Noheri Nziza (Merry Christmas)

After my night in Kigali for my medical reasons, myself and a few other trainees headed out to a friend’s site further North to celebrate the Christmas holiday. We left Kigali early because we knew that public transport on the day before Christmas, in any catholic country, was bound to be a nightmare. Nybogogo (the main bus station) was a lot like what I imagine hell to be like. Luckily, however, Rwandan transport is known for being much better organized than its surrounding neighbors – which isn’t saying much – and our reservations were held and respected. We grabbed our tickets and hopped on our bus moments before it was set to depart.

We spent the two days of our visit cooking good American food, drinking beer and generally being merry. Some of the highlights:

-The two Santa hats I bought in Kigali which were present throughout and passed around between everyone,  until one got stolen by one of the Rwandan guests.

-Cooking Tacos and Spanish rice because we could even though they are not the most Christmas-y of foods

-The constant blue skies, 80 degree weather and banana trees

-When one of the nice female neighbors and about 20 children came into the compound to help us cook and laughed at how we peeled potatoes

-Giving the kids glow sticks after it got dark one night – they went absolutely nuts but were very sad when they stopped glowing in the morning.

-The 2 adorable children who we let stay and eat our tacos with us

-Some rousing games of Trivial pursuit

-Everyone sleeping on the hard concrete floor and thus being very overtired

-The constant chorus of “eat this you need the calories” leveled at me after I revealed that I was malnourished.

In general it was just incredibly nice to all be together, doing things in the most American way we could to celebrate the holiday. And it was nice to hear that everyone has been struggling at site in their own way, despite their personalities, language abilities, living situations etc. Every site is hard. Every site has challenges and realistically we will all get through them together. And every now and then we  will congregate in our own little  Muzungu world and eat Tacos and pretend we are not in Rwanda.

The volunteer we were visiting lives in a much more urban area than myself and upon arriving I was pretty shocked by the surroundings. I would not have been able to live there. Props to this volunteer because after two days there our official diagnosis was that he lived in a village full of assholes. People stared far more openly and in much closer proximity to us than anyone in my village, I was asked for money more, and I just felt downright unwelcome. Children banged at his gate and peered in his windows almost the entire time we were there (and apparently they do this even when just one muzungu is present) and his neighbors let themselves in constantly and invited themselves to stay for food. Luckily this volunteer is one of the more laid-back and kindhearted of our group and thus handles the situation beautifully, but I personally don’t think I could do it. It was a bit of a relief to see someone else’s site and realize that the particular challenges of my site are well within my limits as a person because clearly there are some things which would not be.

So despite missing family, friends and tradition it was a wonderful holiday. A big thank you to everyone who came and made it special and to our host for allowing so many of us to crash at his house despite having no furniture and very few days to prepare. You probably won’t read this but you’re a champ. I hope everyone back home’s Christmas’s were equally enjoyable. Noheri Nziza. Merry Christmas. And a happy new year. 

Malnutrition

Let me start this story by saying, “Do not be alarmed” I am posting this because it is amusing to me and clearly the whole thing worked out fine because I am able to post this story comfortably from an internet café in my market town. That being said, here is the story:

When we first arrived at training the horror story started circulating that every female volunteer in Peace Corps gains weight and every male loses it. This story was confirmed by our doctors, RPCVs on staff, and the current PCVs who came to assist with training. And once I saw a traditional Rwandan meal I was no longer all that shocked. The case was settled when we asked one female volunteer what she did about the fact that Rwandan meals were all starch and she said, “I just got chubby.” So I was resigned to my fat, I would gain some weight here, which in the service of the greater good really isn’t all that serious a crisis. Additionally, being white has the main perk that I could look like [insert any hideous celebrity] and still be considered beautiful, such is life as an oddity.  I decided I would accept the weight gain until I got my own house and could cook for myself – aka 1 starch/carb per meal.

            However,   this is not how things played out. A few weeks into training I realized my pants had gotten noticeably larger despite my Rwandan diet but I reasoned that it was because they were being manhandled every time they were washed and then dried on a line instead of by machine. This trend progressed, however, throughout the training period. Additionally, I was getting awful stomach illnesses roughly bi-weekly which landed me in the infirmary and definitely added to my weight loss. (Yay for bucking trends).

