tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10846724373610212442024-03-05T00:45:18.359-08:00jen in rwandaMurabeho, AmericaJennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-19426898629771900462011-08-30T16:06:00.000-07:002011-09-02T13:56:22.744-07:00The Angst of Homecoming, Dirty Socks, and other Transgressions<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-DUdNH6jDCPqQhvsJ5EuB4btl_ZpHalYiBE2QUQ8b75VW_Fi4e7eLxMNwoaO4YAP3f6k3hzrfFj3Ut-7lXFzuCdfjL0sr6oMhge6iLCJvOPuzodH02BoP3L8p9jh_88Kje-zU2SCkPb4/s1600/kigali+province+overview.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 271px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-DUdNH6jDCPqQhvsJ5EuB4btl_ZpHalYiBE2QUQ8b75VW_Fi4e7eLxMNwoaO4YAP3f6k3hzrfFj3Ut-7lXFzuCdfjL0sr6oMhge6iLCJvOPuzodH02BoP3L8p9jh_88Kje-zU2SCkPb4/s400/kigali+province+overview.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646804296021311026" /></a>
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<br /> I left Rwanda on the 27th of May, 2011. I practically danced my way across the runway and up the first leg of a 25+ hour flight. I sat in that seat, desperately excited, covered in bedbugs and dirty clothes, and leered over my unfortunate seat mate, trying to see Busanza village as we took off. I’ve seen hundreds of planes fly over us in the last year and a half. I couldn't see them, but I know they saw me.
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<br /> I wanted to finally bring closure to my Peace Corps experience. I left about 3 months ago, and after a sufficient time recovering and relaxing back in the states, it seems about time to take that final bow. I'm actually really glad I slacked off these last few weeks, leaving me enough time to gather evidence and anecdotes to fill what will undoubtedly be, a disturbing insight into the Post-Service Experience. It's not all fuzzy and warm and full of longing. There are some days where I desperately miss the markets and temperament and the kids playing hide and seek in my yard. But those soft hazes are followed by the harshness that PC Rwanda wasn't a healthy living condition in the long run.
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<br />Living the Peace Corps life is great in theory, if only it were less damaging on the psyche once returned home. I'm sure non-PCVs don’t have the stress of a constant thread of words running through their heads and other linguistical evidence of a time spent detached. I have literally spent every moment of the day feeling like that guy in Lost [5 8 15 16 23 42] who loses his mind over his preoccupation with a string of numbers. Except my string of numbers is the lyrics to Meddy’s “Amayobera,” the daily formalities of greeting neighbors, or instantly translating current conversation into the kinyarwanda equivalent in my head.
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<br /> Anyhow, one of the things they don’t tell you is that at some point, after your Peace Corps service, you’ll be sitting in a completely normal setting [be it in bed or out to dinner] and have the sudden urge to break out in a monumental panick attack. Yes, we have been prepped that the transition home is sometimes the hardest part of the whole service. And then we get home, and we wait for a reaction.. For me, I finally go to the supermarket. I have one tiny freakout over the price of avocados and think <span style="font-style:italic;">whew, glad that’s over</span>.
<br /> But as the weeks go by, the real reaction, it builds up in you, that this default setting is actually really hard, that this familiar slide back into Americanism is actually pushing against the grain and you react, suddenly, and it sucks. You panick that the last chunk of your meaningful youth might as well have never happened for as much as you can celebrate it here. The truth is, people don’t care, and as soon as you’re home they keep moving along as if you’ve always been there, gliding alongside them. Your little mud house might as well be imaginary for all the attention it gets. And that’s what’s upsetting; how do you pay tribute to the invisible? Such a statement probably sounds familiar. While you sit watching TV, you see the occasional ad for helping the “invisible children” of Africa, and not just the children. Think of the number of all African people with HIV or malaria. Where are the people behind the number? Who’s taking that big stamp and bringing it down over Africa to say, 22.5 million. Where is he living and who are his neighbors? It's nothing but statistics and numbers until you can pin-point your own house in your own village in your own country in your own part of Africa on Google Earth [coordinates: 1 degree 59' 41" S, 30 degrees 8' 47" E]. Which in itself is great, awesome, and the experience is something you’ll never find elsewhere, but I don't expect everyone to make that commitment of living in a foreign world. Just a little effort to educate yourself would be nice [she says, with an effort at not sounding condescending].
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<br /> Walden Syndrome is the term I’ve coined to describe the confusing sense of reality I’ve stumbled upon since being home. Did I say stumbled? I mean fallen into. More like I walk down a dark hallway and am suddenly faced with the confusing question of, real, or in my head? Not many people can say they understand this so-called reality dilemma. There are probably a handful of Peace Corps Volunteers, a good chunk of US veterans or military folk, and a hunchback locked in a bell tower. It’s like... it’s like that space in between dreaming and waking when you wonder whether the alarm really <span style="font-weight:bold;">did</span> go off, or if the sound of a buzzer was only related to a dream about class ending, a car honking, or the start of a race. I place this blame on many hours of solitude, sitting in my yard on a stool just watching the minutes pass by when I’m not only with myself but in my head with dozens of authors, millions of thoughts, and thousands of letters home. I blame it on staring at the wall for countless hours, and the fact that the times between waking and sleeping were becoming too similar to sleeping and waking. I blame it on the blending of realities, when one’s own reality doesn’t rely on others.
<br /> I was the only one in my yard or in my bed or in my house for over a year. And that bright consistent surrounding would fade into my thoughts or imagination. And because it’s so familiar, in the first few weeks of being home, I would find myself alone, and wonder, scared, whether I was not still in my house in bed, about to wake up and be staring at the same mud walls, or in my yard on top of my mountain, alone, but in an elaborate, self-indulgent dream. You can be sure that for the first few weeks stateside, I was never alone. This being such a natural transition [since everyone wants to see you anyway] that one might not even notice the struggle of homecoming. Until, perhaps like me, you find yourself in the hallway at night, with the rain gently pattering on the windows and the trees tapping outside [in my head, remembering, much like the beginning of Poltergeist the movie], and can’t help but feel that the completely familiar nonchalant situation is a little too smooth, a little too cinematic, and I start second-guessing where I am. Am i just making this up? God please don’t let me still be in Rwanda dreaming up this dull but typical “home” situation. And to anyone else that would walk by, I’m standing frozen in the hallway, like a deer, looking around as if a distant TV is suddenly going to turn on to static. But then again, no one is walking by, which is the whole point. It’s quiet and calm and the only reality is my own and who knows if this is real or not. How can it be real unless a completely independent person walks by and acts independently of my thoughts and worries, provoking the idea that this IS the real world, that I AM really here. I needed someone to ground me, for fear of my imagination and Pavlovian conditioning to take over and leave me questioning, where am I?
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<br /> Reading it back it sounds like a case study for PTSD, but it’s simply shock [I hope]. The more I’m home the more it fades but to be honest, I still don’t like being completely alone. But how is anyone ever completely alone in this society? Theres always Facebook, Skype, TV, family, roommates, dogs, friends. But when that door closes and the light goes out and it’s nothing but me and the dark air around me, I can’t pretend I don’t worry that the next time my eyes opened they’d open on a mosquito net and mud walls, that I can’t still hear the chickens and cocks and cows and kids of the morning and night. That the heat of the tin roof doesn’t still press in on me between interrupted conversations. Because when I close my eyes, it’s still there.
<br />[I shared a bed with a fellow PCV one night when we were in the city for a conference. When we woke up in the morning she told me that i <span style="font-style:italic;">patted </span>her butt in my sleep. I what?? I actually wasn't that surprised. I did it all the time when I wanted to make sure Jay was in bed next to me, both when I knew he was, and when I just wasn't sure if I was dreaming him in or not. It made me laugh that I managed, in my sleep, to reach back and pat a friend's butt, unconsciously looking for that reassuring feel of another person nearby.] It's hard to tell when you're dreaming sometimes, in these places.
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<br /> There are of course other contributing factors to the fun box of anxiety reactions I have. The stress of being thrown back in normal life, the fact that no one can relate to what you’ve been through, and having to move on to the next big adventure. A huge one for me is the fact that my external hard drive died about a week before I left Rwanda, and since then, I’ve had two different tech professionals try to get anything off of it, and it’s completely lost, all my photos. And for anyone who knows me, that’s really hard. Naturally, I’m mourning it like a death. I know that I don’t have the memory to stand the test of time. Honestly, I’m already forgetting and it’s terrifying, to think that in 5 or 10 years, I won’t even be able to remember what it was like. Not just the photos I put online for others, but the photos I took for me, that I kept tight to my chest to help me remember the daily rigors and trials. Even all the photos my kids took everyday, seeing it from their view and knowing all the inside details that you only know when you’re in the snow globe, instead of shaking it from the outside. How can I be expected to want to move on when I don’t even have that safety net to keep me warm in the future? For all I’ll know in 50 years, I’ll have imagined half of it. And the language! The language will be the old gibberish grandma mumbles while the grandkids look at each other nervously. I thought that over time it would fade, the language, but honest to god if I’m not getting 8 hours of study every night in my dreams. It’s like my mind doesn’t want to let it go, or maybe it doesn’t know how to. And I wake up mouthing these words over and over to myself like I belong under a bridge somewhere. Komeza [<span style="font-weight:bold;">continue</span>] is a frequent offender. I know that should be poetic, but it’s exhausting and they never stop playing. Coming back to the states was suppose to be a recovery period. Instead I’ve just been discovering ways in which PC Rwanda dented me.
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<br /> I’ve noticed other tidbits of change. One example is when Jay and I walked to the supermarket one day and on the way out, we passed a table where a War Veteran sat, raising money for the Disabled Veterans of America. I felt confused by my reaction at first, which was to cry. I never would have reacted that way before. I more or less asked Jay to empty his pockets and ran back in to donate the money. I just started crying in the parking lot, and if I hadn’t already ran back in once like a fool, I’d have done it again to hug him. I’m not sure exactly where most of the chips lie, but I think there’s a camaraderie there, of feeling like I understand what he’s been through. Now, obviously, I haven’t been through a war, but I have seen some terrible things, and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a horror story or a machete wound. And maybe that war camaraderie, that empathy of knowing that no one knows what you’ve been through or what you’ve seen, made me break down. In a backwards way it made me want to appreciate that man for what he’s put not only his body through, but his emotional health, too. I also think that it broke my heart that in this country, a place where all people are expected to be taken care of and given opportunity above any other countries, especially one’s considered “Third World,” that we are no farther along. I saw him and I saw all the war victims of Rwanda, begging for money at the bus stop, no legs, one arm, obvious war wounds that, in such a place, completely inhibit them from living. And here we are in the strongest, most desired country in the world, and this little old wrinkly man has to sit alone behind a plastic fold out table, handing out paper flowers to anyone that donates 50 cents to the Disabled Veterans of America. Because that’s what his prospects have come to. What the hell, America. [As I write I know I’m going off on a rant here but I just can’t make myself stop...]
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<br /> I loved Rwanda, I did, but in a very tortured way, the way that makes you understand where Stockholm Syndrome came from. It was a beautiful land, filled with some beautiful people, who also happen to be very scarred, understandably, by their past. It makes them very abrasive, and resistant to foreigners. I can honestly say I didn’t even notice this until my last month in Rwanda, when I took a trip to Zanzibar, Tanzania. People who visited other parts of Africa had always said how cold and uninviting Rwandans were. And I never understood this because Rwanda was my only frame of reference. For all I knew, all of Africa and Africans were this way. They were inviting enough. Sure they didn’t trust us, and didn’t seem to particularly like us if we were strangers, but how did I know that was exclusive to Rwanda? And also, who could blame them? Leaving the country for vacation was the best thing I did for myself. It let me see the African world outside of a post-conflict shell, a shell I never knew cased every person there, even my closest friends.
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<br /> I want to give examples but I fear I'll give only a negative impression and not all Rwandans are this way, and this is, of course, my experience and mine alone, although I think there are others who would agree. I do have neighbors and friends and kids I’m extremely fond of, who it broke my heart to leave.
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<br /> Anyhow, my experience with men in Rwanda was extremely.. unpleasant. Almost every interaction with a man was aggressive, unwanted and unwarranted. Aside from actually getting assaulted by a man on my mountain [an experience that definitely defined my not feeling safe], even ordinary interactions felt wrong. As I explained to someone after visiting Tanzania, we sat up all night and talked and had real conversations with these men in Tanzania, without feeling inappropriate or unsafe and actually enjoying the company, whereas in Rwanda, a man says hello to me in broad daylight and I feel dirty. It's disgusting. Another PCV described this as men being sexually charged and women [white or in general, I'm not sure] as the sexual object.
<br /> Another example is that in Rwanda, when a person is trying to scam you [steal your money, rip you off, take things out of your bag] other people aid the thief. They distract you, or agree with false prices, in order to allow you to be taken advantage of. Maybe they feel we as foreigners owe it to them, or it's just a general dislike. In Tanzania, we saw the opposite. It was amazing to see this, when I'm so used to being taken advantage of.
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<br /> Another interesting note about the culture is that Rwanda doesn't seem to want to be Rwandan. Rwanda wants to be American. or Western. I noticed this throughout the majority of my service, that Rwandans don't take pride in their country. I don't know if this is a residue of the genocide, but they seem to want to move on and out and have picked up a lot of western attributes that cloud Rwandan culture. I don't just mean in the way that they want to be developed. Lots of places are developed without compromising their culture. They work their lives to get out of the village, to look and act like an American [insert any Jay-Z video here for all young women], and if they're rich enough or have a willing job, they get on a plane to America [and Europe], and they flee. And that's the reason it's so hard to get a visa for up and coming students to study abroad. Meddy, the most popular musical artist in all of Rwanda [who was REALLY good!] got a music gig in the states last year, and 2 days before his flight back to Rwanda, he fled to Canada. Why not take that power and influence and contribute to your home? Most people don't care about the state of Rwanda as long as they can escape from it themselves. I understand the desire to have all your needs met, but this is something different. I struggled to see Rwandan culture in all the layers of westernization.
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<br /> To be clear, none of these really encompass why I left. They’re just passing reflections I considered while I detached myself from the country. It really came down to time I felt like I was wasting. I remember getting back on the plane after visiting England and being desperately upset. I mean, Jay and I leave each other all the time, we’re used to the airport-scenario. This was different, because I knew I had spent the whole first year trying to find work to do with my organization and failed. And I tried to get support and help from Peace Corps about my site, my organization, and my work, and failed, and was coming back to nothingness for another year. The Peace Corps program in Rwanda is so new and the trial and errors were so regular that we [my group] had been chalked up to a failed experiment in our placements, told to just “ride out” the remainder of our service. It was really frustrating.
<br /> I had finally reconciled my stubbornness in wanting to stay, when I realized I spent every day trying to stay one day more, and that’s not a healthy way to live. It’s validating, too, to know most other volunteers in Rwanda feel the same. As the weeks keep going by and more and more people leave early, I wonder at what point the Peace Corps staff will stop and think, hmm, this is a lot more than we normally lose...
<br /> I spent the last few months finishing my project, running the Kigali Half Marathon, and just spending time with the people who did make my staying worth the while [some amazing PCVs and the three families in my village I really felt close with]. And then, when the time started growing more bitter than sweet, I came home.
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<br /> Since then, people keep asking me to weigh in on the experience [that’s the typical person’s extent of interest] and I really struggle to think of it in terms of white and black stones, so instead I dodge the headache of coming to an impossible conclusion, and tell them it was the most interesting experience I’ll ever have [which is true no matter where the stones lay]. No, I wouldn’t take the experience back now. But if I had known the day I got my Invitation to Serve in Rwanda, what I know now, maybe I would have declined it and served elsewhere. Maybe not. Rwanda and PC in Rwanda have got some baggage. I didn’t like being one of the guinea pigs for their program, but I can’t deny that I didn’t meet some amazing people, learn a really interesting language, and have an experience like no other. It may have been a longer experience elsewhere, perhaps with less emotional damage [debatable] but [struggling to end that sentence so I’m just not going to].
