Oh Beautiful

July 4th is Liberation Day in Rwanda.  When I tell people that it’s also American Independence Day they think I’m pulling their leg. “But America was not colonized!” they say.  America was colonized, but things went a little differently there than they did in Rwanda.  I’ve found it’s hard to talk about American independence in a postcolonial country without incriminating the Founding Fathers. It definitely puts a new spin on the history I learned in elementary school.

But history aside, Rwandan Liberation Day/American Independence Day caused me to think a lot about my own country and what it means to be an American.  I’ve always been American, but the fact of being American wasn’t all that important until I came here.  In my village I’m the sole representative of my country and its culture, and often its government and entertainment industry as well. I’m constantly being asked questions about the United States and Americans that I know I’m not singularly qualified to answer.  Do American pop stars worship Satan?  Why do Americans like dogs so much?  Do Americans think homosexuality is evil? Why is United States so rich?

With all this pressure represent my country, I’ve realized something important.  I’m incredibly lucky to be American.  I’ve been told all my life that the United States is a great country, but what does that mean without a point of comparison?  Now, for the first time in my life, I can love my country on my own terms. And I do love my country. The United States has its share of problems, but it’s still a place of abundance, opportunity and relative freedom.  I love my country, not for its flag, not for its spacious skies or amber waves of grain, but for the things it’s given me.  I’m grateful for my education, for my ability to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer, for my right to speak out against my government if it fails me. The American healthcare system might leave a lot to be desired, but at least the facilities are there.  Nationwide marriage equality might be a ways off, but at least it’s up for discussion.  Quality education might not be affordable for every American, but the United States is still home to the best schools in the world.  For these and dozens of other reasons, I’m glad to be American.

I also love Rwanda.  Despite its problems and its own messy history, Rwanda is a wonderful country.  There is a kindness to Rwanda that isn’t easily found in the United States.  It’s a country that’s bursting at the seams with hope for the future.  Rwanda is a country that’s seen the worst of things and refuses to go back.  It’s also a fascinating and breathtakingly beautiful country.  I feel fortunate to have spent a small part of my life in Rwanda and I don’t doubt that this country will be in my heart forever.  But when people ask me if I want to relocate here permanently (a question people on buses seem to love asking me) I always say no.  Rwanda is nice, but the United States is my home.  And you know what, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’d rather live someplace where women can go out to at night without being called prostitutes, where basic education really is free and where self-expression is a federally protected right. 

I celebrated this fourth of July with my site mate, Meredith.  We went to a restaurant, ordered an entire roast chicken (which, as it turns out, was the most expensive thing on the menu) and spent the afternoon eating and playing cards.  Inside the restaurant, Paul Kagame’s televised address to the nation blared over ancient speakers.  He suggested several times that while Rwanda has had 50 years of political independence, it has not truly been a free country.  The ghosts the past, including its colonial legacy, have returned to haunt it again and again.  Kagame named many of the achievements of the past five decades, but urged his countrymen not to forget the work still ahead of them.  It made me think of my own country and Barack Obama saying how Americans have a lot of work left to do – so much not only to achieve, but to maintain.

The world, Rwanda, the United States – all are changing rapidly, and sometimes those changes seem more like turmoil than progress.  But amidst that turmoil, I’m still enormously privileged to be an American.  

This Time, A Bunch of Bananas

Some of you may remember Goreti, the woman who helped me bargain for a pineapple in my early months at site.  Last Sunday I fulfilled a long-standing promise to visit her.  It wasn’t my first time to stop in at her little house by the main road, but it was one of far too few visits, perhaps four or five over the last year.  Rather than accosting me for neglecting her, something everyone else in Gihara is fond of doing, she smiled when she opened the door and drew me into a warm embrace, planting a big kiss on my cheek as she did so.  I’d wanted to bring her a pineapple as a little inside joke but I couldn’t find one in Gihara, so I settled for a bunch of bananas.  She accepted them happily before ushering me inside.

