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.