Learning to Teach, Exploring Kigali

This is the first photo I took in Rwanda. It is my host brother's shoes drying in the sun.

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Training droned on monotonously for weeks. More language classes, technical training and endless hours of training/lecturing about health and safety. I’m sure you can guess how I felt about the latter. We had a mid-term exam in Kinyarwanda to gauge our progress in the local language. I bombed it big time, and it put me into a serious funk for about a week. I have never been a natural at picking up languages, but this was embarrassing. But let’s stick to the positives, shall we.

Towards the end of training, we had two weeks of “model school”. This would give most of us our first chance to instruct an entire class on our own. This terrified me. Although I didn’t realize it until Peace Corps told me, I actually had a lot of experience in the realm of education. But I had never had to plan lessons or be in front of a classroom, acting as an authority on the subject matter. I knew very little about English grammar, and what I did know was through my study of Spanish and French. I really worried that I would crash and burn every day.

When it finally came time for our model school, I was both disappointed and relieved at the student turnout. We didn’t have enough students show up to the optional classes to simulate a real Rwandan classroom environment, let alone to give all of us a class of students to teach. Most classes were between 5 and 15 students, and some people taught classes of 1 or 2. I was glad that it would be easier than I had expected, but also knew that teaching a Senior 1 class of 8 students would not be the same as teaching a Senior 6 class of 40 students.

As far as my teaching went, it went better than I had expected. In fact, there were times when I really enjoyed being in front of the class, and it brought me back to my days when I was regularly speaking or performing in front of large audiences. It is strange how a few years away from that can bring back stage fright. I got a lot of good critiques from my fellow trainees, staff and volunteers. By the end of the second week, with a whole eight hours of teaching under my belt, I felt slightly more confident about going to teach at my site in a couple months.

My buddy Luke teaching a class on the parts of speech.

Teacher Shannon, teaching a lesson.

On the walk to model school.

***

Somewhere in the middle of training, we were taken on a field trip to Kigali to visit the genocide memorial. After leaving a flower on a mass grave, and walking through the museum I think the biggest thing that I learned was that the horrors of 1994 are for too huge to comprehend for someone like me, who grew up so removed from the realities of African violence. The museum provided little new information beyond what I had gotten from the several books I had read on the subject. Seeing the pictures from the scenes of massacres and portraits of those that had died, however, were very powerful. Parts of it reminded me of the Tuol Sleng museum in Phnom Penh, although much more sanitized and not as gritty as that museum with its crumbling prison setting. The most overwhelming part, however, was a hall labeled “Children’s Room”. Foolishly, I thought it was an area for kids to play while their parents were exploring the museum. Then I saw there were a couple dozen portraits of Rwandan children. Each portrait was accompanied with a plaque that gave information about the child. For example, name, age, favorite food, favorite sport, and, finally, method of death. You would fall in love with the 4-year-old and how their favorite food was boiled cassava, then learn that they had been killed by being slammed against a brick wall, or with a nail-studded club. It was shockingly grim compared to the rest of the museum.

After we left the museum, we were given a few hours on our own in Kigali. At the age of 26, I never would have thought that I would be so excited to be allowed to have a few hours on my own in the city. Most people were going out to nice restaurants for pizza, burgers or Indian food. I didn’t necessarily to want to be alone, but I knew nobody would want to forgo American food for what I had in mind, nor did I want to be with a crowd of gringos. I left the center of town and hopped on a bus to Nyamirambo, a neighborhood with a large presence of Muslims and West Africans. It has the reputation of being unique in that it is typically un-Rwandan. It has a rough around the edges feeling of an up-and-coming artsy community. Supposedly some of Rwanda’s biggest hip-hop artists live here. The buildings are painted loudly and stylishly. Music booms from storefronts. Word is that they have great night life and even street food! If I haven’t mentioned it before, Rwanda is the only place I have ever been to that does not have some sort of street food. It is very taboo to eat in public here. My host brother explained that in Rwandan culture, if you see someone eating in the street it is like they don’t even have respect for themselves. This has obviously been a tough pill to swallow for me, as street food, at times, provides my soul reason to travel. Anyway, I was glad to find a neighborhood with some style. What I had really come here for, though, was that they had West African restaurants. There were two that advertised themselves as Malian restaurants. I asked around and was disappointed that there was no Ghanaian food. I settled for Malian, which turned out to be more Senegalese. I got a huge plate of red rice, yassa poulet (chicken in awesome sauce) white beans and Rwandan-style cooked greens. In essence the food was not all that much different than Rwandan food, however, this had flavor! It was far and away the best thing I’d eaten in Rwanda at this point. Rwanda is just behind Mauritania for most boring food countries I have been to, and that is debatable since Mauritania has Senegalese food in the towns. This plate of West African food was a godsend.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around to the shops, meeting some Senegalese people and practicing my French. At one point I heard a song blasting out of a CD stall that was saying, “Nyamirambo life, Nyamirambo life”. How fitting since that was the name of the neighborhood. I went to the stall and asked who was singing the song. A guy standing next to the stall said, “It’s me.” He said his name was DJ Sam. I talked to the guys for a while, and they sold me a mix CD with a variety of Rwandan rap songs, including “Nyamirambo Life”. I moved on to the Nyamirambo market. At this point I was just wandering. The market was nothing spectacular, but at the same time, few things put me in a better mood than African markets. Finally, I had to get back to town before our vans took us back home. I wanted to hang out in Nyamirambo for the rest of the day, and I wondered if I would be missed if the vans left without me.