She’d cooked cassava bread and vegetables in peanut sauce.  I normally hate cassava bread, but nothing about Goreti is typical, not even her cooking.  She’s tall and slender with a strikingly angular face, deep-set eyes and a uncomplaining tiredness about her.  Things have been going well for her lately.  The cow she and her husband bought earlier this year gave birth recently, which means they have both a calf and a milk cow.  She send me home with a pumpkin from her garden, a liter of homemade drinking yogurt and abundant blessings and well-wishes.  When I told her she was too generous, she told me not to worry.  “We give to each other,” she said, “because that’s what two friends must do.”

Things have been busy lately.  Between ELT-JCS, planning our GLOW camp, attending meetings for the GAD committee and our regional group and dealing with all the changes at school, I haven’t had much time to spend time with people at my site.  Usually once I’m home I just collapse into bed and spend the rest of the evening reading a book - unless I have papers to grade.  I visited Goreti because she met me in the road last week and asked me to find the time. I’m so glad I did.

What really matters in life are the people.  It’s nice to be reminded of that.

Getting Real

As a rule, Peace Corps volunteers are cautioned to keep their negative feelings to themselves. This is especially true where the internet is concerned.  “Journal on bad days, blog on good days,” they tell you at staging and again in pre-service training and probably again at in-service training.  Well, I’m not having a bad day.  I just got over a bout of stomach flu and I feel fantastic.  Thus legitimated, I am going to complain a little bit.  Hopefully this will be as edifying for all of you as it is cathartic for me.

DISCLAIMER: This post is not a cry for help, nor a call for praise, nor anything else of the kind. I’m not trying to elicit any particular reaction from anyone whatsoever.  My goal here, as with my all my posts, is simply to share and inform.

Let me begin by stating the obvious.

Peace Corps is hard.

Everyone knows this.  The fact that it’s hard is what entices some people to join as much as it deters others from even applying.  I realized I was signing up for something difficult when I accepted my invitation to Rwanda.  But Peace Corps service isn’t difficult for any of the reasons one would expect.  Within Peace Corps the idea that “it isn’t about the amenities” is another enormous cliché, but it might not be as obvious to folks who aren’t serving.  Allow me to elaborate.

Peace Corps isn’t hard because there’s no hot running water or because your toilet is a hole in the ground.  It isn’t hard because the power goes out all the time, if there is power.  It isn’t hard because you constantly have either diarrhea or constipation, or because you have to go all the way to the Peace Corps office in Kigali to restock your Pepto-Bismol.  It isn’t hard because of the mosquitoes.  It isn’t hard because of fungal infections.  It isn’t hard because it rains every time you hang your laundry out or because your roof leaks.  It isn’t hard because there are rats living in the ceiling or gravel mixed in with the rice. It’s true that all of these things are typical to the Peace Corps experience in Rwanda and lots of other countries too.  It’s also true that none of these things are pleasant and that oftentimes they’re the final straw for volunteers who already want to go home.  But they aren’t what make it hard.

Peace Corps is hard because no one listens to you.  It’s hard because your biggest assets as a volunteer, so you’re told, are your knowledge and skills, but all anyone wants from you is money.  It’s hard because when you do get support for an idea, you spend half your time and energy trying to entice people to help you implement it.

Peace Corps is hard because nothing ever goes the way you expect it to.  It always rains the day you wanted to take your class outside.  There’s always a national holiday or a staff meeting or an umuganda when you least expect it.  People don’t show up, or they show up three hours late.  Or an hour early, depending which you were least prepared for.

Peace Corps is hard because people never leave you alone.  People always want to greet you, to visit you, to ask you for money, to ask you for food, to invite themselves in for tea, to invite you over for tea, to throw things at you, to insult you, to laugh at you, to flirt with you, or, most commonly, to just stand and stare at you.  This is true wherever you are, no matter what you’re doing.  You could be walking to the market or waiting for the bus.  You could be sitting in a restaurant.  You could be sprinting down the road because you’re late for work.  You could be using a latrine with a door that doesn’t quite lock.  Whatever the case may be, people will take every possible opportunity to harass you.

