I wake up at 7am everyday, and it’s freezing. I fill up a bucket with water from the tap
outside and heat some of it using the water heater for my bucket shower. I get dressed in one of the five outfits that
I brought to Rwanda—I’m not trying to be fashionable here haha—and then head to
the table for hot, black tea (with TONS of sugar, the way Rwandans serve it), a
glass of hot milk (unpasteurized and considered food), and chapatti (Indian
flat bread, which is the BOMB. I could
eat it for every meal honestly.) I brush
my teeth using water that’s already been boiled the night before by our house
girl, Angelique, and I spit into the dirt outside since we don’t have a
sink. I leave for school at about 8am,
heading down the dirt path through the center of my village. I get stares and double takes and “Hello
muzungu!” from literally every person as I walk past the big trucks unloading
bunch after bunch of green bananas from the countryside to sell in the market
near my house. I catch a bus on the main
road to “mu mujyi” (town) and ride for 15-20mins for the equivalent of about 20
cents. We’re squished tight into these
little buses and generally listen to pumping jams on the radio the whole way. I arrive in the central bus “depot” (if you
can call it that; it’s more just an area randomly picked for all the buses to
congregate) and listen for the bus hagglers to yell “Kacyiru” before climbing
onto that bus and waiting sometimes up to 30 mins for it to completely fill
up. That ride costs about 40 cents, I’m
guessing, and when I get off, I walk another 15 mins and
arrive for class at 9am.
We often start the day with Kinyarwanda, with our hilarious
teacher J.P. He always looks incredibly
smart with his shined shoes and suit jackets.
He greets us with “Mwaramutse.
Amakuru?” to which we respond “Ni meza!” and then class starts with
lists of memorizing words, goofy skits, and sometimes singing. This is pretty much what I’ve learned so far:
Nitwa Leslie. Nturuka
muri amerika. Ndi umunyeshuri. Niga amahoro na amateka hano mu Rwanda. Mfite imyaka makumyabiri n’umwe. Ndakunda Rwana cyane!
(My name is Leslie. I
am from America. I am a student. I study peace and history here in
Rwanda. I am 21 years old. I like Rwanda a lot!)
Then we have a lecture (from a government official, a guest
professor, or community leader) or discussion of readings. I hate to say it but the generalization I’ve
been making about the majority of our lectures is that they’re giving us a
pretty standard and specific “official” narrative. I have another blog coming in which I’ll
write about this extensively (because I’m FASCINATED) but generally, we hear in
class that Rwanda, and Kigali especially, is a rapidly developing, successfully
modernizing post-conflict state. Which
sounds wonderful. (more later!)
After a few hours of discussions and/or lectures, we break
for an hour to eat lunch. By now it’s
SUPER hot—as far from the chilly morning as is possible. We wander up the hill in the sun to the line
of dinky shops and restaurants, where we choose from our usual selection of
three Rwandan buffet-style lunch places.
For a flat rate of about 1000 FRW (about $1.50 maybe?) you can pile as
much green banana mush, French fries, rice, beans, boiled potatoes, sweet
potatoes, green stuff (obviously I steer clear of that one), and pasta—Rwandans
like their starch. Because there’s a
flat rate, it’s really common to see Rwandans walking away with enormous piles
of food on their plates—which they somehow manage to consume entirely.
Back to school after that for either more
lectures/discussions, processing sessions (to debrief from all the really
intense material we’re dealing with), or site visits. I’m incredibly lucky because our program prides
itself on experiential learning so we get to do a lot of hands-on talking with
people and visiting of the places we’re learning about. We’ve been able to meet with major NGOs and
government organizations like Invisible Children, USAID, the Institute for
Research and Dialogue for Peace (IRDP), the Justice and Reconciliation Project
(JRP), the Center for Conflict Management at Butare University, the Rwandan
Development Board (RDB), and the National Commission for Unity and
Reconciliation (NCUR). We’ve been able
to ask questions of top government officials and NGO staff members of all of
these organizations and more, adding a plethora of information to our class
lectures and discussions.
We end between 4 and 6pm when I either trek to the library
to do work and email (or skype my wonderful boyfriend!) or I head back
home. At home, my family and I usually
watch this Mexican soap opera that I’ve become obsessed with called “Mar de
Amor” (super dramatic, really cheesy, a great way to de-stress!). Sometimes I sit outside and the neighbor kids
come to say hello. Sometimes our 3-year-old
neighbor, Dan, comes to hang out, too.
We eat dinner around 8pm, which our house girl prepares outside on a
charcoal stove. Whoever is home at the
time sits around the table in the living room, often by candlelight because the
power goes out all the time, and we share rice, banana mush sauce, beans,
pasta, nasty little fishes in a sauce, or fufu.
(Fufu is this squishy dough stuff made from cassava that you roll into a
ball using your hands and dip into a sauce—it fills the belly but there’s
literally no nutritional value whatsoever.
Also, my host mom thinks it’s the most hilarious thing when I eat fufu
so the whole table is always laughing whenever there’s fufu being served.)
By this time, it’s freezing again and I’m super tired so I
end up going to sleep around 9 or 10pm.
And that’s my life currently!
No comments:
Post a Comment