***

During our last few weeks at site we were allowed to go into Kigali on Sundays all by ourselves! I found it interesting that they were letting us go out alone, the only information given to us was what we weren’t allowed to do, and almost no advice on the logistics of getting around Kigali and back home. I mean, I felt totally fine about it, but it seemed odd that they had given us literally no information about Kigali.

I left early in the morning so I could get into town early, and before everyone else. As I walked toward the nearby town that would have buses, a shared taxi passed by and offered me a ride. They had one more spot and the price was the same as the bus. Ok, let’s go! As we neared the next town, I could see one of my fellow trainees waiting for a bus to pass by. Then an explosion. Somehow this no longer startles me, as I think I am constantly expecting a flat tire. As he fixed it, a whole car load of trainees arrived to wait for the next bus. When our tire was changed, one of the trainees decided to squeeze in with us, putting five in the back seat. We still seemed like we would be the first ones into Kigali. Then, when we got to the main road, our driver sold us off to an empty minibus. I knew this was bad. We would have to wait for it to fill up before we could continue. Nobody got in for twenty minutes, so the driver decided to try his luck along the way. We were constantly picking up and dropping off people. It was the slowest ride imaginable.

Kigali, near the bus station.

I had a lot of errands I needed to do in Kigali. Get two phones fixed, visit markets, eat lunch, buy a bag, etc. I wanted to use this time to start buying things I would need at site, so that I was not rushed later. The first thing I found, though, was that Sunday morning was the worst time to get things done in Kigali. Everyone was at church. One of the bigger markets, right next to the bus station, was a ghost town. With the help of a friendly young man eager to speak English, I was shown to a man that could fix my old phone from Ghana. Then, I got on a bus to the center of town, which took the most elliptical route I could have imagined. When I realized that our bus had passed the center long ago, and we were right next to a market, I decided to get off and try this random place out. It was livelier, but it was mostly a produce market. I got back on a bus and realized that if I would have stayed on the previous bus, it would have eventually taken me back to the center. But the center had little to offer me, so I headed back to Nyamirambo. I found another West African place and enjoyed a quality meal of what I would describe as African fusion. Half Sahel, half East African. Luckily they knew how to use spices, or at least Maggi cubes. I had given up on a lot of my tasks, and by the end of the afternoon fond myself in a grimy little bar tucked away on one of the back roads of Nyamirambo. Compared to the countryside, Kigali gets hot, and a cold beer sounded lovely. The seedy clientele gave me a mix of drunken smiles, skeptical glares and indifference as I walked in. I ordered my beer, sure to mention that I wanted it cold. Then she broke my heart by telling me the power was out and the beer was nothing resembling cold. Well, I thought, I still have nothing better to do with my last thirty minutes in the city and I accepted their filthy, hot, tasteless beer. The only spot to sit was a single chair next to the bar, so I took it. A man in his thirties sitting nearby greeted me in French. He turned out to be Congolese, but had moved to Rwanda to work as a bus driver. This is exactly the reason I like to end up in these kinds of places. I would later notice that the bars of choice for the older volunteers were the more upscale and expat-oriented ones. The kinds of places where you would never have an interesting conversation with a sweaty Congolese bus driver. 

And now some photos from my life in the village.

The cistern at the church where I went to fetch water.

A neighbor that came over to visit.

And her husband.

Our courtyard with some laundry out to dry.

These sandals, which have a long history, are still going, still breaking. They've been repaired in at least five countries.

A view from my village. A typical Rwandan landscape.

Luke on a walk.

In my courtyard on a foggy morning.

One of my host brothers, Byishimo.

Our firewood chilling in the rain. Somehow my host sisters are still always able to make a fire for cooking.

My room.

My siblings' rooms, and kitchen to the right.

My host sister, Immaculee, and I.

Rwanda and I.

My little host brother hanging out in the foggy morning.

One night when I was telling my host sisters about traveling in north and west Africa, one of them asked to see my turban. I showed her how to put it on. I don't think our pastor father was too amused.

Hauling fire wood and cow food.

My host mother and one of our neighbors. It looks like they are dancing, but I assure you they are not, unfortunately.

My friends Luke, Caitlan (right) and Eliza. We're on our way to the next town for market day.

I met this guy doing some gardening on the way home.

My host mom walking through the rain.

My host sisters and I.

Site Visit

 

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October 1, 2012

After four weeks at our training site, we got to leave for the first time to visit our future sites. Our first step was to go to Kigali for a day of meetings. We went to a conference room at a nice hotel. We enjoyed simple luxuries like juice, coffee and hors d’ oeuvres. The first order of business was to meet our headmasters, who had all come to Kigali. My headmaster, David was a short man with character to spare. He had more energy and upbeat personality than most Rwandans I had met. Part of this could be because he was originally from the Congo, where the people have a reputation for their loud, outgoing personalities.

The day of meetings dragged on, and finally at 4:00 we were given our first taste of true freedom. We had a full six hours to ourselves before we had to go back to the Peace Corps head quarters for the night. I teamed up with Luke and Caitlin, a married couple that would be at a site a few hours from mine, to get into the city. Without too much trouble, we found a minibus into the city center. Kigali seems like a difficult city to navigate because it consists of nothing but winding roads that traverse the city’s many hills. Getting directions was a tricky game, too, since I was never sure which language to use. I quickly found that my limited Kinyarwanda was not as helpful as either French or English, as everybody seemed to speak one of the two. I approached one woman with French, and she responded, “Please, speak English.”

