As a rule, Peace Corps volunteers are cautioned to keep their negative feelings to themselves. This is especially true where the internet is concerned. “Journal on bad days, blog on good days,” they tell you at staging and again in pre-service training and probably again at in-service training. Well, I’m not having a bad day. I just got over a bout of stomach flu and I feel fantastic. Thus legitimated, I am going to complain a little bit. Hopefully this will be as edifying for all of you as it is cathartic for me.

DISCLAIMER: This post is not a cry for help, nor a call for praise, nor anything else of the kind. I’m not trying to elicit any particular reaction from anyone whatsoever. My goal here, as with my all my posts, is simply to share and inform.

Let me begin by stating the obvious.

Peace Corps is hard.

Everyone knows this. The fact that it’s hard is what entices some people to join as much as it deters others from even applying. I realized I was signing up for something difficult when I accepted my invitation to Rwanda. But Peace Corps service isn’t difficult for any of the reasons one would expect. Within Peace Corps the idea that “it isn’t about the amenities” is another enormous cliché, but it might not be as obvious to folks who aren’t serving. Allow me to elaborate.

Peace Corps isn’t hard because there’s no hot running water or because your toilet is a hole in the ground. It isn’t hard because the power goes out all the time, if there is power. It isn’t hard because you constantly have either diarrhea or constipation, or because you have to go all the way to the Peace Corps office in Kigali to restock your Pepto-Bismol. It isn’t hard because of the mosquitoes. It isn’t hard because of fungal infections. It isn’t hard because it rains every time you hang your laundry out or because your roof leaks. It isn’t hard because there are rats living in the ceiling or gravel mixed in with the rice. It’s true that all of these things are typical to the Peace Corps experience in Rwanda and lots of other countries too. It’s also true that none of these things are pleasant and that oftentimes they’re the final straw for volunteers who already want to go home. But they aren’t what make it hard.

Peace Corps is hard because no one listens to you. It’s hard because your biggest assets as a volunteer, so you’re told, are your knowledge and skills, but all anyone wants from you is money. It’s hard because when you do get support for an idea, you spend half your time and energy trying to entice people to help you implement it.

Peace Corps is hard because nothing ever goes the way you expect it to. It always rains the day you wanted to take your class outside. There’s always a national holiday or a staff meeting or an umuganda when you least expect it. People don’t show up, or they show up three hours late. Or an hour early, depending which you were least prepared for.

Peace Corps is hard because people never leave you alone. People always want to greet you, to visit you, to ask you for money, to ask you for food, to invite themselves in for tea, to invite you over for tea, to throw things at you, to insult you, to laugh at you, to flirt with you, or, most commonly, to just stand and stare at you. This is true wherever you are, no matter what you’re doing. You could be walking to the market or waiting for the bus. You could be sitting in a restaurant. You could be sprinting down the road because you’re late for work. You could be using a latrine with a door that doesn’t quite lock. Whatever the case may be, people will take every possible opportunity to harass you.

Peace Corps is hard because your neighbors regularly mock you for the one thing you can’t stand being mocked for, whatever that may be. Your height, your weight, your skin, your hair, your voluptuousness or flat-chestedness (as the case may be), your athleticism or lack of athleticism, your way of walking, your way of speaking, your native language (or a native language that is assigned to you based on your appearance), your age, your religion, your ethnicity, your gender, any physical blemishes or abnormalities. Nothing is off-limits, and whatever bothers you the most will be the favored object of scrutiny.

Being a Peace Corps education volunteer is hard because you’re emotionally invested in the well-being of your students but you can only do so much for them. It’s hard because you have to penalize them for showing up late even though you know they just walked ten kilometers uphill in the rain in broken plastic sandals and no coat having not eaten breakfast. It’s hard because they come to school with fevers and coughs and stomach aches and headaches and you can’t give them water or medicine. It’s hard because, despite the law against it, students still get beaten by other teachers and there’s little you can do to stop it from happening. It’s hard when a girl stops showing up because she’s pregnant or when a boy comes to class drunk at seven in the morning. It’s really, really hard when you find out that one of your students has HIV.

Peace Corps is hard because no one ever tells you “Good job.” For that matter, no one ever reprimands you for giving up or flaking out.

Peace Corps is hard because no one understands. Your neighbors don’t understand what it’s like to be a foreigner in a remote village because they’ve never left the remote village. Your coworkers at site think you have it easy since they all know you’re eventually going to back to America, The Land of Plenty. Peace Corps administration doesn’t understand because they’ve never done what you’re doing, or if they have, they did it decades ago in a different country with a significantly different culture and climate. Your family and friends back home don’t understand, and (let’s be honest) they probably dismiss you as crazy for joining Peace Corps in the first place. Other volunteers don’t understand because they’re not you and they’re not at your site. Even when they do understand, they have their own problems to deal with.

So if Peace Corps is so hard, why do it? Well, like I said in my last post, there are the little things that keep you going day-to-day. Whether it’s fireflies or a cute baby or a few words of encouragement from a nice coworker, there’s always some little bright spot to be found in even the darkest of days. But more broadly, Peace Corps service is worth it precisely because it is hard. In a context where everything is a challenge, the tiniest achievements are enormous victories. Too, where there are multitudinous problems, there are endless opportunities to make a positive difference. Sometimes just being the sole American in a homogenous community is a huge contribution because you and you alone are providing people the opportunity to meet someone from the outside. When you’re in Peace Corps you’re important and special and you know it, even when people are treating you like dirt.

When I was a trainee, I was told that the hardest part of Peace Corps service is the first three months at site and that it’s all downhill from there. Maybe it’s just standard practice to tell that to trainees or maybe some people actually feel that way, but I disagree. Peace Corps service doesn’t get easier. In the first months at site everything is overwhelming, but it’s also new and exciting. Once volunteers enter their second year, malaise can start to set in. Or in some cases, volunteers take on too much at the beginning of the second year and begin to burn out.

That didn’t happen to me, but I did take on a lot of new things fully expecting to continue doing everything I had been doing before. I’m also a lot harder on myself now when I react poorly to a challenging situation or when I fail to be culturally sensitive. And the things that used to calm me down, like walking in the coffee fields or talking to my neighbors, have lost some of their magic as they’ve become more commonplace. I continue to show up, to chip away at projects and to do my best to be a friendly, positive representation of America, but sometimes my enthusiasm fails me and I start to wonder if I really am a “good” volunteer.

Deep down, though, I know that just being here is cause to be proud. Why? Because it’s hard. As an RPCV Zaire once wisely said, if it weren’t hard, it wouldn’t be Peace Corps.

I have a new headmaster! His name is Sylvan. I don’t know much about him yet, but so far I have a positive impression. He’s a young college graduate and he speaks excellent English. He was a science teacher for several years before he got his degree. He likes to say that he’s a teacher first and a headmaster second. It makes an encouraging first impression.

We had a small going-away party for Evariste/welcoming party for Sylvan at school on Wednesday. Drinks were provided, and our school’s meager kitchen managed to provide a meal of brochettes and grilled plantains for everyone. It was impressive considering I’ve never seen anything come out of that kitchen other than fried balls of dough and small quantities weak, milky tea. The outgoing and the incoming headmasters made long speeches about teamwork, responsibility, motivation, the usual. The dean of studies then stood up and made his own speech along similar lines. Finally the floor was opened for teachers to say a few words. Most teachers took it as an opportunity to voice complaints about the students or their salaries, turning the gathering from a party into an ordinary staff meeting. By the time we disbanded, it was well after nightfall.

As I made my way slowly home in the dark, I kept slipping on muddy patches of road and stubbing my toes on rocks. I was tired and I felt a little dejected, having sat through hours of complaints at what was supposed to be a celebration. But then I noticed for the first time that the fields around my school were full of fireflies. It had been a long day and I was exhausted, but as I looked out over the glittering, blinking expanse, the frustrations of the day dissipated. I know my COS date now - November 14th- and knowing that date has changed things for me somewhat. I find myself dreaming of home a lot more often. When something bothers me, rather than thinking “I’ll resolve this eventually,” I find myself thinking, “Only six more months!” The things that bring me back and keep me here, in body as well as mind and spirit, are those little moments of beauty. Like noticing the cassava fields are glittering with fireflies.

So much depends upon the little things.

Days 4-6

On Tuesday we left Stone Town and headed out to the eastern side of the island. We checked in to a cheap but lovely resort with bungalow-style rooms. It was an incredibly beautiful spot, all white sand beaches and clear blue ocean and coconut palms. We thought we’d died and gone to heaven.

On our second day at the resort, it rained. No, it poured. It was my first experience with warm rain since Hawaii. To the embarrassment of my travel companions, I spent most of the day in a swimsuit and a rain jacket.

We spent our last day in Zanzibar exploring the beach. We found lots of seashells and a Masai tribesman who tried to sell us some beaded jewelry, not much else. In the afternoon we went snorkeling. We were taken out to the coral reef in a fishing boat by an ancient-looking Tanzanian man in tattered shorts and his nephew. The boat had a patchwork sail made out of old blankets. Snorkeling was fun, but nothing we saw was of greater interest than that boat and the old man it belonged to.

Day 7

On Friday we went from the resort directly to the waterfront and caught a ferry back to Dar. For a little extra cash we got to sit up on the top deck. It was a significant improvement from the stuffy cabin. They had bean bag chairs up there and everything.

We checked into a hotel in Dar with crazy colorful murals on all the walls and an exquisitely cheap Indian fusion restaurant attached. Joey relaxed in our room with his Kindle while Kelsey and I explored the city. We did a little shopping in some back alleys, got lost, found an excellent Arab-style bakery, got lost again, and eventually found our way to the waterfront where we bought some interesting trinkets from a Masai and his nephew.

That night we bought fried chicken and chips from a street vendor. That was one of Tanzania’s biggest contrasts with Rwanda, the fact that we could buy and eat food in the street. It was a fitting and delicious end to our vacation.

Day 8

The bus ride back to Kigali was neither fun nor particularly memorable. I sat next to a woman who kept trying to put her three-year-old daughter in my lap, then switched seats with Joey and ended up in front of a girl who kept sticking her feet under my seat and massaging my butt with her toes. At one point we stopped at a rest stop and I managed to lock myself in a bathroom stall. I struggled loudly and desperately with the door for several minutes before Kelsey finally heard me and got me out. When I emerged, there were about two dozen women there just standing and staring. I felt like reprimanding all of them for their lack of humanity (I was sleep-deprived and already quite irritated) but instead I said “don’t worry, no problem” in three different languages and got back on the bus.

Day 9

Sad as I was to leave Tanzania, it felt good to cross the border back into Rwanda. It was nice to know the local language again. We also spotted some baboons playing in the grass near the immigration office. It was hard not to smile watching them.

~

So now I’m back in Rwanda. School got off to a decent start this term until the weather turned cold and stormy and all the students stopped showing up for class. I’m in Nyanza now for the ELT-JCS project and looking forward to teaching tomorrow. More updates to follow as more exciting things happen. For now, mugende n’amahoro.

I promised you all a blog about Zanzibar, but then school started and I got busy. Oops. The term has been going well so far, though. I began teaching on the third official day of class when I usually can’t start until the sixth or seventh day. I’ve also stockpiled a bunch of really good lessons for this term, so teaching has been going exceptionally well. I’ll have more to report in a couple of weeks. For now, here’s a rundown of my week in Tanzania.

My travel buddies were fellow PCVs Joey, Kelsey and Andrew. Hopefully none of them mind being mentioned in my blog.

Day 1

Our journey began Saturday, April 7th. We woke up at 3:45 in the morning and took a taxi to Nyabugogo, the bus park in Kigali. It was pitch black out and pouring rain. We had tickets with a bus company called Taqwa, sort of like a Greyhound for all of East Africa. We left Nyabugogo right on schedule, at 5:00.

There were two drivers, a technician and two other staff people on board. They were Tanzanian and spoke Swahili, no Kinyarwanda. It was very relaxing just listening to them talk without comprehending anything. Tanzanian Swahili sounds like water lapping the side of a boat.

The trip from Kigali to Dar Es Salaam was to take at least 30 hours. That’s right, 30 hours on a bus! Fortunately we made lots of unscheduled stops, mostly in the absolute dead middle of nowhere so everyone could get out and pee on the side of the road. I say “lots,” but that still meant we had to sit on a bus for stretches of eight or nine hours without anywhere to go to the bathroom. I learned to limit my water intake.

There were only two scheduled stops before we reached our destination. The first was a very brief stop for lunch in a small town outside Dar. The second was from midnight until 4 am at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere, the purpose of which (as I found out later) was to avoid being attacked by bandits. None of us could sleep. We got off the bus and found a canteen where we were served very greasy omelets by a man who told us several times to “be at home” and “have no problems.”

The omelets had fried potatoes in them. Doused in hot sauce, they were about the most delicious thing I could remember ever eating.

Day 2 (Easter Sunday)

We arrived at the bus park in Dar Es Salaam at around 11 am. From there we took taxi to the waterfront.

The first thing that struck me about Dar was that it looked like an actual city. Unlike Kigali, it was dirty and noisy and teeming with life. It was also a lot more diverse. There were people in traditional printed cloth outfits and people in Western clothes, but also people in kufi and ikanzu and women in hijab. There were Masai. There were people from the Middle East and North Africa and people from India. There were a few other tourists, but they didn’t stand out like they would have in Kigali. For once, being foreigners didn’t make us special.

Our first and only order of business in Dar was to catch a ferry to Zanzibar. The ferry was hot and stuffy. I fell asleep within the first twenty minutes and slept through most of the ride.

We arrived in Zanzibar sometime in the afternoon. It was like crossing into a whole other country. I don’t know much about the political relationship between Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania but I do know that to set foot on the island we had to fill out a form and have our passports looked at, just like at an international border. An immigration official also demanded compensation from Joey for not having his WHO card. Initially he wanted something like $100 but he eventually accepted $40 “because it’s a holiday.” It was our first direct experience with corruption. Things like that don’t generally happen in Rwanda.

~

It’s difficult not to have a powerful first impression of Stone Town. The humidity was oppressive, but the air smelled like seawater and plumeria. The wharf was lined with coconut palms. The town itself looked more Arab than African, at least based on what I’ve seen in pictures. There were lots of sun-bleached buildings with little glassless windows and narrow balconies. And there were stray dogs and cats everywhere.

We ate dinner twice that night, once at a little place right on the waterfront and once at a fantastic Indian restaurant near our hotel. In between we checked out the fish market. I wish I’d had time to eat an entire meal there, too. They sold all kinds of things, grilled barracuda and octopus on skewers. Who wouldn’t want octopus on a skewer?

Day 3

Monday was Spice Tour Day.

I highly recommend the spice tour for anyone who decides to visit Zanzibar. For something like $10 a guide picked us up at our hotel, drove us to a spice plantation about twenty minutes outside Stone Town, walked us through the whole plantation, gave us lots of spices and fruit to sample, provided us with lunch, and finally drove us down to the coast and let us splash around in the Indian Ocean. All in all, an incredible deal.

The plantation was fascinating. I was impressed by the sheer diversity of things they grew there. In a single tour I got to see teak and mahogany trees, peppercorns, turmeric, cinnamon trees, vanilla, cacao, nutmeg, curry leaves, star fruit, banana trees, two different plants used for dyes and some local varieties of chili pepper. Nutmeg was probably the most interesting. The seed is black with a red vein-y coating. Apparently it’s a traditional drug in Tanzania, but only women take it. Our guide didn’t say what its effects are supposed to be but he did say that if we ask a Tanzanian woman about nutmeg and she has nothing to say on the subject, she must not be from Zanzibar.

We ate lunch at a nearby village. It was like Rwandan food but with the addition of spices. There was pilau rice, beans and vegetables in coconut sauce. It was delicious. I lamented the fact that coconut palms don’t seem to grow in Rwanda.

From there we drove to the coast where we were given an abbreviated tour of some caves that were integral to the illegal slave trade in Tanzania. The caves we saw were in use until 1908, largely because the sultan of Zanzibar wanted to keep the trade going. It would’ve been a heavy note to end the tour on, but fortunately we were then led down to the beach and given some time to splash around in the ocean. The water was surprisingly warm, even when it started raining on us.

On the tour we met two PCVs from the Zambia program. We agreed to meet them for Ethiopian food later that night. Between us we ate more injeera (sp?) and drank more honey wine than we could easily afford, but it was definitely worth it!

The rest of the week will come later. For now I have to log off. Na ejo!

It’s raining again. Raining, after enough dry months to turn the roads to choking red dust, dry up all the water in our rain tankard and raise the price of almost everything at the market. When it started on Thursday I was so excited I ran outside and did a little dance. I promptly fell on my butt in front of the gardener, Dina, but he didn’t seem to judge me for it. He ran over, helped me up and yelled, “Invura yaguye!” The rain is falling! I said “Yep, and me, too.” He didn’t get the joke, but oh well. It was nice to share my excitement with someone.

After my last post one of you thanked me for the update and said it was good to know how my projects were going, but what about my mental and emotional state? That’s a harder question. In general things are fine and I’m happy, but saying that doesn’t really inform anyone of much. I feel comfortable here, probably more comfortable than I would if I blinked my eyes and found myself back home in California, but there are constant, subtle reminders that I haven’t adapted to Rwanda so much as I’ve learned to take its peculiarities for granted. When I actually pause to look at things, it’s all still very bewildering.

