Thursday, March 25, 2010
I spent this afternoon with another trainee, drawing a very skewed map of Rwanda on concrete in front of our training center so that we could all get our site placements and stand on our spot on the map. So we all know the area where we are going and which of the other trainees are nearby. So I have my site placement!!! I will be spending my two years of Peace Corps service in Gashora, Rwanda, in the Eastern Province. And it’s the exact site I was hoping that I would get! I’ll be working for a program called the Access Project, and I’ll look up some more specific information when I can, but for now I know that it’s a new health center and I’m the first volunteer there, so I have a ton of work cut out for me. The organization has a few other current health volunteers at other sites in the country, and from everything that they said, it is a great organization, well-structured, and there is a ton of work to be done. Particularly in human resources! I’m absolutely floored, so excited… I feel like I will actually be useful for the next two years and will be able to make a difference. From what I know, the area isn’t incredibly rural, but isn’t big city either… there are two or three really pretty lakes… it’s flat, and really hot, and drier than the rest of the country… it’s close to the Burundi border and not too far from Kigali, the capital city… and apparently that area has some kind of interesting genocide history. I’m using the term interesting very loosely… but… didn’t join the Peace Corps because it was going to be easy.
So on Sunday we leave for Kigali, where we will meet our supervisors and community guides… we’ll stay in Kigali for a couple of days, and then all leave for our separate sites and stay there until next Sunday. I’ll be staying in a hotel at my site… so who knows what that will be like, but it means that wherever my house is, it isn’t ready yet… but hopefully they will know where it is and I’ll be able to see it! Site visit is supposed to be one of the most stressful times for a trainee/volunteer and supposedly we will all hit a slump after the visit… but we’ll see. I know it will be awkward and I don’t know enough of the language… but I’m still excited. We will receive our job descriptions tomorrow and spend the morning doing “site visit preparation” so hopefully I’ll get a chance to write another blog with more info and get to the internet to post. For now, I need to go to bed… I’ve been waking up at 3:30 in the morning for the last three or four nights… hopefully I’ll sleep better now that I know what my site is, and I got what I wanted!
Mwaramuke!
Friday, March 26, 2010
Hoping to make it to the internet café tonight or tomorrow… but for now I’m still extremely excited about my site placement. We got our job descriptions today, and mine basically says that everything needs to be done! My site is in the Bugesera district, and the health center is the brand new Gashora Health Center. I’m placed in the district with three other volunteers in the district, and quite a few will be pretty close. My job’s primary function will be managing the health center. Training and mentoring the staff… and working to get sustainable programs in place to make the center more efficient, even after I leave in a couple of years. It’s a huge job… and I can’t wait.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
I farmed today!!! And for those of you that would never believe it… there are pictures! Although it may be awhile before they’re seen depending on the internet speed…
So on the last Saturday of every month, everyone in Rwanda is required to participate in Umuganda, which is basically work done in your community, organized on the community (umudugudu) level. It’s amazing. Anyone who doesn’t participate is reported to community leaders and issued a fine. So, our group went to a large project where a community was tilling a huge grassy field, on a rather large hill, in order to plant cassava for the community. Hundreds of people working together in a line with nothing but hand-held hoes tilling this field… and not one of them was getting paid for it. It is such an amazing concept. Can anyone actually see Americans doing the same thing across the country on one day a month? So we got right in there and tilled this field with the Rwandans… who of course laughed at us, and then showed us how to do it right. So I got my technique down pretty good and was actually called “umuhinzi mwiza” (good farmer) and one guy said I was strong… in sign language. It was a really great experience. Although I do have some rather amazing blisters on my hands from the work… some gardening gloves would have been a good idea! So the last Saturday of every month I will probably be spending half of my day helping my community in the fields. How awesome is that?!
Not much else going on here… last night we had the group talent show, which was hilarious… I can’t even put that into words! And now I’m trying to prepare for my site visit this upcoming week… doing laundry (by hand, in a bucket… every simple task is redefined here!) and hoping it doesn’t rain so that it will dry!
