Trainees come for a visit

Had 2 trainees visit. Came Friday afternoon in the rain, got soaked! Moto tipped over, bruises and scratches. Saturday was abana club. Discussed hygiene, gave kids biscuits after doing handwashing demonstration and making all of them wash their hands. More rain. Watched Sex and the City movie, wished for popcorn. Sunday visited resource family, drank homemade yogurt, ate rice with peanut sauce and eggplant, played with baby. Trainees left Monday morning, took them to the motos and put them on and said bye.
Tuesday morning, got on motos, got on bus into Kigali for the first national nutrition conference. Showed up at lunch and ate delicious food!! Had cocktails and tapas afterwards with the minister of health. Red wine!!! Went out with friends afterwards.
Wednesday, went to conference all day, more good food and good information. Had translators in booths and these cool ear thingys, felt like I was in the United Nations. Went out with friends afterwards again.
Thursday, went to last day of conference, left after lunch to buy things for Thanksgiving dinner. Went to Office and started making the apple pie. Was madness with 20 PCV’s in the office at once trying to make enough food to feed us all. Boxed wine was had. Turkey was eaten. Lots of mashed potatoes and stuffing. Had to be out of the office by 6, so ate quickly and stored left-overs in the fridge. Went out with friends again, fell asleep at the bar and got taken home. Everyone else went out dancing! Sad I missed it!!
Friday, went to the office and ate left-overs, played on the computer and hung out with friends. Went to a fancy bar that night and danced.
Saturday, hung out at a friends house watched a movie then drove out to lake Muhazi for dinner and drinks. Went to a house party and danced.
Sunday, got on a bus and came home.
Monday, two other trainees came for a visit. It was dry out so the moto took them all the way to the house. We baked a banana cake on the fire, using dirt (which we first had to cook to dry out cause it was mud) in a big pot. We put the small pot inside the big pot with the dirt. It was delicious! The trainees brought us cheese, so I made pizza for dinner (also on the stove).
Tuesday, we brought them to the clinic and showed them around and then walked around the village to show them the secondary school (they are going to be teachers) and then we sat down and had fantas at the restaurant. That night we baked brownies in the same fashion on the fire. We all watched a movie on my small computer that night.
Wednesday, I was feeling like crap, so I stayed home from work. The trainees left in the morning back to Nyanza. I weeded in the garden a little, the lettuce is growing!!
Thursday, I stayed home again, still not feeling well

addition to uganda trip

Sunday in Kampala we met two white people on the street who suggested a Chinese restaurant to us. When we got to the door, we all stopped and looked at each other and realized that this place was really fancy. We were afraid we would stick out like sore thumbs and we wouldn’t be able to afford it, but we went in anyways. The table cloths were white and made of linen, the napkins were linen and we got warm towels to clean our hands. I felt so out of place it was crazy. We must have looked like such weirdos exclaiming at all the fanciness. I got some tofu and it was delicious!!!! There was even a real piano with a person playing music, one of the songs being from Aladdin! It was a delicious dinner and we all felt very fancy, a wonderful way to end our amazing vacation in Uganda.

Rafting the Nile in Uganda

Okay, so I havent really been in the mood to write lately, so please excuse the bullet points. If you want more details I'll be glad to give them.

October 20th = 6 months at site!
Sat: after abana club, one moto, rain, car late, party in gisakura
Tues: Blisters, cant walk, kid trying to break in
Thurs: caught in rain, wait it out in salon, can’t speak kinya
All weekend cloudy and rainy, constant rain. Peas, squash growing.
Burned wrist 3 times, oil splatter on chest, steam burn on thumb
Halloween: wore black and orange and ate orange foods and candy
Thursday morning, only one moto again, my bag on front, emily’s on back, Emily and driver on seat, me on back on top of bag, flat tire, missed bus
Friday: early bus, caught just on time, had to run and flag down, missed other two coming with, got into kampala late, loooong bus ride, met peace corps volunteers from Uganda in same hotel, took us to dinner at Ethiopian.
Saturrday: bus picked us up at hotel, drove us to Jinja, others bungee jumped, then we got into the raft and went 5 hours down the river. Lost a contact thrusday night, so had to wear glasses, tied string around head. Flipped boat twice and smashed head into boat after going over a waterfall, but glasses are still intact!!! Drank beer and ate some food, went back to resort and watched rugby and video of rafting trip
Sunday: taxi into Jinja town, caught bus into Kampala back to hotel met up with PCV Uganda who took us to big market, got about 50 proposals, came home with an engagement bracelet and quite a few numbers.
Monday: mad dash to catch bus, no taxi’s to be found on road, barely make it to bus, long bus trip back to Kigali, but pretty empty bus so had a row of 3 seats to myself! So nice. Stayed at a friends house and went out.
Tuesday: bought ticket to South Africa for Christmas, went to friends work and played in the city
Wednesday: missed bus back home, had to take next one, moto driver said he was coming to get me, started walking down dirt road home, after 30 mins got call saying out of gas, need to take different moto (which I left behind in the town), found moto got ride to Mwezi, but only to market, had to walk with giant bag of stuff uphill for another half hour and the last fifteen minutes in a monsoon. Was NOT happy (or dry) when I got home.
Sunday: We now have an orphaned girl living with us. She cares for her two younger sisters, but one day while at school they were robbed, so she is working at the parish over school break to earn some money and needed a place closer to sleep (she has to walk 3 hours to get there from her house). She’ll be here until mid-January. She is studying at the secondary school and so she speaks some English, but is very eager to learn more.

Nicknames I’ve acquired:
Mukobwajana
Akanyana kanjye
Coolwhip
Guacamole
Nyamasheke

last of october

Last Wednesday, I helped out with the pregnant ladies and there was one who was on her 12th pregnancy! I told the nun I was shocked and she said “I told her she needs to close her…” but couldn’t think of the word and all I could think was “close her legs” so I started giggling. She meant that she needed to have her tubes tied, but I thought it was hilarious. Every once in a while the language barrier is so funny.

I am now teaching the beginning English class for staff at the clinic. I usually only have 3 students or less; the two drivers and the oldest nun. I get funny calls from one of the driver every once in a while when he wants to practice his English. He will call and say “hello! How are you?” and then giggle and hang up. It’s so funny. Last Saturday was the second kids club. Way less children came. Last time we had about 50 and this time probably 20. Only a few kids were there on time and more trickled in after we started. We played games, and I taught about the importance of taking the ARV medication correctly. We taught them the hokey pokey.
Monday I went to work and was asked if I wanted to go into the village and visit the community health workers. We had to do an evaluation and look at their record keeping. The first house we went to was down almost in the valley about a 25 minute walk from the health center. When we got there, in true rwandese fashion, the guy wasn’t home and wasn’t answering his phone. His kids were there and one left to find his mom who was in the field farming. The little girl brought out some stools for us to sit on while we waited. The kid came back and told us that he couldn’t find his mom, so we just left without evaluating that guy. It was a pretty walk in a part of the village that I haven’t been to yet, so I was excited to be going that way, but the shoes I was wearing were not proper shoes to be hiking up and down the hills of Mwezi, so I got some nice blisters! The next house was on the way back to the clinic, behind the primary school and the lady was home, so she let us in and we looked over her records. When she saw us coming she came out of her house and came up to me and greeted me. She knew my name! She called me Alice, but I get that a lot. I respond to Alice, Alina, Alisa, Alicia, Ali, pretty much anything that sounds close to my name, because not many people can say my name. The record keeping is extremely fancy. Not at all what I was expecting. There are referral forms, sheets to mark down the diseases and medications given out and in what quantity and she even has an ARI timer to diagnose pneumonia. Rwanda is definitely ahead of the game when it comes to community health workers. She even showed us her container of boiled water that she drinks from. When we left she gave me a pineapple and asked me to visit again. She is a relative of one of my favorite teachers at the primary school.

Vaccination campaign and MUTZIG FEST!

