local people doing local things

In a letter my mom sent me, she wrote, 'take pictures of local people doing local things'. Well, I have half of her request. These are pictures of local people doing local things, but I didn't take them. Emma had Pascal take many of these because sometimes the local people don't enjoy westerners talking photos of them or their children. Sometimes they ask for money as well. I would love to take pictures of the market at some point. It's always hard to decide when taking photos is appropriate.


They carry everything on their heads.


Or on bikes. Those are plantains, or green bananas as they call them.


A little boy with his toy.


A woman selling tomatoes on the side of the road.




Women carrying babies on their backs.


A man welding plastic containers for water.





There are more here.

reflections

Emma’s boyfriend is here from the states for the next two weeks. We spent some time yesterday walking around town and it’s interesting to see this place through the eyes of someone that just got here. It brings back a lot of things that I noticed when I first arrived, but hardly think about anymore. Ben’s never been to Africa, and he hasn’t flown anywhere since he was 17. I suspect the reactions he’s having would be similar to how a lot of my friends and family would react.

1.The men hold hands just like the women. This was one of the first things that Ben commented on, and it’s something that I hardly notice anymore. It’s never a gay thing. Rwandese are pretty religious and with that comes a predictable conservativism. A gay sub-culture may exist but no one talks about it, and no one flaunts it if they do consider themselves homosexual. In Uganda they only recently outlawed homosexuality as a crime punishable by death—and while Rwanda doesn’t have a law like that, they are probably just as conservative about the issue.

When the men hold hands here, culturally, you understand that they are best-friends or related. It did throw me off at first because at home you don’t do that kind of thing without wanting to draw attention or make a point about your sexuality. The men dance with each other too. It is definitely an interesting sight to see.

2.Motos are scary as hell. I’d never been on a motorcycle before coming to Rwanda, and it took me nearly a month to feel comfortable using them as a means of transportation. Ben has told Emma that he’s only getting on one if there’s an emergency, a ‘let’s get out of Rwanda as fast as we can because we’re going to die if we don’t’ kind of emergency not an ‘oh it’s about to rain and I don’t want to get wet’ kind of emergency. Mostly, I use them when I don’t know where I’m going. In Kigali this is particularly useful. If I know the name of the restaurant everyone is eating at, I can simply tell the moto driver and he can take me there.

3.The part of Rwanda I live in looks nothing like the picture you have of Africa in your head. There are no blistering deserts or arid grasslands. You won’t ever see a giraffe or a lion or an elephant here. It rains all the time, it’s very green, and sometimes I need a sweatshirt to keep warm at night. The volcanoes enclose the landscape and the hills will kill you if you aren’t in shape. Probably not how you picture central or southern Africa.

4.You won’t understand anything anyone is saying, sometimes even when they’re speaking English, but that’s okay because few people will understand you either. It’s a little stressful at first when you’re on a crowded bus and you only understand a few words from any given conversation going on around you. I don’t mind it now. Actually I rather enjoy hearing the Rwandese conversations flow smoothly from Kinyarwanda to French to English with a little Swahili mixed in and back again. Most of the educated people are at least bilingual and many are trilingual (Kinyarwanda, French, and English). It comes out of a necessity to communicate with the world and I wish it was something that America would adopt.

We always joke about going back and forth between our fluent –English voice and our ESL-voice. Ben has already complained that we don’t have to talk slow, leave out contractions and idioms, or say things five times in different ways for him. It’s just difficult going back and forth sometimes. It’s really exhausting to have to do it all day long, too.

5.Paying more than 5 dollars for a meal is expensive and we’re going to complain. We eat at this Indian restaurant in Kigali sometimes, but it’s so expensive for what we’re used to. I usually end up paying around 8,000 RWF for my meal and a drink, and that’s about 15 dollars. In Musanze, I can get a buffet that will keep me full all day for 1000 RWF and a drink for 300 RWF. That’s just about two dollars altogether. There’s a big difference. Especially when I’m not making a ton of money in the first place.

6.The power goes out at random intervals. It could be bright and sunny outside, but it doesn’t matter. The power goes out for at least an hour every other day.


