Wow, so I haven’t updated this blog in about eight months. I started several times only to erase and desist to post anything. It’s not that things haven’t happened. Oh, they have happened. I guess I’ve been busy. So, to any readers who are not my family (if there are any), let me catch you up on what’s happened since the summer of 2010. I will try not to be tedious but in the interest of completing my Peace Corps story, I feel a duty to fill in the gaps.

So, as you may remember, I started a nutrition project early in 2010 and it start going in earnest in the summer. Now, that I have about six weeks left of service, I’m trying desperately to finish the project and tie any loose ends. So, in what is typically a stress-free laid-back few last months has actually been pretty busy. I feel like I’m running a little NGO with three staff and almost no time. Still, albeit many challenges (one of them being African time), it’s been fun and I’ve learned many things about management, both staff and project-wise. Some lessons learnt are below:

-if there’s money to be spent, spend it.

-Don’t handle the money if you can although be cautious about handing the project money to others to manage. Be VERY careful.

-People work better when they’re paid. (During most of my service, I worked under the assumption that my local counterparts would work volunteer like I was. Now, that I’m near the end, I’m starting to pay them a little and it’s a wonderful contrast to see the quality and dedication of their work once they’re paid.

-Allow three-five months cushion in your project timetable, especially if you’re in Africa.

-Budget for miscellaneous.

Okay, sorry if I’m boring you to death with project stuff. Although, if I may say, this project has been the cornerstone of my Peace Corps service and it has been the job that has taught me more about life and work than anything before. It has also given me a future career direction.

So, from August to November, I worked steadily on project stuff. In December, I took a whole month to go home and visit family, and it was one of the best decisions I have made. Originally, I wasn’t planning on going home which was why I delayed so much in visiting my family. Not that I didn’t miss my family, I was just afraid I would rather stay home once I visited rather than coming back to Peace Corps for another year. Peace Corps Rwanda isn’t difficult physically. It’s just a little difficult psychologically, and I was beginning to feel the effects of not taking a vacation for two years. Anyway, I went home during Thanksgiving and Christmas season, and it was delightful. I’m proud to announce that I gained 8-10 pounds and that was from very good eating. I also spent a lot of money on clothes and other non-Peace Corps things, and I visited my friends and family. It was wonderful, and I came back refreshed and rejuvenated. Thanks to Dad and Mom for buying my ticket. Going to America also allowed me to compare the two countries more closely, and it was amazing how different America seemed to me. I realized I was not the same person I was two years ago. I’m not trying to sound cheesy. What I’m saying is that now, I can’t look at a restaurant menu in a Southern-style restaurant without flinching, and when I go into toy stores during Christmas, I’m disgusted to find that American children have more clothes for their dolls than African children have for themselves. Also, it was hard stomaching the 1000 calories per meal that seem typical in the U.S.

Anyway, moving quickly on. America was wonderful and I was happy to see my family again. Now, I’ve been back in Rwanda for about a month and a half and I’m near the end of my service. I have six weeks left till I leave.

It is weird.

It’s weird because I don’t know if I should be happy or sad. It’s weird because I’m more nervous about my future after Peace Corps than I was about starting Peace Corps in the first place. I’ve been waiting for this moment for two years now but instead of being extremely happy, I’m a little sad and already nostalgic. I’ve realized that I’ve gotten used to living here and it’s actually become sort of a home for me. I love the language. I still find Rwanda’s landscape breathtakingly beautiful. And I finally understand the people. I’ve even become Rwandan-like and assimilated the culture into my own. I’ve made extremely good friends, people I would trust with anything, and I’m sad to leave them. Also, I feel like I’m finally managing this project better and fine-tuning it so it’s more successful. Except, now I have to finish the project and leave.

I guess that’s how it’s like. If you stay at a place long enough, you become attached to everything about it and it becomes home. Unfortunately, my time here has a deadline and once March 29 rolls around, I will not be a Peace Corps volunteer and I will not live in my village house anymore and I will not go to the clinic or the villages every day to visit the ladies. None of that will ever happen again and I will go back to living in the U.S. I will have to integrate back into U.S. culture again because the U.S., believe it or not, is now strange to me.

Well, I do not wish to end this blog entry on a sad note. These last few months have been a lot of fun and I have a lot of touristy activities lined up. For example, next weekend, I will scale one of the Virunga volcanoes to observe a family of gorillas in their natural habitat. If you’ve ever heard of Diane Fossey, the primatologist, that’s where she conducted her research for many years. She’s actually buried there as well. Sooo, I will update you on that once it’s done. Also, I will try to secure some pictures even though my camera is broken.

So, until then, take care.

This morning, my electrical kettle melted the inside components of my wall plug. I only noticed this after the wall started smoking. Then, I noticed that my cell phone charger cord was cut in half. Bad start to a Monday morning and I contemplated not going into work. Guilt overrode me at last and I dragged myself up the hill to the clinic. Monday mornings are the busiest time at the clinic and all the women with malnourished children come that day to get their weekly portion of RUTF. RUTF is Ready to Use Therapeutic Food or in other words, a mixture of peanut butter with milk, oil and vitamins. It’s really good for the kids, super cheap to make, and the kids love it. Here in Africa, it’s the usual protocol for children with malnourishment and many NGO’s distribute it. In my community, we give RUTF every Monday to all children in the community malnutrition program. Usually, they’re supposed to be on RUTF for only around three months but since there’s nothing to go back to at home, they usually stay on it longer. One child has been on it for almost a year. When she came to us last year, we were shocked she was still alive. She weighed around 4.5 kg which is the weight of a one-month old baby. This child was one year old. We tried to transfer her to the hospital but they denied our request because they were out of the therapeutic milk. We have kept her on the RUTF for months now and just in the last three months, she has started to gain weight. Now, she is almost two years old and she still only weighs 5.9 kg. This child also cannot walk, talk and half of her face (and body for that matter) is asymmetrical like if she had a stroke. So, the mother and I decided to take her to the hospital again and this morning, we went through the paperwork of getting her to the clinic consultation room and then to the hospital. Unfortunately, the hospital had a staff of one today so he was too busy to see her. One doctor for a whole hospital! Usually, we have one doctor scheduled for emergencies, one doctor for consultations, one doctor-hospital director and one doctor to drive around the countryside evaluating the 14-so sector clinics. Since we only had one doctor, the woman decided to go home and come back tomorrow since she had left two small children at home alone. This woman also lives very far away, near the border of our sector. It’s probably over a two hour walk for her to get home but she’s coming back tomorrow to try to be the first patient seen. This woman is a good mom but she’s had a hard life. Her husband is abusive and I think he has since left her. She is the sole money provider for her kids and she has three of them. About half of the women in my sector give birth at home but she tried to make it to the hospital to deliver this child. Unfortunately, she lives so far away, she delivered on the way to the hospital. In other words, she had to stop in the middle of one of the goat paths leading to the hospital, squat down and have the baby. When the baby was born, she weighed only 2,6 kg.

Examples like this abound in my community and that woman is one of the main reasons I started a community-based nutrition program for the villages in my sector. Women like these have amazing strength and perseverance(Imagine walking eight kilometers in your ninth month of pregnancy) but they cannot handle it alone and many children end up malnourished. I have come to realize that malnutrition is not only a clinical problem or a poverty problem. It’s a social problem. Many of the women in the program have malnourished children because there are problems in the family. Now, I don’t want to criticize the men too much but I am just tired of seeing women coming to me with malnourished children because the fathers are such deadbeats. Either they drink too much, spending all the income on beer instead of food, or they take other wives, neglecting the first or second wife and her children. Sometimes, the fathers don’t work so that the wife has to farm the land and raise the children as well. In other cases, the fathers are in jail because they committed acts of genocide fifteen years ago. There are the war widows and old women who take in orphans because there are just too many children without homes. Then, there are the men who prohibit their wives from taking birth control so that women in the villages have five or six children on average. I heard a story of one woman who had the Norplant implanted in her arm under the skin. When she went home, her husband demanded she return to the clinic and remove it. She refused so the husband removed it himself. This is one reason why many women keep it a secret from their husbands that they take birth control. This is also one of the reasons why some clinics have birth control days on Wednesdays so the wives can tell their husbands they’re going to the market when in reality, they go to the clinic to get the Depo-provera shots. Recently, in one of my nutrition classes, a woman was beaten by her husband for bringing food to the cooking demonstration at the community health worker’s house. In another one of my classes, one of the women left her village after her husband left her and stole all her possessions. There are stories like these for every child in my nutrition program and the obstacles seem insurmountable. In my classes, I try to help them with the poverty problem. We give them chickens to raise and seeds to plant vegetables. We try to teach them how to cook healthy foods. The one thing that we cannot resolve however, is the oppression of wives by their husbands. That will take years of sensitization and it will take women being empowered enough to demand their rights. Still, there are bright spots to every problem. In one of my classes, my model parent is actually a single dad who raises his children wonderfully. In another one of my classes, one of the mothers could not come because she just gave birth, so her husband came to the class for her. For two weeks, he learned about family planning, hygiene, parenting and how to cook. The Rwandan government, as well, is working hard on raising gender sensitivity, empowering women, and lessening gender based violence. The government provides funds for empowerment and self-esteem camps for girls. It also is promoting a gender-based violence campaign with posters sensitizing men not to beat, bully or force their wives to have sex. The reason there was only one doctor in our hospital today was because three other doctors are in Butare training workers on gender-based violence. This campaign is a good thing and I hope people start catching on to the messages. Maybe, in fifty years, people will notice a decrease in malnutrition and poverty in the villages and maybe, they will put two and two together. When people are empowered, know their rights and support each other, you will see far fewer cases of malnutrition and poverty.

The other day I toured this old lady’s home. It was a perfectly round house made out of adobe and cow dung and it had a straw roof. In other words, it was a hut and it was awesome. Inside this tiny hut (the size of my room in the U.S.), it was separated into even tinier rooms. In the center of the hut was the fireplace, a.k.a. the kitchen. Go three feet that way and there’s the storage room. Go three feet the opposite direction and there’s a sleeping room. Head straight past the kitchen and turn a curtain aside and tada! there’s the old lady’s bedroom. And you know what’s even better about this hut…the old lady built it herself.

Now, let me give you some context or history about all this. Rwandans traditionally lived in grass and mud huts but that was a long time age. Now, most people live in square houses made out of either mud mixed with cement or bricks. The houses have clay tiling or metal sheets, if you can afford it. This is all village housing. In the capital, there’s the whole spectrum of housing from the little clay houses in the poor neighborhoods to large mansions and apartments in the rich part of Kigali where all the NGO workers live and pay New York-style rents. Anyway, the little grass huts are for the very poor of Rwandan society. In my sector (comprised of 27 villages), there are about 500+ grass huts. We know this because the government is trying to come in and rebuild these houses into modern homes. During the genocide, many of the homes and possessions were destroyed. There were many widows after the war and not enough men so women took on traditional male roles (such as building houses). This broke many stereotypes and helped advance the status of women in Rwanda. So, now Rwanda is one of the more equitable countries in regards to women’s rights, jobs, etc. There are more women in parliament than in any other country and women can work all types of jobs from the military to construction work wielding a pack axe cracking gravel (I saw this with my own eyes the other day.) In my sector alone, women are the executive secretaries of two cells (commanding five villages each) and there are many female executive secretaries of villages.

Sooo, to make a long story short, this old lady is a war widow and she built her hut after the war because her first house was destroyed. The government is going to build her a new house soon so she’s looking forward to that. I’ve seen other huts all over the place since I started my nutrition rehab project. This project of mine has me walking to villages all over the place and I get a chance to meet many people and know the geography very well. So, I have noticed all the traditional huts in my area and have seen how poor the people really are. I have also had the chance to learn about the people’s lifestyles and work routine which I find really fascinating. One thing which I had never considered before but I learned the other day was how villagers paint their homes. They obviously can’t buy paint at the nearest paint store. They actually find white stone from the hillside (chalk), grind it up and mix it with water. So, they paint their houses white. They can also add cassava powder to the mix so that the dry paint on the walls does not come off on their clothes, etc. Cassava powder is really sticky so it helps bind the paint to the walls. If they want black paint, they make a mix of cow dung and water.

Another thing I learned from one group of women is that they have to make a two-hour trip to get water. That made me sad. I only have to walk ten minutes to my water source and even then, I have a girl fetch water for me every day. I wonder how much water these villagers use. Imagine six people in a house and the amount of water they go through. I bet they probably only use one or two jericans (20 liters or 5.3 gallons) a day and that’s not enough to bathe everyone, cook food and wash dishes. I usually only use 10 liters of water a day which is 2.6 gallons of water. If I do laundry, I will use over 5 gallons of water or a whole jerican. If I have to wash sheets that day, all is lost. Sooo, I guess my point is, we stress hygiene so much in our public health messages to villagers but if you had to walk two hours to get water, would you bathe every day?

Yesterday, a little bird was resting outside my kitchen on the ground. It didn’t move when I stepped next to it so I assumed it was hurt. I went back inside for an hour and when I finally came out, all that was left of the little bird was some feathers on the ground and a little skull. Horrified, I searched for the culprit and soon eyed the ubiquitous crows that circle my house. I hate those birds. They’re big, ugly, loud and I guess, cannibals also. All day long, they love to jump and dance on my tin roof. Anyway, today, I went into my kitchen and I saw another little bird just like that one on the floor. It suddenly dawned on me that these were baby birds that had just left their nest. I had been eyeing this nest for weeks hoping the birds would grow up so I could knock the nest down since it’s in my kitchen. Oh well, I guess the birds have left the nest now. Too bad, they just sit on the ground waiting for other animals to eat them. That really is kind of unsettling.

So, I have not written a blog in a long time. For a while, I struggled with mechanical problems such as my computers dying. I killed my last computer so well that I not only fried the hard drive, I also broke the motherboard. Another reason for not writing a blog was that I only had the opportunity to write a blog when I was in a bad mood. I decided that was not a good idea either. I guess my last reason for stopping to write as much is that I’m starting to think writing blogs is a little pretentious. I guess it depends on how you write a blog or for what purpose, but when you’re in the Peace Corps, some blogs do come out sounding self-serving or gloating. Despite all these negatives, I’m back to blogging. I figure it’s a better use of time than staring at the walls in my bedroom and generally going insane. Actually, I’m not surprised people can go insane when they’re in the Peace Corps. It can really get to you.

