Of Teaching in Musanze

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.