The End of Training

My host brother stylin'.

After we finished model school, we suddenly realized we only had about two more weeks of training. Almost done, finally. Before we could get to those two weeks, though, we had to celebrate Thanksgiving. It was never my favorite holiday, but this felt like it was going to be a fun one. It was going to be a big effort for the 34 of us to create a Thanksgiving dinner for us and all of our training staff. I was lucky enough to get myself on the turkey committee. This was fortunate because we all got permission to stay at the training center the night before because all the prep work we would need to do. To have a night in which we didn’t have to be home by 6:30 was a real treat. Then again, we still had to be in the training center. In the afternoon I helped dig the giant pit that we would be cooking the turkeys over. I had also somehow gotten in charge of arranging the dinner for the turkey crew, a group that eventually grew to the unnecessary number of 12. We tried to get some live chickens in the nearest market town for dinner, but that didn’t work out. I had figured while we are butchering 8 turkeys, we might as well do some chickens too. Hannah, our resident butcher ran the show when it came to turkey butchering. The training staff had arranged for a local to come and help us with the process, but when he saw that he was unnecessary, he left. Watching everyone slit the turkey’s throats was entertaining as the turkey’s bloody neck stump splattered them. Then we dipped them in hot water to ease the feather-plucking process, a step I somehow did not know about the first few times I involved myself in chicken slaughtering.

Once the turkeys were plucked, gutted, cleaned and in a brine for the night, I went on the town to pick up ingredients for dinner. I had wanted to make pasta with a spicy peanut and tomato sauce, but that sounded too much like Rwandan food to everyone, even though Rwandan peanut sauce is flavorless. So instead we did a more traditional tomato sauce. The power went out as all of us helped out to make the sauce, which I think made the atmosphere even more fun. The slumber party that proceeded after dinner was one of the most fun times of training. I was finally starting to realize how much liked all the people I was with. It was a very different feeling from the first few weeks of training, when I didn’t feel very close to anyone, and usually felt like secluding myself. I couldn’t wait for training to be over so I could get to site. Now I was starting to realize that I would miss all these people. The events of the rest of the night. Will remain classified due to the fact that the P.C. has people that reads people’s blogs and I wouldn’t want to get anyone into any trouble.

At 4 AM everyone got up to start the turkey pit. For whatever reason nobody could wake me up. This was disappointing to me because I wanted to help. Anyway, they filled the pit with charcoal, put the turkeys on a spit above the coals and wrapped the turkeys in banana leaves.

Eventually all the other volunteers arrived, and the day of massive cooking began. Most of my job was done, so I spent the day helping to start charcoal stoves, peeling vegetables, or throwing around a football. Occasionally some of us would take a break for a beer down at the nearby bar. At one point during the day, I heard someone say that one of the turkeys had fallen into the pit. Luke, my good friend, and I ran to the pit, and found that one of the sticks had burned through, and three turkeys were on fire in the pit. We each grabbed a half of the flaming turkey sticks. Once it was in my hand I didn’t know what to do with it, since the turkey was still on fire. Luke threw his on the ground where there were some banana leaves. Luckily he had gloves on and could beat the flames out of the turkeys. It seemed like it was going to be a real disaster, however, we recovered remarkably well. Luke went to find a new stick while the rest of us re-wrapped the turkeys in the leaves. Just as we were finishing this part up, The other turkey spit burnt through and we had to make another quick rescue. Again, we got a new stick and wrapped those leaves up.

In the end, the turkeys were about as good as most Thanksgiving turkeys, which is to say, dry, and lacking much flavor. Luckily, though, we had plenty of other food. Cheesy mashed potatoes, gravy, macaroni cheese (new to me as a Thanksgiving food, but it was the highlight), green bean casserole, stuffing, candied sweet potatoes, and a huge variety of desserts. It was fun to watch how the Rwandans approached the food. Some had no idea what to do with it, and picked through their meals. Others, however, piled it on fearlessly. For how bland most Thanksgiving food is, I figured most Rwandans would find it palatable.

Because  the dinner, with clean up, was getting too close to our curfews, we were given permission to stay there that night too. It is amazing how exciting something small like that can be in the overbearing situation we were in. With or busy daily schedules and early curfews, our free time with each other was usually limited to lunch and maybe a beer at the bar every once in a while.

With almost all of us crammed into the little training center, there were definitely not enough beds, mattresses or even indoor floor space. I was in a group of four that ended up being the last group to go to sleep. Since there was no place to sleep, we found a sheet and laid it on the lawn in front of the building. Unfortunately Rwanda is at a very high elevation and gets pretty cold at night. I decided to set up my tent. Then, because it was only a two-person tent, we all decided to just sleep next to it. I will always remember that Thanksgiving as the one where I froze at night while sleeping right next to my tent.

***

One evening two of the language teachers came over to my house to visit my family. Sometimes they visit because they want to check in on me, and sometimes it is simply to visit the family. Everyone was surprisingly somber that night, and I could not figure out why. Instead of chatting they were just listening to the radio. It seemed to be the news in Kinyarwanda. I sat quietly, waiting to involve myself in the conversation, but everyone just sat. We ate dinner quietly with the radio as background noise. Afterward one of the language teachers led the family in a very intense prayer session. I did not understand much of anything, but it was different than our normal dinner prayers. As his voice came to a crescendo my host families joined him, praying, almost chanting, softly under their breath. It lasted for ten or fifteen minutes.