Tuesday there was a campaign going on for child vaccination, so we had a big line of kids first getting medicine to rid of intestinal worms and vitamin A, then I gave polio drops and then they got a shot of measles. This went on all week and it was just utter madness. Children screaming and kicking; it was for all kids 5 and under, and let me tell you, 5 year olds who do not want a shot are DIFFICULT!!! I got kicked, punched, spit on, peed on and almost bit a few times. The kids made it so much worse because they would start squirming when the needle went in and we couldn’t hold them down and it would bend the needle or just scrape across their arm. I ended up pretty much hog tying some of the kids. There were at least 5 people trying to hold this one girl down. She was hitting and kicking and writhing, spitting and biting. I gave her the medal for the craziest of the week. In between the holding down of children and the giving of polio drops, I took the deworming meds to the schools in the village. I got to hand out the meds to all the kids in every classroom. Some kids really liked the medicine and asked me for more; I think it was cherry flavored. Thursday, we were planning on getting a ride into the capital with a friend, but he texted and told us the car broke down, so we had to rush and get a ticket on the bus early Friday morning. We got on the 6:30am bus, so we had to leave the village on the moto by 5:45. We woke up super early and got everything together, we remembered to lock up the house and walked down to the “road”. The moto driver had called and said he was coming and so we waited at the juncture at the bottom of our hill because there are two paths he could take. It was still dark out, but there were surprisingly a lot of people out and about. We waited there for quite a while and then I called him again and he said he was in the office and said “come”, so we walked to the clinic and got on the motos. After about 5 minutes of driving, the moto driver stopped and I saw that the accountant was walking, so she jumped on the moto with me and I rode on the metal part on the back again. I almost broke my ankle at one point because he turned and there was a rock sticking up and I don’t have a foot rest, so my feet were just dangling and my foot got caught on the rock and twisted backwards. It was completely loose though, so no damage was done, but it scared me so the rest of the ride I held my legs up. My bum was sore the entire weekend from holding my legs up the 25 minutes I was on the moto. We got into the capital and went to drop our bags at the hotel and then went to the office. A bunch of people were there and we ended up getting a ride to the directors house for the party. The new group of trainees arrived Thursday night, so we had a party for them at the director’s house. He had lots of wine and delicious food, so all the volunteers took advantage and we made a very interesting impression on all the newbies. Party ended around 7:30 and I got a ride home in the bus with all the trainees. I was in bed and asleep by 8:30pm, after being harassed by the Rwandan women’s soccer team who were staying in the same hotel as us. The next morning a group of us (we all usually stay at the same hotel when in the capital) went out to breakfast and then I went back to the office to try and finish up posting pictures, etc. I then went to the bank and pulled out some more money. After the bank I just went back to the hotel and lay in bed with a friend and we took a nap then went to the store and I got some cold grape juice!!! It was delicious!
Mutzig fest was starting at 6pm, so we just had to rest up until then. I went and met up with one of my trainers and he said he would come to the fest with us and he would bring a few trainees. We didn’t get onto the bus until about 7:30, but when we got to the park, I was blown away! It was a beautiful park with gardens and they had hung up strings of lights and there was a huge stage with a band and dj and there were tents everywhere with food and beer. About half the people there were white! It was so crazy to see so many white faces in one place. I kept trying to find my friends and i usually just look for the glowing face, but there were so many that I couldnt find them! It was all you can drink and all you can eat for the equivalent of about $10! Totally worth it! I had a wonderful night dancing and hanging out with friends and making new friends. I got home around 3am and woke up at 6:30 and had to get packed and eat breakfast and on the bus by 9:30. I had lost a friend during the night and so I was trying to call her and get in touch with her, but my phone had died and the power was out, so I went and banged on another volunteers door and we ended up figuring out where she was and that she was safe. The drive home was hellish! I was not feeling so well and was super tired and the bus driver stopped and yelled at a few passengers and made them switch seats and kept stopping the bus to rearrange bags and to get milk and ask for a worker and pick up a random Indian man on the side of the road. It was just ridiculous. I just wanted to get home and go to sleep! I got my own moto on the ride home, so that made me happy, nice cushy seat with foot pegs. All in all, it was an amazing weekend and I am definitely going to Mutzig fest next year!!! Oh, and the new group seems pretty cool. Already picked out the one who i want living near me.

this is a long one! my apologies

A frog decided to climb into my net and jump onto my bare leg in the middle of Sunday (9/27) night, thoroughly scaring me and causing me to lose quite a bit of sleep, because after hitting it off my leg, I couldn’t find it and was certain in was lying in wait in the folds of my blanket. It didn’t rain for 5 days this week! After the crazy storm last Saturday, nothing! So strange! It finally started again on Friday…right after I watered the plants. Forgot to say in previous post, when I went to teach on Friday (9/25) a man was standing by the gate and greeted me and then told me he just had a little boy. I congratulated him and asked him how many children he had; this one was his seventh! Then he grabbed my hand and brought me in to see his baby and I met the mom, grandma and aunt. I thought it was really cute he wanted to show me his baby. I teach English Monday, Wednesday and Fridays now to class 2, for those who do not know ANY English. It’s been interesting… I have to go very slowly, we’ve done greetings every day repeating them over and over again. Then we did the alphabet Wednesday, so they could learn to pronounce correctly. Thursday a colleague from AIDS Relief came to work with the accountant and had to stay the night. So I invited him over for dinner and cooked him a box of mac and cheese from grandpa. He thought it was delicious (I also made a salad and omelette). Then we watched Horton Hears a Who. He had it on his computer and I hadn’t seen it yet. Friday we went into Kamembe and it was a huge debacle because they said we only had one moto and it could take one person and then return and take the other, but our friend was driving into town and just picking us up on the road, so we didn’t want to make him wait. We said both of us can go on the moto together and they said “no, no, no” and then after about 10 minutes of arguing, magically the other moto appeared. We had to go on the other road because we wouldn’t have made it on time to meet him in the town on the road. We got there with time to spare and we shopped, sent things from the post office, had some lunch and came home. When we got to the town on the road, only one moto was there and he told us both to jump on. He held emily’s bag in front of him and Emily jumped on behind him and I jumped onto the back part where we usually tie our bags down. I was afraid that it would be painful sitting on the metal part, but it actually wasn’t bad at all. We got about 15 minutes in when he asked someone something and we stopped and noticed that the back tire was flat. I don’t know if it was all the extra weight or if it popped, but we all got off and got surrounded by children and adults. The adults are pretty cool cause they stop, stare, maybe say something, and usually go on their way, but the kids linger. They just stare and whisper and stick around. They rarely get up the courage to talk to you or touch you. The kids in my friends village are awesome because they aren’t shy and immediately come up to you and grab onto your hand and will play with your hair and touch you. Its gross sometimes with their grimy fingers, but its nice! I rather have people touching me and playing with me than just staring at me. That’s how the kids in Malawi and Kenya are and I loved it. The kids in my village are scared of me and too shy. The other moto went to the town on the road also, but took a strange way and they passed each other without knowing, so we had to wait for him to drop off the lab tech and come get us. He got there and Emily got on the back and he took her and dropped her off, then came back and got me. I don’t know how the other driver and moto got back.
Saturday Emily and I woke up early and got our bikes out and decided to ride to our friends house. She lives about 20km east on the main road, so we had to go the 14km of our dirt road and then the 20km to get to her. Well, the downhill part was fun. The rest was death. I rode up very few hills. I walked my bike up a lot of them. The hills are HUGE and if they’re not huge they are never-ending. It was funny passing people because they were so shocked and intrigued by the two white people on bikes with backpacks. Guess there’s never been Mormons in Mwezi. It took us 3 ½ hours to get to her house. I think its pretty impressive considering it takes 3 hours to walk just my road alone. We got going pretty fast on the downhills and took a route through the tea fields that was pretty flat so we were able to bike all of that part, but there were a few points where we were both just gasping for air and had to get off the bikes and walk them up. Theres this one hill, the last one to tackle before reaching my friends town, that just goes on forever. I think it took us over an hour to walk up. Some kids came up to us while we were walking up it and grabbed onto our bikes, so I was like “heck yes! I am soo tired and sick of pushing this thing” they had fun pushing it and one kid took my backpack from me. They were so nice! I gave them a water bottle and banana when they had to turn back. It was so nice not to have to push that thing for those 15 minutes. Then right as we got into her town a bunch of other kids came and grabbed my bike from me and onto my hands. I walked up her hill to her house with three kids on me and two kids on my bike. I was dripping with sweat and my clothes were soaked through, so we decided to go over to the guys house because they have a nice shower with hot water. All three of us showered (my friend only has a bucket bath at her house). The guys were having a party that weekend and had invited some “friends” from the city to come visit, so I got to meet some prostitutes and talk and dance with them. One of the girls let me use her blue nail polish to paint my toenails. They were very nice and sweet. I didn’t have to see or experience any of the gritty stuff, so I really liked those girls! We had a dance party at the house and they roasted an entire pig. I made a salad. The PCVs went back to my friends house and we slept all 3 in her bed. We went back to the boys house the next day cause one of the girls told us to come for lunch and Emily and I decided that we weren’t going to be able to bike home. We were too sore and exhausted! So we ended up sleeping in the guest room at the guys house that night. We watched a LOT of E! and the style network. Theres not a TV in my village and the guys have a lot of channels! Monday morning, I took another hot shower and watched the news and got a ride back to my dirt road. We had to bike home from the dirt road and it wasn’t too bad. Right as we got into our village a boy was walking by me and I asked him if he wanted to ride my bike to my house (because from that point on it was straight uphill) and he said yes, so I let him take it and I walked with my backpack. The boy even started to wash my bike for me when we got to the house because he took it through quite a few mud puddles and it was covered! I told him he didn’t have to do that and thank you and gave him a glass of water. Went to work for a few minutes because I got a text from a colleague from AIDS Relief that he had a package for me. I could hear thunder and see huge clouds, but figured I could make it to the clinic and then I’d just stay and teach and come back afterwards. But when I got down there it still wasn’t raining, so I sat down and read my readers digest from dad and mary and decided to wait the 4 ½ hours until teaching. After about 45 minutes it still wasn’t raining, but the thunder was getting louder and the clouds were now overhead. I called Emily and asked if I should make a run for it because I was bored and didn’t have anything to do for the next 4 hours and she said yes. I made it back to the house with about one minute to spare. It started dumping before I even caught my breath. The nuns came over Monday night after I got a call from one of them telling me that we left the house wide open when we left. The nuns who came over told us that around 2am Sunday the guard came and rang to bell in their house and told them that none of our lights were on and that the door was open. Apparently, he came over to the house because the lights were out and tried the side door and saw that it wasnt locked and went and got the nuns. They were afraid and that that someone was in the house and so they all came in and saw that nothing was missing and no one was inside, so they just locked all the doors. We usually give them a key to turn on our lights when we're gone, but we left so early saturday that we forgot and i cant figure out how we left the door open! we ALWAYS are so conscious about locking the doors. I feel soo bad that they got woken up and found us gone and the door open. How scary. We apologized and promised to always tell them when we are leaving and give them a key.

