Rwandan Kitchen

claification: I had a typo in my name, its Mukobwajana.
Week 7
This week we are learning how to cook and talk about cooking. Wednesday we made American food (pizza and guacamole-okay so they’re not exactly American, but its what we were all craving!) and Thursday and Friday we went to the market, bought food and learned how to prepare it on Saturday. I had to buy beef, beef bone, potatoes and sweet potatoes. Others got chickens (live), cassava greens and root, green plantains, fish, rice, tomatoes, green peppers, onions, garlic. While others were killing chickens and watching them be killed (we had five), I was peeling plantains and potatoes, helping pull the leaves off the stems, scaling fish, and cleaning rice. I didn’t do much cooking though. Clean up sucked! To cook this lunch we started at 7:30am and it wasn’t ready until after 1. I have more thankfulness to our kitchen staff now. But I still can’t wait until I have my own kitchen and can cook for myself. I want oatmeal in the morning and I want to be able to get some more protein in my diet. I think we will be able to cook for ourselves, but it’ll take some strategic planning. When we wake, first thing is to start the fire and get water on, then shower and get ready and by that time it should be boiling and we can then make coffee, tea and oatmeal from the same pot. Or, since we have electricity, we can just buy one of those electric water heaters….
Our PC director came this week to talk to us and hear about our experiences on our site visits. We also had a woman from San Fran who is now working in Kigali with the ministry of education give us info on how to teach English as a second language, since most of us will be doing this as a secondary project. Rwanda switched its instruction in all public schools to English from French this past October. It was extremely quick and many teachers are not prepared. I am hoping to not only teach English to my coworkers at the clinic, but also help teachers learn English so they can keep their job!
I can’t believe there is only 3 weeks left of training. I’m gonna miss my fellow trainees. Its nice having them around all the time so you don’t feel lonely and miss home. You can just go into someone’s room and watch a movie or speak English. It’s nice. My site is quite far from everyone else’s, so my roommate and I are glad that we have each other. We might have to set dates with others to meet them in town and those of us in Nyamasheke have made a pact that when any one of us goes to Kigali, they have to call the others and pick things up for them (because its at least a 7 hour trip for any of us in the west). But, we are only far for Rwanda, if I was placed anywhere else, I could be a two day trip from the capital city or another volunteer. We were told the other day that there will be another influx of volunteers in October and then again in January. We are going to infest the country! It is not that big and there is going to be us 34, the October group of about 25 and then the January group of 35! It’s madness. So, I will most likely have another PCV near me when they get here. I am excited to be the big sister for the next group because we didn’t have anyone and it’ll be nice to be able to help people out a little. I hope they bring good books and movies and such.
So, my house is amazing, I have a beautiful view and electricity and I’ll be there in mid-April. I cannot go on vacation or have visitors in the first three months at site, but after that there better be an influx of friends and family!