And some other random things that happened this week:

We were eating rabbit at this restaurant in Musanze that we’d never been to before. The rabbit was actually pretty good, not gamy like it can be sometimes. It was great until Kim picked up a piece, bit into it and it was blood red. She put it down on her plate and asked us if we thought it was undercooked. Emma’s eyes kind of went wide and I was kind of like, ‘eh yeah, not cooked. Don’t eat it.’ Then Emma turned Kim’s plate around and said, ‘no, Jenn. That’s not the worst part’. And I looked, curious now—and the rabbit was suddenly staring at me. Kim had bitten into the head, teeth, eyeballs and all.

Kim didn’t want us to tell her what was wrong because it wasn’t all that obvious that it was the head unless you look at it at the right angle. She wasn’t all that worried about it once we did tell her. Pascal, our Rwandese friend, sort of scolded the waitress for giving it to us and the waitress shrugged and said something like ‘some people like the head,’ but she was smiling. She knew that she’d just given it to westerners and we weren’t likely to think that it was a good idea to eat the head.

Emma accidently registered to drive in Rwanda the other day. Well, okay. It was an accident in the way that she didn’t know what she was actually doing until right before she did it. Pascal, our Rwandese friend, claimed he needed help registering. There was apparently a long line at the DMV, people were waiting for hours, but since he brought Emma he was able to go right to the front of the line. Yes, you understood correctly. Because Emma is Muzungu (white) she was able to cut the line and no one who was waiting really had a problem with it. Pascal knew this and used her to get his own name on the list quicker. He simply called it a ‘trick’. Mostly, we all thought it was hilarious and Pascal didn’t mean anything by it, he just simply didn’t want to wait in line.

Here's an article about working or studying abroad. It mentions WorldTeach, the organization that is sponsoring my stay in Musanze. Teach for the World by NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.


Fewer than 30 percent of Americans have passports, and only one-quarter can converse in a second language. And the place to learn languages isn’t an American classroom but in the streets of Quito or Dakar or Cairo.

True, but I think it's more than that, too. The cultural experience is just as valuable. Living abroad is allowing me to put my own way of living in perspective. It's easier to see yourself when you're removed from the known and thrown into the unknown.

more thoughts

I think I’ve seen more people peeing in public in the last two months than I’ve seen in my entire life. The little boy whipping it out while we were sitting at an outdoor café was pretty hilarious though. At least, he was courteous enough to stand at the steps and pee into the street.

The restaurants in Musanze with English names make no sense. We have tea at The Smart Family Café and eat buffet at Modern restaurant.

When we had the earthquake a few weeks ago, one of my friends asked her Dean of Studies what the procedure was for the students in an emergency situation. He laughed and asked her why she was afraid to meet God.

Seeing other muzungus (the Kinyarwanda word for white people) around town makes me suspicious. I tend to rubberneck it, just like the Rwandese do. Usually the tourists who are here to see the mountain gorillas stick to the three or four hotels and stay away from the market or the town proper. In Kigali, going in a store called Nakumatt (essentially it’s Kenyan Walmart) makes me particularly edgy because it’s the only place in Rwanda where I’ll ever see more than 5 muzungus in the same place, unless I’m at a WT volunteer gathering of course. They’re just…out of place, I guess. I may be going native.

The tourists are obvious because they do stupid things. After living in Rwanda for only a day or two there are a few things you understand pretty quickly about living here. The first thing is that it’s considered trashy for women to wear shorts above the knee. I don’t know why, it’s just one of those cultural quirks. If you’re Rwandese: it usually indicates you’re a prostitute. If you’re muzungu: it means you’re oblivious.

Some of the city buses in Kigali are themed with different American rap artists. They’re painted in bright colors, blast rap music, and are covered in huge decals of whatever rapper is featured. I’ve gotta say, the T-Pain bus was an absolutely amazing ride and I swear to you I will get on the Lil’Wayne bus before I leave Rwanda. I’ve only seen it once. It’s surprisingly elusive.