A friend comes to stay in Mwezi

Planted more peas and green beans on Monday. Monday night, the rain decided to go crazy and since I have this wonderful tin roofing, it made it impossible to sleep. I tried to watch an episode of scrubs, but couldn’t hear a thing even with the volume at max. I find myself singing the scrubs theme song when I get ditched at work. Sometimes they’ll just leave me to fend for myself, and since my language skills are not amazing, I don’t get much accomplished, especially when left to fill out patient charts. Crazy thunder and lightning storm Tuesday while cooking dinner, almost pooped my pants when lightning pretty much struck right outside kitchen door. Loudest scariest sound ever! I was shaking for about an hour afterwards, I think my heart stopped beating. Wednesday the power went out in the morning and we didn’t get it back until late Thursday afternoon. Emily and I were pretty much inconsolable. What is this real peace corps experience?! I want my electricity back!!! And I have to say, I am sooo happy to have it back. Had to go charge my phone at the bank Thursday during work, since it is the only place in my entire village that has a generator. I was getting worried because we don’t have one and the vaccines were in a fridge with no electricity! Oh, and I have a new aspiration to be a sheep farmer and use all natural dyes and sell the yarn to crazy hippies in America for a profit.
Friday my friend who lives in Gisakura came to visit. She waited until after work to start on her way, so she showed up in the dark. It started raining and she still wasn’t here, Emily and I were getting a little worried, so I sent her a text message and got one back saying that shes stuck, that the gate is locked. So, I went running out to get her, in the middle of the thunderstorm with only lightening lighting my way, I lost my shoes, kicked mud up my back, my glasses fogged up and there was the loudest thunder ever, in which both of us screamed bloody murder at the top of our lungs but did not hear the other. The next morning I confessed to my embarrassing scream and she confessed to the same and we realized that neither of us heard the other. Three girls followed her to my house, so we took them inside and had them wait out the rain. They were soaked head to toe and were freezing. I was only outside 5 minutes or so and was completely soaked through. There was another giant thunderclap (or lightning bolt, I really can’t tell which is causing this ear shattering sound) and we reacted worse than the three small girls. It’s indescribable how loud the thunder is here. During the entire storm there are only 2 or 3 of these ear drum breaking thunders, but every time it scares the living daylights out of me and sets my heart running and my hands shaking for an hour afterwards. Emily and I were almost in tears after the one on Wednesday. Anyways, the rain finally stopped and the thunder and lightning passed on to the hill behind me. We had a fun night and Saturday morning decided to go for a walk. Well, we ended up walking with a group of kids and one teacher whom we met on a previous walk and he took us with him until we started going to the bottom of the valley. It was getting really steep and we knew we were going to have to walk back up eventually, so we left before reaching the bottom and took the path he told us would take us home. Well, that path ended up taking us to the bottom of the valley anyways, after traversing over a few rivers we finally started going up again. And we went up and up and up! The last hour or more of our walk was straight up. We all almost keeled over and died. It was about 11am at this point, the sun was beating down on us and the humidity was ridiculous. I don’t know how we made it back, but when we finally did we all just collapsed. I think that hike took a few years of my life with it. After lunch, we packed up and headed to the clinic for the first ever “abana bo muri club”; the club for the kids at my clinic with HIV. It went well, except the Rwandan who was helping us kept it going for 2 hours! I was planning on only an hour. The poor kids were exhausted. Kate, Emily and I went for a drink at the restaurant afterwards to wait for her moto to take her home. Sunday, the kids who helped Kate get here in the rain came by to visit and then Theodore came to visit. We didn’t leave the house.

my week

I have been in the process of making a dress, I have cut out the fabric, but the amount of sewing seemed too daunting and all I could think about was how quick it would be to do on a sewing machine, so I went over to the nuns and asked if they had a machine I could use. They did and said I could bring my stuff over and we’d work on it. Well, sister Dormina is a pretty good tailor and decided to take over. She measured me, recut my fabric and sewed my dress. I helped her to understand what I wanted it to look like and showed her how to put it together, but she did the majority of the work and I finished the dress in one day! I got my inspiration from the show Rome, which I’ve been watching on my computer. I’ll take a picture and post it of my dress soon. One day after work, I heard a knock on the door and three boys were there, they said hi and that they wanted to visit. So I talked to them for a while then Emily came out and she recognized them as the boys who walked with her when she went out the other week. We looked through their class books and I ended up correcting some of the English and then I got out my Kinyarwanda book that I used in training and they had a fun time reading the dialogues. Emily got a small football in one of her packages, so we got that out and played catch. The boys didn’t stay a ridiculous amount of time and they were the ones who said that they were going to leave. It was really nice. I hate being bombarded and then feeling uncomfortable when people stay forever and it gets awkward because you no longer have anything to talk about. I went into town on Friday and picked up packages and bought some groceries and had lunch with two friends. On the way back the moto driver said he couldn’t come get me for another 3 hours, so I decided to go back with my friend and hang out, but just as we were passing my town on the road, I got a call saying the ambulance was coming to the clinic and I could just get a ride in there. So my friend turned around and dropped me off in town. A co-worker was in town, so I talked with her and we both went down to the dirt road to meet the ambulance. Two men carried my boxes for me and we all sat down together on the bridge to wait for the ambulance. Well, two hours later, I was informed that the ambulance actually wasn’t coming, so the moto driver will come get me now. He took longer than usual (about an hour vs. half hour) and the guys who were sitting with me decided we should start walking. They carried my boxes and my helmet for me, so I just had my backpack. We walked for about 25 minutes and the moto showed up, but he had the lab tech on the back and had to take her to town, so he passed us and went into town and we kept walking until he came back to get me. I have had terrible luck with transportation as of late. I think I’ll just stay in my village for a while. Saturday, Emily and I went to our host families house, she had been in the fields so she was all dirty and they had a wedding to attend, so we held and played with the baby while she washed and got dressed. Emily’s mom sent some cloth diapers, so we showed her how to use them and gave her a box full. She was really surprised and happy. I hope she understands how to use them correctly. This is her first baby, so she’ll get a lot of use out of them through the years. There are these square pieces of plastic that most babies wear, moms put a piece of igitenge (the cloth they all wear as skirts) and then tie the plastic around the babies. After that we ate lunch and when I was laying in bed reading, I heard someone yell “mwiriwe!” and they sounded really close. Most kids yell from the fence but this kid sounded like he was at the door, which was wide open. I got up and went to see who it was and if they were in my yard and didn’t see anyone but saw that the gate was open, so I went to close it and a boy came running towards me. He asked if I wanted to play soccer, so I told him I was coming and went to put on my shoes. When I got to the field, he and another boy (they’re about 8) were sitting down so I went and sat with them and we just sat in silence for a while. A mom sent over her 7 children to greet me and the kids weren’t scared of me! This little boy about 3 and his 2 year old sister came up to me and said hello, how are you (in Kinya, not English). It was so cute. After that the boys and I got up and started kicking the ball around. We played for a while and it was really nice, I didn’t get surrounded and stared at. Three girls about the same age as the boys came up and stared at me for a bit, but then they started practicing their dancing. So, the six of us were on the field, kicking the soccer ball and dancing. It was a good time.

Crazy transportation issues and a party with puppies!!

Friday I got a ride in the ambulance to the hospital where another volunteer works. We were both going to a party that weekend, so I thought I would just hang out at her house until we were picked up and then they only had to make one stop. Well, she didn’t pick up her phone before I left, so I didn’t know that she went into town for the day. I got to her hospital and went to her house and sat on her front porch for an hour or so, then I got hungry, so I stashed my bags in her little storage place outside and went to the cantina at the hospital and bought a hard boiled egg and a banana. I went and sat on her back porch and ate my lame lunch, then sat back on the front porch, but the sun was getting too hot, so I went back to the back porch for a while, then decided to move and i saw a little girl staring at me through the bushes. I said hi and she came up to me and gave me a hug and asked me to teach her English. I told her to come back tomorrow and went and laid on the grass on the side of the house. I laid there for about an hour listening to my ipod, then my phone battery was getting low, so I packed up and headed for the hospital. I went into the office building and no one was there, so I just sat outside. The anestesiologist, whom I met during a dance party came and sat with me and I charged my phone while we talked and listened to music. I got a hold of the guy who was picking us up and so I started walking to the main road because he had never been to her house and didn’t know where it was. Half way down the dirt road, a taxi went by and my friend was on it. I was already on my way and he didn’t know how to get to her house, so I decided I would keep going and meet him at the road and we could come pick her up afterwards. When I got to the main road, I got a call from him saying he would be there in a half hour! I left too early. One of the doctors came by with a volleyball and a net and asked if I wanted to play, so I said sure and went with them. There was a soccer game going on with a the entire primary school and some secondary school kids, so I got surrounded and they came in really close. I got a little claustrophobic. Then I got a call from my friend saying that he forgot his license at home and the police pulled him over and wont let him drive, can I drive stick and do I have my license on me? He said he would pay for my moto to the road he was stuck at, but I needed to come now and drive the truck. My manual driving skills leave a LOT to be desired, so I called my friend who was packing at her house and said she needed to come now, we have to take a taxi and drive the truck. About 50 children decided to follow me from the game and surround me while I was trying to talk to my friend on the phone and just stood and stared at me for the 20 or so minutes before my friend met me. By the time she got to me, my friend had called and said he was on his way; the police let him go. We sat around for quite a while until he called and asked where her town was and if we were on the main road. Long story short, he was about 25 minutes from her town thinking he had already passed us, so he kept turning around and around but never going far enough. We finally started walking and told him to just keep driving, that he wasn’t where he thought he was and we found him on the road. There were already three other people in the truck besides the driver, so we had to squish in. Two of our other friends met them on their dirt road and said they would just walk until they picked us up and then we could take them the rest of the way. Well, since getting lost and finding us took so long, the ended up almost walking the whole way (almost an hour driving!). We finally got them and a friend and I sat in the back with all the bags, it was dark by this time. Dinner was amazing, we had pizza and salad with two kinds of lettuce!!! Their dog had seven puppies, and two of them are named after gossip girl characters. I got to hold and cuddle them all weekend, they were only two weeks old. That night we had a sweet dance party and finally crashed around 2am. Saturday, we went to the lake and had a picnic lunch and then watched movies after a delicious dinner of burritos (with homemade tortillas, which took forever to make considering there were 11 of us!). Sunday, we had tortilla chips and guacamole for breakfast, played some bananagrams (themed Michael Jackson and things you miss from home), watched some Gossip Girl on the projection screen and then got into the truck just as it started raining. The car fogged up so badly we had to keep wiping it down every few seconds and it was raining so hard we couldn’t see and had to stop in the middle of the road for a while until we regained a little visibility. And it started hailing at one point! I was so afraid I was going to have to take the moto in that ridiculous rain, but thankfully by the time we got to my town on the road, it had stopped. They dropped me off there and although I called beforehand and asked for the moto to be in the town at 3:30 (I didn’t get there until 4:15) it didn’t show up until almost five. When my moto driver arrived, a drunk policeman who was not on duty, came over and took the key out of the bike and was pushing my backpack off of the moto and saying that he couldn’t drive me (the drivers from my clinic don’t have driving permits). The police guy who was talking to me the half hour I was standing in town helped and we finally got on our way. He sent me a message while we were driving that I didn’t answer which said “sorry, that man was drunk, he can drive you home now and come get his key tomorrow”. The moto driver stopped two or three times to tell his debacle to others on the road (we had to go the back way, so we were on the foot path the first part of the drive and it was super muddy and full of puddles and the rounded log bridges where not fun to driver over), then the police guy called me because I didn’t respond to his text message and I talked to him for a while and he said sorry and then I gave the phone to the driver and they talked and I heard him say “muzungu…abanyarwanda babi….afite ubwoba” meaning something about me thinking Rwandans are bad and that I was scared. Then he passed the phone back to me and the policeman apologized yet again and told me not to have fear and that he would buy me a fanta tomorrow when he came into my village to return the key. I got home in the dark and the policeman never showed up to buy me my fanta.