            This situation got serious once I got to site and was able to cook for myself and realized I was still constantly getting sick – meaning I couldn’t blame it on my host families cooking anymore. Either I was an unhygienic cook as well or Africa simply wasn’t agreeing with me. Finally, one week after being at site I was washing my dishes when I collapsed inside my house. Naturally, it is a scary feeling to wake up on your floor and realize you’ve fainted and don’t know how long you’ve been out for. I tend to faint a lot, however, so I was going to chug some water and take a nap without thinking much of it but another volunteer happened to call me in that moment. She was upset about a piece of news we had received that day but I was completely out of it and finally had to admit my current situation and ask to call her back. This didn’t go well and she demanded that I call the doctors or she would. The doctors naturally had me come to Kigali the next day escorted by my closest volunteer – incase I should pass out again on public transport.

            Upon weighing me in Kigali it was discovered I have lost 20-25 lbs and am technically malnourished. It looks like I took integrating into the community a little too far; I even have the distended abdomen which would explain why I didn’t notice the dramatic weight loss but you can wrap your fingers around my upper arm – not a good sign – which I probably should have noticed. This is obviously and ikibazo (problem) and I had to agree to gain back a certain amount of the weight to remain a PCV. The bigger problem is that I have been eating and while living with a host family I was eating like a Rwandan, so clearly something was wrong. After several tests it was determined that I have an amoeba which is living in my stomach and stealing all my nutrients causing me to take almost no nourishment from the food I consume. What an odd world we live in. Luckily I have since been given something kill the little devils and I feasted in Kigali. A big thanks to my fellow PCVs for a. making me call the doctors b. accompanying my to Kigali and c. spending most of our Christmas celebrations saying things like “eat this you need the calories.”

Umuzungu Hehe?

Since I am now the only white person in my village, and for that matter in quite a wide radius around my village, I am now on a personal crusade to get people to call me by my name. I am the only white person, thus they should be able to remember to call me Michele or Teacher. For the most part it is working, after I meet people once or twice and explain to them who I am, Why I’m here, and why I don’t like being called Umuzungu they tend to understand and remember for next time. My biggest tool in this crusade are the children, because they have a tendency to be clustered in large groups and to run after, up to me, etc whenever they see me shouting umuzungu. My new tactic for this situation goes like this:

*Chorus of children screaming “umuzungu” *

Me: Umuzungu?? Hehe? (where?) Do you see an Umuzungu? I don’t see an umunuzungu? While looking around confused

 This confuses the children immensely and usually they start laughing and looking at eachother like I’m crazy until one of them gets brave enough to point at me and inform me that I am the Umuzungu. At which point I laugh and say “no I am a Rwandan.” This generally sends everyone watching into fits of laughter until I explain my whole Peace Corps deal and then ask them very nicely not to call me Umuzungu because it makes me very sad. Generally children I do this too remember my name the next time and I usually instruct them to also tell their parents my name so that the message spreads further through the community. So far, its working. Buhoro Buhoro (step by step) they will know my name.  

Daily Routine

I’ve been at site a little over two weeks now trying to adjust to my village and living on my home. It’s a weird time of year for teacher’s, however, as school is not in session and I can’t really lesson plan yet since I don’t know what level I am teaching. But incase you’re interested this is roughly what I have been up to these two weeks:

-Waking up at 7! Aka Sleeping in!

-Making myself a cup of coffee and reading a book

-Washing my dishes and cleaning my house.

-Washing some clothes (somedays)

-Going out into the community to buy whatever random household items I need and socializing with people aka explaining who I am and what I’m doing for several hours on end (its exhausting)

-Coming home and reading a book/napping

-Working out usually a deck, an hour of yoga, and some sprints on the soccer field

-cooking myself dinner

-Heating up a pot of water and showering while listening to Voice of America (I wonder what they would think of that)

-reading by candlelight until I pass out.

During these two weeks I’ve managed to read all of the twilight series, reread Chelsea handler, read Wuthering Heights, and start War and Peace. I’ve also started a mural out of chalk on my wall. Cooking wise I’ve made several pasta sauces, figured out how to cook rice at altitude, made amazing mango chutney and no bake oatmeal cookies. So I believe its safe to say that once you add in teaching during the school year, my occasional social visits, weekly trips to the market and occasional trips to my banking town, this is pretty much how I’ll be spending my life for the next to years. It’s quite boring considering I’m somehow on the biggest adventure of my life, but everyday brings its own little triumphs and surprises and I can only imagine it will get better when school starts.

Oh and my electricity has been out since I moved in because the students are not in school so that should add a significant amount of joy to my life when it turns back on! Hope your days are much more interesting J

Site Installation

I live in Rwanda. I live in Africa. Alone. I realize that I have lived in Rwanda for 3 months now but something didn’t feel real about it until I arrived at my site this week. Now I  LIVE in Africa. I cook my own food, over a petrol stove, I have my own house, I have to decorate and find places to buy silver wear and plates and mugs and there are no other Muzungus for miles. It’s a weird thought and an even weirder feeling. I woke up this morning overwhelmed at the thought of it, I had to venture to the market and bargain for food for the week and because the market closer to my site isn’t until Monday I had to take a 30min moto to a place where there was a market. Needless to say there was a lot of procrastination in my bed before I decided to get up and get moving. Hell I hadn’t slept past 6am in months, and just because I couldn’t sleep didn’t mean I couldn’t lay there and pretend.