I love when I go to market and they try to overcharge me for potatoes because I’m a muzungu. Hey, 10 cents too much is 10 cents I’m not paying. It’s okay, I just find my favorite boisterous market lady, we exchange the two sentences in Kinyarwanda that I know, and she gives me a kilo of potatoes for the correct price. The part I love is when all the other market ladies scowl and tisk and make a ruckus at her for selling potatoes to me at the correct price. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t care because, hey, muzungu or not, money is money.

Musanze wouldn’t be Musanze without the random goat parades. There’s usually a boy or two herding a group of four or five down the same street with the motos and the car-taxis. Sometimes there’s a random abandoned goat tied to a tree. We don’t know where they come from, but no one else seems to know either.

I had a, ‘holy hell I’m on a motorcycle in Rwanda’ moment on the 30 minute moto ride at sunset down the mountainside from Rwaza Secondary school. The view was absolutely breathtaking and it was so peaceful just watching people go about their everyday routines in the countryside. That moment ended when once we got to the small stretch of highway leading back into Musanze, not because the scenery changed, but because my moto driver decided it would be fun to cut around hauling trucks and race the other motos. Then I was only thinking, ‘please let me keep my life today.’

A saw a Rwandese man wearing a shirt with the words ‘beer pong’ on the front of it. I thought it would be a good idea to explain the meaning to a Rwandese friend that was with us. In case you were wondering, the idea sounds incredibly stupid when you’re explaining it to someone who has no concept of drinking games.

There are three types of beer in Rwanda. Mutzig, Primus, and Turbo King. There’s a billboard in Kigali that advertizes for Turbo King with the subtitle: Turbo King: Mark of a Man. One of my colleges renamed it ‘Turbo King: Mark your Manhood’ while drunk one night. It will always be known as that to me now. Most Rwandese won’t touch it because it labels you as a drunkard. I have no idea how it got that reputation, except maybe because I have one and I’m pretty much good for the night. They cost about a 1.50 USD too. Drunkard’s dream.

Everyone assumes I have money because I’m a muzungu. And maybe it’s a true assumption looked at in a relative way. But true or not, I don’t like being reminded of it constantly. I teach computer science, so sometimes I have to do work on my computer in the teacher’s lounge. The first or second time one of the teachers commented on my computer, another teacher said something like, ‘In America, computers are like cars. Everyone has one.’ A fair analogy considering those that own or can afford a car usually have a computer as well. I kept my mouth shut though. It didn’t help my case.

One of the first words I learned in Kinyarwanda was Amafranga. It means money. The reason I know it is because it comes up in Rwandese conversation roughly every thirty seconds.

I like carrying Rwandan Francs around because it makes me feel like I have more money than I actually do. 5,000 RWF is about 10 USD. Monopoly money, right? Their one cent piece feels like it’s made of plastic. It’s probably worth less than what it takes to print it.

The teachers at my school were fascinated by the two American credit cards I have. I had to explain to them that owning credit cards does not mean you have the money to use said credit cards. They thought it was crazy that I could go to the grocery store and swipe a piece of plastic instead of handing over some cash.

It’s ironic to me that the town of Musanze is flatter than Kigali. The roads are more or less straight with the volcanoes framing the background on all sides. I swear you need to be a professional athlete to get around some parts of Kigali.

I’ve found the secret to losing weight. Ready for it? Move to Africa and…nope, that’s basically it. Or more specifically: move to a place where you have to walk to get anywhere worth going and can’t order cheese fries or Quesadilla burgers at a Carside-To-Go.

I really miss ice cream though. And Mexican enchiladas. Some of the WT volunteers enjoy the food game. It’s when you start naming all the foods that you miss from home. Basically, it’s because they’re all masochists.

The Rwandese we’ve met are fascinated by Tanzanian soap operas. I tried to think of some kind of redeeming value, but… no. They’re just awful. They make the tiny bit of myself that I call a feminist want to start a very loud and very violent riot. A riot with pitchforks and tasers.

Speaking of tasers. My friend had her phone stolen out of her hand while she was walking home the other night. She told me she’s going to try to get someone to send her a taser from the states. She’s convinced it will solve all of her problems. I told her pepper spray could do the same job and it’s actually legal to possess that stuff (isn’t it?). In generally, she’s a pretty determined person, so if anyone is able to pull something like that off, it’ll be her.