Peace Corps is hard because your neighbors regularly mock you for the one thing you can’t stand being mocked for, whatever that may be.  Your height, your weight, your skin, your hair, your voluptuousness or flat-chestedness (as the case may be), your athleticism or lack of athleticism, your way of walking, your way of speaking, your native language (or a native language that is assigned to you based on your appearance), your age, your religion, your ethnicity, your gender, any physical blemishes or abnormalities.  Nothing is off-limits, and whatever bothers you the most will be the favored object of scrutiny.

Being a Peace Corps education volunteer is hard because you’re emotionally invested in the well-being of your students but you can only do so much for them.  It’s hard because you have to penalize them for showing up late even though you know they just walked ten kilometers uphill in the rain in broken plastic sandals and no coat having not eaten breakfast.  It’s hard because they come to school with fevers and coughs and stomach aches and headaches and you can’t give them water or medicine.  It’s hard because, despite the law against it, students still get beaten by other teachers and there’s little you can do to stop it from happening.  It’s hard when a girl stops showing up because she’s pregnant or when a boy comes to class drunk at seven in the morning.  It’s really, really hard when you find out that one of your students has HIV.

Peace Corps is hard because no one ever tells you “Good job.” For that matter, no one ever reprimands you for giving up or flaking out.

Peace Corps is hard because no one understands.  Your neighbors don’t understand what it’s like to be a foreigner in a remote village because they’ve never left the remote village. Your coworkers at site think you have it easy since they all know you’re eventually going to back to America, The Land of Plenty.  Peace Corps administration doesn’t understand because they’ve never done what you’re doing, or if they have, they did it decades ago in a different country with a significantly different culture and climate.  Your family and friends back home don’t understand, and (let’s be honest) they probably dismiss you as crazy for joining Peace Corps in the first place.  Other volunteers don’t understand because they’re not you and they’re not at your site.  Even when they do understand, they have their own problems to deal with.

So if Peace Corps is so hard, why do it?  Well, like I said in my last post, there are the little things that keep you going day-to-day.  Whether it’s fireflies or a cute baby or a few words of encouragement from a nice coworker, there’s always some little bright spot to be found in even the darkest of days.  But more broadly, Peace Corps service is worth it precisely because it is hard.  In a context where everything is a challenge, the tiniest achievements are enormous victories.  Too, where there are multitudinous problems, there are endless opportunities to make a positive difference.  Sometimes just being the sole American in a homogenous community is a huge contribution because you and you alone are providing people the opportunity to meet someone from the outside.  When you’re in Peace Corps you’re important and special and you know it, even when people are treating you like dirt.

When I was a trainee, I was told that the hardest part of Peace Corps service is the first three months at site and that it’s all downhill from there.  Maybe it’s just standard practice to tell that to trainees or maybe some people actually feel that way, but I disagree.  Peace Corps service doesn’t get easier.  In the first months at site everything is overwhelming, but it’s also new and exciting.  Once volunteers enter their second year, malaise can start to set in.  Or in some cases, volunteers take on too much at the beginning of the second year and begin to burn out.

That didn’t happen to me, but I did take on a lot of new things fully expecting to continue doing everything I had been doing before.  I’m also a lot harder on myself now when I react poorly to a challenging situation or when I fail to be culturally sensitive.  And the things that used to calm me down, like walking in the coffee fields or talking to my neighbors, have lost some of their magic as they’ve become more commonplace.  I continue to show up, to chip away at projects and to do my best to be a friendly, positive representation of America, but sometimes my enthusiasm fails me and I start to wonder if I really am a “good” volunteer.

Deep down, though, I know that just being here is cause to be proud.  Why?  Because it’s hard.  As an RPCV Zaire once wisely said, if it weren’t hard, it wouldn’t be Peace Corps.

The Little Things

I have a new headmaster!  His name is Sylvan.  I don’t know much about him yet, but so far I have a positive impression.  He’s a young college graduate and he speaks excellent English.  He was a science teacher for several years before he got his degree.  He likes to say that he’s a teacher first and a headmaster second.  It makes an encouraging first impression.

