculous happened. These hybrid cookies, these disastrous love children of misfortune and stubborn persistence, were...good. Betty Crocker, urabesha cyane.
Oh, and before I forget, here's a shout out to Dennis DeVerna. Those candy bars you send Heather a few months ago were amazing. Thanks for raising a daughter who knows the value of sharing (or that a lack of sharing can lead to a revoking of bathroom privileges...).
One word in Kinyarwanda:
Umudugudu!
Greetings big wide world! The past weekend has been a time for lazy indulgence and brave culinary adventures. I headed up to Rulindo for a few days to chill out and take advantage of friends with computers and electricity. After two days of hiking, Gleeing, and frisbeeing, Keira and I made a nacho-fueled decision to stay up way past our bedtimes and make cookies. Warning to the faint of heart--the following account contains a scene of graphic egg-cracking. Some of you may wish to skip to the end...
We started out with a recipe. It was a good recipe, the sort of soccer moms from Ohio gave unanimous rave reviews on allrecipes.com and the like. Simple chocolate chip cookies. Simple and delicious. Simple, and fool-proof. Simple, but not Rwanda-proof.
We should have known that any recipe that called for a preheated oven and the use of an electric blender was doomed to failure. While the flames of the imbabura gently flickered, creating a (in retrospect) glow of warm foreboding, I began to assemble the ingredients. Surprisingly, we had everything we needed, aside from white sugar, an oven, a blender, and a cookie sheet.
It was all going so well. The Blue Band was creamed into the sugar, and the splash of vanilla helped to mask the offensive ambiance coming from my unwashed socks. I felt accomplished. After an eight month hiatus, I was Baking again. Those of you who survived the Great Muffin Invasion of 2010 will appreciate how difficult it has been for me to not putter around the kitchen on a lazy afternoon.
Then disaster struck. Refrigeration in not exactly common in the country (my school actually has a P6 science text book that describes a refrigerator the way a zoologist might describe an exotic species of bird). Although most food keeps far longer than I would have believed possible back in the states, you still run of the risk of getting the occasional bad egg. Literally. I suspect that a bad egg was the inspiration for the original stink bomb. Within a few seconds, my sweet, sugary confection had been transformed into a reeking, rancid puddle of fail. It only took a few more seconds for the smell to permeate the entire living room.
But, in the true spirit of the intrepid Peace Corps volunteer, Keira and I decided to forge on ahead, with new eggs and a more cautious outlook on life. No more sugar? Sketchy eggs? Lack of measuring utensils? Suddenly that simple recipe, so revered by housewives the world over, became simply laughable. This is Rwanda, and we don't need no stinking recipes.
Fast-forward three hours, when the first batch of cookies was finally removed from pot-in-a-pot-on-a-charcoal-fire of an oven (prior to tonight, it was my firm belief that any device requiring that many hyphen won't be successful. It just didn't seem possible). Then something miraculous happened. These hybrid cookies, these disastrous love children of misfortune and stubborn persistence, were...good. Betty Crocker, urabesha cyane.
Oh, and before I forget, here's a shout out to Dennis DeVerna. Those candy bars you send Heather a few months ago were amazing. Thanks for raising a daughter who knows the value of sharing (or that a lack of sharing can lead to a revoking of bathroom privileges...).
Wednesday 1 June 2011
The Adventures of Smurf Hat and the Giant Peach
I'm not so good at keeping updated with blogging. I'm just going to get that little warning out of the way early so that you know what horrors await you in this, my quarterly update. So steel your backbone, stiffen your resolve, gird your loins...ready to begin?
The season of rain has officially ended, and I've been told that the season of sun will last until the end of August. So if any of you all want to come and visit, I would highly recommend the summer months! Of course, when water becomes scarce, we all must make sacrifices on the altar of personal hygeine. I was originally resolved not to shave my legs until the end of the term in July, but I'm beginning to have an increasingly vivid fantasy in which an Oregonian backwoodsman shoots me after mistaking me for the rare African ginger Sasquatch.