When we arrived at the “center”, it seemed that we could have been on any of the city’s major boulevards. A man from our bus helped us up a steep and narrow dirt path and through a series of streets to reach the central part of Kigali. The first place we went was to Nakumatt, a department store that caters to expats and wealthy Rwandans. It was a bizarre experience after spending a month in a village where the only packaged foods the  small shops have are sardines, biscuits and mayonnaise. This place had everything from sporting goods, to electronic equipment and all sorts of imported foods. It was all very strange, and it is the kind of place that I usually avoid going to. Luke and Caitlin were looking for pillows, though, and I needed to get a jar of peanut butter for the volunteer I would be replacing. Then we went to Simba, another import store with an attached restaurant. Luke and Caitlin ate there, but I was saving my appetite for the supposed West African food that I heard exists in the neighborhood of Nyamirambo. Unfortunately, though, when we went to the bus stop to go there, there was a huge crowd waiting, and all the buses were full. We were running low on time, so we decided to just stop by a nearby bar with a balcony and enjoy a couple of cold Primus beers. That turned out to be enough of a dinner for me. We took a minibus back to the Peace Corps headquarters. Although I didn’t get to go to the neighborhood I had wanted to visit, I was happy about my first chance to get into the city. We managed to navigate the public transport easily and get where we wanted to without hassle.

The next morning we had another meeting with our headmasters. Then we were supposed to leave immediately for our sites. Unsurprisingly there was a hold-up with our travel money that delayed us a couple hours. My headmaster and I didn’t leave the bus station until 12:30. I was in no rush, though. Luke and Caitlin were also on the bus with their headmaster.

The drive, of course, was beautiful. The playful Rwandan hip-hop that filled our ears was perfect background music for driving through the rolling hills and watching rural life fly by us. Halfway through the first six-hour leg of our drive we passed by a refugee camp that was taking up a major part of a hillside. The houses, although constructed from wood frames and white UNHCR-issued tarps, looked surprisingly sturdy and the camp seemed to be in great condition for what one expects of a refugee camp in Africa. I later learned that the camp was only a few months old. It housed about six thousand refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A new wave of the long-running conflict in Eastern Congo had flared up with the birth of a new rebel group called M23.

Notice the hillside in the background covered with UNHCR huts for refugees.

They look sturdy, but they are just basic wood frames with white tarps for walls. Still, much better than in a lot of refugee camps.

The Nyungwe Forest, one of Rwanda’s few areas of preserved rainforest was the highlight of the drive. Suddenly the endless settlements of Africa’s most densely populated country ended and we were in an impressive expanse of pristine rainforest for two hours. I couldn’t wait for the opportunity to come back here to go hiking. And at the same time, I feared the terrain and the humidity. Jungle, they say, is like green hell.

When we got to Kamembe, the nearest town to Luke, Caitlin and I, they stayed behind because they would not be able to reach their site by dark. Peace Corps travel policy forbids travel at night. However, my headmaster and I pressed on to our town. I was glad to be arriving after dark. I am sure I have said it several times before, but there is something captivating about waking up to a place you have only seen at night, and letting the new day inspire you.

Jeff, the volunteer I would be replacing was hanging out outside a boutique in the center of the village. He was tall, blonde and bearded. American, although of 100% of Dutch decent. And the village kids still mistook him for being Chinese. This is because the only non-Africans most people see in this village are the Chinese, who own and run the huge cement factory. For whatever reason there is the occasional Indian, but Jeff is the only true white man in the village.

I said goodbye to the headmaster and walked with Jeff to his home, which was right next to the cement factory. I had a great first impression of Jeff. He seemed generally happy; perhaps because he seems to be constantly giggling. His house, my future house, was surprisingly modern for what I had expected for Peace Corps accommodation. He had electricity, running water and a western style bathroom. I was happy about the electricity, indifferent about the water, and quite disappointed by the western style bathroom. I like my squat latrines and bucket showers. The toilet leaked, as did the sink, and the showerhead was broken off and there was no curtain. I felt like there was no reason to strive for these western comforts when they would be uncomfortable, and even a burden, especially when latrines and bucket showers get the job done just fine. I had been looking forward to a very African housing setup, with a courtyard, an outdoor kitchen, maybe some place for gardening or chickens. Not at this place though. Since it was owned by the cement factory, most of the space outside was made of cement. My house was behind a big gate, and was connected to a few other units that housed military. I am still not sure if the military base next to the factory is incidental or for protection of the factory itself. We are less than 10 miles from the Congo border after all, so it could be one of several reasons.

My time visiting Jeff, and my future home was interesting. For the most part there were only things to be excited about. The school seemed great. The town had a basketball court and a tennis court, thanks to the factory. There were hot springs a 45 minute walk away. Jeff also had a great, supportive community. He had gained the respect and trust of everyone there, not an easy task in this village. My biggest fears were that he was a hard act to follow. He was a regular at the Methodist Church, where he played guitar in the band. Everyone would ask me if I would be taking his spot in the band. They always seemed disappointed by my “no”. If anything, I would say that this community could be too stable and well off to need a Peace Corps volunteer. There did not seem to be as many of the glaring problems in the school or community that I heard from the other people when we got back from site visits.

