So I haven't been blogging much lately...

…and I feel like I owe everyone an explanation. When I first came to Rwanda, it was easy to blog about my experiences because everything was new and weird and exciting. But as things become more and more mundane, it’s easy to forget what I’ve already explained or what needs explaining. For example, this morning I had the following conversation in Kinyarwanda with one of my neighbors:

Me: Good morning!

Neighbor: Good morning, Grace. (My neighbors call me Grace if they can’t pronounce “Gelsey.”) Jesus has risen.

Me: He reigns over us all.

Neighbor: What is the news of your family?

Me: Well, my parents were in Rwanda two weeks ago.

Neighbor: Oh yes, I saw them. You must be very happy.

Me: Yes, it was very good to see them.

Neighbor: You have gotten very fat.

Me: Thank you.

Neighbor: God bless you.

Me: Have a nice day.

Now that I have that out in writing I can see at least three things that probably don’t seem normal to anyone back home. I have several conversations exactly like that every day and it never occurred to me to talk about it. So I encourage all of you, please, to email or comment if you have any unanswered questions about Rwanda or my experiences. I probably have answers, it just hasn’t occurred to me to share them.

Ababyeyi mu Rwanda Part 2

I’ll pick up where I left off in Butare. We got in late on a Wednesday, checked into a hotel and spent Thursday exploring the town. Butare is one of my favorite places in Rwanda and I highly recommend it as a travel destination to anyone visiting this country. It’s home to a university, a national museum, a large outdoor market, several western-style restaurants and a big local crafts store, among other things. It also has Nzozi Nziza, the ice cream shop that made all my dreams come true back in November (probably why it’s called “sweet dreams”). The best part is the whole town is arranged in an uncannily logical order with the museum at one end, the restaurants and market in the middle and Nzozi Nziza at the other end near the university. We started at the museum and made our way to Nzozi Nziza, hitting pretty much everything of importance except the outdoor market. All in all a successful day.

Our plan for the following day was Nyungwe Forest, a national park located about two and a half hours south of Butare by charter bus. Since Nyungwe is one of only three major ecotourism destinations in Rwanda I assumed that buses stopped there, but it turned out that the nearest stop to Nyungwe was Cyangugu. I had no idea where Cyangugu was but I assumed that it must be fairly close to Nyungwe. If we couldn’t figure out where to get off the bus we could just go to Cyangugu double back without losing too much hiking time, or so I thought. The clerk at Sotra Tours corroborated this notion.

In actuality I was very, very wrong about the proximity of Cyangugu to Nyungwe, but I’ll get to that.

The ride into Nyungwe Forest was an experience unto itself. Passing out of Butare town, we meandered through smaller villages until we came to the edge of the park where the scenery changed perceptibly from farmland to rainforest. Even barreling down a paved road we could hear a cacophony of insects and birds, and at one point we saw a small black monkey creeping through the underbrush. Trees rose up on either side, appearing to fight their way out of a tangle of exotic-looking grasses and vines. For what seemed like hours we continued down the paved road with the forest whizzing by. I saw a sign for a lookout point and wondered aloud if we should get off the bus, but my dad said he thought there would be a more obvious place to stop. So we waited.

And we passed out of the park into the tea fields of Karama.

At first I think we all kept hoping to see an entrance sign, but after about forty-five minutes of tea fields it was obvious we were no longer in Nyungwe. I suggested that we get off at the nearest bus stop, but that happened to be a tiny, sketchy-looking town somewhere between Karama and Karembe so instead we opted to go all the way to the end of the line.

Cyangugu turned out to be almost two hours outside of Nyungwe. It’s so far southwest it shares borders with both Burundi and the DRC. A very friendly Sotra Tours employee helped us find a bus back into Nyungwe, but when we finally got into the park it was too late hike even the shortest trail and make it back in time to catch the last bus to Butare. My parents were extremely positive about the whole thing. They took a bunch of pictures of the park entrance and walked around the periphery a bit. My dad told me later that our impromptu trip to Cyangugu was one of the more interesting parts of their visit. I’m sure he meant it, but I still feel blessed to have such tolerant parents.