Last weekend, I braved death and ran in the Kigali Peace Marathon. Okay, that makes me sound so much more in shape than I am or ever will be. I actually ran one leg of a Peace Corps relay team, so I only went 10 kilometers instead of the full 41. But I lived to tell the tale, which is the important part. And Kigali seemed so wonderfully flat after 'training' in my village, which sits atop a mountain with a 75 degree gradient. I'm currently planning to run a half-marathon in July, assuming my sense of self-preservation doesn't intervene in the next month or so.
Time for a dark confession: I have started drinking coffee. This is quite possibly the most disturbing lifestyle change I've encountered in the past few months. I'm not even sure how it happened. One day, the cup was there, and I took it, and I drank. And now I can't stop. Eight months in Rwanda has done what even four years in Seattle never could. And it isn't even good coffee either. I suspect that my brain wants the quick jolt of caffiene so much that is has assassinated my tongue's taste receptors.
Well, one of the more interesting things that has happened to me over the last three months was my trip to Ukraine, which I have utterly failed to blog about thus far. Not only to I fail at writing blogs, I fail at communication in general. So, first things first: if you ever feel the spirit move you to travel anywhere via Kenya Airways...reconsider. I ended up getting delayed for a full 24 hours in Kenya, much to my annoyance. As a matter of fact, I was beyond annoyed. I was peeved. Still, Nairobi was a fun place to be stranded for a day. I got to pet giraffes, see baby elephants, go to the national museum, visit an awesome Masai crafts market, take my first hot shower in six months...truth be told, the shower freaked me out a bit. There was so much steam! I spent the first five minutes laughing hysterically, and the next five minutes feeling suffocated and claustrophobic. And I still had a baseline level of grime on when when I was finished. I am like Siberia. I am permagrimed.
As my plane landed on Ukrainian soil, I was greeted with flurries of snow. I had been hoping to see some snow, but from a more warm, congenial distance. I was hilariously underdressed for the weather, to say the least. Flip-flops are great for Africa, but in the former Soviet Union, flops flip you! And then there was the fact that I was wearing actual colors. The Rwandan way of dressing involves piling on as many different and often clashing patterns as possible. Even so, my outfit was completely tame by African standards: only five different colors, and all of them in solids. But there I was, aboard a plane of vampirically pale Europeans, all dressed in black and looking like they hadn't seen the sun in six months. Which they hadn't. Because they live in Eastern Europe.
My lovely sister met me at the airport, and there was much hugging and rejoicing. Two years was far too long to go without seeing each other. And thus the sisterly hijinks began. If an artist with too much free time were to make a cartoon about our escapades, it would have to be titled, "The Adventures of Smurf Hat and the Giant Peach." Like I said earlier, I was about as inappropriately dressed for the Ukrainian April as possible. Margaret lent me what was been affectionately dubbed "the smurf hat" (there are far too many pictures on facebook), and then we were off to see the sights and sounds of grand ol' Kiev.
Probably the most distinctive aspect of the city is all the domed churches. Kiev's architects went through a very pronounced dome phase, when they roamed the streets, stroking their bushy beards and wonder what, what could possibly make that church more ornate? Someone must have had an old copy of that architectural best-seller "Our Domes, Ourselves" lying around, and the solution soon became obvious. The churches are all incredible, both from the inside and the outside.
By the end of the day, I'd seen more white people,gold, products of the insane Polish mind, and WWII monuments than my brain could handle. I was also freezing, and my body was going into some kind of shock about the face that it was seven at night and the sun showed no signs of setting. Needless to say, I was a bit overwhelmed when we stopped off at a cafe to get coffee. Yes, a real cafe! With toilets! That flush!
Now it's time to welcome our second erstwhile protagonist. Moog, smurf hat firmly on head, left me to bask in the warm anonymity of a European cafe while she headed over to the Peace Corps office to retrieve a pea coat that another PCV had left behind in the free bin. The coat was warm and toasty. It was also ankle length, too big, and unrelentingly pink. Thus bedecked, Smurf Hat and the Giant Peach left the cafe to face the cold Ukrainian night.