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<br /> Even without my photos, I hope I'll still remember a little of what I came from. I've gotten used to conditioning my hair again, to sitting in air-controlled houses and cars, and I've thankfully lost half of the stress-weight I put on while serving [on that note, I can actually run again. My fitness was never something I thought I'd compromise by joining the Peace Corps; it was probably the biggest surprise].
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<br /> I may have left most of my clothes in Busanza with my neighbors, but I did bring back the most pathetic pair of socks you'll ever see. It was the only pair I ran in, climbed the volcano in, walked up and down the mountain in, and they are the most disgraceful color of greyish brown, crumbling as you hold them. I keep them in the closet so that every now and then I pick them up, compare them to my Target-bought white running socks and marvel at what they've been through to be permanently molded to the shape and color of Africa. It reminds me how normal they were to me, how treasured they were and how any right-minded American would toss them in the trash and never look at them again. Another thing I brought back was a gift from a girl in my village. I didn’t get to say goodbye to her when I left the village and I was at the airport in the morning to find her waiting for me [4 miles from my village] to give me 3 glass bracelets, the total cost being close to 30 US Dollars. One of them slide off the dresser recently and smashed into bits of glass pieces. And I cried a lot, knowing how much it cost for her to give to me. Most people can’t pay the $2 a year for health insurance, but she gave me this gift. I promised her I’d come back and visit her some day when she opens up her orphanage. Giving is easy when you have a lot to give. It’s a lot harder when you have nothing. Glass bracelets and dirty socks. Of all the souvenirs I've brought back, I may treasure them the most. They define where I lived and what worth really is.
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<br /> So for now, Murabeho, Rwanda. Goodbye for a long time [but not forever]. Thanks for the good, the bad, the scary, and the parasites. I treasure every day without them.
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<br /> Thank you to everyone who read, wrote, or mailed me inspiration [or duck sauce, or books, or crafts or food]. Somedays it was the difference between feeling human and not.
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<br />For future endeavours you can find me and Jay at www.onceuponadong.blogspot.com as we will start our next adventure in Korea, teaching for the next year, together.Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-36854625164217353552011-03-22T05:42:00.000-07:002011-03-23T02:24:13.725-07:00Make 'em Laugh Make 'em Laugh Make 'em LaughLet’s talk about Lucy.<br /><br />In previous posts I’ve mentioned the “crazy” girl in my village that always made me very nervous, that I would dread like an attack. I’ve heard her described in many ways, in both English and Kinyarwanda. The most notable explanations were:<br /><br />The people came and put something in her head.<br />She has a bad, bad mind.<br />She is an umusazi, a crazy person.<br /><br />This is Lucy. <br /><br />Even before I heard this, Lucy terrified me. My first few months at site were hard but doable. You just make yourself a friend to everyone and they learn to make themselves a friend to you. But Lucy would just cackle at me. She has this laugh that’s slightly maniacal and off-putting. She has very erratic motions and an inability to communicate.<br /><br />Actually that’s not true. It SEEMED that Lucy couldn’t communicate. With me. I noticed over time she would respond when other people on the mountain called things at her. They still burst out laughing before during and after the exchange, but there was some level of a call-and-response. With me, Lucy would just yell MUZUNGU! And if I tried to respond her expression became one of a person who wasn’t actually there, like she disappeared behind her crazy mask.<br /><br />If she said, [her favourite expression for me] Bite, muzungu? [what’s up, white girl!] I couldn’t even respond before she was already cackling in a way that just unnerved me and made me feel like I wasn’t expected to answer, nor would an answer be acknowledged. I used to watch to see if she were coming and try to sneak by, as if that were even possible. [I had some volunteers come visit for Halloween and from my mountain, you could see them walking down <span style="font-style:italic;">the other mountain</span>, an absurd distance away, distinctly white. In theory, I can be seen coming for a half a mile. I don’t know what part of me thought that if I shuffled close enough to the shrubbery, I would simply disappear into it.]<br /><br />Anyway, Lucy unknowingly put terror on the surface of my every day existence for 6 months. She continued to heckle me loudly and publically much to the amusement of anyone around. And I continued to try and disappear as quickly as possible. It’s terrible that I was even afraid of her, for faults not her own, being mentally handicapped in an environment that doesn’t accept such a thing. She was just rolling with her defense mechanisms of a stranger invading and changing her environment, and I was rolling with mine. This would have kept going on, I think, except that one day I saw Lucy, sitting in a ditch with her hands in her lap and her head down. No jericans strapped to her head or back, no erratic or loud motions. No running down the mountain with her igitenge [African fabric] held up behind her like a cape. No energy. Just very sunken. And I was so taken aback by this that I actually stopped instead of running from her as usual. I just stared for a moment, and even though I hated her normal disposition toward me, I was upset by what could subdue such a hurricane of a person.<br /><br />I asked my walking buddy at the moment what had happened. They told me Lucy’s friend had died of AIDS. A friend on the mountain. Lucy herself has to be between the ages of 17 and 30. Hard to tell. But I assume her friend was a similar age. I spent the whole week after scouring the mountain for the people I knew just making sure everyone was accounted for. [I live across the road from a compound for children living with HIV/AIDS.] <br /><br />Lucy remained in that state for several days. The next time I saw her, she was waiting at my gate, just to say hi. I don’t think she’d ever stood still long enough to give me a direct address or look right at me. I said hi back to her, and stood dumbstruck for a moment as she just as unexpectedly ran off. I’ve come to acknowledge our relationship as something reminiscent of Tom and Jerry. <br /><br />From that moment, Lucy and I became friends. We had been scared of each other in a way that danced along the lines of love-and-hate. And now? She skipped down the mountain next to me [still erratic, still mentally questionably] but she could look at me now. She would suddenly take off sprinting, barefoot, cackling, with her waist fabric held high above her shoulders like superman’s cape. And eventually she’d stop and stumble around, curiously, until I caught up and sometimes even passed her. But she’d eventually start running to keep within my bounds, like an orbit, until I left the mountain and she found the water pump. She asked me questions. She learned my name and I wasn’t afraid to say hers. I help her carry her 5 jericans of water [three strapped to her head, one in each hand] up the mountain when I have the opportunity [she loves this. The perks of being in cahoots with the village muzungu. Because not only is it super strange for a white person to be helping a Rwandan carry her jugs of water up the mountain, but to be helping the village crazy person... unheard of]. <br /> <br />Now we regard each other with humour and excitement, as it seems to amuse everyone else. Like it was the last obstacle to cross to be officially in the village. Getting the crazy person to be a little less crazy with you. It’s as if we have a bit now when we pass at the water pump. <br /><br />“Good morning, Ms. Lucy!” <br />“What’s up, Ms. Jenni!” <br />“Not much, Lucy! Can I take some of those jericans for you?” <br />“Let’s go, Jenni!”<br /><br />And so on and so forth with the over-acted stamina of two people who know how absurd their friendship looks from the outside. Undoubtedly, others saw my former hide-in-the-shrubbery tactic from the first few months.<br /><br />Anyway, there are quite a few neighbours that I visit regularly, and I don’t know any of their names. The old grandmas are called Umukecuru [old lady], and the mothers of my kids are simply, Mama. But Lucy, I don’t have the heart to call her Umusazi, crazy person. She’s just Lucy. She’s always in dirty clothes, she doesn’t own any shoes. She has no family, no obvious friends and most people shun her as a respectable counterpart, or equal. She can’t hold a real conversation because of her handicap, nor can she have a real job or education. Her only job is to carry jericans up and down the mountain every day as a mule, a job that only men or boys typically do. She spends all day every day being dehumanized by a term that makes her nothing more than crazy. And sometimes you really need someone to bring a little humanism to the table.<br /><br />If she earns nothing else in her life, she should at least have her name. And yes, this is the perspective of someone regularly called by the characteristics of her skin rather than by the name given to her. But if we’ve done nothing else for each other in the last year, at least we now have our names. I think it’s why we’re friends. The mama’s call me their daughter, the old ladies call me a beautiful girl, but Lucy calls me Jenni. And I can call her Lucy. <br /><br /><br />Enough about Lucy. Let’s talk about work [Yaaaaay!] <br /> <br />So as I may have mentioned previously, I have no work or prospects in my village [other than the informal art club and English classes I hold in my yard and in neighbor’s yards]. As per the structure of PC Rwanda, I am meant to walk out of the village every day and work in the capital with an organization. I was protesting this for a while, but realized that because of my village’s location, local work wasn’t even that feasible. Since everyone else in the village walked into the capital to work every day too. I think it’s a fairly unique setup and poses an interesting question of what this means for me, as a PCV, when the role of a PCV was traditionally very different. None the less, I started a project in cooperation with a different organization in Rwanda. <br /><br />The project is called Grassroots Comics. I explained it in an earlier post, but just as a refresher, it’s a behaviour change/ community development tool that encourages people to discuss and express the issues of the local community in comic form. The comics are then hung up at the community level, be it at a school, or the district office or a health center. The comics are written in the local language, although primarily image-based [to encourage comprehension even with the high illiteracy levels in the village] and discuss issues that are affecting that community. It’s a safe forum for discussion, a means of getting good information out there, and encourages creativity and expression with the youth. Depending on the context, it can be a regularly meeting club at schools or a one-time-workshop at an existing event [such as World AIDS Day or Women’s Day].<br /><br />So as for the update: I’ve been working on a training guide for PCVs and development workers in the Rwandan context since last October. The manual is meant to provide an easy means of facilitating the Grassroots Comics Meetings, drawing exercises, ideas and themes, supplies, collecting feedback, and sharing the results with other facilitators through a GRC newsletter. <br /><br />The guide has now been tested by a group of PCVs, who gave their feedback and helped make the guide more user-friendly for people who are not native English speakers, and for presentation to people who are also not native English speakers. I’ve been working with another volunteer and with the organization that is funding and encouraging the development of this tool, and in a few weeks I anticipate the project will be reaching its final form! This past week at an HIV/AIDS Conference I presented the project and there are lots of interested parties, both PCVs and organization workers. So the next few months will mostly be filled with finalizing the guide, getting funding for supplies, distributing them to the people interested and conducting trainings to help people get started on it. When I get a chance, I’ll upload some examples of comics that were created! I really think this would be a great tool for PCVs all over the world, and I hope to get the word out to other PCV countries when the project is in full swing.<br /><br />On a fun note, the Kigali Peace Marathon is coming up at the end of May! Myself and a few other volunteers are training for it so please think happy thoughts of running in the African sun during the dry season!<br /><br />Another fun note, I am 2 months parasite-free! That really is quite a success. On the other hand, I did fall in a 4 foot ditch the other day... And take a chunk out of my foot in a mudslide... And set the record for most-things-wrong-with-a-PCVs-eyes...<br /><br />More fun stuff: So there are these buses in kigali that are spray-painted and designated to a certain rapper or football team. There's a Manchester United truck, a Drogba bus, Jay-Z bus and every rapper that ever existed including a lot I've never heard off. They're decked out in the team/rapper's colors, their name or logo printed all over, and a photo imprinted onto the back or side. The buses sometimes even have blacklights inside! <br />ANYWAY, the other day, I saw a Justin Bieber bus. And to my knowledge he is the first NON rap artist to have his own Rwandan dedicated bus! And so young and early in his career.. I'm torn between being impressed and being disturbed.<br />A side project I'm going to be doing for mostly my own amusement is tracking down the rest of the funky buses that travel through Kigali and making an album dedicated to them. Or a calender. Really, other people just need to see them.<br /><br />I haven't written a post in a while, so if I think of anything new and absurd that I want to note and didn't, I'll revise this blog. If not, enjoy Lucy and Grassroots Comics!<br /><br />[PS: New photos of MSC, safari game drive, and everything else in this second year of service!]<br />www.picasaweb.google.com/jolsen87 <br />The album is The Early Months: Year TwoJennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-79930876889068840622010-12-29T08:36:00.000-08:002010-12-29T14:02:26.678-08:00Stressing the Gear"I have a question for our American teacher..."<br /><br />I stand up, hands clasped together in my small African classroom setting of 8 students and Rwandan translator.<br /><br />"Do Americans ever sit down and think... about the people of Africa.... and what they're doing to us..."<br /><br />A puzzled expression crosses my face and I say, " I'm not sure I understand. Can you explain?"<br /><br />"Of course," says the boy with the best English in the whole camp. "I mean, do Americans ever sit down and think about how they're hurting us?"<br /><br />"I'm sorry?"<br /><br />"Because, as Rwandans, we see things on TV that Americans are doing, like oral sex, and we want to imitate it! We want to be like Americans. But this practice, it will kill us!"<br /><br />[This, sprung from a discussion of the comparably MINOR risk of HIV infection through oral sex, and the fact that Rwanda, as a culture does not traditionally practice, or know of, oral sex.]<br /><br />Ignoring the desire to ask him what it is he's watching on TV [and the internal desire to kick him in the face], I start to explain that: first off, Americans probably don't realize that oral sex isn't a common place sexual activity. And second-<br /><br />"But you are KILLING us!"<br /><br />-------<br /><br /><br />This December I attended Camp Glow [Girls Leading Our World] and Camp BE [Boys Excelling] for 2 weeks as a facilitator teaching empowerment, life skills and health. CG is a program originally designed by Peace Corps Volunteers in Romania in 1995, and is now the gold star of PC Rwanda, who, still in it's infancy, has no other established program. This year, CG invited about 100 girls and 65 boys to come for a week each to learn about being the future leaders of their country.<br /><br />http://campglowrwanda.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/welcome/<br /><br />While CG and CBE was a learning experience for the kids, it was also a learning experience for me. There are a lot of taboo topics that are simply not discussed in the villages, or topics that cannot be explained due to our limited knowledge of esoteric kinyarwanda terms. Teaching and working with these small groups of students, whose English is good enough to actually discuss such topics, was really enlightening, really encouraging and sometimes really discouraging at the same time; but overall, totally worth the experience. <br /><br />I spent most of the afternoons going on runs through the valley, trying to work out some of the convictions and beliefs in Rwandan culture. I found that some things can be changed painlessly through simply explanation and discussion [such as: while drinking your friend's blood IS a traditional practice of bonding and brotherhood, it should be discouraged, because yes, you can get sick] while others are just so heavily and stubbornly believed, how can we even BEGIN to make sense of it? [example: Semen makes a girl fat. "No! That's absurd for about 5 reasons. (list all reasons)" "No, no, it's true! It's true! She gets fat! She'll always get fat! It's true!"... A camp-wide irrational argument that lasted a half hour before I threw in the towel]. And aside from that, some of it is just downright shocking [see above mentioned conversation with the "smartest" boy in camp]. I'm not sure yet if there's a point to this blog, other than voicing the notes I scribbled into my margins in between topics and coyly asked questions, just so I wouldn't forget a particularly interesting point one of the students made. <br /><br />The curriculum<br /><br />So, let's talk about critical thinking. I'll say it straight out: it doesn't exist here. It just doesn't. You're probably thinking, what? That's silly. Of course it does, you just: think. Critically. <br /><br />But nope, it doesn't. An example is a game we tried to play that was similar to 20 Questions. Someone has a paper on their back with a way of transmitting HIV. The person has to ask you questions to figure out what their paper says. Doing this with Rwandans was impossible. Because they just couldn't grasp the concept. My partner kept saying, I don't understand. How can I say what it is when I can't see it? It's on my back, I don't know what it says.