We had a small going-away party for Evariste/welcoming party for Sylvan at school on Wednesday.  Drinks were provided, and our school’s meager kitchen managed to provide a meal of brochettes and grilled plantains for everyone. It was impressive considering I’ve never seen anything come out of that kitchen other than fried balls of dough and small quantities weak, milky tea. The outgoing and the incoming headmasters made long speeches about teamwork, responsibility, motivation, the usual.  The dean of studies then stood up and made his own speech along similar lines.  Finally the floor was opened for teachers to say a few words.  Most teachers took it as an opportunity to voice complaints about the students or their salaries, turning the gathering from a party into an ordinary staff meeting.  By the time we disbanded, it was well after nightfall.

As I made my way slowly home in the dark, I kept slipping on muddy patches of road and stubbing my toes on rocks. I was tired and I felt a little dejected, having sat through hours of complaints at what was supposed to be a celebration.  But then I noticed for the first time that the fields around my school were full of fireflies.  It had been a long day and I was exhausted, but as I looked out over the glittering, blinking expanse, the frustrations of the day dissipated.  I know my COS date now - November 14th- and knowing that date has changed things for me somewhat.  I find myself dreaming of home a lot more often.  When something bothers me, rather than thinking “I’ll resolve this eventually,” I find myself thinking, “Only six more months!” The things that bring me back and keep me here, in body as well as mind and spirit, are those little moments of beauty.  Like noticing the cassava fields are glittering with fireflies.

So much depends upon the little things.

Zanzibar Pt. 2

Days 4-6

On Tuesday we left Stone Town and headed out to the eastern side of the island.  We checked in to a cheap but lovely resort with bungalow-style rooms.  It was an incredibly beautiful spot, all white sand beaches and clear blue ocean and coconut palms.  We thought we’d died and gone to heaven.

On our second day at the resort, it rained.  No, it poured.  It was my first experience with warm rain since Hawaii.  To the embarrassment of my travel companions, I spent most of the day in a swimsuit and a rain jacket.

We spent our last day in Zanzibar exploring the beach.  We found lots of seashells and a Masai tribesman who tried to sell us some beaded jewelry, not much else.  In the afternoon we went snorkeling.  We were taken out to the coral reef in a fishing boat by an ancient-looking Tanzanian man in tattered shorts and his nephew.  The boat had a patchwork sail made out of old blankets.  Snorkeling was fun, but nothing we saw was of greater interest than that boat and the old man it belonged to.

Day 7

On Friday we went from the resort directly to the waterfront and caught a ferry back to Dar.  For a little extra cash we got to sit up on the top deck.  It was a significant improvement from the stuffy cabin.  They had bean bag chairs up there and everything.

We checked into a hotel in Dar with crazy colorful murals on all the walls and an exquisitely cheap Indian fusion restaurant attached.  Joey relaxed in our room with his Kindle while Kelsey and I explored the city. We did a little shopping in some back alleys, got lost, found an excellent Arab-style bakery, got lost again, and eventually found our way to the waterfront where we bought some interesting trinkets from a Masai and his nephew.

That night we bought fried chicken and chips from a street vendor.  That was one of Tanzania’s biggest contrasts with Rwanda, the fact that we could buy and eat food in the street.  It was a fitting and delicious end to our vacation.

Day 8

The bus ride back to Kigali was neither fun nor particularly memorable.  I sat next to a woman who kept trying to put her three-year-old daughter in my lap, then switched seats with Joey and ended up in front of a girl who kept sticking her feet under my seat and massaging my butt with her toes.  At one point we stopped at a rest stop and I managed to lock myself in a bathroom stall.  I struggled loudly and desperately with the door for several minutes before Kelsey finally heard me and got me out.  When I emerged, there were about two dozen women there just standing and staring.  I felt like reprimanding all of them for their lack of humanity (I was sleep-deprived and already quite irritated) but instead I said “don’t worry, no problem” in three different languages and got back on the bus.