In short, the trip was a blast. One night we went to the ballet (Zorba the Greek, and you know he's Greek because he's so jaunty). Even after looking up the plot on wikipedia, we still couldn't make sense of what we'd just seen. Who was that man dressed all in black? The music seemed to suggest that he was evil, yet everyone danced so sadly when he died. And did he actually die, or was that merely an overly artistic interpretationof the indigestion that follows eating too much Greek food?
And on the subject of indigestion--after eating a steady diet of rice, beans, potatoes, and pineapple for six months, Kiev felt like the promised land of culinary delights. Ukraine in general had more food options than I knew what to do with, in so many ways. From ice cream to Oxana's borscht to that sushi in Odessa, well let's just say that the Giant Peach got a bit more giant, and Smurf Hat got to have an awkwardly hilarious conversation with a poor pharmacist one day. But hey, sis--if you can ask for that in Ukrainian, then I'd say you're pretty well fluent...
We stopped off at Sofievka gardens on the way to Moog's village of Chechelnyk. Nothing much was blooming, but the scope of the place was still impressive. We only got to spend one full day in Chechelnyk, but it was action packed. Her host family made some of the most amazing food that I've eaten in a long while, and there were many toasts, which did little to help my heavy eyes stay open. One of the lesser known perils of living on the equator is that your body becomes frighteningly in sync with the rising and setting of the sun. When it gets dark, that means it's bedtime. It took us four tries for me to make it through the latest Harry Potter installment, and we were ultimately successful only because we watched it in the middle of the afternoon.
The next morning we got up dark and early and went to Moog's school. The English teacher that she often works with wanted me to give a presentation about Rwanda to some of her classes. Being in a Ukrainian school was such a change of pace for me. Ukraine's population is shrinking, and the class sizes reflect that fact. The students were all blown away to learn tha there are over 1000 students at my school. They loved seeing all my pictures, especially the ones with animals. I was tempted to tell them that I wrestle lions every morning, but I settled for regaling them with tales of my cricket-eating days instead.
After school, we went to the town bakery and wandered the slushy streets of Chechelnyk eating the loaf with our bare hands. At this point, I'd traded in the giant peach coat for my sister's much more normally hued green coat. Still, a few people did stare as Smurf Hat and the Giant Pea munched their way around the church grounds, the war memorials, and the derelict sugar beet factory.
We headed out to Odessa the next morning, that beautiful city on the sea. It was definitely my favorite city in Ukraine, and not just because of the delicious sushi. After a day of museums, sight-seeing, dithering about on the Ptomkin stairs,and other such delights, Smurf Hat and the Giant Pea donned their finest tiaras for a night at the opera. I can't actually remember the name of the show that we saw, but the opera house is a spectacular sight unto itself.
And then suddenly it was time to return to Rwanda. Of course, Kenya Airways wouldn't let me go without a fuss, and I got delayed in Paris just long enough to get irked. And yes, I went to McDonald's while I was in Ukraine--for the cheap coffee and clean bathrooms. And to watch Ukrainians eat ice cream at eight o'clock on a blustery morning. And then I tried to imagine the concept of fast food in Rwanda. And then I laughed.
So that's kind of a briefly long-winded summary of life over the last three months. Obviously, other interesting, exciting, perplexing, and intriguing things have happened, but let's keep the mystery alive a little longer, eh?
The season of rain has officially ended, and I've been told that the season of sun will last until the end of August. So if any of you all want to come and visit, I would highly recommend the summer months! Of course, when water becomes scarce, we all must make sacrifices on the altar of personal hygeine. I was originally resolved not to shave my legs until the end of the term in July, but I'm beginning to have an increasingly vivid fantasy in which an Oregonian backwoodsman shoots me after mistaking me for the rare African ginger Sasquatch.