September, week 1

So, we’re down to two piglets now. The sick one that wasn’t walking died. I went over to the nuns to cook dinner Sunday night again and two of the priests were there, so we ended up in the living room talking with them for about an hour. There was a mom and a little boy outside the house and the boy was afraid of our white skin and would cry if we tried to get too close to him… it happens a lot. Sister Mary came over earlier in the day and we had an English lesson with her.
Monday, I stayed home with the umukobwa and sister mary came over to help me plant some seeds. We planted squash, spinach and sweet basil. The carrots are coming along nicely, a few more weeks and they’ll be ready to pick. I already pulled one up, but I want to wait to pull the others until they are bigger.
Tuesday, I worked in child vaccination. Gave some polio vaccine, weighed babies and measured mid-upper arm circumference.
Wednesday, I measured moms and got them tested for HIV. Didn’t do a condom demonstration this time. I also found a secret room in the maternity ward where the moms who work at the clinic keep their babies so they can come breastfeed throughout the day. I got to hold one of the babies and she wasn’t scared of me! While I was taking blood pressure and measuring bellies, it started to rain. I had done laundry that morning, so I told the nun “oh no, my clothes!” and she said “go quickly”, so I ran home early and got my clothes off the line. Its been raining like crazy!!! What I remember of the rainy season was rains once a day, we’ve been getting it multiples times a day at random times. It rained all night Tuesday, then again around 11:30 Wednesday morning and then again later in the evening. Thursday it didn’t start raining until around 3:30. It rained at 1pm Monday.

guinea pigs and piglets

Monday, I woke in the dark to another earthquake! I’ve only lived here 7 months and have had 3 earthquakes so far. Work was pretty boring again, one of my coworkers from AIDS Relief was here, so I hung out with him and played on the computer. Tuesday I helped with child vaccination and entered some data into the computer, but pretty much just played on my phone. I am getting super excited about starting this club for the kids because then I’ll actually have something to do and look forward to. Wednesday, I weighed and measured moms, took blood pressure and got them and their husbands tested for HIV. We had one girl who was on her second pregnancy at 21 and is not married. The nun was not too happy with her and she got a bit of a lecture. She is the first single mother I have run into the entire time I’ve been here, so that’s not too bad. After lunch on Wednesday, I decided to get some exercise (cold showers are more tolerable if you are hot before hand) and got out my jump rope. The girl who cleans my floors was here helping till the garden and when she saw me jumping she came over and I gave her the rope and she jumped and sang a song and taught me some of the song. We had a fun time playing. Thursday, Emily and I left work early because we were just sitting around doing nothing. We were supposed to have a meeting with out titulaire about getting the club going and other things we have seen at the clinic that we would like to change, but one of her friends had passed and she was going to their funeral, so we left early and went on a walk after lunch and ended up at a primary school where they were playing soccer. It was crazy, but not overwhelmingly. The kids surrounded us and one of the teachers greeted us and then started telling the kids that we were there to look at their hygiene. He told them that we wanted to see if they were wearing clean clothes and wearing shoes, one kid said that he was doing laundry, so that’s why he was in dirty clothes. I asked them where they washed their hands because I didn’t see a hand-washing station outside of the latrines and a boy told me he washed them in the river. I told them they needed to drink clean water, that they need to boil it before hand and I took their picture. So a walk through town ended up being one of the only health lessons I have given! I am planning on making a tippy tap for the school and giving a hand-washing lesson to them when I bring it. The teacher was really helpful and when he was showing us the way home, (he showed us a different way than the way we came, which ended up being an hour hike up the side of a mountain!!!) he would give short hygiene lessons to the people who asked about us.
Friday, I went to work and weighed pregnant women and took their blood pressure and then went into town to go to the bank and buy some more time for the internet. The moto driver took me in a different direction and it was a beautiful drive! We went up a giant hill, possibly the largest in the area, I was looking down on everything! Then we went through a pine forest that looked like Spokane, we passed tea fields and a large house that he said Americans used to live in and arrived on the main road where I took a taxi bus into town. I forgot how much I don’t like public transport here, I got too spoiled with my South African friends who have cars. I didn’t spend too much time in town, the bank went really quickly and then I was back on a bus and back to the dirt path where the moto driver met me. He had to go to the hospital to drop some papers off. On the way back, I saw a little boy holding two guinea pigs! Never seen a guinea pig in Africa before, so I was thoroughly confused! Saturday I slept in, watched a lot of Weeds season 4, read my book, went to the shop and bought eggs, black thread and elastic (I’m making a few dresses and a skirt, really wish I had a sewing machine!) Heard the pig next door screaming and went over to see if they were killing her only to see a little pink piglet! I was standing peeking through the fence slats and saw two men in the stall with her and noticed she had huge nipples and figured they cant be killing a pregnant pig, so I kept watching until one of the guys came out holding a little baby. I went over there and saw three piglets, one of which was too tired and couldn’t walk. He kept getting his ears bitten by one of the other ones and mom was too tired to do anything and lay down so they couldn’t feed. The guy kept whacking her with a stick telling her to get up and she couldn’t. I went over to the nuns to cook dinner because we ran out of gas and was told that the momma pig was sick and needed calcium? I dunno...

Last weeks of August

Emily’s friend left Wednesday morning and it was sad. It was fun having her here. We stayed and worked and came back to teach English at 4pm, but no one showed up, so we sat outside the clinic with the two nuns that work there and had a good time laughing at the one nun who knows no English and who was trying to learn. Her pronunciation is terrible, but hilarious, and we were all laughing and joking with her. After a while of that, we all walked home together. Emily got a little sick Thursday morning, so we both just stayed home that day. That evening, one of the teachers from the primary school came over to help us learn Kinyarwanda. He is a really good teacher, but I just need help speaking and he had us writing stories, etc. Friday, I went to work by myself because Emily was still not feeling well and I took the blood pressure of about 60 women and when I was getting ready to go home for lunch, one of the nuns ran into the exam room, grabbed something and ran back out. The nun who speaks English told me to go with her, so I followed her into the labor and delivery room and there was a mom on the table with the baby on her abdomen. He was too tired from the delivery and was having trouble breathing. He was quite blue, so we put a respirator mask on him and sucked the gunk out of his mouth and nose. Then they took him and put him on the table and put a piece of gauze soaked in alcohol on his chest. I don’t know why, but it seemed to work. We kept shaking him and using the respirator, and he was doing better when I left. I don’t know if he made it or not. All the blood and guts from the mom were still everywhere and the smell in the room didn’t go over well with my stomach and I got really faint and lost the hearing in my right ear, so I had to leave. I don’t know how many births you have to attend before the pain and blood and guts don’t affect you in that way, but I am definitely not there yet.
Saturday, I took the moto to the town on the road and my friend picked me up. We went into town and bought a few things and then picked up my other friend and we went to the hot springs. It was quite a different experience than the last time I was there. It was overcast and kind of cold, so the hot water actually felt good (last time it was so hot out the hot springs felt like a sauna, it was not nice) and children did not surround us and stare at us for hours on end. It was really nice. We all came back to my house and I made fried rice for everyone and we listened to music.
Sunday, my friend realized he had left his camera at the hot springs, so he wanted to drive back and see if it was still there. His truck is only a two seater, but Saturday he had a mattress in the back that I just laid down on. Sunday, he had taken the mattress out in his search, so Emily and I both sat in the seat together, me on top of her. Let me tell you how painful and uncomfortable a ride it was! This is a terrible dirt road with many twists and turns and ups and downs and I thought I was going to die. It takes about an hour to drive to the hot springs from my house, so by the time we got back I was in pain! He didn’t find his camera and we were all really glad we didn’t come to swim that day because as soon as we started driving in, the truck got surrounded by children. I’ve got some nice bruises from that drive.
Monday was super boring. I went into work while Emily stayed home with our house girl. I went into the ARV room where one of the girls was handing out medicine and I helped her enter data into the computer. That lasted about 45 minutes and then I just played a lot of solitaire. I got bored of that and decided to go through patient files and found that there are quite a few who have not come back after being diagnosed. One woman was diagnosed when she was pregnant and hasn’t been back to the clinic for a check up in 416 days! This really worries me because the child needs to be checked out and she needs to know the correct way to care for her child so it doesn’t contract the virus. The rest of the week was pretty boring as well, not much going on. I did teach Kangaroo Mother Care to some of the staff though, so hopefully that will be implemented when necessary and I gave a condom demonstration to a group of people, and again there was an old (60’s or 70’s) man who I had practice and it was really awkward and he had no idea how to do it. He kept saying, “I’m old; I don’t need to use condoms”.
On Friday though, all of the Nyamasheke crew met in Cyangugu and we had lunch together and hung out and ran some errands. I had 6 boxes at the post office!!!! All my packages got caught up somewhere and were delivered all at once. We went back to Tricia’s house and had a good dinner with wine she brought back from South Africa and watched a movie. The next day wasn’t so good. I got stuck trying to get home at every instance and I almost flipped my lid. 7 months of being stared at and followed and talked about kinda wears on you and you go a little crazy. Emily and I were not happy campers after that experience and we just stayed in the house on Sunday. Work was fine during the week, had another condom demonstration to the pregnant women and their husbands, gave out polio vaccine to babies and weighed and measured them. We had a few newborns who still had a bunch of gunk of them, it was kinda gross.
Oh, and when I was working in the ARV room Monday, a young boy (probably 12) came in and I met him and talked to him and then he came back to the clinic on Tuesday and when I was at Tricia’s house, I walked over to the hospital to go to the cantina to buy some eggs in the morning and he was at the hospital! I talked to him and asked if he was sick and when he was returning to Mwezi. He didn’t know. I hope to make friends with some of the kids and get to know them by name. Supposedly my organization gives my clinic money to do a club thing with the HIV+ kids, but I have never heard of it, so I am going to ask my titulaire about it and see if I can get it up and running.