<br /><br />It would be super frustrating if it weren't so interesting to witness. It just. doesn't exist. And it's so natural for us. We don't know any other means of thinking. Try teaching an adult or a schooled teenager how to critically think when it's not a natural process for them. They can't. They won't just guess [guessing is silly] because you don't know, how CAN you guess?<br />Super interesting!<br /><br />Another interesting belief that I found both with my girls and my boys: We did a game to test the kids knowledge about HIV/Sexual Education. I would read a statement and if they thought it was true, they walked to the True side of the class. If false, to the False side. If undecided, in the middle. Both the boys and girls struggled with the following statements:<br /><br />Traditional healers/religious leaders in our country have cured AIDS<br /><br />If a man uses condoms for more than 2 years, he can become infertile.<br /><br />What's interesting is that the first statement was prefaced with the following statement:<br /><br />There is no cure for AIDS<br /><br />and all kids agreed that this was true. When presented with the above mentioned statement about traditional/religious healers curing AIDS, some thought it was definitely true, and others were undecided. Simple deduction would have told us that no cure means no one has cured AIDS, but like I said, critical thinking is nonexistent. The point being that some kids tried to say that Jesus cures AIDS and that they have a friend who has a friend who had AIDS and he prayed a lot and got better. Others believe traditional healers/witchdoctors are rumored to cure AIDS and if you go to them, they'll perform some magick to make it go away. <br /><br />And let me tell you, it's difficult to sensitively tell an almost completely christian culture that jesus does not heal your HIV/AIDS, but we all did agree that this was a poor form of prevention.<br /><br />I'm not sure what the logic behind condoms causing infertility was, but perhaps it's just a scary thought of something you don't know enough to trust. Like people who used to think seat belts were deathtraps.<br /><br />The boys were by far, more curious in their questions. I've heard more about female circumcision [does NOT reduce the risk of HIV transmission, FYI. It actually increases it, while male circumcision reduces the risk by 60%] and "dry sex" than I ever needed [dry sex= drying the woman's vaginal area out with drying agents such as bleach in order to cause more friction for the man. This is a big problem for prostitutes in some parts of Africa. It hugely increases the risk of transmission for a woman.<br /><br />Some of the interesting standards that I think will take a long time to change are in the gender roles.<br /><br />When role playing, I asked the boys, what if you are married, and you find your wife is HIV+?<br /><br />"I will leave her"<br /><br />What if you are married, and you find out that you are HIV+? What will your wife do?<br />"We will support each other"<br /><br />I tried to encourage some debate with this, about why the wife should have to stay with him if he would leave her in the same situation but their answers didn't waver much. Too soon maybe.<br /><br />I also heard some scary stories, such as: A man and woman are about to be married, and as is suggested in Rwanda, they go to get tested for HIV together. The man is HIV+ but does not tell his wife. He begs the doctor to give him a negative result. The doctor then tests them and comes back, and says that the man is not positive, but his WIFE is. <br /><br />They also say [they... those village gossips who herald myths and nonsense through the generations] that if you drink fanta [specifically, coke] or milk, it will help you have a negative test result.<br /><br />My Rwandan facilitator/translator brought up an interesting point about STDs. HIV testing is at least fairly common knowledge for people who will be married, but STDs are still creeping along in the shadows, I think. We were looking at Syphilis, I think, and one of the symptoms if untreated is death. Especially since a lot of people don't exhibit any symptoms at all until it's too late, we discussed how this might correlate to so-called "poisoning" in the villages. To this day, when you order a fanta or a drink at a shop or restaurant, they won't open it until it's placed in front of you, so that they cannot be accused of poisoning it. It is a rampant belief that people are regularly poisoned. Even well-educated missionaries I know believe that this exists everywhere. I'm a little more skeptical. I don't think you're going to get poisoned for shaming the village old lady. But it's so common for people to drop dead that they all claim poisoning! Maybe all this poisoning business is actually a late-stage case of untreated Syphilis. Think about that, Rwanda.<br /><br />Moving out of health, <br />Gender roles fell into our Decision Making session as well. The boys were giving situations on slips of paper and they had to go through the decision making process step by step and then make a decision. This is to encourage ACTUAL thought processes while making important decisions. Sometimes, the most basic decisions are based on someone just telling you to do it. If you're waiting at a bus stop and a bus pulls up, a man will continually yell it's destination to the SAME GROUP OF PEOPLE. and you'd think these people are standing at a bus stop with their OWN destination in mind, but I swear, if he stands there for only 30 seconds yelling REMERA REMERA REMERA! someone will up and decide, sure, I'll go to Remera instead. Like your travels and schedules are based on the whims of a lively or convincing bus man. It drives me nuts [although I'd be lying if I haven't done the same thing one or twice myself]. <br /><br />People tend to do what they're told, especially women, which is a hard habit to break. In a hypothetical situation, the girls were told "A man who has given you gifts to help feed your family is now asking you to meet him at a hotel" and their first reaction wasn't 'hotel=he wants to get some.' It was, "Well, I should go to the hotel to see what he wants." And in that situation, they've put themselves into a position to be compromised. It's how a lot of prostitutes get started in this country. They need to feed their family// get money for secondary school. They turn to a "sugar daddy" and find help and a lot more.<br /><br />In an even more alarming realization, the boys addressed the following situation:<br /> "You are a girl in a relationship with a boy you plan to marry. He's been suggesting lately that you have sex now instead of waiting to be married."<br /><br />The boy response: First, you refuse. Then, if he insists, you use a condom. <br /><br />Me and the other PCV in the room at the time just looked at each other. Is this what boys think of a girl's values? Push a little and they cave? And it is. Maybe it's not how they deduce it, but boys in this culture believe a girl always says no at first, but she means yes. She has to play coy, but wants it as much as he does. I had hoped that after our life skills and leadership and lessons on being assertive, that I wouldn't have to address that, but even these boys, these enlightened, equal-rights, boys of the future still think a woman is subject to mold.<br /><br />There's a saying in kinyarwanda that you hear if you trip, or drop something, or do anything of the spaz nature.<br /><br />Urashyaka umugabo! You need a husband!<br /><br />Because a husband makes you complete. You can't be a fully functioning adult without him.<br /><br />It wasn't all like this, though. Aside from the strange cultural beliefs or practices, the boys were really sweet. Boys who speak good English and have gone through most of their schooling know how to sweet talk the ladies [which is why we do a condom demonstration]. In one class, while discussing what love is, one boy stood up and declared it was money and giving iPhones to the girl, and one of my boys stood up and said it must involve kissing "because love without kissing is like tea without sugar."<br /><br />So anyway, I would go running, sometimes on my own, sometimes with other like minded PCVs, and sometimes with PCVs and the male campers. We set out into the valley at a smooth pace but as soon as the boys got comfortably warmed up, they sprinted ahead at a pace suitable for a well-fed African boy that I am seriously not accustomed to. When the kids run with me in the village, I know it's only a matter of time until their styrofoam shoes and weary physique demand them to stop, and I continue on, in my Nike shoes, Target running spandex, meticulously thought-out sports bra and two running-only tank tops, running off years of Western diet stored in the depths of my body. But here, in the open space of Gitarama and the winding dirt road of the valley, these boys are flooring it, nothin' but bones. <br /><br />Runners everywhere in the western world always talk about the gear. I used to be so particular about what I ate before I ran, cant be less than a half hour before, can't be wearing low-rising socks. Can't have shorts with lining on the inside, can't have a really baggy Tshirt. Need a headband. But you know what, I was like that because at that point I still sucked at it and needed an excuse. Now, I can run 8 miles on the drop of a dime. I remember the first week of pre-season training of field hockey in high school, and Coach Hack had just gotten out of her car eating a bagel and drinking a large coffee. And she put it down and got on the track and just went. 8 minute mile. And I thought, I would SO throw up if I had to do that. But now, especially after seeing these kids who have NOTHING. Literally nothing. Styrofoam shoes. No shoes. Dress pants. No shirt. They just get up and go. Or they hear from a half a mile away that the Abazungu [white people] are coming, and they get up and get ready for it. But for us, we're too privileged. I can't run because my <span style="font-weight:bold;">good </span>sports bra is in the dryer [DRYERS! remember those?] or my socks aren't clean. Or the weather is too hot. <br /><br />Move to Mali, lose the shoes, and go. Little malnourished African children run a mile with me just for the fun of it, and these boys, these well-fed, 3-meals a day, 2 tea breaks with a snack every day, they can finally move to the level they're capable of, without worrying whether they'll have a next meal to recover with.<br /><br />And that's the point, I guess. They don't stress the gear. They don't stress anything. They'll walk 5 miles to school every day as long as they can sit in a classroom and take notes and learn. There are so many people in the states who would rather fail a class than get up in the early morning and walk 5 minutes [let alone 5 miles] to "learn" something. <br />Just having the opportunity to be at this Camp, to know where your meals are coming from for at least one whole week, to be allowed to express yourself, artistically or athletically. To be <span style="font-style:italic;">allowed</span> to study. To develop oneself, as they say here. Just to be allowed to know, what Americans know, and take for granted. What a privilege. To be allowed to do anything.Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-22394095490076093462010-11-05T02:11:00.000-07:002010-11-19T08:52:56.914-08:00Where the Sidewalk EndsToday, you'll be reading the self-composed interview of one, Jen Olsen, atop her mountain in Busanza, Rwanda, answering some of those juicy questions all you Westerners out there are asking!<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">JO:</span> Am I lonely? I don't suppose so. I'm definitely <span style="font-weight:bold;">alone</span>, but not <span style="font-style:italic;">lonely</span>.<br /><br />I mean, I have my thoughts, and they keep me pretty busy. And with them, the thoughts of everyone I've ever read. I listen to Whitman almost daily, and Emerson everytime I find myself talking to the chickens. As of recent I've added Jane Austen, Chaim Potok, David Sedaris, Paul Farmer, and Ray Bradbury to the crew and every week the party gets bigger [a commonality between all PCVs, I imagine]. <br /><br />And you know what, it's not that I enjoy living in my head, but I can't help it. I'm either walking down the road with a running kinyarwanda dialogue in my head, practicing and planning for probable interactions, or sitting with my kids during art club, while they banter to themselves and eventually my kinyarwanda runs out, and I'm left staring off into the sky, thinking of synonyms and similes Walt would have given to the setting mountaintop sun. Comprable to that, Emerson would have regarded the brazen simplicity and the solace my home gives, and to turn nature itself into a juxtaposed chaos, Bradbury just stands in the corner, contemplating the way the light strikes through threads of banana fiber. Honestly, it's actually quite crowded in my yard. I mean my head.<br /><br />I'll keep sitting here on my shoddy twig stool held together with three strips of old tire, quietly considering all their observations, questioning these things and people and places and their opinions on life [and my life, specifically] and suddenly, how can you ever feel alone?<br /><br />Some of the best minds, the best people [not mutually exclusive, fyi] i've ever known are the ones who take off on their own. who hole up in their room with their thoughts, drive north until the land is no longer familiar, or take off across the country on foot, just to dive deeper into themselves.<br /><br />If these people all hold a facet for observation, and I'm turning it around also, saying, hmm, yes, very interesting, let's look at it from over here... we're all peering into the same crystal ball looking for insight. And everytime it changes hands it's scuffed, cloudy, dirty or scratched, whether war or time or place has changed, we all keep peering into the same core. <br /><br />Our thoughts may vary slightly, based on these superficial inflictions, but no one's ever <span style="font-style:italic;">lonely</span>. I'm tied to these people as much as I've ever been. I can't help but see familiar faces in all that I do. I'm not a pioneer. I've just joined a club of great minds and finally got my own facet. Let us hope others will seek solace in me and them and never lose faith in our anonymous, faceless comradery. I'll always be here, and if the sharp plains of a diamond last forever, then so will we. Right?<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">JO:</span> Daily routine? That's pretty hard to nail down but let's go with yesterday. Yesterday I woke up at 5:56am to the sound of the tiny little bird that used to tap dance on my roof, now taking inspiration from the Broadway hit, STOMP and using what must have been a bird-sized sledgehammer with his already thunderous routine. In my morning delirium I reached out from my mosquito net and threw my flip flips at the underside of the roof. Not much accomplished but I laid in bed until 7 or so when I finally got up, flipped my net up, and fed the chickens [who, since laying eggs, have started to fly up to the windows and whimper if I'm not speedy with their food ((BTW, did I mention the first egg laid was from Gaju flying to my window, climbing through the bars, and laying the egg on my windowsill?))]. On a complete sidenote, Gaju means brown cow and WHY is it Rwandans never seem to think it's funny when I tell them I named my brown chicken brown cow? But they think Shyimbo [little bean] is hysterical..<br /><br />Anyway, after that, I start filling up my water boilers, boil water, make tea, sweep out the house with my awesome Rwandan broom that requires you to bend your back parallel to the floor, and do a general routine of tidiness. <br /><br />Yesterday was Thursday which is Art Club day, so the kids came over to draw and play. Usually I try to sneak something educational into the event, but since we've been covering only health topics and I have a dozen or so drawings of me as a stick figure brushing my teeth, the kids and I looked at my world map and drew pictures of our flags and talked about how many countries there were and whatnot. One of the girls had never seen a world map before, so I think the World Map Project is in my future for the primary school in Busanza. I'll be able to paint a mural of the world on or in the school with the kids, so that they always have a map to learn from [a novelty almost all schools can't afford]. [sidenote: since writing the first draft of this, I now have 3 more schools interested in me running the world map project, all of which will commence in the new year, as well as my being an art teacher for a few months so the art program doesn't shut down for lack of teacher. WOOHOO!]<br /><br />After that, I started boiling some rice, and did my Jillian Michaels workout video [honestly, it should mention in the PC handbook that 80% of volunteers gain weight in Africa]. In between monsoons and drizzles, I read a bit, cleaned a bit, chopped down some reeds in my yard and brought them to my neighbors who feed them to their cow. I visited them for a bit, sat outside with the kids and mom who were laying on a mat next to the cow pen. The dad is really sick; he always tells me he has pain in his stomach and his daughter, who I teach english, always tells me that he is going to die. I hadn't seen him since he went to the hospital two weeks ago but Sunshine [the name I've given to his daughter] brought me inside to his bed to say hello. In the last two weeks he's gone from a sick, old, malnourished man, to a bedridden man who is so wasted he resembles a Holocaust survivor. It's a really hard reality to stomach, to watch a man slowly die. I didn't stay long, for the smell and sight of the room, but he greeted me just as he had when he was more alive. That's something to say about the culture.<br /><br />After that an old man who saw me with the reeds, begged me to come see his cows and chickens, so I visited his family, played with a cow, wowed some old women with my kinyarwanda, and went home. I made some pseudo rice veggie and egg stir-fry for dinner, watched the Season 3 finale of Lost and cried a little over it, and cleaned up. Thus is a typical day in the village. It's not going to move any mountains, but I don't mind it!<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">JO:</span> What do I miss the most? <br /><br />Excluding the most obvious family and friends: <br />Target, tubs of movie theatre popcorn, Binghamton University Nature Preserve, running without being followed, talking without being self-conscious, fencing, wearing shorts without being confused for a prostitute, using a debit card, ordering pizza, eating pizza, smelling and seeing pizza. drinking water out of the tap, ice cubes, tracks, fields, not being stared at all the time, university classes, lip gloss, and shaving my legs. AND feeling human. That may sound like a grand statement, but when you're always wearing a funny suit, it's hard to remember what you were wearing before. The job is 24/7 so the suit never really comes off and you're always on stage, always on the record.