So, maybe you’re wondering what I have been doing with my time here. Well, lately, I’ve been chicken shopping. And if you’ve ever tried to go chicken shopping, you will realize it’s not as easy as one might think. When I decided to give a chicken to each parent in my nutrition program (around 120 of them), I inconveniently forgot that I’m not in the United States and can simply go to a chicken farm and order them. The first ten chickens I bought off of the nutritionist, my partner in this project. That was easy enough but that purchase supposedly zeroed out the stock of chickens available for sale in my sector. A sector is about the equivalent of a county in the U.S. Therefore, I decided to buy chickens in the markets in the other sectors. The only problems to my idea were the following. Number one, I have no transportation of my own; two, I am a muzungu so the price of chickens is essentially tripled for me; three, I don’t really know how to buy young, egg-laying chickens so anybody can essentially cheat me. Despite these problems, I decided to at least try, and after some asking around, I caught a lift on my hospital ambulance to a sector and market around 20 kilometers away. Miraculously, one of the NGO workers volunteered to help me that day and we took a motorcycle to the market to buy chickens.

The market was huge but the chicken selections not so huge. After identifying me as a muzungu, the sellers immediately started doubling and tripling the price. Exasperated, the NGO worker told me to go hide in one of the shops while we sent a villager to go bargain down the price. After several hours, we ended up with one chicken and a rooster. Too bad I needed eleven chickens. That day, I finally arranged for a local health clinic worker to buy chickens for us and we would pick them up the next week. Well, that failed completely so we came back the next week to buy more chickens ourselves. This time, we fared a little better. We bought three chickens after two or three hours. Not deterred, I decide to try another market in another sector two days later. Unfortunately, I missed the bus so I had to walk the whole way to the market, about 8 or 9 kilometers away. There, I got chided again by my co-workers for being muzungu because all the sellers started increasing their prices when they saw me. This time, I bought five chickens that morning so I’m still missing one chicken now. I figure, after going to the market three times and not finding enough chickens for my program, I’m just going to let my clients start finding the chickens. If they really want chickens, they will have to find them and I will buy them then. As it turns out, being a muzungu is really a bad thing when you want to buy chickens.

Another bad side-effect of my project is that many of my villagers are asking me for money and chickens now. I have turned into the “money volunteer,” which if you ask any Peace Corps volunteer, that is not a good thing. I have again become a walking dollar sign. Imagine having people come up to you and instead of greeting you or making small talk, they just immediately ask, “What will you give me?” I feel like I’m Santa Claus living with hundreds of children on Christmas Eve.

Oh well, I guess being Santa Claus for two years is not that big of a deal in the overall scheme of things. People are getting chickens and hopefully the kids are recovering from malnutrition. Now, if I can only have my sleigh with reindeer or even a motorcycle would be nice.

Out of the many things I’ve learned being a Peace Corps volunteer, those that stand out recently are that eating bread and cheese for four days straight is not good on the digestive system, East African wedding receptions also have the electric slide as the token dance and Congolese doctors like to play scrabble after work…French Scrabble that is. Oh, I almost forgot this too…watching eight shows of the Gossip Girl in one day can seriously lead a Peace Corps girl into depression.

So, I haven’t updated this blog in a while. I hope you haven’t worried too much. I haven’t died or mysteriously dropped out of the Peace Corps or immigrated to Kenya to live among the Maasai tribe. I’m still gainfully employed as a Peace Corps community health volunteer in my village’s health center.

Latest events: 38 fresh Peace Corps volunteers just arrived in Rwanda, bringing our total number of volunteers up to around 90. If Rwanda’s population density is around 300 people per square kilometer, it must also be around 100 Peace Corps volunteers per square kilometer too. I personally have three Peace Corps volunteers that are less than twenty kilometers from me. Ironically, I never see them except when we travel to the capital, which is around 150 km away.

In other news, I have been traveling around lately. My villagers, at one point, thought I had gone back to America. In February, I was sent to Nairobi, Kenya for about a week to have a medical procedure done. Nothing too serious but it was still dramatically called a “medical evacuation.” For me, it turned out to be a mostly all-expenses paid trip to a city that has everything a girl could wish for. And by everything, I mean shopping malls, cinemas, and Mexican food. If you’ve never been to Nairobi, I seriously recommend a visit. It is amazing. I probably gained five pounds because I insisted on eating pizza and ice cream every single day I was there. I also racked up around $150 in credit card charges because of all the shopping and restaurant dining. I even went to a Brazilian steakhouse. You know, those restaurants where the waiters dress like South American cowboys and bring around skewers of meat to your table until you feel like you want to die of fullness and sheer happiness. They even had alligator meat, which was quite tasty.

Tell you what, after being in pseudo America for a week, it was really weird going back to Rwanda and my village. Really weird. It kinda got me thinking about the things we love most in life and how many times, they are small, unimportant things like ice cream. We don’t even realize that until they are gone. I thought that going to the Peace Corps would make me realize the triviality of all that stuff. Instead, it just showed me that the smallest things, like paper towels and wearing jeans, maybe aren’t necessary but they bring a person closer to home.

So I am sorry about the ranting in my last blog. I should never write when I’m angry. I read it again a while ago and it made me cringe just a little. I sound like a terrible person. Anyway, I guess I will leave it up on the site as it gives you guys an idea of the frustrations people encounter in the Peace Corps. At least now, I have happier news and am going to give all of my family and friends a long update of my life since then. At least, until my boss comes back and takes over the office. I’m using his office and computer right now to write this blog. My computer has been dead for a few weeks now, another reason I haven’t updated my blog.

As many of us are approaching our one year mark here in Rwanda, we have been handling it in different ways. Some have already started planning their next move once they’re back home--grad school, job hunting. As for me, I have yet to nail down a concrete plan once I return. Having been away from the States for almost a year now, I envision coming home to a land of no jobs and huge debts. It sort of makes me thankful I still have about a year and a half left in a secure job, a long time to make vague fanciful plans about my life.

I have to be honest, being here has definitely had its ups and downs. Just read my last blog for proof. Yet, even with the bad stuff, things turn around in a really good way sometimes. The political guy I complained so much about in the last blog has now become my best ally in getting my nutrition project funded. And even though it has been frustrating creating a project proposal with all the different languages and misunderstandings, I am actually really proud of how it turned out. I really hope we get funding by the end of this month. If so, we can start this project by March and continue until I leave. Oh, I guess I haven’t told you about this project yet. I am really excited about it. It’s called HEARTH or Positive Deviance and it’s a behavior change nutrition project. It has a really cool concept and is super sustainable. The concept of Positive Deviance is that, in every poor community with malnutrition, there are mothers who have innate knowledge of good feeding habits. They use the foods available in the area to feed their children healthy meals. These mothers are called Positive Deviants because they are poor villagers who have healthy children in a community of unhealthy children. Anyway, in this HEARTH project, we find the positive deviant moms in a community and use them as teachers in a community cooking class. In this class, women with malnourished children bring their children and a variety of local, affordable foods to the class. They all cook together using a nutritious recipe and get taught a lesson in nutrition, parenting, family planning, etc. Afterwards, they all feed their children. After two weeks, many children start showing improvements. They gain weight, improve their mood and energy level. During the class, the women also learn good hygiene habits since they wash all the food before cooking and their hands before eating. The program idea is so simple but it has been really successful in many countries. The key to its success is that it’s cheap and uses behavior change techniques really effectively. Mothers bring food locally available and learn from a neighbor. They also learn by doing through an extended period of time instead of sitting for an hour listening to someone lecture them. The recipes and the habits stick with them. They take these good habits home with them and implement them in their lifestyle. This program has rehabilitated children in Haiti, Egypt, Mozambique, Cambodia, Vietnam and many others. In Vietnam, it rehabilitated 80% of the children in the communities where it was implemented. Anyway, now I want to start it in the villages around here and see if it works. We also plan to have the women in the classes form cooperatives and raise chickens. We’re giving them six chickens for each group and we’re planting gardens in each of their homes. I really hope it works out because it’s a more sustainable solution to the malnutrition problem than just giving money and free food. Obviously, this program would not work where there’s food insecurity--in other words, in a desert or in a war zone. I’m a little worried because there’s a little bit of food insecurity in my villages but I will see how it pans out.

Well, that’s all I have for now. I will try to update you guys more later. Hope you had happy holidays and welcome to 2010!

So, it turns out most of the clichés about Peace Corps are true. Unfortunate but my reality nevertheless. When I first came to my site and to Rwanda, I kinda ignored a lot of them and just rolled with it because I was new and didn’t want to rock the boat. Actually, I think I was a little numb through it all, which is my typical response to new situations. But the other day, it hit me. It is really hard to work here and get things done. After months of trying to get students to regularly come to my English class and actually be on time, I have just given that up. I dislike planning lessons anyway. When they ask me why I stopped teaching English, I just tell them that people never came and when they did come, they were half an hour late or more. Ironically, its usually the ones who never come to my English class who are the most interested in why I have stopped teaching and when will I pick it up.

On to the next topic. I can predict now when my supervisors and partners or political bigwigs in my town will miss meetings or appointments with me. Almost always. It takes weeks or months to get things finalized because people never have a definite schedule or they overbook themselves like American doctors. And one of them always has the nerve to ask me when I will get a certain project done or a certain paper written when it is a huge task that depends on others’ collaboration and it’s really none of his concern anyway. Maybe, he should try to make it to some of our meetings on time and we could work better together. Case in point. This particular person, who shall not be named, wanted us to go together to present my new project to the mayor and perhaps get funding. I agreed and asked him for a meeting time. He told me he didn’t have a particular time but it would be no later than ten o’clock. I then ask him to come to the health center and we can revise my project summary and take it with us. Well, the morning rolls by and he doesn’t call or show up. I’m unexpectedly busy but I finally call him at 10:30 and ask him about the appointment. He said he waited around for us at his office but since we didn’t show up, he just left for the district by himself. What! What! I’m thinking. So, then I call the other guy who’s supposed to go with us and he has left the clinic also! So, I guess they were just completely lying to my face yesterday or maybe they just forgot everything we said about 12 hours ago. So frustrating!

Now, what tops that though is trying to do project planning and budgeting with these guys, not the least because we have to speak three freaking languages to get our point across to each other (not to mention that none of us are fluent in each others’ language). Give you a quick example. I’m trying to budget construction of a chicken house. We ask a guy’s help and he rattles off figures and prices in kinyarwanda. All very good but then one of the guys has to try to translate building materials and prices to me by hand gestures, pointing or a mix of French, English and Kinyarwanda. Then, we have to get on the same page about dimensions and we have a long argument about whether we should buy traditional chickens or the new exotic breeds (or modern breeds) that lay more eggs, etc. My argument is that we should use the traditional breeds since they are acclimated to the harsh living conditions and are less likely to die to diseases and no food. Then, the others whine about how it’s according to the national policy to raise the modern breeds. Their only argument. My thinking is that it kind of defeats the purpose of giving away chickens if they’re just going to die once we give them away. Seriously, the villagers just let the chickens roam completely free. They don’t feed them, protect them from predators or build them a little house to nest and roost.

It’s all so excruciatingly frustrating. I’m lucky I have a pretty calm temperament. I’ve been stood up, delayed and told false promises to so many times that it’s so tempting to not do anything. But if I do nothing, I just get bored and that’s even worse.

Ok, I feel better now after that rant. Still want to join the Peace Corps, any of you newbies out there reading this? Well, good luck. That’s all I have to say. Let’s also hope you’re not placed in Mongolia. I hear it’s freaking cold there. I hate the cold.

Well, moving on. It’s a week and a half till Christmas and I have about forty dollars to my name. Guess I’m stuck in the village for Christmas. I am just so lucky. At least, I got a few things done this month. I finally had a bed made by the cheating, lying carpenter in my village. I had a friend go bargain with him because I can’t stand the whole process. Maybe, I will get my bed in two months, if I’m lucky. Oh well. I’ve been sleeping on the floor for so long, the ants and I are practically family now.

Talking about ants, those little creatures are tough. And they get into anything! Nothing is sacred. I had a trainee come visit me a few weeks ago and I had to keep brushing ants off of all of our food. I even washed all of my bananas because there was like five hundred ants crawling all over them. And you better believe I ate those bananas after I got those ants off. Bananas are a treat for me now.

One last thing and I’m finished with my pity party. My computer, after six years of existence, is giving serious signs of old age. My cable started burning up a few weeks ago and when it finally started smoking, I decided it was time to replace it. This past weekend, I went into the capital and bought another cable for $50. My computer almost immediately started burning this new cable as well so that it melted into my computer. Seriously. I cannot pull it out. Surprisingly, it still works (most of the time) which is why I’m writing this blog to you right now. I hope it lasts till next May so I can buy a new computer when I visit home. I don’t think it will though.

Well, that’s all I have to say for now. Sorry to be such a bummer on my blog but I’m just in a bad mood. Been in one for a while, I think. I’ve been going through so much chocolate in my house that I think I am creating cavities. I’ve also found a new taste for icing. I buy confectioner’s sugar in the city and I make icing and just eat it straight up although sometimes I make a cake too. The day before, I had icing for dinner and then for breakfast the next morning. I do that sometimes and when I have a bad day, I eat one of those Mounds bars that Mom sent me. I guess I’m taking my emotions out on food because when I go to Kigali, I get a half kilo of ice cream and eat it all in one setting. I haven’t cooked a decent meal in about a week and a half. I’ve literally been living off of sweets and bread. The irony of it all is that I’m creating a community nutrition program right now, and I’ve been eating so awful. The other irony is that I hardly ever ate sweets in America. Cakes would grow stale and ice cream would get freezer burn. Now, I will eat one of my cakes in about one or two days.

Today, I feel compelled to write about latrines. Hope you do not mind. There are several types of latrines actually, in case you did not know. There are ones made out of wood, cement or brick. You can see some latrines with ventilation systems and clever fly traps. There are latrines that are very shallow (like most of the latrines in my sector) and there are latrines that have very deep pits. Some latrines have doors; some do not. Some latrines don’t even have little buildings built around them. There are also latrines that have tubing connecting them to a sewage cistern. My latrine is, fortunately, the latter, and after six months at site, I have come to deeply appreciate it. Some of the volunteers actually have toilets and plumbing in their houses. That’s very nice but when they do not have water (which is a common occurrence here), it’s a pretty bad scenario. With my latrine, I don’t have to worry about not having enough water. I just use my waste water (like dirty dish water or bath water), pour it down my latrine and it “flushes” all the bad stuff to the cistern twenty meters away. No mess, no smell, no hassle, no wasting clean water. I love it. So convenient. The World Health Organization actually calls my type of latrine (the pour-flush latrine) an “improved” latrine technology, just so you know.

