My new site...The Village

Well I have finally moved sites. I used to live in Gitarama, Rwanda’s second largest city after Kigali. I liked it there but with 4 other PCV’s, a ton of other volunteer organizations and NGO workers located there it was very crammed with outsiders. I now live in a tiny village in the district of Ruhango, about 1 hour from Gitarama, 2 hours from Kigali. I am the only volunteer and only white person and the first PCV to ever be placed here. The village contains a hospital and about 10 little shops. There is a bus station, a Seventh Day Adventist Church and some primary and secondary schools. There is a University with 1,000 students who live in dorms during the school year (Jan-Oct). That literally is what makes up my entire town. There is not even a market, to go to the market I have to take a 20 minute bus to the next town which is only open on Wednesdays. The town is mostly Seventh Day Adventist, meaning everything is closed on Saturday’s because that is the day everyone goes to church. My house is amazing. In order for my organization to afford it they had to combine my house with the office; to do that they built a wall between my living room and the three bedrooms. So the living room is the office and I still have three rather large rooms. One I have made into the Kitchen, one is my bedroom and the last room contains a huge 100 liter water storage tank and my bicycle. I have electricity but no running water in site. I pay someone to fill my 20 liter jerry cans with water every few days. I have an outdoor shower area. (really just a room with a locking door and a drain). Luckily I brought a solar shower with me to Rwanda so I fill it with hot water and still get to take hot showers. Then my bathroom is in the room next to my shower, also outside. When I first came to look at the house it was just a hole in the ground, a pit latrine. I told them that was fine with me. It’s what I used all throughout training so it really doesn’t bother me anymore. But when I arrived on move in day they had stuck a real toilet overtop of the pit and cemented it in. I have no running water so I have to keep a bucket full of water next to my toilet to flush it but it actually works out pretty nicely.
I am also in the process of completing a $500 water charity project for a primary school nearby. They need a second water tank and I will be trying to get that for them through appropriateprojects .com. The school is 1200 students who travel 2 km by foot a day. There are only 14 classrooms and 20 teachers for the 1200 students. I think they could definitely use a second tank to collect rain water in. The other water source is 300 meters down a steep hill meaning a steep hike up hill carrying the water. Anyway wish me luck and if its accepted my project will be posted online to ask for donations.

Good things come when you least expect them

Well since I have a cat now, I have to have a litter box now too. Since litter does not come easily in stores I use dirt instead. And it works just fine; it just starts to stink faster and has to be changed more often. It’s no big deal though because kids love to change the litter box for me at no cost. Because it means they get to play in the dirt and help a muzungu (white person) at the same time. So today I went to go find a good spot to dump the litter and was looking for some fresh dirt when I saw some kids playing volleyball and decided to go play with them. As I was playing the kids put new dirt in my litter box and I got to play volleyball with some secondary school students. Also the school year has officially come to an end here, the kids finished final exams yesterday. Until the end of January there is no more school. This of course means kids will be playing outside on the streets all day every day. It would normally not bother me but they love to follow muzungu’s wherever they go so just walking to the market can catch a crowd of 20 or so children. It can be super frustrating some days and other days really nice.

Secondary Project at the Special Needs School

A few weeks ago I found a school for special needs children near my house. The school is huge and has over 300 children attending. It is one of 10 schools in Rwanda for special needs students. They have deaf children in one part of the school and autistic children in another. I don’t think they have gone so far as to diagnose other mental disorders, they just combine everyone into these two categories. Sadly the teachers have not been trained in any way to teach or discipline these children. If they are running around outside not coming to class nobody seems to care. They told me they don’t know how to get the children to come to class. So my job has been rounding up the children who don’t come and dragging them to class and sitting with them to make sure they stay. Also positive reinforcement is completely lacking in the classrooms which is especially important when children have these conditions. It’s also sad that they place deaf students with autistic children because many of the deaf students have no brain disabilities at all. So I have been trying to stress positive reinforcement. Also for the children that act out they are usually doing this purely for attention. So I have found if you ignore the students acting out and pay attention only to the students being good, and giving the good students lots of positive reinforcement the children acting out and refusing to do the exercises eventually feel left out and learn that to get the teachers attention they have to be good. During my first week at the school I was shadowing one particular teacher. One day when I arrived he was not there. I asked another teacher where he was, and was told he was at the bank. So his class was left completely unattended, no one subbed in and no one seemed to car. So I just took over the class and taught that day because the teacher went to the bank. You can see the standard these teachers are held to…none.

Things acceptable in the Peace Corps; that maybe aren’t acceptable elsewhere?