            I first went to the center of my village hoping to find some of the items I needed a little closer to home. There is a small hill leading down into the city center and thus as I walked I could see the shops unfolding before me and slowly but surely I could see the town see me. Have you ever walked up to a place and had literally everyone stop? Fifty plus people just stop their conversations, stop whatever they are doing and watch you? Well that’s what happened. Naturally I was a bit overwhelmed.  By the time I made it down the hill into the center of the road all activity had ceased and everyone had gravitated in on me. The school I work at is a little off-set from the village so I wasn’t sure if these people had already heard there was a white woman coming, or what their expectation of me in that moment was. I froze. I was panicking. I mean really what do you do in that situation? Let me tell you that the natural response in to run, but that clearly wasn’t what I should do here. So I caught my breath, slowed my heartbeat and gave my speech.

            “Ndi umwarimu icongereza, ndi umunyamerikakazi. Ndi umukorerabushake wa Peace Corps. Ntuye hano, na Ecole Secondaire Ngara. Nzatuye hano umutwe babiri. Nitwa Michele. Sinitwa Umuzungu, Michele Kyangwa Teacher gousa. Ndishimye Kubamenya.”

            For those of you  who don’t speak Kinyarwanda it says, “ I am an English teacher, I am an American woman. I am a Peace Corps volunteer. I live here at Ecole Secondaire Nagara. I will live here for two years. My name is Michele. It is not Muzungu. Call me Michele or Teacher only. It is nice to meet you.”

            And then all hell broke loose. Every old mama hugged me and kissed my cheeks. Every old man shook my hand and every small child hugged my legs. All symphony of names were screamed at me that I will never manage to remember all of and I was welcomed as a member of the community. I don’t know if they had heard I was coming, but clearly my declaration that I had to come to teach their children English was enough to ingratiate me into their community.

            Quickly afterwards  I was asked what I was looking for and a younger woman who went to University and spoke good English became my guide to helping me find cups and plates and the like. Children were sent running through the streets to ask every shop owner if he had these items and amaceruzi (shopkeepers) were brought from their houses to open stores which were not open. Ultimately, however, the quest fell short when we could not locate forks or knives or spoons. After the town apologized profusely I hopped on a moto to the closest big city to acquire these items because clearly eating without these things would be difficult to say the least.            

            While in town I also found an internet café, and although the internet wasn’t working today, I was able to use the electricity to charge my computer, which is nice because the electricity in my home will not be turned on until the children are back in school. Because the electricity runs on a generator we use it only when there are students who need it to study in the dorms at night, meaning that I’ve still got another 3 weeks of living without electricity. Disappointing, yes, but hardly something that I’m not used to. There are, anyways, many solutions to this problem. I can charge my phone by dropping it off with a boutique owner and paying 100 RWF to charge it there, or by taking it to a man in the village who uses a car battery to charge electronics. However, since I didn’t buy the car charger with my phone that sometimes becomes more problematic. Where the computer is concerned it gets a little harder because naturally it is a more expensive commodity. No one would steal my phone because its not even as nice as the ones that most Rwandans use, and they wouldn’t want to break my trust over something so small. A computer, however, is a big ticket item and thus to charge it somewhere I also have to stay with it, which is a long process. In Kamonyi I knew a few tea shop owners who were happy to charge me a little extra for Icayi (tea) with a side of electricity but I have yet to find that in my village. So for now I have to go into the big city where this kind of thing is more normal. But eventually, buhoro buhoro (step by step) I will integrate into my new community and know where the hot spots are. 

Reflections

Here it is, I’ve lived in Rwanda for 3 months. Three whole months a very white girl has managed to survive here in Africa. It hasn’t been easy, or pretty, or well-organized and it hasn’t always been fun.  But damn has it been an adventure. Already in 3 months I have done things I never thought I would do, seen things that I never contemplated, and been confronted with realities of third world life and the stark contrast it poses to the existence that we Americans have come to enjoy. I’ve learned a lot too, as one could imagine, in my time here in Kamonyi. So before I move on to the next stage, move to Nyamagabe and start re-establishing myself as a member of my community here are the things that I’ve learned:

-Check your mosquito net for holes before sleeping under it, because it will do you no good if the mosquitos can get in.