Last weekend, I braved death and ran in the Kigali Peace Marathon. Okay, that makes me sound so much more in shape than I am or ever will be. I actually ran one leg of a Peace Corps relay team, so I only went 10 kilometers instead of the full 41. But I lived to tell the tale, which is the important part. And Kigali seemed so wonderfully flat after 'training' in my village, which sits atop a mountain with a 75 degree gradient. I'm currently planning to run a half-marathon in July, assuming my sense of self-preservation doesn't intervene in the next month or so.
Time for a dark confession: I have started drinking coffee. This is quite possibly the most disturbing lifestyle change I've encountered in the past few months. I'm not even sure how it happened. One day, the cup was there, and I took it, and I drank. And now I can't stop. Eight months in Rwanda has done what even four years in Seattle never could. And it isn't even good coffee either. I suspect that my brain wants the quick jolt of caffiene so much that is has assassinated my tongue's taste receptors.
Well, one of the more interesting things that has happened to me over the last three months was my trip to Ukraine, which I have utterly failed to blog about thus far. Not only to I fail at writing blogs, I fail at communication in general. So, first things first: if you ever feel the spirit move you to travel anywhere via Kenya Airways...reconsider. I ended up getting delayed for a full 24 hours in Kenya, much to my annoyance. As a matter of fact, I was beyond annoyed. I was peeved. Still, Nairobi was a fun place to be stranded for a day. I got to pet giraffes, see baby elephants, go to the national museum, visit an awesome Masai crafts market, take my first hot shower in six months...truth be told, the shower freaked me out a bit. There was so much steam! I spent the first five minutes laughing hysterically, and the next five minutes feeling suffocated and claustrophobic. And I still had a baseline level of grime on when when I was finished. I am like Siberia. I am permagrimed.
As my plane landed on Ukrainian soil, I was greeted with flurries of snow. I had been hoping to see some snow, but from a more warm, congenial distance. I was hilariously underdressed for the weather, to say the least. Flip-flops are great for Africa, but in the former Soviet Union, flops flip you! And then there was the fact that I was wearing actual colors. The Rwandan way of dressing involves piling on as many different and often clashing patterns as possible. Even so, my outfit was completely tame by African standards: only five different colors, and all of them in solids. But there I was, aboard a plane of vampirically pale Europeans, all dressed in black and looking like they hadn't seen the sun in six months. Which they hadn't. Because they live in Eastern Europe.
My lovely sister met me at the airport, and there was much hugging and rejoicing. Two years was far too long to go without seeing each other. And thus the sisterly hijinks began. If an artist with too much free time were to make a cartoon about our escapades, it would have to be titled, "The Adventures of Smurf Hat and the Giant Peach." Like I said earlier, I was about as inappropriately dressed for the Ukrainian April as possible. Margaret lent me what was been affectionately dubbed "the smurf hat" (there are far too many pictures on facebook), and then we were off to see the sights and sounds of grand ol' Kiev.
Probably the most distinctive aspect of the city is all the domed churches. Kiev's architects went through a very pronounced dome phase, when they roamed the streets, stroking their bushy beards and wonder what, what could possibly make that church more ornate? Someone must have had an old copy of that architectural best-seller "Our Domes, Ourselves" lying around, and the solution soon became obvious. The churches are all incredible, both from the inside and the outside.
By the end of the day, I'd seen more white people,gold, products of the insane Polish mind, and WWII monuments than my brain could handle. I was also freezing, and my body was going into some kind of shock about the face that it was seven at night and the sun showed no signs of setting. Needless to say, I was a bit overwhelmed when we stopped off at a cafe to get coffee. Yes, a real cafe! With toilets! That flush!
Now it's time to welcome our second erstwhile protagonist. Moog, smurf hat firmly on head, left me to bask in the warm anonymity of a European cafe while she headed over to the Peace Corps office to retrieve a pea coat that another PCV had left behind in the free bin. The coat was warm and toasty. It was also ankle length, too big, and unrelentingly pink. Thus bedecked, Smurf Hat and the Giant Peach left the cafe to face the cold Ukrainian night.