Ok, now sitting at the internet café with no power, a storm rolling in… and therefore no internet connection… love it! So this morning while I was doing umuganda, I was having one of those moments that I periodically have here where I am just amazed that I’m here. This really is the experience of a lifetime and I’m so disappointed in myself that I can’t explain it properly! I mean, it’s not just about the location, and the scenery, and the experiences themselves… it’s about the people… and the fact that we are in the middle of a completely different culture, communicating (little by little… buhoro buhoro…) and being involved in their lives… it’s incredible.
Success! And check out www.theaccessproject.com for more info on my organization...
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Pictures
Tried to upload a pic or two, but it didn't work... but feel free to check out my roomate's pictures! http://picasaweb.google.com/jolsen87
Monday, March 15, 2010
It is HOT here today! For some reason we are all just dying here today. Everyone just seems too tired to learn anything! But, attempts at language have been made… it was a rough class today. They’re giving us the language a little at a time, without explaining the grammar the way we’re all used to in language classes… and it’s difficult to say the least, and we’re frustrated… but we have to just put our trust in the language teachers that they know what they’re teaching us and how to do it in 10 weeks.
We have less than 8 weeks of training left… it will probably start to drag by at some point, but for now I’m just freaked out that I only have 8 weeks left to learn enough to get by with! Not too much exciting today… just busy. I need to make more flash cards and work on studying tonight… such an exciting life I lead here. The roommates are watching episodes of Friends… it’s amazing how addicted to that stuff everyone is when it‘s no longer readily available. I rarely watched TV in the states… I haven’t decided if I will get to the point where I really want to watch the stuff here!
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
It has been such an interesting couple of days! It’s one thing to have language thrown at us all day… but so much of the rest of the information we’ve gotten has stressed me out quite a bit. From the medical sessions where we learn about all of the random parasites and intestinal problems we could, and likely will, encounter here… to the technical sessions where we learn about HIV/AIDS and various other community health initiatives that I have no experience with… our technical training has made me stress out about site placement so much. But the last couple of days we had sessions with a couple of volunteers that work in organizational development within health systems strengthening… which is the area that our Associate Peace Corps Director for Health here in Rwanda told me I would likely be working in. So we're supposed to find out our site placements next week and then do site visits the week after that, but we'll see... the Peace Corps loves to change things! :)
Other than that, things are about the same around here. More and more Kinyarwanda… I have to figure out a better way to retain vocabulary because I’m not memorizing things as well as I should be! Things like numbers and time are such a struggle… for instance, thirty six is mirongo itatu na atandatu and I may have possibly spelled that wrong… but it’s just so long! And times do correspond to the numbers… but their “first hour” is 7 in the morning… so one is at 7, two is at 8, and so on. So someone asks you what time it is and you have to check the time, translate the current hour into their hour and then that number into Kinyarwanda! Ok, I’ll stop complaining about how difficult the language is.
Funny thing about being here is the things we miss without even having been gone for very long. Everyone has already started talking about food we miss… food here is pretty bland. And when I pull out my iPod every few days it’s so nice to hear music! I miss country radio already! I think it’s because our days are so structured and the fact that we all know we’re going to be here for more than two years is in the back of our minds. My new favorite things in two years are going to be hot showers and ice cubes.
A few people have complained about the super hard pillows and the wood frame bunk beds with only about a three inch foam mattress to sleep on… but I love it! Apparently the benefit of loving a hard mattress is the ability to sleep on anything. To think that I had a full box spring and mattress at home and I’m perfectly happy sleeping on a few inches of foam…
I’m currently sitting right inside our front door, typing, and one of the neighborhood kids has climbed up to the bottom of our metal fence so that he can look in and is making animal noises at me and some of my other housemates who are sitting on the front porch. And for some reason this is no longer a strange occurrence! Then again, one of my roommates did teach the neighborhood kids animal sounds while she was teaching them English words for animals… but they’ve gotten very good at it!
I know I’m rambling a bit, but I’m making the effort to blog more and share more of the random things that happen here… it’s so easy to get wrapped up in the daily life and not want to write because I can’t decide what to put on the page.
It’s off to dinner soon… we actually have a session after dinner tonight, so it will be a later night than usual, so I have to make sure that my world is in order so that I can crash when I get back… seeing as it’s 6pm and I’m already tired!