-Even after you know the language, sometimes feigning ignorance is the easiest way to deal with Rwandans.

-Always bring your own toilet paper.

-Some people will never stop calling you Muzungu, will never stop staring, will never stop laughing when you speak Kinyarwanda and will never accept you as a member of your community. They are completely not worth your time.

-Despite having to be culturally sensitive, it is ok to say that  you do not eat things for religious reasons. I use this excuse frequently with tongue, liver, heart, and intestine. I’m not sure what religion bars the eating of these things but I don’t feel all that bad about lying.

-There are some things that you just have to grit your teeth and do, regardless of how much you don’t want to, or it doesn’t make sense, or its absolutely batshit crazy. Its just easier to do it than to explain why you won’t.

-The people you meet in the Peace Corps are the some of the kindest, quirkiest, most interesting, more accomplished people I have ever met. And after 3 months I would already trust them with my life and have realized that my training group is 36 people that will never be far from my heart.

-Cleanliness is relative.

-Mice, not as scary as many Americans make them out to be.

-In all the fundamental ways that make us human, people are the same. At the end of the day the basics always translate, emotions are universal, and tears or a smile seem to elicite the same response regardless of culture.

-Children will play and dance with you, always, and it will make your day.

-This is a big daunting job, and you can’t approach it like you’re going to change the world. Each day you just have to be your best self, which is hard, but that will make the most lasting impact.

-Mud is a creation of the devil that was created only to punish humans.

-I have something to do for Peace Corps, is the most effective excuse to get out of absolutely anything you don’t want to do.

-Having an adequate supply of water and power bars is a life saver.

-People in stressful situations are capable of bonding much quicker than is normal.

-Certain cultural norms are just going to have to be ignored. For example on those days when you really need a beer; have one.

-People are resilient, and even if you don’t agree with it they are capable of ignoring great tragedies.

-You can,  in fact, live on almost essentially on unflavored carbs, but you won’t like it.

-Sometimes a hug or mac and cheese or a cup of coffee fixes everything.

-It really is the small things in life.

-Having a sense of humor, and a rather dark one at that, might be the best preparation I ever had to survive this country and this job for two years.

-Your hair and skin is fascinating and will be touched by all manor of strangers.

At the end of the day, this isn’t a glamorous job. There are days where you will ball like a child, or be deathly ill, or scream at a kid. But ultimately it is always worth it. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Mood Swings

            The life of a Peace Corps Volunteer is an emotional rollercoaster. The highs are high and the lows are devastatingly low. Unlike normal life these ups and downs are much more frequent. Instead of having a good month or week or day, my mood can noticeably change 4 or 5 times over the course of the day.  And these changes can be triggered by the most insignificant of occurrences. You know the saying wearing your heart on your sleeve? Well I wear all my emotions there. This country, this job, this life are just too tiring to wear the masks first world societies prize so highly and as a result everything is slightly realer, slightly rawer, and a whole lot more emotional.  Let me give you an example breakdown of a typical day:

-       My host family wakes up at 5am and starts blaring Christian radio and I can’t get back to sleep (-)

-       I take a freezing cold bucket bath in a dirty mud room full of spiders (-)

-       I make coffee at the hub that someone sent me in a care package and feel caffeinated and loved (+)

-       I check my blog and see that I have 3,000 page views! (+)

-       I spend 20 minutes and 5 dollars to check my facebook and email and realize that no one has sent me anything (-)

-       The little kids we pass everyday give us flowers (+)

-       An old woman in the street follows me for 5 minutes screaming Muzungu, or a small child runs after me demanding money (-)

-       I run into some of my little boys in the street who know who call me Michele and dance with me (+)

-       My host mother laughs mercilously at all of my attempts to speak Kinyarwanda. I mean honestly its been three months it can’t be that funny anymore (-)

-       We have tech training which is a miserable incessant pool of idiocracy. (-)

-       Some of the other volunteers and I go to the bar after class and grab a beer. (+)

-       The bar owner tries to charge us extra on our beer even though we have been coming there for months and she knows us. (-)

-       I curl up in my bed and read a good book until dinner. I’m currently working my way through War and Peace (+)

-       Dinner isn’t served until 10 o’clock at which point I am exhausted, not hungry, and grumpy because I already fell asleep and woke up. Dinner is also awful. (-)

Not all of these things happen everyday obviously, but enough of them do to make a day sufficiently frustrating and to alter my mood several dozen times. Honestly, there are days where I imagine that this is exactly what an emotionally unbalanced person feels like. Luckily I know that these feelings are not unique to me and that if I am going crazy, it is all in pursuit of a just cause.