Photos of everyday life in Rwanda

Traditional Dancers at a local organization fair

A cooperative in Kigali that sews cloth bags.

A farmer cooperative proudly standing in front of their land

Deforestation of tree's in my own village :(

Rwandan children loving each other

The heavy rains of rainy season

Close up of the little fishes or in kinyarwanda isambasi

My neighbor laying out little fishes to dry

Some cow skins for sale at the local market

21 Months

Well, Friday marks 21 months living in Rwanda. I am very excited to be finished kinda soon! On dec. 5 I will have exactly 5 more months. My training group started with 37 and now has 22 making our Group- (Health 2) have 40% early termination rate. Most of my closest friends have left not making things easier for me. I got very very close to going home also. But I decided to stay for a number of reasons, the biggest being friendships, new travel experiences and the goal of just finishing.
So what am I doing now?
I am trying to keep myself busy and trying to stay in my village as much as possible. My organization lost a lot of its USAID funding and is now as a loss for what to do. For now they seem to still be paying staff and paying rent but as for all the activities, they have to be cut. It doesn’t really make much sense to me what’s going on; I think they are trying to do what they can with as little money as possible. Personally I think it’s for the best, they were getting too much money before anyway and not really doing anything useful with it. So now I get to be a true “community development & health volunteer”, which gives me a lot of freedom to do anything. The problem is knowing what is needed and where can I help. Lately I find myself hanging out at the health center. Here I can talk with women and families about hygiene and nutrition. (They never realize how good avocados and carrots can be, instead they by glucose biscuits and fried bread for the same cost.) There is a nurse there who is really good in English and can translate for me. I can say it very simply in Kinyarwanda and he then goes into detail. I talk about when hands should be washed and how children should not run around bare foot (if they can afford shoes) which almost everyone has a least cheap foam shoes, ect. Then when paperwork/names are being filled out I play with the babies and keep them occupied using my phone, my house keys, and sometimes even my earrings. After work I hang out in the town center, usually with my bike (as I have to ride it to the health center). Everyone wants to take turns riding it around so I usually let them for a short time. Then I head to a shop to take some tea. Last week I somehow managed to spill a mug of hot tea all over myself, the guy next to me, the bench and the floor. It caused quite a mess, but the shop owner happily cleaned it up and gave me a free new cup of tea. I had to sit and drink while everyone who came into the shop got told the story of how I spilled tea everywhere. But I do love Rwandan Tea. I also recently “designed” a number of dresses that I had a tailor make for me. They all came out great!
The school year is over now but I will maybe start teaching English again in January at the primary school.
In December I head to Zanizbar for a second time (because its just that amazing) and Zambia to see Victoria Falls!

Training Teacher’s to be Child Friendly

Lately my job has been going to different schools in the area and teaching about child-friendly schools. This is basically showing teachers other ways to teach besides lecturing the students for 8 hours a day. My co-worker and I taught teachers how to use teaching aids and about the active learning method. We talked about using role play activities, puzzles, and the game of BINGO. That was training number 1. A month later we went around to all the schools again evaluating and checking if they had tried to use any of the teaching aids. We then discussed how the process went and how to make things better. Most of the teachers had tried to use these aids and the ones that tried had little to complain about. Sadly in one of the schools not a single teacher tried any of the methods. This was very discouraging for both me and my co-worker. It meant that the hours we had spent before training them were pointless. They said they could not use teaching aids due to lack of time, too many students and a lack of materials. We attempted to resolve these problems and taught four more teaching aids; board games, word blocks, letter blocks and the around the world flash card math game. The teachers seemed to like all these ideas and promised to try at least one in the next month. It was really fun teaching these games. The teachers had never heard of or played a board game before in their entire lives. So I made a simple board game to show them how it works then had them all come up with their own games. This also involved teaching how to make a dice out of paper. The word blocks games is a packet of cut up English words, a team of 4-6 people receive these letters and must make as many sentences as possible with the words provided. The team to come up with the most correct English sentences wins. The letter block game is similar. Each team is given a packet of letters and must spell the word said the fastest. All in all I have really enjoyed my work the last few months teaching Child Friendly Schools in Rwanda.

