To all the Talking Blue Horses Out There

This one’s for you

To volunteers all over the world
To circus freaks, science experiments, and zoo exhibits
To anyone in the closet, under the rug, and on the radar
This one’s for you

To every person living the life of the minority; struggling to speak; struggling to blend
To all the people who wish they could walk without being judged, shop without being watched, jog without being followed,
To Michael Jackson and Brittney Spears
This one’s for you

If you’ve ever been pet, poked, pinched, touched, prodded by complete strangers,
If you’ve ever remained silent, hungry, thirsty, sick, diligent for the sake of fitting in,
If you’ve ever made an infant cry and run in terror at the color of your skin,
This one’s for you.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Asceticism

The week of the Rwandan

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.

Thus began my week as a Rwandan.

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...]

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.

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.

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.
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.

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]. 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 [true. My rigorous walking dedication is paying off because people notice, thank goodness. Plus my legs look awesome] and the other kids, they tell me that you have a fiancé! And that you won’t take a Rwandan husband! [also true. I don’t think that requires an explanation]...

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.

But they’ve started to accept me. They’ve let me in to their lives for, I don’t know what reason.
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, bites? [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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
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.

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A village, a husband, and hyperventilation

I posted some new photos of my adorable little home and some other moving-in stuff.

www.picasaweb.google.com/jolsen87

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.

Actual conversation from earlier this week.
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.

Ok, actual conversation:

Mr.Soldier Neighbor: I waited for you last week
me: yes i was there. i did not see you.
him: we shall go have a fanta now then
me: no, i cannot, it's night time. I must go home.
him: you will visit me next week.
me: yes but I cannot come to your home, we must meet outside
him: but my home is right here, you will come visit at my home
me: No, I cannot come to your home, it is not appropriate to visit in the home of a man.
him: But you will come to visit my home.

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

him: you will visit and soon i will be your husband

if you've seen abbot and costello, insert reference into this next bit that lasts an exhausting 10 minutes

me: no no, I have a fiance
him: oh. you have a fiance? he is rwandan?
me: no, british. and he will be visiting soon.
him: yes, and then soon I will be your fiance
me: no, I HAVE a fiance.
him: yes, me
me: no, I already have one
him: you will have me
me: no, I have one. I only want one. I do not want another
him: yes, you will take me.
me:

[feebly repeating myself as a woman and the baby on her back walking by pause to watch the humor]

no, I have one already. I only want one. I do not want two.
him: but I need you

I'm assuming this actually translates to I'm looking for a muzungu wife, partly because its logical based on their vocabulary, and partly because it's less creepy
me: uhhhh NO, no no. You are my neighbor and a friend only. No... no no... no.

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.

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.
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.

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Peace Corps: The closest you'll ever be to bipolar

For 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.

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.]

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.

Journal Entry Excerpt, first night
10th May 2010, Busanza: A Homecoming

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.
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!!]
I may be a panicked recluse, but at least I have avocados.


Excerpt from a letter home 17th May 2010


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.
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].


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 .





An update on the health of a health volunteer. 26th May 2010

PC: You signed up for this. You signed up for this?

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.
To be honest it’s the best medical care I’ll ever have. Serious props to the Rwandan PCMO that took care of me.
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.
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]
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.
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.
No really, I love a good adventure.

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Nyiramwiza

so 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:
Mwaramutse
Mwaramutse
Uvuye he?
Mirugo
Ahh yego. Komeza.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.
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!

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Measuring Time in Tubes of Chapstick

Days left of language training: 13 days
Days left until swear-in: 18 days
Carmex chapstick used: 3 tubes

Infinitive: Gushaka Translation: To need/want
Ndashaka kwiga kinyarwanda I need/want to learn kinyarwanda
Urashaka kwiga kinyarwanda You need/want to learn kinyarwanda
Arashaka kwiga kinyarwanda S/he needs/wants to learn kinyarwanda

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.

Learning kinyarwanda is like walking before you know you have legs, motor function, or balance.
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.
You slowly gain footing and learn the basic abilities of movement, but we may as well be drunk for all of our stumbles.
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.
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.



Awesome happenings of week 7:
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!

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!

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!

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Siddhartha Part I, II, and III

OK, this is going to be a LONG post, so get yourself some tea before settling down for it.
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].
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.

Tuesday:
Mood: hopeful, optimistic, a little apprehensive.
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.
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.

Wednesday:
Mood: about to pass out from internal hyperventilating.
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.
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?
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...
Thursday: mood: determined, focused, unstoppable.
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.
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??
Seriously, can't a white girl enjoy nature anymore?
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.

End of the week mood: optimistic, super excited, and hopeful! Yaaaay!


Ahh in my rantings I forgot to mention the best parts! Me doing/learning awkward social encounters!
I'm not sure if anyone can rate these but I definitely can't choose.
-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?]
Oya, umugabo wanjye. Traditional. [No, my husband, in traditional dress]
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.

-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..

-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.
-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.

-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.

-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.

-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.

Since I'm already rambling, I'm going to throw some lists out there to answer some questions I've been asked:
Awesome Rwandan Things:
1. the African tea I mentioned above. Google it!
2. tree tomatoes. So amazing but no I don't think I can mail any home
3. passionfruit <3
4. Medy, a musician on all the Rwandan radios. Look up his song, Amayobera, it's aaawesome
5. red clay roads and endless greenery.
6. little chubby babies who do the 'yay muzungu!' dance in the road when they see you coming from 100 yards away.
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.

Random things I miss:
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]
2. the smell of car air conditioning [I really don't like air conditioning, but the smell of it... faaaantastic]
3. Target
4. eating snow. Leaving mid-winter, I got jipped on my consumption

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