Saturday, March 20, 2010
It’s been an interesting day. We were scheduled to go to one of the national parks today and the Peace Corps had negotiated a discounted rate for us… so we drove 3 hours down there and while it’s a pretty drive, it’s not a fun one! Very curvy roads up the mountains… and I get minor motion sickness. So I didn’t feel great. But we got there, they wouldn’t give us the discounted rate, so we drove through the park of the park we could drive through, and then drove home. But, I did get a few great pictures when we were in the rainforest. It’s cooler at the higher elevation, and it’s just so green and beautiful, it’s amazing. I’ll try to load a couple of pictures tomorrow. AND we saw monkeys just hanging out in the trees on the side of the road!
Tonight we’re having a party for the handful of March birthdays we have in our group… so it’s off to dinner and drinks soon. I’m planning to head to the internet café tomorrow, but we’ll see. I need to spend most of tomorrow studying.
It is HOT here today! For some reason we are all just dying here today. Everyone just seems too tired to learn anything! But, attempts at language have been made… it was a rough class today. They’re giving us the language a little at a time, without explaining the grammar the way we’re all used to in language classes… and it’s difficult to say the least, and we’re frustrated… but we have to just put our trust in the language teachers that they know what they’re teaching us and how to do it in 10 weeks.
We have less than 8 weeks of training left… it will probably start to drag by at some point, but for now I’m just freaked out that I only have 8 weeks left to learn enough to get by with! Not too much exciting today… just busy. I need to make more flash cards and work on studying tonight… such an exciting life I lead here. The roommates are watching episodes of Friends… it’s amazing how addicted to that stuff everyone is when it‘s no longer readily available. I rarely watched TV in the states… I haven’t decided if I will get to the point where I really want to watch the stuff here!
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
It has been such an interesting couple of days! It’s one thing to have language thrown at us all day… but so much of the rest of the information we’ve gotten has stressed me out quite a bit. From the medical sessions where we learn about all of the random parasites and intestinal problems we could, and likely will, encounter here… to the technical sessions where we learn about HIV/AIDS and various other community health initiatives that I have no experience with… our technical training has made me stress out about site placement so much. But the last couple of days we had sessions with a couple of volunteers that work in organizational development within health systems strengthening… which is the area that our Associate Peace Corps Director for Health here in Rwanda told me I would likely be working in. So we're supposed to find out our site placements next week and then do site visits the week after that, but we'll see... the Peace Corps loves to change things! :)
Other than that, things are about the same around here. More and more Kinyarwanda… I have to figure out a better way to retain vocabulary because I’m not memorizing things as well as I should be! Things like numbers and time are such a struggle… for instance, thirty six is mirongo itatu na atandatu and I may have possibly spelled that wrong… but it’s just so long! And times do correspond to the numbers… but their “first hour” is 7 in the morning… so one is at 7, two is at 8, and so on. So someone asks you what time it is and you have to check the time, translate the current hour into their hour and then that number into Kinyarwanda! Ok, I’ll stop complaining about how difficult the language is.
Funny thing about being here is the things we miss without even having been gone for very long. Everyone has already started talking about food we miss… food here is pretty bland. And when I pull out my iPod every few days it’s so nice to hear music! I miss country radio already! I think it’s because our days are so structured and the fact that we all know we’re going to be here for more than two years is in the back of our minds. My new favorite things in two years are going to be hot showers and ice cubes.
A few people have complained about the super hard pillows and the wood frame bunk beds with only about a three inch foam mattress to sleep on… but I love it! Apparently the benefit of loving a hard mattress is the ability to sleep on anything. To think that I had a full box spring and mattress at home and I’m perfectly happy sleeping on a few inches of foam…
I’m currently sitting right inside our front door, typing, and one of the neighborhood kids has climbed up to the bottom of our metal fence so that he can look in and is making animal noises at me and some of my other housemates who are sitting on the front porch. And for some reason this is no longer a strange occurrence! Then again, one of my roommates did teach the neighborhood kids animal sounds while she was teaching them English words for animals… but they’ve gotten very good at it!
I know I’m rambling a bit, but I’m making the effort to blog more and share more of the random things that happen here… it’s so easy to get wrapped up in the daily life and not want to write because I can’t decide what to put on the page.
It’s off to dinner soon… we actually have a session after dinner tonight, so it will be a later night than usual, so I have to make sure that my world is in order so that I can crash when I get back… seeing as it’s 6pm and I’m already tired!