The latrines at the health center scare me. No joke. I literally choose to walk home to use my latrine or just wait until the end of the day. The reason they scare me is that they are so freaking deep, I feel like I’m standing on top of an entrance to Mammoth Cave or something. And when you’re peeing, you feel vulnerable enough. Add to that the fear of falling into a bottomless pit and you can see why I choose to walk home. Also, I’m afraid I’m going to drop my cell phone in there or worse, my house keys. It has happened to many people, you know. One volunteer dropped her cell phone into a latrine during her site visit. Her counterparts actually fished the cell phone out of the latrine and cleaned it for her. Now, that’s hospitality.

Cell phones and keys are not the only things to fall into latrines. People also fall in. And when you do fall into the latrine, the main concern is not getting dirty but getting burned by the acid. Yea, one of my friends told me that acid is produced down there by all the waste and is very dangerous to the skin. Who knew? Soooo, this is the reason why mothers never let their small children use the latrines. They always pee or defecate outside in the bush and the mothers, hopefully, clean up after them. The latrines at the health center, for example, are 20 meters (65 feet) deep. I would hate for a kid to fall in there.

Okay, moving on.

Lately, I’ve been trying to integrate into the Rwandan culture of “fanatic soccer love” and I’ve been watching and attending several of the soccer games. Even though I watched no sports back in America, it’s been a lot of fun and I think I might keep this hobby. Anyway, Rwandans love soccer. I mean, they really do love it a lot. Whenever there’s a game on t.v., guys flock to the bars and restaurants to watch the “big game” on a projected screen. As poor as they are, they will even pay money to watch these games. And the teams they watch and cheer for are the European soccer teams, mainly the British. They cheer for teams like Manchester United, Chelsey, and Arsenal. It’s kind of humorous actually but I guess it’s because I’m from Brazil and I’m not accustomed to seeing a bunch of pasty white guys actually good at soccer. Yea, the British teams are really good and I hope to choose my favorite team soon. That is, as soon as I watch all the games in the Premier league. That might take a while.

I also attended a soccer game here in Rwanda a few weeks ago, and let’s just say it was an interesting experience. First, it was a big game, Rwanda vs. Egypt, the qualifying game for the World Cup. Even the President, who loves soccer, attended the game. Because he was there, security was super tight and we waited in the security line for an hour before we were cleared. The security girl even checked my camera.

Although it was kind of intimidating to see all the military guys walking around with their sniper rifles and other equipment, the atmosphere was pretty festive and we got awesome seats, right in front of some crazy old Egyptians who flew in just to see the game and a semi-naked crazy Rwandan.

Around twenty minutes before the game, I left the stadium and went outside of the safety perimeter to buy some water and a cap for the game. I stayed out there for a while so one of my Rwandan friends called me to warn me the game was about to start and that I should get in. I told him, “Okay, I will be right in.” He called me two more times saying the same thing and I was thinking, “Wow, he really doesn’t want me to miss the beginning. Why is he so concerned? It’s not a big deal. I can miss a few minutes.”

Okay, have you ever been outside the stadium when a big game is about to start and there’s a huge crowd still wanting to get in? Then, you know what happened to me. I started to head for the entrance gate a few minutes after my friend called and I slowly realized that people were running. I turned around and with a shock, realized that two hundred people were stampeding towards the gates. I turned to the front and was horrified to see the military closing the gates on us. With only a few seconds to think, I did the only reasonable thing I could think of. I ran. I ran like crazy with the rest of the mob and I jumped inside the gates right when the guard was closing it. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it very well; the gate jarred me so I fell to the ground and lost my shoes. The mob continued running and fortunately, they didn’t run over me but around me. Then, this Ugandan guy materialized out of nowhere, picked me up off of the ground and helped me find my shoes. I stared dully at my guardian angel while he cleaned the blood off of my scratches with his shirt. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. He led me to the stadium doors where we saw the crowd in a deadlock with the military. As I warily eyed their guns, the military, uncertain how to security-check all these people at the same time, finally let us all through with a quick pat-down. After what seemed an eternity, I made my way to my seat and thanked my Ugandan guardian angel. And although I was out of sorts, I enjoyed the game. Unfortunately, Rwanda lost. The Egyptians in front of us had a field day with the game and ran up and down the aisles when Egypt scored, loudly singing Arabic songs. I don’t know what the Rwandans thought of that, but I was pretty amused.

In retrospect, I think it was all worth it. Although I gained a few scratches from the experience, I learned a few things about pre-game activities and got to see a live game. Amazing experience overall. Next time, however, I’m getting there two hours early and I’m staying glued to my seat.

About two weeks ago, the winds arrived, cool and steady, stirring up huge piles of dust and blowing through the trees and houses in an ominous manner. Then the rain started falling and falling and falling and it forgot to stop, washing away all the dust off the trees, roads, and buildings and turning my little part of Rwanda green again. Rainy season arrived at last, God bless it.

Rainy season means several things. To me, it means no more dust covering my clothes and possessions whenever I travel, no more dust in my throat and cooler weather. To the farmers, this is around the time they start planting and replenishing their food for the rest of the year. Rwanda has two growing seasons, one time around the beginning of the year and one time right now. By the way, we’re also now in hunger and thief season. I bet you haven’t heard of that season before but basically it means that the people have run out of food from the last season’s harvest and are basically eating very little until the next harvest. Some of them get so hungry that they resort to breaking into other people’s houses and stealing their food. That’s the thief season part.

Actually, I feel very guilty about the whole hunger season. I’ve never had to deal with that before. At least, I don’t live in the Sudan or some other desperate country where it’s basically hunger decade. Nevertheless, we still have a season dedicated to it. Since I’m the assistant to the nutritionist at the clinic, I get the honor of seeing all the kids in the sector come in to be weighed. I can always tell which are the malnourished ones by their mood. They’re screaming bloody murder or are very lethargic and lifeless. I think the lifeless ones scare me the most. The well-fed babies, with their little bundles of fat, gurgle and say “da-da” and never mind when I measure their arms or height. We also get the water babies. These babies can fool some people at first sight because they look fat. Unfortunately, the reason they look fat is because their bodies are swollen with water; they’re severely malnourished with kwashiorkor. They’re not getting enough food, especially protein foods. Actually, most of the malnourished babies and toddlers I see are either the kwashiorkor babies or the medium malnourished babies. The marasmus children, the skin and bones children, go to the hospital to drink some miracle porridge and recover. I wonder what happens when they go back home. Actually, I wonder how much these families eat exactly. And what does it feel like to always be hungry. An old woman came in the other day with her kwashiorkor baby but we had to turn her away from the food distribution program because her baby’s arms were too thick to qualify for the program. She kept telling me the baby was an orphan; her mother was a fellow villager who died recently. The baby lived off of sweet potatoes because, well, there really wasn’t much else to feed her. I felt really bad for this old woman. She was like one hundred years old and caring for this water baby and I’m feeling helpless because I can’t do anything to help her. I guess I could be a typical muzungo and throw money at her but that won’t really solve anything long-term and, plus, I would have the rest of my sector knocking at my door asking for money. So, I did what I always did. I gave her the nutrition spill and told her to come back next month to get her baby re-weighed. Man, you can bet I felt good after that, a real hero, telling her to feed her baby vegetables and beans when the woman’s problem is not misinformation but just poverty. The kinyarwanda word for poverty is ubukene. I think I have it stuck in my head now forever. I used to think I was poor. That was before I came here. Now, I think I must have been a millionaire back in the States eating meat two times a day, having piped hot water and as much electricity as I can ever use, a paid university degree and a paid car. Even now, as a Peace Corps volunteer, I am rich. I have the good life. Not only do my villagers think that, I think that. If I can spend $4 dollars in one day to call my friends on the cell phone, if I can have an egg every day and a gas tank to cook my food. If I can have electricity in my own home and travel to the city on the weekend, how can I not be rich?

Actually, I’m beginning to realize how relative being rich and poor can be. In the States, as a waitress and college student, I definitely did not make enough money to be in the middle class. I did not consider myself rich by any means. But how can you explain to an African that a poor person in the States might have a rented apartment, a car, fed kids that go to school and a job? In our mind, we can argue, “Well, the family lives in the ghetto in subsidized housing, the car was new when the “I love Lucy” show was playing, the kids live off of soft drinks and chips and the father has a job at McDonalds.” But to an African, our arguments sound hollow and spoiled and basically don’t make any sense. This family may live in the ghetto but they have a place to sleep that protects them from the elements. Their children can go to free school on free school buses and eventually have the chance to go to university and improve their lot in life. The father may have a job at McDonalds but at least he has a job and he has a car that can take him places easily like to work or to the hospital when necessary.

What does all this mean? Am I trying to make you feel guilty? Well, yes. If I’m going to feel guilty, then I may as well not suffer alone. But I think the lesson here is more than emotional. It is instructive in life to sometimes look at the outside world, to see how other human beings are getting along and to put oneself in context. It is misfortunate and very nearsighted to put oneself in a box and live there oblivious of others for the rest of one’s life. Because if you do so, you miss out. You really do. For us Americans, we miss the opportunity to realize how blessed and full our lives really are.

It’s another night in the life of Patricia and it is time to write a blog. I must warn you that I have nothing really important to say tonight. I just haven’t written in a while so I thought I would give a little update. I’ve also promised myself that I would not write about food in today’s blog. It seems like every blog I write mentions food in one respect or another so I’m going to close that book and move on. Although I should mention that the market was especially well-stocked today and therefore I had a good meal tonight. Okay, moving on.

Well, it’s been seven months since I landed in Rwanda and four and a half months since I started living in the boonies, a.k.a. my site. I realized today that I only have a year and a half left of my service and that got me kinda thinking about what I’ve accomplished so far. Bad idea. I then had to buy myself a fanta and finish a whole package of cookies.

I guess you’re wondering what I am exactly doing here in Rwanda. I remember wondering myself what I would be doing when I started applying for the Peace Corps a year and a half ago. I would peruse the Peace Corps website meticulously, read all the stories, and waste hours on the web reading volunteer blogs. It was all a lot of fun and good material for daydreaming but it was also, to be honest, all kinda vague. I understand now why they were always so vague with their stories and blogs because that describes my life now. Vague, vague, vague. And random. That’s also a good word.

Let’s see. About my job. Yesterday, I distributed seed and farm equipment to a whole village. The week before, I saved a child’s life by rescuing him from a rushing river full of hungry crocodiles. Just before that, I had just finished work on a brand new house for a widow and her fifteen children. Now, I’m finalizing touches on a grant that will provide money for a brand new school for my town plus pay for the school fees for every single child. Oh, I almost forgot. Last month, I installed electricity and running water in my town. Yep, that’s my life now. Or at least my life in the movie version. You know how Hollywood writers embellish a little.

Uhm, yea. So, in reality, my volunteer job is in community health. I’m paired up with my sector’s clinic so I work there every day. I show up to work every day at 7 am and do random work the rest of the day to help the nurses with their jobs. I take temperatures and blood pressure. I weigh children and pregnant mothers and monitor their nutrition levels. I fill out forms for patients and fill syringes with vaccines. I also teach health topics sometimes to the patients in my baby kinyarwanda. Two days a week, I teach the staff English and I’ve started teaching them “the machine” or the computer as I like to call it. When there’s no work, I go over to the NGO’s office, bother them with requests for translations or ask to tag along on one of their community visits.

In all the empty space that’s between, I sit in a tiny office full of records, try to look busy on my computer, and wonder how I’m going to fill up the empty space the next day. I guess I can’t blame my co-workers. They don’t know or maybe don’t care how bored I am. Plus, they are blessed with working for the slowest clinic in the world. I think that we can have around twenty patients a day. Today, I saw five sitting on the bench outside the consultation room. In the afternoons, all the patients disappear and the nurses sit around till 5 pm doing nothing. Sometimes, I sit with them in the afternoon, watch the people walk by outside, and wonder about this clinic I work for, where the hardest workers are the janitors.

In all practicality, I’m my own boss. This would be good for some but not so much for me because my last few jobs and my whole school career trained me to be a very good robot. Unfortunately, this job requires me to be more like a computer with a good processor and access to Internet. Uhm, don’t know if that analogy worked. Anyway, my point is that I’m on unfamiliar territory and it’s been a little shaky. I’m not referring to teaching English or taking temps. What’s unfamiliar territory is having disease, hunger, and poverty staring me in the face every day when I teach English or take temps and knowing I should do something about it but not knowing exactly how to go around doing it. I do have a couple of ideas for projects and hopefully they will pan out. We'll see. It’s just month four and I’ve got twenty more months to figure things out. Maybe, I can still build that widow’s house or solve the hunger problem in my community. Probably not but why not dream. At least, I had a good dinner tonight.

Ways to tell you’re a Rwandan Peace Corps volunteer

1) You speak Kinyarwanda like a three-year-old.

2) Six months later, you’re wearing the same clothes you brought from the States even though they’re too big/small and are starting to disintegrate.

3) Unlike the other foreigners (with their big SUV’s and hired drivers), you ride around in the local minivans and public buses, covered in dust and packed more tightly than sardines.

4) Your diet consists of rice and beans and some more rice and beans.

5) When you gather in groups of two Peace Corps volunteers or more, your conversation centers around American food. And Mexican food, and Chinese food, etc.

6) You argue fiercely in the market over a few hundred francs (a few American cents) and get mad when they charge you the foreigner rate.

7) The children call you Muzungu k’uruhu, meaning you’re a foreigner by skin only, not by culture. Translation: you don’t dole out money.

8) You spend more money on the telephone and Internet than on food and other living allowances combined.

9) You develop gross conditions like worms, giardia, chiggers, and more diarrhea than you thought possible.

10) You have gotten your phone or camera or other valuable stolen, at least once, while you’ve been here.

11) You’re so poor that even the Rwandans tell you that you need new shoes. Unfortunately, you can’t afford to buy new shoes because you spent it on Internet and you walk around in shower flip-flops.

