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.