The other day we were at a restaurant eating a buffet and suddenly it seemed the whole town was running in the same direction, toward something happening a block away. Later, after Kim ran into the crowd to see what was going on and I stayed with my beans, rice, and plantains, thank you very much, we were told there was a thief and everyone was running to watch him get beaten up by the shop owner he stole from. Apparently there are two ways to deal with a thief in Musanze. 1. Call the police and pay for the prisoner’s jail cell as his accuser, or 2. handle it yourself. Easy decision.

This is ironic considering there’s a police academy and a jail across the street from my school. The prisoners have pink jumpsuits and sometimes take escorted walks around the town. It’s equal parts scary and comical.

Why did it take me 23 years to discover how delicious avocados are? I want to literally put them on everything now. I’m currently refining my guacamole salsa brushetta recipe. Be prepared.

I told my students we call ‘chips’ French fries in the states. I still don’t think they believe me.

A week or two ago, one of my students asked me what a hot dog was. I don’t know why I thought it was so hilarious at the time. Maybe because the question was randomly asked right in the middle of a lesson on combining sentences using who and whose. Or maybe I just never expected to have to explain the concept of a hot dog to anyone, ever.

the food situation...

I thought I would post a list of ingredients I can get here and see if anyone can help me with recipes.

Generally I make tomato sauce with pasta and cheese, vegetable stir fry with masala or curry and rice, mashed potatoes, salt & vinegar fried potatoes, grilled cheese, vegetable omelets, or rice and beans. I think I'm going to attempt to make chicken flavored soup, bean soup, & possibly corn cakes, but I'm not very creative, so give me ideas! Mostly the problem is that I don't have a refrigerator, an oven, or a microwave. Basically, we have two electric burners so I can boil or fry things.

There really isn't a lot of variety. This is what I can find at the market/in town:

carrots
tomatoes
potatoes
onions
peppers
green beans
peas
eggplant
squash
cabbage
avocado
cucumber
cauliflower
unsweetened corn
beans (mixed types. They just throw everything together.)

bananas
plantains
passion fruit
star fruit (or a fruit that looks like star fruit. We don't know what it's called. haha)
oranges
limes
lemons
mangoes

bread (french/sliced white/chapati (fried tortillas))
pasta (spaghetti, spiral, elbow)
white rice
salted/buttered crackers

eggs
salted butter
cheese (gouda- the only kind they really sell. It's also expensive.)
powdered milk
vegetable/soybean oil (I can get olive oil too, but it's very expensive)
corn/wheat flour
oatmeal

synthetic vinegar
garlic
coriander
cyanne pepper
salt
black pepper
cumin
Tiki Masala seasoning
Italian seasoning
Curry seasoning
hot sauce
salt & vinegar seasoning
chicken or beef bouillon
raw sugar
cinnamon

I can buy meat. Technically. Mostly goat if it's available, but it's sold in open air butcher shops, and I don't think I really want to take that adventure. :)

Any help would be awesome! email me: jlfeldhaus at gmail dot com

Random thoughts for the week:

1. Most 13 year old girls are drama queens regardless of culture or native language. Theory is now officially law.

2. I hate teaching grammar with the passion of a thousand firey suns. Note: I speak English. This is not the same as being able to teach English.

3. I made grilled cheese today. I think it was the best thing I’ve tasted in weeks. Besides Kim’s birthday cake, of course.

4. Yesterday, I learned that one of my Senior 1 students escaped the boarding school, made it all the way to Kigali, and is now claiming she saw a holy apparition that told her to break school policy and leave unannounced. See #1.

5. A few of my Senior 2 girls like to fake being sick to get out of school work. They’re magically cured around 4:30 every day. Again: See #1

6. Generally, I love my students. No, really.

7. Unlike my fellow volunteers, I’ve successfully avoided the mattress fleas and the poison ivy-like skin rash that makes you look like you’re mutating into Mystique. Yeah, probably just jinxed myself.