12) You’ve become an expert English teacher because everyone in Rwanda wants to learn English.

13) You haven’t trimmed or cut your hair in months because the only person who knows how to cut Muzungu hair is another muzungu.

14) You’re the first muzungu to show your village children a picture of themselves or speak to them in their native language. You may be the first white person they’ve seen.

15) You’re the expert Internet and communications specialist in your village, even though in the United States, your only specialties were Microsoft Word and Facebook.

16) You spend the equivalent of $6 on a banana split when you travel to the capital.

17) You're not insulted when another volunteer offers the remains of a food item to you, such as cookie crumbs or half-eaten cake. This is especially true if it's in a package from the States or if any part of it consists of chocolate.

18) You take toilet paper with you whenever you travel. And laundry soap.

Other random lists

Things I miss from the States, besides family and friends of course

1) Food

2) Vegging out in front of the T.V. Especially watching Criminal Minds, Jon Stewart, and Law and Order.

3) Convenience and speed. If I’m hungry, order take-out. If I need something, I can go to Wal-mart.

4) Being completely understood, at all times. At least language and culturally wise.

5) Always having family at home when I came home from work or school.

6) Having a job I’m really good at.

7) A long, hot shower

8) Having enough money to buy frivolous things.

9) My car

Perks of being a Peace Corps volunteer

1) Having a job that actually matters.

2) Developing all sorts of random skills, like latrine maintenance and bargaining.

3) Being the superstar of a village.

4) Learning a second and potentially a third language.

5) Being the most eligible bachelor or bachelorette in town (This may not be a perk for some)

6) Kids love you. (Well, most do. Some cry.)

7) Having a huge network of other volunteers in other countries to support you when you travel, need information, or a favor.

8) Good healthcare

9) Meeting awesome people you never would have met otherwise.

10) Changing your way of looking at life, rearranging priorities.

11) Learning to appreciate the small things in life, the small victories and gifts.

12) Learning to live on your own, gain independence and maturity.

13) Developing life-long friends.

14) Gaining a new culture.

So I haven’t written in a while…it’s not been because of lack of things happening in my life. I guess my life has been just as eventful as before but because of circumstances, I haven’t felt the urge or had the heart to write a blog.

It was around the middle of June when I got sick for the first time. I developed fevers, chills, and fatigue, which left me bedridden for a few days. I guess it’s not that bad of an illness but when you’re thousands of miles away from home and missing your mom’s care and chicken noodle soup, it can feel a lot worse. I hitched a ride to the nearest town and got put up in a motel for a few days, compliments of Peace Corps. The Peace Corps doctor also gave me enough amoxicillin to treat an elephant so I quickly recovered after that. For some reason, although I recovered physically, the illness left me really down, unmotivated, and homesick. I hope I never get sick here again because it packs quite a punch, physically and mentally.

It’s been over for a month so I’m all better now. I’ve been working some and I also visited two other Peace Corps volunteers on the 4th of July weekend. Many of my projects and lessons have been put on hold because of holidays, going to a Peace Corps meeting and other obligations so I’ve been feeling like a slacker. Next month, however, I’ve already told myself to become a workaholic and really start Peace Corp volunteering in earnest. There can be no American slackers in my town.

In other news, my father and stepmother have come to visit me in good ole Rwanda for two weeks. To be honest, I was a little worried when my father first told me he was coming to visit. After all, my house is sorely lacking in certain commodities and amenities. In addition, getting around Rwanda is not exactly luxurious or easy. Fortunately, they have been really good about adjusting to everything and seem to actually be enjoying the experience. I’ve taken them to visit the university town, my town, and the capital city. We’ve been to shops, a museum, a wedding, walking randomly around my villages, and tomorrow, we will explore Kigali City. Normally, I hate going to the capital because it’s big, intimidating and my monthly salary has a tendency to disappear. Ever since my dad and stepmom have come to visit however, I have been obligated to learn my way around the city and I have been surprised at how much I know and that I can actually get around (well, sorta). The person I usually depend on for everything Rwandan (language translations, bargaining, advice about things mundane and important) has gone to America for three weeks so I’ve been forced to rely on myself for all that. Fortunately, my kinyarwanda was enough to rent hotel rooms, bargain for taxis and find a way to my village 250 kilometers away without losing my sanity. Like I told my stepmom, nothing in Rwanda is ever easy or convenient. I guess it’s just highlighted when you have visitors from the States. I was kinda getting used to the discomfort, dust, bargaining, lack of conveniences (like water), and various mishaps, cancellations, and bad deals that comprise my life now. When my dad and stepmom came to visit, I was reminded again of all those things and the fact that my life in the United States was actually pretty cozy.

They brought gifts from the United States. I gave my dad quite a list to bring me, including: an antivirus for my computer (very important here), a cowboy hat for a friend, my backpack, my good dress, seeds for my garden, movies, songs, and books, and the Catch phrase game (I might use it in my English class to increase vocab.) Dad also brought some English teaching textbooks and cd’s for me, for which I’m extremely grateful and my sister packed some curtain material for me. Before, I just had an old rag across my window and a bedsheet across my kitchen window. When my stepmom saw my bedroom curtain, she said it looked like Pigpen’s blanket (you know from Charlie Brown’s comic). Hehe. Yea, I guess it was pretty bad but I’ve been too lazy to seriously try to find suitable curtain materials, haggle for prices, go to the market to buy rods and rings, haggle for prices, measure the curtains and cut the material, go to the seamstress to get them hemmed up, haggle for prices, then go home to sew on the rings. Too much work for me. I rather just have Pigpen’s blanket across my bedroom window for three months. Well, unfortunately, Dad doesn’t know how lazy I can be because he made me do just that. We finally got all that finished yesterday and now I have brand new curtains hanging up in my living room and two bedrooms. Pigpen’s blanket is the curtain for my stockroom now. It’s an ugly room anyway.

When I first brought my parents to my town, they were surprised I lived so far from anything. My dad said that I lived at the end of the world. I guess it’s kind of true. It’s completely different from anywhere I’ve ever lived. Fortunately, they really liked my small town. We walked to three villages and all the villagers came out to see the strange white people walking through. Children ran, babies cried, and old men delightedly shook our hands. I was quite gratified to realize that the people knew me or at least recognized me. Many of them called me “umuganga” which means doctor in Kinyarwanda. I guess you’re wondering why they wouldn’t know me if I’ve been living here for three months. Well, where I live is composed of 26 different villages or umudugudu. Where I was taking my parents was the neighboring village or umudugudu.

I gave my parents the grand tour of my house and of the clinic where I work at. I suspect they had quite a different idea of where I lived or at least were not expecting what they saw. I don’t know for sure but they quickly got used to living with little water, cooking on charcoal, using a latrine and washing clothes by hand. I thought they would be all impressed by my charcoal lighting abilities but Dad already knew how to light the charcoal the old fashioned way. The next day, he lit it no problem and cooked on it whereas it had taken me two months to learn how to light the charcoal without kerosene.

My parents also made several improvements to my home. Compliments of my father and stepmom, I now have enough groceries for several weeks, two bedrooms and a living room freshly painted in yellow and green, curtains on all my windows, a new set of tools (screws, nails, saw, screwdrivers), a dustpan, three fixed doors that actually close and lock, new sandals (My old shoes were falling apart…literally), and various other things I can’t think of right now. I also think my dad felt really bad about all the children dressed in rags because he left half of his clothes and a pair of shoes to be given away to them. My neighbor’s house-servant will now be walking around in my dad’s clothes. It’s actually a really good thing. I think he only has one shirt and pair of pants.

Well, this blog is already too long. My parents fly away in two days and I will go back to my site the next day. It will be weird living alone again but I will get used to it as always. (I saw a cat today and seriously considered taking it back with me.)

June 11, 2009

Sometimes life is taking a deep breath and plunging in. That’s how I felt this morning once more as the mothers gathered together so I could start teaching them. I began my lesson on nutrition by introducing myself, then I started reading from my translation, trying to pronounce the words, hoping they understood it. Fortunately, a coworker was there, to repeat anything they did not understand and to expand on the subject.

If someone had told me a year ago I would be teaching a community about nutrition, HIV and family planning, holding English classes and conducting community assessments and interviews, I would have been intimidated and perhaps wondering how I would become qualified to do all this. Even now, when I think about what I do every week and what I will possibly be doing the next two years, I become a little terrified and I have to shut my mind and concentrate on what I am doing that day. Or sometimes, I have to just stop worrying and just do it. Because the alternative, that of not even trying, is many times worse than trying to do something and failing spectacularly. For example, the first time I taught a group of mothers, they did not understand a word I said. And I was speaking their language (or at least, some version of it)! In short, the lesson did not go well. As time went by, however, and as I taught more lessons, I started speaking more slowly, pronouncing the words more clearly, and remembering them. Now, when I teach a lesson in which I’m familiar, people can understand me and I can speak freely in Kinyarwanda for a few minutes without having to read my notes. And you can’t imagine how good of a feeling it is to be able to converse and teach in that language without having to read a translation from a piece of paper.

I’m not trying to sound all clichéd and inspirational. I’m trying to make a necessary point because if any of you guys reading are like me, then you need to hear this. Life is not safe; it’s not predictable or kind. If you want to make something of yourself, if you want to grow and learn, and leave behind something meaningful, then you have to take risks. You have to leave, for a time, whatever it is that makes you feel secure (your family, school, the living room couch) and make that gamble. It will change your life. Now I’m not saying that one decision will change your life. Instead, what changes your life is consistently overcoming your fears and taking chances. Take a chance and apply for that job or internship you think you will never get or that promotion at the office. Go out with that guy at the coffee shop although you’re afraid of getting hurt again. Sign up for that college class although you think you are not smart enough. Hey, apply for the Peace Corps. If you want to completely leave anything that could be called a safety zone, that’s one way to do it. I emphasize this point because, for many years, I played it safe and did not take many chances. I was afraid of not being talented or smart enough, of failing in general. I had so many excuses and reasons for not going anywhere significant in life. Fortunately, I realized this so I overcompensated slightly and did what could be considered either the smartest thing I’ve ever done or the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I decided to take a two-year volunteer position in a small African country thousands of miles from home and doing a job I had never done before in a language I had never heard of.

Yea, my life now is hard and new. Yea, I don’t know what I’m doing half of the time. I live and eat very poorly by American standards. I walk around half understood and half understanding, gossiped about and stared at. But when I think about these things, I start thinking about my fellow villagers. My life is hard but their’s is harder. Have you ever met someone so poor that he has to go out into the forests or countryside every day to try to find something to eat? His children have never gone to school or been vaccinated. Their clothes are literally falling off of their bodies. You probably wouldn’t even use those clothes for rags. Yea, my life is easier. And about being half understood, imagine living your whole life in one little village, struggling in the fields day by day to feed your family. There are few to no opportunities for advancement, education and a way out of that life. No one really cares or comes to try to make your life better. You don’t really have a voice.

When I start considering these things and thinking about the people I live with, I remember why I took that risk and joined the Peace Corps.

Blog June 1, 2009

I had a visitor last week. He stayed for several days, with no prior notice. Fortunately, he was pretty quiet and stayed out of my way most of the time. His only annoying habit was trying to eat my food and run under my feet when I was near him. He was also small, furry and ran very fast. And I was absolutely terrified of him.

As you might have guessed, my visitor was a mouse. A little, brown mouse. The first night I saw him I was in my bed talking on the phone. I screamed and started banging things around to get him out of my room. I made so much noise, my neighbors thought I was being robbed and came over to check on me. I then barricaded myself in my room and finally went to sleep. In the morning, I looked around for him but did not find him. Thinking he had run out my back door, I left for work. That night, when I was cooking, I saw him again! He was in my kitchen running over my plates and kitchen utensils. Taking drastic measures, I grabbed my squeegee and started chasing him. My neighbor came over for something and I recruited him in the mouse hunt. Under no circumstances was I sharing quarters with a mouse! Unfortunately, the mouse outsmarted us. After thirty minutes of searching and sealing all the doors, we could not find him. Disheartened, I let my neighbor go home and I went to bed. The next morning, I went into the kitchen and found my cheese eaten. Furious, I vowed that this situation would end that same day. Grabbing the squeegee, I started banging around the kitchen until the little monster showed himself and started running across the floor. I closed the kitchen door but the mouse, being so small, escaped underneath. I chased him into the hall and saw that he had hid himself behind the hall door, the little fool. Gathering my courage, I did what had to be done and the mouse died. After I finished, I realized that my whole body was shaking. Sure, I had killed insects before but never something that was so obviously warm-blooded and breathing. I scooted it outside the house into my backyard. Afraid it would wake up and run inside again, I raised my squeegee high in the air, closed my eyes, and gave a good last wham on the poor thing.

I wish I could tell you this was my only incident with unwanted guests. Since that day, it seems like I have been inundated with various uninvited critters and I have been trying to get rid of them. Ants are a big problem in my house especially when I bring in pineapple and other such goodies. They don’t really bother me that much; they are just annoying. Spiders are also common but they don’t really bother me either. What really bothers me is looking into my latrine one day and realizing, oh crap, what are those white worms crawling all over my poop. Yeah, sorry to be so direct about this but if I have to deal with it, you, my reader, can deal with it too. Like an idiot, I had never bothered to cover my latrine. Therefore, flies decided to make it their main nesting ground and voila, hundreds and hundreds of fly larvae now live there. Yeah, I know. Gross, super gross. But what can I do about it. I can’t really relocate them. The first few nights, I stared in amazement at the colony. When they started trying to migrate upwards, I realized I was in deep trouble and I broke out my bleach. Like a sadist, I poured the bleach into the hole, watched the critters struggle for a minute and then covered the hole. Unfortunately, the larvae are tough and lived on. I have been pouring bleach into my latrine for the past few days but they still live! Maybe, I should just pour kerosene down the hole and set the whole shebang on fire. Haha. Just kidding, Mom. I would never do that, no matter how tempting it is.