Sorry I haven’t written in so long, my internet decided to crap out on me, so I haven’t been able to get on and do things. I turned in my culminating paper for my MPH program and now I am DONE!! J

IST in Kibuye

I had a weeklong meeting in Kibuye with Peace Corps. It was really fun to see everyone again and the hotel was right on the lake. I went into Kigali on Saturday with a friend and on the way there we had to stop in the middle of the road going through the forest because a huge troop of about 20 baboons were all over the road. My friend had to go into the city because some of his workers had gotten in trouble at the airport for being drunk and got arrested, so he had to go try and get them out and onto the next flight. I drove around with him to the jail and to the embassy and then back to the jail and it was just a crazy day with no one being helpful. Makes for a funny story now, but it was frustrating then. Sunday when I tried to get my bus to Kibuye for the meeting, the guy who told me his bus was going, I only had to wait for it to fill, decided to go to another town instead after me waiting around for an hour and a half and then I couldn’t find another going, so I had to call PC and tell them I couldn’t make it. Turns out a few other people didn’t make it either, so I bought tickets for the three of us for Monday morning and we all made it there safely. The meetings were long and kind of boring, but it was interesting to see what everyone has been doing at their sites and on Friday we had a really useful presentation on Kangaroo Mother Care. It’s an innovative way to care for low birth weight babies in settings where there are no incubators. I want to introduce it to my clinic and teach it to the community health workers, in case they run into a home birth and the baby is small and the mom cannot make it to the clinic.
Wednesday afternoon we all took a boat out to Amahoro island and had lunch there and went swimming. I swam to two other islands and caught a fish with my bare hands! On the island there was also a monkey tied to a tree. It was sad. People kept giving him food and we filled a water bottle with soda, and then later on with some beer and he enjoyed it. Almost every day after the meetings I went swimming. The hotel is right on the lake and it was so beautiful, I didn’t want to leave. I got a ride with PC back into Kigali on Friday afternoon and stayed with a friend. One of Emily’s friends who is a PCV in Cameroon came on Friday, so we all went out to dinner and she is going to come stay with us for a few days. I got lucky and got a ride home in a CRS car, so all in all, I only had to take one three hour bus this whole week! I had to squish into the back seat with 3 other people and I had the belt buckle up my bum the whole ride, but its better than the giant buses with people puking. On the radio there was a talk show and interspersed with the talking was a guitar solo of away in a manger… so strange. Right when we got into the forest there was a huge troop of baboons again! So, I got to see them on the way out and on the way back in. I got dropped off at the town on the road and took a moto back to my house. It was getting kind of late and the sun was starting to go down and over the tea fields there was a rainbow; very nice welcome home after 9 days away.
Monday, I heard some kids outside yelling “good morning” to me, so I went outside and talked to them for a minute and then told them I couldn’t visit because I was sick. Later a group of about 15 people came and were yelling at me from my fence and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with that many people, so I just hid inside the house. Then after they left (they stayed for about 20 minutes) I heard some crunching leaves and went out to see who was here now and it was 4 little kids, no more than 8 years old. I knew one of the girls, so I talked to them for a while and gave them some empty bottles I had lying around the house. I went back inside and then heard a branch snap and giggling, so I went out and saw one of the kids on top of the fence climbing over and then two came around the corner, who had already jumped the fence. I yelled at them and told them they were bad and it’s not okay to climb my fence and showed them out. They didn’t leave and I got really frustrated. Emily and her friend showed up while I was still dealing with the kids, so I didn’t notice that they were still around and then there was a big group of many kids of all different ages. They started yelling “good morning” and “what is your name” at us and I told them to leave and they wouldn’t go and so my girl who cleans the house once a week came and yelled at them. We decided we should burn the trash pit, since that was the impetus for the jumping of the fence (they wanted to grab things out of it, which is why I was so angry at them…I don’t want them playing with garbage!), so we set the pit on fire and went back inside. We heard some yelling and Emily came out to put her laundry in and she starts yelling “Ali, Ali, Ali, I NEED YOUR HELP!!” I ran outside and our fence was on fire. It’s the dry season so there are a lot of dried leaves and the fire jumped out of the pit, burned the dried leaves on the ground and then caught our fence on fire. So we all started filling buckets and throwing water onto the fence, all the while the kids are still yelling “good morning” (it was about 4:30pm at this time) and “what is your name”. I was so annoyed and fed up with the kids that I yelled at them and then went and got one of the nuns. She came over and they disappeared. Nuns are very respected and since our house and the fields around it is their property, the kids knew to take off.

summary of July

Highlights:

My host family’s first and only baby was baptized. I went to the church thinking it was a private baptism only to find out that about 50 other babies were being baptized at the same time!! The priest dipped his hand in water and just flung it out over the crowd of parents holding their babies. Then we took pictures outside the church and walked to the family’s house to continue the celebration. It was super long and I got very tired and bored.

Went into Kigali for medical reasons and ended up sitting in the hospital for about 3 hours, then I got stuck in the exam room afterwards (they guy said, okay we are finished, but the door I had come in he locked and didn’t unlock afterwards and he didn’t turn the lights back on so I was confused and just sat there for about 10 minutes until he came back in and said okay you can go), and then, I got locked in the bathroom and a maintenance guy had to come let me out. Met up with a lot of other volunteers and had a lot of good food! Really, really fun weekend.

A funny conversation I had with a girl at the clinic after I got back:

Me: I had pizza in Kigali!
Girl 1: Oh, pizza, I love pizza, you will make me pizza? I want to eat some pizza.
Me: Sure, I just need to build an oven first, then you can come over and we’ll eat pizza.
Girl 2: What’s pizza?
Girl 1: I don’t know.

Went to Kigali again with a friend and saw the Seattle Sounders vs. Chicago game on the TV!

I now am a pro at taking blood pressure using the cuff and stethoscope.

I got to see the twin babies whom I felt in the moms belly when she brought them in for vaccination.

First week of July

Mama came over Wednesday afternoon to help me make the peanut sauce she served us and brought baby and her niece. Emily played with the kids while mom and I cooked. Then I got to play with them for a little bit before they left. We got out the bubbles and seasame street books and some paper and colored pencils. It was pretty fun. The food though didn’t turn out so well. I think the peanuts I bought went bad. They smelled kinda funny, but she didn’t seem to mind, so I thought it’d be okay. It wasn’t. It was gross. On Thursday, I helped with VCT (voluntary counseling and testing). I sat and listened while my counterpart talked about how to prevent HIV and the ways HIV is transmitted. I had brought a little booklet with me that is in Kinyarwanda and he used that for teaching. Then he asked me if I had any questions for them. I didn’t know what to say, so I asked, how can you prevent HIV? (which I am sure he already went over) Someone said wear a condom, so then I added wear it correctly and then I asked them if they knew how to correctly use a condom in terrible kinya (mubizi gute gukoresha neza agakingirizo-you know how to use well a condom?), but it got the point across. They said they didn’t know, so we got out the wooden penis and did a demonstration. We also had a female condom and one of the women looked really interested in it and asked how to use it, but my counterpart didn’t want to open it and show her because there were picture instructions on the package. My favorite guy of the day was a 73 year old man who was wearing a Sponge Bob t-shirt. He answered most of the questions and giggled like a girl when we brought out the wooden penis.
Friday, I measured bellies like always and found a mom who had twins in her. She was 36 centimeters and I couldn’t find the head. The nurse tried and couldn’t find it either and then determined that its because this giant belly is because she has twins, so we had to send her to the hospital.
Saturday, I got picked up by some guys who live near Kate. They are building a resort by the forest. We had met them when we were in town a few weeks ago and she had seen them a few times near her work. They came and picked us up and we went to the hot springs. None of us had been there before, so we were just driving along and had to ask a few people along the way if we were going the right way. We finally made it there and it was a beautiful day. It was too hot outside for the springs to feel good, so we all got in for a few moments and then just hung out on the grass drinking and talking. We had a crowd of about 8 people just staring at us and then a giant group of school children came and were just standing around us staring at us for about an hour. It got old really fast and one of the guys decided to chase the kids. He lunged at them and chased them all over the park and then every time he moved after that the kids would jump back thinking he was going to chase them again. One of the guys asked us to teach him something in Kinya that he oculd say to the kids so kate told him to say mfite impiswi (I have diarrhea). They thought that was pretty funny. After about 2 hours of being stared at, a guard type guy came around with a stick and herded the kids away. I was so thankful. I am not that interesting, I have no idea what they could’ve found so entertaining about us just sitting on the grass talking. After the hot springs, we went into town to get some food for a braai (South African bbq). They made steak, chicken and cheese sandwiches and a salad. It was delicious, but I got peer pressured into eating a bite of chicken and now mfite impiswi. We drank drinks and watched music videos and played with their pet pig. We spent the night at their house and then on Sunday morning we all went to the lake. Of course, Sunday it was a bit cooler, so the lake was cold. But it was still really nice. We all swam out to the floating dock and laid in the sun, then hung out on the grass. After the lake, we went to a restaurant that’s on a cliff overlooking the lake and got some food and drinks. Then they drove us home. It was a really nice weekend. Two of the guys are from South Africa and one is from Siberia, so the mix of accents was interesting. They like the way we say bananas, but not how we say tomato. One of them kept making fun of us saying do you want a banana or a banAna. I learned a few words in South African slang, so I’ll totally fit in when I go down there for world cup. Haha.