A lot of our time was spent on visits. I didn’t always know where we were going. We just always seemed to be walking on the muddy little paths around the village, and would eventually arrive to someone’s home. We would sit, and Jeff, with his impressive level of Kinyarwanda, would make conversation for a while. Then, suddenly, we would go. This reminded me so much of the visits I would go on with Awine, when I was living with him in Ghana. Some nights he would just ask if I wanted to go on a walk. I would follow him to these far off homes, we would hang out for a bit, then suddenly return home. In both cases, I didn’t understand what was being discussed, but I was glad to be on these little visits. The second two nights I was there we visited families for dinner. The first night was the family of a good friend of Jeff, a boy named Baia. They lived in a basic home with a mud floor. Jeff said he liked this family because they were one of the few to decorate their walls with something other than a picture of Jesus or President Paul Kagame. I couldn’t see much in the dark, but they seemed to have random homemade decorations and even drawings on their walls. We ate a basic meal of rice, pounded and boiled greens, and little dried fish. It was surprisingly delicious, but then again, I think the welcoming atmosphere had a lot to do with it.

The next night we went to the home of Bizinette, one of Jeff’s friends who plays bass with him in the church band. He was a driver for the cement company, and by the looks of his home and all within, he was doing well for himself. It was one of the nicest homes I had seen in Rwanda. It was loaded with expensive electronics. We only stayed for tea, because we were heading to one of Jeff’s favorite family’s houses for dinner. It was Mama Jeanette’s house. Although they lived close to Bizinette, and some of the family was involved in the choir and band, Mama Jeanette’s family was one of the poorest I had met in Rwanda. At the same time, I felt much more comfortable sitting on a flimsy wooden stool in their mud hut in the dark than I did on Bizinette’s couch in his nice living room. I could relax at Mama Jeanette’s. The whole family is so sweet and they don’t put on airs. They served us ubugali (cassava porridge) with beans. It was one of the most basic of Rwandan meals, but somehow they made it more delicious than any meal I’d ever had at my, relatively well off, host family. 

One of the best parts of my visit was getting to play with the basketball club. Jeff had started a GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) Club at our school to promote female empowerment. One of the side projects was a basketball club for the clubs. As basketball is my favorite sport, I was more than happy to hang out and play with them after school.

As I mentioned before, this town is also blessed with some beautiful hot springs. One day, Jeff and I walked out to them. I was expecting a few hot little puddles, like most natural hot springs are. I was in for a surprise to find that not only was it a large pond, but also that the area around it was developed and landscaped like nothing I’d ever seen at a natural hot spring. We probably should have had to pay to get in, since it seemed like it should be a state park, but it was free. The grass and gardens were well-manicured and there were concrete gazebos circling the pond. The maintenance of it was paid for by the cement factory, as far as I know. Am I going to have to reconsider my stance on Chinese business in Africa because of some beautiful hot springs? I guess I have a couple of years to decide. We were also lucky enough to have rain while we were in the water. The water was obviously hot, but so is the air in our village. We live in the part of Rwanda with the lowest elevation, and therefore it is also the hottest and most humid. So the rain almost seemed necessary to enjoy the spring.

There are lots of rice fields in the valley below my village. They make the place look a little like the Philippines.

Because my site is farther from Kigali than anybody else’s, I decided to get a head start on getting back to our training site. The day before we had to be back, Jeff and I took a bus to our regional town. Luke and Caitlin had the same plan and they walked the three hours to town with the volunteer they are replacing. That night we stayed in the Peace Corps’ regional house. Because we are the farthest region away, there is a transit house for us to use for these kinds of situations. Unfortunately they were shutting it down at the end of the month due to budget concerns. We were glad to enjoy it for a night, but it was bittersweet knowing that we would never get this luxury again.

The next day we headed back to Kigali on the (relatively) long bus ride. Only because we had left a day early were we able to get back to our home stays in time for our 6:30 curfew.

Coming back from site visit was hard. We now had an idea of what we were getting ourselves into, but did not want to sit  through another two months of training. We had gotten a taste of freedom as well as a glimpse of the interesting life we would lead in what seemed like the much too distant future.

Obligatory Public Service

 

Every Peace Corps post seems to have

Wait, I have to mention something I heard just now and it was on the BBC. A journalist referred to their station as “the ‘Beeb’”. Really? The BBC can be referred to as “The Beeb”?

Ok, anyway, as I was saying, every Peace Corps seems to have some strange quirks to it. Rwanda, as lacking as it is in those typical third world traits, it has some unique things. One of them that we experienced recently was “umuganda”. This is an obligatory public service that everyone over the age of 18 is obligated to partake in on the last Saturday of every month. I could be wrong, but I have never seen this anywhere else that I have traveled in. As Peace Corps volunteers, we were issued hoes so that we could partake in this practice. It is somewhat surprising that it has been a part of this country for several decades. It seems like the kind of thing that would have either been implemented by the post-genocide government as a way to rebuild the country. However, it seems, to me, like something that could have been banned by the new government because of the connotation it gained during the genocide. Some of the “genocidaires” (the general term for those that partook in the genocide) sometimes referred to their mass murder as “umuganda”; their duty to their country.