The next day we went to the market. The market at Butare doesn’t look like much from the outside, but once you get inside it’s an enormous and paradoxically claustrophobic maze of vendors and merchandise. Narrow passageways divide racks upon racks of everything from radios to pineapples to donated shoes. I expected my parents to be overwhelmed but neither of them seemed at all ill at ease, even with people pointing and staring. At one point my dad noticed a young man wearing a hearing aid and struck up a conversation with him in sign language. We even got a good deal on a couple of bolts of igitenge cloth.

That afternoon, after a quick and violent rainstorm that lasted exactly the right amount of time for us to have lunch, we caught a bus back to Kigali. Our original plan was to go straight from Butare all the way up into Gisenyi but after our nine-hour round-trip adventure to Cyangugu and back we decided to take a breather in Kigali first. It was an evening well-spent; I introduced my parents to Shokola* and we spent most of dinner arguing whether the winged animals landing in the trees overhead were birds or large bats. (For the record, they turned out to be bats.)
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The last stop on our trip was Gisenyi. If Butare is my favorite town in Rwanda, Gisenyi is a close second. Like Butare, Gisenyi is a sprawling college town with a lively downtown and a quiet periphery. One advantage it has over Butare is that it’s situated right on the eastern bank of Lake Kivu. An actual sandy beach runs all along Gisenyi’s eastern edge and continues into the DRC. Rumor has it you can stand in Gisenyi and touch Goma without any consequences, but we didn’t try it.

There are lots of unique tourist attractions in Gisenyi, all of which we completely ignored. Instead we spent two days walking up and down the beach, exploring the outdoor market and eating brochettes at the Bikini Tam Tam. It was heaven.

I ended up going back to Kigali with my parents before heading out to Kibuye for the AIDS conference. They saw me off at the bus station and met a few other of the other volunteers. It was hard to say goodbye, but it felt good to part ways on a high note. They said they want to come back to Rwanda, time and resources permitting. The best part of the trip? Visiting my site and meeting the people there, according to my dad. If that isn’t a point for Goal 3 of the Peace Corps, I don’t know what is.

Love you, Mom and Dad.


*Shokola is an Arabian Nights-themed restaurant in downtown Kigali, close to the Hotel Milles Collines.

Ababyeyi mu Rwanda Part 1

It seems that the longer I go without updating my blog the harder it is to do so. My mom and dad have been stateside for almost a week. The seminar in Kibuye was a success in many respects and we did discuss specific ideas for HIV/AIDS-related projects. So far, returning to site hasn’t been nearly as difficult as I expected. I’m happier than ever to be back in my little village and starting school again. But before I get too sidetracked, a lot of people have been asking about my parents’ visit, so here’s the promised rundown.

I should preface this by saying that in Rwanda, things almost never go according to schedule. I made an itinerary for my parents so they could plan a travel budget but I didn’t count on actually sticking to it for their entire visit. My most detailed plans were for the first night, and they only included hotel reservations and prearranged transportation. Louise helped me find a driver to pick them up at the airport and since he was a friend of hers he agreed to drive them for free. I was optimistic that in the very least I’d get them safely from the airport to their hotel without any major snags,

The night of my parents’ arrival, as Louise and I stood in the middle of the Gihara market waiting for our driver to show up, I felt somewhat less optimistic. Our original driver, Noah, was in Gitarama because I’d mananged to give him the wrong date. He’d supposedly found an available taxi at the last minute but we had no idea who the driver was or when he was coming, only that he had Louise’s number and he’d call us when he got to Gihara. My parents’ flight was scheduled to land at 7 pm. They had no way to contact me and I had no way to contact them. For the first hour of waiting I was too excited to be worried, but by 7:10 both Louise and I were still stranded in Gihara and Louise was talking about beating Noah with a stick.

We did eventually get to the airport, but only after taking moto taxis to the main road, locating the driver’s parked car and offering him partial advanced payment so he could buy gas. I had visions of my mom and dad looking bewildered and forlorn on a bench outside the airport with all their luggage, but it turned out that their flight had been delayed an hour. So our timing was perfect. Yet another of life’s reminders that everything works out if you just kwihangane.*

That night in Kigali my dad and I decided to grab some late-night dinner at White Horse. We were the only customers. We sat on the patio because the wait staff had converted the inside of the restaurant into a dance club complete with smoke and lights. When we came in one of the waiters ran up to us and yelled, “Welcome!” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

From Kigali, we took a taxi into Gihara where we were greeted with open arms. The nuns prepared a room and insisted we join them for lunch, dinner, and breakfast the next day. All in all it was a nicer setup than some of the hotels we stayed in. My dad said he wanted to repay the nuns for their hospitality and asked them if there was anything he could help them with, perhaps something that needed fixing. Sister Donatile said he could take a look at their electric stove. “We can’t figure out how to plug it in,” she said. No wonder. The power cable had no plug, just a bundle of frayed wires where a plug had once been. My dad said he’d see what he could do.