Pictures corresponding to blog posts

Its the same album as always, but just jump to the end to see the new ones.

Mwezi

End of the week-Meeting with PC

Thursday we had our regional meeting with PC in Kamembe. We left in the morning on the motos and about 15 minutes into the drive, we see a gigantic mass of people on the road. We had seen people running and going in big groups together, but thought that it must be an ubukwe (wedding), but when we saw about 200+ people on the road blocking our path, singing and beating drums, we had second thoughts. Weddings here are usually huge, but don’t take up the entire road! I guess there was so pilgrimage type thing going on with the catholic church and people were walking from my town to who knows where. Well anyways, so we got past the stragglers in the back, but could not get through the masses, so we would stop and wait a while, then ride up to behind the big mass and repeat. Finally we went off onto a footpath and were able to stay on that for a while until we headed them off. While on the footpath, passing people was so funny because 1. there are never motos on the path, and 2. we are white. The look of shock mixed with confusion was priceless. We waved a lot while on that path. It was a beautiful drive and I wish I would’ve been able to get out my camera more to take pictures. When we got close to the paved road, the motos stopped and we had to walk the rest of the way to the town on the road because the police were stopping people up ahead to check for insurance. I think my moto driver is not registered to be a taxi, so he is not allowed on the main road. When we got into the taxi, the police man we were talking to in town got in with us and when we were almost to Kamembe, we pulled up behind this giant truck and there was a boy hanging onto the back. Well the truck was going very slowly up this hill, so the police man jumped out and as soon as the boy saw him, he jumped off and ran into the woods and the police man chased him for a second then got back into the ibisi (taxi bus-its really just a minivan) and we kept going. When we got into town, we went into a shop that has a refrigerator and got cold yogurt and drinks and then went into the market to look at igitenge (fabric used to wrap as a skirt). As soon as we stepped out of the shop, four boys started asking us for money. One of them grabbed my hand and started shaking my arm and wouldn’t let go for the next 20 minutes and followed me all through the market. I just ignored him after the first few minutes and attempts at saying no to him. He finally gave up after we left the market and went to the post office. My favorite driver came and got us and took us to the center where we had lunch and started the meeting. After the meeting, we all went out to a hotel by the lake and had drinks and ordered dinner. The soccer matches were on the TV, so I got to see the US beat Spain and then Brazil beat South Africa. The power went out after the US/Spain game for about a half hour. The hotel didn’t have a generator, so we sat by candle light and with a huge lantern waiting for dinner. The driver and I were hanging out in the car listening to a CD he put in and the Cops theme song came on. I sang the part that goes “whatcha gonna do when they come for you” and the driver said “I’m gonna run”! haha. Then we got into a conversation about how in Rwanda if you don’t drink a lot of beer with your friends they ask “Uri inkoko?” (are you a chicken?) and I explained that that is called peer pressure and we use the same phrase in the US. I split a vegetarian pizza and lasagna for dinner with one of the other volunteers and no one wanted to try the lasagna! I tried to share and pass the plate around, but all the Rwandans looked at it like it was poison. When we got back to the center, the game was on and a bunch of men were all sitting around watching it. I was the only woman. That night, I slept okay, but I woke up to a dog barking like crazy and then the church bells rang for I swear 5 minutes straight at 6am, the bell tower was right behind my building. The center was beautiful. It was located on top of a hill that overlooked the lake and Bukavu, DRC. The conference room was pretty sweet too; it was a circular building with an amazing view. We got really lucky on the way home, we got a ride with PC to the town on the road and the motos were there waiting for us. Saturday we sat around the house doing nothing and then on Sunday, we went for a hike up the huge hill next to us. The hill isn’t that bad, but the path has no switchbacks so it just goes straight vertical! We were dying, but met a lot of people on the way and got followed by a bunch of kids. When we got to the top, the road continued on pretty much on a flat, so we went along that and found a little town. After our sweaty adventure, we jumped into the shower quickly and then the nun took us to visit our resource family (FINALLY!). They live pretty close and they have a 4 month old baby boy. He is so cute. We just played with him and they gave us fantas and some food and we got stuck because it started raining. But if you have visitors and it starts raining they say you are good visitors (abasitsi beza) because you brought the rain.

Quick update

I walked home with the nun who is a nurse at the clinic and speaks pretty good English, and I asked her about the babies I saw on Monday (she usually works in maternity, so I knew she would know. Also Rwandese's favorite past time is talking about anything and everything and everyone). She told me that it was a spontaneous abortion caused by the mother working too hard. Women here are so strong and work so hard, in the fields and carrying pounds and pounds of produce up and down the hills to the markets. This particular woman had walked all the way to a big town to sell at the market there. The town is almost 3 hours by bus! She got home and felt some pain so she came to the clinic. She was very sad they had died and she will be burying them in her garden. The nun thinks they were 5 months old. If she was in the U.S. they probably could've been saved.

I can’t keep track of what happens

On Thursday, I was helping out with the child vaccination again and one of the nurses came to say hello to me, so I asked where he was working today and he told me he was working in psychiatry that day for people who were affected by the genocide. I didn’t know we had this service, so I asked him if I could come see and he showed me the paper he fills out while talking to people. It went over trauma, mental health problems, asked if the patient has any scars, and a few other things, that I couldn’t translate. He saw people of all ages, from old widows to young girls in secondary school. I am very interested in and elated that we have this type of service. Mental health care is very difficult to come across in lower income countries. Before teaching English and the crazy rain, the neighbors came to visit again and the oldest girl and one of the smaller ones braided my hair into about 10 lopsided uneven braids. I didn’t care. It felt so good to have someone touch my head. I gathered them all up and put them into a pony to go to class.
So, on Friday during the testing of pregnant mothers, one woman came in whose husband was HIV+ and she was not. The nun had me get everyone else out of the room and she shut the door to talk to this woman. She was asking her if her husband uses condoms and the woman said that he refuses and started crying. We tried to console her and talk to her and the nun asked her to bring her husband in and they would test her again and talk to the husband, but I could see the fear and frustration and pain that this woman felt. There is no way for her to make her husband use a condom and she knows that she will contract the virus and die. Her husband is dealing her the card of death, putting the whole family at risk. The children already born will be orphaned and the one in her belly might also get the virus and die, but there is nothing she can do about it. She cannot say no, and even if she does, it won’t help because there is no such thing as rape inside of marriage. I almost started to cry, but my friend came in, so I went to meet her. I tried telling Emily about it, but found that I could not without bursting into tears in front of everyone. Its just so frustrating having no hope, knowing that there is this thing you can prevent, but not having the power to prevent it. I am still so angry about it and so sad for the woman, but know that I can’t do anything about it and she is unable to do anything about it. I just hope that the nun will be able to talk some sense into the husband and let him know that he needs to protect his family; he cannot leave his children without any parents. Its terrible and sad that he has this virus, but it wont do any good for his wife to contract it as well.
Monday, I helped out with family planning and then got the list of drugs in our pharmacy to make a pharmacy sheet. Right now, everything is hand written in a book, as it comes up, so you have to look through what you wrote for the day every time you have another patient (to record how much is being used), so I decided to make a sheet in alphabetical order with a place to record how much is used and the totals for the day. Then we went to the market, ate lunch and went to teach English. While I was rounding up students, one of the girls took me into the birthing room and I thought she was going to check how much one of the women was dilated, but instead ended up pulling out two fetuses and showed them to me. I knew what was it was before I saw them. They were wrapped in paper and put into a box and just sitting on the shelf. I am pretty surprised that I had no reaction to them. I still don’t really. I don’t know how I feel about it. I am not disgusted, or sad or angry. I feel very nonchalant. I don’t know the circumstances around the babies. I don’t know if the mother went into early labor and they just couldn’t survive, or if she was having complications and they needed too be aborted or if she had an elected abortion. I am trying to figure out if all those anti-abortion pictures and videos of aborted fetuses and the ones I saw in formaldehyde during biology lab prepared me enough to be able to see theses babies without feeling, but I just don’t know.

The rain came back!