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">JO:</span> Unexpected gains from this experience? Well, with the one-year-in-country anniversary coming up, I've made a short list of <br />Things I never expected to gain from this:<br />Honing my shakira-dancing skills [one of the few music videos I've acquired is She-Wolf]<br />Encouraging sanity through personal dance parties and concerts during monsoons when I can't even hear myself sing, shadow puppets when the power's out and befriending chickens.<br />Perpetuating my hopeless attraction to color and artistic enthralment by finding endless means of expression, whether art club, children's photo perspective, or chalk-on-mud wall-murals<br />A sailor's tongue<br />A new understanding of/ respect for my digestive system<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">JO:</span>Best thing I've seen this week?<br />So I was walking home in the dark the other night [I was running late, don't yell at me!] and nearing the end of the paved road. From that point I can look left, and see the 60 foot twin pine trees that mark my village on the sky line, or I can look right, and see the edge of Kigali city petering off into the hills. I'm rarely down the mountain this late at night because it's still a 40 minute walk from where the sidewalk ends to get home. But looking right, I see the edge of the city, a thicket of lights all the way to my right and behind me. I pan left slowly and the lights fall into smaller groups, patterns and dimplings of stars on the mountain, evidence of the random assortment of electricity-bearing villages. I keep paning until the lights go out and the mountain fades into wilderness and I'm back on the edge of the road. I look left at my own mountain, and I see not thousands of the city, not hundreds from an up-and-coming town, but 7. Just 7 lights. And mine would soon make 8. There were a few flickering lights, dictating fires outside and it reminded me so much of the traditional practices of Halloween, of lighting a bonfire on every mountaintop, to be seen and acknowledged by other firey minds. And I was reminded of what a rare beauty this was, to see where the lights stop, to know that some places are nothing but light, but I'm luckily in this beautiful world where sharing a bonfire can still acknowledge some likeminded living, one that's simple and hopeful and modest.Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-43763080854524325512010-09-28T08:06:00.001-07:002010-10-02T01:35:31.774-07:00Peace Corps: Desperation Leads to CreativityFYI. New photos on picasaweb.google.com/jolsen87. Also, new care package request list on the side bar :D<br /><br /><br /><span xmlns=''><p>IST; September 2010. I want to preface the preface with the fact that the following blog was written over the course of a 5 day conference, during breaks, during lectures, and during general moments of either elation or despair. The thoughts are a little broken up and as is the flow but to save the reality of it, we're going to just let it be. <br /><br />Preface.<br /><br /></p><p>A few years ago while working at Camp Shane, someone sent me a gift. It was a box, colourful, curious, with no return address. It was painted bright orange, yellow, and pink; absolutely coated in vivaciousness and stamped with the label: CAUTION: CONTAINS CREATIVITY. It was so light I couldn't begin to imagine where it came from and what it meant. I sat down, tore through the layers of paint, and opened the flaps to find a big empty box. I thought about this today, after I contemplated hurling my phone and bag into the Lake for the sake of starting over.<br /><br /></p><p>Every day I wake up in a whirlwind of difficult situations and vague-alities [not a real word but go with it]. This swirl engulfs me so that the day moves in muted color and softened sound. I feel like I'm watching it from inside myself sometimes, and it's really hard. Good morning to my neighbours, good morning to the nuns. Children walk me down the mountain. Swirling through my vision are notable moments: the happy little boy with gaping wounds and bug infestations in his scalp. Every day he hugs me and looks up with a smile as I look down at his poor infected head. I see the broken water pump, the hundreds of jerricans in line. A baby's wooden coffin is unattended and balanced on a sewer pipe. No one seems to notice it but me. I see textbook diseases come to life: Polio, elephantiasis, rickets, TB. I see a man with one leg, half an arm, no limbs at all. A stump of a body rolled to the street corner for the day to hopefully collect change, and then taken home with the coins gathered in his shirt pocket. I've gone for a run and watched from the street as a house burned to the ground in 2 minutes flat. Seen a little boy run over by a car and the driver doesn't move. Moments like this are so hard to forget. And I'm not trying to remember, they just hover around my mind effortlessly, ever present in the world-of-things-I-never-hoped-to-witness filing cabinet of memories. This fog follows me everywhere, making it even more difficult to find a project, get support, fill the hours. And these feelings are at least validated amongst my fellow volunteers, most of which follow similar daily patterns.<br /><br /></p><p>The problem with being in Peace Corps is that once you're actually in it all the magic is gone. The mystery no longer intrigues you and the hardships are never in the way you expected. If the only problems I ever had were no water, sketchy electricity, and a mud house, my life would be a golden cakewalk. Even if I had to have chiggers taken out weekly what a wonderful life that would be! But the problems aren't what we prepared for, no. They're infrastructure, helplessness, and struggling with a newborn program [as one staffer said, if the health program were a person, it would be a medical emergency]. We're not Kennedy's PC. We're not your parent's PC. We are 50 years of an evolving system that now has different expectations, aims, and beliefs. And that's difficult, when we never signed up to be the guinea pigs. But then again, we did sign up to go anywhere and do anything. Stupid us. I guess we are Kennedy's children still. The newest generation of give-all's who are willing to do whatever it takes to get whatever we can.<br /><br /></p><p>Introduction.<br /><br /></p><p>So we're here, in Kibuye on Lake Kivu at our IST [In- Service Training] Conference, strategizing, commiserating, discussing the various reasons half of us are losing our hair [stress response: at this rate I will quite literally be bald by Christmas]. As I've said before the highs and lows of PC are frequently rolling over us. For most, it's been a low for almost 8 weeks. <br /><br /></p><p>Somewhere on the grounds, boy is smashing things in his hotel room. A girl sobs to the PC medical staff. A group of smokers huddle at night on the rock-slab stairs [a memory from PST: "Smoking is not allowed publically in Rwanda, but if you're a smoker, now is NOT the time to quit. If it's your crutch, you're going to need it..."]. And me, I stood in the lake this morning, phone in one hand, bag in the other, and weighed the urge to purge these useless things one acquires when serving others, alone. <br />People are breaking down! No work no support no time no structure and as a result, no motivation. How do you get started on the problems of a whole country when your office has no work but expects you there 8-5? Writing their English homework for them? Inputing the HIV status of orphans for 6 hours? To sit still and simply be a pretty office plant in the corner for observation and not much else? It's demoralizing, to say the least, and unfortunately, the norm for us supposed health and community development volunteers.<br /><br /></p><p>And we've been told a lot of things this week.<br /></p><p>You're Pioneers!<br /></p><p>Trailblazers!<br /></p><p>Ihangane! [Be patient!]<br /><br /></p><p>But the truest motivations come in disguise, in genuine life stories, or rather, in genuine comradery and misery.<br />I listened one night to the stories of one of our newest PC-RW staff members, who in his youth served in Zaire. And I for the first time since being here rediscovered the mystery and intrigue and excitement of being a part of something so big. Hearing what he did, how he lived, how he still speaks the local language with his wife [something I also hope to do. I asked if when they fight, they can slip into this secret language, something I always tell Jay I'm going to do when I get mad at him. (FYI, he confirmed they do)] and I love the memories, even those that aren't mine, but I know will be some day. Listening to him I knew what I wanted and how badly I still wanted to get there.<br /><br />A fellow PCV told me in his infinite depth of personal misery, that a hero has a thousand faces. <br />Desperation is one of a thousand of my faces [Call it a metaphorical breaking point].<br /><br /></p><p>Drumroll.<br /><br /></p><p><br /> </p><p>Which brings me back to the Lake.<br /></p><p>The idea came in a way that suggested it'd always been there. Like he'd been in front of me but was so close, I couldn't focus. And when I stepped back out of the sandstorm for a moment to breath [or yell at the Lake], he was there all along, waiting like the empty creativity box. Or maybe I simply hit my breaking point. Frustration and angst doesn't become me, after all. I was <strong><em>exhausted</em></strong>, and truly desperate. And then, the box. I was experiencing what I'd call a Dorothy-entering-Munchkin Land- moment. I hastened to get my ideas and thoughts down before I got too close and lost sight again.<br /></p><p><br /> </p><p>Moral.<br /></p><p><br /> </p><p>Here, in Peace Corps, in Rwanda specifically maybe, sometimes we fall so far we suddenly find we're actually climbing again. Not that living an MC Escher drawing is entirely poetic. It's actually quite nauseating, at times completely aggravating, and full of chiggers, boredom, and too many carbs.<br /></p><p>And while I found my clarity for at least the next week or so, that's not to say we've all reached it together. But, I hope that like the chiggers, it spreads with time. <br /></p><p><br /> </p><p>Epilogue.<br /><br /></p><p>So since IST 2 weeks ago I'm still in the bottom of the pit trying to fight my way out [in terms of my organization at least]. But I have a lot of project ideas due to the conference and reaching my own breaking point that day. Quite literally, desperation took me to a beautiful place where I finally saw all the things I already knew but couldn't acknowledge. What is this place doing to me? Here is a list of some of these projects and ways you can help!<br /><br /></p><p>I'm starting an art club with the kids who live near me, just to have them get together and draw and I'm going to turn it into a community health- project and have them draw their own health slogans and signs and teach them about preventive health issues from the grassroots level. A similar but probably better-grasped project will commence with the secondary school kids who have good enough English to be able to grasp the concept of drawing comics [it's called Grassroots Comics; they have a website!] and using them as a community development tool, since its created at the local level, requires minimal supplies and is written in the local language.<br /></p><p>Aside from that I'm going to help out at the English club at the secondary school that's only about a mile or so from my house in the village. We're also looking into a long term project of some kind of community youth center or library, but that's going to take a much longer time frame. <br /><br /></p><p>Going on right now, we're starting Books for Africa in Rwanda and they also have a website [booksforafrica.org] and we'll be designing events and raising money to send books over probably for the next year [books are absurdly expensive here].<br /></p><p>If anyone wants to send me anything awesome to help out, right now I really just need paper and pencils and some thin tracing markers. The grassroots comics is going to be a great project, and one that I fully believe can be really influential in a community. I am super excited about this! So at least while this organization issue gets worked out, I'm thankfully in the village full time and working there [as it should be].<br /><br /></p><p>I know the above post sounds maybe pessimistic or at least gloomy, but I swear it was simply epiphanic. Also, there are a lot of smaller victories happening every day that would be better to focus on. Here is a short list from these past 2 weeks:<br /></p><p>-Teaching English every weekend to a teenage boy in my village who is really motivated to learn. We sit and discuss what adjectives are, what pronouns are, and have small group conversations in English to help him get over the fear of speaking what he already knows [practice practice practice. It's the only way we learned Kinyarwanda]. To be honest I have no idea how to teach English, especially when he can only speak basic sentences and I have such limited language myself. But we have a lot of fun and his motivation is truly encouraging.<br /><br /></p><p>-going for an accidental 8 mile run where I got lost but discovered the marshlands on the other side of my mountain. I was directed home by the wrinkliest, most adorable old lady in the bush who sent her 12 kids to walk with me to the road that led to the main dirt road that would get me home.<br /><br /></p><p>-having my kids come over for an umunsi mukuru [party!] they set up, and they sung, danced, and taught me to drum Rwandan style, and then performed a traditional dance of giving gifts and presented me and Anna [a pcv who came up the mountain for the event] with gifts which were shoeboxes filled with fruit. I almost cried because i know most of them don't have money for health insurance, which costs less than $2 a year, but they went through the trouble of doing this for us.<br /><br /></p><p>-teaching the kids how to do the hokey pokey and the chicken dance [it was only a matter of time]<br /><br /></p><p>-learning the actual lyrics to Medy [who's now in AMERICA! Touring or something. Google that man, he's an awesome artist] and singing them with the neighbour while the kids did a breakdance.<br /><br /></p><p>-and on that note, finally being comfortable enough to visit with neighbours, sing and learn from them, without it being the forced awkward visits I'm accustomed to. Actually enjoying my time there. Finally!</p></span>Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-83604117762356011862010-08-06T11:12:00.000-07:002010-08-06T11:29:26.420-07:00Push<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7o1_BIEnxdW_A1k7lIdM_ZOHEhSVHQgg6viD3n39tZpOSssVlq_opHHX1jiE5GnwJfFnAYB4ZVkr-K1cxGazsX1mIOiK1KLZgnNCob0yAQwFUtz0WmkdFtgBHdArNFiEx3EaXcrrTWeA/s1600/IMG_2406copy.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 163px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7o1_BIEnxdW_A1k7lIdM_ZOHEhSVHQgg6viD3n39tZpOSssVlq_opHHX1jiE5GnwJfFnAYB4ZVkr-K1cxGazsX1mIOiK1KLZgnNCob0yAQwFUtz0WmkdFtgBHdArNFiEx3EaXcrrTWeA/s400/IMG_2406copy.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5502365680429122370" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />Dear Avid Readers,<br /><br />I have no cultural insight for you this time, only a change in address and phone number [sorry!]. My phone is now [+25]0722404653 and the new mailing address is listed on the sidebar. As many people may know, the hubby came to visit for 2 wonderful and unfortunately brief weeks, and I've asked him to ponder that time over and write an unbiased outside perspective of whatever he took from his time here. <br />Sometimes I think I'm [not just me actually; <span style="font-weight:bold;">we're</span>] too close to the lives here that many alarmingly foreign things are now taken as the familiar, the rarities of life are actually my every day. For example, I haven't had enough water to shower for 5 days and I'm not phased by that, but I know someone out there reading this is probably shocked at my lack of hygiene [I smell lovely, for the record]. Anyway, I hope both you [avid readers] and I, can take something out of that perspective. Keep an eye open for it sometime soon. <br /><br />Maramuke, n' Ijoro rwizaJennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-5387877172170659962010-07-11T02:01:00.000-07:002010-07-11T02:40:08.475-07:00To all the Talking Blue Horses Out ThereThis one’s for you<br /><br />To volunteers all over the world<br />To circus freaks, science experiments, and zoo exhibits<br />To anyone in the closet, under the rug, and on the radar<br />This one’s for you<br /><br />To every person living the life of the minority; struggling to speak; struggling to blend<br />To all the people who wish they could walk without being judged, shop without being watched, jog without being followed,<br />To Michael Jackson and Brittney Spears<br />This one’s for you<br /><br />If you’ve ever been pet, poked, pinched, touched, prodded by complete strangers,<br />If you’ve ever remained silent, hungry, thirsty, sick, diligent for the sake of fitting in,<br />If you’ve ever made an infant cry and run in terror at the color of your skin,<br />This one’s for you.<br /><br />Volunteers, in mud huts all over the world, in sky-clad markets all over the world, in jungles, tundra and deserts all over the world, have no fear. Someday, the talking-blue-horse phenomenon will fade and no longer will our skin be pulled just to see if it’s real. No longer will children run screaming from you, or screaming towards you [the magickal powers from touching the talking blue horse]. Normal reactions may occur, yes! Someday, the big bad wolf of globalization will make your color fade, make your hoofs seem more natural, make it appear that you are in fact, almost human. <br /><br />For now, perhaps we should take delight in the fact that there are still untouched depths of the world, unknown regions so close at hand that a child has never even heard RUMOR of a talking blue horse [making its presence ever the more surprising]. Perhaps it would be better to take advantage of being a specimen to society. Think of what you’re contributing! Think of the influence and opportunities to teach. Sure, the PC spends 10 weeks trying to dull the effects of an inevitable culture shock once dropped in your village by training you on culture and language. But let’s be honest. Our PST drunk goggles are making us think we’re being smooth and suave, but on their side of the glass we’re just as blue as ever, wearing a silly human mask over our faces. This is why we rock mood swings like a diabetic’s blood sugar. We walk with a bag full of tricks, lingo, clothes, and we feel pretty damn good sometimes. But all it takes is a dose of reality, of one person, or several, reminding you that behind that mask is a big talking blue horse, and of course they can see you through it.