A South African Dream

The three days in Uganda was just not a long enough vacation. So I took a weeklong trip to South Africa to visit some of my friends from my semester abroad. I flew into Johannesburg and meet up with a friend before I headed to my destination. Walking into the airport from the plane was very overwhelming. There were shops and restaurants everywhere and people of every race. I didn’t know where or how to even begin. There were so many things I could get here that I cannot get in Rwanda, choosing something on a menu at this point was too much for me. I sat down at Mugg and Bean where I was to meet my friend and told the server to bring me anything cold because I could not decide. He brought me a delicious strawberry cheesecake milkshake and I was in heaven. It only took an hour to get out of culture shock and enjoy South Africa and all it had to offer. After chatting for hours with Sarah my Johannesburg friend it was time to travel to Durban, the home town of my best South African friend Kirstin. I had been here before during my semester abroad, I spent a week here during a vacation from university. Durban is South Africa’s third largest city on the east coast with a population of 3.5 million people. Durban also has the largest concentration of Indian people making it the best place to get bunny chow a south African Indian specialty involving a half loaf of bread hollowed out and filled with beans, meat and curry stew. One day one my friend and I and her cousins drove around Durban to a small not well known Lion Park. It was a short drive around safari where we were able to pet huge elephants. We also saw a dozen lions trying to catch a monkey that was in the top of a tree. This is the first and only time I will probably every see a full grown lion climb a tree. Sadly the lions did not succeed in catching the monkey. He was too quick for them and jumped from tree to tree. It was very entertaining for the tourists though. I also saw a lager, a mix between a lion and a tiger. Yes, they really do exist! The next day we went shopping in a 3 story mall! It was crazy and amazing! Then it was time for some wave surfing. At one of the malls in Durban there is a wave machine. So for one hour we bungee boarded and surfed on a wave machine. It was more fun than can ever be explained here but I do believe I have a video from it that would win on America’s Funniest Home Video’s of a complete wipeout by me. Another day we went to the new Moses Mabhiba Stadium which was built for the 2010 world cup. Now they have a lift you can take to the top to see a great view of all of Durban. The rest of the time was spent relaxing, catching up on GLEE episodes, and eating amazing food!

Over to Uganda for the weekend

A few months ago I took a vacation to Uganda, boarding the north of Rwanda. I went with a friend and we squeezed a week trip into 3 days. First stop was Sabinyo volcano. It has a jagged top with 3 peaks. The third peak is at the border of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda. To get to each peak you have to climb up and down ricked wooden ladders because of how steep each peak is. In Kinyarwanda Sabinyo means bad or old teeth which is a very fitting name because from a distance the top of the volcano looks just like that. We spent the night in a hostel right at the bottom of the volcano. Then bright and early at 7am we woke up to begin the daunting climb. Funny story here, we did not know there was a time change as we are merely 1hour from Rwanda directly north, but yes indeed there is a one hour time change and therefore we had not set our alarms for 7 but 8 instead so we had a very sudden awakening by the staff who knew we were intending to climb the volcano that morning. We made it to the base by 7:30 only 30 minutes late and began climbing. We were accompanied the entire way by an armed guard in case of elephant attacks mostly is what we were told. We did see elephant tracks and elephant dung but no actual elephants sadly. We reached the first peak at 1:00ish and then it was onto the second peak going down first and then further up the summit peak two. Unfortunately during our climb it was foggy and rainy and we had absolutely no view. As we climb onward to the third peak all I am thinking the entire time is please let the fog clear so we can get a few. At 2:30 we summated the third and highest peak of Sabinyo and got to stand in 3 countries at once, Rwanda, Uganda and Congo. The third summit is 3669 meters high. The climb in total is 14 kilometers and took about 8 hour’s total. To say the least by the end of the climb we were absolutely exhausted, sore and completely wet by the end of this climb but there was no time to rest as next we had to go white water rafting and bungee jumping. We took a bus, rested at our hostel on Saturday and on Sunday morning, took a 44 meter leap of faith off a ledge over the Nile River with a bungee attached of course, then took on the white waters of the Nile River. It is said to be one of the world most spectacular rafting destinations in the world. And I must agree. In the morning we took on four class 4 and 5 rapids one being a 15 foot waterfall that yes we went down it and survived and did not even flip the boat which most of the other boats that did hit ended up flipping. (By the way the highest level rapid is a class 6 but those are deadly, the highest rapid that can be rafted through is class 5.) There is a way around the waterfall for wimps. Then it was lunch time, which was amazing by the way chicken and ham and fresh vegetables wrapped in chapatti with hot sauce. This may not sound amazing to those living outside Africa but let me tell you the vegetables are limited in Rwanda and it is amazing when there is a buffet full of them. After lunch we hit 4 more rapids flipped in one of them. Flipping is really the adrenaline rush with rafting. You get sucked under the water for a few seconds by the rapid and it is scary but really fun to do. We tried to flip more times but just didn’t hit the rapids quit right to cause a flip. Yes that’s right flipping is a skill you have to try for its not as easy as it seems to flip. So then it was time to return that night to our beloved home of Rwanda. In three days we were able to trek a volcano, bungee jump and whitewater raft and it was an amazing weekend.