In short, the trip was a blast. One night we went to the ballet (Zorba the Greek, and you know he's Greek because he's so jaunty). Even after looking up the plot on wikipedia, we still couldn't make sense of what we'd just seen. Who was that man dressed all in black? The music seemed to suggest that he was evil, yet everyone danced so sadly when he died. And did he actually die, or was that merely an overly artistic interpretationof the indigestion that follows eating too much Greek food?
And on the subject of indigestion--after eating a steady diet of rice, beans, potatoes, and pineapple for six months, Kiev felt like the promised land of culinary delights. Ukraine in general had more food options than I knew what to do with, in so many ways. From ice cream to Oxana's borscht to that sushi in Odessa, well let's just say that the Giant Peach got a bit more giant, and Smurf Hat got to have an awkwardly hilarious conversation with a poor pharmacist one day. But hey, sis--if you can ask for that in Ukrainian, then I'd say you're pretty well fluent...
We stopped off at Sofievka gardens on the way to Moog's village of Chechelnyk. Nothing much was blooming, but the scope of the place was still impressive. We only got to spend one full day in Chechelnyk, but it was action packed. Her host family made some of the most amazing food that I've eaten in a long while, and there were many toasts, which did little to help my heavy eyes stay open. One of the lesser known perils of living on the equator is that your body becomes frighteningly in sync with the rising and setting of the sun. When it gets dark, that means it's bedtime. It took us four tries for me to make it through the latest Harry Potter installment, and we were ultimately successful only because we watched it in the middle of the afternoon.
The next morning we got up dark and early and went to Moog's school. The English teacher that she often works with wanted me to give a presentation about Rwanda to some of her classes. Being in a Ukrainian school was such a change of pace for me. Ukraine's population is shrinking, and the class sizes reflect that fact. The students were all blown away to learn tha there are over 1000 students at my school. They loved seeing all my pictures, especially the ones with animals. I was tempted to tell them that I wrestle lions every morning, but I settled for regaling them with tales of my cricket-eating days instead.
After school, we went to the town bakery and wandered the slushy streets of Chechelnyk eating the loaf with our bare hands. At this point, I'd traded in the giant peach coat for my sister's much more normally hued green coat. Still, a few people did stare as Smurf Hat and the Giant Pea munched their way around the church grounds, the war memorials, and the derelict sugar beet factory.
We headed out to Odessa the next morning, that beautiful city on the sea. It was definitely my favorite city in Ukraine, and not just because of the delicious sushi. After a day of museums, sight-seeing, dithering about on the Ptomkin stairs,and other such delights, Smurf Hat and the Giant Pea donned their finest tiaras for a night at the opera. I can't actually remember the name of the show that we saw, but the opera house is a spectacular sight unto itself.
And then suddenly it was time to return to Rwanda. Of course, Kenya Airways wouldn't let me go without a fuss, and I got delayed in Paris just long enough to get irked. And yes, I went to McDonald's while I was in Ukraine--for the cheap coffee and clean bathrooms. And to watch Ukrainians eat ice cream at eight o'clock on a blustery morning. And then I tried to imagine the concept of fast food in Rwanda. And then I laughed.
So that's kind of a briefly long-winded summary of life over the last three months. Obviously, other interesting, exciting, perplexing, and intriguing things have happened, but let's keep the mystery alive a little longer, eh?
Sunday 13 March 2011
A little bit of life...
Hello out there, friends! Today I played the piano and was accompanied by a Rwandan man with an accordian. I think it's about time to get some ibitengi lederhosen made.
The term is almost finished—we have one more week of actually teaching, then a week of review, and a week of final exams. Then three weeks of holidays! It's gotten to that stage in the term when the students have begun to check out, and I'm having to remind myself not to mentally wander. Sometimes my reminders are less successful than others.
Last weekend I went on a whirlwind trip up north to visit my friend Heather. She was on a mission to acquire a kitten, so Operation Baby Cat successfully launched under the cover of darkness late one Friday night. Our target was not happy, especially after being transported back to her house wrapped in a blanket and stuffed into a box. As one of her colleagues remarked, “I think it is somehow difficult to grow a baby cat!” But it was really great to be around a fuzzy animal that I knew was not going to be served for dinner sometime in the near future.