He spent the rest of the trip casually scouting for electronics stores. We never did find a plug, but I have to say I admire him for trying. Love you, Dad.

Our second day in Gihara, I took my parents to visit my headmaster and his family and then for a walk up past my school. Initially I had planned on making a loop back to the town center but on a whim I decided to lead them into Kagina (sp?), a neighboring village that’s known locally for its pottery. We ended up running into the village chief who gave us a full tour not only of the pottery collective, but of a local school as well. By the time we were done touring the village we had acquired a crowd of a few dozen children. Here's just a few of them following me and the chief:




That night we took a charter bus from my site to Butare. While we were waiting for the bus a crazy man played a song for us on a hand-fashioned instrument made from discarded bottles and what looked like fishing line, but otherwise it was an uneventful evening.

From Butare the plan was to take a charter bus into Nyungwe Forest for a day hike. We never did make it into Nyungwe, but we did end up having an adventure that took us most of the way to the border of Burundi. But I’ll save that story for my next post. It’s a story that deserves to be told in chapters.

*Kwihangane means “to bear with it” or to have patience.

Hey, I'm Back!

As I’m writing this I’m sitting on a balcony at the Centre St. Bethania in Kibuye looking out at a rather grey and foggy Lake Kivu. Peace Corps is hosting a seminar here on HIV/AIDS for education volunteers and their Rwandan colleagues, the purpose of which is to support HIV/AIDS initiatives in secondary schools. So far we’ve had sessions on communication and behavior change and HIV/AIDS epidemiology. I’m hoping we’ll discuss specific project ideas at some point but even if we don’t it will have been an informative few days, not to mention how nice it is to see everyone again.

I just had an amazing week traveling around the country with my mom and dad. We had a great time together and I now have a renewed appreciation for my site and Rwanda generally. More details to follow when I have time to write a longer post!

Kuruhuka Nziza

Hi all! I meant to update my blog over Independence Day weekend but somehow I didn’t get around to it. I’ve been busy catching up on grading and writing exams. I’ve also been compiling the results from the English language needs assessments which I finally managed to distribute to all of the teachers. I only got them back from the primary school teachers, but it’s just as well. I’m pretty tight with the secondary school teachers and it would be a little awkward trying to teach my friends. Teacher classes are all set to start next term and while I’m still apprehensive I’m also excited. I feel as if I’m pushing the final piece of my primary assignment into place.

For those of you who asked, Independence Day weekend was great. I had all kinds of plans to be productive over the holiday but instead I relaxed and took some time to reconnect with my site. That Saturday I spent two hours tossing an avocado back and forth with some kids, and I can honestly say it was the most meditative and wonderful two hours I’ve had all month.

I also bought sugarcane at the market for the first time ever, which turned out be quite an experience. In Rwanda, it’s considered impolite not to conceal food you’ve purchased unless you plan on sharing. The problem with sugarcane is that it’s only sold in eight-foot sticks, making discretion impossible. Sharing was also impossible because I was in the middle of a marketplace full of people and had I decided to share I would have ended up without any for myself. So I did the only thing I could do. After making my purchase, I marched briskly and defiantly through the town square, pretending I couldn’t hear the horde of children chasing after me and screaming for “agasheke.” I think my village enjoyed the spectacle.

Next week is exam week. I love my students but I have to admit, I am very much looking forward to the end of the term.

Crashing the Party

Long time, no blog! Sorry, all.

It’s been an uneventful couple of weeks with the exception of last weekend. Last weekend I went to the Kwita Izina in Musanze, the annual naming ceremony for Rwanda’s baby gorillas. Some other volunteers were going so I decided to go too, not realizing that it’s such a huge event. Turns out it’s one of Rwanda’s biggest tourist draws besides the gorillas themselves. There are performances by all kinds of Rwandan pop stars, speeches by important officials, traditional dances, actors in gorillas suits to stand in for the gorilla babies, and sometimes President Kagame comes and makes a speech. I panicked a little upon arrival because I didn’t have a ticket or an ID or really anything at all to legitimate my presence there, but I got seated in the VIP section anyway. There are all kinds of things wrong with that, but don’t look a gift horse in the mouth I guess?