I’m almost positive the feeling goes two ways. My village is used to me but my presence is still strange. It’s all fine and good that the American government sent a volunteer to Gihara to teach English, but why a young woman, and why for two years? And for God’s sake, if I’m not making any money why would I agree to any of it in the first place? It makes no sense but they accept it. After all, I’m clearly not going anywhere until my contract is up.

On Saturday I’ll be taking a vacation in Tanzania. The plan is to take bus to Dar Es Salaam, then on to Zanzibar from there. It will be a thirty-hour journey, but according to everyone Zanzibar is worth it. Of course I’ll tell all about it here as soon as I get back. In the meantime, Pasika nziza!

Hello all! I know it’s been forever since my last update and for that I apologize. Things have been busy here. With the second health group finishing service soon, my training class (the second education group) is taking on some new responsibilities. It’s up to us and the third health group to organize GLOW and BE camps this year. The GAD committee* has taken on GLOW and BE preparations for the time being but eventually there will be a separate volunteer committee dedicated exclusively to GLOW and BE so that GAD can focus on other stuff. Needless to say, there are a lot of things in process right now.

We’re also working to expand PSN, the peer support network. PSN was initiated by the first health and education groups to arrive in Rwanda. It started out as volunteers helping other volunteers in the field, but now PSN is increasing its involvement in volunteer trainings. I’m a member of the GAD committee and a GAD-PSN liaison so I’ve been in and out of Kigali for meetings. Between that and ELT-JCS** I’ve been out of site almost every other weekend. It’s a substantial change from the slow pace of last year.

There have also been lots of changes at my site. I met with a guy from the sector office last Thursday and discovered that my headmaster is getting transferred to another school. Technically he no longer works at St. Dominique but his replacement has yet to arrive. This comes at the end of a long string of massive changes: the addition of another grade level, the construction of new classrooms, a number of teachers being transferred and new ones brought in, new students getting added to the roster every week. The changes are mostly positive, but that hasn’t made any of it any less jarring.

We’re also being micromanaged by local government administrators in new and exciting ways. At one point I was recruited to work with an English teacher from Meredith’s school on a standard scheme of work for lower-secondary English to be used in schools all across the sector. A scheme of work is like a curriculum but more detailed; it includes a schedule of when to teach what. I was excited to contribute to a standard document of such importance and I went into it with all kinds of flowery ideas. Unfortunately the teacher I collaborated with was a bit set in her ways (to put it lightly) so the scheme of work we created looked exactly like the one she uses for her own classes with the addition of a “themes” column and some suggested activities. As with so many things in Peace Corps, I learned a lot more from the experience than I contributed, but that’s alright with me. It was an opportunity to work closely with another English teacher, and my name is now permanently attached a document that will be disseminated by the sector office year after year.

My idea for a school library is looking less and less plausible. The books are there, the room is there, about half of the necessary shelving is there, but with so many other things going on I can’t get access to any of it myself, much less recruit others to help me. That too might be for the best. I found out from the sector that there’s a plan in the works for my school to be absorbed by Meredith’s school at the beginning of next year. Meredith’s school already has a library and a librarian, so I’d only complicate things by creating a distinct organization system and shelf list. The best I can hope to do is begin labeling our books according to the other school’s system so they’ll be easier to organize when the two schools merge. Since that’s the most I’ll have time to do before I leave, it’s a perfect situation. At least that’s how I’m trying to see it. Admittedly I feel weird knowing my school, the locus of my service, will imminently cease to exist.

Speaking of leaving, many of you have been asking when exactly I’ll finish my service. There’s no exact date set, but as soon as the school year ends in November, we’ll start leaving in batches. Everyone from my training class should be out by early December. It’s all a bit unreal. Seven-plus months sounds like a lot, and sometimes I feel like it can’t come too soon, but considering how quickly the last three months passed I’ll be back in the States before I even know what happened.

There’s still so much to do I know I can’t waste too much time looking at the finish line. There’s GLOW and BE camps to plan, an English club to run, and my three sections of S4 to catch up to speed, not to mention my regular S2 sections of almost seventy students each. There’s a lot going on, and I don’t plan on missing any of it.

*GAD = Gender And Development. Last year, Peace Corps Rwanda created a GAD committee tasked with creating GAD resources for volunteers and providing support for gender-related projects. The committee is still defining its role, but so far we’ve been working on GLOW and BE and gathering information relevant to gender and development from volunteers at different sites.

**ELT-JCS = English Language Training for Judges and Court Staff.

I just came from Nyanza where I spent the weekend at the ILPD, the Institute of Legal Practice and Development. I was there for my first weekend of teaching with the English Language Training for Judges and Court Staff project.

I was different than I expected, MUCH different from teaching my regular S2 and S4 classes. There were supposed to be about a dozen students in my class but only seven showed up. Thus instead of teaching a class of over 60 teenagers, as I’m accustomed to doing, I taught seven quiet, attentive adults. I ended up finishing our three-hour lesson in just over two hours because I’d unconsciously factored in a bunch of time for disruptions. The only pauses in the lesson were for thoughtful questions from the students. It was heaven.

I’m glad my primary assignment isn’t adult ESL. I really enjoy working with teenagers and I love my secondary-school students dearly. But I can tell that this once-a-month commitment is going to be a nice change of pace.

Life continues as usual in Gihara. There are a ton of new students at St. Dominique which means a whole new batch of kids who need to be taught to call me “teacher” instead of “muzungu.” I spend most of my time at school. We’re rewriting the schedule of classes again at an indeterminate time this week, but until then I plan to keep teaching and running my English club. Soon we’ll be converting one of the old classrooms into a library and the dean has said I’ll be in charge of organizing the books. I’m extremely excited to start. I have big plans for an adapted library of congress system.

We’re in the short dry season now, so everything is dry heat and red dust. Fetching water has become tricky because parched honeybees gather in angry clusters around the water spigot. Sometimes when I get home from school I spend a few minutes lying on the cement floor of my kitchen to cool off.

Perhaps the biggest difference between this year and last year (besides the feeling of normalcy) is having another American with me at site. Meredith and I don’t see each other that often but even our brief and infrequent interactions make a difference. I don’t feel isolated anymore, which is both good and bad. It’s nice not to feel as alone as I did, but I now have appear sane not just to the villagers, but to another American. It’s a challenge.

In some ways I think my presence has had greater impact on her than hers has had on me. Everyone in Gihara knows who I am and they expect Meredith to be the same or similar. I imagine this had made some things easier - Meredith probably spends less time explaining why she has her own moto helmet and doesn’t give handouts - but it also means that people compare her to me. She’s already had to explain why she doesn’t speak as much Kinyarwanda as I do (I’ve been here a year) and that she is my colleague, not my younger sister (you’d think that would be a no-brainer since she’s tall, thin and Korean-American, but I guess not). I feel bad for denying her the clean slate I had when I arrived, but then again her situation is more typical within Peace Corps than mine was. Not many volunteers get to break in new sites.

This year will be all about finding a balance. A balance between projects outside of site and at site. A balance between social time and time alone. Between work and integration. Between worrying about the impact I’m having and allowing myself to relax. I’ll let you know how things play out.

It’s the beginning of a new year. I forgot how chaotic the first week of school is, probably because last year I didn’t even know that I was dealing with chaos. Last year I knew I was supposed to teach two sections of S2, so on the first day of school I strode into an S2 classroom and taught an improvised English lesson for two hours. Later I found out that those were not my hours, nor my students. The schedule of classes hadn’t been written yet. I’d taught a random assortment of senior-level students, some of whom apparently still remember that first lesson.

But this year I knew better. I showed up on the first day of school with a book to read and nothing else. Teachers are supposed to arrive at 7am, but by 7:15 I was still the only one there. At 7:30 a few students arrived and started playing basketball. At 8am the other teachers began trickling in.

Beginning around 9am, we convened in the staff room and had a two-and-a-half-hour meeting to discuss the problem of starting classes late every year.

I spent the rest of that day and most of the next mobilizing students to clean out the classrooms and the teachers’ room which were littered with old homework assignments, candy wrappers, broken pens and other school-related debris. On Wednesday we met with the dean of studies and wrote the schedule of classes collectively - no small feat, since nobody wanted to teach on Fridays or after lunch. When we finally finished, I asked if anyone thought we’d be able to start the following day. Everyone including the dean agreed that we couldn’t start until Monday because attendance wouldn’t be high enough until then.

The next day, I slept in later than I intended. I woke up to a phone call from the dean telling me to come into school. “You’re teaching today,” he said. I told him I didn’t think we were starting until Monday. He chuckled and hung up on me.

When I got to school, the students were mopping out the classrooms for a second time. With nothing else to do, I spent the day getting to know the new secondary school teachers. Most of my friends from last year have been transferred to other schools, but the new teachers seem like a good group. One in particular, a chemistry teacher, has been extremely helpful to me already. He’s taken over Theotine’s job of translating for me during staff meetings.

I started teaching yesterday. We had another staff meeting in the morning but fortunately I wasn’t scheduled to teach until around 11am so I got a chance to introduce myself to both of my English classes. They’re an incredible group, even more enthusiastic than my students last year. I find myself wondering how many of them I’ll really get to know before I leave. Right now there are about 60 students in each section, nearly twice the amount I had at the end of last year - a conspicuous reminder of the staggering dropout rate.

At yesterday’s staff meeting, a district official urged the teachers to “work together as a team” to keep our students in school. He didn’t elaborate. He couldn’t, really - students drop out for a multiplicity of reasons, everything from unplanned pregnancies to sick parents to financial problems. I figure if I can keep just one student in school who might have dropped out otherwise, it‘s a success. I wonder if the other teachers feel the same way.

New year, new faces, new challenges. But this time, I’m at least a little bit better prepared. Last year, my mantra was “don’t panic.” This year, it’s “bring it on”!

Well, happy 2012 all! I'm Musanze for our mid-service conference this week; I jump into teaching an all-new batch of S2 students next week. The past few weeks have flown by. I was invited to attend the swearing-in ceremony for the new education group, so I spent a day in Kigali getting to know the freshman class of volunteers. They're a great group, in some ways much better prepared for life at site than I was when I swore in. They spent pre-service training living with host families instead of in houses with other volunteers so they have already experienced epic amounts of stomach sickness, bug bites and minor infections. That and their Kinyarwanda is alarmingly good.

I spent Christmas in Buhanda visiting a new volunteer at his site along with a few of his neighbors. We collaborated on one of the best Christmas dinners I've ever had - steak tacos with homemade flour tortillas. It only took us ten collaborative hours to bring Mexican food to Rwanda!

After such a long break between terms, it's hard to believe that I'll be teaching again in less than a week. But I'm excited to start. Last year, I started the term with no schedule, no curriculum, no experience, no idea what I was doing - and survived. Who knows what's possible this year?

My grandfather, Elden Hughes, was an exceptional man. He died on December 4, 2011 in his home in Joshua Tree, California. He was 80 years old. On Monday morning, December 5, I read in an email from my parents that he had died. Then I read his obituary in the LA Times. He was rather famous for his conservation work with the Sierra Club, so it was more of a feature article than an obituary. It was a beautiful article but it didn’t comfort me much.

Normally I wouldn’t write about the passing of a relative anywhere on the internet, much less on a blog dedicated to my Peace Corps experiences. But like I said, my grandfather was exceptional. He was always the perfect grandfather, old and wise and grandiose and unchanging. He sort of reminded me of a big old oak tree. He liked to tell stories and was excellent at it. He had many stories but he tended to tell the same ones, especially ones about Native American basket weavers. While I always enjoyed hearing his stories they were mostly about people I’d never known and places I’d never been to and consequently I’m not sure how often I really listened.

Then I joined the Peace Corps and he started writing me letters. Elden was a prodigious letter-writer. I suppose you don’t get as far as he did in life without being a prodigious letter-writer. I gave him and a number of other relatives my mailing address because I thought they might want to send me Christmas and birthday cards. Elden immediately sat down and wrote the first in what was to be a series of nearly 60 letters I’d receive throughout my first year of service.

When I arrived in Rwanda, Letter #1 was already waiting for me. I think I was the first volunteer in my training class to get any mail from home.

Through letters, I got to know Elden and he got to know me. He wrote to me about all kinds of things, about Native American basket weavers but also about my father and uncles as little boys, about books he’d read, about geological work he did in Mexico. He told me about raising pigs to put himself through college. He told me about graduate school at Vanderbilt, how it starts raining so suddenly in that part of the country and how he always seemed to get caught in the rain without an umbrella. He told me about his work with the Sierra Club and how he sometimes received death threats for his efforts. He also sent me pictures of himself. They’re mostly recent ones of him with his many pets, but there was one photo of him shaking hands with President Clinton.

Every time I went to the post office in Gitarama there were at least three letters from him waiting for me. They were printed on nice stationery with his personal letterhead. I responded via email because it was the only way I could keep up with him.

In one email I told him I was running out of ideas for things to do with my English club. He told me that if my students wanted to write to him, he’d be happy to respond. Twelve ended up writing letters, eleven of which got sent. They asked him lots of difficult open-ended questions, like “How can I succeed in life?” and “How can I come to America?” He not only responded to each one individually, but his answers were helpful and sensitive and written in English they could easily understand. Since a large part of my job in the Peace Corps is to communicate complex ideas with rudimentary English, I knew this was no simple task.

Elden told me on several occasions that I ought to read Moby Dick. He told me in high school that I ought to read Moby Dick. He told me again in college that I ought to read Moby Dick. I never did. When I came to Rwanda, I brought a copy with me and told him I planned to read it. “If you don’t get through the whole book,” he said, “there’s one chapter in particular that you need to read. It’s called The Mat Maker. Queequeg is weaving a mat, beating down the threads. It’s the perfect metaphor for life. You have the long threads of the warp. Those are the things in life you can’t change. Then you have the shuttle passing through the long threads. That’s free will. And then - WHACK. Chance!”

I made it a little more than halfway through Moby Dick before giving up on it, but I did read the chapter called The Mat Maker. When I opened my email on December 5 and saw that Elden had died, for a good twenty minutes the only thing I could think was: WHACK. Chance!

I’m lucky in that I haven’t experienced a whole lot of loss in my life. I’ve lost a few relatives whom I loved very much, but Elden’s passing is the first time I’ve lost not just a loved one but a friend. His letters a consistent source advice, encouragement, even companionship, and I relied on them during my first year of service. I realize now how lucky I was to get to know him that way and how much more difficult things would have been if I didn’t have his letters to look forward to.

My grandfather Elden did a lot of incredible things in his life. There are many, many people who know what he did for the Mojave Desert. There are only a few who know what he did for me. If I’ve made any contribution to the advancement of Rwanda, I owe it at least in part to his love and support.

The last days of camp kind of blur together in my mind because I woke up on Thursday with horrible stomach cramps that refused to go away. I slept through part of a career panel featuring a female police officer and a local nurse. I also slept through an SGBV (Sex and Gender Based Violence) seminar led by some local health workers. Thursday night we had an all-camp talent show. I was present for the first half, so I got to see some awesome dancing and singing. There were also a few girls who did standup in Kinyarwanda. Apparently I missed a pretty awesome fashion show featuring clothes the girls made and a spirited Macarena performance by the camp facilitators.

Oh, and I almost forgot - at the behest of some of the facilitators, I did a solo acoustic performance of Beyonce’s “Halo.” I’m pretty sure it was a hit.

Friday morning the sector officials returned to the camp to make a closing speech and each of the girls were given certificates of completion. Everyone said they were sad to leave the camp. A few girls even cried. When I asked one of the girls from school about the crying, she said, “It’s because everyone is so nice here. It’s so much easier to make friends here than at school.” I realized then that camp had been a safe place for me, too. Normally my status as “muzungu” means I’m treated differently, but at camp I was just a mentor and a friend. It was an incredible feeling. I felt like a human being.

I left Bugesera that day feeling worn out but fulfilled. Not only was GLOW an incredible success, but I found that the messages of the camp - female empowerment, healthful living, reconciliation - resonated as much with me as they did with the campers, and I returned to site on Saturday feeling stronger, more confident, and more at peace with myself and my neighbors. Everyone has been telling me how well I look since my return. I guess that’s the GLOW glow.

Last week was GLOW week in Bugesera. My body is bug-bitten, stomach-sick, achy and exhausted, but in heart and spirit I’m in better condition than ever. Not only was our camp an incredible success for the campers, it was an equally incredible experience for the volunteers who organized it. In fact, it was undoubtedly the best week of my Peace Corps service thus far.

Of course, “incredible success” doesn’t mean “flawless,” hence the exhaustion, stomach sickness and bug bites. But I’ll get to that.

I mentioned Camp GLOW in my last blog post but I never got a chance to describe exactly what GLOW is or how the camps are organized. GLOW, or Girls Lead Our World, is a Peace Corps initiative that started in Romania in 1995. The idea is to bring young women together in a camp setting to foster a sense of empowerment and discuss pertinent topics like sex, health and self-esteem. The GLOW initiative is new to Rwanda. There have been trial programs in Kigali and Gitarama but this year was the first year to see multiple regional camps happen simultaneously.

I participated in a regional camp in Bugesera, a district immediately east of Kigali. Our campers and facilitators came from six different schools in the Kigali-Bugesera area. We had guidelines Peace Corps and funding from PEPFAR, but it was up to us volunteers to actually make the camp happen. Four volunteers served as camp administrators. They secured a location for the camp, acquired materials, drew up a schedule, wrote lessons, planned activities and coordinated the staff that did the cooking and cleaning. I was one of six volunteer facilitators who recruited campers, taught lessons and supervised activities. We also had Rwandan co-facilitators and junior facilitators who we recruited from local schools.

