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 7^th 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.