A few days before the latrine incident, I decided to cook some pinto beans. Realizing I was out, I went to the store and bought a kilo. After I came home and opened my bag, I realized my beans were moving. Incredulous, I adjusted my eyes to see hundreds of these pinto bean termites crawling all over my beans. I had been invaded by one of the plagues of Egypt! At the time, one of my Rwandan friends was visiting. He took one look into the bag and asked me, “You didn’t check the beans before buying them?!” Feeling like a fool, I replied dully, “Noooo, I didn’t even know you had to check beans before buying them.” I poured my beans out on a platter and stared at the termites dredging tunnels through all the beans. Annoyed and embarrassed, I decided to boycott the store and storekeeper who sold me the beans; then, I realized it was probably the only store in town that sold beans. I finally exclaimed (like I had done several times before), “In the States, this would never happen!” To which my friend replied, like a real smart-ass, “Oh, I’m sorry the FDA didn’t have time to inspect that batch of beans before it was sold. Maybe, you should go back to the store and get your money back.” He then told me the beans I bought were about five seasons old so it would take much longer to cook than ordinary beans. Like I didn’t already cook my beans for about five to six hours, now I had beans that took longer!

Anyway, I guess that’s life, right. We make mistakes, learn from them and hopefully do not commit the same mistakes again. Granted, it is embarrassing when you first do them, but what can you do about that? In case, you are wondering what I did with the beans, I did not throw them away. We put the beans out in the sun so the termites would crawl away. After several hours, I threw away the beans that had termites still in them or that had more than two holes. With the rest, I just threw them in a pot and ate them that night. You think that’s gross. Just wait until I tell you what I do with my bread when I find ants on them. I blow and shake the ants off of my bread and then I eat it. I can’t throw it away, like I would in the States! If I threw all my bread away, I would have nothing to eat for breakfast and lunch. I lose enough weight as it is. So far, I have lost about 12 pounds and I have gone down two dress sizes. The Peace Corps diet, my friend calls it, and I’m on it. Don’t worry. I won’t starve or anything. I will just be a little thinner when you see me next time. Anyway, I guess my sister must have realized my situation because she sent me a care package. You know what she sent me through the mail?! She sent me chicken! I had never thought of chicken being sent in a package but it was. And I can’t even tell you the last time I ate chicken here. I’m going to save it for a special occasion because it looks really good.

my dining room

laundry day

Colobus monkey

my view

Rwandan stove!

my first cooked meal

my birthday cake

my house

Pancakes!

May 11, 2009

I guess it’s true what they say. Women really must gain weight in the Peace Corps. I was actually really surprised when I heard that the first time. I thought, “How can I gain weight when I have to walk everywhere and cook for myself? And what will I eat? Will my village sell anything but beans, rice, and sweet potatoes?”

Well, it’s true that my village doesn’t have the variety of Walmart or even the local gas station in the U.S. for that matter. Actually, the offerings are bread, eggs, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, cassava, corn, tomatoes, onions, peanuts, questionable milk and some weird vegetables I don’t know the name of. Actually, people here eat the leaves off of everything it seems and they call it vegetables. Oh, and I almost forgot my favorite, avocado.

Okay, so the first week I was here, I kinda didn’t cook at all. For one, I had no wood, gas, or charcoal. Second, I didn’t know where to buy anything or how to cook on wood or charcoal. Third, I had no time to cook especially because it would get dark by 6:30. So, I basically bummed off of my neighbors for about a week and a half. At that time, I was eating only once or twice a day and I honestly thought my clothes would start falling off of me soon. Well, I finally bought some charcoal and for the past week and a half, I have been developing a system of cooking. I actually now have the charcoal lighting down (if I throw half a cup of kerosene on it before lighting). And my timing is getting better. People here eat pinto beans every day and you know as well as I do that pinto beans take forever to cook! So, I finally developed a system where I soak my beans overnight, light my charcoal when I wake up, start the beans cooking, go to work, come back and cook them another hour or two. This system is not flawless though. The first time I tried this, I underestimated how much water to put in the pan and seriously burnt the crap out of everything. Okay, maybe I did this twice. And since I work 8 hours a day, the charcoal also goes out by the time I come back and I have to relight it. Anyway (I’m taking too long to explain this.), I am finally getting used to cooking for myself and since then, I have been eating way too much. For one, I usually have half an avocado every day. In the morning, I have my bread and butter. At ten, I have one or two little sweet breads they sell at the hospital cantine. At twelve, I have some more bread and butter or I reheat food from the night before. At 7 or 8 pm, I have dinner (usually beans, rice or noodles, and avocado). Or I have eggs and, you guessed it, bread again. Then, at 11 or 12 am, I get a craving for chocolate and eat about 3 or 4 spoonfuls of Nutella. If you don’t know what Nutella is, stop reading this blog and go to the supermarket to buy some. Seriously. Nutella, with its heavenly mix of chocolate hazelnut and vanilla-like spread, is probably the best thing invented by man. At least, it is the best thing in the food department and when you spread it on bananas, wow! I, at least, can’t stop eating it and I have gone through a whole jar in just one week. And nutella isn’t cheap either. It costs $4 a jar. I guess it’s a bad idea to keep it by my bed. I’m moving it tonight.

Today, I made pancakes. Real, honest to goodness, like your grandmother makes them, pancakes. And they were delicious. I had to sacrifice one of my precious eggs for the recipe but it was worth it. I’m going to try to save around three of the pancakes for breakfast tomorrow (not sure how that’s going to turn out but it’s that or nothing). I also cooked enough beans and rice to feed a family of five, so I’m having that tonight too. This is after downing three or four cookies with nutella and eating half an avocado. You see what I mean? I’m going to blow up. I hate to keep harping on this. In the States, I was never really that conscious of my weight but here, where villagers are lucky to eat twice a day, I am actually considered a little heavier than normal. I weighed myself the other day, after the pregnant women had finished weighing themselves, and I actually weighed just as much as a Rwandan woman in her sixth or seventh month of pregnancy!

Talking about weight, that’s what I did today. I weighed children and measured their arms in one of the little villages. After doing that for about four hours, I was ready to cry or at least strangle myself for being an American. Seriously, about half of these kids were underweight and many were in the malnourished category, some severe. I weighed one child I thought to be around 8 months old only to find out she was two years old. I literally gasped when the mother told me how old she was. After I would weigh the child and find out she was underweight, I would usually tell the mother to visit the clinic for vitamins and nutrition counseling. After a while, I started thinking if I was going to have to send all these mothers to the clinic. And I asked once or twice what the children ate at home. One mother told me the family only ate pinto bean greens (the leaves off of the plant). What can I say to that? I did tell several mothers to feed their children pinto beans, sweet potatoes, fruits and vegetables. But what does that accomplish? What can a mother do with this information if she has no money to buy the food or if, like much of the land in my sector, the land she tills is so infertile, she can’t produce enough food for her family, especially not the food for a varied, healthy diet?

That’s the main problem I have been facing here. Poverty. I guess it’s obvious yet I didn’t expect it to slap me in the face like it did. You tell them something and they listen. They agree it’s good advice and they believe you because you have the white lab coat on. But do they do it? Many times, the answer is no because they simply cannot afford to do it. For example, health workers tell the villagers to boil their water before drinking because the water is dirty and will spread diseases. Yet, what mother will stop what she is doing to boil water when she has only one pan and she probably needs to cook beans and potatoes for her four hungry children? And after she boils the water, does she even have a container to put the water in?

It’s a cycle. Poverty leads to health problems, shortened life span, and malnutrition and, in turn, health problems, shortened life span, and malnutrition lead to more poverty. I guess the answer lies in trying to solve the poverty problem. If people have enough money, they can buy nutritious food, boil their water, buy shoes for their children and send them to school. Maybe, if the child goes to school, he will be one of the lucky few, who finish high school and goes to college. Maybe, if he finishes, with help from the government and scholarships, he will be one of the even luckier few, who will find a good job. But maybe, his parents will be like so many others who dredge out a sort of living every day on their small plot of infertile land and they try their best to feed their five children and send them to school. But high school is inordinately expensive and not many people can afford it. So, the children stay home and grow up to become farmers themselves. They divide the land of their parents and continue to live the same life as their parents did. And they have many children because they are afraid some of their children will die. For who will take care of them when they are older if their children are all dead?

Okay, I’m depressing myself so I will stop writing about this. And I need to stop eating! Maybe, I am channeling my emotions through food. That would be trouble. Haha. Okay, next time I will try to write a happy blog. If anybody is reading this, send me some topic ideas or questions so I will not just write about the demise of society or some other sobering topic.

Blog May 6, 2009

It is week three at my site, and although I am still struggling with a routine at home and at work, I feel like I am getting there. Today, I actually cooked two meals on the charcoal grill. Granted I used a cup of kerosene to get it all started, I still feel pretty proud that I was able to work a whole day and still find time to cook lunch and dinner. I am actually going to have three meals today, a fact that actually makes me very happy. I had been eating only twice a day, if not once a day in the past few days. I had also been inviting myself to my neighbors’ houses for free food. But I feel like I turned a page today. I actually soaked my pinto beans all night long. I had a cheese sandwich for breakfast, cooked some ramen noodles for lunch and put a pot of beans on the charcoal grill before I left for work in the afternoon. I let the beans cook all afternoon and hurried back to check on them after work, but not before buying my beloved avocados at the local market. The charcoal was dead so I had to start it all again. Tonight, I’m having pinto beans, rice, and avocado. I even boiled some water so I can have some hot tea or coffee tonight. I am going to eat very good today and enjoy every bite.

Because I am an American, I refuse to have a house servant like all of my co-workers. Granted if I had a houseworker, I would have hot meals two times a day, clean clothes and a clean house, but it goes against something inside of me to hire a house servant. Maybe I enjoy my privacy too much or my own way of doing things or maybe I value my computer and camera. Anyway, because of my stubbornness, I have been having trouble feeding myself the way I am accustomed and finding time to do everything I need to do. Many of my co-workers here complain about how bored they are and how they have nothing to do after work. For me, I wish I had three more hours after work, at least of daylight. I have so much to do (which explains why I am wasting time writing this blog instead of preparing lessons or studying kinyarwanda). Talking about my co-workers, they are part of an interesting dichotomy in my town. Most of the people here are the typical African villager, very poor, usually farmers, no water or electricity, and little access to education. But the other type of people in my town speak to me in English, have access to Internet, wear jeans, and tell me they like shows like the O.C. and One Tree Hill. It is so weird. Sometimes, I feel like I am in one of those small towns in America that happen to have a university. The university brings in the life, the youth and modernity. It is the same here; yet, instead of having an university, it has a new hospital. And the people who are so different from the villagers are those who work at the hospital, the doctors, pharmacists, and nurses. They are the university graduates from other parts of the country or from the Congo. Many of them have only been living here for a little while and most of them are young and have no families. So, in a way, they are newcomers like me. I find it comforting because in a way, they remind me of people my age back in the United States. It is a study in contradictions living here but it brings a little bit of home back to me.

Writing about this reminds me about a blog topic I had in mind, the differences in American and Rwandan culture. It is amazing how much you can learn about your own culture just by being in another. And it is also amazing how much you miss of the local culture when you just live with thirty-four other Americans for three months. Since being at my site, the differences have been magnified and, to be honest, I think I am starting to prefer some of the Rwandese customs over my own. Okay, like I said in my last blog, the hospitality here is amazing, over the top. When a person moves into the village, people come to welcome him, show where he can buy food, etc, introduce him to the local leaders, and invite him to visit them. Ever since I have been here, it has been that way. Amazing hospitality. And I really enjoy the custom of welcoming guests into the home. They always offer hot tea, fanta or beer and let the person stay for dinner if he wants to, no prior notice needed. Actually, you could probably stay for hours at a neighbor’s house and he wouldn’t care. At least, he wouldn’t say anything and he would invite you back again. I’m trying to imagine how it is in the States. For one thing, when someone moves into a new community, no one really goes out of their way to help that person integrate. If it is a small town, it might be a little different but it is nowhere near the welcome you will get here. If a person moves into a city in the States, good luck. No one cares what you do or how you do it. And visiting the homes in the United States is also different. It is rude not to give prior notice and it is weird visiting the home of a person you do not know well. Most people just go out to socialize. And you must never overstay your welcome at someone’s house.

One thing that Rwandans and Americans have in common is that they are private about their lives. You might think this unusual if you are accustomed to West African culture. A friend once told me that the only secrets West Africans keep are the ones they forget. It is very different in Rwanda. Although the people are very friendly, they won’t let you into their confidence right away. You need to earn their trust. Even though Rwandans are private, they are willing to help each other often, even if it means sacrificing their convenience and time. And to be honest, Americans are not like that. I am not saying that Americans do not like to help each other. They do but there is also this culture of independence and intense privacy that keeps other people away. They will try very hard to do something on their own before asking for help. And asking for help usually means one has failed and is not strong enough to do it on his own. And the issue of time. Oh, you know as well as I do how obsessed Americans are about time. Time is money, isn’t it? And if someone takes your time and you feel like you are not getting anything for it, it is so annoying. If it is not convenient for the schedule, then you will not go out with a co-worker to celebrate his birthday, you will not visit the grandmother at the nursing home or grab some lunch with the new neighbor. I’m not saying that all Americans are like that. I’m just saying that it has been my experience that Americans value their time and convenience highly, too highly sometimes. And you don’t even realize you are like that until you visit somewhere like Africa where people will actually turn back from a trip to town because you are going to visit them or where people will walk you to a place if you are lost instead of just giving verbal instructions.

Okay, I will stop bashing America. It is not all bad and hopefully, I’m showing them some good American traits. It is my culture after all and they will be living with it for a while. Let’s see how they react to living with a twenty-something American female for two years.

April 30, 2009

The worst hours of the day have to be from 4:30 to 7:30 pm. As the day wanes and I go home from work, I am always faced with the issue of what to do and how to do it. And I also have to decide what to cook that night, if I will cook anything. Today, I spent an hour trying to light my charcoal grill, all the while wondering what brought me here, thousands of miles away from what I call home. Even now, I can picture myself driving home from work and stopping by a fast food joint to grab a hamburger and fries. Then, I go home and watch my favorite program on the television or I call some friends. I talk to my sister or my mother and then I go to sleep. Everything is familiar and I know exactly what to do and where to go. I know the place, the language, and the people. I can predict what will happen tomorrow and what will probably happen next week. And I am not alone. I am not the only white person for kilometers and kilometers. And my job is clearly defined.

