Monday, May 17, 2010

it's official: i'm a volunteer

My gosh it’s been a long time since I wrote anything. And so much has happened since then it’s crazy. First things first, I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! Hooray me! We spent an awesome week in Kigali for swear-in and buying all the things we would need for our house- or at least all the things we thought we would need for our house. Turns out (much like packing for Peace Corps the first time) I may have misjudged slightly. Although, whereas when packing for PC I mostly just brought the wrong things, this time I just didn’t buy enough of anything. And forgot some things entirely. Like jerry cans- whoops. Good thing I’ll be going to Nyanza for some training next week and should be able to stop in Kigali to pick up the stuff I forgot.

But back to our week in Kigali. Or actually, back up. So before we even left Kigali, we had a end-of-training/going-away party for us and our LCFs. This was organized by some of the trainees and we had wonderful food and played a bunch of games. Or at least, some of us did. (dun, dun, dun (that was me singing ominously)) The games were organized into a competition, divided by house. I was competing in the first event (yea, that’s right, I’m calling it an event- like it’s all official, we even had house t-shirts, because we’re the best), which was the three-legged race. Naturally, me and Sihya dominated and won the event. Unfortunately, we took a bit of a spill at the end of the race and I decided to catch myself using my face. Nicely done. So, I ended up missing the rest of the party so that I could go get myself stitched up. But no worries, it healed fairly nicely. Although I did have a nasty black eye for swear-in. Which brings us back to Kigali.

We drove to Kigali Tuesday morning (the 4th), had a little bit of time to get settled in, then took off for meetings at the PC office, but not before stopping at Bourbon café for hamburgers and French fries (AMAZING!). Wednesday morning was swear-in and I discovered, much to my delight, that St. Paul’s has hot water, and so was even able to take a hot shower (I know, I’m so spoiled)! Swear-in was actually fairly unremarkable, except that we got the chance to dress up and eat yummy food and hang out at the ambassador’s house. The ceremony didn’t take very long, and we were shuffled out of there pretty soon after it was over, but it was still nice.

Thursday all the people working under CHF had a meeting most of the day, so we didn’t have too much time to shop around for stuff. However, if my memory serves me correctly, Thursday was the day we discovered Indian food. Oh my goodness, I cannot even describe how delicious this place is. And even better is that you get so much food that you cannot possibly eat it all, which means leftovers! Friday we discovered Shokola (kind of the French/Kinyarwanda version of chocolate), which is a fantastically glorious café/restaurant that has delicious Moroccan/Mediterranean food and is adorable. Naturally, we went there a couple days in a row. Unfortunately, these places are crazy expensive, which means I probably won’t be able to go back very much, but it was wonderful while it lasted.

Friday we also did most of our shopping for site. There were three main stores we visited, each of them was kind of like Walmart, selling everything from food to kitchen supplies to beds. I’ve only been in Rwanda for three months, but already I was pretty overwhelmed by so much stuff. Especially the electronics. I wash all of my clothes by hand in buckets and can only cook as much food as won’t go bad if it sits out, and now here is a store that sells washing machines and refrigerators- imagine the convenience! But alas, they are much too expensive, and even if we could get them, paying for the electricity to run them would also be much too expensive. So bucket washing it is. We did, however, decide to splurge on a blender, since there is so much fresh fruit, and have had smoothies almost every morning for breakfast (pretty rockstar). And actually, that reminds me of something…yesterday I was washing my clothes and hanging them up on my newly fashioned clothesline and I thought to myself, wow, look at this set-up; pretty rockstar. But then I had to laugh at myself. I just scrubbed my clothes by hand, using buckets, and hung them up to dry on a rope that I tied to a tree, and was thinking it was rockstar. I would say that is probably the opposite, but is probably pretty Africa rockstar. So there you go, Africa rockstar.

Saturday morning Sonya and I took the bus from the town center out to the large market. This place is great- you can buy a lot of the same stuff as in the stores, but for much cheaper. We found some baskets to use for clothes and storage, and I bought a rug for my room. We met up with some of the other girls for lunch and had some pretty great hamburgers and milkshakes. I think this was probably the closest to milkshakes that I’ll ever get in Rwanda. They definitely tasted like milkshakes, and were at least slightly thicker than milk, but definitely not as much as you would get back home. Still delicious though. By the way, yes, I do realize how often I talk about food in my blogs, especially western food. And it’s probably going to stay that way, so I hope you all enjoy listening to descriptions of things that you can eat every day, because for me it’s always exciting and different. Carmen told me that food and cooking would become a huge part of my Peace Corps experience, but I don’t think that I fully believed her until I got here. Saturday we also went and visited the co-op that’s located right by the town center. They have great crafts there, and I wanted to buy everything, but settled for a pair of shoes since everything was pretty expensive. They’re adorable, and y’all are gonna be jealous when I come home wearing them.