1st Day of English Class

Last week I started English class at the nearby primary school. I requested a class of 30 P4, P5, P6 students only. This is the last three levels of primary school. I decided to teach on Tuesday and Thursday evenings as an after-school help class. So I arrive on Tuesday evening for my first class. There are at least one hundred children all shouting at the teachers. The teachers have come up with picking a number out of a hat to see what children can be in my class. Because I am early I get to watch this process happen. Let me tell you it was not pretty. I felt so bad, all the kids wanted to be in the class but couldn’t. Do to the wild and craziness and the fact that 10 minutes before class is suppose to start we only have 10 names, the classes has now been shortened to 15. And I am so glad because I do not think I could control 30 students. But I also feel so bad about the students who can’t come but want to. As I start the class I have to take names and kick out all the people on the list. Then later children start climbing through the windows and sneaking into the class. You should think I would notice this but they are skilled. I only noticed that suddenly there are 18 students as opposed to the 15 students on my list. So I have to kick them out. Then I have to bolt the door shut with a desk to keep the kids out. There are still at least 30 kids outside watching and mocking the class. To say it bluntly the first day did not go so well. Good news though, the second day went great. The teachers had already prepared the list, (I have 2 classes one on Tuesdays and one on Thursday) and had the students who were picked already in the class and everyone else had left. There was still a few people outside watching but nothing nearly as noisy and distracting as the first day. It appears the children are used to having white people visit to give out free stuff and all the children really wanted was something from the white visitor. Once they all realized it really was just an English class, people were much less interested. So thanks AID workers for turning this culture into a NGO dependent culture and for just giving out things constantly.

In the Dark of the Night

It was about 6:30 at night. Here that is when the sun sets. Due to our location so close to the equator the sun rises and sets at 6:30 exactly everyday all year. And it only takes about 15 minutes from the time it starts setting at 6:15 to when it finishes setting.
I was taking the bus home from Kigali, and grueling 2 ½ hour ride if I’m lucky, and I arrive at about 6:30. It was dark and I was busy talking to some relatives of a university student who were coming to my site for their sister’s graduation. Remember, I live in a tiny town there is a small university. I had just been to the town where my P.O box was to pick up 3 packages. So as I’m getting off the bus I have to rummage around the bus to collect all my packages. Then when I got off the bus I realized I didn’t have my purse. I ran back on the bus to search for it but it was not there. So I started shouting to everybody that a thief had taken my purse. Then somebody said they remembered seeing someone get off the bus rather quickly and run off down the dark dirt road. so three guys ran in that direction to find him. It turns out one of the guys knew who he was and where he lived. That night they were able to get my purse back for me with all the cash still there but the guy had taken the phone and run somewhere with it. While they got my purse back at this thief’s house they stole his soccer bag as collateral for my phone. I was told I would get the phone back the next day but I was pretty doubtful. And I was now scared that I would get reported as a thief since I had this guys soccer bag. Not a good idea at all but I really had no say in the matter. I I was happy just to have gotten my purse back which also had the keys to my house, so I could now get home. I had accepted the fact that I would probably have to get a new phone. Phone’s here are high commodities; people want phones more than anything else, more than laptops or other electronic. The reasoning for this is because laptops are rare besides my co-worker and maybe some rich university students I am one of the few with a laptop, therefore it’s pretty easy to figure out who stole it when somebody tries to use it everyone will know it’s not theirs. So the only thing easiest and less traceable is a phone. If you have an iphone your safe too because nobody has those here so if one is seen with a non-westerner they know it was stolen.
The morning has arrived. I wake up to a knock at my door. It is one of my neighbors. He has a phone number written down of somebody who needs to talk to me. So I use his phone to call the number and have them call me back. (Receiving phone calls is always free). It turns out the call was from the Peace Corps Country Director. She heard I had been mugged. I cleared up the story. I had not been touched or threatened in any way. Just was being stupid and careless on the bus home. Also later that day I got my phone back and the man’s soccer bag was returned to the security who returned it the the Thief. I still don’t know the thief but I know he lives in my town and as I walk around I look at people wondering who it was. I know they know who I am being the only white person in town.