In any case, the ceremony was awesome. This year the president didn’t show up due to “unavoidable circumstances” but Jack Hanna made an appearance, plus the music and dancing was amazing. The traditional dancers alone made the trip worthwhile. Each region of Rwanda has its own traditional dance and in the north the dances are particularly energetic with a lot of jumping and stamping. The dancers wore bells on their ankles to augment the percussion. It was so beautiful. The musical performances were also a lot of fun. There was a Ugandan singer, Chameleon, who pulled one of the PCVs up on stage with him. He got kicked offstage shortly after that, but it was an exciting few minutes.

After the ceremony there was a reception with complementary beverages and finger-food which was an experience in itself. It was sort like a mosh pit except we weren’t fighting to get to the front row at a concert, we were fighting over mozzarella balls and glasses of chilled white wine. Then security personnel intervened and the crowd was filtered out of the courtyard into the street, leaving in its wake a courtyard strewn with beer bottles and crumpled napkins and other such carnage. It’s hard to believe they’ve been doing this every year for almost a decade now.

Now I’m back to teaching and tutoring and putting off the start date for teachers’ classes until I can get a curriculum together. I’ll probably be at site for the fourth of July, so keep me in your thoughts while you’re barbequing or bonfiring or doing whatever.

Yep, Still Love My Job

I love my students so much it almost hurts.

Yesterday in class we played charades with different adverbs and they got so into it they didn’t want to stop. I had to instate a “no-touching” policy after a particularly spirited depiction of the word “violently” but otherwise it went incredibly well. They’re nothing if not performers.

My second class of the day has a ten-minute break halfway through, one of the very few opportunities they get to go out and enjoy some fresh air and sunshine, but yesterday most of my class stayed inside with me. They like to ask me about English words they’ve heard in songs. Sometimes it’s a minefield (how do I, as a middle school teacher, explain what Shaggy supposedly wasn’t doing?) but yesterday, mercifully, they wanted to know about “Baby” by Justin Bieber. I sang part of it and endeared myself to them forever. Say what you will about the Biebs, he is king in Rwandan middle schools. Even the boys like him here.

Yesterday was also English club day, a thing which normally leaves me completely drained and ready for a day off. Between this term and last term, English club membership went from overwhelming (seventy-five students) to underwhelming (about fifteen students) because I lost the classroom we initially met in to the understandably more-popular dance club. On top of that, all the S3 students somehow have an extra hour of class this term, so I’ve been struggling to retain my S3 members. I was beginning to the think the club might be a lost cause, but yesterday we started a project that might keep the club going into next year: letter writing. They’re so excited about writing letters to the U.S. it’s almost scary. If it goes well, I might try to set up correspondence with a middle school classroom in the States. If any teachers are reading this and interested, please shoot me an email!

Otherwise things are progressing nicely. English classes for teachers might actually happen, though I’m not sure how soon. I’ve been trying to call a staff meeting to discuss meeting times and distribute English pre-assessments, but it’s proven more difficult to do so than I’d expected. I don’t have the power to call staff meetings by myself and my headmaster keeps telling me we’ll have the meeting “tomorrow,” by which he doesn’t so much mean “tomorrow” as “not today.” The classes probably won’t be a reality until sometime next term, but that’s fine with me. I’d rather spend the rest of this term focusing on my students who, if not my raison d’etre, are certainly my raison d’etre ici.

I’ve also begun tutoring Yvette and it’s worked out even better than I hoped. She comes to my house every Thursday morning with an academic article or a book in hand and we go over all the difficult vocabulary. Then she asks me questions about grammar and pronunciation. I’ve been making up exercises on the fly but I’m accumulating a nice catalogue of lesson plans I might be able to use with the teachers at my school. Not only that, but I now have one more friend I get to see reliably often.

So, setbacks and non-meetings and non-members aside, I love my job. Through it all, my students are a reason to get up and face the world every morning. They say “thank you, Teacher,” Greek-chorus style at the end of class. Every time I want to tell them that I should be thanking them, not the other way around.