The next morning, I heard that there had been a heavy amount of fighting in areas along the Congo-Rwanda border. Over night, Congolese rebel group M23, which is believed to receive funding from Rwanda, took Goma. Goma is eastern Congo’s biggest city and sits right on the border. There had also been an attack on a Rwandan village on the border, allegedly committed by the FDLR, a rebel group in the Congo that is made up of “genocidaires”, the people that committed genocide in Rwanda in 1994. A ranger from the gorilla reserve had been killed and some others injured. There were also reports of exchange of fire across the border between Goma and the Rwandan town of Gisenyi, and the possibility of Rwandan military briefly advancing across the border. We had seen the fall of Goma coming, as the M23 had been threatening it in the bush for some months. I had known they were advancing, but I was obviously not as in tune with the imminence of violence as my host family was. I was disappointed that they had not even mentioned it to me. They knew I was trying to keep up with what was going on over there and they saw me reading a book about conflict in the eastern Congo. At the same time, I understood. They had family over there, and at some point had even lived there. This was far more serious for them than it was for me.

There was one volunteer close to where the FDLR had crossed the border and she could hear the explosions from her house. She was evacuated the next day. Within the next week, the Peace Corps put a travel restriction on the northwest of the country. Two of my fellow trainees were informed that the sites they were preparing to go to were in the restricted region, and would therefore would be reassigned. They were pretty heartbroken, since they were exceptionally excited about the location of their sites.

A week or two later, the M23 half-pulled out of Goma, as peace talks began in Uganda. In reality, though, their presence was still very strong in the town as they maintained control of certain strategic points, and only pulled back about 20 km. from the town. Right now the peace talks are still dragging on and we will see if some sort of agreements will develop. It is an incredibly complicated region, and while it is relatively quiet for the time being, it will be more surprising if it remains so. 

***

The last two weeks of training suddenly made me feel rushed. I had to get ready to take my language test, prepare to leave, finish Peace Corps paperwork, and enjoy my host family’s company as much as possible. This was hard because suddenly the training group had a lot more free time with each other, and we were spending a lot of it hanging out at the bar, knowing that we would not be seeing each other much any more. I was, for whatever reason, not too nervous about my language test. I had done terrible on my first one and I should have been more concerned.

I took my test late in the day. As people finished their language tests, they slowly trickled down to the bar to celebrate the end of language training. I decided to follow my instinct that I had ignored on my first exam and have a beer beforehand to relax myself. This turned out to be a better idea than I had imagined, and I didn’t have any of the jitters I had had the first time I took it. I walked out feeling confident, knowing that I had passed.

A few days before departure, we had a ceremony with our host families. Not too much to say about it, except that some of the speeches that my fellow trainees gave were quite touching. We had six speeches, two each in Kinyarwanda, French and English. A few of them brought tears to my eyes, making me further realize that, when I wasn’t paying attention, I had grown close to the community I had been living in the past few months.

Morgan and her host sister.

My host brother attended the ceremony in place of my host father.

And my host mom.

 

I had tried for a few days before leaving to get my host family together for a group photo that I would print out for them as a gift. Every time, though, we were missing somebody, or someone refused because they weren’t wearing their nicest clothes. I had made an effort, though, to get a nice portrait of each member and did get them printed as a parting gift for them. 

My host sisters Soleil and Chantal

My host brother Byishimo Jean Legal

 

My host sister Immaculee.

Host Dad, Papa Bonnke.

 I also took a few photos of them around the house.

Cooking beans.

Doing laundry.

Digging a trench.

Papa Bonnke having his son tie his shoes before leaving on his moto.

I had also taken some adorable photos of the tiny kids that hang around  my house all day. They are hands down the filthiest kids I have ever met. It is almost as if their sole purpose throughout the day is to get as dirty as possible. It makes me laugh every time the crowd runs up to me, yelling, “Mzungu! Mzungu! Witwa nde?” or, “White man! White man! What’s your name?” Even though they very well know my name was Joey, or, as they pronounced it, “Jony” since consecutive vowel sounds don’t occur in Kinyarwanda. I would always respond, “uzi.” (you know). “Jony!” I took some photos of them towards the end, when they were getting especially filthy. I printed a couple of them and gave them to the kids. One of the boys loved it so much he decided to eat it. 

Mmm...a photo of myself.

My actual goodbye with my host family was surprisingly anti-climactic. I had been packed and ready to go early, but didn’t actually get picked up until mid-afternoon. My host father, Pastor Bonnke, was distracted because he suddenly had to go to Congo because he had just found out his sister, who lived there, had died of some sort of illness. I was disappointed that he left unannounced when I was still in my room packing. When it finally was time for me to leave, my host mom, Dorcas, was not feeling well, and was sleeping in her room. She didn’t come out to say goodbye because she would see me at the swear-in ceremony in Kigali. I was a lot closer with my siblings anyway, so I was just glad that I had gotten a proper goodbye with them.

The day before we all left, we had placed bets on when we would actually depart our training site. We were told it would be 3:00, but nobody believed it would be close to that. So, naturally, we placed bets on the actual time we would leave. While schedules are beyond flexible in Africa and punctuality is a vague concept, I have not found Rwanda to be as extreme in this case as other places. So, I placed my bet on 3:00 sharp. There were dozens of things going wrong, and even I knew I would be way off. Then, somehow, everything came together, the trucks were packed and we were ready. The vehicles left at 3:01, and I won the pot, which amounted to about $2. I am still trying to collect from most of the people.

I grew a mustache during training, so here it is.