Speaking of dinner, Heather has a convent right behind her house, and we took over the kitchen to make pizza one evening. The nuns are crazy about pizza! They are not so crazy about Jesus jokes. I learned that one the hard way.
I'm going to be off jet-setting for the holidays, heading up to Ukraine to visit Margaret for part of the break. She has promised me a hot shower. It's been five months. I'm ready. Hopefully I won't have a massive panic attach when I am surrounded by buildings that are taller than one story. I might need a day or two in Kigali before I leave in order to acclimate myself once more.
Mk, I'm up in Muramba right now, hanging out with Alanna and petting cows. Umunsi mwiza!
Friday 4 March 2011
Do you have your digital?...No, but I have my words!
Happy weekend, friends kure kandi hafi! First, an apology. I have yet to post a single picture from Rwanda on my blog or on facebook. I could offer up a litany of excuses: people stare enough already, I have no electricity, the internet is slow and sporadic, etc. Actually, those are pretty good excuses. But as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words--and as a word nerd, I have quite a few words stockpiled and ready for use. So today, I'm going to take you all on a tour of my village. With a little imagination, hopefully you can see where I live!
Let's start at my house. Walk out of the gate (and be careful about the bridge--people have been known to slip and fall...goons...) and look left. The rutted, dirt road heads almost straight up into the mountains. Right across the street, there will probably be a few men hanging out, laying the foundation for a new house that is being built. Past that, the hill drops off dramatically into the valley. If you squint, you can make out women in dusty ibitengi cultivating sweet potatoes. There are a few little goat paths that go down into the valley; you will probably spot children carrying yellow jerry-cans of water or sugar cane on their heads. My favorite are the kids that carry bean vines on their heads. The vines are so long and rambling that you can barely see the child beneath all the vegetation. It looks just a like a giant mutant bean plant lumbering slowly up the hill. Disconcerting at first, yes, but now just hilarious!
Alrighty, let's head left. We're going to have to climb up some pretty steep hills if we want to go all the way to Rusumo, the market town 5 kilometers away. First, we'll pass the pasture behind my house. Various livestock show up there. I swear to god that the goats like to peep in my bathroom window while I pee. There are also a few chickens that run around mindlessly and occasionally come to visit my back porch. If you're lucky, the cow will be out, swishing his tail and mooing contented. Or, there might be a mismatched collection children playing soccer with a ball made out of twine and plastic sacks.
Keep walking up the hill, if you feel up to it, and you'll pass more sweet potato fields, banana groves, and children shouting "Komera!" You'll also see lots and lots of maize. People will ask, "And this, does it exist in America?" You will reply in the affirmative, but you can tell that they don't quite believe you. Then you will tell them that we call it "corn" and lose all your tenuous credibility.
There will be an endless parade of women coming and going to the market or to the village. Their ibitengi wraps are dazzling, even the ones that look to be years old. They will stare at you inscrutably, until you stop and greet them in Kinyarwanda. Then their eyes will light up and their faces will break into the most brilliant smiles you've ever seen. Some of them will shake your hand, some of them will hug you, some of them will try to drag you into the forest to visit their house, but they will all walk away softly murmuring to each other "Kinyarwanda arakize!" (She speaks Kinyarwanda!).
Further up the road is the Pentecostal church. If you peer off the side of the road to the left, past the pine trees that grow tall and perfume the air, the valleys and hills will roll on forever into the distance. The church is a happening place, and you will often hear drums, singing, and the rhythm of dancing feet drifting out of its open windows.
By now you're beginning to wonder if the ground is ever going to level out. It doesn't, but you're almost to the top of the mountain. When you finally reach the top, you can continue along the road down to Rusumo for another 3 K or so, or you can turn left and wander along the ridges for awhile. If you go left, you will probably hear something like this:
Child on hill: "Umuzungu!"
Child in valley: "Ari he?"