Either way, the country is still hard at work with umuganda every last Saturday of the month. I didn’t know what to expect when we walked to our village’s task for the day, but I carried my hoe with purpose in anticipation of serving the country I would be living in for the next two years. We arrived earlier than most of the village, but the other Peace Corps volunteers and I got started on our project. It looked like we would be clearing dirt and brush to build a road. We used or hoes to tear away the dirt. Slowly people trickled in with their hoes and, bit by bit, we tore away the dirt, transforming a trail into what would become a small road connecting two other small roads. I was a in favor of these communal projects, but when a police officer showed up to tally who was present, it felt a little more like forced labor. Rwanda is transforming itself drastically, but in ways that are often controversial. This felt like an example that could be debated, but it is an issue that is too complicated for blog material. So I will try not to get into that too deep.

In a lot of ways, the effort the (often quite elderly) men and women put into their community was very inspiring. It seemed noteworthy that the same week I had seen a “quote of the day” on the national TV station. It was JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”.  As inspiring as the activity was, it seemed that it was not taken very seriously among the more privileged in the country. Most of the slightly wealthier families would not take part. They would either pay the fine for not taking part or say they were too sick to participate. I still have mixed feelings about the event. Unfair forced labor, or an admirable effort to get Rwandans to take pride in their country? There are plenty of policies in Rwanda that I would not want in America, but I feel are appropriate for this country. This might be included.

Either way, I enjoyed the physical activity for myself. During our training we mostly sit in chairs all day and, other than the few jogs I take every week, provide the only bit of exercise I get. I got tons of blisters on my hand, which all got torn to shreds the next day when I washed my clothes. The sympathy I got from my host sisters was awkward when I know that they are constantly working much harder than I am.

***

Every time I feel that this country is uncomfortably boring, I find myself brutally knocked back to reality. The boring part is mostly because I find the whole environment completely contradictory to a lot of other things I have seen in Africa or the rest of the developing world. The people are incredibly reserved for Africans, everything is clean, street food does not exist ((!) yes, even in the city), public transport runs on tighter schedules than Greyhound, and nobody is hostile, nor are they particularly good-humored.

In the village I live in, things seem almost perfect. Then, every once in a while, I am reminded that this place is not always so ideal. I was shocked to find that petty theft happens right here in our little village. There was a rash of charcoal theft from people’s homes in our second week here. One volunteer’s family heard someone snooping around their fence, trying to get in. One of the first things that surprised me here was the extent to which people lock their doors. Every door has a lock and is always secured. The cabinets also have locks. I never would have imagined that in a village this small there would be any security concerns. The worst incident happened after about seven weeks here. During my language class I could hear a loud argument going on at the shop next door. When we were finished I saw my village chief with a group of men and some onlookers having a heated discussion. My language teacher told me they were discussing something that had happened the night before. A man beat up a teenage girl on her way home from her night class. I saw one of my host sisters walking by and asked her about it, since she goes to the same school. She said she knew the girl that was beaten and the guy who did it. Apparently he lives just a few houses away from us on a trail I use often. Nobody seemed to know why the man did what he did. Supposedly his punishment was to pay the hospital bill for the girl. She had spent the night there. I couldn’t believe this had happened so close to where I live. Few places I have been have less of an atmosphere of violence than the little village I live in at the top of a hill. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of this was how little people seemed to care. Nobody was up in arms, and my host sister spoke of it matter-of-factly.

***

My daily routine leaves a lot of excitement to be desired. Then again, I remember about a year ago, when I was in India, I was desperate for some sort of routine or something to work toward every day. While a lot about my training period with the Peace Corps has been frustrating and dull, it is comforting to know that I am learning a little every day. I am excited to become proficient in Kinyarwanda. I am also happy to be building my teaching skills, which will hopefully serve me beyond my time with the Peace Corps.

Each week I have between fifteen and twenty hours of language class with two other trainees. It is a relatively enjoyable way of studying language, but Kinyarwanda is incredibly difficult and has grammar elements I have never seen before. We have a lot of technical training, which can be boring, but it is relevant. Then there are the other sessions that deal with health, safety and security and culture. These are absolutely mind-numbing. I just have to grin and bear them.

It is a weird situation to live with a host family, but also to be with 33 other Americans all the time. Through the home stay and the language classes, we are supposed to be integrating into Rwandan culture. However, due to our busy schedule and all the time spent with other volunteers, I feel I have not gotten to know too many Rwandans. I find myself spending a lot more time with my colleagues than I would want to. It is nothing against them, but I feel weird being here and spending so much time with the people from my country, rather than with people in the country I will be in for the next two years. Then again, when I get to my site in September, I will be a few hours away from the nearest volunteer in my group and I will have plenty of time to build relationships with Rwandans and integrate into my community.

***

Four weeks into our training we were informed of where in Rwanda we would be serving. We all had our hopes about where in the country we would go, and what our home would be like. My dream placement would have been somewhere with a lake nearby so I could swim and maybe buy a canoe. I had my hopes up, but I was ready for disappointment. Well, I didn’t get my lake, but my placement looked like it would be interesting enough. It was in the deep southwest corner of the country, in the district of Rusizi. I had the farthest site from Kigali, and would have to travel about nine hours to get there. I was right next to the borders of Burundi and Democratic Republic of the Congo, two countries that Peace Corps volunteers are not allowed to go to. I felt that the Peace Corps was putting me there as a test. Like they were daring me to cross the border so they could kick me out.