Saturday, March 20, 2010
It’s been an interesting day. We were scheduled to go to one of the national parks today and the Peace Corps had negotiated a discounted rate for us… so we drove 3 hours down there and while it’s a pretty drive, it’s not a fun one! Very curvy roads up the mountains… and I get minor motion sickness. So I didn’t feel great. But we got there, they wouldn’t give us the discounted rate, so we drove through the park of the park we could drive through, and then drove home. But, I did get a few great pictures when we were in the rainforest. It’s cooler at the higher elevation, and it’s just so green and beautiful, it’s amazing. I’ll try to load a couple of pictures tomorrow. AND we saw monkeys just hanging out in the trees on the side of the road!
Tonight we’re having a party for the handful of March birthdays we have in our group… so it’s off to dinner and drinks soon. I’m planning to head to the internet café tomorrow, but we’ll see. I need to spend most of tomorrow studying.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Update
Saturday, March 13, 2010
What a long day. It’s only 5pm and it feels like I should be in bed passed out. The day started with a 1am wake up and then up the rest of the night with stomach cramps… which just confirms what I was already thinking… I can’t eat the meat here. Whatever it is, I just can’t stomach it.
Then I was up and heading to breakfast before 7am this morning to prepare for our first language simulation tests that started at 7:30am… which I think I did ok on, but not great. Yay for Saturday morning stress! Then it was off to Butare, for lunch and some shopping! It’s a bigger city with some items available for muzungus! So I bought a chocolate bar, a couple of lollipops, some peanuts, nutella, and papaya jam… I’m set for weekend breakfasts now! And my sweet tooth will be temporarily calmed here in Rwanda, where for some odd reason they seriously lack sweet things!
After Butare, we headed out to the Genocide Memorial that was close by. After we visited the Kigali Memorial, we were warned that this one was difficult, and to be mentally prepared. However, nothing can prepare you for this place.
In April of 1994, the Tutsis in this area were told of this place where they could take refuge and would be safe from the genocidal killings that were underway. The authorities urged all the areas Tutsis to head here and they would be protected. So the Tutsis went… 50,000 of them. For two weeks they stayed there undisturbed. They had no food but felt that they were safe. So after two weeks, they were weakened… and the militia surrounded the hill. Armed with guns, grenades, clubs, knives, and machetes, the killers systematically killed all 50,000 Tutsis and after taking all of their valuables and clothes that could be used, the bodies were tossed into a mass grave. During Operation Turquoise, French soldiers set up volleyball courts on top of the mass graves while they provided protection for the killers to flee Rwanda. In September of 1995, Rwanda exhumed the bodies from the graves and went about creating the memorial. In multiple buildings, there is room after room of dead bodies, preserved with what I understood to be lime. Some still have hair, some children are still clinging to their parents. You walk into room after room of adults, children, and some rooms with nothing but skulls and bones where the bodies were not intact. You see skulls that were bashed in, children missing limbs, bones twisted in awful directions, mouths left wide open where you can only imagine the person died screaming for their life. After the initial shock of the first room, you continue to walk into each individual room and realize that you’re there to pay tribute to each of these people that was senselessly slaughtered in 1994. The massive amount of children is almost unbearable. The smell is indescribable. The bodies have dried, and the lime preserves them… but there is still a smell… and you don’t forget it.
I can’t describe the feeling of walking into a room of dead bodies, and then walking outside, where the sun is shining, and the view of the surrounding hills is beautiful, and children in the villages are laughing and playing… and then walking back into another room of people, and children, who were murdered in that same place just 16 years ago. And then another room, and another, and another… I saw hundreds of dead bodies today… and I just can’t describe what I felt.
The man at the memorial told us that he hopes we take our experience and share it with others in the hopes that people will become more aware of what happened in Rwanda… and hopefully another 800,000 people won’t have to be killed in order for the world to keep the next genocide from occurring.