During the camp we divided our days between small-group lessons and large-group activities. There were six groups, each named after a different famous female. I was the facilitator for the Michelle Obama group. There was also a Wangari Maathai group, a Mother Theresa group, an Oprah group, etc. Each morning, the small groups met in different classrooms for lessons on various topics. The theme of our GLOW Camp was HIV awareness so a lot of our lessons had to do with HIV prevention, but we also had lessons on things like decision-making, goal-setting, love and relationships. In the afternoons and evenings the girls convened to do sports and other activities. Sometimes we had multiple activities happening simultaneously, allowing the girls to pick what they wanted to do.

Though things went smoothly for the most part, it was definitely an adventure. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me begin at the beginning:

The camp started on a Monday, making Sunday orientation day for the facilitators. I left my site at 6am because I had no idea where I was going or how long it would take. I knew only that I had to be at a school called G.S. Rango in Bugesera by 11am. It was a hot, dusty trip on bad roads in an overstuffed minibus. When I finally arrived at the school we only had time for a quick lunch before jumping into an orientation meeting that lasted hours. After dinner, we continued the meeting. I was so exhausted at the end of it I could have passed out in my chair.

The school had been infested with bedbugs during the year so the headmaster and his wife had provided us with new mattresses to sleep on. When we got to the dormitories I collapsed onto a bed and, assuming I was safe, slept a sound, dreamless sleep.

Two hours later I awoke to a sharp itching. Assuming I was imagining things, I tried to ignore it. When the itching persisted, I turned on my flashlight to investigate. To my horror, the mattress in the bunk above me was crawling with bedbugs as big as ticks. I rolled onto my stomach, inadvertently coming face-to-face with some that had fallen onto my sleeping bag. I squished one with my thumb. It left a long, bloody streak. On the other side of the room, a couple of people were frantically disentangling themselves from infested sheets. We rushed our mattresses outside, brushed them off, and spent the rest of the night on the floor of the supply room on the other side of campus.

Fun fact: bedbugs can live in wooden bed frames as well as mattresses, and they can lay their eggs in sheets, clothing and sleeping bags. In most cases, washing with cold water will not kill them.

~

Before the start of camp I had volunteered help round up campers coming through Nyabugogo, Kigali’s main bus station. So it was early the next morning, I had to take a minibus back to Kigali. I went with Mike, an administrator, and Grace, a junior facilitator. We left well before breakfast. As we hurtled back down the bumpy, dusty road, I silently cursed myself for ever volunteering to make such an awful trip twice and for forgetting to bring a personal supply of instant coffee with me.

For those of you who have never been to Rwanda, Nyabugogo deserves an explanation. I described it as Kigali’s main bus station. It is also by far the most chaotic place in the entire city. There are dozens upon dozens of minibuses, charter buses and taxis, some labeled and some not. These create an indecipherable maze of vehicles through which hundreds of travelers and street vendors are constantly streaming. The maze is bordered by shops and the offices of various ticket agencies. There are about ten agencies, at least two of which sell tickets to Bugesera.

Some of our campers knew to come find us in front of the Kigali Safaris ticket agency, but some had no idea where to go. To help them out, we’d made posters that read “Camp GLOW” in colorful block letters. We were supposed to collect seventeen girls and leave for Bugesera by 10am. By 9:30 we only had eight of them, so I decided to take a lap around the outer edge of the bus station with my sign. I tend to get harassed in Nyabugogo just for being a lone white women, so you can imagine what happened when I decided to walk around by myself with a big, colorful poster. By the time I made it back to the ticket agency I’d accumulated a crowd of hecklers and the poster was almost torn in half.

We had only sixteen girls by 10am and, despite our best efforts, we couldn’t stall our driver. We ended up finding the last girl and leaving with her at 10:45. By that point I was actually grateful to be getting back on a bus. I had become so famous throughout Nyabugogo that people were trying to get me to sell my Camp GLOW poster.

When we arrived back in Bugesera I discovered that the school’s custodial staff had washed all of our bedbug-infested clothing and sheets. They had also washed our pillows and sleeping bags, including the ones stuffed with down feathers. The staff was convinced that our things would dry. I was convinced I’d just lost a $200 sleeping bag to someone else’s good intentions. Fortunately I had no time to be angry. We jumped right into lessons that day, and I met the eight young women who would be my family for the week: Vestine, Jacqueline, Djamila, Ancille, Angelique, Martine, and my co-facilitator, Lucy.

I slept that night wrapped in someone else’s spare sheet with a damp towel for a pillow. We had all relocated to supply room, leaving us without mosquito nets to sleep under. It wasn’t ideal, but have to say I much prefer mosquitoes, katydids, dampness and cold to the predation of bedbugs. Few things are worse than rampant bedbugs.

~

Tuesday morning was a cold, misty morning, but I decided to take an outdoor bucket bath anyway. We were expecting some sector officials to come and speak and I wanted to look presentable.

That day the schedule was packed with activities and some rather technical lessons on HIV and the immune system. We had allotted about an hour for the sector officials and assumed it would be plenty. This was a typical American mistake. In the United States people of high standing are more punctual than average. In Rwanda, the more important you are, the later you can afford to be. The later you can afford to be, the later you are, and everyone is expected to wait for you.

Naturally, the sector officials were late. To our credit, we waited for an hour and a half before assuming they weren’t coming and proceeding with the day’s lessons. Everything seemed to be going fine until around 2pm when some visiting Peace Corps staff approached a volunteer. They told her that the school’s headmaster was extremely upset. He thought we hadn’t waited because we didn’t want to hear from the sector officials, and he was so ashamed of us he couldn’t bear to approach us about it himself. We immediately contacted the sector and reiterated that we wanted them to come and that we’d rearrange our schedule as necessary.

At 3:30 we put our afternoon activities on hold to have the “official opening” of Camp GLOW by the sector. It was what I’d call a exemplary cross-cultural experience.

Misunderstandings aside, everything worked out. The executive secretary gave a very nice speech and our schedule didn’t get too far off track. We got through all of our lessons and most of a team-building ropes course. That evening I paired up with another volunteer and taught a beginning salsa class, which turned out to be a big hit. All in all a successful day.

~

Wednesday was condom demonstration day. This was a big hurdle for me. I had never done a condom demonstration before in my life and I was nervous. It wasn’t just that I worried about maintaining a straight face, though I admit that was part of it. I also wasn’t sure what to expect from the campers and I had reasons to fear the worst.

Condom usage in Rwanda is an unnavigable area of controversy. On the one hand, there’s a huge push on the part of the government to combat HIV transmission. On the other hand, the possession of condoms is frowned upon, especially for young girls. In extreme cases I’ve heard of students getting expelled for having condoms in their book bags. Some of our initial GLOW Camp lessons discussed condoms as a means of preventing HIV but I still had no idea how the girls would react to the sight of an actual condom. I ran through all the possibilities in my head - giggling fits, horror, stunned silence, a mass exodus from the classroom - before I went in to teach that day. Nothing could have prepared me for what actually happened.

We began the lesson with an activity. The girls were each given a sheet of paper. The sheets said things like “check the expiration date of the condom,” “pinch the tip of the condom to keep air from getting trapped,” “roll the condom down to the base of the penis,” etc. The girls had to arrange the sheets in chronological order. When they got it right, we taped all the sheets to the wall. I explained that at Camp GLOW we do not encourage girls to have sex, especially since abstinence is the only way to be 100% safe from diseases like HIV. I explained that we want there to be safe, healthy options for girls who choose to have sex, which is why we talk about condom usage. Then I took out a condom and a banana and ran through each of the steps.

Not only did the girls listen attentively and respectfully, but when I gave them the option, every single one of them took a condom and practiced the steps themselves. No one seemed uncomfortable. To my amazement, two of the girls told me afterwards that it was their first time to ever see a condom. One girl told me that she’d seen a condom demonstration before but that it hadn’t been as effective. She said that even though she wants to abstain from sex until marriage, she’s glad to know how to use a condom because she can teach others. Hearing that was probably the single most fulfilling moment I’ve experienced as a Peace Corps volunteer.

That night we had a dance party in the main hall. While the girls boogied down, we built a bonfire outside and set up a table with marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers shipped specially from America for making s’mores. The s’mores were a huge hit. We tried to limit the girls to one apiece but a few kept sneaking back inside to grab more marshmallows.

As we stood around the fire eating, a few girls started singing softly. Others slowly joined in, and soon the entire group had erupted into a beautiful three-part harmony. Their voices were powerful yet sweet, building to crescendo that broke like a wave over my heart. I’ve heard a lot of choral singing in my life but I’ve never heard anything quite so beautiful as that one spontaneous song.

In Rwanda it’s considered indecorous to cry in public, even on happy occasions. I turned around and hid my face in another volunteer’s shirt so the girls wouldn’t see my tears.

I’ll share the last two days of camp with you later. I think I’ve given you all enough to read for now.

Today something incredible happened in Gihara, but to describe it I have to explain umuganda. To be honest, I’m surprised umuganda hasn’t come up earlier. My Kinyarwanda-English dictionary defines umuganda as simply “community work,” but Umuganda (capital U) is a practice that exemplifies Rwandan development rhetoric in action like nothing else I’ve seen. On the last Saturday of every month, shops and local businesses close down all over the country and everyone turns out en masse for community service. People do whatever needs to be done, from clearing roads and sweeping out gutters to weeding gardens and repainting buildings. Their compensation? The knowledge that they’re making their country more beautiful. It isn’t bottom-up development in the purest sense, but it is a policy that seems to have fostered a national culture of volunteerism that I find inspiring.

Though no one in Gihara really expects me to, I do my best to participate in umuganda. It’s sort of like working out or doing chores. I always feel better when I’ve done it, but I don’t really look forward to it and it never seems to get easier. People always think it’s hilarious that the muzungu wants to join in. It doesn’t help that I’m not particularly adept at doing “basic” tasks like cutting weeds with a machete. Last umuganda I got a blister on my hand from wielding a hoe with too much enthusiasm, effectively confirming everyone’s suspicions that I’m too delicate to do any real work. So you can imagine my consternation when I went out walking this morning on a day that was decidedly not the last Saturday of the month and got asked by every other person I met, for the first time, “Where are you going? Aren’t you doing umuganda?” After the tenth or eleventh person to question me I had to go back to the town center to investigate.

As it turned out, today was declared an extra day of umuganda for a special community project: the planting of dozens of trees all over the sector. All of my neighbors came out with hoes and shovels and ministry people distributed saplings from the back of a pickup truck. Then they went from one end of Gihara to the other together, alternately digging holes and planting. Soon I was swept up in the crowd. Someone handed me a sapling and a shovel. I’ve never volunteered to plant trees before in my life, but I think I’m going to start as soon as I get back to the States. It was exhilarating and surprisingly addictive, especially in a place as starved for shade as Gihara.

When all the trees were planted we convened at my school for a big celebration that included live music and traditional dancing and, of course, a lot of speeches by local officials. It was a hot, sticky, breezeless day and I was tired and covered in dirt but nonetheless, I was happy to be there. They say people join Peace Corps to change the world, but it felt good just to do my part alongside everyone else. I think that’s what bottom-up development probably feels like: everyone gets to plant a tree.

One year in Rwanda. I don’t know about you all, but I can barely believe it. I know a lot has happened - I’ve learned 1000+ Kinyarwanda words, the names and faces of 100+ students, and more than a dozen different ways to spice rice and beans - but it doesn’t seem like enough to have filled a whole year. Or maybe it’s that there are only two seasons instead of four to mark the passage of time. It’s late October, but it feels like June in California. I got sunburned walking home from school today.

To celebrate the anniversary of our arrival, I spent the weekend at my friend Brittany’s site near Kibuye. Four of us collaborated on the most amazing dinner I’ve had in at least a year: a green salad with raisins, crumbled gouda and homemade vinaigrette; wood oven-baked lasagna with garden spinach, tomato-garlic sauce and homemade paneer; and baked apples stuffed with raisins in a cinnamon-vanilla glaze. It couldn’t have happened without collaboration. The raisins came from an Indian mini-mart in Kigali, the gouda and apples from Gitarama, the cinnamon and vanilla from Zanzibar, the vinaigrette spices in a care package from America, the lettuce and spinach from a convent garden near Brittany’s house. International borders were personally crossed for the baked apples alone. I have to admit, sometimes I miss the convenience of American supermarkets.

I also miss baking. Fortunately for us, Brittany’s neighbor has a wood oven for making bread. I don’t think lasagna would have been possible in a Peace Corps-style convection oven.*

School will be out for the holidays until January. Most volunteers are going home for awhile, but I’m glad to be staying. There’s a new volunteer who will be installed just up the road from me in mid-December and she’ll want someone to spend Christmas with. I’m also looking forward to being a facilitator at the Kigali region’s GLOW Camp,** a girls’ leadership camp organized by Peace Corps volunteers. I’ll be staying in Bugesera for a week in November to help set up and supervise a camp of 48 girls from around the Kigali-Bugesera area. It should be awesome. We have a ton of great activities planned and we’ve scheduled guest speakers on topics ranging from career planning to health issues like AIDS. I recruited seven girls from my school to participate in the camp and they couldn’t be more excited.

All in all, I couldn’t be happier with where I am in my service. I have things to look forward to and accomplishments to look back on. I have a sense of what’s possible and enough time to put new projects in motion. I even had a weird moment the other night where I thought I might want to stay in Rwanda indefinitely. I speak the language well enough. I have friends here. I could have locally grown pineapple every day forever.

But then I thought…nah. I love Rwanda, but it isn’t home. And more importantly, two years is long enough to go without Chipotle braised chicken burritos.

*A “Peace Corps oven” consists of two pots, one larger than the other with water in the bottom. By placing the smaller pot inside the larger pot and heating both over charcoal, it’s possible to bake a variety of things in small batches.** GLOW stands for Girls Lead Our World. It’s a Peace Corps initiative originating in Romania in 1995. The purpose of GLOW is to encourage adolescent girls to become active citizens by building confidence and developing skills such as goal-setting, health and life-planning.

I can't believe it's been so long. About this time last year I was packing my bags and getting ready to leave Seattle. Have I changed since then? Has Gihara changed? Have I made a difference? It's hard to know. No one calls me "muzungu" anymore, but otherwise it seems as if I've accomplished very little. Then again, sometimes the most meaningful accomplishments are also the most subtle.

I don't know how many of you remember my post about the woman who always asked me for shoes. Lots of people ask me for things, but most people at least have the courtesy to say hello first. She never did. I assumed she never would. But yesterday I passed her in the road and she smiled and greeted me warmly.

It was the first time I'd seen her smile. She has an incredible smile.

Teacher classes never did happen this year. The teachers couldn't seem to agree on a good meeting time. No one wants to stay late during the week and no one wants to come in on weekends. I offered to teach English classes during the break, but no one wanted to come in then either. It made me think of the flowers I planted in front of my rooms. There were four separate plants, one of which I was sure would last because it seemed to be the best-protected. Last week someone stepped on it. It just goes to show, you never know which projects will come to fruition and which will fail to take off.

I'm actually kind of relieved that teacher classes aren't happening. Now I have time for more interesting projects. Next year maybe I'll turn the school's "book room" into a real library. Who knows. Lots of things are possible in a year.

Today I woke up at 5:15. I spent half an hour watching the sky lighten through my window. The dawn breaks twice here. Once over the horizon, once over the roof of the convent. You have to see it to really understand.

We’ve been doing a lot of group work in my English classes. I like it because the students can talk and I can circulate. Today while I was circulating I felt something tug at my hair. I turned around and found one of my students crouching on top of her desk with her arm outstretched. She was trying to touch my hair without me noticing. When I turned and saw her she gave me a look of utter mortification and almost fell off her desk. The class burst out laughing. I guess this is one unforeseen problem with letting my hair grow out.

I went for a walk after teaching and found a little boy sitting by the road in nothing but a dirty tee shirt. He couldn’t have been older than four. He had a small scythe and was playing with the sharp end, a sadly common sight. I wanted to intervene without scaring him so I crouched down a few feet away from him and whispered, “Hey, kid!” He looked up at me and grinned. “Muzuuunguuu,” he cooed. I was about to tell him I had a name and that it wasn’t muzungu but before I could say anything he dropped the scythe, ran over, and wound both arms around my neck. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Muzuuuuunguuuu,” he said, and started nuzzling my face. Children are often curious about me but the nuzzling definitely wasn’t something I’d encountered before. I tried to stand up. He went with me, dangling off my neck. I told him I had to go. He wrapped his legs around my waist. He didn’t let me go until his mother came and told him to leave me alone. I asked her if he had some kind of problem. “He likes muzungus,” she said.

Once a small child ran at me with a stick. I think he intended to defend his house. He was valiant in his attack, though he cried in terror the whole time. So that’s one possible response, and then there’s the boy with the scythe who nuzzled me. I’ll never understand the kids here.

Today I woke up at 5:15. I spent half an hour watching the sky lighten through my window. The dawn breaks twice here. Once over the horizon, once over the roof of the convent. You have to see it to really understand.

We’ve been doing a lot of group work in my English classes. I like it because the students can talk and I can circulate. Today while I was circulating I felt something tug at my hair. I turned around and found one of my students crouching on top of her desk with her arm outstretched. She was trying to touch my hair without me noticing. When I turned and saw her she gave me a look of utter mortification and almost fell off her desk. The class burst out laughing. I guess this is one unforeseen problem with letting my hair grow out.