Our friends came to visit again on Monday. They came in the house and we sat in the living room in our stupid, uncomfortable chairs. Emily gave them lollypops and I took some pictures and we played with the baby and she peed on the floor.
Tuesday, I helped out in vaccinating babies. I wrote in the baby’s ifishi (medical record) and gave polio vaccine. I also finally got up the soap for the clinic at the handwashing stations by the bathroom. I used a modified version of the tippytap. I was ashamed and thought it to be setting a very bad example that the health clinic did not have soap for people to wash their hands after using the latrines, so I asked the titilaire if there was any money in the budget for soap and she said yes, but was afraid that people would steal it. The genius of the tippy tap helps in many ways, not just to clean hands, but also to keep soap from being stolen! (I’ve posted pictures of the contraption in the Mwezi album on picasa) The boss from AIDS Relief came and we FINALLY got a job description! I am so happy. We ate lunch together with some of the other staff who were with him and it was awesome, having someone besides Emily to speak English to is always great. So, back to the job, we are here to help increase patient adherence to their ARV (antiretroviral) drugs and to make sure they are being taken care of sufficiently. Many HIV+ mothers fail to bring their babies in at the appropriate times to be tested. I knew this is what I was supposed to be doing, but he told us exactly where the clinic is failing, what we should be looking for and showed us the patients records, so we know where to mark these things, what information to look for and to get it filled in if its missing, etc. I am so happy. I enjoy doing all the crazy things they have me doing, but I guess I am the type of person that likes being told what to do. I was always frustrated that I didn’t have something concrete to work on. We had an electrical storm Tuesday night. I didn’t hear anything, just saw some flashing to the south, so it was either that or Burundi was bombing something.
So, on Tuesday, I taught “oh shoot” “dang it” and “darn it” and Wednesday after class the lab tech, a nurse and I went to the school and played volleyball and the lab tech missed the ball and said “oh shoot!” It was awesome.
THE RAINY SEASON IS NOT OVER!!! My goodness the rain came back with a vengeance!! It hasn’t rained in almost 2 weeks and today was a DOWNPOUR, a deluge. I wish all of you could experience Rwandan rain; it is completely inexplicable. The bad part is that it starting during class, so we had to walk home. We didn’t leave the clinic for a good half hour after class when the rain let up a little. I was terrified that I was going to fall again! The classroom was leaking really badly and there was a river, and I honestly mean river-it covered my feet, running through the building. I grabbed the converter box off the floor so it wouldn’t get wet and then went to pull out the plug and electrocuted myself. Not badly, but my arm felt weird for a while. The lab tech whom I played volleyball with on Wednesday while walking through the river said in English “I am swimming”. It was funny. I love it when they use what they learn. My shoes got covered in mud, as did my feet, and I slipped but didn’t fall. When we got to the little shops where everyone saw me fall last time, I could hear them all whispering in anticipation.
Friday, our friend who works in the town with the hospital hitched a ride to our village in the ambulance with some coworkers who had to come do some follow-up at my clinic. I showed her around the clinic and then made her lunch and caught a ride back with the ambulance to her town to stay the night with her. There were 12 people in the ambulance on the way out. We got to her house and made some guacamole and chapatti for a party at her neighbor’s house. We arrived at the party around 6pm and stayed until 11. There was a potluck dinner and lots of drinks and a dance party out on the lawn. It was really fun. The baby was dancing with us (he’s about 1 year) and was so dang cute. There was a little girl baby around the same age and I was dancing with her and she pulled herself into my arms and wouldn’t let me put her back down, so I danced with her on my hip for a long time. When the little boy came back, she let me put her down and she danced with him. We made delicious pancakes Saturday morning and then walked the half hour to the main road and waited for a taxi bus for another half an hour and finally made it into town 15 minutes before the bank closed. Emily and I went to the bank and our friend went to the market and then our other friend who lives in Nyamasheke met up with us in town. The our coworker from AIDS Relief picked us up and brought us to his house where we had a nice lunch and watched a movie. He had a friend in town and has two roommates, so we all hung out at the house a while then went to the hotel by the lake and went swimming in the pool. It was cold, but nice. We stayed at the hotel all night drinking and talking and finally got a taxi back to our friends house around 10. We slept at her house again, had some more yummy pancakes then hit the road to come back to Mwezi Sunday morning. We got to the main road, had to wait a while to catch a bus to Ntendezi, then waited in Ntendezi for the motos for a few minutes and then just decided to start walking. We walked for over a half hour when the moto showed up and took me home. Emily continued walking until it came back and picked her up, which took about an hour from when I left her to when she got on. So she walked about half way home (an hour and a half). We had gotten cheese while in town, so we had grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner!!

abasuri, impinja na ubukwe (visitors, a baby and a wedding)

Thursday, we had a meeting with the community health workers. We were told the meeting began at 8am, we never usually get to the clinic before 9 because the staff meeting goes until 9, so we showed up around 8:10 and the meeting didn’t begin until 8:45. I introduced myself for a whole 30 seconds and then sat in the corner over 3 ½ hours! Being stuck in a meeting sucks, but its soo much worse when you cant fully understand what is being said. I know they talked about nutrition, hygiene and the mutuelle health insurance, but that’s about it. We finally just got up and left (which is not an uncommon nor a rude thing to do in Rwanda, but its difficult for us being American because I feel that it is extremely rude and it took me about an hour to build up the courage to just go). After the meeting we had lunch and Emily took a nap. I sat outside and finished my book and had my first real visitors. I was sitting reading when I heard a child’s voice yell “mwiriwe!” I yelled back then went to the gate and there was a young girl there with an older girl. We tried to communicate, but it didn’t really work and we just stood around not talking for a while and then I tried to get them to go because I wanted to shower and I had to write my lesson plan for the day, but they didn’t get the hint and when I came back out of the house, they were still there, so I asked them some questions and I told the little girl to climb the mandarin tree to pick some and we stood and ate oranges together and then I told them I would come visit them tomorrow, so they pointed out their house to me and left after being here for an hour. Imagine my shock when they show up again an hour later with three more children! I was bored out of my mind and figured they were too, why would they want to come back and endure that awkwardness again?! But Emily was up by then so we all sat out on the steps and “talked”. There was a baby this time and he was super cute. He enjoyed playing with my toes and water bottle and pen. He also peed on the steps (they don’t have diapers here). Two of the girls left after a while and then Emily painted the oldest girl and the younger girls toenails. It was cute. (I was able to get a shower in between the first and second visit).

Friday, I went into the clinic and helped with the pregnant mothers again and while I was measuring bellies, a nurse came running in and said a lady was giving birth, so the nurse I was working with told me to come along. I’ve never seen a birth before so I was pretty excited, but after hearing the nuns tell me that I would become one of them after seeing one, I was a little nervous. When I got into the birthing room I saw a teeny, tiny lady on the table with a bucket of bloody gauze below her. Two of the nurses decided she should be moved to the other table, so one took her under the arms and the other grabbed her legs and they moved her to the other table while she was moaning out in pain. I wont go into the gritty details, but my goodness, birthing is not pretty. I stood at her head because I didn’t want to see what was going on below and I was in sandals and didn’t want to get junk on my feet. Even that didn’t do the trick and after a while I got a little nauseated and light headed and had to go sit down. The nurses laughed at me and I tried to smile then they sent me to get another of the nurses. As soon as I got out into the fresh air, I felt better. I brought the other nurse in and ascertained that the lady was having complications, the baby’s heartbeat was slowing and she needed to go to the hospital, so the nurse than came in last checked her, wrote some stuff on a piece of paper and went to call for the ambulance (we do not have a car in our village, so the ambulance has to make the hour and a half drive to the clinic to pick someone up, so all in all it takes about 3 hours for someone to get to the hospital if need be). So, I never got to see the baby, just a woman in pain and some nasty stuff, not exactly what I pictured for my first birth.
I got home late and was starving and nauseated and had to eat quickly and get dressed for a wedding. One of the drivers was getting married and we were invited to the wedding. It was a hot day, and my dress up clothes are not the coolest ensemble, so I was sweating pretty badly when I got to the church. The ceremony didn’t take place in the church, everyone just met there before proceeding to the couples house, where a canopy and a million benches were set up. The procession of people came singing down the road. The first group of people to come in were carrying things on their heads. They all carried the things down and then people made a production line to bring the things into the house. Then they started seating people. The poor bride and groom had to stand in the sun until everyone else was seated, which was a LOT of people! We then sat and some songs were sung, speeches given by both fathers, and banana beer from a gourd was shared among the families. Then some fantas and beers were given out and plates of food were handed to people. They made me and Emily a plate with eggs on it instead of cow. I hate and love that they cater to us (hate because I feel bad and don’t want them to make special arrangements for me, but also love so I don’t have the awkwardness of turning down food). We ate some and then passed the plate to others who didn’t get good food (there was definitely a hierarchy to whom got what food). I also gave away my sodas that I didn’t finish, when you hardly drink soda its hard to have 3 in one sitting! Then came gift giving time. Here, when you give a gift, you have to get up in front of everyone and hand your gift to the person and give a little speech or sing a song. I was too embarrassed to do so, so I just waited and gave them the gift later. The Rwandans around me were laughing at me and telling me to go up and give them the gift, but I refused. It’s so awkward and Emily pushed it onto me. She had the envelope but gave it to me to do! The wedding was pretty long, but it was interesting and fun. The bride is a good foot taller than the groom, so that was pretty funny. The house was a good half hour walk from our house. We were told it was close, so Emily wore high heels and my shoes decided not to cooperate, so we both got home with many a blisters and were big bags of complaints.

Saturday morning I was awoken around 3:30/4am to my second earthquake! We had one while in Butare during breakfast one morning. They are pretty small, but scare me a lot because I live in a cinderblock house. Not the most earthquake friendly structure. It was pretty quick and small, so I didn’t even bother getting out of bed and there were no aftershocks, but my heart was racing for quite a while afterwards and it was difficult to go back to sleep. We had some more visitors Saturday evening. They live near us and came over to say hello and introduce themselves and tell us that we shouldn’t stay cooped up in our house all alone, that we should go out and visit our neighbors. I know this is true, but it’s so nice to sit and read a book and do my laundry and not be stared at and talked about. I like having the weekends to be alone. Today, I borrowed watering cans from the nuns and we watered the garden. Our timing was totally off on the whole planting process. As soon as we finally plant something, it stops raining. Hasn’t rained all week! It is not easy watering a giant garden with only little watering cans. Took about an hour I think. Wish I had a hose with spray nozzle!