When I first started my Peace Corps blog, I did so for two reasons. The first was to have an easy way to update all of my family and friends on how I was doing, without having to email all of them. But the second reason was to provide an honest and detailed account of life in the Peace Corps so that others who are out there can understand and make an informed decision about whether to join or not. When I first thought about joining the Peace Corps, I read many blogs. Many of them were very good and funny but I noticed that the blogs did not really provide the information I wanted. And the information I wanted to know was how the volunteer integrated into the community, how did he learn the language, and how did he do his job in such circumstances. What were the hardest things to get used to and what were the challenges in the job? Was it worth it after all? Did he ever have doubts? So, I want to do that here and I want to be as honest as possible. And I want to do that because I believe in the Peace Corps’ mission and I think it is a very good thing. Yet, I don’t want people to join with the wrong ideas or the wrong reasons and I want them to be prepared.

I have been at my site for a week and a half now. It is hard for me to come to terms with the realization that I am actually here and I will be living here for two years. For a person who does not like to make promises, I have had to make many promises and commitments, one of them being my stay here. And to be honest, although it is very difficult for me now, I can see my job in the future, like six months or so, and I like what I see. For one thing, what I am doing now actually means something and can help people, unlike any other job I’ve ever had before. And I also feel very fortunate to be placed where I am at now. I am not lying when I say that the people here just blow me away with their hospitality, kindness and generosity. I have actually felt very comfortable here from the first and it is because the people have been so open and friendly. One of my Rwandan friends says that this is the way people are here; it is the culture. They tell me that we are together and that I am their sister. For someone accustomed to the American culture of independence, privacy and “everyone for himself,” it is a little overwhelming at times. Yet, this hospitality is deeply appreciated. If I move back to the States to live, I will take this type of hospitality with me because I think it is so much better than the way we live in the States. People here are shocked when I tell them that many Americans don’t even know who their neighbors are.

I guess I can give you some details about how I am living and so on. I actually have a very nice cement house with four bedrooms. Right now, I have hardly any furniture so it looks so big and empty, but I will be filling it up month by month. Last week, I ordered a desk and a coffee table, but I still need to order chairs for the living room and shelves for my kitchen supplies, books, and clothes. It will probably take a couple of months to get it all because everything is handmade. Let’s see, I also have electricity in two bedrooms. My neighbor has offered to come over and put wiring in my kitchen, latrine, and living room, which would be awesome. I told him he should teach me how to wire my house. I might as well gain a useful skill since it seems like everyone here knows how to do those things. Talking about useful skills, it would be really nice if I knew how to light my charcoal grill. I can get it started but I usually have to go through five or six matches and a lot of paper. Today, after an hour of struggling with the charcoal and watching the sun set, I finally gave up and threw about half a cup of kerosene on the charcoal. Only then could I get the charcoal started.

It’s not that bad though. One of the two best things about my house is the distance from work, only about 200 meters. Every day, I return to my house at noon for a small siesta. The other thing is my view, which is to die for. Seriously, when I step outside my house, I feel like I am in a postcard. Where I am, there are so many hills, mountains, valleys and rivers. When I go visit the surrounding villages, I am always just gaping at the scenery. It is incredible. Of course, the scenery becomes a little nerve wrecking when I am on a big bus trying to maneuver the small dirt roads around the side of the mountains. If the bus moves just a few feet to the right, it is all over for me and my Peace Corps adventure.

Talking about surrounding villages, I am going to be visiting the area villages a lot in the next three months. My first Peace Corps assignment is a community assessment, which involves researching town and hospital records and visiting houses, conducting census-type questions. As it turns out, my sector has twenty-one little villages so I will be visiting them all very soon. The amount of work I will be doing seems a little overwhelming as a result because I not only have to do the community assessment but they want me to start teaching at the clinic. This would be okay normally but I don’t know the language yet. And I really want to be fluent but, right now, I only have survival kinyarwanda. The area schools also want me to come and teach (mostly English). Honestly, I am really excited about the possibilities and I am glad they want me to come teach about health topics. Once I get a good grasp of the language, I really think I will love my job. But right now, I am just a little overwhelmed. When I come home from work, I will usually feel more stressed than when I am at work because I feel like I need to start preparing lesson plans, translating something, filling some form for Peace Corps or trying to light the charcoal before the sun sets. Today, I gave myself a little holiday after work and I decided to write this blog. And I have a reason to celebrate. Today, I taught my first lesson at the clinic and it was awesome! I was stressing about it because they told me yesterday I should teach today at the community health workers’ meeting. But I prepared the lesson on HIV/AIDS and found a translator and presented it with no problem. I don’t know why I was so worried. It was actually fun and great to see how interested they were in the topic. I actually opened a can of worms at one point when I asked them if they thought AIDS is a punishment from God. I was playing the true/false game and I was really trying to determine the level of stigma in the community. They really got into that argument. Some thought it was a punishment from God because there’s no cure for AIDS. Most others disagreed however, and a big debate ensued. I loved it and I tried to facilitate as best as possible with guiding questions. It was a little difficult however because I had to have a translator and the translators kept jumping in and adding their own viewpoints on the matter. Overall, though it was a lot of fun and my lesson lasted forever. I thought it would be around thirty minutes long but it lasted almost two hours.

I have been trying to write a blog for weeks but every time I start, I get the worst writer’s block. I need to write though because so much has happened in the last two weeks and I feel it is my duty to report on those events. Right now, I’m sitting in another volunteer’s room watching her pack. We both leave two days from now to head to our villages and start work. I don’t really know how to handle this reality so I’m trying not to think too much about it because if I do, I will just fret and worry.

Last week was our last week in Butare. We took our final language and tech tests and had our last interviews with our training director. Somehow, I managed a score of “advanced” on my language test even though I am nowhere near that level. I also signed my name on a piece of paper stating I passed my training and agreed to be a Peace Corps volunteer. It was so surreal and I can’t believe training is finally over. It seems like it took forever yet it doesn’t seem like three months has already passed. To be honest, I don’t even think of my life in the United States anymore. The first month I was here in Rwanda, I missed home like crazy. I especially missed material things like television, pizza, Mexican food, my bed, hot showers, and driving my car. Now, those things aren’t that important anymore. I have finally become accustomed to some aspects of my new life: bucket showers, washing my own clothes, bargaining with storekeepers, trying to follow conversations in three different languages, and waiting for hours for something that would take minutes in the United States. Although all of these experiences have prepared me for life in Rwanda, I know I will experience even more culture shock once I go to my village. Until now, I have only lived in town, in a convent, and had everything prepared for me. Once I move to my village, I will have to start a new job besides learning how to live like a true villager. Well, maybe not a true villager because I will be a lot better off. Still, I want to learn how to cook on charcoal and wood and carry a jug of water on my head.

This week, we left Butare for good and headed to Kigali. We have spent a week here so far and it has been incredible. After living in Southern Rwanda for three months, Kigali seems like New York City. On Wednesday, we had our graduation ceremony at the ambassador’s house and were sworn as Peace Corps volunteers. Many former volunteers came to see us graduate (actually forty-something former Peace Corps volunteers are here working in NGO’s) and some officials from the Rwandan government came as well. Two volunteers gave speeches in Kinyarwandan and wowed the crowd. After the ceremony, we all attacked the hors d’oeuvres and coffee and explored the ambassador’s ginormous house.

Thursday was simply one of the best days I have had in Rwanda! We all loaded up in buses and traveled to Lake Morhaze for a barbecue, games and wakeboarding. The embassy has a house beside the lake and we took possession of it for a day. While our director and other staff barbecued shish kabobs, I played volleyball and soccer with the Peace Corps staff. Our balls kept falling in the lake water and we were so afraid to wade in and retrieve them because there might be schistosomiasis in the water. We finally recruited a couple of kids who were in the water to swim out and fetch the balls for us. Four off-duty Marines from the embassy came with us, much to the girls’ delight, and they brought a couple of blow-up boats. They had this board, and they taught us to how to wake board. It was amazing! It’s kind of like water skiing yet you are on your knees on a board. I couldn’t resist. I went out in the schisto water and had my first experience in wakeboarding. Awesome, awesome, awesome! Of course, I was a wakeboard retard at first and I fell off the board, let’s see, about three or four times. When you are on the wakeboard, you start off on your stomach and you have to pull yourself up on your knees while the boat is moving. I was only able to get up once without falling, then the boat speeded up and I fell off again. After I got back on dry land, I stuffed my face and played football, soccer and volleyball with the staff and other volunteers. That was followed by random dancing to Bob Marley and African singers. All day long, I kept thinking that I cannot really be in the Peace Corps. This is simply too much fun and we are so spoiled. The day was perfect, absolutely perfect.

After we returned, a group of us decided to go to a salsa club for some dancing. I don’t have a clue how to salsa dance but I tagged along anyway. Once we got there, it was like muzungoville. It freaked me out a little. I was also taken aback by the dancers because they were so freaking good. I felt like I was watching a scene in Dirty Dancing: Havana nights. With nothing to lose except my pride, I jumped onto the dance floor and “salsa danced.” The night went without too many incidents until around midnight when I got paired up with a salsa teacher. After seeing how much I sucked, he took me aside and taught me the basic steps, right there on the dance floor in front of everybody. I was too grateful to be too embarrassed but I wondered if he did that to every bad salsa dancer he came across.

After Thursday’s wakeboarding and dancing, I spent today shopping for my house and recovering from strained muscles. And it was really confusing and stressful. The Peace Corps staff rented a couple of buses and they have four cars so they have been randomly carting all 32 of us around town. It has been a logistical nightmare because there are so many of us going to different places at different times and they really didn’t set up concrete schedule or timed routes. Basically, groups of us call the drivers to take us places and come fetch us after we buy boxes of household goods. Today, I just played it by ear and caught rides whenever they were going somewhere. Somehow, I managed to visit two stores, buy loads of crap, and still be picked up by the buses without having to call them. It was seriously a case of being in the right places at the right times.

Shopping has also been stressful because 1) I’ve never shopped for a whole house before. I basically need everything besides a bed frame and a kitchen table. 2) They have only given us a little bit of money to settle in, which means I have to budget, I can’t buy cute stuff, and I have to do without many things. This is fine. I mean, I am a Peace Corps volunteer after all. The only problem is that I don’t really know how to buy things on so little money. And there is also the issue of pride. Should I buy the really ugly blanket or the nice comforter? Should I buy all matching dishes and silverware or do I buy the cheap metal and plastic dishes from China that have the cats and weird English phrases on them. I do still have half of my settling allowance left so I think I am doing better than some other volunteers but I still have to buy a mattress, a gas tank and some furniture. I guess I can do without furniture the first month. At least, I have a bed frame.

Okay, I’m going to end by telling you about my first experience in a shopping mall in Africa. I have lived in Rwanda for three months and I had heard about this “shopping mall and Target-like store” in Kigali but I didn’t really believe it. Having never seen this mythical store, I had contented myself by shopping at the open-air markets and the little sketchy stores in Butare. Today, however, I finally got to visit it. It was so weird. Everything the other volunteers said about it was true! It actually looked like a Target/Sears. It had the cash registers and aisles with the little signs saying what was on each aisle. I probably looked like an idiot just wandering around the aisles with an expression of pure delight on my face. At first, I was too afraid to buy anything. I just explored the aisles and stared at the refrigerators, gym equipment, and flat screen televisions. They even had Ramen noodles although it was about a dollar each instead of 16 cents. There were so many options, I didn’t know where to start. I had gotten used to only having one or two choices and then bargaining for that one item until I got a good price. And the item normally looked like it came from a Goodwill store or a used clothes box from the States. Now, I had options! And to make it better, the workers were actually helpful unlike the workers at Walmart who try to run away from you whenever you have a question. One of them put together my gas grill for me and answered all my questions about gas prices and cooking options. He then took me to the hardware section and got the other pieces I needed for the grill.

The best part, however, had to be the Bourbon coffee shop. I walked in and just stared for five minutes at the sign listing the options. They had all the fancy coffee drinks and little sweets that Starbucks has. I laughed out loud and exclaimed, “This is just like Starbucks!” to the barista. The barista laughed and prepared a fancy coffee drink with little swirls and designs in the coffee, complete with porcelain cup and little sugar cookie. With a smug look, he presented the drink and asked, “Does Starbucks make coffee like this?” Impressed, I ordered a café mocha and chocolate cake complete with whip cream and cherries. Although the bill was the equivalent of five restaurant buffets, you must believe me when I say that I enjoyed every bite of that chocolate cake, and the café mocha was better than Starbucks coffee!

I finally found an internet connection fast enough to load some pictures but these were the only ones I had on me at the time. I will try to upload more pictures soon. The picture on the right is a picture of my classroom where I learn Kinyarwanda.

I only have three weeks until I graduate from training and head off to my village to start working. It seems like the weeks have just flown by and I can hardly believe PST is almost over. This week, we actually have a project to complete. Our group of four trainees visited a health clinic and arranged to talk to one of the small groups that meets every week. This group is comprised of around 8-10 women who have malnourished children. We are going to give a health talk about nutrition, water sanitation, and hygiene. I should probably be planning some of it today instead of writing my blog but the day is too nice to be spending it on work.

This week, our training director decided to teach us how to cook Rwandan food so he divided us up into groups and sent us to the market with shopping lists. My group was in charge of buying cassava powder, salt, tomato concentrate and of course, five live chickens. I was in charge of the money so I was given 24,000 francs to carry around the market. I hid the money in several areas in case I was mugged and carried two purses to throw people off. Haha Thankfully, we also had two teachers with us to help when our bargaining skills slacked off. Before the trip, I was wondering how we were going to transport five chickens back to the center but fortunately, one of the trainees was raised on a chicken farm so she told us she would teach us how to carry them and kill them. When we finally got to the area where they sold chickens, we were immediately surrounded by abacuruzi (sellers) trying to sell their chickens and rabbits and by poor street children asking for jobs and money. It was a little overwhelming especially because I had a lot of cash on me and they were invading my personal space. Nevertheless, I surprised myself by bargaining very well for the chicken price. I actually got a very cheap price for each chicken and I was so proud of myself. I got the seller to go down from 5000 RWF to 2500 RWF for each chicken. And our trainee who was raised on the chicken farm inspected each chicken and taught us a few tricks about how to choose them (as if I am going to be buying live chickens for personal consumption in the future!) Anyway, it was all a very interesting experience and made me realize how spoiled I am to be living in the States. For one thing, meat is very expensive here. And I mean expensive. I’m going to convert the currency so you can get an idea. A kilo of beef costs $4 and a kilo is 2.2 pounds. One live chicken can cost up to 4000 RWF or $8!! And the per capital GDP is $250. Soooo, people don’t eat a lot of meat here. I think that many people have gardens, and the vegetables and fruit are cheap here.