The experience today really put into perspective something we saw today during our morning walk to the training center. We were walking along our dirt road, past the children that always greet us, and the women carrying their children on their backs and their loads on their heads, and we saw a pink piece of paper nailed to a tree. We went over to look, and the only word we recognized was Gacaca… which is the trials still held for the perpetrators of the genocide. There was also a list of nine names at the bottom of the paper. So in our community, nine people will be put on trial in the community for crimes committed 18 years ago. These nine people possibly took machetes and systematically killed their neighbors… children and brothers and sisters of the people still living here today. I simply can’t fathom how the people living in this country today deal with what they went through in 1994. Some of our Rwandan teachers will tell us little things during lessons. Like while we were learning how to talk about our families, one of our teachers, who lives at our house, told us that she only had one brother… but she used to have seven siblings. She took a deep breath and moved on. When you hear things like that here in Rwanda, it means they were lost in the genocide.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
I think I’ll actually post some of this stuff today… forgive the long blog posts… I write everything while I’m at home on the computer and then copy it into a blog post when I actually bring my computer to the internet café.
For now I’ll update on what life’s like here for me on a daily basis… I live in one of the four separate houses they have for our group of trainees here. Our house is Laundry House, and it’s beautiful! We’re up on a hill, with a great view of the valley and mountains behind it. We can sit and watch the storms come in, and the mists over the mountain are amazing. Our huge front porch is a great place to just sit. We have a large living area, with just plain wooden chairs and tables, and then four rooms… one of six girls, one with two of the guys and two of our male Rwandan teachers (LCFs: Language and Cultural Facilitators), one with two of the female LCFs, and then the room I’m in, which has four girls in it. We each have our own bathroom, without running water, and then the pit latrine is out back. We have huge plastic bins that are filled with water out back when our water turns on between about 12am and 2am… so we take the buckets out there and fill them for our bucket baths.
Every morning we get up and walk a little over a mile to the training center along paved and dirt roads. Just about everyone walks here, so we a ton of people everyday… most stare at us and comment on the muzungus. But everyone is very friendly when you greet them in kinyarwanda, so it’s fun. We get to the training center, eat breakfast, and head to class all day. That consists of language, technical training in health and community development here, sessions on how to stay healthy and safe here, and cross cultural classes. Lunch is from noon until 2pm, and then class continues until 4 or 5, and then dinner is at 7. Most of my down time is spent studying the language… which is difficult to say the least. But we do know quite a bit for only being here two weeks I guess.
Saturdays we have class and sometimes fun ventures out into Rwanda. And Sundays are free. Last Sunday I went to church with my host family… four hours in a Pentecostal church. Not my idea of a good time, but it was a good community building experience. The singing is fun… but after four hours of sitting, nothing is really all that fun. So this Sunday I’m relaxing. Planning to head to the internet café, post this stuff… and just hang out. Do a little bit of studying later. I need to go see my host family more, but that’s always such a stressful experience with the language barrier, even though they are very nice and so sweet to me.
So that’s about it here. I miss people back home, but it’s great to be here and I’m still very excited about the experience. It is nice to hear from everyone though, so please send emails… when I do get time on the internet I like to hear what’s going on back in your world! Letters would be more than welcome, and packages… candy… most any kind of candy would be great as there’s very little that’s sweet here (I am partial to dove chocolate, nerds, gobstoppers, and any bag of sour gummi stuff)… mixed nuts (my protein intake is suffering)… wheat thins… peanut butter… baby wipes… double A and triple A batteries… small bottles of hand sanitizer… bottles of Calgon Morning Glory body spray from wal-mart (it’s nice to at least try and smell good here and feel like a girl sometimes)…and I’ll update as I think of other things! Everyone has asked what I want sent… so there it is! And remember to check the list on the left side of the blog on how to send things… and use flat rate boxes! They’re much cheaper to send here!
Miss everyone and hope all is well on your side of the world!
What a long day. It’s only 5pm and it feels like I should be in bed passed out. The day started with a 1am wake up and then up the rest of the night with stomach cramps… which just confirms what I was already thinking… I can’t eat the meat here. Whatever it is, I just can’t stomach it.
Then I was up and heading to breakfast before 7am this morning to prepare for our first language simulation tests that started at 7:30am… which I think I did ok on, but not great. Yay for Saturday morning stress! Then it was off to Butare, for lunch and some shopping! It’s a bigger city with some items available for muzungus! So I bought a chocolate bar, a couple of lollipops, some peanuts, nutella, and papaya jam… I’m set for weekend breakfasts now! And my sweet tooth will be temporarily calmed here in Rwanda, where for some odd reason they seriously lack sweet things!
