SWEAR IN

Written May 9th

Well it has been quite a while since I wrote a blog. I wish I could blame it on the internet never working but I don’t actually need the internet to write the blogs. So I guess I can’t really use that excuse. But Training is officially over and I am an actual Peace Corps volunteer now. (If you didn’t know before I was a Peace Corps trainee for the past 10 weeks.) Our swear-in ceremony took place on May 5th at the Ambassador’s house. He has a beautiful house and the ceremony was televised and made the newspaper called the New Times: Rwanda’s First Daily the May 6th edition. I am actually pictured on page 3 so hopefully I can put an electronic copy on my blog for you all. The oath we took is the same oath as everyone in the U.S government takes including the military and congress. That’s right Nick I took the same oath as you
I, Sonya Alexander, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, domestic and foreign, that I take this obligation freely and without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion and that I will well and faithfully discharge my duties in the Peace Corps, so help me God.
So after swear in we got to spend 4 days in Kigali to buy things we need and to relax and hang out. I love shopping so this has been a really fun couple of days. The peace corps gives us a move in allowance to buy things like appliances and furniture for our houses. We have also gotten to test many restaurants in Kigali. Night one, we ate at what we thought was Thai food but in reality it was owned by a French man and mostly only had French foods. The guy didn’t even know what Pad Thai was. So I had noodles and vegetables in a peanut sauce which was as close as I could get to pad thai. The next day we stuffed ourselves at the ambassadors house after our swear-in ceremony. So for dinner we just had the famous Rwandan bar food brochettes and fires. The next day we had dinner at a pizza place called sun and moon. The pizza was really good they were just a bit stingy on the cheese but cheese is very expensive here so that understandable. My friend ordered a cheese pizza with olives and literally got one whole olive cut into about 8 pieces on her pizza. Even with all that I would recommend the place because it’s good and cheap. Friday we ate at a little coffee shop located outside the market called aromas. It was so-so but cheap and owned by a Texan. I had a burger and fries which were not as good as at this coffee shop Bourbon. Speaking of Bourbon it is like a little America in Rwanda. It’s like Starbucks but better. The food is really good and comes out really fast. Service is great. They have amazing ice cream that’s real Italian gelatti. The only glitch is that they are really expensive. We also ate at an Indian restaurant which was good but not so good non. A few weeks ago a few of us came to Kigali and ate at a really nice Indian restaurant. The food is amazing the non and chicken tika masala is amazing but it’s one of the most expensive restaurants so we can’t really afford it on the peace corps budget. Today we found a really great cheap burger place with good milkshakes so that was exciting also.
I feel like all I ever blog about is food but it’s a big part of happiness here in the Peace Corps. The theory goes that women gain weight and men lose weight. I will hopefully not be part of that statistic. Luckily in Rwanda it’s somewhat ok to go running unlike in other countries where it is completely unacceptable.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

written May 9th

In Kigali something very amazing happened the other day. So back story, there are many kids who ask muzungu’s for amafaronga (money). All the time they hold out their hands and say give me money. (By the way please does not exist in this language neither do any words we would use to be polite. This includes store and restaurant settings they say I want or give me. No please, no polite statements its just the culture not because they are rude. Oh and also hissing at a waiter or waitress is how to get their attention.) So anyway back to my story a kid was asking me for money so I held out my hand and asked him for money. He gave me 25 francs, then continued to ask me for money so I gave him back the money he gave me and he continued to ask. It was really unexpected and maybe a little rude of me but who would have guessed he would actually give me money. Well a few days later my friend did the same thing, asked the kid begging for money and she was given 100Francs. That’s actually a descend amount of money, enough to buy a lolli-pop or a chocolate truffle. She gave it back but still its so crazy that this has now happened twice in the same area.