Arriving in Rwanda

Sept. 2012

I was jolted awake at two in the morning by the sounds of a woman screaming. I sat up, trying to get oriented. I had to remind myself that I was in a rural Rwandan village. For a moment, I thought that the scream had come from a dream. Then I heard it again. She was yelling something in Kinyarwanda and it sounded panicked and desperate. I jumped out from under my mosquito net and lurched toward the window that looked out to the red dirt road that ran through the village, next to the Pentecostal church. The moon was nearly full, and it illuminated the banana groves around the church. I couldn’t see anybody. However, as the screaming continued I heard somebody getting up in my house, opening and unlocking doors. I had only been studying Kinyarwanda for a week, but I felt that if I tried hard, I might be able to understand the phrase the woman kept screaming. It was frantic, haunting, and had a distinct cadence. I couldn’t quite make out the words, except I thought I heard “urusengero”, the word for church. I heard our front door open and saw my host father, a Pentecostal pastor, walk across the street and enter the church compound. Whatever was going on, I felt my host father was taking care of it. I had no idea what to make of it, but I forced myself to go back to bed and sleep through the now intermittent wails. If I had been in West Africa, my midnight imagination would have steered me to thoughts of juju, or witchcraft and traditional African beliefs and religious practices. This culture, however, is mostly absent from Rwanda, which is at least 90% Christian. No, in this post-conflict country, these screams seemed far more sinister.

***

New blog, new country, new purpose. Whatever. Let me get to it. I’m in the Peace Corps now. It’s a weird thing for me. While all of my travels have come from completely different motives, this is completely different than anything I have done before. Some people have thought it would make sense for me to join the Peace Corps. After all, I am used to being abroad and can deal with new situations. It’s not that simple though. Not only have I not been abroad for as long as two years, and more importantly, I have not stayed in one place or committed to one job for anything close to two years in a long time. In fact, I have been so transient in the last decade that it has been since high school that I even lived in the same place for more than two years at a time. The same would probably go for a job too. So as much as it might seem like I am going off to do what I have been doing for the last six years, I’m not, and yeah, it scares me.

***

When I woke a few hours later, I came out of my room and found one of my host sisters sweeping the living room floor. I tried to ask her about the woman I had heard screaming in the night. She understood what I was asking about, but my Kinyarwanda was not good enough to understand what she was saying. All I understood was the word “umusazi”, which is a general term for a crazy person. I never got more information about what was going on. All I knew was that she was an “umusazi” and her shrieks had something to do with the church.

It was not the only incident we have had with an “umusazi”. One morning I woke to a couple of loud crashes and bangs that seemed to come from the front of our house. I jumped up and looked out the window. I saw some of the village kids and a few adults from the surrounding area starting to walk toward our house. I threw on clothes and ran out of my room. Our front door was open and a crowd was gathered around our porch. I walked out and saw my host sisters standing outside in the crowd. A huge stone that must have weighed 40 or 50 pounds was sitting in front of the door. Scattered around it were a dozens of photos, that seemed to have spilled from a paper bag that lay nearby. I was still groggy and trying piece this whole thing together. One of my host sisters rubbed my back in a consoling way, telling me it was just an umusazi, and that I need not worry. I found this kind of funny, as I did not feel threatened by the incident, just confused. Down the road I could see a few people hustling in the opposite direction, apparently chasing the man who had done this.

I later found out that this person had stolen a huge bag of photos from a woman that lived nearby and makes a living as an event photographer. He had proceeded to throw the photos and stones at our house and at least one other nearby. I also heard that he was arrested soon after and thrown in jail.

It is strange to have these incidents and know very little about what is going on. My ability in the local language is improving, but I am still in the dark about most of what goes on around me. I feel an urge to connect dots about these incidents. I am living in a country that is still recovering from one of the most horrific events of the 20^th century. Rwanda is rife with posttraumatic stress disorder. It is natural for me to try to put two and two together. However, the genocide seems rarely, if ever, talked about. At this point it is actually difficult to see the realities of what happened only 18 years ago. Is what I was seeing in the mental health of some of my neighbors related directly to this? I had seen plenty of so-called “mad men” in the cities in Ghana and Mali, although never in such small villages. Or, perhaps, this was a result of government policies that keep people like this in their villages and out of the cities. Obviously I have a lot to learn about this small, but complicated country.

***

Besides the bizarre incidents described above, my time in Rwanda, the tiny land-locked country in Central Africa, has been less eventful in blog terms than my previous adventures. My first six weeks here have been full of routine and restraint. The Peace Corps has kept me on a tighter leash than I have been on since I was a child. Although I don’t want to admit it, this is possibly for the better.

Our first couple of days saw us basically locked into the compound at the Peace Corps office in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. All we saw of the capital was a nearby cell phone shop and whatever we could glimpse on the way out of the city as we went to our training site. It was only an hour outside of the capital, but the change was drastic. We drove deep into the hills into a small village that was completely removed from crowds and chaos of Kigali. We were given almost no information about where our training would take place, so I was surprised that such a small village was going to house 34 American volunteers for the next three months. In fact, we would be scattered throughout several villages within eight km. of our training center.

The first thing event in our training site was meeting our home stay families. The volunteers and the home stay parents all gathered behind the training center, underneath a pavilion to protect us from the sudden downpour of rain. Looking back on it, it was amazing how little we knew about what the next few months would be like. We were told nothing about the village, whom we would be living with, what our training schedule would be like or what the living conditions would be. One by one our names were announced and we were matched with our host parents. Most of the host parents outlandishly animated when it was their turn to greet and welcome their new guest. They would jump up and wrap them up in big bear hugs, then drag them over to the seat closest to them. When I was announced, my host mom was markedly more reserved than the others. She gave me a light hug that was more like us patting each other’s shoulders, a common Rwandan style of hug.