Day 9

Sad as I was to leave Tanzania, it felt good to cross the border back into Rwanda.  It was nice to know the local language again.  We also spotted some baboons playing in the grass near the immigration office.  It was hard not to smile watching them.

~

So now I’m back in Rwanda.  School got off to a decent start this term until the weather turned cold and stormy and all the students stopped showing up for class.  I’m in Nyanza now for the ELT-JCS project and looking forward to teaching tomorrow.  More updates to follow as more exciting things happen.  For now, mugende n’amahoro.

Zanzibar Pt. 1

I promised you all a blog about Zanzibar, but then school started and I got busy.  Oops.  The term has been going well so far, though.  I began teaching on the third official day of class when I usually can’t start until the sixth or seventh day.  I’ve also stockpiled a bunch of really good lessons for this term, so teaching has been going exceptionally well.  I’ll have more to report in a couple of weeks.  For now, here’s a rundown of my week in Tanzania.

My travel buddies were fellow PCVs Joey, Kelsey and Andrew.  Hopefully none of them mind being mentioned in my blog.

Day 1

Our journey began Saturday, April 7th.  We woke up at 3:45 in the morning and took a taxi to Nyabugogo, the bus park in Kigali. It was pitch black out and pouring rain.  We had tickets with a bus company called Taqwa, sort of like a Greyhound for all of East Africa.  We left Nyabugogo right on schedule, at 5:00.

There were two drivers, a technician and two other staff people on board.  They were Tanzanian and spoke Swahili, no Kinyarwanda.  It was very relaxing just listening to them talk without comprehending anything.  Tanzanian Swahili sounds like water lapping the side of a boat.

The trip from Kigali to Dar Es Salaam was to take at least 30 hours.  That’s right, 30 hours on a bus!  Fortunately we made lots of unscheduled stops, mostly in the absolute dead middle of nowhere so everyone could get out and pee on the side of the road.  I say “lots,” but that still meant we had to sit on a bus for stretches of eight or nine hours without anywhere to go to the bathroom. I learned to limit my water intake.

There were only two scheduled stops before we reached our destination.  The first was a very brief stop for lunch in a small town outside Dar.  The second was from midnight until 4 am at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere, the purpose of which (as I found out later) was to avoid being attacked by bandits.  None of us could sleep.  We got off the bus and found a canteen where we were served very greasy omelets by a man who told us several times to “be at home” and “have no problems.”

The omelets had fried potatoes in them.  Doused in hot sauce, they were about the most delicious thing I could remember ever eating.

Day 2 (Easter Sunday)

We arrived at the bus park in Dar Es Salaam at around 11 am.  From there we took taxi to the waterfront.

The first thing that struck me about Dar was that it looked like an actual city.  Unlike Kigali, it was dirty and noisy and teeming with life.  It was also a lot more diverse.  There were people in traditional printed cloth outfits and people in Western clothes, but also people in kufi and ikanzu and women in hijab.  There were Masai.  There were people from the Middle East and North Africa and people from India.  There were a few other tourists, but they didn’t stand out like they would have in Kigali.  For once, being foreigners didn’t make us special.

Our first and only order of business in Dar was to catch a ferry to Zanzibar. The ferry was hot and stuffy.  I fell asleep within the first twenty minutes and slept through most of the ride.

We arrived in Zanzibar sometime in the afternoon.  It was like crossing into a whole other country.  I don’t know much about the political relationship between Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania but I do know that to set foot on the island we had to fill out a form and have our passports looked at, just like at an international border.  An immigration official also demanded compensation from Joey for not having his WHO card.  Initially he wanted something like $100 but he eventually accepted $40 “because it’s a holiday.” It was our first direct experience with corruption.  Things like that don’t generally happen in Rwanda.

~

It’s difficult not to have a powerful first impression of Stone Town.  The humidity was oppressive, but the air smelled like seawater and plumeria.  The wharf was lined with coconut palms. The town itself looked more Arab than African, at least based on what I’ve seen in pictures.  There were lots of sun-bleached buildings with little glassless windows and narrow balconies.  And there were stray dogs and cats everywhere.