8. Howl by the band Empires should have been the soundtrack for the Sookie Stackhouse books. Just saying.

9. But just to reaffirm where I stand: Buffy Summers > Sookie Stackhouse > Bella Swan.

10. Being mocked for my existence gets old. I’m learning to deal, though. Note: Yes, the muzungu needs to buy potatoes just like the rest of the human population. Yes, the muzungu does her own laundry and cooks her own food. Deal.

11. I had a conversation with the teachers at my school about cohabitation before marriage being a personal choice in The States. It went as well as you can imagine. Won’t open that can of worms ever again.

12. My students think it’s absolutely hilarious when I say anything in Kinyarwanda. Omva, nde Umwarimu.

13. They also enjoy my attempts at drawing. My wildebeest drawing looked like a pig with stick legs. Whatever. I’ll look ridiculous if it keeps their attention.

14. The word chocolate comes from a Greek word meaning ‘food of the goats’ according to my Senior 4 class dictations. They may have misunderstood my crazy American pronunciation.

15. Internet withdraw is not fun. America is a terrible internet-addict enabler and Rwanda enjoyed ripping that from me, cold turkey. Like removing a band-aid with superglue adhesive using a blow torch. I’m anticipating sweet relapse in about nine months.

16. I had a conversation with an eight year old boy on my way to town the other day. We’d never met before. He reached out to hold my hand as we walked together, and I think it was a metaphor for something. Until I figure out what, it’ll be enough that it makes me smile.

this book is a movie

So things are finally settling down around here. I am currently in love with my soft-spoken, incredibly focused secondary students, the constant 75 degree weather, ginger and milk in my tea, honey on my chappatti, bargaining a pair of shoes down to half price, and the general Rwandese attitude of 'it'll get done when it gets done, sit down, enjoy life, and be patient'.

In the past two months, I've learned that despite growing up connected to news and people halfway around the world through the internet and television and technology, despite finishing my formal education, I can honestly say I know exactly nothing about this world that I live in.

I'm also pretty much okay with that.

I feel comfortable here now. I have a routine. My students, my colleagues, the market ladies, they know who I am, where I'm from, why I'm here. But I'm still an outsider here-- and it's not something I'll ever be able to change. I'm reminded constantly of this, not only through the obvious things-- my native tongue being English, the color of my skin, the way I dress & how much money it is assumed I have because of the things mentioned above, but also through what I do not understand, the things that are unfamiliar, the things I must observe or ask about. The culture, the family structures, economic statuses, the mentality and values of these people. They are all so different from what I'm used to. Different is not bad though. I am learning. I am watching and asking questions and figuring all of this out and I can already feel the way it is changing me.

I am the outsider, but I am being welcomed here anyway. It is a beginning.


The mountainside between Kigali and Musanze, terraced for farming.


The volcano in the background is called the Kinyarwanda word for 'with teeth'. This is a view right outside of my school. It's very green here. :)


These are some of the teachers I work with. This is our tea break room/teacher's lounge.

St. Vincent's

first day of classes

The first day of classes went well. I only taught two hours, Senior 2 English but it was enough for one day. The students have better English than I anticipated, so that was a welcomed surprise. They are a lot quieter than I am used to 14 year old girls being. This is a good thing because classroom management is easier, but also a bad thing because it is hard for me to assess whether students understand because they would rather sit in silence than ask a question to clarify something they don't understand.

The students here learn mostly through memorization and direct instruction/presentation by the teacher and that is far from how I like to teach. It will be a challenge to get them to think more openly about what they are doing. Creativity is very minimal and they have a hard time with the concept of 'no one right answer'.

I'm honestly excited for the challenge.

Also, if you’re interested in sending me a small package here are a few things I’m dying for:

Oreos!
Pencils/black pens
Notebook paper
Peanut M&Ms
Granola bars/energy bars
Fruit snacks
Jellybelly jelly beans
Family photographs
English novels I could lend to my students (middle/high school age females)
Green tea (or tea of any sort)
Wash cloths
SPF 30 or greater sunscreen
Nutella
dehydrated pre-packaged pasta (like macaroni & cheese) that I would just have to add boiling water to to cook
anything else you can think of

Here is the address:

WorldTeach c/o Kelly Jo Fulkerson
P.O. Box 4875
Kigali, Rwanda

I'm not sure how much it costs, but I believe you can purchase a flat-rate international box that you don't have to weigh. I've been told that you don't need a country code/zip code. Rwanda doesn't use one.