Sunday was a pretty lazy day, which is always nice, and then Monday Arielle and I spent running around Kigali trying to buy all the last minute things for our site. Like I said before, we still forgot a bunch of stuff and so will have to pick it up when we make it back to Kigali. Monday was also pretty sad because the first group of volunteers were moved to their site. After seeing the same people every day for three months, it was hard to see them go, but hopefully they’re all loving their site placements. Monday night we went back to the expensive Indian restaurant for our last meal in Kigali, it was fantastic and I had a great time hanging out with the volunteers. Monday night was of course spent frantically trying to pack all the things that I had scattered across my room during the course of the week in Kigali, as well as all of the things that I had bought for my house.

Tuesday, Arielle and I were driven to Gatsibo, our home for the next two years, and dropped off. And what the Peace Corps drop-off it was. We arrived at our house with all our stuff, they helped us bring it into the front room and then said “ok, well, bye”, and left. Oof. It turned out ok, since I went into the office in the afternoon and Emile took me around town to buy some things, including some food, electricity and new locks for the door.

A little bit about our site. Gatsibo is one of the districts in the Eastern Province. I’m still not totally clear on what my Umudugudu is called, but it’s right next to Kiziguru (I think). It turns out that Arielle and I have one of the most rural sites of our group (excluding the couple placed in the middle of Nungywe forest). Of course, because Rwanda is so small, this means that we are still only 40 minutes out of Rwamagana, which is a pretty big city. My house is huge and has 6 bedrooms, plus two front rooms. My room is absurdly large and has a bathroom attached. Unfortunately, there’s no running water in the bathroom, so we only use it to shower in, using buckets. For the toilet, we’re still stuck using the latrine out back (but we were so close to having an actual shower and toilet!). There is also apparently a water shortage currently, so except for yesterday from 6 to 7 am, there has been no water at all. However, I find this pretty strange considering it’s rainy season and it has also rained every day since we moved here. Emile has been great helping us get jerry cans and water. He told me that sometimes there are problems getting water during the rainy season, but couldn’t explain why. It’s counterintuitive, but I noticed when we were in Nyanza that the water would slow considerably when it was raining or had just rained. Maybe something with the pipes…? Who knows. At any rate, water looks like it’s going to be a challenge. But you can always pay one of the local kids 100 Rwf (20 cents) per jerry can to go get you water. Hopefully the water comes back soon, and until then, I guess I’ll just be a little dirty and a little smelly. On the up side, my house is surrounded on two sides by banana tree groves, and it’s gorgeous. Especially at night when the sun is setting over the grove. And, because the site is so rural, there is no light pollution and you can see tons of stars if it’s not cloudy. Hopefully this is enticing you to come visit! And don’t worry, by the time you get here, we’ll probably have some furniture. Right now it’s kind of sad. We cook on our front porch and eat on the floor. We also don’t have bed frames, so the mattress is also on the floor. But I gave Janvier some money today for the down payment on two bed frames, a table and four chairs. After that we’ll work on getting some shelves and maybe a couch type thing. What makes it slightly more challenging is that everyone here assumes that because we’re white, Arielle and I have tons of money, so they charge us 2 – 3 times the price, hence why Janvier has been helping. (and just in case I didn’t explain earlier, Emile and Janvier two of the people I work with at AEE in Gatsibo).

So far work at AEE has been slow, but I’ve gone in every day since I got here on Tuesday. AEE is still waiting on the budget and workplan from CHF, so they are slowly getting activities started. By June they should have it and get things moving. Yesterday I had a meeting with Charlotte, the go-between for AEE and CHF do discuss my primary and secondary activities. She knows that I am much more interested in health than small business enterprise, and so came to Gatsibo to help me figure out how I can do more in health. It sounds like I’ll be working with Fred, the new employee who just came to Gatsibo today, and will be in charge of the economic development aspect of the AEE/CHF Higa Ubeho program. When he goes to visit co-ops and associations to talk about economic development, I will work with them and community health workers to talk about health, including nutrition, family planning, issues around HIV, building kitchen gardens, etc. AEE also does a lot of work with OVC in primary and secondary schools, so I’ll also be doing sessions with them. I’m not totally sure how this will all work, but I’m hopeful.

Well, I suppose that’s the extremely short version of my last couple weeks. I hope everyone is doing well and I love you and miss you all!