We ate dinner twice that night, once at a little place right on the waterfront and once at a fantastic Indian restaurant near our hotel.  In between we checked out the fish market.  I wish I’d had time to eat an entire meal there, too.  They sold all kinds of things, grilled barracuda and octopus on skewers.  Who wouldn’t want octopus on a skewer?

Day 3

Monday was Spice Tour Day.

I highly recommend the spice tour for anyone who decides to visit Zanzibar. For something like $10 a guide picked us up at our hotel, drove us to a spice plantation about twenty minutes outside Stone Town, walked us through the whole plantation, gave us lots of spices and fruit to sample, provided us with lunch, and finally drove us down to the coast and let us splash around in the Indian Ocean.  All in all, an incredible deal.

The plantation was fascinating.  I was impressed by the sheer diversity of things they grew there.  In a single tour I got to see teak and mahogany trees, peppercorns, turmeric, cinnamon trees, vanilla, cacao, nutmeg, curry leaves, star fruit, banana trees, two different plants used for dyes and some local varieties of chili pepper.  Nutmeg was probably the most interesting.  The seed is black with a red vein-y coating.  Apparently it’s a traditional drug in Tanzania, but only women take it.  Our guide didn’t say what its effects are supposed to be but he did say that if we ask a Tanzanian woman about nutmeg and she has nothing to say on the subject, she must not be from Zanzibar.

We ate lunch at a nearby village.  It was like Rwandan food but with the addition of spices.  There was pilau rice, beans and vegetables in coconut sauce.  It was delicious.  I lamented the fact that coconut palms don’t seem to grow in Rwanda.

From there we drove to the coast where we were given an abbreviated tour of some caves that were integral to the illegal slave trade in Tanzania.  The caves we saw were in use until 1908, largely because the sultan of Zanzibar wanted to keep the trade going.  It would’ve been a heavy note to end the tour on, but fortunately we were then led down to the beach and given some time to splash around in the ocean.  The water was surprisingly warm, even when it started raining on us.

On the tour we met two PCVs from the Zambia program.  We agreed to meet them for Ethiopian food later that night.  Between us we ate more injeera (sp?) and drank more honey wine than we could easily afford, but it was definitely worth it!

The rest of the week will come later.  For now I have to log off.  Na ejo!

Bless the Rains

It’s raining again.  Raining, after enough dry months to turn the roads to choking red dust, dry up all the water in our rain tankard and raise the price of almost everything at the market.  When it started on Thursday I was so excited I ran outside and did a little dance.  I promptly fell on my butt in front of the gardener, Dina, but he didn’t seem to judge me for it.  He ran over, helped me up and yelled, “Invura yaguye!” The rain is falling! I said “Yep, and me, too.” He didn’t get the joke, but oh well.  It was nice to share my excitement with someone.

After my last post one of you thanked me for the update and said it was good to know how my projects were going, but what about my mental and emotional state?  That’s a harder question.  In general things are fine and I’m happy, but saying that doesn’t really inform anyone of much.  I feel comfortable here, probably more comfortable than I would if I blinked my eyes and found myself back home in California, but there are constant, subtle reminders that I haven’t adapted to Rwanda so much as I’ve learned to take its peculiarities for granted.  When I actually pause to look at things, it’s all still very bewildering.

I’m almost positive the feeling goes two ways.  My village is used to me but my presence is still strange.  It’s all fine and good that the American government sent a volunteer to Gihara to teach English, but why a young woman, and why for two years?  And for God’s sake, if I’m not making any money why would I agree to any of it in the first place?  It makes no sense but they accept it.  After all, I’m clearly not going anywhere until my contract is up.

On Saturday I’ll be taking a vacation in Tanzania.  The plan is to take bus to Dar Es Salaam, then on to Zanzibar from there.  It will be a thirty-hour journey, but according to everyone Zanzibar is worth it.  Of course I’ll tell all about it here as soon as I get back.  In the meantime, here's a picture of the sunrise over my site. Pasika nziza!