After Butare, we headed out to the Genocide Memorial that was close by. After we visited the Kigali Memorial, we were warned that this one was difficult, and to be mentally prepared. However, nothing can prepare you for this place.
In April of 1994, the Tutsis in this area were told of this place where they could take refuge and would be safe from the genocidal killings that were underway. The authorities urged all the areas Tutsis to head here and they would be protected. So the Tutsis went… 50,000 of them. For two weeks they stayed there undisturbed. They had no food but felt that they were safe. So after two weeks, they were weakened… and the militia surrounded the hill. Armed with guns, grenades, clubs, knives, and machetes, the killers systematically killed all 50,000 Tutsis and after taking all of their valuables and clothes that could be used, the bodies were tossed into a mass grave. During Operation Turquoise, French soldiers set up volleyball courts on top of the mass graves while they provided protection for the killers to flee Rwanda. In September of 1995, Rwanda exhumed the bodies from the graves and went about creating the memorial. In multiple buildings, there is room after room of dead bodies, preserved with what I understood to be lime. Some still have hair, some children are still clinging to their parents. You walk into room after room of adults, children, and some rooms with nothing but skulls and bones where the bodies were not intact. You see skulls that were bashed in, children missing limbs, bones twisted in awful directions, mouths left wide open where you can only imagine the person died screaming for their life. After the initial shock of the first room, you continue to walk into each individual room and realize that you’re there to pay tribute to each of these people that was senselessly slaughtered in 1994. The massive amount of children is almost unbearable. The smell is indescribable. The bodies have dried, and the lime preserves them… but there is still a smell… and you don’t forget it.
I can’t describe the feeling of walking into a room of dead bodies, and then walking outside, where the sun is shining, and the view of the surrounding hills is beautiful, and children in the villages are laughing and playing… and then walking back into another room of people, and children, who were murdered in that same place just 16 years ago. And then another room, and another, and another… I saw hundreds of dead bodies today… and I just can’t describe what I felt.
The man at the memorial told us that he hopes we take our experience and share it with others in the hopes that people will become more aware of what happened in Rwanda… and hopefully another 800,000 people won’t have to be killed in order for the world to keep the next genocide from occurring.
The experience today really put into perspective something we saw today during our morning walk to the training center. We were walking along our dirt road, past the children that always greet us, and the women carrying their children on their backs and their loads on their heads, and we saw a pink piece of paper nailed to a tree. We went over to look, and the only word we recognized was Gacaca… which is the trials still held for the perpetrators of the genocide. There was also a list of nine names at the bottom of the paper. So in our community, nine people will be put on trial in the community for crimes committed 18 years ago. These nine people possibly took machetes and systematically killed their neighbors… children and brothers and sisters of the people still living here today. I simply can’t fathom how the people living in this country today deal with what they went through in 1994. Some of our Rwandan teachers will tell us little things during lessons. Like while we were learning how to talk about our families, one of our teachers, who lives at our house, told us that she only had one brother… but she used to have seven siblings. She took a deep breath and moved on. When you hear things like that here in Rwanda, it means they were lost in the genocide.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
I think I’ll actually post some of this stuff today… forgive the long blog posts… I write everything while I’m at home on the computer and then copy it into a blog post when I actually bring my computer to the internet café.
For now I’ll update on what life’s like here for me on a daily basis… I live in one of the four separate houses they have for our group of trainees here. Our house is Laundry House, and it’s beautiful! We’re up on a hill, with a great view of the valley and mountains behind it. We can sit and watch the storms come in, and the mists over the mountain are amazing. Our huge front porch is a great place to just sit. We have a large living area, with just plain wooden chairs and tables, and then four rooms… one of six girls, one with two of the guys and two of our male Rwandan teachers (LCFs: Language and Cultural Facilitators), one with two of the female LCFs, and then the room I’m in, which has four girls in it. We each have our own bathroom, without running water, and then the pit latrine is out back. We have huge plastic bins that are filled with water out back when our water turns on between about 12am and 2am… so we take the buckets out there and fill them for our bucket baths.