Sitting in the hot sun, missing you all very much!

a month in already...

It’s been hard to update the last few weeks because I’m now at my site in Musanze. The internet is less reliable here and I’ve been keeping busy enough that it’s hard to take the time to sit around and wait for the internet to decide to work for me. My school is supposed to have wireless, but the students aren’t here yet, so the power is currently off in the computer lab.

My school, St. Vincent’s Catholic secondary girls school, is absolutely beautiful. They really take care of the grounds and the buildings are in great condition. I don’t have a lot of space in my room, but I have fairly new furniture (a wardrobe, a desk, two chairs, and a bed) and a new mattress so that makes up for it. I also have an actual toilet that flushes and running water in my shower (though it’s cold water). I was honestly one of the luckier ones in my group. Some volunteers don’t have running water or electricity at their sites.

Kim and I have recently discovered that we have three cows, two calves, and a bunch of pigs. The two calves have names but they’re Kinyarwanda words so I don’t remember them. One is the word for ‘homesickness’. Sister Florence explained that when the sisters don’t see the cow for a while they miss him and that’s where he got his name. The other is the Kinyarwanda word for white bird.

We just got an electrical outlet put into the room we’re using for a kitchen so we should be able to buy a hotplate and start cooking for ourselves soon. The sisters at our school also run a small resturant and guest house, and they fed us three meals a day for the first week we were here as a welcome. We’re pretty much on our own now. There’s a few hotels to eat at in town, but we’ve been frequenting the cheap buffets more than anything else. A buffet is generally 1000 rwf or about $1.75 without a drink.

There isn’t much to the town of Musanze. It’s comprised of four or five streets with shops for buying clothing, food, and housewares everywhere. There are two open air markets that are pretty nice compared to others that I’ve seen in Rwanda. One is called the Everything Market. This market is the bigger one of the two and is where you can buy clothing, shoes, fabric, and random household items. The smaller market is an agricultural market where you can buy fruit, vegetables, flour, salt, rice, beans, meat, and various other things. I think I’m going to ruin myself for fresh food forever. The fruits and vegetables are so much better than the stuff you can get at the grocery stores back home. You can get great deals too. Yesterday, I bought a bunch of 9 bananas for 200 rwf which is about 30 US cents.

It takes a while to orient yourself to the way things work in the market because there aren’t any manuals or helpful guides. It’s also naturally harder for someone who’s obviously foreign to get a good deal through bargaining, but they tend to respect you more if you at least try to communicate in Kinywarwanda—even if many of the locals do think it’s absolutely hilarious for a ‘white’ person to say ‘good morning’, or ‘how much does this cost?’ in Kinyarwanda. It’s mostly that they’re not expecting it, I guess. A few days ago, two of my worldteach friends and I were in the market buying food and we caused a mini-scene by just being there. The Kinywarwanda word for white people started going around as soon as we started buying things. It seems that once you buy one thing, everyone knows you’re actually there to do business and then it’s a free for all. It was pretty overwhelming, but we left with red onions, tomatoes, potatoes, bananas, enough salt for a small army, a cabbage, and the best tasting pineapple I’ve ever tasted in my life.

School is also not in session right now, so we aquired a small group of boys following us around asking to carry baskets for us. At one point, I yelled “oya!” which means ‘no’ in Kinyarwanda fairly loundly and I think I accidently scared them.

In general, I don’t enjoy having a lot of attention on me, or being the focus of a large group of people I don’t know so I think being in the market has been good practice because having that unwanted attention simply because I’m not a native Rwandan and I can’t easily blend in without practice isn’t going to disappear while I’m here. People are generally friendly here, as long as you initiate conversation, and there haven’t been any people who’ve been openly hostle aside for the odd drunk or town crazy. 

School is starting on Tuesday and I’m still unsure about what I’m teaching and when. The schedule won’t be done until Monday. Being here a month has really taught me to just roll with it though, even moreso than before I came, so I’m not exactly worried. It’s more an annoyance that I can’t plan ahead at this point.