They call me Mukundwa

Written May 9th

A little about my last week in Nyanza…
I celebrated a friend’s birthday at my other friends host family. We all went to their house together and taught them how to make grilled cheese and tomato soup. It was a really fun time but think they doubted how well it would turn out because on the side they also made beans and rice. Then later that week I had dinner with my host family. I hadn’t really spent as much time with them as I should have but they were a really awesome family and extremely nice but spoke no English so it was very difficult to communicate. I did find out however that the dad was a construction worker and also the boss of the village/umudugudu. The mother owned a fabric shop in town which I frequented a lot. They had 4 children but one I never met because I think she was at boarding school. I learned that the dad used to live in the area I am moving to before 1994 but everything was destroyed and he moved to Nyanza. This was all in Kinyarwanda and with actions so it was hard to handle and I can be sure before of the slashing actions he was showing me. I didn’t really know how to react to such a statement.
That night I got to cook dinner with them. I peeled potatoes, and tomatoes. Broke string beans, Cut potato’s simultaneously cutting my finger as well. So then I sat out on the rest but dinner was really good. We had cow meat, rice, fries, tomato sauce, green beans, and banana wine. They had me sit at a large table with me the father and mother. The kids had to sit outside and as far as I can tell they are only fed the left over’s. This does make me extremely uncomfortable but everyone says that’s how it is at their host families also so it’s just the norm here. A friends of the families came by and took like 15 photos of me eating. Then a few more with me posing with the family. They gave me a kinyarwandan name. Here it is tradition to after 10 days of birth to be given a name. Mine is now Mukundwa meaning peace. Then they gave me a gift. At first I thought it was fabric which is what I love so I was ecstatic. I took it out of the bag to find a dress that she had my umudosi make for me with the measurements she already had from the dress she made me before. It was super cute and I love it dearly. The next day we had tea and a goodbye ceremony with all of our host families. I got to wear the dress and I think that made my host parents very happy.

GUTEKA- to cook!

I feel in one of my earlier blog entires I was a bit negative on the food issue. I would like to tell you the wonderful foods that have been derived from the ingredients we have been able to find in Rwanda. But first a little about Rwandan cooking. There are 5 standard dishes and thats it. Rwandans never branch out and try different concoctions, its always the same. Plantins (a cross between a potato and a bananna; Ibishyimbo na umuceri (rice and beans); mashed potatos; ifiritis (french fries); dodo (greens similar to spinish); carrots, peas and green beans; umugati (cassava flour bread, very bland, hearthy taste but not bad); especial (omlette). As americans though we discovered with a little effort that many american dishes can be made here. 1: Hmaburgers, i did little in the preperation of this but my house mates spent hours grinding the meat with a terrible meat grinder. Then the ground beef was formed into hot dog shaped burgers since that is the shape of the buns here and cooked over a coal fire. They were delicious. we added avocado and tomatoes and cheese to them. Then with the French fries i learned a cool new trick and that is to always double fri. The following weekend we made macaroni and cheese starting with a rue of butter and flour then adding cheese. It was also incredible the garlic was an amazing touch to that dish. It funny because I have a roommate who can find anything in this country. Snickers and kit kats have recently been discovered, not sure if they were specially ordered from Kigali because of the group of 36 muzungu's staying in the area or not. Anyway she saw a white man and followed him and what did she find, she found French baguettes. so now on numerous occasions we have had grilled cheese on real French baguettes. To make it a little better, avocado and tomatoes are a great touch. Guacamole is another favorite especially since we don't need to spend an hour prepping a fire in order to make it. Avocado's are huge here and you can get 1 for 10 cents. Interestingly enough guacamole is not a Rwandan dish and Rwandans don't really know about it. It is definitely popular with the peace corps volunteers though. So I think i can safely say I will not be wasting away of starvation any time soon. (of course packages with american food are definitely still wanted :)

Peace Corps Talent Show

Peace Corps Rwanda had a talent show for the trainiee’s a few weeks ago. It was just like being at summer camp again which was really fun. I found out there is lots of talent in our group. Sadly I have no talents for a talent show but that did not stop me from participating, and partially because it was required everuone be involved. So a few of my friends and I re-wrote a famous song, It’s Miley Cyrus’s Party in the U.S.A.
It goes like this:
Hopped of the Plane at KGL
With our chocos and our 80 pounds
Welcome to the land of a thousand hills
Not gonna fit in
I hopped on the volcano express for the first time
Looked to my right and i see the condom sign
This is all so crazy, i guess i’m not that lazy
My tommy’s turning and i’m feeling kinda homesick
Too much pressure and i’m nervous
Thats when the driver man turned up the radio
And the yawe song was on (X3)

Chourus
So i put my hands up their playing my song
And the butterflies fly away
Nodding my head like yego
Moving my hips like yego
So i put myhands up their playing my song and i know its gonna be ok
Yeah yeah there’s a party in Rwanda