After the ceremony, my new mom and I walked to our house. There was a big crowd hanging around the church across the street. My host father was there for a wedding and he came over to greet me. He was stout man with a round head and a huge gap-toothed smile. He was very warm and seemed excited to add someone new to the family. That night, I met my huge new family. Four sisters and two brothers, plus a mystery brother who was studying in Uganda. They ranged in age from ten to mid-twenties.

The first thing that I learned about my family was that they were very religious. At first I thought they were Seventh Day Adventist because it was an Adventist wedding going on at the church. However, it turned out they were actually Pentecostal, and the father, was a Pastor, and leader of the Pentecostal Church for our whole district. His name was Pastor Bonnke, which is my favorite name so far. When I found out that my father was a pastor, I knew that we would probably be one of the wealthier families in the area. While we were not rich, necessarily, we did have a few luxuries that most of the other volunteers did not have. Most of all, we had electricity. This was nice, of course, though I felt it would have been good to go without electricity for the first three months. It was also something of a curse, since we also had a TV and DVD play, which were constantly running videos of church music videos and footage of local choirs performing. The novelty of this wore off very quickly. The main exception, ironically, was that the boys would usually watch action movies dubbed in Kinyarwanda on Sundays.

That night I could hear the choir singing across the street late into the night. It cut through the otherwise silent night with a deeply atmospheric resonance. I felt very happy to be where I was.

On my second morning, I got dressed in my nicest clothes to go to church with the family. The church was large and I sat on one of the long wooden benches with Aline, my oldest host sister. I noticed that it was all women and children in our section, while the men sat in a section to the right. Aline said it wasn’t a problem. As people slowly filled up the benches in the first hour, the four (four!) choirs sang. For the most part, I really enjoyed the music, and we all clapped along. Later in the service, guitars and a drum set were added, which I felt was unnecessary and reminded me of the new age churches that have Christian bands play instead of choirs.

The mass was about three hours, which I was not expecting. Luckily at least half of it was music. The next week, Aline gave me an English Bible, so I read for most of mass, which made it a lot more enjoyable.

Since I have been here I have constantly been in the habit of comparing it to the other African countries I have been to. In so many ways Rwanda is completely different from the West African countries I have been to. That is not to say that Mali, Ghana and Mauritania are that similar, but Rwanda seems completely unique. I have already formed a lot of opinions about this place and made plenty of observations. It is a strange place, however I don’t feel I am ready to give my opinions quite yet. I have only been here for six weeks and I am sure I have a lot to learn. I’m afraid that if I might regret any strong statements that I make at this point.

Transitions: Back to America Pt. 2

 

April 2012

Then things started to look up for me. Around April my transition back to a stable life in the states started to take shape, just in time for it to be over.

It must have started with a joke with a friend. Harley, who had just finished his service in the Peace Corps in Cameroon, had recently moved back to his home New Mexico. When I had asked him earlier about his plans after Peace Corps, he told me he would probably stay in New Mexico with his parents. I told him it would not last long. Sure enough, after a few weeks in New Mexico, I talked to him online and dropped on him the Anchor Man quote “I think after this is all over, you and me should get an apartment together.” It was in jest, but I also meant it. And he was totally down for the idea.

So we moved into a shared house together. I was thrilled to move out of my terrible living situation, and to have another friend around. Plus the people we moved in with were the kind of people that we could live with.

Soon after, I managed to get out of my restaurant job in Bellevue. I replaced it with two restaurant jobs which were a big step up. I had caught wind that I had no chance of advancing from my position at my job in Bellevue, so I figured if I would be a busser, I might as well work closer to home and make more money. One job was at a popular seafood restaurant that was something of a Seattle icon. It attracted tourists, elderly regulars, and boat people. It wasn’t the best group of customers or co-workers, but it was a huge restaurant that provided a steady and reliable income. The other was something of a dream restaurant job. It was as close to an enjoyable service industry job as I could have imagined. It had a mature and friendly staff, a respectable clientele, and a chef that was recently named one of the best in the country. It was by far the best restaurant job as I could have asked for. It was the rare service industry job I could take a bit of pride in.

With things in order, I could enjoy my last summer in Seattle for a while. I had a Peace Corps application in the works, but I had no idea when I would be leaving. It could be anywhere from August to the following winter. I felt like I was finally getting things in order. Plus I was lucky enough to have Lise come and stay with me for the summer. My previous living situation had made her last visit complicated. Now we were free to enjoy each other’s company and have some truly memorable times together. We spent time canoeing Lake Washington, going to Capitol Hill Block Party and camping. It really made the summer perfect.

So now I was waiting to hear from the Peace Corps. I had been jumping through their hoops for months. I don’t feel like going through the details of that, but it was a long process of doctor appointments, dentist appointments, endless paperwork, visits to various government offices and going to copy shops. I even had to go back to Idaho once to get a dental exam because the corrupt dentist in Seattle (recommended by the Peace Corps) said he would need to do over $700 worth of (unnecessary) work to sign off on my paperwork.