The day after we bought our supplies at the market, we started cooking our food. And it was very difficult because we had to cook for 70 people and we had to use these ancient cooking techniques like charcoal grills and wood stoves. It took forever to peel and dice everything especially because the knives looked like they were taken from the caveman display at a museum. The most interesting part of all, however, had to be the chicken preparation. Those of you who buy your chicken already killed and nicely cleaned and frozen in the store are spoiled! First, we had to kill the chickens, then we had to defeather and degut them. And the killing was awful. The knives were so dull that when some of the volunteers tried to kill them, it took forever to cut off their scrawny little heads. At one point, one of the volunteers freaked out and the chicken got away with half of his head hanging off. Volunteers started screaming and running in all directions. Finally, one of the teachers caught the poor thing and finished him off. After we killed the chickens, we put them in boiling water to loosen their feathers. Then, we took them outside and started pulling the feathers off. I helped with this and was surprised at how easy it was to pluck the feathers. After the feathers were all off, I helped cut the chicken up and degut it. That was really interesting too but I kept messing up. I finally finished the chickens however after learning how to clean a gizzard and avoid certain unsavory body organs in the chicken’s inside.

The whole cooking process took about seven hours and the end result wasn’t really that pretty. But, we got an idea of how to cook food Rwandan style, which may lead many of us to hire cooks when we get to our site. As for me, I think I might hazard cooking for myself at first if I can find a way to get around the time constraints. My reasoning is that I personally prefer my style of cooking, and I am tired of finding bugs and rocks in my food.

This last week, all of us were finally given our job assignments and locations! The big secret of where we are going to be for two years is finally over. After we found out where we were going to be living, we each traveled to our own site for a week to visit and meet co-workers, supervisors and other important people. Unfortunately, I was an exception because my house wasn’t quite ready so I hung out with another volunteer at her site for a couple of days. All in all, it was a very interesting and terrifying experience. To be honest, this past month has felt a little like summer camp with thirty-five twenty-somethings housed in a dormitory together studying during the day and playing volleyball and watching movies at night. And now, the real world hits us at last. Oh, are we actually here to do a job and live like Rwandans for two years?

Some volunteers were better prepared to handle reality than others but I think all of us were pretty surprised by our sites and jobs. Unfortunately for me, I also became sick during site visit so when I finally visited my site for an hour, I felt like crap during the whole visit and I did not expend much energy in investigating my town and meeting people. Still, when I think about it now, it is pretty exciting than I am going to be getting my own little town and health center to work with. I am very happy about the possibilities especially since there is so much work to do. I can hardly wait to jump in and start getting my hands dirty. I can’t wait till I know everybody in my town and I get trained and good at my job.

For those of you who are curious about my job, here are some excerpts from my lovely job description. I don’t know if I will actually be conducting all of these activities. I don’t want to replace someone’s job or do something above my capabilities. However, here it is:

I will be working in hygiene and sanitation activities. I will be monitoring utilization of mosquito nets; I will be helping in family planning activities. I will assist nurses in the vaccination program, the PMTCT program and the VCT program. (The PMTCT program seeks to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child and the VCT program stands for voluntary HIV counseling and testing) I will monitor children’s growth, help in the nutrition program, assist in activities related to prevention of common childhood diseases, conduct ‘behavior change activities’, and teach and assist clinic staff in technology and English.

As a side note, even though all of us are health volunteers, many of us will also be teaching English a large portion of our time. The reason being that the Rwandan government recently mandated a nationwide transition from French to English. The primary and secondary schools are especially affected by this because now all curricula are being taught in English rather than French. This becomes a problem when many of the teachers and most of the students don’t know any English. The Ministry of Education is running to keep up with this mandate and find English speaking teachers. Recently, they imported about twenty Ugandan teachers for the schools but that still fulfills only a small portion of the vast need for English teachers. The Peace Corps is actually going to help with this by sending in ESL (English as a Second Language) volunteers this October. It is very exciting and I hope a volunteer gets placed close to me. Rwanda is so small geographically that by next year, there will be many volunteers all over Rwanda and we will probably be close to each other. Right now, I am only 16 kilometers from the nearest volunteer and some volunteers are literally across the street from other volunteers.

Now, I know you want to know about my house and the amenities I will have. And no, I am not living in a grass hut. I have a very nice cement house complete with living room, outside kitchen, shower room and latrine. It’s got some prettying up to do but I am excited about the decoration possibilities. I have never had my own house before and now my first house is one in Africa. Who knew! Very cool and bragging rights when I get back to the U.S. Actually, I probably won’t have a house this big when I get back to the States. I will be lucky to get a two-bedroom apartment in the U.S. since I will be a poor grad student. Anyway, my house is very nice and I’m hoping to be able to do many things to it when I move in. Maybe, I’ll paint it a nice sea green color and make some cute curtains to match.

Sorry I haven’t written in a while, guys. So much has happened that I haven’t had much time to visit a computer lab and upload information. I will give you a few updates of the latest events.

Last weekend was pretty packed. Saturday morning, we all took an oral competency test in Kinyarwandan and I bombed it. After the test, I went and hid in my room for a while. Feeling better that afternoon, I went on a hike with two other volunteers through the forest by the university. It was fun but the trek was very hilly. I was gasping for air about half of the time and I was only walking. It made me realize how out of shape I am. In the United States, I never worked out and now that I am here, I am having to walk everywhere.

That night, the volunteers put on a talent show and dance at the local Chinese restaurant. I was so exhausted from the test that morning and the two-hour hike of death that I left before everyone else. Fortunately, I was able to see the whole talent show before I left. The acts included Rwandan traditional dancing, belly dancing and Spanish music, juggling, guitar playing and singing, and a little play. Needless to say, it was very entertaining. I loved it.

Of course, after a late night at a talent show, we all decided to visit Nwungwe National Park the next day. A few volunteers slept past their alarm clocks but most of us loaded up at around 8 in the morning and took the two-hour drive to visit the monkeys and hike the beautiful trails of Nwungwe. Nwungwe is in the south and is basically a huge jungle with Colobus monkeys, chimps, baboons, cats, and a few other animals. We chose to visit the Colobus monkeys (all 400 of them) and I tell you, it was one of the best experiences of my life. I am not exaggerating. The jungle was so amazingly beautiful and wild. Half of the time, I thought I was going to fall and break a leg but it was all worth it. Oh, was it worth it. Visiting animals in a zoo is one thing, but seeing them in their natural habitat is something completely different. Another element of the hike, which made it so enjoyable was that it was so freaking difficult. And we took the moderate trail! Okay, I know I am not a hiker or outdoorsy person but this trail was literally cut out of the jungle by a person with a machete in front of us. We all had walking sticks with us and I had to keep thrusting mine in the ground so I wouldn’t fall down the trail. It was so steep. At other times, I had to hold on to trees and random branches so I could keep my balance. The trail was so steep and hilly that, on the way back, I fell uphill! I got so much mud and random stuff on me. I had to grab on to trees that were nasty because they had this green algae stuff growing on them. I felt so adventurous; it was great. And when we finally arrived to where the Colobus monkeys lived, we got to see them swinging from branches to branches and playing with each other. The monkeys would make these incredible leaps between these super tall trees. And if they missed, they would grab the next branch on the way down. The trees were so tall and there was so much foliage underneath them that we didn’t even feel the rain that was coming down.

Once we came out of the jungle, we sat by the road and ate our bag lunches. One of the Colobus monkeys came out to investigate when he saw us all eating. He was not shy at all, and the guide had to keep scaring him to keep him away. He kept staring at our food and at one point, he ran toward one of the volunteers and tried to steal his sandwich he had left on the ground on top of his bag. It was so funny. I was able to get about two feet from him, and I just watched the little monkey while he ate leftover banana peels. He was so cute!

Unfortunately, we finally had to leave. I totally want to go back though and I would love to live near there too. Because we were so high up, we had an awesome view of Lake Kivu and we could even see the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) border. And the border was hundreds of miles away. It was amazing. I got some good pictures, but I could never capture it completely. Sometimes, you just have to see it in person.

I guess that, today, I will write about my job since I have been promising people information on it. Let me see, as you know, I am a health care volunteer currently in the middle of training, an intensive ten week period involving countless hours of language training and a little tech training thrown in. When I first received my job assignment, I thought I would only be working in HIV prevention. It turns out my job could be more than that. I will also be doing preventive work and education on malaria, water sanitation, other infectious diseases, family planning, nutrition, and anything else related to health. My specific job assignment will depend on the nonprofit organization I am paired up with. I could be doing any number of these health projects and many more. I will also have secondary projects. The Peace Corps director is pretty flexible about my secondary projects; I can basically do anything I want. For example, I could teach English to my co-workers or to schoolchildren. I could set up health clubs, afterschool activities or even summer camp for the kids in my village. I could teach computer skills to the villagers (yes, me teach computer skills!) or help with “income generating activities” for the women in the village. Anything, basically, it all will depend on what the villagers want me to help them with.

By the way, if you have noticed that my grammar and punctuation is getting worse in my letters and blogs, that’s because it is. Try typing on keyboards with letters in the wrong places and learning a whole freaking language in ten weeks. Yeah, my English is getting bad. I find myself simplifying it a lot to “caveman speech” to talk to the Rwandans because their English is somewhat basic.

Okay, back to my job. The other day, we visited the clinics in our province. The clinic I visited was a public one that is a five-minute walk from our center. They have a staff of 12 with six nurses. One of the nurses said that she was really busy but she gave us a tour of the facilities. She showed us around exam rooms and a vaccination room. They had a laboratory too with a technician and two microscopes. The waiting room had around twenty people sitting around with their babies strapped on their backs staring at us. Around the waiting people were all the medical files as well. I could just walk up and start looking at a patient’s file if I so inclined. I guess you don’t have to worry about getting sued here. I loved the posters on the wall too. The government is really trying to emphasize family planning so one of the posters showed a family with babies and children all over the place. They were skin and bones and the house was falling apart. There were broken pots on the ground with no food. To contrast, the poster showed another family with just two children. This family was healthy and had a beautiful home with a cow in the backyard. Another poster showed a family using a mosquito net at night to prevent the spread of malaria.

After the tour, our nurse answered our questions and explained to us the insurance system of Rwanda. I asked all the dumb questions like “Do mothers vaccinate their children regularly?’ “Do people use contraceptives on a regular basis?” “What are the most common diseases people get treated for?”, etc. If you are curious, the answers are yes, no, and malaria and respiratory infections. Let me tell you about the insurance system. It’s available to all Rwandans for a sum of 1000 RWF a year (less than two dollars). If you have insurance, clinic visits will cost you 250 RWF and that includes medicine. Family planning and contraceptives are free. Anteretroviral medication (for HIV/AIDS) is also free but it is only available in certain facilities because personnel have to be trained in how to administer the drugs and manage compliance, etc.

I love going to my tech classes because I like learning about the biology of the diseases and prevention. Many diseases could be prevented if people only had the right information. For example, diarrhea is the leading cause of death among children under five in Rwanda, but many parents think that diarrhea is just a normal course of childhood. They do not take easily preventable measures to combat diarrhea and many children die as a result. It is really sad.

My life as a muzungo in a small town

Today, I visited my resource family again, and I’ve got to tell you, they are pretty awesome people. My resource father is a pastor, and my resource mom is actually one of my Kinyarwandan teachers. They also have three cute little kids. My resource family is going to teach me all sorts of skills like cooking and washing clothes, African style of course. I’m pretty excited about it. This Saturday, I am going to learn how to cook and next Sunday, I am going to make the 50 minute trek to attend their church.

My resource family has a way of placing me in a very good mood. They make me feel like I belong to the community, even though I stick out like a sore thumb. Imagine walking through a village and have everyone stop what they are doing to stare at you. That’s how it feels when I go visit them. The town kids love seeing me, and they run up and follow me for a while. So do the beggars, but they usually don’t follow me. Other villagers are a little more subtle, but I do get called “muzungu” a lot. Many of the people in our city are a little wary of us, “the American group” because we are learning Kinyarwandan. I try to drop a few Kinyarwandan words here and there so they think we are fluent in it and then, they won’t gossip about us, at least not in front of our face.

In other news, we are finally learning about bargaining and shopping. Two years from now and a car salesman won’t stand a chance with me. Here, they bargain like crazy over everything and I hope to acquire that skill pretty soon. When I bought my cell phone, I bargained my cell phone down 1000 francs but I feel like I could have done better. The main problem is that I do not know what everything is supposed to cost and the shopkeepers raise their prices when they see a mzungu walk into their shop. One of the p.c. volunteers tried to get a haircut the other day in a salon with the price clearly posted for 400 francs. They tried to charge him 2000 francs. He told them he would pay them 400 francs or he would walk out without paying. They then told him he should pay 500 francs because his “mzungu hair” messes up the clippers. He finally paid the 500 francs and walked out. This is just one example. I am sure they are overcharging us on a lot of stuff without us realizing it. I am getting really paranoid about it actually and I usually try not to shop without a Rwandan with me. I get stingy over a few American cents or dollars. It’s humorous actually because I remember my life in the United States where I would spend $50 on a tank of gas or $20 on a meal. I would spend money like water and here I am begrudging a poor shopkeeper a couple of dollars. When I come back to the United States, I will probably experience a reverse culture shock at the prices because everything is very cheap here.

