Care Packages

This post is to say a GIANT thank you to everyone who spent the time, effort and money to send me a care package. Honestly, I’m not sure how I will ever convey the level of gratitude that I and the other trainees feel for them. Additionally, a thank you should go out to my parents for teaching me good sharing skills because the PCTs definitely benefit highly from my packages.  All five of the packages that were mailed to me were received on the same day (a product of the postal system here) the night before Thanksgiving. The oreos and pretzels sent by the lovely people of Travelers Insurance were immediately put up for grabs and just as immediately devoured. The nerf football also made Thanksgiving that much better as we were able to have a touch football game (in the pouring rain) and explain to our Rwandan  teachers the game of football and its significance on Thanksgiving. It is also the only football that anyone has in this country – where soccer is much more popular – so you cannot imagine how much the males of our group appreciate it! Another thanks to Mama K for the prepackaged pumpkin bread mix and canned pumpkin. It arrived literally just on time and we constructed our own oven just to cook it up for the celebration! The Rwandans loved it too which is rare for something so different from the norm!! My children – yes I call them mine they are my favorite Rwandans by far –  were overjoyed with more jump ropes to play with and there are now a dozen or so little boys with American flag colored friendship bracelets. My boss whose son has been in the hospital for quite a while was brought some of the chocolate and oreos, which I am told he appreciated. Care packages, as you can see, clearly bring an immense amount of comfort and excitement to myself and those around me. Anything from America is automatically considered epically cool and people are excited just to have access to it. But I have to say a big thank you last but not least for the food! It is beyond comforting! This week I have eaten a tuna fish sandwich! Goldfish! Salsa! And Kraft macaroni and cheese!! And I can safely say that they made my week and the week of everyone I shared with. Today after a long, rainy, and stressful day of AIDs training myself and several other trainees came back to the hub and cooked up a big pot of packaged mac and cheese from one of my packages and some brownies from someone else’s. You’ve literally never seen a bunch of happier people. It was borderline indecent. So if I haven’t expressed my gratitude enough let me do it again. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Thank you for the food and toys. Thank you for the thoughts. Thank you for the obvious support it shows for myself and the Peace Corps’ mission at large. Thank you for making my week. Thank you for the few pounds it has helped me gain back.  It’s an incredibly comforting thing to have concrete signs of home, and love, and support, land a million miles away and realize that someone took the time and effort thinking of you. It makes hard days here easier and good days better. Thank you! And don’t worry, I am paying forward. 

Shallowness

There are things you plan to miss when you depart your homeland for an extended period of time. Things you mental prepare for and gourge yourself on knowing that you won’t find them for a while; friends, family, fast-food, hot showers, driving a car. It’s the things you expected to be fine without, to rejoice in leaving even, that catch you by surprise. The familiarity of gossip, the minor annoyance of traffic, knowing when Beyonce’s baby is due – its these things that really shock you. The minor announces of American culture that you thought you would be better off without suddenly seem so important when you realize you don’t want to learn all the inner workings of a new culture, a new celebrity gossip seen, new political parties slinging slightly redder African mud. I can’t explain the feeling but today I woke up and realized that I missed idle gossip. I miss having cursory acquaintances whose outfit didn’t match or talking shit about someone’s trashy significant other. Compared to the serious occurances of everyday life here I would gladly trade. Don’t get me wrong, Its truly a special thing that I don’t have anything bad to say about my colleagues here, but sometimes you miss the luxury of triviality. I miss frenemies, and passive aggressive texts, and bitching, and gossip rags, and springer. I miss those people in your life who you don’t like but can’t get rid of. I miss the “Karens” of the world who you keep around just to hate. I miss Perezhilton, and TMZ and People. I miss snarky VH1 celebrity specials. I miss having nothing better to worry about. I miss smiling at someone’s face. Despite the fact that it makes me a hypocrite, and I’m sure that I’ll regret saying it when I’m back in America, I miss the shallowness that can infest our first world lives. At the end of the day, I miss small fixable problems that could be easily removed from my life, as opposed to the big intractable ones. The ones that make you reevaluate your principles, and which may never be solved. When faced with AIDs, poverty, inequality, illness, and genocide, I’m not ashamed to say I’d take a two-faced friend or a flaky partner. I guess these are the choices I made, I traded up from irksome to life-changing, and I stand by the choice. But damn, don’t I wish some days that my biggest problem was the boy I like not being interested, or my roommate eating my sour cream. 