Hill: "Umuhanda!"
Valley: "Ehhhhh. Ni Katerina!"
Florence and her brothers will come running from their hut in the valley to greet you with a rousing chorus of "Komera" and "Good morning!" Anton knows to say "Good afternoon," and will correct his siblings if they get the greeting wrong. After spending five minutes chatting in a pigeon of KR and English, you continue on your way, and the little kids follow you down the road for awhile, dancing and singing. The road runs out after awhile, but if you venture up into the hills again, you can walk along another ridge and eventually come to a flat stretch of grass with the most amazing tree. It'll probably remind you of Rafiki's tree from the Lion King. Sitting beneath it, you can look out and see a large percentage of Rwanda's one thousand hills, as well as the winding curves of the Nyaborongo river.
Now let's go back to my house. It is only a ten minute walk to get from my house to the school. The village itself is in a tiny dip between two hills, and in the mornings the fog settles in a thick blanket over everything. Turn right from my gate, and start walking down hill. On your left is the health center. In the mornings it is very busy, and the gentle buzz of Kinyarwanda will fill your ears. The village center itself consists of a few shops, a barbershop, and a few houses. Past the last shop, you can take a road down into the valley and eventually arrive at Cyome, another market town. Make sure to stop and greet people as you walk to school--even the drunkypants that hang out in front of one of the shops. If you're lucky, you'll be walking at the same time as the preschoolers. They'll see you and start to spread their arms wide. Stop, and open your arms wide. You won't be able to help but smile as you are swarmed by a giggling mass of tiny Rwandan children.
The school is literally where the road ends. It is on top of a hill, with yet another million dollar view. In the distance, you can see a few other schools perched atop hillsides, their blue roofs glinting in the sunlight. School is just starting, so you linger outside with the other teachers while you "wait the learners." There is a teachers' room, but it dark and filled with unused desks and broken glass. Your first class is in local one, but you have to wait twenty minutes for the students to finish sweeping out the classroom. This is just as well, as the workmen installed glass panes on the windows earlier this week (while you were teaching) and there were shards everywhere. But now, the fog no longer creeps in during your lessons and obscures the chalkboard!
After you finish teaching, you can head back outside to schmooze with the other teachers or correct lessons in the teachers' room. If you walk past the primary school building, you will see the cow, the maize, and the latrines. You know enough to avoid walking very close to the latrines. There will always be a child or two (or twenty) wandering around the school grounds, or hanging out of the doors, ready to shout "good morning!" at you.
So that's my village! I'll take ya'll with me all the way to Rusumo one of these days, so you can get a feel for the market madness and meet the man who tells me that I am beautiful like his cow.
Weekend nziza!
Let's start at my house. Walk out of the gate (and be careful about the bridge--people have been known to slip and fall...goons...) and look left. The rutted, dirt road heads almost straight up into the mountains. Right across the street, there will probably be a few men hanging out, laying the foundation for a new house that is being built. Past that, the hill drops off dramatically into the valley. If you squint, you can make out women in dusty ibitengi cultivating sweet potatoes. There are a few little goat paths that go down into the valley; you will probably spot children carrying yellow jerry-cans of water or sugar cane on their heads. My favorite are the kids that carry bean vines on their heads. The vines are so long and rambling that you can barely see the child beneath all the vegetation. It looks just a like a giant mutant bean plant lumbering slowly up the hill. Disconcerting at first, yes, but now just hilarious!
Alrighty, let's head left. We're going to have to climb up some pretty steep hills if we want to go all the way to Rusumo, the market town 5 kilometers away. First, we'll pass the pasture behind my house. Various livestock show up there. I swear to god that the goats like to peep in my bathroom window while I pee. There are also a few chickens that run around mindlessly and occasionally come to visit my back porch. If you're lucky, the cow will be out, swishing his tail and mooing contented. Or, there might be a mismatched collection children playing soccer with a ball made out of twine and plastic sacks.
