Friday I went to my resource family’s house for the first time. My host mom, Mama Queen, is 36, is going back to university for restaurant management and has two adorable little girls who are 6 and 3. The older girl will sometimes answer questions that I ask her, and speaks a little French and a little English. The younger girl I haven’t heard speak yet, but she sits in my lap sometimes, which is adorable. Mama Queen is fluent in French, which made things much easier for me than many of the other volunteers who have families who speak only Kinyarwanda. Unfortunately for me, I haven’t practiced French in ages, so I’m a bit rusty, and combined with the Rwandan French accent, we still have a hard time understanding each other sometimes (which is kind of sad and makes me feel like a fail in three languages). My host dad works for Rwandatel, which is one of the phone companies in Rwanda. I haven’t met him yet, but Mama Queen did give me a bright orange Rwandatel t-shirt and hat. While I was there, Mama Queen told me that she was also host mom to Brandon, one of the current education volunteers, and called him so I could talk to him (awkward?). He told me that Mama Queen is the best and that if I want to bring people over, or eat dinner with her, or have a beer with her (women are sometimes discouraged from drinking), that I’m more than welcome. This is very encouraging!
Friday night we went to Blue Bar (not actually the name, but that’s what we call it since no one knows what the name is, and the bar is blue) where maybe 20 of us squeezed into a tiny gazebo together. We had a good time, but I’m sure we were annoying the other people with how loud we were. Many Rwandans when you talk to them will speak at just over a whisper. A lot of times it’s hard to even hear what they’re saying, much less understand.
After a week of classes, we had our first free day on Sunday (we have classes Monday-Saturday). The free time is nice, but it also means we’re not fed. They feed us enough during the week to not need to eat at all, but instead we went to Heritage Hotel Saturday night to get pizza. It was interesting. Imagine bread dough with a bunch of random vegetables (maybe carrots, eggplant and peppers) with some not-quite cheese and an egg on top, and you have yourself some Rwandan vegetarian pizza. It also took over two hours from the time we ordered to when we got our food- we’re definitely on Africa time. One of the girls got sick so we went back to the house early to watch Center Stage and have some starburst (feel free to send some when you get the chance)- it was a good night.
Yesterday morning I went for a run with Amy. We ran to the lake that’s kinda by my house, then walked around the lake and ran back. The lake is really murky- even right by shore where it’s only a couple inches deep you still can’t see the bottom. When I got back I took a cold shower (all showers here are cold), but because I was so hot and sweaty it felt great. A group from one of the other houses walked by our house to go to the lake in the afternoon so we walked back with them. Since Amy and I had just been there, we sat on the bridge while the others walked around the lake. It was nice, and a big group of kids came over to stand by us. We still can’t say very much, but hopefully it will get better, and it’s been encouraging talking to current volunteers. One of the girls is nearly fluent, even though she’s only been here since September. While I don’t expect that to happen quite so quickly, it’ll be good to be able to have basic conversations with people.
That’s it for now, have a wonderful week!
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