Reverse Racism, Integration and the Chaos of Kigali

This weekend, we once again took advantage of our new found privileges to adventure into the capital city of Kigali. Kigali is always an odd and overwhelming experience for trainees ( and I’ve been told for PCVs as well). For starters we are not the only white people, and generally people pay us no attention at all, which is a wonderful change of pace. However, as Peace Corps Volunteers who work primarily off by ourselves without seeing other white people – unlike other aid and NGO workers who live in the capital or work primarily with American colleagues we are a little bit socially awkward.

Whenever I see another Muzungu in Kigali I automatically assume they work with Peace Corps, because that is my frame of reference, but truthfully PCVs are not in Kigali very often. Most times I refrain from approaching strangers for this reason – most likely they are aid workers or ex-pats who are nowhere near as excited as I am to see a white person they don’t know.  There is also generally a tension between PCVs and ex-pats who are in Rwanda for other reasons (which I have been told is pervasive in other countries as well).  PCVs live very differently and have very different goals from many other aid agencies. We learn the language (extensively), live in rural communities, make modest salaries, try our hardest to conform to culture, and we are extremely proud of it. Ex-pats make plush salaries, use translators, live in capitals, and many times have access to things that mean their lives are not all that different from America. You can probably sense already from this post that the tension comes from both sides. PCVs sometimes can and do feel superior – like they are being more authentic – and ex-pats react by thinking we are self righteous causing the whole cycle to perpetuate itself further.

I had my first run-in with this paradox and the complications that being around other muzungus causes. While sitting in Bourbon coffee on Sunday enjoying a very overpriced ($2 American) cup of coffee a small boy came and stood next to me. Naturally I greeted him in Kinyarwanda and started asking him my normal slew of questions. He looked terrified and confused and the only thing he would do was point out at the rest of the room and say mama. I assumed that he was trying to discourage me from stealing him by reminding me that his mama was in the room.  Fair enough, better safe than sorry. However, after he decided he didn’ t know what to make of me he ran away into the arms a white American woman and her African American husband and began babbling away in perfect English. Yea, they were ex-pat Americans and the child didn’t speak a word of Kinyarwanda, they were from New York. 

Thanksgiving cont'd

The few of us who were in charge of significant parts of Thanksgiving then passed out here so we could wake up at 5 am and put the turkeys in their pit. The pit was filled with charcoal and wet banana leaves and then the dirt was poured back in so we could dig them all up again at 530pm. Yea, it takes 10 hours to pit roast turkeys, and even when we dug them up they weren't fully cooked and some pieces had to be sauteed.

Then 40 pounds of potatoes had to be hand peeled and diced. Along with all the stuffing, salads, mac and cheese and green beans we were cooking. At around 1 we hit a wall where nothing else could be done until 3ish because otherwise everything would be ready at different times so we went to the bar, naturally, and played the types of games families typically play after they finish their meals. Care packages came the day before thanksgiving so I had received a football and we had a game in the pouring rain when we got back ( a very nice American touch). 

All in all it was a good holiday, I'm not sure it was Thanksgiving, but it was a holiday. There were a few moments when people got emotional and homesick on such a long stressful day: namely myself if we're being honest here, but as i've learned already on this adventure Peace Corps might be the best support network I've ever witnessed. Try and hide the fact that you were crying in a room of PCTs who already consider themselves your family and see how well it goes over. Hint: it doesn't. You will be offered any and all candy or booze on the premise and given a bear hug while several other people tell you they feel the same way. So at the end of the day that is what I'm thankful for this year: for finding my people. It's been a long hard year and I had to come all the way to Africa to find them but it was one of those moments where you know you are in the right place.

Happy Holidays all! Let the countdown to 2012 and an official new beginning begin. 

Thinking

There is a true lack of creative or critical thinking in this country that makes me both sad and annoyed on a daily basis. I can never decide if this tendency is routed in a fear of making a mistake, a system that discourages it, or instead a simple lack of ability. This problem crops up in many different - and equally annoying - ways in my daily life. 