<br /><br />But it’s OK! Talking blue horses will unite someday, and when we’re all out at our blue horse convention, talking about hard times in Village Funnyname, of Obscure Country #12, we’ll miss that specialness, that sense of being something spectacular, of making simple tasks look incredible. Washing your clothes will never again hold the same gumption and defiance. Your families will not be riveted by your ability to bargain for tomatoes or hoe your back garden. And even on your soapbox, calling out to the world with a megaphone on your metropolitan street corner, you will not be heard amongst the familiar sea of blue, oh no. Your voice will rise and fall in a familiar flow of noise and comfortable congestion, feebly growing more hoarse [ba-dum-cha] each time.<br /><br />Revel in it, brothers and sisters, that mask that gives you an opportunity, that tongue that lets you into their lives. Revel in the chance to have a say! To teach 17 children [actual count] English as they follow your jog, to bond as you carry water together, to be someone who tried so hard to hide blue beneath a thin mask of foreign vocabulary. Just to be someone who tried. It’ll never be this hard again, no. But let’s face it. It’ll never be this easy.Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-9524201081134465902010-06-21T01:11:00.000-07:002010-06-21T01:27:30.607-07:00Asceticism<span style="font-weight:bold;">The week of the Rwandan</span><br /><br />Partly because I have a guilt-sensitive gag reflex, and partly because my priorities lie more in research than personal satiation, this past week has been the culmination of many moments of culturally-induced understandings and curiosities; of needs and wants merging to one, and, of my limited tolerance for detachment from my community. <br /><br />Thus began my week as a Rwandan.<br /><br />Peace Corps preaches that we live at the level of the local community, and on some points, we really do. But even by the minimal living allowance PC gives us monthly, it’s still a far cry from what the typical Rwandan lives off. [probably because they’re accounting also for our letters home, phone credit, toilet paper and the occasional relapse into western life by splurging on an egg sandwich and coffee at a café once a month. Mmmm...]<br /><br />But my neighbors don’t have such luxury, and the girls in my village don’t take the bus, go to town, or contemplate buying tree tomatoes even though they’re out of season. Every day I walk the 4 miles to town out of the mountain with my neighbors. They’re mostly heading to the markets, but doing so with baskets of maize balanced on their heads.<br /><br />This means of carrying things had lost its shock value until I saw a woman walking down our mountain carrying a full-sized school bench, a chair, a market bag, and a basket of produce, all balanced on the bench on her head. There was also a baby on her back. She also had the fore thought to cover the baby with a shawl to protect him from the sun. And it’s not a small decline by any means. I still feel like I’m in Bridget’s boot camp every time I go up it. And I almost fall once a day going down. These women are malnourished, usually pregnant, usually with a baby already strapped to them, and they move jugs of water, vegetables, or benches, apparently, up and down the mountains like mules. No complaints, no hesitance.<br /><br />And I walk with their kids, and they’re excited, to play with their friends at the water pump in the valley; to kick a football made out of banana leaves wound-together like the cultural extension of a rubber band ball; to tell the muzungu they’re going to look for food. And I feel guilt at the empty water bottle in my bag, at the prospect of bread, eggs, maybe even juice and other luxuries of having more than 500rwf a week to spend.<br /> And small children chew on sugar cane or unripe tree fruits, and stumble their chubby legs over to me, arms stretched out for minutes waiting to get close enough to touch the mysteriously white-skinned, fine-haired girl who lives god-knows-why in their village.<br /><br />Being confronted by these images moment by moment, acknowledging the women who carry one jerican strapped to their head, the other to their waist, and I wonder how they aren’t still scoffing at me. They definitely think I can’t do anything. One woman tried to carry my hoe for me, amongst all the other crap she had on her. I told her I had strength and could carry it, and she laughed. The children gossip about me. A little girl I walk down the mountain with sometimes told me how other children tell her rumors about me, and she refutes or confirms them [since she has ACTUAL CONTACT with the muzungu].<span style="font-style:italic;"> And this one girl, she said that you never take lifts from passing cars, and you always walk, always! Even though you could have a ride</span> [true. My rigorous walking dedication is paying off because people notice, thank goodness. Plus my legs look awesome]<span style="font-style:italic;"> and the other kids, they tell me that you have a fiancé! And that you won’t take a Rwandan husband! </span>[also true. I don’t think that requires an explanation]...<br /><br />We are both quite the paradox, I think. I look absurd to them and they boggle my mind on a regular basis. Movements, facial expressions, emotional expressions, dress, work, contemplation, everything. We blink at each other and sometimes I’m not sure who the zoo exhibit is. Ok that’s not true. I know it’s me. I actively try not to stare while they actively embrace the impulse.<br /><br />But they’ve started to accept me. They’ve let me in to their lives for, I don’t know what reason. <br />We pulled out in 1994. Not only did we pull out but we pulled every other white person out, too. We left them to burn themselves out, to smolder until all the flames were out and a million people had died. And now they welcome me into their village? I walk home with friends, neighbors, marveling that everyone knows my name, that the mothers bid me hello, that the older boys and girls cast casual remarks as I pass, and the children ambush me with hugs as we approach my house. Even the girl whose presence I dread like the town drunk was waiting at my gate, just to say, <span style="font-style:italic;">bites?</span> [semblance to, what’s up?] and no longer mocked me with incessant muzungu chanting. I’m feeling a little like a rockstar; exhausted, but riding a high on the cycle of adjustment; I've just hit the gold star or bullet on rainbow road and can now just sit back and enjoy the ride. I don’t feel like I deserve this. But I’m grateful. So grateful.<br /><br />So I spent a week like a Rwandan. I’ve had one meal a day; beans, rice, cooked bananas, so on and as much water as I can afford to boil and carry with me during the day. The beans I cooked came from my own garden, and the 2000 rwf I budgeted for the week was spent only in the markets on produce from the people I call my neighbors. <br /><br />It’s just an experiment, really. To get in touch with them, to understand their mannerisms and motions and dialect. To quiet my curiosity at things I see but don’t have an explanation for [which is everything]. They’ll still think I’m a muzungu, that I’m hiding my baby-pool of money and riches in the closed door of my bedroom. But at least I’ll understand more. Maybe I’ll have the answers to the millions of unfamiliar moments I experience each day. Or just one. Just one answer would be enough for now.<br /><br />It took until day 5 of this lifestyle for me to have a delusional urge for bagels, day 7 to dream about pizza, but only day 3 or 4 to start to feel the effects on my body. My lips shriveled and my skin broke out in a still unfamiliar dryness. My motions were slow, deliberate, which I only realized while I tried to swish my head around in a bucket to wash my hair and became instantly disoriented and nauseated. I also realized that a mannerism I’d noted, particularly in the men, of walking [moseying, almost] slowly, with the arms lingering out to touch things, meandering side to side, in what had appeared to be a very random and erratically slow movement, had an underlining malnutrition to it. I found myself reaching my arms out unintentionally to touch passing objects, and then realized it’s because I was so dehydrated, I couldn’t be sure where my feet would be landing. I had reached my fingertips out to graze the surface of an electrical pole, a plant, anything, because it gave me a sense of depth, grounding me to my current location and giving an awareness to my surroundings that maybe I wasn’t able to comprehend anymore on my own. It’s so interesting. <br /><br />Anyhow, I made it to day 6 before I bought eggs and some bread to make an obscene amount of French toast [a compromise with myself, for not going looking irrationally for expensive Kigali-city bagels for no good reason other than delirium]. I feel like Hermann Hesse while researching Siddhartha but with much less clarity. That also might just be the hunger talking. <br />How do you even begin to even the score? Not only are they hungry, but they’ve accepted it as a standard of living. Not only are they orphaned, but still living in the house their parents were killed in. Not only is it difficult, but it’s a matter of fact. It’s life. End of story.Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-69328045719329568162010-06-11T07:30:00.000-07:002010-06-12T02:53:37.216-07:00A village, a husband, and hyperventilationI posted some new photos of my adorable little home and some other moving-in stuff. <br /><br />www.picasaweb.google.com/jolsen87<br /><br />I know when I was stalking PCV journals when I was waiting to ship out, this was something I really wanted to see myself. so please, take a look! but remember that there is a huge spectrum of site placements there could possibly be, and I am super thankful and appreciative of my lil village and wonderful neighbors. except for the ones that ask me to buy their house or marry them. <br /><br />Actual conversation from earlier this week. <br />ok wait, backstory: my creepy single buff neighbor who speaks english as well as i speak kinyarwanda kept trying to get me to visit him and I kept finding ways out of it, because visiting a single man is a no-no for the single white girl living alone. I run into him his full military camo, because apparently, he's a soldier, and we stop to talk in the middle of the dirt path of my village. three or four kids congregate to watch. he speaks english to me, and I respond in kinyarwanda to him.<br /> <br />Ok, actual conversation:<br /><br />Mr.Soldier Neighbor: I waited for you last week<br />me: yes i was there. i did not see you.<br />him: we shall go have a fanta now then<br />me: no, i cannot, it's night time. I must go home.<br />him: you will visit me next week.<br />me: yes but I cannot come to your home, we must meet outside<br />him: but my home is right here, you will come visit at my home<br />me: No, I cannot come to your home, it is not appropriate to visit in the home of a man.<br />him: But you will come to visit my home.<br /><br />this continues as I explain I cannot visit a man in his home and he tries to understand why and just when I start to think maybe I was too presumptuous to be avoiding a person I'm clearly just miss-communicating with, he says<br /><br />him: you will visit and soon i will be your husband<br /><br />if you've seen abbot and costello, insert reference into this next bit that lasts an exhausting 10 minutes<br /><br />me: no no, I have a fiance<br />him: oh. you have a fiance? he is rwandan?<br />me: no, british. and he will be visiting soon.<br />him: yes, and then soon I will be your fiance <br />me: no, I HAVE a fiance. <br />him: yes, me<br />me: no, I already have one<br />him: you will have me<br />me: no, I have one. I only want one. I do not want another<br />him: yes, you will take me.<br />me: <br /><br />[feebly repeating myself as a woman and the baby on her back walking by pause to watch the humor]<br /><br /> no, I have one already. I only want one. I do not want two.<br />him: but I need you <br /><br />I'm assuming this actually translates to <span style="font-style:italic;">I'm looking for a muzungu wife</span>, partly because its logical based on their vocabulary, and partly because it's less creepy<br />me: uhhhh NO, no no. You are my neighbor and a friend only. No... no no... no.<br /><br />this is all in light humor too, not scary or threatening. just matter-of-fact. blunt. he wants a muzungu wife. I want him to understand that in America, we don't take two husbands. Or trade them out like poker. So we leave on just as vague of an understanding and I go home thankful for my muzungu fiance's impending visit.<br /><br />The night after this occurred, I was contemplating another pan of popcorn [off my kerosene stove. Maize kernels and milk powder simulate white cheddar popcorn enough to satisfy my general hunger], when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a massive black object on my wall next to my water boiler. Now, I know most people compare the fight or flight response when faced with bigger opposition like a mountain lion or bear, but seriously, and with NO EXAGGERATION, the beast that had claimed my living room as it's own was THE SIZE OF MY HAND. I didn't HAVE any hard cover books big enough to kill it, and he would simply laugh at a magazine swat. To be honest I couldn't imagine getting close enough to actually hit it with a book without him eating my hand and my body had legitimately started sweating, shaking, and hyperventilating. yea. THAT'S HOW BIG IT WAS. Anyway, when I realized I couldn't hide in a corner and wait for it to go away, I grabbed the squeegee and opened the back door [because if I missed, I would need an escape route and I'd just give him the house]. I whimpered for a while but eventually fought him down with the squeegee. I stopped hyperventilating about a half hour later when I intoxicated myself with bug spray and dismantled my clothes line to hang my mosquito net off the crumbling walls.<br />In that hour Africa seriously lost some brownie points.. but if the relatives of the spider that starred in Arachnophobia stay outside from now on, I guess I'll forgive him.Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-17135083710650166322010-06-04T10:17:00.000-07:002010-06-07T01:48:50.017-07:00Peace Corps: The closest you'll ever be to bipolarFor the sake of a potentially well-sculpted glance at the first few weeks at site, I’m going to include a few different works. One is a journal entry from the first night at site, one is an excerpt from a letter home to the hubby, and another is a series of photographs, hopefully able to narrate my village and surrounding area. I’m trying really hard to break the muzungu-stereotype so taking photos has become a covert-operation. Hopefully you get a nicely-played, full-faceted perspective of my homecoming.<br /><br />I’m also including an update with a miraculous tale of stupidity, frustration, and amazement that I call: Peace Corps: Remember, you signed up for this [for my amusement and sanity, I’ve come to making up new advertising slogans. They’ll catch on eventually.]<br /><br />Also, photos may be delayed a few days. My laptop had a meltdown and I was sans-communication for a month. While I luckily had all my photos backed up, my back-up of adobe photoshop application is tormenting me and not loading so we’ll see how long it takes to upload photos of my perfect little home and village.<br /><br />Journal Entry Excerpt, first night <br />10th May 2010, Busanza: A Homecoming<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">So the Puck of Africa took a swing at me, and I fell, mostly out of fear, into the clutches of first-night-chaos. Besides my nonexistent laptop and suddenly temperamental ipod, the terrifying village kids won’t stop banging on my gate!! I appreciate the enthusiasm but they probably don’t realize I’m terrified at every sound. So here I am, in the dark, sleeping on the floor of my new perfect little village home, without a mosquito net because I have no ceiling to hang it from [malaria prevalence: an infrastructure problem?] and huddled under a blanket listening to this saving grace of a crank radio that picks up VoA [Voice of America]. My 3-foot housewarming drum is guarding a dark corner, and I am literally begging, BEGGING that these kids realize it’s the middle of the night and they really need to get home and stop scaring the muzungu.<br />Maybe there’s a natural anxiety to forging out on your own. Maybe the mefloquine hasn’t finished its course through my system. Or maybe the first night in the middle of nowhere, down a dirt road, up one of a thousand hills, through a grove of mud houses and banana trees, past some nuns and behind a shaky metal gate, is suppose to feel as macabre as it feels in my head. Seriously my yard looks like the opening to Children of the Corn right now [but I have a yard!!! And lots of banana, avocado, and mango trees!!]<br />I may be a panicked recluse, but at least I have avocados.<br /></span><br /><br />Excerpt from a letter home 17th May 2010<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />There were a million things I wanted to tell you yesterday, but since skype hates us I’m going to ramble here. I wanted to tell you that after my 5-year-old tantrum over not getting your package, I decided to wander into the market near my office, thinking I would get the avocado and onion I needed for guacamole and that would help my mood. The banter with the market ladies is what really made me happy and I was only slightly ripped off [250 rwf for 2 avoka and 100 for ubutunguru] and I felt so much better; the highs and lows aren’t day to day or week to week, it’s minute to minute, which is wonderful and absurdly frustrating. When I got home I harvested my beans [ibishyimbo] and they’re beautiful green, pink, dark blue, speckled white, it’s amazing that so much variation comes from the same plant. To be honest I have no idea how to harvest them. Do I let them dry out? In the sun or in my house? Does it matter? Can I just eat them? If I don’t dry them do they still have to be boiled for 3 hours? I’m too confused that I may just bring them to my neighbor as a gift [the one that asked me to buy his house when I met him]. So I’m sitting outside my office at a discarded desk that was left in the grass, which is actually perfect for me since I hate offices and my tan is starting to go. In front of me is this wild looking bush with red flowers protruding out that look like skinny monotone irises and there are these birds, tiny with long skinny beaks that twitter about inside it. These birds are so beautiful; their chest and beak is a naturally amazing iridescent blue that shimmers and shines when they move and they’re so tiny. I can watch them move for hours. To the left of my randomly placed desk are 4 banana trees, underneath which is a large compost pile [this is where all trash goes in Rwanda- under the banana trees]. And every time the wind blows their big leaves flop around on the wind like elephant ears [I don’t know where I acquired that association but every time I hear them move I think of elephants]. Next to that is a lime tree. I don’t know how countries apparently so rich in food sources can be so malnourished. Things grow everywhere. Someone told me during training that Rwandans don’t believe these easily accessible things are good for them. Like avocados. They really just don’t eat them. It’s not part of their culture which is why you can pull them off the trees yourself and kick ‘em around like a football. But for the impoverished and malnourished, they could be a gold mine. Instead, they sell them to muzungu like me for the equivalent of 20 cents [I’m pretty sure Wegman’s sells them at $4 each]. It’s sad but it raises the question of how much you sacrifice culture for what is apparently health, or development. Rwandans talk about desperately wanting to be developed, but to do that, how much of their identity is going to be sacrificed? I hate imagining Rwanda like America or any other Western country. How much is going to change when it develops enough that McDonalds infiltrates the capital? The effects it’ll have on food, on daily life, on health. Please don’t ruin another culture, they’re better off without you. I hope it never makes it here. I hope they ride the fine line between 2nd and 1st world forever, because I don’t think the 1st world is worth the baggage; the dissatisfaction, restlessness, heart disease, industry, and general unease that comes with it.