I went for a walk after teaching and found a little boy sitting by the road in nothing but a dirty tee shirt. He couldn’t have been older than four. He had a small scythe and was playing with the sharp end, a sadly common sight. I wanted to intervene without scaring him so I crouched down a few feet away from him and whispered, “Hey, kid!” He looked up at me and grinned. “Muzuuunguuu,” he cooed. I was about to tell him I had a name and that it wasn’t muzungu but before I could say anything he dropped the scythe, ran over, and wound both arms around my neck. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Muzuuuuunguuuu,” he said, and started nuzzling my face. Children are often curious about me but the nuzzling definitely wasn’t something I’d encountered before. I tried to stand up. He went with me, dangling off my neck. I told him I had to go. He wrapped his legs around my waist. He didn’t let me go until his mother came and told him to leave me alone. I asked her if he had some kind of problem. “He likes muzungus,” she said.

Once a small child ran at me with a stick. I think he intended to defend his house. He was valiant in his attack, though he cried in terror the whole time. So that’s one possible response, and then there’s the boy with the scythe who nuzzled me. I’ll never understand the kids here.

Besides losing the sense of novelty, I’ve thought of another reason why it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep up my blog. I’m also losing sight of what’s relatable.

For the first several months at site I was an American in Rwanda and I could write as an American in Rwanda. Now, after nearly a year spent as a fish out of water, I can’t help but see things through a lens that isn’t exactly American nor exactly Rwandan. The things that shock me, interest me, aggravate me or gratify me increasingly seem like mine alone. This is a problem I thought I shared only with other Peace Corps volunteers and the select few expats who live in cultural isolation like we do.

But then I met Faith.

Last Monday I had just gotten home from school when I heard knock at my door. I answered it with a scowl because I was in the middle of lesson planning and I suspected it was someone asking for food or money. Instead, there was Faith. She was tall and model-slim in distressed jeans and a tee shirt, with bangles on her arms and her short black hair in a faux hawk. She was definitely African but she was like no one I’d ever seen in Rwanda, not even in Kigali. In perfect British English she said, “I heard you have a guitar here. Thought you might let us borrow it, if it‘s not too much trouble.”

I was so taken aback by her perfect English, her accent and directness it didn’t even occur to me to ask who she was. I said, “Yeah, you can borrow it, but it’s travel-size.”

“Oh, you mean one of those tiny ones?” She mimed a ukulele.

“No, it’s…here, let me show you.” I went into the other room and produced my travel guitar, a blue, meter-long fret board with strings. “It’s little!” Faith said, in that perfect British accent. “Yeah,” I said, “but the frets are full-size so you should have no trouble playing it.”

“I’m Faith, by the way,” she said.

That was the beginning of a three-hour conversation that ran the gamut of things from living abroad to cooking to cycling to music to the differences between American and Rwandan culture. Faith, as it turned out, was the niece of Sister Mediatrice, the nun who manages the health center at Gihara. She had been living in London for something like fifteen years but she’d decided it was time to come back home so she was in Rwanda looking for work. “But I don’t think I’ll find anything,” she said. “I’m an artist, you see, and there’s not much of an art world in Rwanda .” She said she mostly did digital photography and ceramics. She comes from an artistic family, to the extent that her brother and sister recorded some of the music for the soundtrack of Hotel Rwanda. Over the course of her life she has lived in Rwanda, Kenya, France and England in roughly that order. She’s a believer in freedom and nonconformity. She’s nonreligious even though her father is a priest and her aunt is a nun. She’s the most eclectic person I think I’ve ever met, and from the moment I first saw her I had a sense I could tell her anything and she’d understand.

It took me awhile to figure out why Faith and I related so strongly. We barely knew each other. We were almost ten years apart in age and came from drastically different backgrounds. But she, like me, is a person out of place. She told me it had been hard coming home because people here treat her like a foreigner. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I’ll be talking to them in fluent Kinyarwanda and they’re staring at me like I’m a zoo animal. I mean, this is where I come from!” I sympathized. If there’s one thing I relate to, it’s being stared at like a zoo animal.

There was more to it than that, though. Faith was the first non-American I’ve met here to whom I could reveal myself completely. In fact, talking to her made me realize what a wall I’d built up around myself. I try not to lie to my Rwandan friends and neighbors outright, but I have led them to believe certain things about me that aren’t exactly true. In Gihara, everyone thinks that I’m religious. They don’t know that I drink or that I’ve had several boyfriends. If they did, they might not want to be associated with me. I would no longer be “umukobwa mwiza.” But with Faith, I didn’t have to hide anything. What’s more, I could talk about how frustrating it is to have hide things from people just to be accepted on a basic level.

We ended up exchanging contact information. She said if I’m ever in London I’m welcome to stay with her. Faith - if you’re reading this, I hope you know I'm really to take you up on your offer someday.

Other than meeting Faith, it’s been an unremarkable couple of weeks. I was supposed to finally teach my first English class for teachers last week but so far all we’ve done is agree on a time, a day and a meeting place. Our dean of studies keeps putting pressure on me to teach on weekends even though I’ve told him several times that I’ll be out of site for the English for legal professionals education project and regional meetings at least twice a month on Saturdays, and no one wants classes on Sundays. My students have finally learned how to write coherent paragraphs with introduction and conclusion sentences but I’ve realized too late that their speaking and listening skills sorely need work and I’m not sure what to do about that in the remaining four weeks of the school year. No one seems to know whether final exams are cumulative for the whole year this term. I’ve been feeling a little harried and a little restless lately, but only a little.

The other night I made banana pancakes for dinner and ate them on my porch with Josias. I realized that however stressed I am about my role as a volunteer, I still love it here. That’s got to count for something.

Besides losing the sense of novelty, I’ve thought of another reason why it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep up my blog. I’m also losing sight of what’s relatable.

For the first several months at site I was an American in Rwanda and I could write as an American in Rwanda. Now, after nearly a year spent as a fish out of water, I can’t help but see things through a lens that isn’t exactly American nor exactly Rwandan. The things that shock me, interest me, aggravate me or gratify me increasingly seem like mine alone. This is a problem I thought I shared only with other Peace Corps volunteers and the select few expats who live in cultural isolation like we do.

But then I met Faith.

Last Monday I had just gotten home from school when I heard knock at my door. I answered it with a scowl because I was in the middle of lesson planning and I suspected it was someone asking for food or money. Instead, there was Faith. She was tall and model-slim in distressed jeans and a tee shirt, with bangles on her arms and her short black hair in a faux hawk. She was definitely African but she was like no one I’d ever seen in Rwanda, not even in Kigali. In perfect British English she said, “I heard you have a guitar here. Thought you might let us borrow it, if it‘s not too much trouble.”

I was so taken aback by her perfect English, her accent and directness it didn’t even occur to me to ask who she was. I said, “Yeah, you can borrow it, but it’s travel-size.”

“Oh, you mean one of those tiny ones?” She mimed a ukulele.

“No, it’s…here, let me show you.” I went into the other room and produced my travel guitar, a blue, meter-long fret board with strings. “It’s little!” Faith said, in that perfect British accent. “Yeah,” I said, “but the frets are full-size so you should have no trouble playing it.”

“I’m Faith, by the way,” she said.

That was the beginning of a three-hour conversation that ran the gamut of things from living abroad to cooking to cycling to music to the differences between American and Rwandan culture. Faith, as it turned out, was the niece of Sister Mediatrice, the nun who manages the health center at Gihara. She had been living in London for something like fifteen years but she’d decided it was time to come back home so she was in Rwanda looking for work. “But I don’t think I’ll find anything,” she said. “I’m an artist, you see, and there’s not much of an art world in Rwanda .” She said she mostly did digital photography and ceramics. She comes from an artistic family, to the extent that her brother and sister recorded some of the music for the soundtrack of Hotel Rwanda. Over the course of her life she has lived in Rwanda, Kenya, France and England in roughly that order. She’s a believer in freedom and nonconformity. She’s nonreligious even though her father is a priest and her aunt is a nun. She’s the most eclectic person I think I’ve ever met, and from the moment I first saw her I had a sense I could tell her anything and she’d understand.

It took me awhile to figure out why Faith and I related so strongly. We barely knew each other. We were almost ten years apart in age and came from drastically different backgrounds. But she, like me, is a person out of place. She told me it had been hard coming home because people here treat her like a foreigner. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I’ll be talking to them in fluent Kinyarwanda and they’re staring at me like I’m a zoo animal. I mean, this is where I come from!” I sympathized. If there’s one thing I relate to, it’s being stared at like a zoo animal.

There was more to it than that, though. Faith was the first non-American I’ve met here to whom I could reveal myself completely. In fact, talking to her made me realize what a wall I’d built up around myself. I try not to lie to my Rwandan friends and neighbors outright, but I have led them to believe certain things about me that aren’t exactly true. In Gihara, everyone thinks that I’m religious. They don’t know that I drink or that I’ve had several boyfriends. If they did, they might not want to be associated with me. I would no longer be “umukobwa mwiza.” But with Faith, I didn’t have to hide anything. What’s more, I could talk about how frustrating it is to have hide things from people just to be accepted on a basic level.

We ended up exchanging contact information. She said if I’m ever in London I’m welcome to stay with her. Faith - if you’re reading this, I hope you know I sincerely hope to take you up on your offer.

Other than meeting Faith, it’s been an unremarkable couple of weeks. I was supposed to finally teach my first English class for teachers last week but so far all we’ve done is agree on a time, a day and a meeting place. Our dean of studies keeps putting pressure on me to teach on weekends even though I’ve told him several times that I’ll be out of site for the English for legal professionals education project and regional meetings at least twice a month on Saturdays, and no one wants classes on Sundays. My students have finally learned how to write coherent paragraphs with introduction and conclusion sentences but I’ve realized too late that their speaking and listening skills sorely need work and I’m not sure what to do about that in the remaining four weeks of the school year. No one seems to know whether final exams are cumulative for the whole year this term. I’ve been feeling a little harried and a little restless lately, but only a little.

The other night I made banana pancakes for dinner and ate them on my porch with Josias. I realized that however stressed I am about my role as a volunteer, I still love it here. That’s got to count for something.

…and I feel like I owe everyone an explanation. When I first came to Rwanda, it was easy to blog about my experiences because everything was new and weird and exciting. But as things become more and more mundane, it’s easy to forget what I’ve already explained or what needs explaining. For example, this morning I had the following conversation in Kinyarwanda with one of my neighbors:

Me: Good morning!Neighbor: Good morning, Grace. (My neighbors call me Grace if they can’t pronounce “Gelsey.”) Jesus has risen.Me: He reigns over us all.Neighbor: What is the news of your family?Me: Well, my parents were in Rwanda two weeks ago.Neighbor: Oh yes, I saw them. You must be very happy.Me: Yes, it was very good to see them.Neighbor: You have gotten very fat.Me: Thank you.Neighbor: God bless you.Me: Have a nice day.

Now that I have that out in writing I can see at least three things that probably don’t seem normal to anyone back home. I have several conversations exactly like that every day and it never occurred to me to talk about it. So I encourage all of you, please, to email or comment if you have any unanswered questions about Rwanda or my experiences. I probably have answers, it just hasn’t occurred to me to share them.

I’ll pick up where I left off in Butare. We got in late on a Wednesday, checked into a hotel and spent Thursday exploring the town. Butare is one of my favorite places in Rwanda and I highly recommend it as a travel destination to anyone visiting this country. It’s home to a university, a national museum, a large outdoor market, several western-style restaurants and a big local crafts store, among other things. It also has Nzozi Nziza, the ice cream shop that made all my dreams come true back in November (probably why it’s called “sweet dreams”). The best part is the whole town is arranged in an uncannily logical order with the museum at one end, the restaurants and market in the middle and Nzozi Nziza at the other end near the university. We started at the museum and made our way to Nzozi Nziza, hitting pretty much everything of importance except the outdoor market. All in all a successful day.

Our plan for the following day was Nyungwe Forest, a national park located about two and a half hours south of Butare by charter bus. Since Nyungwe is one of only three major ecotourism destinations in Rwanda I assumed that buses stopped there, but it turned out that the nearest stop to Nyungwe was Cyangugu. I had no idea where Cyangugu was but I assumed that it must be fairly close to Nyungwe. If we couldn’t figure out where to get off the bus we could just go to Cyangugu double back without losing too much hiking time, or so I thought. The clerk at Sotra Tours corroborated this notion.

In actuality I was very, very wrong about the proximity of Cyangugu to Nyungwe, but I’ll get to that.

The ride into Nyungwe Forest was an experience unto itself. Passing out of Butare town, we meandered through smaller villages until we came to the edge of the park where the scenery changed perceptibly from farmland to rainforest. Even barreling down a paved road we could hear a cacophony of insects and birds, and at one point we saw a small black monkey creeping through the underbrush. Trees rose up on either side, appearing to fight their way out of a tangle of exotic-looking grasses and vines. For what seemed like hours we continued down the paved road with the forest whizzing by. I saw a sign for a lookout point and wondered aloud if we should get off the bus, but my dad said he thought there would be a more obvious place to stop. So we waited.

And we passed out of the park into the tea fields of Karama.

At first I think we all kept hoping to see an entrance sign, but after about forty-five minutes of tea fields it was obvious we were no longer in Nyungwe. I suggested that we get off at the nearest bus stop, but that happened to be a tiny, sketchy-looking town somewhere between Karama and Karembe so instead we opted to go all the way to the end of the line.

Cyangugu turned out to be almost two hours outside of Nyungwe. It’s so far southwest it shares borders with both Burundi and the DRC. A very friendly Sotra Tours employee helped us find a bus back into Nyungwe, but when we finally got into the park it was too late hike even the shortest trail and make it back in time to catch the last bus to Butare. My parents were extremely positive about the whole thing. They took a bunch of pictures of the park entrance and walked around the periphery a bit. My dad told me later that our impromptu trip to Cyangugu was one of the more interesting parts of their visit. I’m sure he meant it, but I still feel blessed to have such tolerant parents.

The next day we went to the market. The market at Butare doesn’t look like much from the outside, but once you get inside it’s an enormous and paradoxically claustrophobic maze of vendors and merchandise. Narrow passageways divide racks upon racks of everything from radios to pineapples to donated shoes. I expected my parents to be overwhelmed but neither of them seemed at all ill at ease, even with people pointing and staring. At one point my dad noticed a young man wearing a hearing aid and struck up a conversation with him in sign language. We even got a good deal on a couple of bolts of igitenge cloth.

That afternoon, after a quick and violent rainstorm that lasted exactly the right amount of time for us to have lunch, we caught a bus back to Kigali. Our original plan was to go straight from Butare all the way up into Gisenyi but after our nine-hour round-trip adventure to Cyangugu and back we decided to take a breather in Kigali first. It was an evening well-spent; I introduced my parents to Shokola* and we spent most of dinner arguing whether the winged animals landing in the trees overhead were birds or large bats. (For the record, they turned out to be bats.)

.

The last stop on our trip was Gisenyi. If Butare is my favorite town in Rwanda, Gisenyi is a close second. Like Butare, Gisenyi is a sprawling college town with a lively downtown and a quiet periphery. One advantage it has over Butare is that it’s situated right on the eastern bank of Lake Kivu. An actual sandy beach runs all along Gisenyi’s eastern edge and continues into the DRC. Rumor has it you can stand in Gisenyi and touch Goma without any consequences, but we didn’t try it.

There are lots of unique tourist attractions in Gisenyi, all of which we completely ignored. Instead we spent two days walking up and down the beach, exploring the outdoor market and eating brochettes at the Bikini Tam Tam. It was heaven.

I ended up going back to Kigali with my parents before heading out to Kibuye for the AIDS conference. They saw me off at the bus station and met a few other of the other volunteers. It was hard to say goodbye, but it felt good to part ways on a high note. They said they want to come back to Rwanda, time and resources permitting. The best part of the trip? Visiting my site and meeting the people there, according to my dad. If that isn’t a point for Goal 3 of the Peace Corps, I don’t know what is.

Love you, Mom and Dad.

*Shokola is an Arabian Nights-themed restaurant in downtown Kigali, close to the Hotel Milles Collines.

It seems that the longer I go without updating my blog the harder it is to do so. My mom and dad have been stateside for almost a week. The seminar in Kibuye was a success in many respects and we did discuss specific ideas for HIV/AIDS-related projects. So far, returning to site hasn’t been nearly as difficult as I expected. I’m happier than ever to be back in my little village and starting school again. But before I get too sidetracked, a lot of people have been asking about my parents’ visit, so here’s the promised rundown.

I should preface this by saying that in Rwanda, things almost never go according to schedule. I made an itinerary for my parents so they could plan a travel budget but I didn’t count on actually sticking to it for their entire visit. My most detailed plans were for the first night, and they only included hotel reservations and prearranged transportation. Louise helped me find a driver to pick them up at the airport and since he was a friend of hers he agreed to drive them for free. I was optimistic that in the very least I’d get them safely from the airport to their hotel without any major snags,

The night of my parents’ arrival, as Louise and I stood in the middle of the Gihara market waiting for our driver to show up, I felt somewhat less optimistic. Our original driver, Noah, was in Gitarama because I’d mananged to give him the wrong date. He’d supposedly found an available taxi at the last minute but we had no idea who the driver was or when he was coming, only that he had Louise’s number and he’d call us when he got to Gihara. My parents’ flight was scheduled to land at 7 pm. They had no way to contact me and I had no way to contact them. For the first hour of waiting I was too excited to be worried, but by 7:10 both Louise and I were still stranded in Gihara and Louise was talking about beating Noah with a stick.