1. Food - I understand that there are a lack of ingredients cheaply and easily available in Rwanda, especially in the villages, but that does not mean that you must combine them in the same 10 ways only for your entire lives. Alternative uses for foods, such as guacamole, tacos, mashed potatoes, cheese, scrambled eggs, potato salad, sandwiches of any kind, pasta with tomato sauce...the list goes on, all of which are possible here in Rwanda not only are not made but Rwandans generally will not even try when they are presented with them.

2. Classroom - When I teach my students a new grammar concept and ask them to come up with their own examples It is almost impossible to get my students to produce original sentences. Usually instead they reproduce my example sentences or copy the sentences of the few students who did understand, meaning that I get all the same sentences and no clear idea of who understands. This is both frustrating and sad. I have been told that Rwandan teachers are usually quite brutal when criticizing students for being wrong, so that could have something to do with the problem. 

3. New Ideas - Presenting new idea to anyone I've spoken to here over a certain age has proven generally impossible. Any piece of information a person receives is clung to with such intensity that should another fact come along to dispute it there can be no room for argument. See previous post concerning where exactly Barack Obama is president of. 

4. Scheduling - We bump heads with our Rwandan counterparts almost daily on the need to make and keep logical schedules. These are always interrupted, however, by some higher-ups need to commandeer a car to fit his own schedule, or  desire to change the schedule simply to assert authority. My patience is continually tested as we reinvent the wheel literally every morning by scrapping the schedule that works to create a new one that may or may not. As you can imagine this drives Americans crazy. 

I know these attributes are caused by a complicated web of culture, education, hierarchy, and fear of being wrong but on a bad day, or even a good one sometimes, that doesn't stop them from driving an American absolutely insane. 

Culture Clash

I have been sick several times already here in Rwanda. Usually with gastrointestinal problems that need no further explanation. When this occurs, however, my host family and I have extremely different ideas on how best to respond. The Rwandan belief is stated to be that regardless of how sick you are you must eat a full plate of rice and beans. I have had one person tell me it is because medicine is poison and you need food to counteract it. Recently though, I have realized that this belief only applies to Muzungu's living in your home. Over the last 3 weeks at least one member of my family has been sick to the stomach each night - meaning that they do not eat dinner and no one seems to care - but whenever I try to take that route I am scolded and embarrassed. Usually the conversation goes something like this:

Me: I will not eat tonight I am sick

Mama: Oya, Ni bibi (no this is very bad) You must eat. Lots of Rwandan clucking and judging noises.

Me: No I insist, I will not eat. I spoke to the Doctor he said do not eat.

Mama: That is a lie. No doctor would ever say that. (Calls over host sibling to speak to me in English)

Sister: You must eat! Mama is very angry. She says she does not forgive you.

 * At this point I get fed up and go into my room and close the door insisting that I am a grown woman who does not have to eat when she does not want to -yes I know Its quite childish but sometimes it is the only thing that works. *

In the morning I am always confronted with Mama praising the Lord (literally) that I am still alive and telling me that she is very angry with me because she could not sleep all night thinking that I would die. The woman is the martyr of the century. 

The whole thing has gotten progressively more obnoxious once I realized that my family is not forced to eat when they are sick. Additionally, the high frequency of sickness supports my theory that it is due to the food being cooked at 7 and then sitting out until 10 until we eat it. I can't wait until I can live on my own! 3 more weeks!

Thanksgiving

Our first African Thanksgiving is fast approaching, and preparations are in full swing. Since the American embassy in Rwanda is in a bit of a transition - the ambassador was newly appointed just after we got here - there is not a Turkey day party at the embassy this year. Instead, we as trainees will be cooking our own meal. This means that we will be cooking a Thanksgiving meal for 60 people over an open fire in the yard of our school's compound. The menu obviously had to be simplified accordingly so this year's meal will include: mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, turkey and mac and cheese (not exactly traditional but who cares). For dessert we are covering chipoti (spelling?) with powdered sugar. Oh and the Turkeys? They were purchased yesterday, all six of them, alive. We will be killing, plucking and gutting them ourselves then cooking them in a pit in the yard. This is going to be quite the adventure for sure. I'll let you know how it works out!!