Every morning we get up and walk a little over a mile to the training center along paved and dirt roads. Just about everyone walks here, so we a ton of people everyday… most stare at us and comment on the muzungus. But everyone is very friendly when you greet them in kinyarwanda, so it’s fun. We get to the training center, eat breakfast, and head to class all day. That consists of language, technical training in health and community development here, sessions on how to stay healthy and safe here, and cross cultural classes. Lunch is from noon until 2pm, and then class continues until 4 or 5, and then dinner is at 7. Most of my down time is spent studying the language… which is difficult to say the least. But we do know quite a bit for only being here two weeks I guess.
Saturdays we have class and sometimes fun ventures out into Rwanda. And Sundays are free. Last Sunday I went to church with my host family… four hours in a Pentecostal church. Not my idea of a good time, but it was a good community building experience. The singing is fun… but after four hours of sitting, nothing is really all that fun. So this Sunday I’m relaxing. Planning to head to the internet café, post this stuff… and just hang out. Do a little bit of studying later. I need to go see my host family more, but that’s always such a stressful experience with the language barrier, even though they are very nice and so sweet to me.
So that’s about it here. I miss people back home, but it’s great to be here and I’m still very excited about the experience. It is nice to hear from everyone though, so please send emails… when I do get time on the internet I like to hear what’s going on back in your world! Letters would be more than welcome, and packages… candy… most any kind of candy would be great as there’s very little that’s sweet here (I am partial to dove chocolate, nerds, gobstoppers, and any bag of sour gummi stuff)… mixed nuts (my protein intake is suffering)… wheat thins… peanut butter… baby wipes… double A and triple A batteries… small bottles of hand sanitizer… bottles of Calgon Morning Glory body spray from wal-mart (it’s nice to at least try and smell good here and feel like a girl sometimes)…and I’ll update as I think of other things! Everyone has asked what I want sent… so there it is! And remember to check the list on the left side of the blog on how to send things… and use flat rate boxes! They’re much cheaper to send here!
Miss everyone and hope all is well on your side of the world!
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
I made it!
Not even one week into my time in Rwanda and I feel like I have far too much information to try to get into a blog! I'm struggling with where to begin. I only have a few more minutes here at the internet cafe, so I'll just update with what everyone's asked me...
Rwanda is BEAUTIFUL (Urgwanda ni gwiza... for those following my progress in kinyarwanda)... at our house in Nyanza, we have this beautiful view of the hills (they are some BIG hills!) and the towns... the rains move in and the clouds move in over the hills and it's gorgeous. I'll try to post pics soon.
While we were in Kigali we lived in a hotel run by nuns, and think of the term hotel loosely. We had hot water sometimes, and the water trickled out, but the shower worked! We also had electricity and a western toilet.
Here in Nyanza, where we're living for the next 10 weeks... we have a toilet, but it doesn't really flush, you have to pour water down it and depend on gravity... not sure how that plumbing is set up... we supposedly have running water, but no one's seen it since we got here... so it's been cold bucket baths! And we have electricity... but no internet. And the people are really friendly... kids follow you... calling Umuzungu! (white person) and they'll high five you and run up and hug your legs. I met my host family yesterday... amazing people!
And it's time for class for me again... but just know this, I'm loving it here! The country, the sun, the rain, the people... I just can't describe it yet...
Mwirirwe!
Rwanda is BEAUTIFUL (Urgwanda ni gwiza... for those following my progress in kinyarwanda)... at our house in Nyanza, we have this beautiful view of the hills (they are some BIG hills!) and the towns... the rains move in and the clouds move in over the hills and it's gorgeous. I'll try to post pics soon.
While we were in Kigali we lived in a hotel run by nuns, and think of the term hotel loosely. We had hot water sometimes, and the water trickled out, but the shower worked! We also had electricity and a western toilet.
Here in Nyanza, where we're living for the next 10 weeks... we have a toilet, but it doesn't really flush, you have to pour water down it and depend on gravity... not sure how that plumbing is set up... we supposedly have running water, but no one's seen it since we got here... so it's been cold bucket baths! And we have electricity... but no internet. And the people are really friendly... kids follow you... calling Umuzungu! (white person) and they'll high five you and run up and hug your legs. I met my host family yesterday... amazing people!
And it's time for class for me again... but just know this, I'm loving it here! The country, the sun, the rain, the people... I just can't describe it yet...
Mwirirwe!
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