We did eventually get to the airport, but only after taking moto taxis to the main road, locating the driver’s parked car and offering him partial advanced payment so he could buy gas. I had visions of my mom and dad looking bewildered and forlorn on a bench outside the airport with all their luggage, but it turned out that their flight had been delayed an hour. So our timing was perfect. Yet another of life’s reminders that everything works out if you just kwihangane.*

That night in Kigali my dad and I decided to grab some late-night dinner at White Horse. We were the only customers. We sat on the patio because the wait staff had converted the inside of the restaurant into a dance club complete with smoke and lights. When we came in one of the waiters ran up to us and yelled, “Welcome!” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

From Kigali, we took a taxi into Gihara where we were greeted with open arms. The nuns prepared a room and insisted we join them for lunch, dinner, and breakfast the next day. All in all it was a nicer setup than some of the hotels we stayed in. My dad said he wanted to repay the nuns for their hospitality and asked them if there was anything he could help them with, perhaps something that needed fixing. Sister Donatile said he could take a look at their electric stove. “We can’t figure out how to plug it in,” she said. No wonder. The power cable had no plug, just a bundle of frayed wires where a plug had once been. My dad said he’d see what he could do.

He spent the rest of the trip casually scouting for electronics stores. We never did find a plug, but I have to say I admire him for trying. Love you, Dad.

Our second day in Gihara, I took my parents to visit my headmaster and his family and then for a walk up past my school. Initially I had planned on making a loop back to the town center but on a whim I decided to lead them into Kaygena (sp?), a neighboring village that’s known locally for its pottery. We ended up running into the village chief who gave us a full tour not only of the pottery collective, but of a local school as well. By the time we were done touring the village we had acquired a crowd of a few dozen children. If I don’t forget, I’ll try upload a photo of them here.

~

That night we took a charter bus from my site to Butare. While we were waiting for the bus a crazy man played a song for us on a hand-fashioned instrument made from discarded bottles and what looked like fishing line, but otherwise it was an uneventful evening.

From Butare the plan was to take a charter bus into Nyungwe Forest for a day hike. We never did make it into Nyungwe, but we did end up having an adventure that took us most of the way to the border of Burundi. But I’ll save that story for my next post. It’s a story that deserves to be told in chapters.

*Kwihangane means “to bear with it” or to have patience.

As I’m writing this I’m sitting on a balcony at the Centre St. Bethania in Kibuye looking out at a rather grey and foggy Lake Kivu. Peace Corps is hosting a seminar here on HIV/AIDS for education volunteers and their Rwandan colleagues, the purpose of which is to support HIV/AIDS initiatives in secondary schools. So far we’ve had sessions on communication and behavior change and HIV/AIDS epidemiology. I’m hoping we’ll discuss specific project ideas at some point but even if we don’t it will have been an informative few days, not to mention how nice it is to see everyone again.

I just had an amazing week traveling around the country with my mom and dad. We had a great time together and I now have a renewed appreciation for my site and Rwanda generally. More details to follow when I have time to write a longer post!

Hi all! I meant to update my blog over Independence Day weekend but somehow I didn’t get around to it. I’ve been busy catching up on grading and writing exams. I’ve also been compiling the results from the English language needs assessments which I finally managed to distribute to all of the teachers. I only got them back from the primary school teachers, but it’s just as well. I’m pretty tight with the secondary school teachers and it would be a little awkward trying to teach my friends. Teacher classes are all set to start next term and while I’m still apprehensive I’m also excited. I feel as if I’m pushing the final piece of my primary assignment into place.

For those of you who asked, Independence Day weekend was great. I had all kinds of plans to be productive over the holiday but instead I relaxed and took some time to reconnect with my site. That Saturday I spent two hours tossing an avocado back and forth with some kids, and I can honestly say it was the most meditative and wonderful two hours I’ve had all month.

I also bought sugarcane at the market for the first time ever, which turned out be quite an experience. In Rwanda, it’s considered impolite not to conceal food you’ve purchased unless you plan on sharing. The problem with sugarcane is that it’s only sold in eight-foot sticks, making discretion impossible. Sharing was also impossible because I was in the middle of a marketplace full of people and had I decided to share I would have ended up without any for myself. So I did the only thing I could do. After making my purchase, I marched briskly and defiantly through the town square, pretending I couldn’t hear the horde of children chasing after me and screaming for “agasheke.” I think my village enjoyed the spectacle.

Next week is exam week. I love my students but I have to admit, I am very much looking forward to the end of the term.

Long time, no blog! Sorry, all.

It’s been an uneventful couple of weeks with the exception of last weekend. Last weekend I went to the Kwita Izina in Musanze, the annual naming ceremony for Rwanda’s baby gorillas. Some other volunteers were going so I decided to go too, not realizing that it’s such a huge event. Turns out it’s one of Rwanda’s biggest tourist draws besides the gorillas themselves. There are performances by all kinds of Rwandan pop stars, speeches by important officials, traditional dances, actors in gorillas suits to stand in for the gorilla babies, and sometimes President Kagame comes and makes a speech. I panicked a little upon arrival because I didn’t have a ticket or an ID or really anything at all to legitimate my presence there, but I got seated in the VIP section anyway. There are all kinds of things wrong with that, but don’t look a gift horse in the mouth I guess?

In any case, the ceremony was awesome. This year the president didn’t show up due to “unavoidable circumstances” but Jack Hanna made an appearance, plus the music and dancing was amazing. The traditional dancers alone made the trip worthwhile. Each region of Rwanda has its own traditional dance and in the north the dances are particularly energetic with a lot of jumping and stamping. The dancers wore bells on their ankles to augment the percussion. It was so beautiful. The musical performances were also a lot of fun. There was a Ugandan singer, Chameleon, who pulled one of the PCVs up on stage with him. He got kicked offstage shortly after that, but it was an exciting few minutes.

After the ceremony there was a reception with complementary beverages and finger-food which was an experience in itself. It was sort like a mosh pit except we weren’t fighting to get to the front row at a concert, we were fighting over mozzarella balls and glasses of chilled white wine. Then security personnel intervened and the crowd was filtered out of the courtyard into the street, leaving in its wake a courtyard strewn with beer bottles and crumpled napkins and other such carnage. It’s hard to believe they’ve been doing this every year for almost a decade now.

Now I’m back to teaching and tutoring and putting off the start date for teachers’ classes until I can get a curriculum together. I’ll probably be at site for the fourth of July, so keep me in your thoughts while you’re barbequing or bonfiring or doing whatever.

I love my students so much it almost hurts.

Yesterday in class we played charades with different adverbs and they got so into it they didn’t want to stop. I had to instate a “no-touching” policy after a particularly spirited depiction of the word “violently” but otherwise it went incredibly well. They’re nothing if not performers.

My second class of the day has a ten-minute break halfway through, one of the very few opportunities they get to go out and enjoy some fresh air and sunshine, but yesterday most of my class stayed inside with me. They like to ask me about English words they’ve heard in songs. Sometimes it’s a minefield (how do I, as a middle school teacher, explain what Shaggy supposedly wasn’t doing?) but yesterday, mercifully, they wanted to know about “Baby” by Justin Bieber. I sang part of it and endeared myself to them forever. Say what you will about the Biebs, he is king in Rwandan middle schools. Even the boys like him here.

Yesterday was also English club day, a thing which normally leaves me completely drained and ready for a day off. Between this term and last term, English club membership went from overwhelming (seventy-five students) to underwhelming (about fifteen students) because I lost the classroom we initially met in to the understandably more-popular dance club. On top of that, all the S3 students somehow have an extra hour of class this term, so I’ve been struggling to retain my S3 members. I was beginning to the think the club might be a lost cause, but yesterday we started a project that might keep the club going into next year: letter writing. They’re so excited about writing letters to the U.S. it’s almost scary. If it goes well, I might try to set up correspondence with a middle school classroom in the States. If any teachers are reading this and interested, please shoot me an email!

Otherwise things are progressing nicely. English classes for teachers might actually happen, though I’m not sure how soon. I’ve been trying to call a staff meeting to discuss meeting times and distribute English pre-assessments, but it’s proven more difficult to do so than I’d expected. I don’t have the power to call staff meetings by myself and my headmaster keeps telling me we’ll have the meeting “tomorrow,” by which he doesn’t so much mean “tomorrow” as “not today.” The classes probably won’t be a reality until sometime next term, but that’s fine with me. I’d rather spend the rest of this term focusing on my students who, if not my raison d’etre, are certainly my raison d’etre ici.

I’ve also begun tutoring Yvette and it’s worked out even better than I hoped. She comes to my house every Thursday morning with an academic article or a book in hand and we go over all the difficult vocabulary. Then she asks me questions about grammar and pronunciation. I’ve been making up exercises on the fly but I’m accumulating a nice catalogue of lesson plans I might be able to use with the teachers at my school. Not only that, but I now have one more friend I get to see reliably often.

So, setbacks and non-meetings and non-members aside, I love my job. Through it all, my students are a reason to get up and face the world every morning. They say “thank you, Teacher,” Greek-chorus style at the end of class. Every time I want to tell them that I should be thanking them, not the other way around.

It’s been a strange couple of weeks. Uncanny things keep happening, small things, none completely without explanation but bewildering nonetheless. I feel as if Gihara is trying to send me a sign, though of what I have no idea.

Take, for example, the bull.

I was walking home from school in the late afternoon when I saw it. It was standing in the clearing in front of the church, so still I almost thought it was a vision. It was a beautiful animal, huge and golden-brown with enormous pale horns that curved inward at the ends like a giant coronet. I’ve seen bulls here before, usually being herded through the countryside or in stalls behind houses. But this bull was somehow so much more powerful, so much more majestic. Perhaps it was the absence of an owner or the fact that it was dangerously out of place, standing as it was in the middle of town. I stared at it, and for a moment I understood why bulls are sacred creatures here, why traditional Rwandan dance mimics this animal, the shape of its horns. It was standing at a fair distance but even so I could see its eyelid flicker and I swore for a second that something passed between us, some kind of silent communication.

Then it turned and charged.

I have no way of knowing if I was charging at me or just in my direction. It might not have even seen me; I was far enough away. Anything could have startled it. There were people on bicycles, motorcycle taxis going by, children playing on the steps in front of the church. Whatever the reason, it rushed at me. And I froze. It wasn’t so much fear as surprise that stopped me from moving. For an absurd half-second I thought maybe I should wait for it to catch up with me, as if it was running after me to tell me something. Then the threat of the horns registered and I took off in a perpendicular direction, bounding to safety behind the garden wall of the convent. The bull tore past me, scattering a group of children who ran screaming into the bushes. In it’s wake, a harried-looking pair of farmers dashed down the street. I guess it was their bull.

I texted a fellow Peace Corps volunteer about the incident. He texted back, “Peace Corps for the stories, right?” I guess so.

~

I’ve yet to organize classes for the teachers at my school but I have taken on an additional student. Her name is Yvette, a masters student from Kigali. Meeting her was almost as uncanny as the incident with the bull. I was out walking on the main road from town one Saturday evening when she drove up in a Range Rover, itself an unsettling sight in the middle of rural Rwanda. She pulled over alongside me, almost blocking my path, and addressed me through a rolled-down window. She said she’d been hoping to run into me. She claimed I had personally promised to tutor her in English, but that she hadn’t been able to find me. I asked her to remind me of her name. “I’m Yvette,” she said.

I knew for a fact I’d never met this woman before. Warily, I asked her how she knew me. She said I knew her brother. “Is he a student?” I asked. “Yes,” she said, “a student at university.” Not one of mine then. I didn’t know what to think. Later I’d find out that she’d mistaken me for another muzungu, but at the time I decided it couldn’t hurt to tell her I was a teacher in Gihara and that she could come find me whenever she wanted. Most people who ask me for help with English aren’t serious about following up.

As it turns out, she was quite serious. The following Tuesday as I was leaving school, the prefet asked me to meet him in his office. He said there were two men waiting for me there. Ominous and unexpected. They turned out to be Yvette’s brother and one of his friends. They had come to speak for Yvette; she couldn’t meet me herself because she had class that day. They spoke no English, so we had an awkward conversation half in French, half in Kinyarwanda. They explained that Yvette was quite serious about receiving English tutoring but that she had limited time to study. They asked if I could meet her the following day. Wednesdays are the busiest day of my week. I explained that I was available on Thursdays only, in the morning. I said that my first responsibility was to my school and my students and that I knew Yvette would understand. They thanked me and left.

The following day, the prefet interrupted my class to tell me that I had visitors again. He said it was a woman and her brother, one of the men from yesterday. Irritated, I apologized to him on their behalf and told him that I had another hour left of class. He said he’d relay the message. Fifteen minutes later, my phone started buzzing. I guessed correctly that Yvette had tracked down my phone number. Seething a little, I ignored it. Then the headmaster came in. He said he wanted to observe me. I was explaining in Kinyarwanda that we were doing a review, not a real lesson, when my phone started buzzing again. For the rest of the hour, I struggled to concentrate on teaching while my headmaster leafed through my lesson notebook and my phone buzzed at odd intervals.

Due to the various interruptions, my class ran ten minutes over. My headmaster commented in red ink on my lesson, “It’s good to finish on time.”

So it was that when I finally met Yvette face-to-face, I was prepared to draw a hard line. I told her I would tutor her if she was willing to make the trip to Gihara but only once a week, and only if she brought materials to study. She tried to bargain for more time, but at length she accepted. We start next week. Somehow, I feel like this is the boost I need, this little bit of extra work. It will give me some much-needed practice teaching adult ESL, and I’ll get a chance to look at materials from a Rwandan university. Yvette is a student of development studies. I’m actually quite excited.

I’ve been told I’m overdue for a blog. I guess I am going on three weeks now, not to mention my last post was about something that happened over a month ago. I apologize for not writing. The internet has been more unreliable than usual lately, but that’s not the whole reason. To be honest, I’ve been in a slump.

It’s not that things are going badly here. My students alone make everything worth it. They are so bright and so full of candor and enthusiasm, and since last term they’ve miraculously learned how to write in complete sentences, follow verbal directions and ask interesting questions. I don’t feel justified taking the credit for their progress as I barely have five months’ worth of teaching experience. If I’ve had an impact it’s because my students have worked extremely hard to understand and meet my expectations. I love them, and they frequently tell me they love me too, though I know it’s probably half sincere and half a shrewd attempt to boost flagging grades.

It’s not my site, either. Over the last four months my site has metamorphosed from a strange and sometimes terrifying place into a safe haven. People call me by my first name and no one asks me for handouts anymore. People don’t even try to overcharge me in the market these days. Children follow me around, not because they think I’ll give them money or biscuits but because they want play with me. If I’m sick or tired or otherwise not at my best, there’s no place I want to escape to. I want to be here. It’s home.

So, as it’s not my site or my students, I guess the thing that’s been frustrating me these past weeks is…me.

More specifically, it’s my own unrealistic expectations. On some level I believed that the mid-service training at Kibuye would miraculously imbue me with all kinds of new technical knowledge and that I’d return to site with complete plans for multiple secondary projects. Alas, such is not the case. I have some ideas for projects but I’ve yet to determine which ones are feasible in my community. I also foolishly promised my headmaster that I’d set up an English club for the teachers at my school this term, but with over forty teachers of vastly different proficiency levels, I have no idea how I’m going to organize it.

But who knows what I can do. Six months ago I couldn’t light a charcoal stove to save my life and my Kinyarwanda was limited to “good morning” and the numbers one through eight.

Anyway, until I figure out how I’m going to achieve the impossible, I hope to find little things to make me feel productive. Yesterday while I was out walking I met some coffee farmers on their way to work. I ended up helping them pick coffee berries for upwards of two hours. I’m sure they thought I was crazy, but they seemed happy enough to accept the free labor. I now have an open invitation to visit them whenever I want, provided I can figure out where they live.

I guess whatever ends up happening this term, I can at least say I’ve harvested coffee in Africa.

*Did you miss me?

Happy belated Easter, everyone! I’m back in my village, and I have to say it feels a lot like I’ve come home. It’s strange how much I missed my two little rooms, the garden, all my neighbors. I assumed no one would miss me that much but when the nurses at the health center saw I was back they all stopped what they were doing and came out to give me hugs and kisses. My friend Claudine gave me a bear hug and a huge kiss on the cheek when she saw me, an unusual display of affection even for her. I haven’t felt so welcome in Gihara since I first arrived in January.

Last post I promised to talk about visiting people. I said there was a whole elaborate ritual to it but in reality I guess it isn’t much different from visiting people in U.S. except that it’s done more often. The other major difference is that visitors never bring gifts. Instead the host is always expected to provide something, either food or drink, regardless of how informal or unexpected the visit is. I try to avoid visiting people at mealtimes because if they don’t have food it stresses them out and if they do have food they always insist that I eat too much of it. I also try to avoid visiting poorer families, especially families of students, because I don’t like to take their food and I don’t like being used as a status symbol or as a means of provoking jealousy in people’s neighbors (sounds strange, but it happens). However, on a couple of occasions I’ve received such forceful invitations I’ve had to break this rule.

One example stands out in my mind. At St. Dominique where I teach there is a student named Pacifique, a deceptively soft-spoken, incredibly bold little girl of nine or ten. She decided early on that she wanted to befriend me so she figured out where I lived and started showing up on my doorstep after school a couple times a week. Initially I greeted her and went about my business but she would linger on my porch, sometimes for an hour or more, so eventually I told her that I don’t receive students at my house. She said, “Then you will visit my family.” I said maybe. She nodded and went on her way and I thought that was the end of it.