Sunday, I awoke to drumming. The catholic church had some kind of feast and there was a procession from the church to a place on the hill next to ours. The drumming was consistent and did not stop for longer than 10 minutes at a time for the first 4 hours of the morning (7am-11am). Then it stopped for a half hour and began again at 11:30, by noon, it sounded like they were in our back yard, so em and I decided to go check it out and as we were walking down our path, we see the priest in full white gear go running past from the nuns house down past the water tank. We got to the end of the path and looked in the direction he ran and saw HUNDREDS of people all gathered about 100 yards away. While we were peeking around the bushes at all the people, the head nun came walking up and caught us. She told us we were free to join them if we wanted. We decided instead to go into the cows yard and look through the fence at the people. We also found out that there are rabbits next door also. I thought we just had cows and pigs, but there are some rabbits too. We just went back into the house and listened to the drumming and singing, my goodness noise carries well here. The singing and drumming finally ended around 2pm. The girls who visited earlier came over again and took us to their house. its pretty close, on the hill next to ours. we sat in the house a while and they cut up some pineapple for us and then we went outside and played the "iki n'iki" game (whats this) and then emily and i decided we wanted to see what was on top of the hill. So, they all walked with us up the hill. it was WAY steeper and more difficult that I imagined, but the view was AMAZING!!!!!!! We are going to do it again someday when i have my camera so you can see. it is like death going up that hill though. i think i lost a year of my life. and i am pretty conditioned to climbing, i do it everyday and have been doing it every day for the past few months, but this hill is VERTICAL! I'll climb it again soon so you can see photos.

We have potatoes

The rainy season is officially over! It hasn’t rained in 3 days. The weather has been absolutely perfect, warm and sunny with a slight breeze to cool you off when hiking up the hill. I forgot to add that while swimming, I lost my toe ring again. This time it was not found, but luckily I just received a new one in my birthday box from mom, so no naked toe for me! I have a cold that I think I picked up from one of the people at the party. Not sleeping probably had something to do with it also. Oh, and I burned my leg on the hot water pipe in the shower at the party also. I forgot how to use hot water and when I leaned forward it caught my leg and burned me, not a bad burn, just a little red line across my thigh.
Our girl who cleans the house is helping us to plant carrots, so she came today and dug up the garden and found us some potatoes! I made curry fries tonight for dinner with them and they were delicious!
We had a visit from PC on Tuesday and the driver who is the one that drove me here to drop me off brought me chocolate from Kigali! We became friends very quickly when we met (he’s a new driver, hired on right before we all left to site, so I didn’t get to know him during training at all) and I think he is the coolest person I have met so far. One of the first things he said to me was “don’t let them give you any shit” and that totally threw me for a loop! How did he learn that phrase! He lived in Kenya and South Africa for a few years, so he has had a bit of western influence and it is hilarious. Wish I could see more of him, but he lives and works in the capital and I am just too far.

this is how expats party

I went into the clinic on Friday and ended up doing prenatal exams on pregnant women. I got to measure their bellies and feel for the head to determine if the baby was fixed or not. I actually caught an at-risk birth; the baby’s head was fixed, but not in the birth canal, so I called the nurse in and she felt it then called in the other nurse to come feel it and they had to send her to the hospital. I felt like a real maternal nurse that day, it was awesome. I saw about 15 patients. Then the nun sent me and Emily home to eat lunch and rest (they think we are weak muzungus), so we came back and packed our bags and sat around for a few hours until the motos arrived to take us to the main road for the OAF party. I had to ride with the accountant who is a TERRIBLE driver! He doesn’t really know what he is doing and he acts like a teenaged boy. He goes really slow because hes not very confident on the bike but then he has to prove his machoness by gunning it the next second. It was not a fun, relaxing ride like I usually have with Ambroise, the main driver. We got picked up at the main road and driven to the house. We had a delicious dinner complete with salad with macadamia nuts and goat cheese!!! There were 12 expats in the house, it was crazy. 11 from the US, 4 were RPCVs from West Africa and a Kenyan. It’s like heaven going to their house with all the good food and fun things to do. We had a dance party that lasted all night and the next morning (or more accurately, afternoon) we had a yummy breakfast and then went to the lake for swimming and picnicking and we played some Frisbee and volleyball. It was a beautiful day. I swam out to the floating dock and lay there a while listening to the kids on the shore yell at me (they can see me no matter how far off I am). When we got back we had another amazingly delicious dinner and more alcohol and dancing. We played taboo and UNO and I won both! (well, I won one hand of UNO which ended up being the last b/c we were playing where I got the points from the cards still in peoples hands and I caught everyone when they had a million cards, so I got all the points in one hand! And in taboo I was on a team, so it wasn’t a solitary win, but still!). During the day, Tricia and I practiced some acroyoga, which we began to do in Butare. It is really fun. I’ve always wanted to be in circle de soleil and acroyoga is kinda like that. It’s a lot of partner acrobatics. I am the flyer and Tricia is the base. I’d like to try to be the base, but I don’t have anyone smaller than me to fly. We showed the others and Tricia ended up flying two of the other people also, so we started a movement of acroyoga in Rwanda! We did some more Sunday morning after another amazing breakfast and then we watched a movie, Lord of War, which was pretty interesting, on their giant projection screen with surround sound! We were driven home late Sunday night and slept in Monday morning and just went to the market and to teach English in the afternoon.

Volleyball!

Monday, I helped out in the pharmacy, counting pills and putting them into baggies (they don’t have pill bottles here, just baggies) with the nun and this one guy came in to get some medication to treat syphilis. Well, the nun was furious and started yelling at him in Kinyarwanda and I couldn’t understand enough to figure out why she was so angry. When he left, she told us that he had 4 wives and didn’t bring any of them to get treated. She threatened not to treat him until he brought his wives in and held on to his meds for a little while. She yelled at him a second time and then gave him his medication. That evening, I taught phone vocab, one of which was “off the hook”, I tried my best to explain the slang meaning of this phrase, but failed miserably. I thought it was so funny and was giggling every time I read that phrase, so I thought it would be only fair of me to explain why I was laughing, but it just doesn’t translate.
I went into Kamembe on Tuesday because we were flat broke. I went to the bank which only took 10 minutes, which is unheard of in Rwanda (we’ve been known to wait 4 hours before), so I was pretty stoked about that. I then went to the market and bought some peas and carrots, which are unavailable in my village (I’m gonna teach the importance of variety in ones diet) and then sat around. One of the other volunteers in Nyamasheke said she was coming into Kamembe that day also, so I texted her to see when she was going to arrive and found out that she hadn’t left yet, so I decided to make the trek down to the AIDS Relief office to see if I or em had any mail. I was walking down the hill and decided I better ask someone if this was the correct hill, so I turned around and asked this guy who said yes, this was the right way, but heres a short cut. My goodness that short cut was STEEEEEEEP. We went traversing down this vertical muddy footpath first through houses and then through the forest. It was the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. I am flabbergasted that I did not slip and fall. I finally made it to the office after about 25 minutes and went to the post with one of the staff to see if there was any mail. I got a box, Emily got an envelope and Tricia got a box. It was a good day. While I was waiting for the other volunteer to come (she was going to give me a ride back up the hill because now I had a large envelope and box to carry along with my moto helmet and backpack), I opened my box and read some Newsweek. That lasted about an hour, then I got on the computer and checked my email, played some solitaire and played with this electronic dictionary that has French, English, German and Spanish. Then I made some tea and sat outside looking at the lake and Congo for a while and then after about 3 hours of just sitting at the office getting in the way, I asked if the driver could take me up the hill. He was on lunch, but could take me when he got back. I finally made it to the top of the hill around 2:30 or so and went to the taxi stand to get a taxi back to the town on the road. The taxis don’t leave until they are full, and since my town isn’t very popular there was only one other person in the taxi when I asked, so I decided to eat something first. Ordering food in Rwanda always takes a long time, but this I know. It took about an hour to get my food and pay and then I had to sit in the taxi another half hour until it filled up before we could go, so I didn’t get moving until 4pm. It took an hour to get to my town because of all the stops we made along the way, so the moto driver was trying to beat the sun on the way back and my goodness my legs are sooore from gripping onto the bike.
Wednesday, I helped pass out mosquito nets to the people in the sector who cannot afford one. It was madness and I thought of a million different ways to increase the productivity of the day. I taught English later in the day and after went to play volleyball at the primary school. It had rained that day, so there were huge mud puddles on the court and my arms and hands were a different color by the end of it. I played with boys and girls and teachers, so it was a good mix and really fun. A lot of people on their way home stopped to watch the abazungu play (to pluralize people in Kinyarwanda, you change the prefix instead of adding an s on the end, so umuzungu, becomes abazungu when theres more than one).
Thursday, emily talked me into staying home to make chapati for lunch (it takes a long time), so I did some laundry, taught english to the one nun, fixed the clothing line and read. it rained around 1 and then again at 3. it finally stopped around 3:45, so we were late going to teach, but it doesnt matter because they're always late coming in. during the night, there was an electrical storm in which one flash was so bright i thought something exploded and then the thunder was so loud that it stopped my heart and my whole body got goosebumps for about 10 minutes. I have never been so scared of thunder before in my life. I cannot explain how loud and scary it was. I was shaking and covered in goosebumps and on the verge of tears. i feel silly saying that, but this was like nothing i have ever heard before and the flash was so bright and scary, it just added to the terror. I'm okay now, but my goodness that was scary!!!