life in kiramuruzi

I was wrong- apparently the East really is flat and hot. At least when compared to the North- which is beautiful, by the way. A couple weeks ago I went to Musanze to stay with Amy and it was wonderful! It’s been great to see different parts of the country too. The North where Amy lives is much cooler and very hilly. From outside her house you can see the three volcanoes in Rwanda- gorgeous! Musanze is also full of NGOs so it’s like Americaland. There are tall buildings and restaurants, and hotels that cater to westerners, and stores that carry everything!

Clearly, I live in a much smaller town. There are a couple of stores in “town”, but they all sell the same things, and just the basics. We have two restaurants (I thought we only had one, but just recently found out about a second one), which both only have Rwandan foods. This means rice, beans, French fries, greens, ubugari (cassava dough), plantain mash and meat in sauce. Our market is only open twice a week, on Saturday and Mondays. Now, you might think that it would make more sense to have the market days more spaced out, and I would agree with you, but apparently not. The market has fabric and tailors inside the market building, shoes right outside, and vegetables on an open area on the other side of the road. Now, it also makes sense to buy the bulk of your food on Monday, since the market won’t be open again until Saturday, so of course that is the slow day. Saturday is the big day when there are tons of vendors and lots of fresh vegetables. These veggies then sit out in the sun until Monday, when, like a silly muzungu, I come buy them. However, buying the veggies on Saturday is no good either because I either use them up before the next Saturday so I have none, or they go bad so I have none. Clearly, the system needs work.

But regardless of the vegetable/market situation, Arielle and I eat incredibly well. Much better than I did in the US. I even cook here. From scratch! I’m getting really good at making tomato and soy sauce stir-fries, and the other night we had a delicious spicy peanut sauce (unfortunately, I was responsible for the veggies, not the sauce, so I’m not entirely sure I can recreate that one). I am now also capable of cooking beans, lentils and garbanzo beans (for making homemade hummus, obviously). Probably the most impressive would have to be when Jenny, Sonya and I made homemade pirogues. Yes, we even made the pasta ourselves. I was voted best pasta roller (I know you’re proud). They were delicious! Funnily enough, the biggest hit of the night was the tomato sauce we made to go with the pirogues, but then botched, and then fixed by throwing a bunch of beer in the pot. Who knew? Jenny, apparently. We’ve taken to calling it disaster sauce, and it’s pretty fantastic.

We made the sauce again with some pasta salad to bring to Tom’s house for the 4th. Tom and his wife Malea live in Kibungo and for the last two 4th of July’s he’s roasted a goat at his place. Since we were cooking in the morning we didn’t make it there for the actual roasting, but it was delicious when we got there early afternoon. Tom’s house is amazing! His organization already had the house set up, which means it’s furnished with actual furniture, and there’s even a kitchen with a sink, a fridge, a fully functional and a (mostly) working pizza oven in the back yard!

As far as everything else goes, life at site is pretty much the same most weeks. I go to work in the morning around 8, sometimes there are site visits in the morning, sometimes not, sometimes there is data entry for me to do, sometimes not. I leave for lunch sometime between 12 and 1, and then have an hour or two to go home, make some lunch, hang out, and come back. The afternoons are usually pretty quiet, but sometimes there is a meeting. Recently we’ve started doing training sessions for the unity and reconciliation clubs, which are done through the churches, and training sessions for establishing internal saving and lending groups. Of course, these trainings are done all in Kinyarwanda so there is little that I can add, but my organization reassures me that it’s important for me to be there so everyone can get used to me so that when I start doing health and nutrition talks in August or September they might actually listen and not look at me like some crazy muzungu. Also, I visited the health center by my house a couple weeks ago and am hopefully going to start working on a nutrition program for under-five malnourished children. I go back next week, so wish me luck!