It wasn’t.

The following weekend I was in the middle of cooking dinner when Pacifique showed up on my doorstep again. I asked her if she’d come to visit me. She said, “I’ve come to accompany you.” I asked her where she intended to accompany me. “To my family’s house,” she said. I was floored. What determination! I told her I couldn’t go with her because it was close to dark and I was in the middle of cooking. She said, “Then you will visit tomorrow.” I said, “Yes, I promise, I will visit tomorrow after mass. Now go before it gets dark.” She nodded triumphantly and ran off.

The next morning it was pouring rain and I was relieved. I had no idea how to find Pacifique’s house and while by Rwandan standards that was an insufficient excuse not to visit, the rain certainly was, or so I thought. I was sitting in mass thinking this over and trying to decide whether to feel guilty for evading her invitation when I noticed a small child sitting one row over and behind me, clutching an umbrella at least as tall as he was. He caught my eye because he was a miniature replica of Pacifique, but even more adorable. The resemblance was so striking I thought he was a hallucination. I blinked and he was still there. When he saw me looking at him he blinked back me and smiled.

I turned around and whispered, “Are you Pacifique’s brother?”

He nodded emphatically.

I said, “You are a Catholic? I thought your family was Pentecostal.” He whispered back, “We are Pentecostal.” I asked him, sincerely puzzled, “Then what are you doing in a Catholic mass?”

He said, “I’ve come to accompany you.”

This time there was no escaping. I wasn’t about to disappoint two adorable children in one weekend. Once the mass was over the rain had let up so off we went, over the hills and through the woods to grandmother’s house, quiet literally. Even though it wasn’t that far in kilometers his family lived off the beaten path on the side of a steep hill, so we spent close to an hour slipping and sliding in the mud and picking our way through bean fields to get there.

It was a good-sized house with several rooms and a tin roof, but the walls and floor were mud and there were few windows so the interior was disconcertingly dark. Smoke wafted out of a room near the entryway that housed an indoor cooking fire. I was led through the house to a sitting room that was somewhat more finished-looking with a low table and chairs and a cement floor. I sat down and waited while Pacifique’s brothers, her mother, her grandmother and a bunch of children from the surrounding area filed into the room to stare at me. When I visit colleagues I’m very rarely put on display but with students’ families this almost always happens, which is partly why I avoid such visits.

We sat in silence for a minute. Then the grandmother began asking me questions about myself in rapid, mumbled Kinyarwanda. I told her several times to speak slower and she repeated herself several times at exactly the same pace until I gave up understanding and started asking her questions instead. I tried to discern which of the children in the room were hers and which were Pacifique’s siblings. She indicated a toddler that I think she said she’d adopted because I asked her if he was her child and she said, “No, I’m too old, I can’t nurse anymore!” Then she removed one of her sagging bosoms from her shirt and flapped it in my direction to make sure I understood. I had no idea how to respond to that so I went back to sitting in silence while a couple of the smaller children tried to climb up into my lap to tug on my hair.

Pacifique emerged from another room carrying a huge thermos and five plastic mugs. She set the thermos on the table and her mother opened it and filled each of the mugs with what I imagine was supposed to be drinking yogurt, though it looked and smelled more like cold, chunky sour milk. In medical sessions I’d learned not to drink uncooked dairy because it can carry tuberculosis and other nasty viruses, but to refuse food or drink is probably the rudest thing a guest can do. I tried to come up with excuses while Pacifique filled my mug literally to the brim. Then Pacifique’s mother crossed herself and began offering a prayer. It struck me that this milk was probably the only thing the family had to eat that day, making refusal even more infeasible. The prayer ended too quickly. Pacifique’s mother was urging me to drink. I didn’t know what to do. Should I lie and say muzungus can’t drink yogurt milk? Should I make a run for it and hope that Pacifique wouldn’t try to come find me again? Should I just refuse and risk insulting the whole family? Should I drink it and risk catching some horrible illness?

My dieus ex machina arrived in the form of a phone call from America. David, if you’re reading this, thank you so much for calling me. You may have saved me from death by sour milk.

I picked up, told David to hold, and explained rapidly in Kinyarwanda that I was very sorry but I had to go right away because my friend in America was spending lots of money to call me and I had to take the call. They said, “You’re going?” I said, “Yes, but I will come back another day!” They said, “No problem, let us accompany you!” I’d forgotten that in Rwanda good hosts always accompany departing guests. I tried to tell them that it wasn’t necessary to accompany me since I had to take a phone call but they’d hear none of it. I left the house with the entire family in tow, plus several additional children. They followed me, the grandmother and the mother and Pacifique and her brothers and the children, for almost half a mile while I talked on the phone. Then, at what seemed to me to be a completely arbitrary point, all of them about-faced and went back home.

Elements of this experience repeat themselves whenever I visit a new family. I frequently find myself surrounded by staring children, force-fed huge quantities unidentifiable food and interviewed about everything from my parents’ professions to what people eat in America. Northing quite competes with Pacifique and her family, though. She still shows up on my doorstep from time to time, though it’s been awhile since she’s asked me to visit.

Her brother is a different story. I saw him at school today and the first thing he said to me was, “Uzasura ryari?”*

*When will you visit?** All the dialogue in this post was actually in Kinyarwanda, but I thought it was too cumbersome to have a bunch of footnoted translations so I paraphrased in English.

I’m writing this from the Centre St. Bethania in Kibuye and it’s so beautiful here it’s almost too much to take in. The hotel is right on the eastern bank of Lake Kivu. From where I’m sitting I can see a gorgeous stretch of sparkling blue-green water (a rare sight in a landlocked African country) and on the opposite bank, the eastern border of DRC. In between there’s a smattering of little dark green islands. The temperature has been perfect for swimming these last two days but the staff have forbidden us from going in the water due to schistomaosis. Stupid water-borne parasites.

I’m in Kibuye for a week-long in-service training session. So far it’s been incredibly beneficial, despite how aggravating it is to sit inside for hours in such a beautiful place. We spent the entire first day sharing our individual successes and challenges at our sites. It’s incredible what a range of experiences we’ve had in our villages, especially considering what a small country Rwanda is. That said, we seem to have a lot of the same concerns and objectives and it’s been wonderful having the opportunity to share ideas. I apologize for how vague all of this is but were I to try and describe all the disparate things we’ve been discussing I’d go on for volumes, so all I can really say is it’s been good.

Anyway, after my last post a few people asked me in emails what it’s like visiting people. In fact, there’s a whole elaborate ritual to being a visitor in someone’s house. I promise to write a post about it before the week is out. Right now the beach is calling J

Someone recently asked me in a email what my “typical day” looks like here. I haven’t blogged about my day-to-day routines much because I don’t find them interesting, but now that I think about it I imagine the mundane aspects of Peace Corps service are probably very useful to prospective Peace Corps volunteers, so in the spirit of utility I will give you all a detailed description of my average day during the school year. No hard feelings if it puts you to sleep.

My day begins at 5:30. I wake up early because I like to go running in the mornings but if I do it after my neighbors are awake people gawk at me and children run after me. This still happens occasionally, but the difference between 5:30 and 6 is the difference between one or two children tailing me and a group of ten surrounding me and making it difficult to run. If I’m on schedule I usually get home at around 6 or 6:15 which means people at the health center next door see me in shorts from time to time but they’ve gotten used to it so they don‘t hassle me much. Once I’ve stretched and scraped the mud off my legs I fill up a bucket with cold water from the rain tankard next door and use it to take a shower. Most mornings I try to eat breakfast, usually just tea and bread or oatmeal if I have it. Then I read for a little while before heading to school.

Weekdays I’m at school by 7:30 whether I’m teaching or not. I teach two sets of two-hour classes in the morning, three days a week. I go home around 11am to cook lunch, which takes about two hours on an imbabura. If I can borrow hot coals from a neighbor I heat up whatever I cooked the night before and use the extra time to take a power nap. Then I go back to school. On Tuesdays I teach another class in the afternoon and on Wednesdays I stay after school to supervise my English club, but most afternoons I just sit in the teacher‘s lounge and grade papers. I’m only permitted to teach fifteen hours a week because the Peace Corps wants me to have time for secondary projects, but since I’m only in month three of my service I have no idea what those projects should be. Eventually I’ll be giving English seminars for teachers and doing whatever else my director thinks I should be doing but right now I’m enjoying the extra free time.

I spend my evenings walking around and visiting people, which is actually a fairly important part of my job. Peace Corps stresses “integration” into our host communities, both because its important for us to have friends at site and because one of the major goals of Peace Corps service is cultural exchange. If I don’t have someone specific to visit I walk around until someone either stops me to talk to me or invites me into their house. I’ve learned a lot of Kinyarwanda this way, and I’ve also gotten to know my village pretty well.

I head home by 5:30 at the latest because I have to be inside my gate before dark. I don’t know how it is in big cities but in the villages women do not go out alone at night, both because it’s unsafe and because to do so is to risk one’s reputation. This used to bother me because the nights here are cool and clear and great for walking in, but lately I’ve learned to enjoy my nights in. I have a night guard named Josias who shows up at my house around 6pm so I usually talk with him for a little while or play guitar on my front porch (Josias loves it when I play guitar) and then I go inside and write lessons or read until I’m tired enough to sleep. If I need a reprieve from solitude I’ll have dinner with Louise, which is great because it means I don’t have to cook.

My Sundays are a little more interesting. On Sundays I wake up before 5am to play soccer with some of the young men in my village. My headmaster invited me to play with them once about a month ago and I’ve shown up every week since because if I don’t people ask me why I wasn’t there. It’s daunting because I’m the only female and I’m also terrible at soccer but the guys I play with are really encouraging and a lot of them aren’t that good either so I usually have a good time. We play until 8 or 8:30. Then I go home, shower, make breakfast, and go to mass. Yes, I go to church. It’s actually not that unusual for nonreligious PCVs to attend church because it’s a way of integrating, and it’s also an opportunity to be out in public without people staring at you or trying to poke your skin or pull your hair.

So there you have it, my typical day in Rwanda. A lot of this doesn’t apply right now because I’m in between trimesters so I don’t have a job, but certain things (the waking up at 5:30, for example) are still accurate. If anyone has any further questions, please let me know - like I said, to me this is all mind-numbingly boring but that may not be the case for everyone back home, I don’t know. Thanks for reading!

I apologize for my delay in putting up another blog post. The internet has been cutting out badly these last two weeks and I’ve also been a little busier than usual. It’s finals week next week so besides writing an final exam I’ve had to finish grading my student’s quizzes and papers from last week, a total of ninety-five quizzes and one hundred and ninety homework assignments (probably less than the average TA has to deal with, but I‘ve never TA‘ed a class so I wouldn‘t know). I have an Excel spreadsheet of all my students’ grades and I decided to copy it out by hand because I wanted them to know their grades before the final and I don’t have a way to print things. Judging by my students’ reaction, this must not be common practice amongst the teachers at my school. At the end of my last lesson I took out the spreadsheet and said that I had their grades recorded there and before I could say anything else my normally well-behaved students had jumped up and swarmed me, pushing and shoving each other for a look at the paper. I told them to form a line and they obeyed for about five minutes but as soon as one student stepped forward, five others came with him and soon I was surrounded again. I finally resorted to drawing a line on the floor with chalk and instructing my students to step over it one at a time to look at the spreadsheet. Fortunately only a few of them wanted to dispute their grades or I would have had chaos again.

I never got a chance to talk about the naming ceremony I mentioned in my last post. It’s a really interesting tradition. In Rwanda, a child isn’t given a name until eight days after it’s born. On its eighth day, everyone in the family gathers together. All the children in the family (and sometimes the adults as well) come forward one at a time to suggest names which are recorded in a list. Then the mother or father chooses one name from the list. Once the name is announced, there is a brief period of drinking, dancing and jubilation, and then everyone goes home.

I expected my friend’s niece’s naming ceremony to be a casual gathering because I was invited at the last minute, but when I arrived at her house I found the entire extended family there, dressed in their Sunday finest. It felt a little like crashing someone’s Easter brunch. I sat down next to someone who I guess was a friend of the mother and attempted conversation while drinks were distributed. We waited for what must have been three hours. Finally, someone stood up and made a brief speech, and the mother emerged with the baby. A hush fell over the room as all the children there, most of them dressed to the nines, lined up single file to whisper names to the mother. Each of them gave at least two names, one Kinyarwanda, one French. Some of them gave as many as four names. Then each of the adults in the room stood up in turn and suggested names. Then the mother gave her suggestion. When the list was complete, we waited for what may have been another hour for the father to give his final decision.

We talked in hushed voices as if speaking loudly would break the father’s concentration and prolong the ceremony. Finally, the name was announced. I never heard what it was because someone immediately burst into song, and pretty soon everyone was singing and half the room had jumped up and started dancing. I tried to stay sitting but someone pushed me off the couch into the middle of the floor so I danced, singing along with everyone to the best of my ability. At some point I realized that while it wasn’t my family and I didn’t even know the names of half the people there, I felt completely at home. It was a similar to the feeling I had at my headmaster’s wedding. People wanted to make me a part of things.

Next week I will be proctoring twelve different exams, I think because a few of the other teachers won’t be in town. I’m tired from grading and a little disheartened because many of my students are not going to pass my class without some kind of miracle on the final. But then I remember things like that naming ceremony and I realize there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. Also, I saw a baby goat sneeze yesterday. How can I not love it here?

My headmaster got married yesterday. It was the first Rwandan wedding I’ve attended and it was awesome. It was an indescribable experience but I’m going to try and describe it anyway so bear with me. This is going to be a very long blog post.

I’ve been anticipating this wedding since my second week at site when my headmaster hand-delivered my invitation but I wasn’t anxious about it until last Tuesday. That’s because last Tuesday the teachers had a meeting to pool money for a wedding gift and they decided unanimously that I should be the one to present it at the reception. This meant I would have to make a speech. A wedding speech. In Kinyarwanda.

Fortunately I have a friend at site, a nurse named Louise, who infallibly comes to my rescue in such situations. When I told her my predicament she sat down and immediately wrote something out and told me to memorize it. She explained all the words I didn’t know and had me read through it several times until she was satisfied with my pronunciation. For the moment, I was in the clear.

But then there was the problem of what to wear. My skirts and dresses from home are too short by Rwandan standards. There was the dress I wore for swearing-in, but it’s made from igitenge material which generally isn’t worn at weddings. I asked my neighbor Claudine for help and she had me try on different combinations of things until she found a acceptable skirt and blouse. I was all set, or so I thought.

The night before the wedding Louise came to check up on me. She had me recite my speech again and when I was done she asked me what I planned to wear. I showed her the skirt-and-blouse ensemble. She said, “Who told you to wear that?” I told her Claudine had helped me pick it out. She said, “Claudine doesn’t know anything. You need Rwandan wedding clothes.”

I said, “What are Rwandan wedding clothes?”

Next thing I knew I was being dragged by the hand to the local tailor. Together with Louise she found me a traditional Rwandan wedding outfit, a silk camisole and a beautiful blue wrap with a matching shawl that I wore draped over my shoulder like a toga. It had to be fitted and washed but finally, by 10pm the night before the wedding, I had something to wear.

Sometime around midnight that night my headmaster called me and told me to be dressed and at his house by 6:30 a.m. He said he wanted me to go with him and his family to the dowry ceremony. I said I hadn’t realized I was invited to the dowry ceremony. He said, “Of course you‘re invited. You’re my best man.” I said I thought Vincent was his best man. He said, “Well then you’re my best woman.”

Eight hours later I was jammed into the back of an old pickup truck between my headmaster’s mother and another woman who I think might have been his aunt. It was a long and arduous trip to the bride’s family’s house not because of the actual distance but because we couldn’t get there via the main road, which meant driving down a series of extremely bumpy and narrow dirt paths. We clattered along for what felt like hours over boulders and up hills and through ravines. It would have been kind of fun if I hadn’t had to pee the entire time. When we finally arrived I was so happy to be done traveling I didn’t mind that we had to wait another hour or so for the bride to be ready.

The dowry ceremony was beautiful. It was also very long. It mostly consisted of a very theatrical back-and-forth between the father of the bride and the father of the groom. The agreed-upon dowry was a pair of cattle but instead of offering the cattle straight away the father of the groom offered up a series of small gifts, including a water jug and a pair of hoes. The father of the bride accepted the gifts but every time he asked for something bigger until finally the cattle were presented. Then the bride emerged. She took her place next to the groom while speeches were made and drinks were distributed. Then she and the groom drank traditional sorghum beer from a huge gourd. When the ceremony was over, a twenty-person choir entered and gave an exuberant performance that included dancing and drum-beating and hand-clapping. Then everyone piled into cars and went back to Gihara for the actual wedding.

The religious ceremony was unremarkable. In fact very few people attended because the majority of the guests were in the community center across the street preparing for the reception. The bride wore a veil and a white dress and was attended by bridesmaids like in an American wedding but her father didn’t give her away at the alter since that had already been accomplished at the dowry ceremony. Instead she and the groom each read a series of very long vows, and then the priest made a very long speech, and then a choir performed a few songs, and then she and the groom read more vows. Finally, the priest pronounced them husband and wife and they embraced (without kissing because Rwandans do not kiss in public) and it was time for the reception.