After constant waiting, I received a phone call saying that my Peace Corps invitation had been sent. They said that I would probably be going to sub-Saharan Africa. This was a good thing. My dream was to be going to a French-speaking country to go to West Africa. I had done everything possible to set myself up for a French-speaking placement. I didn’t have the formal education in French that was required, but I had studied French on my own for three years, especially in the last few months. I had taken a Clep exam and passed with a high score, which qualified me for a French-speaking placement. I will be honest that my ambitions for joining the Peace Corps were not entirely altruistic, and I wanted to be able to greatly advance my abilities to speak French for many reasons. I had put a lot of personal effort into learning the language and wanted to be place where I could hone these skills.

I figured that the invitation letter from the Peace Corps, which would include my country of placement, would arrive within a few days. Unfortunately the Peace Corps seemed to send it at through the slowest possible means. It got there after about eight days.

Mama called me, saying the letter had come. My heart pounded, yeah yeah yeah, dramatic lead up to my announcement. I was incredibly nervous of course. She told me I was being sent to Rwanda on September 11.

My reaction was tempered by many factors. I was excited to finally know. I was shocked by how soon I would be leaving. It was a tight squeeze. Peace Corps is required to notify you at least 8 weeks in advance, and mine was exactly that much. I can move quickly, but this was still overwhelming. Lise would be staying until two weeks before I left, and I was doing all I could to not be distracted during her visit. I knew that two weeks between her visit and leaving for Rwanda would be nuts.

As far as Rwanda, my reaction was mixed. Yes, it is a Francophone country, but it didn’t mean much. For many reasons, the country has recently switched to English, especially as a language of instruction. This was very important, since I was going to be in the education sector. Also, because of how homogenous Rwanda is, I would not be trained in French, but rather Kinyarwanda, which is spoken throughout the entire country. On the other hand, I was excited about being placed in a country that I completely did not expect. It was a curveball that I welcomed. I had many dream placements, such as Guinea, Togo or Cameroon, but I also kind of wanted to be put in a country that I knew nothing about. Rwanda fit the bill. Of course I had read a lot about the genocide over the years, but I knew that there was still so much to learn. Plus it was in a region of Africa that I was very unfamiliar with. It was East Africa and Central Africa at the same time. It had close historical ties to the Congo, but was also geographically close to East African countries of Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. This was a region that I had always overlooked when it came to traveling, but again, my ignorance of it was a big plus.

My job assignment as well gave me pause. I was placed in the teaching sector, most specifically English teaching. This was definitely not my top choice. Over time I had developed a somewhat cynical view of the idea that teaching English to people in developing countries was going to help the country’s situation. For example, teaching children English in a place like Mali or Cambodia seemed like it would only provide opportunities for a few people in the tourism sector or maybe the lucky few that got into international business. It did not seem to be the kind of thing would have a significant impact in alleviating poverty. Plus, tourism in developing countries is very volatile. Take Mali, for example. A year ago tour guides most definitely benefited from their ability to speak English. Now that it is unstable and tourism has dried up, it is no longer putting food on tables or supporting industries.

However, Rwanda was unique. The whole country, which spoke French as its international language, has decided to switch to English. One of the major reasons for this (among many) was the fact that many of the neighboring countries are Anglophone. Rwanda is trying to promote valuable economic ties with countries like Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, rather than the troubled Francophone countries Burundi and Congo, which are far more troubled. The country officially changed the language of instruction in schools from French to English just a few years ago. It has obviously been a difficult change for the country, but it is a change that I feel I can support. It is not because I think that one language is better than the other, but it seems that English will be a more valuable language for Rwandans than French. This is why I feel good about my efforts to help Rwanda in their transition from French to English. Still it is ironic, as I was really hoping to use the Peace Corps to improve my skills in French.

I was also conflicted in a more selfish way. As far as my job with the Peace Corps was concerned, I was hoping for a role that would set me up to learn more about development. I did not feel that English teaching was very different than other posts where volunteers were able operate more like NGO or development workers. It is something I really had a desire to get involved in for the sake of my post-Peace Corps life. At the same time, I know that teaching English as a second language would give me the skills to teach English anywhere in the world, if I so wanted. In the future, if I am ever in need of a decent job abroad, my experience with the Peace Corps will give me a huge advantage if I need some work teaching English.

Once it all sank in, I felt overwhelmed with how soon I was leaving. Eight weeks is not a lot of notice. I had to continue working the two jobs I was about to quit, move out of my house, continue the never-ending barrage of Peace Corps paperwork, make visits to friends in Phoenix and my sister in Indianapolis, and squeeze the most time out of the time I still had with Lise in Seattle. It was an intense last month. Every time someone asked me if I was excited or nervous, I had a difficult time mustering any emotion. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was too busy to contemplate the fact that I was about to spend the next 27 months in an African country I knew relatively little about. Perhaps it was because I had left the country blindly for various reasons in the past and now I was getting used to it. Maybe it was the fact that the Peace Corps was not my first choice of options, but rather the next logical move in my life. Maybe it was all of those and more. It is impossible to say.

When it finally came time to leave home on Sept. 10, I can say that I still felt very little. Of course I was sad to say goodbye to my family, and I knew I would miss them. On the other hand, I had done this before, and knew what to expect. My best guess to explain my calm and tempered mood was that my excitement and my nervousness were counteracting each other, leaving me to appear bored and boring. I wanted to muster up strong emotions, but then again, I knew those would really come flooding in the moment I stepped off the plane. Just like usual.