- Eating food off the floor
- Stealing strangers leftover’s that they didn’t eat
- Sharing a paper napkin with 3 or more friends
- Eating off of tuberware lids and sharing forks at a dinner party b/c there aren’t enough
- Eventually learning to just keep silverware in your purse at all times
- Bringing tuberware to events with free food and taking enough to eat for two days.
- Buying 2 gallons of soft serve ice-cream and putting it into a tuberware container
- Paying children to get you things when you’re too lazy to leave your house.
- Only showering when you can see a layer of dirt over your skin and have such greasy hair that just touching it makes your hands greasy
- Only washing your clothes after 5 or more wears, when they start to stink and have stains all over them
- Taking 2 liter bucket baths to conserve water during the dry season
- Hoarding buckets and jerry cans full of water b/c you never know when you might get water again.
- Trading care package items or using items as PCV currency
- Wash your dishes in the rain
- Save your pasta water to reuse over and over
- Letting nothing go to waste. Scraping out last bits of peanut butter with your finger. Licking the ziplock bag that cookies were in.
- Begging people at the market to sell you things for cheaper because you’re a poor volunteer not a rich white person.

Gabo the Cat

So one day I was walking down the street to my host family’s house and there were a bunch of annoying children following me as usual. They asked me if I wanted a cat, not thinking they were being serious I said yes, bring it to my family’s home. About 20 minutes later, ten kids’ show up together one of them holding the cat by its neck out as far away from him as possible as if the cat were the plague or something, I instantly take the cat and give him some chai (the only thing I had at the time) as my family is outside arguing with the kids about the price of the cat. Cat’s are suppose to be free by the way, a Rwandan would never pay for a cat. But since they knew I am not Rwandan, the kids were being difficult. So eventually we gave up, my host sister throws the cat back at the kids (which makes them all scream and run because for some reason Rwandan’s are extremely scared of cats.) Anyway the kid’s didn’t want him so I got to keep him for free. He is a really, really cute kitten about 10 weeks old I think. I feed him eggs, avocado and bread. He goes crazy for eggs! I named him gabo from the Kinyarwanda word imigabo which means refuge.

It’s my Birthday!

Well last week on October 1st was my birthday. I had told my Rwandan family over a month ago and not mentioned it since. I told them on Friday I was leaving to go visit my friends in Rwamagana, only 2 hours by bus from my site. So they invited me over for a birthday dinner on Thursday night. They even asked me what my favorite dish was because they wanted me to have my favorite food on my birthday. I requested noodles because of all possible Rwandan dishes that is my favorite. So they said ok. I come to the house with my roommate. I think this is just going to be like any other night. I show up and am put in a room as usual and kind of left alone as usual. I think we are just waiting for them to finish up dinner. Maybe an hour later they lead me out of the room into another house and there the whole family and friends of the family (over 30 people) are standing around a cake with candles lit and they are all singing to me. It was such a surprise. They had a DJ and speaker system set up, used toilet paper for streamers on the walls (which actually looks really nice) and my name is written in huge letters on one of the walls using toilet paper. It was crazy. The cake was cut and dancing began. At 10:00 we finally got come real food. They had made me pasta salad with green beans and carrots and mayonnaise. I have never seen a Rwandan make pasta salad before. They gave me fries and seasoned rice too. (They sure do love their carbs here.) It was a really great birthday party that I was completely surprised about.
Then in Rwamagana, my friends had another surprise for me. Sushi for dinner made from dried seaweed that one of them got in a car package. So we made avocado and cucumber sushi. To make sticky rice we just added a little more water than usual, and to put the rice into Ziploc bags to sit for an hour. For dessert we had homemade brownies from a package also! The next evening I got my favorite food pierogies that we made from scratch. We made the pasta with eggs and flour. Rolled out the pasta stuffed it with cheese, and mashed potatoes with butter, garlic, milk and onions inside. (The mashed potatoes alone were incredible. My Peace Corps best friend is from Sicily so she knows how to cook really well. Then we fried the pierogies in oil. Also she made a cream tomato sauce for dipping and calls it her disaster sauce because she discovered this sauce after ruining the sauce she was trying to make and then adding ingredients to try and save the sauce. Now she purposing does all those things and makes an amazing sauce to go with the pierogies.

Spaghetti Night

Yesterday I went to my Rwandan families’ house for dinner as usual but I went earlier than normal. And so they sat me down and then just left me for 2 hours. Therefore I got to watch the umucozi cook the meal. First she lit the charcoal stove and let the fire grow. Once the fire was a descent size a pot of water was placed on top to boil. When the water boiled it was moved to a plastic jug. Now the pot is empty and oil is added to cover about ½ in the bottom (way too much oil in my professional opinion). Anyway the oil sizzles and a small amount of red onions are added. A small amount of tomato paste is added, like about 3 heaping tablespoons (not nearly enough for an american“tomato sauce”). Then an entire bag of spaghetti, broken into 3 parts is added and stirred. (Keep in mind there is no water in the pot just oil, onions, and tomato paste with the pasta. In about 5 minutes they decide water is an important factor and the boiling water that was poured into the plastic jug earlier is now added to the pasta. Then it’s left to cook. For the “salad” the umucozi cut up white onions into tiny slices and added a ton of vinegar and sugar. And there you have salad to go with your spaghetti and sauce. (It was not too great but I ate it out of politeness. Surprisingly the noodles were pretty good though I’m sure my standards have dropped dramatically from living here. And that was my night of watching the umucozi cook at my Rwandan families’ home.