The reception was also very long and laden with ceremony but it was a lot more relaxed and fun than anything that had happened previously. People lit sparklers while the bride and groom made their entrance and food was distributed (one piece of bread and a bite of roasted pork per guest, but it was better than nothing since none of us had eaten all day). Someone shook up a bottle of champagne and sprayed it all over the newlyweds. Then the cake was cut and distributed (a small sliver for each guest, but that was as expected since there were probably two or three hundred people there). The bride and groom fed each other cake and champagne and the bride’s uncle told some jokes. Then it was time to give gifts.

I was first up and I was shaking like a leaf. They handed me a microphone and I think most of the congregation expected me to speak in English so the room went dead quiet when I opened with, “Murakokze mwe mumpaye ijamo. Nshimiye n’abajiye kuntega amatwi kandi murambabarira kuko ntazi ikinyarwanda neza, ariko ndageregeza…”

The crowd went wild when I finished. I got slapped on the back by two or three teachers and a member of the bride’s family (who was quiet drunk due to the lack of food and overabundance of beer) came over and told me we were leaving Gihara together then and there because she was going to take me home with her as her adopted daughter. Success.

After the gift-giving was over, the dancers came out and took the floor. Rwanda is famous for intore, a traditional style of performative dance, but until yesterday I’d only ever seen it in YouTube videos. It involves a lot of stamping and graceful twisting the dancers accompany themselves with singing and clapping. Video cannot capture the intricacy and energy of such a performance. It was especially incredible to see because many of the dancers were my students. They performed in sets - first all the very young girls performed, then very young boys, then the teenage girls, then the teenage boys, then boys and girls together. Then the dancers started pulling members of the wedding party onto the floor. One of my students ran over and tried to take my hand. I told her I didn’t know how to dance intore. She said, “Try!” and I said, “No!” and the tug-of-war continued until I was in the middle of the floor with the rest of the wedding party. All eyes that weren’t on the bride and groom were on me. I was horrified for a moment but then I decided to give into not knowing and just dance. I have no idea how well or badly I performed but when the dance was over I was again slapped on the back and congratulated and told I was a real umunyarwandakaze and that multiple families wanted to take me in as one of their own.

As I was leaving my headmaster found me and took one of my hands in both of his and thanked me for coming and his new wife, Christine, embraced me and kissed both my cheeks. I have been to close to twenty weddings in my life, some for relatives and close friends, but never have I felt such an intimate part of things as I did at my headmaster’s wedding yesterday.

Now I’m off to a naming ceremony. My colleague’s sister had a baby girl last week and most of the community is gathering to choose a name for her. I’ll let you know how it goes.

After I wrote that last post I got emails from a couple people reminding me of the obvious. It doesn’t take a college degree to notice the wealth disparities between “developed” and “developing” countries, especially in a place like Rwanda where the international aid presence is huge. Even if it weren’t for international aid, exposure to tourists and western media would be enough to indicate the enormous differences between life in the “developed” world and here. I guess the reason I find it puzzling because I’m subject to it, if that makes any sense. I know that the United States is “rich” and Rwanda is “poor” but it’s still weird to me that people yell after me for “amafaranga” (money) when I pass them on the street regardless of the fact that I’m dressed like an average Rwandan.

I also found out that in poorer and more rural areas, it’s not just white foreigners who get harangued, it’s anyone who obviously has a regular job. I have a friend who works at the health center here, a nurse, who told me that she can’t wait to move to Kigali because she’s tired of random people asking her for money. She said it’s particularly difficult because she can’t afford to give handouts since she’s already paying her brothers’ school fees. And I thought I was so special.

In other news, I finally launched an English club this afternoon. I almost thought it wasn’t going to happen because I had no idea what room we were supposed to meet in and the teacher I was supposed to be collaborating with was nowhere to be found, but then a group of students from S3 (ninth grade) found me an empty classroom. By the time my colleague showed up I had written all the lyrics to “Yesterday” on the chalkboard and I was teaching the students the second verse. I had initially hoped to spend most of the two-hour meeting answering questions and planning the curriculum for the club collaboratively with the students but when I asked them what they wanted to do in their club they said, “We want to learn English.” I said yes, but what specifically in English? “To speak it,” they said. Well, alright then.

Confusions aside, the club meeting significantly improved my week. I’d been in kind of a bad mood ever since I finished grading midterms because a lot of them received failing grades despite my best efforts to test only on grammar and vocabulary I’d explained several times. At first I blamed myself but then I noticed that the few students who did well were also the few students who consistently turned in homework. I think I’m going to have to give a lecture on study habits sometime in the next couple of weeks.

I also want to do a lot more activities with songs, both in my classes and in my English club. The problem is finding songs that use simple vocabulary, are easy to sing, are inoffensive and are suitable for students between ages fourteen and seventeen. I have a few but they’re all Beatles songs. If anyone has any suggestions please comment or email me!

*Are you a seller or a beggar?

Begging is a difficult subject. In phone calls and emails people have asked me a little bit about beggars and begging here but I haven’t done a blog post on it because I’m not qualified to speak to its causes. My undergraduate degree in international/development studies provided me with a rough outline of the systemic causes of macro-level poverty but for all the Sachs and Easterly I read in college I cannot explain why every small child here knows how to say “give me money” in English. That said, I deal with begging on a daily basis so I can at least talk about my experiences, eschewing my speculations as to the “why” and “how.”

First of all, there are two types of beggars. The first type of beggar is genuinely a beggar - that is, someone who subsists on money given to them by others. These are the people who, like in the United States, appear to have fallen through the cracks in the system. They are the crippled and the deranged** and others who for whatever reason cannot work and have no one to care for them. The second kind of beggar is not really a beggar and in fact would not ask anyone for money under normal circumstances except maybe as a loan. This kind of beggar presents a real challenge because she is one hundred percent convinced that I, as a white foreigner, have wealth beyond her wildest imaginings and that I’d be incredibly selfish not to share just a little of it. As far as she’s concerned, her persistence and aggression are more than justified and my refusal to give is not.

I encounter this kind of beggar everywhere. At the market, people ask me to buy vegetables for them. In town people ask me for money for a cup of tea. One time I was walking into town with a few coins in my pocket to buy bread and a woman asked me for money for a Fanta and when I said I didn’t have money to give her she pointed to my pocket and said, “So what’s that there?”

I rarely encounter this kind of thing when I’m at my house because my immediate neighbors understand my situation. They know that as a Peace Corps volunteer I have less money than some of my colleagues at school and that beyond the netbook and camera I brought from home there are no untold riches to be found in my house. However, there have been times when people have actually come to my doorstep looking for money. One time I was sweeping my porch and a woman with a small child came right up to me, greeted me and asked for 500 francs. I told her in Kinyarwanda that I was not in a position to give 500 francs. She said (in Kinyarwanda), “You want me to believe you have nothing?” I said, “I have enough so that I can eat but not enough to give everyone.” I thought that was a fair enough explanation, but it didn’t deter her. She indicated the child and said, “Look at him. Can’t you give something for him?”

He was an adorable baby, maybe a little underfed but healthy. I told the woman, “You have a beautiful child. But do you see the field by the church there?”

“Yes, I see it.”

“Do you know the children who play there?”

“I know them.”

“I also know them and I love them very much, but many of them are sick and some do not have shoes and some do not eat because their families are poor. I do not have enough to give to all of them. How can I give money for your child and not to the children there who I love so much?”

The woman paused, thought about it and said, “I only want a little.”

This is probably the only thing I encounter at site that consistently frustrates me, the assumption that because I am a foreigner I have money to give. I probably wouldn’t be bothered by it if there weren’t some truth to it in a roundabout way. My Peace Corps “salary” might equal that of an average Rwandan teacher but when my service is over I will have the resources to return to the United States where I will have opportunities that people here do not have. But if I give money to a woman so that she can buy milk for her child one day, what am I doing other than creating a sense of dependency and/or strengthening the notion that foreigners have money, making life that much more difficult for Gihara’s next Peace Corps volunteer?

I have so many unanswered questions about this kind of thing, though. How is it that even small children in remote places know to equate foreigners with money? Is it because the foreigners they encounter are all aid workers and missionaries and tourists? What about those who have never seen an American before? Thanks to Sachs and Easterly, Jared Diamond and Paul Farmer, I know that the United States is a “wealthy” and “developed” country and that Rwanda is relatively “poor” and “developing,” but my neighbors haven’t read these books. Where did they learn this rhetoric of rich and poor, developed and developing?

These are not rhetorical questions. If anyone has any thoughts to offer or if you know of a book or two that might help, please share. Thank you all!

**I apologize if my use of terms like “crippled” and “deranged” is politically incorrect, but for me these terms best capture the condition of the beggars I’ve encountered in Kigali and Gitarama. If I’ve offended anyone, please feel free to comment or email me and I’ll make edits where necessary.

Yesterday I bought a pineapple.

In another context this would not be worthy of a blog post but here the simplest interactions hold equal potential for incredible successes and terrible calamities and more often than not both occur in equal measure. Also, buying a pineapple in Gihara is not a simple transaction for the following reasons:

First, market day is Saturday in Gihara. That is, every Saturday people come from all over to sell fruits and vegetables on blankets and rice sacks laid out in the town square. Yesterday was not Saturday. Yesterday was a Wednesday, and during the week fresh fruits and vegetables are difficult to come by.

Second, whether on market day or not, produce must be purchased directly from the farmers. This means prices are not set, so everything must be bargained for.

Third, muzungus (white people and other obvious foreigners) are often given prices that are two or three times what is standard because it is assumed that foreigners are tourists and tourists have money. That and we’re easy to cheat because we don’t speak the language very well or at all.

Lastly, I really, really, really hate bargaining.

In this context, I went into town on a Wednesday evening to try and find a pineapple. I knew I might not succeed, but I was hopeful. Fortuitously I found a vendor selling an assortment of fresh fruit on a table outside her shop. She only had one pineapple. It was small and oddly shaped but it looked edible so I asked her how much she wanted for it. She said 200 francs. This is the standard price for a really good pineapple. The one she had wasn’t worth more than 100 francs and I knew it but I really, really, really hate bargaining and I was in a hurry to get home before dark so I accepted her price.

While I was fishing around in my bag for the money a woman came over and asked me how much I was paying for the pineapple. I said 200 francs. She looked affronted. She asked why I would pay 200 francs for such a small pineapple. I don’t know how to say “I’m in a hurry” in Kinyarwanda so I just shrugged and gave the vendor the money. The woman told the vendor to give me back half. The vendor started shouting something about amafaranga (money) and umuzungu (foreigner) and the woman started shouting back and I started yelling “It’s no problem, it’s no problem” over the din as loud as I could and pretty soon there was a huge crowd of people standing around us staring. At some point I ducked out of the crowd and ran home, vowing silently never to buy a pineapple in Gihara ever again.

This evening I was out for a walk and I saw that same woman sweeping in front of her house. When she saw me she waved me over. She said in Kinyarwanda, “Do you remember me? The market? The pineapple?” I said I cannot forget a friend. I thanked her for helping me and explained that it’s difficult for me to bargain because I don’t speak much Kinyarwanda and she nodded gravely. She said she hates it when people try to cheat muzungus. I said, “Well, I understand, it’s because they think I have money.” She said yes, but it should not matter - your skin might be one color and mine might be another color but we are the same. For most Americans this kind of rhetoric of racial equality is familiar to the point of being cliché and disingenuous. But when I heard this woman in rural Rwanda say that she and I are the same I knew that she meant it with all her heart, at that moment at least, and I was almost moved to tears.

The woman’s name is Goreti. I think next week I will visit her. Maybe I will bring her a pineapple.

It hasn’t been long since my last post but I don’t feel like finishing my lesson plans for next week so I’m blogging instead. Or, to put it another way, I feel inspired to blog because I’ve had a really good week. The lesson plans will get written.

Yesterday I took a walk past the school up a hill I’d never explored before and met a young woman on her way home from the market. She had her month-old baby girl tied to her back with a cotton cloth, which is how mamas carry their babies here. She immediately invited me to visit her at her house and due in equal parts to curiosity and confusion over what she was saying, I followed her. When we arrived she brought a stool out for me to sit on and unslung her baby girl and burped her and then handed her to me. My first thought was, this is going to be messy. As if on cue, the baby urinated all over my legs. The mother ignored this. When the baby started to cry she took her from me and began to breastfeed her without batting an eye. I tried my best to be calm and cheerful despite being soaked in pee. I sat for as long as I could stand to and then I got up, promised a future visit, and went home to change.

As soon as I got inside it began to pour rain. I left the door open and sat on my bed and played guitar with a pen cap because I can’t find my pick and sang as loudly as I could into the downpour. I have no idea what there was to be so happy about, but I was ecstatic. Simple pleasures are profound here - like, for example, not being caught in the rain, and not being soaked in pee.

I should be starting an English club sometime in the next couple of weeks. I’ve located the teacher who is supposed to help me and now that I’ve met him and I can see why he was chosen to do so. He’s been teaching English in Rwanda for the last eight years and he speaks English impeccably, if haltingly and pedantically. He is in the process of writing a comprehensive English textbook with explanations in Kinyarwanda and as a result he’s been too busy to start an English club by himself, but he told me that if the club meets once a week only he can be there with me. I told him we could talk about it again after I give a midterm exam. I have no idea what the process is for giving a midterm and I want to tackle one unknown at a time.

In spite of (or maybe because of?) all the minute frustrations and confusions, I feel more and more every day like I belong here. Earlier this evening I was out watching the sunset and struck me how badly I will miss things like the smell of charcoal fires and I was incredibly sad for a moment, but then I realized I have almost a whole two years ahead of me.

I was going to wait awhile before updating again but I’ve received some letters and emails with questions about my situation at site and I think it’s most convenient for everyone if I answer them here.

Some of you asked me what amenities I have at site. I have to admit that my situation is pretty luxurious as far as Peace Corps Rwanda goes. I have electricity in my house most of the time which allows me to charge my phone and computer on a regular basis and to read at night without having to use a kerosene lamp or a candle. It also means I can cook with electricity if I want to and I do have a hotplate that I use for quick-cooking things like rice but I don’t like to use it too often because it ends up costing a lot if I do. I do most of my cooking on a charcoal stove called an imbabura. It’s messy and a bit of a hassle but since matches cost next to nothing and charcoal is less than two dollars for a big bag it’s by far the most cost-effective way to cook. I do not have running water in my house so I have to fetch water from the rain tankard next door. I keep my water for cooking and dishwashing in jerry cans and my water for bathing in a big bucket in my bathroom. I do not heat my bathing water. Cold bucket baths are a great way to wake up quickly, and since most days I wake up before sunrise and I need the help.

A few of you also asked if I have access to television or other media. The answer is yes and no. I live next door to a convent and the nuns own a television, so when I have dinner with them I get to watch one of two Rwandan TV stations. One has news and the other has music videos and that’s it. I have sporadic internet access via a thumb drive modem that uses the same network as my cell phone and I’ve been using that for email, blogging and occasionally reading the news, but it costs per amount of data sent so I can’t download or upload things very cheaply. My shortwave radio works quite well here but it only picks up local stations. Occasionally I can pick up French radio stations and very occasionally I get the BBC, but it’s almost inaudible with all the static. I do not have a way to access movies or music other than what I have on my computer. If there’s a movie theater in Kigali (I’m pretty sure there is) I have no idea where it is or what kind of movies are shown there. Chances are I’ll be two years behind in movies and music when I come back to the States, but those are fun things to catch up on so it doesn’t worry me too much.

I think someone asked me in an email about the local wildlife. Truth be told, there aren’t a lot of exciting animals at my site. Most of the more exotic faunda - monkeys, gorillas, that kind of thing - inhabit the far west and north, but I’m right in the center of the country. My neighbors own things like goats and cows and chickens and there are lots of colorful little birds and beetles but that’s about it. Oh, and there are tons of honeybees. They like to come in under my door at night and crawl into bed with me which is a little unnerving, but since they’re by far the most dangerous animal in my immediate vicinity I consider myself lucky.

Things are still going well at site, but I’m realizing I have a lot to learn yet. There’s a phrase in Kinyarwanda that people use to describe gradual progress - buhoro buhoro. It means “slowly, slowly.” So, buhoro buhoro I am getting to know my community and the people who live in it. Yesterday my colleague Anonce showed me a small village adjacent to Gihara where people make pottery. They had everything from giant clay pots for storing traditional sorghum beer to tiny ceramic gorillas to sell to tourists. We hiked to the edge of town where we could see out over a vast green valley with a river running through. She told me that some day she will take me down into the valley to see the crocodiles in the river. She also told me that sugarcane groves grow on the riverbanks and promised that she will find me some raw sugarcane so I can see what it tastes like. I told her I feel lucky to know her, which is true.

I haven’t organized an English club yet largely because I found out that another teacher has been assigned to help me but I don’t know who he is. I asked my dean of studies who gave me a physical description, so now my mission is to hang out in the teacher’s lounge until I see him. I’m kind of glad I can’t get started right away because it means I can focus on teaching and getting to know my students. I’ve been trying to learn their names but I’m having quite a lot of trouble because I have almost ninety students in total and about six of them are named Jean Claude. Another six are all named Clementine. Another dozen never say anything in class so when I run into them in town they have to remind me that I’m their teacher, which is thoroughly embarrassing. But I’ll get to know them eventually.

I’m impatient to get started on a project or several so I can start giving back to this community that has been so good to me, but whenever I start to wonder, “Why am I not organizing English classes for the nurses at the health center? Why am I not tutoring the other teachers at my school? Why haven’t I written the midterm exam yet?” I am reminded in some way or other that I’m still incredibly new to this place and that I need to take the time to find my way around. Buhoro buhoro, nzabimenya.