<br />Whenever I think about what development means, I go off on similar tangents and then after, inevitably, I have to ask myself, so… what are you doing here? And I struggle with the answers. It reminds me of camp in a way. Sometimes there’s so much you don’t agree with but if there weren’t people like you, me, any nutritionist ever, any solid counselor, camp would be as industrial as the western world. There’s one form and everyone thinks this is what they should be formed into. But there’s more to what developed could mean. They don’t have to follow our suite. They don’t have to become only what’s been formed before. But they only see America and want to be it. These kids and these people have a fighting chance if they’re given the information and education they need. Without it, there’s one direction. Countries like Rwanda don’t have to be us, they can be better, a similar strain of developed but maybe learn from our faults, not follow like lemmings [because it didn’t work out for them, did it].</span><br /><br /><br />Standing at the base of the valley that I walk through to climb the mountain to my village. If you look to the far right of that massive storm settling over my village, that's where my house is <3 . <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAnCgUm-kacvxz_22Mt5ldoNhWrbR9uyoKbNpMJXa04uJCUz8Ub27Dt88hJBaTAbdhhHY7G0pANctMXikxGpClYav6vJcGnO3CK1aYfnASD11m_xFMGKyq3ruHnOVMOq2Pb_HTZlZU_Jk/s1600/DSCN1689.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAnCgUm-kacvxz_22Mt5ldoNhWrbR9uyoKbNpMJXa04uJCUz8Ub27Dt88hJBaTAbdhhHY7G0pANctMXikxGpClYav6vJcGnO3CK1aYfnASD11m_xFMGKyq3ruHnOVMOq2Pb_HTZlZU_Jk/s400/DSCN1689.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5478975143475968018" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />An update on the health of a health volunteer. 26th May 2010<br /><br />PC: You signed up for this. You signed up for this?<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Really, it’s my own fault. I shouldn’t have slept with my contacts in. I shouldn’t have. But it was dark, I was due in town to watch the marathon at 8am, and I wasn’t about to go trekking up the mountain at night only to come back down at 6am Sunday morning. So I slept on another volunteer’s floor in town and woke up on Sunday in excruciating pain. A combination of getting old and the climate/dirt of Africa had literally blinded me over night. I don’t honestly know how I made it the 4 miles home that morning. Once I did get home though, I laid in the dark with my eyes closed hoping it would sort itself out. When it didn’t, the amazing PC staff picked me up, guided me into a vehicle, took me to the capital hospital and found out I had severely scratched corneas. Then, guided me home and I’d been laying in the dark with a washcloth over my eyes ever since.<br />To be honest it’s the best medical care I’ll ever have. Serious props to the Rwandan PCMO that took care of me.<br />Anyway, not being about to see is probably one of the most debilitating ailments because I couldn’t distract myself with books or the beautiful environment. Moving hurt and so did sunlight. I literally could not bathe or eat for 3 days. Try and imagine waking up with the roosters at 5:30 and then laying perfectly still in the dark for 15 hours only to rewet a washcloth from the basin next to my bed that I fixed before the anesthetic from the hospital wore off. I was at the point of peeing in a bucket because I couldn’t find the latrine 15 feet away without wanting to gouge my eyes out.<br />I’d used my emergency phone card to call the PCMO to begin with, so I was sans communication, sans electricity, sans food, running low on water and about 98% blind. [side note: did I mention I accidentally drank kerosene the 1st week? I’ll get back to that]<br />So it’s day 3 or 4 and I am so frustrated that I can’t go outside long enough to fill a bucket of water to take a shower without my eyes melting from acid, that I’m just absolutely losing my mind. I throw a small [huge] tantrum and lay in bed.<br />Miraculously, a few hours later my vision clears a bit and I can move enough to take a bucket bath in the darkness of my house. Then the storm of a century rolls through and my house starts flooding. And I’m so happy I can see that I enjoy moving my little belongings out of the storm path and watch the rain destroy most of my maize [not an issue for me, but an issue to think about when most of my neighbors subsist entirely on their own crops]. With the rain comes my electricity. So after almost a week of absolute hell, I wash my dirty dishes, take a bath, squeegie the flood out of my house, eat some food and boil some water, and once again, all is right in the world.<br />No really, I love a good adventure.</span>Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-91299923237138188882010-04-30T23:45:00.001-07:002010-05-01T00:04:55.482-07:00Nyiramwizaso it's May 1st [Happy May Day!!!] and we're officially done with training. We've taken our language proficiency interview, we've passed, and we've moved on to partying, Rwandan names, and shipping off to Kigali. I'm actually really proud of myself and my language capabilities after kinyarwanda boot camp for ten weeks. The fact that the majority of my group swung advanced level language skills is really fantastic and at the same time hardly means anything until we get to site and try to actually apply them regularly to our neighbors and coworkers. Yesterday I was sitting and staring [not thinking, because it's hard to think when you look at the views here] at the mountain silhouettes on the horizon, and three boys who looked like the Rwandan equivalent of the lollipop kids from the Wizard of Oz, walked by. The were clowning by me until they saw the muzungu sitting on the hill and we had the following exchange:<br />Mwaramutse<br />Mwaramutse<br />Uvuye he?<br />Mirugo<br />Ahh yego. Komeza.<br /><br />And while that really is basic, we understood each other, they respected my understanding and seamless speaking abilities, and moved on. It was really great. Kinyarwanda is such a throaty language that you might understand the words but if you can't be comprehended while speaking them, what use is it? It's also really interesting to try to communicate with minimal mutual language between you, and it's impressive what you can get across without actually saying anything. Real time charades.<br /><br />I was at the market yesterday since it was the last market day we'd have in Nyanza and discovered some interesting things about Retail, USA. Imagination: the spring lines come out and mass consumerism commences. A few weeks later, whatever doesn't sell is either A: Shredded [because you can't give new clothes to the poor in America, apparently, because they try to return it for money at the original store. Or B: the clothes go into donation boxes and get shipped to 3rd world countries such as Rwanda. They're then given to local NGOs/other organizations, and then given to local business owners, who then sell it in the outdoor markets in heaps and piles to the average Rwandan for 200 franc per piece. The American Eagle shirt that was selling for $24.95 in Oakdale Male, NY just sold to me for the equivalent of 35 cents, tags still on, shirt never worn. What's the production value of this stuff?<br /><br />My group will be heading to Kigali on Tuesday for our official PC swearing-in ceremony, for those of us that are left. In the past 10 weeks of training, 3 potential volunteers have gone home, which was statistically probable anyway, but it's still sad every time to lose some of the family.<br /><br />Swearing in should be amazing; it'll be on Wednesday at the ambassador's house in Kigali, and will be shown on national television. If anyone knows a fancy western way to view it, like you can hear Rwandan radio on iTunes podcast, please try to! Lots of good food, Rwandan tailored dresses, and some tan faced children ready to be thrown into the bush. Each of us were given a Rwandan name by our LCFs [Language and Cultural Facilitators], the ones who lives with us and have taught us for the last 2 months. It's kind of a rite of passage and it's a name we can use at our sites since our silly American names are mostly unpronounceable. I was given the name Nyiramwiza, which means the beautiful one; I was so excited I almost cried when my LCFs told me.<br /><br />I'm drawing a blank on what I should be writing about. Training is over, and the 24 months are about to start but it's so vague and daunting and mysterious that I really have no thoughts or tangible concerns yet to talk about. Or maybe my brain's just fried from too much kinyarwanda. <br />Kigali in a few days, Swear-in on Wednesday, and departure for my permanent site in a week. Happy/anxious/excited/terrified updates to come!Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-60523510724953361912010-04-17T01:52:00.001-07:002010-04-22T09:05:15.711-07:00Measuring Time in Tubes of ChapstickDays left of language training: 13 days<br />Days left until swear-in: 18 days<br />Carmex chapstick used: 3 tubes<br /><br /> Infinitive: Gushaka Translation: To need/want<br />Ndashaka kwiga kinyarwanda I need/want to learn kinyarwanda<br />Urashaka kwiga kinyarwanda You need/want to learn kinyarwanda<br />Arashaka kwiga kinyarwanda S/he needs/wants to learn kinyarwanda<br /><br />It's a comforting cultural acknowledgment to know that in one of the most complex languages in the world there's one word to describe both need and want, with no need for distinction between them.<br /><br />Learning kinyarwanda is like walking before you know you have legs, motor function, or balance. <br />You flounder for a while because you're trying to move [there's no point in staying still when the world around you is moving]. Eventually you're told you have a leg but one leg sans balance and motor function is minimally useful, and you continue to struggle linguistically; deaf, dumb, and blind.<br />You slowly gain footing and learn the basic abilities of movement, but we may as well be drunk for all of our stumbles. <br />Despite the difficulties of learning one of the hardest-ranked languages in the world [true story. Google it.] we do it happily, eagerly, and insatiably. It's the key to integration and acceptance, and to be honest it's an honor to do what no other foreigners in Rwanda set out to do. And when these 24 months have passed, and many more years after that, we'll take solace in this secret knowledge and bare our understanding to very few. We'll save it's strength for when our children have nightmares and be confident when we tell them komera [be strong] and quiet those fears because those same words helped mommy some years ago when she was alone in a small, landlocked jungle.<br />This language is a treasure, a jewel we'll carry home, and maybe not apply like you'd apply a romantic language, with a gold star on your resume, but it carries a different purpose, a kind of poetry that pops up in dreams and personal solace and lives if only for that.<br /><br /><br /><br />Awesome happenings of week 7:<br />1. To practice our community assessment skills, our group visited different organizations and learned about their varying jobs and needs. By a stroke of fate, the cooperative I went to was a soy bean processing organization that makes soymilk and tofu. Long story, lots of excitement, and many photos later, I'm going to be making my own tofu. Never did I think this day would come living in Africa with the Peace Corps, but I'm not about to argue with fate. If anyone has any great seasoning/marinating ideas, forward them my way!<br /><br />2. I don't have a definite for my housing situation yet, but my amazing future boss confirmed that they located a house in a village outside the city so I will be living the dream in hopefully a hut/house with no running water, banana trees, and garden/chicken potential. WOOOOOOOOOH!<br /><br />3.Chances are high that i'll have a traditional rwandan charcoal “stove” to cook with and some CPCVs have said how awesome it is to roast marshmallows over the embers after you cook dinner [and since it takes forever to heat the embers up anyway, you might as well get the full course out of them]. So if anyone wants to mail me some smores ingredients, feel free!Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-59631335881495643452010-04-03T23:45:00.001-07:002010-04-03T23:54:38.348-07:00Siddhartha Part I, II, and IIIOK, this is going to be a LONG post, so get yourself some tea before settling down for it.<br />So, this whole past week all of us trainees went to Kigali, the capital, to have a conference with our future organizations, and then we were shipped off to visit our future work/living sites. This is easily the most exciting and emotionally overwhelming part of our ten weeks of training. The site you are given is more or less like shuffling monopoly cards and dealing them out, except there is no trading. I'd like to say that our experience and preferences are taken into account, but since the organizations didn't receive our resumes, aspiration statements, or even a biography, I don't think it is the case. This is why most people at this point reach a level of stress/anxiety that is unparalleled to any other situation. No but it's been a good week. It started out really stressful and anxious but has since calmed into an upscale of enthusiasm and ecstatic hopefulness. I'm going to break the week down into emotions and incidents [incidents being: stupid or interesting cultural things I accidentally stumble into].<br />Actually let's start with a preface. We received our site organization, location, and job description last week. Mine said I'd be placed in Kigali [bummer, when a country is this beautiful, who wants to be in the capital? But it's a big region so I was hopeful for some rural life still], and my organization seemed to work with vulnerable groups, such as OVCs [orphans/vulnerable children] and PLWHA [people living with HIV/AIDS] which is awesome. My job description, however, said 'micro enterprise development' and I don't even know what the crap that is. And the fuller descriptions following that looked just as daunting and not at all related to health. SO, when this caused an uproar among other people with similar descriptions, we were assured that we would be doing health, under a program called Higo Beho, that focuses in work related to HIV/AIDS. So, everyone tries to breathe, and we wait for our conference in Kigali.<br /><br />Tuesday: <br />Mood: hopeful, optimistic, a little apprehensive. <br />Me and a few other volunteers meet our organization, whose name I won't put since I don't want to be liable for any potential ranting that may be coming in future paragraphs or prose. It is a faith based organization, which I wasn't opposed to having since the FBOs tend to be better established and have much more and consistent funding. At the end of the talk with them we weren't quite sure what the organization did. We knew it was good [awesome] and did good things [still awesome] but specifically we weren't sure beyond the fact that they affiliate with groups related to OVCs and PLWHA [the PC loves abbreviations]. Later we had individual talks with our bosses and I learned that ours still thought we were volunteers who would be doing micro finance for his branch. We quickly told him we were health volunteers and when Anna and I described our experience, he was very receptive and agreed he would be happy to find work that would suite our skill sets. So we were happy but a little nervous as to whether this would actually happen, or if he was just yessing us, since we have heard that many currentPCVs are still doing a bit of micro finance with this organization.<br />We left with our community guide/boss/the people we'll be working with and went into Kigali to the office. It's probably relevant to any potential PCVs to mention my emotional downswing around this time. Between tuesday night and wednesday afternoon I felt like an absolute panic attack waiting to happen. I was so worked up about not being immediately happy with my site and afraid it was going to be terrible and afraid I was going to be unhappy and useless for 2 years that I was aaaa nutcase. <br /><br />Wednesday:<br />Mood: about to pass out from internal hyperventilating.<br />7am-8am every morning: daily prayer with all the staff. The PC emphasizes that volunteers are not required to attend religious ceremonies, but it is by no means optional to the organization. It's interactive, excessive, and a little overwhelming. I don't mind people doing their religious thing. And if I have to be there for it, I don't mind as long as I can sit through it and dream of a sandy honeymoon beach. But being pulled into it, asked to give the prayers at dinner, lunch, tea, or over a fanta, is a little much for me. After this we had a few hours of down time so I took the opportunity to make a pro-con list [don't mock it!] and it significantly reduced my anxiety to a minimum. I guess just knowing what was making me anxious really helped. The problem was that I consider myself a fairly optimistic person and I think I can find a silver lining in just about anything, but I couldn't find anything definite to put on my pro list. I had two things that were potential, like, 'potential health work' and 'potential electricity' but nothing definite. And a con list that was hitting double digits. This in itself is not very optimistic but it helped clear my head a bit and we continued on our visit, dreary, but sane. <br />Later we visited a cooperative that the organization works with and saw how they held a SLG [savings and loans group] that helped generate income for the people involved, a group of PLWHA. The actual meeting of SLGs is incredibly boring and exactly the work I don't want to be involved in, but the people in the meeting told us that they would love to be trained about HIV, and that one woman worked with children living with HIV and found it difficult to advise them on good nutrition, which is important when you're already immunocompromised. And all I could think is, this is stupid, I need to live in a community like this. I could do this all the time and love it and love the people why am I not living in a community like this?