Let me see, what else is new. Oh yeah, plumbing problems. They are very annoying especially with a language barrier. Have you ever tried to describe a plunger to someone who doesn’t know English? An even better experience, my faucet went crazy on me the other day. It completely unscrewed and fell off so I couldn’t shut off the water. It then started spewing water like a geyser when I tried to screw it back on. I tried to look for the main shut off valve and couldn’t find it. I messed with something but I was afraid I was going to unhook a pipe and then completely flood my room. I was trying to arrange the buckets in our room to catch the water and my Rwandan roommate was completely nonchalant about it. She tried to fix it too and when she couldn’t, she told me not to worry about it. She then went about her business while I frantically tried to hunt down people to help me. I consulted the male p.c. volunteers and found out none of them had plumbing experience. To my delight, one of the female volunteers, who is supposedly an expert in plumbing and mechanics, found the shut off valve for me. She told me that the faucet just needs a gasket (or washer maybe) because the other one had worn down. I then had to wait two days for the nuns to fix it and I became very adept at turning the main shut off valve on and off every time I used the sink. Today, they finally fixed the sink so I am very happy about it. And, a tiny miracle, I actually had a little hot water for a shower this morning. Of course, I was done with my shower when the water became hot, but I filled my bucket again with luxurious hot water and enjoyed every drop of that hot water!! My tech trainer said to enjoy small victories and I am definitely enjoying them. Here are a sample of them so far:

*I understood a complete paragraph in Kinyarwandan today, spoken by my resource father.

*My resource children remembered my name.

*I ate a hamburger and fries last Sunday. Even though it was Lebanese-style, it was still delicious.

*I ate a whole portion of spinach greens (or whatever they are) and actually enjoyed it.

*I found a new shower stall with better lighting and stronger water flow.

*I found a cyber café three minutes from our center.

*Learning to type fast on an European style keyboard.

*My feet are getting tough, allowing me to save on band-aids and walk around in flip-flops.

All in all, life is getting smoother. My dad and mom called this week, which was awesome. I think they are going to try to find calling cards or something so we can talk more often. It is super expensive to make international calls yet it is actually cheaper for me to call them than vice versa.

Dear Blog Readers,

Satisfaction and contentment are the only two words to perfectly describe my state of mind right now. It is the end of week two at training and there have been many ups and downs so far. Today, however, has been one of those rare days where everything aligned to make the perfect day. The skies are clear and the weather has settled to a nice 75 degrees. The birds sang all day and the roses, daisies and other flowers are in full bloom around our campus. I have gone to two language classes today and they have been great as well. I don’t know how long this feel-good state of mind will last but I am enjoying it to the fullest.

Our training so far has been very intense and difficult. I learn so many words each day that it is hard to keep up. By the time, 5:00 pm rolls around every afternoon, all I want to do is sleep or eat. Yesterday, however, I forced myself to make flashcards of all the words I could not remember. After fifty flashcards, I gave up and fell asleep. This Saturday, we have our first test so I better start studying after class.

Training however has not been all about studying. After class, we usually go out in groups to the local cybercafes or to the market. In the late afternoons, a group of us go to the courts to play volleyball. The last time I went to one of the volleyball games, my forearms were so bruised that they swelled up. Needless to say, I decided not to play volleyball the rest of the week. If we are not playing volleyball, we usually gather around the porches in our center and play card games or listen to the guys play their guitars. Our teachers are our age so they are a lot of fun to hang out with. One of the teachers plays the guitar amazingly and the rest of the teachers sing along with him. It is awesome. They all know these hauntingly beautiful Rwandan folk songs. I want to learn how to sing the sings. Of course, I probably won’t sound as good as they do.

Although my life here in Rwanda is very different from the one I led in the United States, I am adjusting. I do miss a lot of things right now. Some of them are good to miss like the people I left in the United States: Nathan, my family, my friends, and my church. Other things are more material. Here is a short list:

*ice cold sweet tea

*shoes that don’t hurt my feet. Actually, they only hurt my feet because I’m not used to walking for kilometers at a time.

*Hot long full blast showers in the morning.

*My mom’s coffee. (The coffee here is so thick I can put a spoon in it and it will stand up. Right now, I’m filling my mug half full of coffee and half full of milk and it is still really strong.)

*Cheeseburgers

*Water that tastes like water and can be drunk from the faucet.

*Availability to make phone calls without paying $.60 to $.70 a minute.

*Washing machine

*A digestive system that is accustomed to the local fare.

Don’t get me wrong. I actually really like it here. The people are great and really friendly. The culture is very interesting and the countryside is breathtakingly beautiful. Even now, I know I will miss this country when I eventually leave. The food here is good too although I am having to get used to some of the dishes. For example, they cook a lot of goat and rabbit meat. They seem to love potatoes and sweet potatoes, boiled or fried. They even serve us French fries sometimes, which goes over very well with us. Rwandans love cassava (or manioc). They either boil the cassava in pieces or they mash up the cassava and make a type of soft bread. They also boil the cassava leaves and make a dish, which is eerily similar to Southern-style turnip greens. My grandmother would be proud of me. I am actually trying to get used to the cassava greens. If I mix it up with my potatoes or carrots, I can hardly taste it. In restaurants, they serve beans and rice, which is very delicious. Sometimes, they put sugar or cinnamon in the beans. I am not sure I like that as much. I keep putting salt in the beans when they do that because I am not used to beans being sweet. Boiled squash, peas, and boiled carrots are also popular. I eat a LOT of peas and carrots. Also, bananas and plantains are huge here. With the plantains, they cook and season them as if they were potatoes. I’m still getting used to that idea. The bananas are served as dessert, along with passion fruit, Japanese pear???, papaya, pineapple and sometimes coffee cake (very good). My favorite Rwandan food so far has to be the sambusa. It is like a little fried piece of goodness with ground beef inside and a fried crust on the outside. For those who know Brazilian food, it is basically a “pastel” and it tastes just like it. When the cooks serve us sambusas for tea time, we attack the platters. First come, first served. I usually try to eat only three because I’m being good although others eat as much as six of them.

When we are not eating or suffering through language class, we also have cultural sessions with our teachers or our resource family. It is super interesting, especially when our teachers talk about dating and marriage. First off, a Rwandan girl must never ask a guy out on a date. Instead, she must hint around that she likes him until he asks her out. The dating time before marriage seems to be about the same as in the United States, six months to a year. When the guy decides to marry his girlfriend, he must purchase a cow for the girl’s family. It is a symbol of how important the lady is to him. In Rwanda, the cow is the ultimate symbol of richness and beauty. To have cows means that you are rich. If a lady is said to look like a cow or to have the eyes of a cow, it is the highest compliment. Poetry and songs are written about cows. Schools, institutions and people have names that have the word “cow” in it. Before the genocide and even many years before, when Rwandans owned many cows, a man would bring his bride’s family to his cattle ranch and the family would choose a boy with a strong throwing arm. The boy would throw the spear towards the herd of cattle. Wherever the spear landed, the family would receive all those cows. Obviously, the objective would be to throw the spear as far as you can. Now, however, it is only necessary to present one cow to the bride’s family.

Other interesting cultural notes are the handshake. In Rwanda, if you meet an elder or someone of respectable position, you must wait until he offers his hand. You must never offer your hand first. Then, when you shake, if you want to be polite, you must place your left hand across your right arm when you shake. It is extremely rude to shake hands or to offer any type of food or object with your left hand. If you meet an old woman or old man in the village, it is okay to say “Hello, old man or hello, old woman.” It is actually a sign of respect because age is respected here. Unfortunately, the Kinyarwandan word for “old man” is only a letter away from the word for “crazy man.” You can also call a woman old enough to be your mother, “mama.”

I will present a short disclaimer here about the culture. Given I have only been here a short amount of time, I may be wrong about certain cultural aspects. I have only written what I have been told by Rwandans and what I have experienced in Kigali and Butare. Kigali and Butare are the two biggest cities in Rwanda and they are more modern than the rest of the country. Cultural issues and food may differ across Rwanda depending on proximity to the borders or isolation from other villages. I will continue my cultural notes whenever I observe them and when I reach my site. Forgive me however if I make assumptions based on one town or stereotypes based on a group of Rwandans I know. Rwanda is a very dynamic country and I am looking forward to experiencing the rest of Rwanda.

As always, I miss you guys and I hope you are doing well. Take care and tell me how Obama is doing so far. He is immensely popular here in Rwanda. I bought an Obama hat in the airport, and I am probably going to wear it around soon to show it off.

Igitagangurirwa! No, it does not mean “welcome” or “hi” in Kinyarwanda but it is the longest word I have learned today. The length of the word, which means spider, kinda makes me wonder about the size of these creatures in Rwanda but I guess I’ll just have to find out.

Well, for those of you who have been following my blog (or one post), I have finally left my home in the United States and have arrived in Rwanda to begin training as a Peace Corps volunteer. And so far, (not to sound clichéd) it has been an amazing experience. I feel like I have met so many new people, experienced so many new things and learned so many Kinyarwandan words that I don’t really know what to do with myself. I don’t know where to put all this new information and my American routine has been disrupted so badly that it has taken awhile for me to adjust. Who am I kidding? I am still freaking adjusting and I will be for a loooong time.

My American routine was pretty consistent. I woke up late in the morning, drank some coffee, sat on the couch, watched television or read a book, ate lunch, then drove to work. After work, I would usually hang out with friends and eat dinner. Then, I would go home and go to bed sometime around midnight or 1 am. It was a pretty comfy life, I will admit.

Now, my schedule is sorta like this. If I sleep through the night, I wake up at 6 am. I grab my shampoo, soap and bucket and rush to the communal bathrooms before the other volunteers get there. Not that there is not enough showers for all of us. It is a question of having enough water for all of us. I turn on the faucet and a fast dribble of cold water comes out. I fill up my bucket and shower from that. I usually need around two buckets of water to shower. If there are too many people showering, I have to wait until water reaches my stall. The positive part is watching the sunrise from my stall. I get an awesome view from my window. Then, after I’m done “showering” comes the tricky part. I grab my flashlight and start hunting for a suitable toilet. I look in one and no toilet paper. I look in another one and no toilet seat. I look in another and it hasn’t been flushed in the past three days. It usually takes me looking in about eight stalls to hunt down the amenities I need for a toilet.

Around seven o’clock, I join the other volunteers for breakfast and enjoy hot tea, Rwandan coffee, little sweet breads, passion fruit and something that tastes like goiaba. I take my malaria pill and then head to class.

Class is a mixture of exhilaration, exhaustion, frustration and complete incompetence on my part. I have language class three times a day, each one lasting about an hour. The teachers are bright young university graduates and I have to admit, they have a lot of patience. So far, I have been studying Kinyarwandan for a week, and I feel like I have learned a huge amount of information. At the same time, I realize how much I need to know.

Tech training is also part of our schedule and it is my favorite part. In another blog, perhaps, I will go over in detail what we might be doing in our site. We have received some more information about it, and it is pretty exciting. Our main trainer is a woman from Zimbabwe and she is amazing. She has a Master’s in Public Health; she was a nurse and midwife in her country for many years before traveling around Africa and the rest of the world gaining more experience and education. She is a great teacher and her excitement is infectious. I wish I could attend tech training all day but there is that little matter of picking up a whole new language. And it is not like Kinyarwanda is a piece of cake either. For example, there is no frame of reference between Kinyarwanda and romance languages so I can’t use my Portuguese to remember words. In addition, they have something called “noun classes,” 16 in all. Depending on the noun class, the prefixes of every word in a sentence will change to agree with the noun in the sentence. We haven’t gotten to “noun classes” yet, but learning it has become very ominous indeed.

Our language and tech training ends around five o’clock in the afternoon. We have a two hour break until dinner. After dinner, we usually hang around in small groups and pretend to study Kinyarwandan. I usually head to bed around 9:30 ( I start yawning at 8:30) and I tuck myself into my mosquito net and I read John Grisham until I pass out. Then, I wake up again at 6:00 and the whole routine is repeated.

The days differentiate a little and I am still trying to figure out a personal schedule for myself. (For example, when do I wash my clothes.) Hopefully, I can get it figured out in a week or two and I can start posting more regularly on this blog.

I feel like I have so much information yet I do not want to bore you. If you have any specific questions about Rwanda or you want me to write about certain topics such as food, culture, taboos, just let me know. I will try to get around to them, sooner or later. For now, I need to head to bed. It is 10:39, way past my bedtime. Enjoy the read, and your hot showers and cheeseburgers. Good night.

Heeeeyyyy, Family and Friends!! As you can tell, this is my blog for all things African and Peace Corps and it will be where I will post my online musings on my Peace Corps experiences for the upcoming two years (that is, if I have electricity at my post). I am pretty new on this blogging experience and my writing skills are a little rusty, so bare with me. And for those of you who don't know me and just stumbled on my blog, here's a little background. I'm in my early twenties and in 2007, graduated with a degree in social work. As I had no concrete job aspirations or grad school applications in the mail, I decided to do something crazy, life altering and hopefully career furthering. I decided to apply for the Peace Corps. I figured since I had no job or family obligations (aka kids), right now was the best time of my life to do this. Or I could wait till I was sixty-five years old and my kids grown up to do this, but, honestly, I didn't want to wait that long. Soooo, I applied and waited eleven tortuous months and finally got accepted in November of 2008. I leave for East Africa, specifically the beautiful country of Rwanda, a week from today. I will be training for three months in one of the largest cities in Rwanda, learning the languages (kinyarwanda and french), health education, culture and safety training. Then, I will be assigned a small village and health outpost to work at. I will be working with the outpost or clinic in HIV prevention and outreach and integrating into the community.

So, there you have it. My life condensed to a single paragraph. Hopefully, I will be able to post more information as I go along but, honestly, it depends on electricity and internet access and if anybody steals my computer while I'm there.

As I haven't started Peace Corps yet, I will regail you with the boring details of my life thus far in the United States. I quit my job a week ago, theoretically to pack my suitcases and finish some loose ends here at home. In reality, I have entered into a new dimension of laziness. An example or two is needed. On Sunday, I spent a large portion of the day eating and watching reruns of CSI. After finishing my third CSI episode, I quit watching but only because there were no more reruns to watch. Then, I proceeded to stay up until 3 am organizing my music files on my computer. Last week, I finished a whole season of Charmed and started the second season. To make matters worse, I am so bored that I keep eating. And when I mean eating, I mean all the time. I guess I will lose weight in Africa (fingers crossed) but, right now, I don't fit in a third of my clothes. Which brings me to an important debate in my mind. Should I pack clothes that I like but don't fit me in the hope they will fit me when I am starving three months from now, or should I leave them here in the United States? I am not accustomed to making home cooked meals every day, going to the market or raising vegetables. Who knows what I will be eating when I am left to my own devices in a little mud hut in a remote African village. Better eat up now while fatty, indulgent American cuisine is a phone call or short drive away. In the coming week, I will be hitting up all the Mexican, Chinese, and fast food restaurants in town and, as a result, not be able to fit in the rest of the clothes I own.