Hi again, just wanted to let you all know that I have a personal post office box now. The address is:

B.P. 216

Gitarama, Rwanda

If anyone has sent anything to my old address within the last three weeks it’s not a problem, just let me know so I know to check for my mail in Kigali and not in Gitarama (they’re about two hours apart by bus). I tried on Thursday to get a box set up in Kigali to keep things simple but after getting there, locating the post office, having a friendly but unduly long chat with a post worker and finally getting directed to the appropriate desk, I was told that no post office boxes are available in Kigali and that I should try back another time. I didn’t feel like waiting so I got one in Gitarama yesterday.

Other than the new mailing address there’s not a whole lot to report. I’m slowly getting into the swing of things here. Last week I sat through a four-hour staff meeting that was conducted entirely in Kinyarwanda. About three hours in I gathered that they were selecting teachers to be in charge of various after-school clubs and that someone had nominated me for traditional dance. I explained in French that I don’t know anything about traditional dance but that I could be in charge of an English language club. My headmaster said in English, “We don’t have one.” I said, “Would you like one?” This was met with cheers and applause. I’m not entirely sure what I’m expected to do to get started, but I’m meeting with another teacher tomorrow for lunch and I intend to bring a notepad and ask a lot of questions.

I’m learning how to cook Rwandan food with the help of one of my neighbors. So far she’s taught me how to prepare beans, cabbage, potato soup, fried plantains and “frites.” She offered to show me how to cook meat but I’m terrified of buying meat so I told her I don’t like to eat it. I’m also terrified of buying unpasteurized milk so I’ve been vegan for the last two weeks except for the occasional egg. I successfully made some banana pancakes this morning and shared them with my neighbors who seemed to enjoy them. Next I’ll introduce them to French toast.

I guess that’s all for now. One final note: thanks, Grandma and Grandpa, for the Christmas package! It finally arrived last week. I’d almost forgotten what chocolate tasted like and now I have more than I know what to do with. It’s a nice problem to have.

Hey everyone! It’s been awhile, as predicted - I still have internet access via modem, but it’s unreliable because it uses the same network as my cell phone and the signal isn’t very strong here. Also, it actually costs me money to go online now. I’m still going to try and post once or twice month or whenever there’s anything important to report - like my new mailing address.

About that - I’m currently in the process of figuring out the process of setting up my own P.O. box. I can still receive mail at the Peace Corps mail box (BP 5657) but the Peace Corps has asked that all volunteers try and set up a different mailing address within a month, otherwise they’ll charge us exorbitant amounts to retrieve our mail. Or something like that. So if you want to send me anything, hang on - I should have a new mailing address within the week and I’ll be sure to post it.

Anyway, I’m a volunteer now! I was “installed” at my site on Friday and I began teaching on Monday (technically, anyway - more on that later). All in all, it’s been pretty great. When I came here for site visit in November the village seemed claustrophobically small, but now that I’m living here I feel like there’s infinite territory to explore. There’s a maternity center, a family planning center, a Catholic church, a tailor and a number of shops not just within walking distance of my house but literally within sight of my front gate. Every Saturday there’s a market where you can buy fresh vegetables and fruit, clothes, sandals and other odds and ends. I’m still navigating my way around, but my neighbors are very eager to help me out.

I learned today that the shop where I bought airtime during site visit occasionally sells bananas and avocadoes. Things like this are cause for endless excitement, especially since I haven’t figured out how to effectively shop for food yet.

Coming here was an experience unto itself. Unlike PCVs in many countries, we weren’t required to use public transportation to get to our sites (and thank God, because I had way too much stuff to take with me on a bus). Instead we were driven to our sites in small groups. I rode with four other volunteers and Kassim, our Program and Training Assistant Director. We only took about an hour getting to Kamonyi from Nyanza but we spent an additional hour and a half going up various dirt roads to find the district office so Kassim could alert the authorities of my presence. At one point we came to a spot in the road that was covered with felled eucalyptus trees. We stopped and Kassim got out to talk to a group of shirtless axe-wielding men who were presumably responsible for the roadblock. After some very rapid Kinyarwanda was exchanged, Kassim got back in the car. I thought we were going to go back, but instead our driver shifted gears, revved the engine and drove right over the felled trees. Then Kassim turned to us and said, “This is a four-wheel drive.” No kidding.

The first day of classes was a little chaotic, as anticipated. My first class simply didn’t happen because the students were mopping out the classrooms. Then no one showed up to take my place at the end of my second class (in Rwanda, teachers go from classroom to classroom, not students). I taught for an extra twenty minutes and eventually left to find the headmaster. I never found him, but on my way to his office I collected a herd of about 200 children from the primary school, all of which wanted to touch my skin. I found out later that my schedule actually involved teaching two two-hour blocks three times a week instead of two one-hour blocks five times a week. I’m still not sure if something had gotten lost in translation or if my headmaster just didn’t want to tell me that he didn’t know the class schedule.

Scheduling mishaps and small children aside, I’m completely enchanted with my site and my job. My headmaster and Dean of Studies are incredibly supportive and my colleagues and neighbors are very friendly. The nuns from the health center and the women who work at the maternity center check on me several times a day, which means that I generally have no privacy and plenty of food. Everyone I meet is always asking me when I will visit and I haven’t yet figured out if they’re serious or not, but either way it’s nice. And Gihara, my cell, is beautiful. There are mango trees, corn groves, coffee groves and banana groves in abundance. It’s sunny every morning and rains almost every afternoon. I like it.

I miss everyone back home, though. I taped some photos to my wall yesterday and it made me really happy. If and when I get a P.O. box I’d love for people to send me more photos to put up.

This week was the homestretch to becoming a volunteer. We had a series of exams on language, cultural knowledge, health, safety and Peace Corps policies culminating in the final LPI (Language Proficiency Interview) on Thursday. The LPI is apparently a huge stumbling block for a lot of trainees - basically how it works is, you go into a room with an LCF and have a conversation in Kinyarwanda and if you understand most of what's going on, you get to swear in. If you don't pull that off, you don't swear in.

Well, today I found I passed all my tests - including the LPI - with flying colors. I will be going to Kigali on Sunday with the rest of the trainees and staff and I will officially swear in as a PCV on January 3rd. The ceremony will be held at the ambassador's estate and a Rwandan television crew will be present - it will be quite an event. In a moment I'm heading off to a local seamstress to pick up my dress for the ceremony (hopefully it's finished!) but before I do, I want to make a brief statement in Kinyarwanda:

Icyumweru gitaha, nzarahira na nzaba umukorerabushake wa Peace Corps. Nzakora indahiro gufasha abantu wa Rwanda. Nishimiye cyane. Nzakumbura abariumu banjye na bagenzi banjye - nzabasura mugihi ndi mu Rwanda - ariko ndashaka kuba kuri site yanjye. Ndakumbura umuryango wanjye muri Amerika noneho - ni kubaberako ndi hano, kandi ndabakunda cyane.My apologies to any native speakers who read this - I'm still working on my use of object pronoun infixes. Thanks all, happy New Year!

Merry Christmas, everyone! It's probably 90 degrees here but we're doing our best to get in the Christmas spirit.

Last night we took over a local restaurant and had a giant game of white elephant, followed by a talent show (a time-honored PST tradition) and dancing. We had some fantastic gifts with very creative wrapping - American candy and Nutella purchased in Butare, second-hand t-shirts and ugly Christmas sweaters from the local market, Rwandan jewelry, apples imported from Europe and so on. The talent show was also pretty spectacular. There was a fantastic rendition of a Flight of the Concords song, some spoken-word poetry, and some traditional Rwandan dancing. I and my friend Genevieve performed a duet, "Angel from Montgomery," and she accompanied us on ukulele. Overall, it was a success.

The last day of model school was also pretty awesome. Since it was the day before Christmas eve, I decided to spend the entire class period teaching my students about wassailing. Then I taught them a traditional wassail song. They got really into it - by the end of the class period they knew almost all of the words and had the melody down. I wished I'd had time to teach them a harmony. There are lots of church choirs in Rwanda, but schools generally don't have choral groups. I'm dying to start one as a secondary project, but we'll see.

I'm definitely homesick for my family today but all of the PCTs feel the same, so it's not so bad. We're going to celebrate today by baking spice cake and watching Christmas movies at the training center. I hope you all are having a great Christmas back home and I hope it's cold!

This post will be quick and dirty because I plan to update again after Christmas. I will not be sending any cards home because apparently there is some kind of embargo on mail going from Rwanda to the U.S. and Canada. I can still receive mail, I just can't send anything out. I've yet to figure out why - I tried Googling "Rwanda-U.S. mail" and came up with nothing. If anyone can find out what's up, please email me and let me know. The other trainees will thank you!

Also, as I may or may not have mentioned before, I have been posting a lot lately because there is free wireless at the training site in Nyanza right now. I still plan to buy a modem before I go to site in January, but it will cost me actual money to load blogger so I will not be posting as often - probably once every two or three weeks.

Okay, that's all for now. I miss you all and hope to talk to some of you over the next couple of days - and I'll let you know how the festivities progress here!

Well, I'm 23! I had an awesome birthday. We took a field trip to Butare again so I got to have ice cream and it was just as magical as my first encounter with Butare ice cream. I will be dreaming about it every night at least until I go to Kigali for swearing-in, where ice cream can also be found. Supposedly. We shall see.

I'm starting my second week of model school and it's still going decently well, but it's not easy. We're actually losing students at an alarming rate because it's their vacation right now, so they're attending voluntarily (or their parents are making them attend) and our lessons haven't been interesting enough, relevant enough or comprehensible enough to maintain an audience. I reacted to this problem by reading through the national exam for S3 students and writing a lesson plan based on the content therein, namely social issues in Rwanda, summarizing passages and writing paragraphs. In theory it was a great idea, but despite my best efforts the discussion of social issues was awkward and the vast majority of my students have no idea what a paragraph is. I'm taking a day off teaching tomorrow to do a double lesson on Wednesday, and by then I hope to have some ideas for how to teach a lighter class on a similar topic.

On an entirely unrelated note, I had the opportunity to visit the Murambi Genocide Memorial last Sunday. It was my second trip to a genocide memorial - we visited one in Kigali but it was very different. I am willing to share any information of interest about either of them, but I'm reluctant to do a whole blog post about them because most of what Americans know about Rwanda involves the genocide. I also feel that the story of the genocide is not my story to tell, at least not in my blog. If any of you have any questions feel free to email me and I will tell you whatever you want to know.

I will say briefly - the Murambi Memorial is located in an old school building where Tutsis took refuge during the genocide and were slaughtered en masse by Interhamwe militia. The school grounds contain several mass graves and the old classrooms contain the preserved bodies of victims. The bodies have been mummified with limestone so they are pale and skeletal and not at all horrifying, just difficult to look at. Eventually there will also be an informational display like the one in the Gisenyi Memorial in Kigali, but it is still being constructed. I can't succinctly describe my thoughts on the memorial but I will say that I'm glad I went. I think it is important for us as educators to at least have some small awareness of what this country - and many of our students - have been through. Again, email me with questions if you have them.

One final bit of news - I got packages today! Thanks Mom and Dad - I'm so happy to have an advent calendar it's not even funny. Also, I got another letter from Grandpa - thanks to you too, I enjoy reading your letters very very much. They are a tiny oasis of peace in an otherwise overwhelming environment.

I'm still working on sending paper mail home. Ni hangane, everyone.

Week One of Model School complete! It wasn't a total disaster and I count that as a small but significant victory. My class is wonderful - I teach 37 S3 (ninth grade) students for an hour every day and they are super sweet and engaged but also very shy. They're very reluctant to ask questions or to respond to my questions unless they're sure they have correct answers. As a result I've been seduced into teaching content that is probably way too easy - we spent most of the week drawing family trees and naming the different family members. I plan to step it up next week.

I've been surprised by what is challenging about teaching and what isn't. I have absolutely zero stage fright in front of my class, which is good - I definitely expected to shake like a leaf on the first day, and I didn't. I also thought writing legibly on a chalkboard would be difficult, but it's easy and surprisingly fun. The hard part is knowing what to teach (we don't have textbooks and the national curriculum is pretty unspecific) and how to teach it in a way that engages everyone and keeps class's energy level up for the whole hour. It's also hard to get a wide range of students to be responsive, in part because they're so shy about giving wrong answers. A couple of times I've tried calling on students who don't raise their hands - it works in the States, so I assumed it would work here. Wrong! If you try to force a response out of a student, you'll get a horrified stare and silence. Maybe with practice it will get better, but right now I'm not sure what to do about that.

It's also hard to know what name to use. In Rwanda, professionals are usually called by their titles and not their names - for example, a judge will be referred to simply as "Judge," and a teacher is simply called "Teacher," not Mr. or Ms. I have asked my students to call me Ms. Gelsey or Teacher, whichever they prefer. In general they don't refer to me by name but I want them to at least know who I am. I haven't bothered telling them my last name because the spelling is so confusing, but many of the other trainees have asked to be called by their last names, or modified versions of their last names. Model School is great for this kind of minutiae. It's an opportunity to see what works and what doesn't.

On an entirely unrelated note - I've been blogging/emailing a lot lately because there's free wireless internet at the training site right now! Internet access isn't perfectly reliable but it's pretty good, so if any of you want to try Skyping please email me and we'll set something up. I still plan to buy a modem before I go to site but I don't know how well it will work, how much it will cost to use or if I'll even have a a fully-functional computer by then, so I'm trying to take full advantage of reliable free internet while I have it.

One final thing - sorry I haven't sent any paper mail home yet! I've figured out how to do it, I just haven't gotten around to it because internet is free for me right now and I've had lesson plans to write. I guess I've also just been lazy about it. I probably won't get letters out in time for Christmas but at SOME point I'm going to locate my address book and send some.

That's all for now. Thanks for following!

Hi all! There isn't much to report, but I did want to let everyone know that I finally received my first batch of mail from home this week. I got a postcard from Sonya, letters 2 and 3 from Grandpa, a letter from Mom and Dad with photos from our trip to Boston and my travel guitar. Thank you all so much for sending me mail, and a HUGE hug and kiss to Dad for building a case to send my guitar in and going to all the trouble and expense to actually send it. I love having it, not just because I can play it whenever I want but because I have something to share with other volunteers. Thank you thank you thank you!

Next week I will begin teaching model school and I'm freaking out. Model school is exactly what it sounds like - the training staff recruited kids from Nyanza to act as students so the trainees can practice teaching. Half of the trainees have already started model school but I don't start until Monday. It's been kind of nice having the extra time to plan lessons etc, but since I have no idea how much English my class will know I'll probably have to redo any plans I make now. I'm developing a much greater appreciation for all of my middle school teachers, I'll say that much.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! I'm sad I can't be with y'all for the most indulgent of American holidays.

I and the other trainees are doing our best to bring Thanksgiving to Rwanda. The embassy gave us some turkeys and we're currently cooking them over hot coals in a giant pit we dug yesterday. I guess it's supposed to work like a really big dutch oven - we'll see how successful it is. We're also making apple crisp, mashed potatoes, African sweet potatoes and mango-pineapple upside-down cake. We have only local ingredients and charcoal stoves, so improvisation has been key. We wanted to make pumpkin pie but we could only find one pumpkin in all of Nyanza and it was green. But, hakuna matata. It's going to be an awesome Thanksgiving, with or without pumpkin pie.

I have photos to upload, mostly of Nyanza and the training site, but my computer has been acting up. Every time I try to do something that requires hard disk space I have to wait thirty seconds to several minutes, even though I have plenty of hard disk space and my hard drive is defragged (de-frag-ed?). If anyone has any suggestions as to what I can do, please email me at gelseyh@gmail.com. I really don't want to have to send my computer back to the States to get it fixed.

That's all for now. Love and peace!

Hi everyone! I'm back from my site visit in Kamonyi District - the name of my sector is Gihara, for those of you who want to look me up on Google Maps (if Google Maps covers Gihara - I honestly have no idea). I had an incredible week.

If you all could see my site, you would be jealous. I have a tiny two-room house all to myself in the garden behind a Catholic convent. I will be teaching at a day school, GS St. Dominique, that's a five-minute walk from my house. The school has 2000+ students, grades 1-9. I will be teaching either 8th or 9th grade English - I don't know which yet. Apparently my schedule will be determined at the beginning of the next trimester. The school is tiny but gorgeous - the classrooms are little brick buildings and the entire campus sits at the edge of a cliff that overlooks a coffee grove, rolling hills and in the not-so-distant distance, the capital city, Kigali.

My house wasn't ready for me to stay in this week, so I stayed in a room in the convent and ate all of my meals with the nuns. I count them all as friends now and I think they feel the same way about me. In the very least they find me entertaining. On my second day at the convent I managed to lock myself in the latrine and had to call for help. They had a good laugh at my expense over that. It took three of them and a spoon to get the door open.

I tried to meet other people in my community, with limited success. I was introduced to the headmaster and director of studies at St. Dominique and I was able to parce things out with them in French. I attempted to talk to my other neighbors in Kinyarwanda but conversation was difficult due to my limited vocabulary; right now I know how to say, "Hello, my name is Gelsey, I will be teaching English at St. Dominique, I am a Peace Corps volunteer," and that's about all. That and "please pass the salt."

I'm almost out of time, but thanks all for reading, and please email me if you have any further questions.