<br />The problems I was feeling with my organization is based around what they had set up for us. The boss said that he wanted to put us near the office, in the city, so we didn't have to walk far [to make it to prayer every day] and since we were muzungu [my words, not his] he was going to put us in muzungu housing, which is fancy, western housing. And that's not what we want and not want the PC preaches. If I were living in the city, I wouldn't have a community because the capital in Rwanda is like a city anywhere else. Cars, exhausted, paved roads and stores and lots of people moving in and out. There's no community and no comradery and no sense of belonging. The PC preaches living and working at the community level, within the community, in order to be trusted and integrated into a foreign society. And that's a justified approach. If I were any of these people I wouldn't listen to the white American girl driving into the village in an SUV once every few weeks to tell me how to eat or live. It's absurd. But that's the way this organization works. The approach is probably easier for the Rwandan staff but it's not what we do and it's not the way PC works. We're volunteers. We're here to help the community, to become integrated and to be an example to those around us in order to facilitate our skills. I can't do that without a community. After this epiphany, came scheming...<br />Thursday: mood: determined, focused, unstoppable.<br />So, I changed speed and decided I would fix this living situation and met with my boss and drove a hard bargain as to why it was necessary to place me in a village. He seemed more confused by this than anything else, because most Rwandans that live in villages spend their whole lives trying to get to the city, and I was doing the opposite. He also didn't realize that this was how the PC really worked. I feel like between the job confusion and the actual program itself, there needs to be some better communication. Anyhow, I looked back on my pro-con list, and if I were placed in the village, 8 of my cons switched to the pro list. A community to connect with, opportunities for secondary projects in case the organization forgets that I'm a health volunteer, personal space and sanity, less prayer obligations [the village will hopefully be too far to get to the office every morning]. And a real feel for Rwanda, not the melting-pot of a tourist trap that all big cities can be. I don't want to be just another face floating in and out. I can really help and I will be the most useful to the peace corps and to my organization if I can live with the people, like the people.<br />Anyway, after my cheerleading session on village life, my boss happily, albeit, very confused, offered to have us driven around the villages to look at potential areas. For the first half hour they tried to scare me out of the concept by showing me really obscure, really remote mudhuts, and when I enthusiastically said, Yego! Ni byiza cyane! [yes! It's very beautiful. Very good!] they were like, uhmmmm what??<br />Seriously, can't a white girl enjoy nature anymore?<br />But after they heard my reasoning we actually made some progress and I found an area with modest houses, lots of children, and a great community not too far from the actual city. I'm going to be riding my fancy PC bike EVERYWHERE for the next 2 years I think, but I'll have some great biker's legs from it. I'm super excited and hope my boss really takes me up on the idea [huts are significantly cheaper than a muzungu house in the city, so he better]. Since then, it's been smoooooth sailing and I'm hopeful to actually get there in 5 weeks, assess the situation, buy an African drum, and call it a day.<br /><br />End of the week mood: optimistic, super excited, and hopeful! Yaaaay!<br /><br /><br />Ahh in my rantings I forgot to mention the best parts! Me doing/learning awkward social encounters!<br />I'm not sure if anyone can rate these but I definitely can't choose.<br />-the wife of my colleague was showing me their wedding photos and since she doesn'tt speak english, I was working on my kinyarwanda and pointing to people in photos and asking if they were her sister, her cousin, whatnot. And there's a photo of her with what appeared to be an older woman, and I asked, mama wowe? [Your mom?]<br />Oya, umugabo wanjye. Traditional. [No, my husband, in traditional dress]<br />turns out I called her husband a woman because the traditional dress is this crazy lookin headband with a lot of hair sticking out of it and I deeeefinitely thought it was a woman. Awesome. <br /><br />-African tea is growing on me. It grossed me out at first because its mostly hot milk, but after being fed it 3 times a day all week, I really miss it. It's boiled milk mixed with boiled water, with some kind of african tea/ginger thrown in, and then about 3 or 4 tablespoons of raw sugar, and it's delicious. It almost resembles a chai latte but is waaay better. And on that note, I tried to describe that to my colleague, and I asked him if he knew of starbucks, and not even the faintest fluttering of recognition floated across his eyes and I felt a curious sense of joy at that..<br /><br />-My host family for the week insisted on stuffing me with food. I wasn't allowed to leave the table if I only ate one serving. So, I started taking smaller servings in order to make the second one less daunting, but he noticed or was simply gearing up for it, so he just started piling scoops of rice, never ending, onto my plate, after the second serving, and insisted that I eat everything. If you can imagine 4 cartons of white rice from any chinese restaurant in america, that is literally, no exaggeration, the amount I had to eat at that one meal. I've never eaten so much rice in my life. And it is white rice, which drives me nuts because it's so counter intuitive, that a third world country with all produce coming straight out of the ground only has white, refined, rice. <br />-Not entertaining like the others, but interesting. A person I met who was about 20 years old and still a student, was helping with my kinyarwanda [he also pleaded with me to let him clean my muddy shoes. Rwandans like clean shoes] and talking to me in english. He asked first if I had parents and said I was very lucky to have them. Later, he told me how he used to have 14 siblings but now he only has 7 because of the war. This was said in between two very casual statements in a group of Rwandan people, so we kind of just seamlessly continued the conversation after it. He later explained to me that there are many things he would like to tell me about the war, many difficulties in his life, but that his english was not good enough to do them justice, but that someday he hopes he can portray his story. And it was really interesting and sobering to know that a young man who was only 4 years old at the time, wants to desperately share the story of his life. I haven't decided what it means yet, but it was really interesting.<br /><br />-I couldn't figure out the hygiene situation at this house because toilet always means different things in Rwanda. Sometimes, it's a working inside toilet. Sometimes it's a working toilet that you can't put anything other than water in, sometimes it's a hole in the ground. It took me a day and a half to realize that their toilet was a hole in the ground, but had a toilet bowl over the hole to give the impression of functionality. The 'douche' was also a lot of guesswork because the shower room they showed me was a shack with no light and a hole in the floor. So for a while I thought 'douche' meant latrine [don't worry I didn't try to use it] and I still didn't know where to shower. Eventually my grunginess took over and I asked how I could bathe, and they put a small basin of water in the shower shack and that was that. Not very conducive to washing hair, but enough to get the job done.<br /><br />-According to Rwandan folklore, all Americans are good singers, and they go to college at the age of 10 and graduate with a masters at 18. True story. They asked me to sing for them and the only thing I could think of was “empire state of mind” and the scene in Madagascar where he sings the new york song.<br /><br />-When my host told me I would be giving the prayer at dinner, and I stumbled through the explanation that I didn't know any prayers because in American culture, we only pray in church, he laughed at me and told me I was special.<br /><br />Since I'm already rambling, I'm going to throw some lists out there to answer some questions I've been asked:<br />Awesome Rwandan Things:<br />1. the African tea I mentioned above. Google it!<br />2. tree tomatoes. So amazing but no I don't think I can mail any home<br />3. passionfruit <3 <br />4. Medy, a musician on all the Rwandan radios. Look up his song, Amayobera, it's aaawesome<br />5. red clay roads and endless greenery.<br />6. little chubby babies who do the 'yay muzungu!' dance in the road when they see you coming from 100 yards away.<br />7. the art district of Kigali, where they sell awesome African jewelry and some awesome-looking drums I'm going to become an expert on.<br /><br />Random things I miss:<br />1. the smell of the inside of the subway freezer after all the vegetables have been prepared [seriously, it's worth working at subway for]<br />2. the smell of car air conditioning [I really don't like air conditioning, but the smell of it... faaaantastic]<br />3. Target<br />4. eating snow. Leaving mid-winter, I got jipped on my consumptionJennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-84104642479073990992010-03-24T06:33:00.001-07:002010-03-24T06:52:13.511-07:00Not for the meek, weak, or wearyI want to preface this blog entry with a warning that the content will not be particularly pleasant to hear and with any help of reality, will be downright upsetting. Two weekends ago we visited the Genocide memorial outside of Butare and I wanted to give myself a week or so to process what I saw so that the emotions wouldn't override the factual truth of it, but even now, I'm not sure what this is going to sound like. First off, wipe the visualization of a memorial out of mind, because I want the image to be perfectly clear and often times I feel like we have a detached idea of what memorials are, seeing only the statues or flowers that have been made in memory of what happened there. This is not that type of memorial.<br /><br />We arrived at this site and were given the following background information: this building used to be a secondary school. There is the main building and then there were strips of classrooms in separate structures scattered along the property. During the months of the genocide as it was getting increasingly hostile and life-threatening all across Rwanda, Tutsis [the targeted group] in all the nearby towns were told that they would be safe if they headed towards the school. They were told this by the Hutus in their villages. <br />So, 50,000 Tutsis gathered at the school and lived there for two weeks with no food or water but felt they were being protected. After two weeks, the hutu extremists/armies surrounded the school and killed them all. They had been denied food and water over the 2 weeks in order to weaken their resistance. The Tutsis tried to fight back with bricks and stones, but the Hutus had guns, and were stronger. But they weren't just killed with guns. They surrounded them with guns. They killed with machetes, garden tools, guns, and physical torture. Children, women, adults, everyone. They were all thrown in mass graves built on the grounds. The Hutu extremists also took the valuable clothing off the Tutsis before and after killing them.<br />While this phase of the killing of 50,000 people took place, the French army came in, and took up camp at the school in some of the empty buildings. Their mission was to protect the Hutu genocidaires [attackers] when they made their escape to the Congo border. The mass graves were covered with a volleyball pit built by the French for their amusement while they stayed there. After this phase, after I'm not sure what length of time, the bodies were dug up, preserved in lime, and put on display, as a testament to the atrocities that occurred. <br />This part we weren't told. We didn't know the bodies were on display until we walked up to a strip of classrooms that overlooked the beautiful, juxtaposed Rwandan landscape, and waited to see where they were leading us. I walked up to the first strip and when I got close to the first door, oh god, the smell. It's the most horrible thing I've ever smelled. And you walk into the room and you're surrounded by bodies. Human bodies. Baby bodies, still with skin, some still in clothing, broken limbs, skulls smashed in, tufts of <span style="font-style:italic;">hair </span>still on their heads. It makes me physically sick to remember it. And every room, 6 classrooms next to each other and we went in one by one. And then we moved to the next strip and one by one they led us into them. And I was so sick so disgusted so ill at something I can't begin to put into words. I don't think there's an emotion for the feeling that overwhelms you in that situation. <br />The problem is that as humans, I think we form a natural detachment from things that we can't personally relate to. The holocaust, 9-11, any war, unless we have been personally touched by it it's near impossible to gauge the right level of horror to understand what people went through. And often, the events are far enough back in history that we're not expected to understand them well enough to empathize. But these people we see everyday, the people who train us, who live with us, who greet us in the street, who beg for money, every person in this country over the age of 16 has been effected by it and in turn, we see those effects. When someone we now know personally tries to fight a breakdown, it's impossible to ignore. When our host families confess how many siblings they had before 'the war' or how they simply live knowing their neighbors and friends who killed are being rehabilitated and eventually released back into society. How do they live. In the same place, the same house. How can they stomach to see those bodies, and the bodies of babies, of a head crushed in by machete, of limbs hacked off. I don't mean to be graphic or maybe I do, because it's too easy to displace the absolute horror that took place 16 years ago. If I had grown up in this country, if any of us had, we would remember how we lost our families. How do they live when it was their sister, their parents. How did anyone survive? As someone completely unattached to the event, it makes me sick. The court system, Gacaca, is a system that deals with the attackers and rehabilitates them through community work. We see them walking down the street in light pink prison uniforms, heading to the hillside to till the land. And they don't look any different, they're not hardened by the prison like people are in America. They don't look like criminals. They look like men who 15 years ago, were fathers and sons and neighbors and bankers and shop owners. I may have said this before, but I marvel at it and I don't trust it at the same time. I want to respect and understand it and at the same time I want to throw up. A whirlwind of emotions. And I feel like 90% of them are still inaudible. <br />There's no way to avoid it and no way to talk about it. So, people go about their day and their life like they do. Because they have to. So we will too. Because it has been 16 years, and life has to go on and it has. It doesn't change anything and at the same time, it does. Because the children are still happy and still eager to talk to you and the woman in the village are still well-dressed and friendly, and you can forget for a little while the despair that used to plague this country, but when a beggar with one arm asks you for money, it's difficult to displace that knowledge of where he's coming from.<br /><br /><br /><br />**I want to add that normally I would have kept that experience locked up in my mind, but it was the request of the manager at the memorial that we share our experience with others. That's the reason for putting 50,000 bodies on display, isn't it? People say we learn history so that history doesn't repeat itself. But it always has. Genocide is not a rare or isolated concept. As an eternal optimist, it's difficult to acknowledge that it's prevalence is almost indicative of a quality of humanity. And if that doesn't scare you, I don't know what will.<br /><br />More optimistic blogs coming in the very near future.Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-53913726710630484512010-03-11T02:32:00.000-08:002010-03-11T02:39:55.608-08:00Come, my tan faced children<br />Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,<br />Have you your pistols? Have you your sharp-edged axes?<br />Pioneers! O pioneers!<br /><br />For we cannot tarry here,<br />We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger<br />We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,<br />Pioneers! O pioneers!<br /><br />O you youths, western youths,<br />So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,<br />Plain I see you western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,<br />Pioneers, O pioneers<br />[Whitman]<br /><br /><br />Surreal. Word of the day. It's 3 pm and we're sitting out on our porch, with soft jazz playing on a laptop, with the sun hazing through thin clouds, and the below view in front of us.<br />One of the other volunteers just said that lately, her dreams feel more real than her life [probably from the malaria meds].<br /><br />Seriously, it's never been such a new and beautiful life. Don't get me wrong, though, training is hard and tiring, when your house is only the place you sleep and do your laundry. And I miss my friends and family and the love of my life, but it's not an adjustment just yet. So many of us have such similar backgrounds and passions that when you put us together 16-24 hours a day, it's not difficult to love what you do. <br /><br />Things you would expect to be an adjustment but aren't:<br /><br />aiming well while using the latrine [think about that]<br />washing your clothes in a bucket with a bar of soap<br />taking bucket showers [pocahontas style]<br />walking 1.5 miles to class every morning<br />not having running water<br />greeting EVERY person you pass on the street [average: 35 on the way to class]<br />having children follow you everywhere, even when you're running<br />only having boiled and filtered water for drinking/ brushing your teeth<br />not being allowed to put toilet paper in the toilet [true story]<br />eating goat at least once a day<br />almost always not understanding an attempt at communication [the go-to phrase being, simbizi! I don't understand!]