Genocide Memorials

A couple of days ago we visited some of the memorial sites for the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda where as many as one million Rwandans (nearly 20% of the population) lost their lives. The first place we visited is the Memorial in Kigali. The outdoor portion is where they've built the mass graves for those that died in the city. There were about 8 mass graves that were finished, and a few more that were still under construction, as far as finishing the massive cement coverings and the surrounding gardens.



There was also a wall where they've written the known names of people that died. There were only about 4,000 names on the list-- that's the most complete record they have and it's extremely heartbreaking to witness.



There was also a museum, but we weren't allowed to take pictures inside. These are some of the gardens surrounding the mass graves.




The second place we visited was a church in Nyamata, about 30 minutes outside of Kigali. 10,000 people were murdered within the church during the Genocide. As a memorial, they removed all of the bodies, and left the clothing piled on benches around the church.





You could also see where bullet holes are still visible at the front door where they shot to get to the people inside.



At first we were unsure whether pictures were appropriate in this situation, but our guide gave us permission. He explained that he wanted us to document what had happened and tell people what we had seen. Rwandans feel understandably abandoned. They received little aid during the Genocide from outside countries and many people still feel as though it wasn't as big a tragedy as it honestly was.

Needless to say, it was a really intense experience. It's something you don't necessarily ever want to see, and have nothing to relate it to from personal experience, but it's also necessary. I needed to see these things in order to understand the people that live here-- and especially my students. Most of my students will be too young to have remembered much from the Genocide, but they've all been effected by it through their families.

Posting more pictures. Some are from New Years, some are of in and around Kigali, and some are from the Genocide Memorial sites we went to today. I'll post more about my experiences at the Genocide Memorials soon. It was extremely heartbreaking.

I hope everyone had a happy new year celebration. Mine was awesome. Our entire group went to this open-air bar called “Car Wash” to celebrate. It’s more of a local place, so of course we made a scene while we were there. They generally give you the large beers as a default and they’re cheap as well. After that we went out to a club called “Catalac”. It was extremely crowded so a few of us left after a short while. After that I ended up on an impromptu journey to Nakumatt with two other volunteers at three in the morning. Nakumatt is a 24 hour convenience store similar to Target in the States. It was interesting and completely alien to see locals buying beer, then openly drinking it just as they left the line. Equally bizarre, was watching them drink, celebrate, and sing while near the gun weilding professional government hired security that are always visible in the high traffic areas of the city.

Today we were able to explore downtown Kigali a little more through a team effort scavenger hunt. Each team of three had to find the answers to questions that required you to find a certain landmark or building in the city. As a handicap, we weren’t allowed to use the regular car taxis—in other words: take the easy way out. We could only use the taxi-busses or the moto-taxis. The moto-taxis, which are two person motorbikes, were completely intimidating at first: the drivers tend to make their own rules for driving in and around traffic, Kigali is incredibly hilly, and I’ve never ridden on a motorcycle before. I was pretty scared, but it wasn’t nearly as horrific as I’d imagined it would be. I just had to keep telling myself to lean into the driver because he was keeping me alive. I’ve learned that I’m terrible at barganining for a price. They also tend to charge foreigners more, but I’m told they take you more seriously if you can negotiate in Kinyarwanda. They’re going to teach us how to next week.

The taxi-busses were also interesting. Luckily, we had a local boy offer to help us out with logistics. He spoke pretty good english and actually ended up helping us navigate for a few hours. Rwandans usually pretty friendly. It took a while for us to explain what a scavenger hunt was to him. He understood the words, but the concept was pretty foreign to him. He asked us why we would stop to take pictures if we were racing as part of a game. Haha. We explained that at that point, we didn’t really care all that much about winning.

Being able to navigate the city in a small group left me feeling extremely acomplished. Getting used to being the outsider and overcoming the communication barrier were my two fears coming into this experience so getting to know my way around was a good way to become more comfortable with those things.

pictures from first few days

Here are some pictures from the first two days in Kigali. They're are a few from the bus ride just outside of the Kigali airport and some of the mission (St. Paul's) our group is staying at for the first two weeks. I'll put more pictures up soon.