Went to the blue bar the buy a primus
Everybody’s looking at me now
Like who’s the chick thats rockin crocs
She’s gotta be from outta town
Its not hard with my firends all around me
Everyday is like a peace corps party
All i see are bright fabrics
I guess we all got the memo
My tommy’s turning and i’m feeling kinda homesick
Too much pressure and i’m nervous
Thats when the driver man turned up the radio
And the yawe song was on (X3)
(Chorus)

I feel like hopping on a flight
Bakc to my hometown tonight
Mupemba stops me everytime
And the DJ plays my song and I feel alright

(mupemba is our training director here in Rwanda)

A Weekend in Paradise

Well this has been a great weekend in mini America (or as close as I’ll get in the next 2 years). We have been staying at a very nice hotel for 3 nights to have a health conference with all the organizations Peace Corps health group will be working with while in Rwanda. We are staying in a hotel with individual huts with a roommate. But we have hot showers and flushing toilets. It has a swimming pool and what’s even more amazing is that we were actually told there would be a pool and to bring our swim suits. The pool felt so amazing I have been swimming every day at every chance we get. (So about 3 times because there has not been a lot of down time until now). Many people left for their site visits this afternoon. Me and about 10 others leave tomorrow so we get to spend an extra night in this exquisite hotel with free wireless. This is why I have been able to upload pictures to my blog and to facebook. Our first day when we arrived in Kigali in February it did not seem like such a big, amazing city before. It was not a big deal, a city in Africa nothing like even the smaller cities in America. Now after spending only a month in the semirural city of nyanza, Kigali is this huge luxurious city in which we get seasoned food and can hear cars driving by at night. Definitely a different perspective. Also the first traffic lights I have seen in a month was when we drove back into Kigali. I never even noticed they were missing until I saw them and thought it was strange seeing them.
The point of the health conference was to learn about the organization we would be working with and see all the other organizations that others are working with. It was great getting to meet my counterpart and supervisors this weekend. I also got to learn a little bit about my organization. They work with rural communities to help make sustainable living for underprivileged families. They work with farmers to raise crops like corn and flour and fruits. They sell a famous health porridge around Africa called Sosoma which I got to even sample and it’s like a runny oatmeal without the oats. The company also helps craftsman to make, sell and market wood projects such as doors and beds and cabinets. I am the very first volunteer this organization has ever had. My role as of now is still a little unclear but I know I will be working in the community with the farmers and working in the office doing business plans and organizational things. I will be living about 45 minutes from Kigali in the district of Muhanga which is much bigger than Nyanza but only slightly smaller than Kigali. I will share about what i am doing here once I have gotten to see my site and spent time in my community and with my organization.
Thank You all for reading!

Umugonda (National Day of Service)

Rwanda is a truly amazing country. On Saturday we all woke up early to go to the monthly event called umuganda. This happens on the 4th Saturday of every month. Shops close and everyone works together on this national community service day. We went to go help one particular umudugodo (village) with cultivating land for Cassava plants. The mayor recommended we help them. It was an hour and a half hike through woods and over mountains and down hills, it was beautiful but of course I forgot my camera. Anyway we get there and we see over 2 hundred people hoeing the ground, the old fashioned way to turn the soil. We all had to take turns with the hoes because they were many more people than there where tools which seems to be a common problem. Anyway we worked for a few hours on this large area of land, then everyone sat down for some sort of meeting and role check I think,(it was all in Kinyarwanda). Umuganda is a mandatory event in the country and some community’s even fine people who do not attend. After the meeting the Rwandans all start chanting and then dancing and I realized that in Rwanda everything turns into a dance party. There is never down time because anytime people are waiting to do something they just start singing and dancing. Maybe if we all did the world would be a happier place. For lunch we got to eat umugati, which is a roll of bread dough that you dip into a sauce. I really like it but it takes some getting used to. The way one person refers to it here is the most earthy taste you can imagine, but in a good way.
Sunday it was off to Kigali. We are staying in a hotel with huts as rooms. Its really nice, we have hot water showers and flushing toilets and amazing food. We had French toast for breakfast which made me amazingly happy. Today we met our supervisors of the organizations we will be working with. And we also have free wireless internet, what more could a PCV ask for!