<br /><br />This being said, some current volunteers came in to give us a talk on the cycle of adjustment during PC service. And according to their chart, us trainees are still in the 'honeymoon' period of service, and I can anticipate a shock/breakdown in 2-3 weeks! Things to look forward to!<br /><br />Exciting happenings of this week:<br />I successfully haggled in the market, the most intimidating place I've seen yet. It took until my 4th trip to feel comfortable enough with my kinyarwanda and my muzungu self to do it. As a basis for pricing, the PC handbook says to take whatever number they propose to you [the muzungu price], and haggle it to about 50-60%, and that's the fair price. I got my own glass tea mug for the equivalent of a little less than $2 :).<br />I learned a bit of Rwandan dance at National Women's Day on monday, when about 100 rhythmically gifted high school students pulled us all out of the stands to dance. Lots of singing by one guy, then responses from the rest, and feet stamping, clapping, and low hip movement. It's awesome to see these people, so free and unabashed. Shame must be a western emotion.<br /><br />On Saturday we head to Butare to go to a museum and another genocide memorial, this one rumored to be a lot more intense than the last [preserved bodies]. I'm excited to see more of the country and get closer to being comfortable in Rwandan culture. More is unfolding every day and I feel more and more familiar here. Yay :)Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-50978436008092666992010-03-07T02:01:00.000-08:002010-03-07T04:58:04.567-08:00Culture Clash1. So I'm posting photos as of now to this web address: <br /><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/jolsen87"></a><br />http://picasaweb.google.com/jolsen87<br /><br />My photos are usually better than my prose, so take a gander!<br /><br />2. Soooo I may have accidentally made a proposal to a rwandan friend. I didnt mean to, but this is a textbook definition of a culture clash. I walked back from town with a rwandan, who is male, and was asking innocent questions about rwandan life, where he's from, if he farms, whatnot. And when he said he farmed, I asked if he had a cow, solely because I like farm animals [no shock there] and he said yes, and I asked [with a hint of childish whimsy, I might add] “how many cows do you have??” again, because I love cows! But he responded in such a way that I immediately knew I was treading on veeeeery different terrain than I had intended! Either way he kind of laughed the question off and I immediately started inquiring about chickens [which I know have no wealthy significance] but it was sooo awkward haha. Apparently, in rwanda, cows are considered dowry. Such as, a man is a better mate the more cows he has. He would approach a woman's parents and ask for permission and present the number of cows he had, indicating wealth. This is a very traditional idea and its my understanding that since the genocide, the amount of cows someone is actually allowed to have is now limited [if you had over a certain amount of cows, it meant you were in a certain ethnic group. Discussing or labeling ethnicity is illegal in rwanda since the genocide of 1994, therefore some of the bases for its separation are also dissolved.] Anyway, now its more like, asking someone how many cows they have is like asking them how much money they make, with the assumption that you're inquiring as an interested partner. Coooool.<br /><br />On a sidenote, I was just assaulted by a jumping spider and almost threw my laptop in the process of escaping [don't worry Joe, I'm taking care of it]. The spiders aren't as big as everyone else made them out to be, but they're still not exactly pleasant. So it's sunday morning and we all slept in to a whopping 7am, before crawling out of bed and eating out boulangerie-bought muffins with rwandan bananas that look more like plantains, and boiling/filtering our water. Kitty and I went for an exploratory run and after 15 minutes found a few kids who followed walking behind us for a ways. I asked them in ikinyarwanda if they like jogging and they nodded and started jogging with us. By the time we got back to our house there were 10 kids and a few adults, waiting to see what we did next. And in a true likeness of Forrest Gump, we shrugged and decided to go for round two. We motioned the kids and they started jogging with us again. We were probably out for another mile or so and we had two dedicated kids [ages? 7/10ish] who stayed with us the whole way. It was pretty wonderful. For undernourished kids they can really outdo us. I think because of camp, running with kids is so natural, that I think I may have found a secondary project, for developing some kind of youth outreach program. I also have a year before I have to worry about that, but its nice to remember how useful I actually am. <br />Training is a little ridiculous but fun and wonderful at the same time. But seriously, the language workload is really intense; if we all didn't laugh so much we'd lose our minds. I already know more kinyarwanda than i've ever known french or italian. To help add to our immersion in rwandan culture, we each have a 'resource family' that we dont live with, but spend a few hours a week with in order to learn and whatnot. In general, this is an awkward situation, because we know 5-days worth of kinyarwanda, and they mostly know little to no english. Some families know a bit if french but a little of all the wrong languages still leaves most everyone just staring at each other for 3 hours, which is funny in retrospect, but incredibly awkward and self-humbling at the time. It's interesting trying to bond with someone with absolutely no communication skills to compile. This in itself is bareable, because I hear that it does get better as your kinyarwanda does, but yesterday, my host mom pulled out the big guns. My first visit she asked me if I liked amata [milk] and I said yego [yes] and she poured me a glass of steaming hot milk. And that was fine actually, because it wasn't sour, it was just hot, and tasted like western milk, and I was really relieved! Because i've heard horror stories of chunky milk you get served and are expected to drink. But this second visit, she asked me if I've ever had [insert word for chunky old milk here] and I didn't know the word but I could sense something coming and let her know I had class in 15 minutes and had to leave. But she insisted that I try it first. And I swear by this statement, but I would have rathered to slaughter my own goat and eaten it for her, than drank that huge glass of chunky, yellow, old milk. But I had to try it, because she was waiting, so I tried it and she watched me so excitedly, and I tried to not die, and said, ohhhh! That's lovely. This isn't like american milk. How do you make it? And she told me you take regular milk, leave it in the sun for 2 days, and then you get this.<br />I spent the next 5 minutes stressing that I had to leave while she urged me to drink more [I almost feel like she had to know how horrible it was and was just amusing herself] I got out of there with 3 real drinks and then spent the walk back trying not to throw up. I'm still deciding how to be able to go back there and get out of it. <br />Quite often its easy to forget you're a world away, until you need to be home with your family. Get better big brother :( <br />If anyone has specific questions about rwandan life or the PC, shoot me an e-mail. I forget how much i've already adjusted to, like using a latrine, having small children follow me everywhere, or red clay roads lined with banana trees. It's pretty amazing what you don't know about the world, until you get there.<br />So it seems pretty easy to keep in touch while I'm here in Nyanza for training. For the next 9 weeks, if you want to contact me, please do, by email or mobile. My cell number is [0]782162181. you have to put the rwandan country code in front of that, and the code of the country you call from. It's something like 011+250+782162181. good luck :) it's free for me to receive calls, but i'm pretty sure itll destroy your phone bill if you talk for too long! I'll find out my actual site placement in 3 weeks, so when I know that i'll have a better idea of my location and communication skills beyond May 8. Maramuke!Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-91244584128942471782010-03-04T03:02:00.000-08:002010-03-04T03:09:26.035-08:00view from my training palace<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy3itglah5tLhvYWlYrBRYix940v4jPa5XDIESPdebSS8DfAraVe6Srk507w6LbscQiXW8aQkdNC-Fy-XfVclhBCWfpK6_pFkjJsZZY4dtp4HBv_NkFPwBCl4gIquzsRfiCmI0jWKOQj4/s1600-h/DSCN0838.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy3itglah5tLhvYWlYrBRYix940v4jPa5XDIESPdebSS8DfAraVe6Srk507w6LbscQiXW8aQkdNC-Fy-XfVclhBCWfpK6_pFkjJsZZY4dtp4HBv_NkFPwBCl4gIquzsRfiCmI0jWKOQj4/s400/DSCN0838.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5444734016495573650" /></a>Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-34856029132450553972010-03-04T02:42:00.000-08:002010-03-04T02:50:38.976-08:00muraho, muzungo!so, 5 days in country and here are the interesting things ive learned:</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">plastic bags are illegal in rwanda. So are cigarettes [mostly], homosexuality, crying in public, sniffing your food and discussing ethnicity.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">malaria meds dont 'prevent' malaria; they just make it less likely. They also give you rampant hallucinogenic dreams</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">the length of your skirt dictates marital status. For example, my ankle length skirts mean i'm married [score], a few inches above ankle means you might be close to marriage, and from there, the closer to the knee the more cows youll be offered for your hand in marriage :)</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">You CAN be a vegan/vegetarian for 6 years, and then eat goat samosas with relative ease. They are, btw, pretty good and served ALL THE TIME</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">thinking of the above, the PC will try to fatten you up with them during training because youll need the extra calories once you're at site.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">$100 exchanged in the capital gives me 56,000 rwandan francs.just for a gauge, while shopping, a sim card for a cellphone costs 1,000 [less than $2] and you can buy an avocado for about 20 american cents [yay guacamole!!] when you tell rwandans that avocados cost $4 each at home, they look shocked. Even more so when you convert your student loans into rwandan currency.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">you CAN get 7 shots in 48 hours and feel pretty alright</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">randan people dont understand the concepts of pets, but it would be fine, even normal, for me to buy a pet chicken, as long as I can convince people I intend to eat him eventually. Yaaaay pet chicken!!! ndi fuzi kugira inkoko. i would like to have a pet chicken.<br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">the weather here lives up to both its names [land of a thousand hills and land of eternal spring]. The elevation makes it not nearly as hot as other equatorial countries so it is eternally spring. Its been a lovely 70-80 degrees with cooler temps in the morning and evening. Rain every so often that eventually opens up to sunny delicious skies. Little yellow/orange-bellied birds sing so loud you swear your not in the city but in a jungle. There are rolling green hills and beautiful views from any point in the capital, and banana, mango, and avocado trees are all over. And the country is poor, yes, but they have so much other richness that its no wonder the government and people are so optimistic for its growth. Its no wonder its the bright sun of africa, the safest country, the up-and-coming. Its no surprise that only 16 years after a horrific genocide, the people survive and go about their every day with smiles and genuine friendly demeanors.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So we went to the genocide memorial yesterday and it was by no other words, overwhelming. Its amazing to me, to know that the victims of attacks and the victims of the propoganda, the people who commited the crimes, are still living day to day here. Gacaca, the court system used to bring the attackers to trial, are being held all the time. People are giving accounts of who they attacked, whose family, whose neighbor, and justice is being tried. But everyday there are still people who have lost an arm to a machete, or have lost a child to “beaten into a wall” [actual description of a 1 year old child in the memorial, given by the mother]. And live with the reality that their neighbors turned on them, and that they witnessed their families being tortured by friends. I still cant understand how this happened, but a lot of the books on it interview the attackers and they try to explain that when a mob mentally develops, and everyone grabs the machete and demands compliance, you have no other way of life but to continue. And I cant fathom that. I cant understand and I wish I could see the culmination of years of ethnic imbalance and extremist propaganda. I wish I could understand how these people still live with years of post traumatic stress and explain to their children why theyre still living in the same country. It's a loyalty that I simultaneously respect and doubt.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">One of the most moving parts of the memorial was a wall dedicated to stories of heros of the genocide. A man spoke about how a neighboring woman [a Hutu, the ethnic group that was allowed to live, for the most part] was tending to his wife who was injured and very ill, and the mob came back to finish their attack and asked the Hutu woman to step aside. And she told them that she wouldnt and if they were going to kill his wife, they would have to kill her, too. And they did. And it's amazing to me because we hear this typical hero gesture situation on movies and pop culture, when the hero claims to give their life for a damsel or their love, but the movie isnt the same. The hero never has to commit their life. But this woman did. She gave her life for a stranger when she didnt have to die. Its a cultural loyalty that we from american cant even begin to understand. This is one of the reasons this country has so much strength. There is no part of the country that wasn't influenced by the killings. And while the genocide is not something you can ask people about socially, you know that anyone in their early twenties will remember how their families died. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I dont mean to end on such a macabre note, it's not my intent. But this isnt something we've ever addressed back home. I never learned about it, or found it in the news. Someone yesterday said that in america, we have the power of choosing to be ignorant, and mostly I think its true. Why are we not more proactive about our world? A statistic is just a statistic until you put yourself and your family in them, and then it's downright devastating. Those families are no different than my own.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I hope that in more time I can develop a better understanding of these incidents, and hear personal accounts when my neighbors begin to trust me. Even if I can't sympathize or begin to relate, at least I can be aware, because I think it's all they want.</p>Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-23646691019105545872010-02-20T20:23:00.000-08:002010-02-20T20:35:35.036-08:00Rwanda via PB M&Ms<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg861UzKEQLk43KNukTQUqwQGDCSqBAA3MoBJ1rO0bOB2BKKTpgVnwlrkvgnN72JnUnyY66jNT6-i5jQZ128T5xt1-_tx_V6by6Ehb_PoEB2s-AovBlDLQGUAQmoJ4vOPiRBv-rIjFnjG4/s1600-h/DSCN0648.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 318px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg861UzKEQLk43KNukTQUqwQGDCSqBAA3MoBJ1rO0bOB2BKKTpgVnwlrkvgnN72JnUnyY66jNT6-i5jQZ128T5xt1-_tx_V6by6Ehb_PoEB2s-AovBlDLQGUAQmoJ4vOPiRBv-rIjFnjG4/s400/DSCN0648.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440550613947344370" border="0" /></a>Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-70466227939038016442010-02-06T21:00:00.000-08:002010-02-06T21:21:12.690-08:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZHNrRnMffXJ6IVWyR2CzAw-Qu6XdAIK8Dtx3HYGpAhVowidT3vTyS4A7xbnW7TDWQK7MSjcwcFmn1UdrJH_PL3s23Q0antucP1aGv7i-Qd2H_MwrOk1ezBVzoOn-SlaQlC5JmAB2QACw/s1600-h/DSCN0350.JPG"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZHNrRnMffXJ6IVWyR2CzAw-Qu6XdAIK8Dtx3HYGpAhVowidT3vTyS4A7xbnW7TDWQK7MSjcwcFmn1UdrJH_PL3s23Q0antucP1aGv7i-Qd2H_MwrOk1ezBVzoOn-SlaQlC5JmAB2QACw/s320/DSCN0350.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5435362787639505058" border="0" /></a><br />Hey friends! So my departure is in 16 days.... WOOOOOH! This is pretty much a test blog to see if the photo setting is up to par and to give some last minute info.<br /><br />On the 23rd at 7am I will be flying to Philly to meet with my fellow health volunteers for staging. After registration in Philly, we'll be traveling to JFK on the 24th to fly out to Kigali, Rwanda! <br /><br />The first week will be filled with lots of fun things like vaccinations, orientation, and general culture shock; I can't wait! It's hard to believe it's finally here.. I feel as though I've been waiting my whole life for this to begin. There are a lot of personal sacrifices that come with signing up for this gig; one of the most obvious being leaving my family and friends. Thank you to those of you who openly showed your support! And I'll be damned if I don't make it worth my while :). I can't wait to start!!Jennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1084672437361021244.post-23982801563380695052009-12-30T22:07:00.000-08:002010-01-29T18:12:59.517-08:00Predeparture BlogatureHey friends!<br /><br />This is a test entry to see how everything comes out.<br /><br />Operation: PC begins February 23nd with "staging" in Philly! The official departure from America is February 24th! So, if you haven't done so already, fb me your mailing address so I can send you postcards, small african children [or anything else you can imagine] while I'm away.<br /><br />I'll be updating this blog as often as I can, so check back for any potential rantings, humorous stories, or other remarkable prose.<br /><br />Support, letters, and any form of Americanized contact will be welcome, I'm sure, so don't hesitate!<br /><br />viva la Rwanda <3 .<br /><br /><br />**The first time I wrote this, I forgot to actually mention what I'll be doing in Rwanda for the next 27 months! My job title is "HIV/AIDS and Health; organizational development and capacity building" which means I may be doing almost anything in the health field, from fascilitating health programs to building up the capacity of local health centers.<br /><br />see you all when the sun comes upJennifer Olsen Weedallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04881533424249830020noreply@blogger.com0