Keep walking up the hill, if you feel up to it, and you'll pass more sweet potato fields, banana groves, and children shouting "Komera!" You'll also see lots and lots of maize. People will ask, "And this, does it exist in America?" You will reply in the affirmative, but you can tell that they don't quite believe you. Then you will tell them that we call it "corn" and lose all your tenuous credibility.
There will be an endless parade of women coming and going to the market or to the village. Their ibitengi wraps are dazzling, even the ones that look to be years old. They will stare at you inscrutably, until you stop and greet them in Kinyarwanda. Then their eyes will light up and their faces will break into the most brilliant smiles you've ever seen. Some of them will shake your hand, some of them will hug you, some of them will try to drag you into the forest to visit their house, but they will all walk away softly murmuring to each other "Kinyarwanda arakize!" (She speaks Kinyarwanda!).
Further up the road is the Pentecostal church. If you peer off the side of the road to the left, past the pine trees that grow tall and perfume the air, the valleys and hills will roll on forever into the distance. The church is a happening place, and you will often hear drums, singing, and the rhythm of dancing feet drifting out of its open windows.
By now you're beginning to wonder if the ground is ever going to level out. It doesn't, but you're almost to the top of the mountain. When you finally reach the top, you can continue along the road down to Rusumo for another 3 K or so, or you can turn left and wander along the ridges for awhile. If you go left, you will probably hear something like this:
Child on hill: "Umuzungu!"
Child in valley: "Ari he?"
Hill: "Umuhanda!"
Valley: "Ehhhhh. Ni Katerina!"
Florence and her brothers will come running from their hut in the valley to greet you with a rousing chorus of "Komera" and "Good morning!" Anton knows to say "Good afternoon," and will correct his siblings if they get the greeting wrong. After spending five minutes chatting in a pigeon of KR and English, you continue on your way, and the little kids follow you down the road for awhile, dancing and singing. The road runs out after awhile, but if you venture up into the hills again, you can walk along another ridge and eventually come to a flat stretch of grass with the most amazing tree. It'll probably remind you of Rafiki's tree from the Lion King. Sitting beneath it, you can look out and see a large percentage of Rwanda's one thousand hills, as well as the winding curves of the Nyaborongo river.
Now let's go back to my house. It is only a ten minute walk to get from my house to the school. The village itself is in a tiny dip between two hills, and in the mornings the fog settles in a thick blanket over everything. Turn right from my gate, and start walking down hill. On your left is the health center. In the mornings it is very busy, and the gentle buzz of Kinyarwanda will fill your ears. The village center itself consists of a few shops, a barbershop, and a few houses. Past the last shop, you can take a road down into the valley and eventually arrive at Cyome, another market town. Make sure to stop and greet people as you walk to school--even the drunkypants that hang out in front of one of the shops. If you're lucky, you'll be walking at the same time as the preschoolers. They'll see you and start to spread their arms wide. Stop, and open your arms wide. You won't be able to help but smile as you are swarmed by a giggling mass of tiny Rwandan children.
The school is literally where the road ends. It is on top of a hill, with yet another million dollar view. In the distance, you can see a few other schools perched atop hillsides, their blue roofs glinting in the sunlight. School is just starting, so you linger outside with the other teachers while you "wait the learners." There is a teachers' room, but it dark and filled with unused desks and broken glass. Your first class is in local one, but you have to wait twenty minutes for the students to finish sweeping out the classroom. This is just as well, as the workmen installed glass panes on the windows earlier this week (while you were teaching) and there were shards everywhere. But now, the fog no longer creeps in during your lessons and obscures the chalkboard!
After you finish teaching, you can head back outside to schmooze with the other teachers or correct lessons in the teachers' room. If you walk past the primary school building, you will see the cow, the maize, and the latrines. You know enough to avoid walking very close to the latrines. There will always be a child or two (or twenty) wandering around the school grounds, or hanging out of the doors, ready to shout "good morning!" at you.
So that's my village! I'll take ya'll with me all the way to Rusumo one of these days, so you can get a feel for the market madness and meet the man who tells me that I am beautiful like his cow.
Weekend nziza!
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