one week in

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!

Amashyo

This is a greeting commonly used by older adults talking to younger people. It means that they wish them to have many cows. The proper response is amashyongore, which means there should be many female cows among them to reproduce. While the concept of wishing people many cows is pretty foreign, the good-natured wishing of health and prosperity is not. No one has actually wished me to have many cows yet (although I’m staying hopeful), but everyone has been incredibly friendly and welcoming, and I am so glad to be here.

We flew into Kigali airport on Thursday night, drove to St. Francis, which is a former nunnery which has since been converted into a hotel/nunnery, complete with glow-in-the-dark Jesus in each room. I’m not sure what I was expecting in Kigali, but it was not correct. Kigali is a huge sprawling city, with paved roads- most of better quality than those back home- and landscaping. There are shopping malls and neon signs (granted, not many) and almost everyone we met spoke French or English.

We went to the Peace Corps office a couple of times where we met with current volunteers and got all our shots. Our mail will all be sent there, and they have Internet; unfortunately, now that I’m in Nyanza, we won’t be back for a while. One of the nights we went to the PC Director John Reddy’s house. He had delicious appetizers and drinks for us, and we were able to meet some of the current health and education volunteers. It was one of the most informative sessions I have had since applying to Peace Corps. It was great to hear other volunteers’ experiences and what they thought about their sites. The consensus: electricity is a great thing; you can get by without running water.

On Sunday we drove to Nyanza, but already I could almost swear it’s been weeks. Nyanza, and all of Rwanda, is absolutely gorgeous. Everything is incredibly green and people grow avocados, bananas, corn and eggplant in their front yards. There are tiny little goats that line the road to eat grass. Every day as we walk from our house in Nyanza to the main building for classes kids run up and shout “muzungo, muzungo!” (white person, white person!). We say hello to them in kinyarwanda and after a moment of shock they start spouting off kinyarwanda phrases. (This is the point where I look sad and say that I don’t understand). Some of the kids speak English and French, so we’ll talk to them a bit longer. The adults are a bit more reserved, but lots of people will say hello as we walk past. Rwanda recently changed the official language from French to English; so many people want to practice their English with us. They also laugh as we try to practice our kinyarwanda phrases with them.

We started kinyarwanda classes yesterday- intense. I thought it would be like other language classes, starting out with colors or numbers, but was shocked with the amount we covered. For example; mwaramutse! nitwa Jessi, ndi umuyamerika, ndi umunyeshuri i’kinyarwanda, nkaba ndi umukorerabushake wa peace corps, means good morning! My name is Jessi, I’m American, I’m a kinyarwanda student, I work as a volunteer for Peace Corps. Very useful stuff when everyone looks at you like you’re an alien. Along with the language classes, we’re also starting medical classes, safety and security, and technical classes this week. Monday we had interviews to talk about goals and expectations during service, basic medical information, and preferences for our site placement. Basically there are two types of placements, capacity building and CBO/FBOs. The capacity-building volunteers will work for health clinics and hospitals teaching computer skills, reporting, monitoring and evaluation, etc. The other type is working with community-based or faith-based organizations to do health programs or income-generating activities. We were also given the chance to voice our preference for urban vs. rural and how important it is to have running water and/or electricity. However, like Biba said, this is just a wish list, so it’s impossible to know how many of our preferences we’ll actually get. Better to keep an open mind when we start visiting sites in a few weeks.

We also went into town and visited the market yesterday morning with the language and cultural facilitators (LCF). They sell tons of second hand clothing and shoes, food, electronics, toiletries, anything you can think of in a huge open-air market. Mostly the people just stare at us and whisper something about muzungus, but it’s not like many other countries where people will rush up to you to get you to buy something or hassle you for money. It was much more relaxed than I thought, which was nice. There’s also fairly cheap internet in town, so at least during training I should have access (it’s just the time to go that is more of an issue).

My house is about 20 minutes down a clay road from the kitchen house, which is where we eat and have classes. At tech house, where I live, there are 8 students and 3 LCFs in 6 rooms. I share with Amy, which is nice since we’d already met in DC before coming here. We have two bathrooms, but only one of them has running water, and unfortunately it’s the one coming off the boys room. So mostly the girls take bucket baths in the other bathroom. The toilet doesn’t flush so we dump water in the bowl to push things through. Number two only happens in the squatty potty outside. I never thought I would be so grateful for the experience in India, but the practice has definitely come in handy- I gave advice to some of the other girls.

Tonight we had rice and beans and guacamole for dinner- definitely one of the best meals so far, it was delicious. We eat a lot of potatoes (usually as french fries), carrots, and goat meat (kinda tough, but not nearly so strange as it sounds). Breakfast is almost always bread and crazy salty eggs and lots of coffee (thank goodness). We eat pretty much every two hours, so whenever it’s longer, everyone gets hungry- probably not the greatest thing to get used to, but the food is delicious so we all dig in.

I suppose that’s it for now. I’m loving Rwanda and will get some photos uploaded asap so you can all see what I’m talking about. I also bought a cell phone, if anyone has an international calling plan and feels like talking- just let me know if you’d like the number!

I love you and miss you all!!

murakaza neza!

Murakaza neza! Welcome!

Thanks for visiting my blog! Right now, I'm starting to get things together for my trip to Rwanda in February. I'll do my best to keep this blog updated as much as possible- I'm generally pretty bad about keeping a journal and internet will be spotty at best- but hopefully this will provide a sense of my journey through the peace corps. I'm nervous and excited, so thanks for all your love and support!

<3