I spent the weekend after Jon left in Kigali and Sunday, Adam moved into the new house! Its super nice and in a perfect location, right on the bus line (which I have to take due to PC restrictions on taking motos) and within walking distance to the PC Office. Monday, I spent at the PC office finishing my nutrition project and then caught the bus back to Butare. Its still crazy to me that I can spend a whole day working either in Kigali or Butare and get to the other before dark (ok, so not the whole day, but until the 4pm bus). Much different than my previous site, where I’d have to leave early in the morning to make it to Kigali or back before dark.
I did the gender lesson again with a different group of peer educators and they had some that I didn’t agree with (along with men being the only ones with strength). They mostly all agreed that only men have intelligence and make family decisions. The other two times I taught this lesson, those were put into the ‘both’ category. It was Ryan’s last week here and he wanted to go see the chimps, so we tried to figure it out, but were unable to make it. I was really excited and am disappointed it didn’t happen, but after looking into it, I now think it’s fiscally possible for me to do at a later time.
Went into Kigali Friday and met up with Adam at the new house and got to meet the new puppy! She’s super cute, black and brown with a little bit of white here and there. She’s a Rhodesian ridgeback mixed with mutt. After playing with the puppy a while, we went to meet up with a girl who is making a documentary here and needed Adam’s help getting in contact with people. Ryan came and met us there and we went to the pork place, only to find it closed. We went to a different bar instead and then out to another before coming home. Saturday, Adam had a housewarming party, so everyone came over there and we just had fun at the house. Sunday, we got woken up early by the new maid who came to see the house and she decided she wanted to start working Monday, so the mess from the housewarming party was left to fester for a day. I came home Sunday evening and the power went out for 3 ½ hours and when it finally came back on, I read for a few minutes before falling asleep on the couch and waking up in the light an hour and a half later! My computer battery wasn’t full, but still had about 3+ hours to it, so during the blackout I watched a million episodes of The Office. I have a hot plate, so was subjected to eating only things that didn’t need to be cooked, aka an orange, cashews and bread (I know, I know, really healthy!).
Monday, I started my permagarden training. It went really well and we built 3 beds in one day. I have a translator with me who is a student in the agriculture program at the national university and he was a big help! I tried to show them how to dig, and they laughed at me and took the hoe away from me to do it themselves, but there were quite a few times when I had to do it to show them how. It’s a different kind of digging, where they have to do a ‘double dig’ so I had to stop them and take the hoe and do it myself, even though my hoe’ing skills aren’t very refined. There was a lot of laughing at the muzungu trying to dig, but it was fun and productive and I think they’re buying into it. When things start growing, they’ll really be able to see how great of a technique this is and then introduce it in their own homes and in the community. During the digging, one of the women decided that my hair was too unruly and tied it up for me with one of her cloths. SPREAD provided us all with lunch, so they were happy and I am happy that I’ll have a concrete example of a meal that is not very healthy for my nutrition lesson (we ate rice, beans, spaghetti, cabbage and carrots, sauce, fries, meat and green bananas which are like a potato; so 4 carbs, one veggie dish, and two proteins). After lunch, the car was still out and so couldn’t come pick us up, so we went to catch the bus. It was a good 50m away from us when it pulled up, so my translator and I had to run to the bus with our bags and supplies (markers, flip charts, etc.)
Sitting at home after work a monkey jumped on my roof again, SO LOUD! I went out to see and he was just sitting there and then walked along my wall towards me then past me into the neighbors’. The girl next door, while I was taking my clothes off the line, saw me and started yelling nonsense, then yelled “good morning”, so I said back “good afternoon” then she said 4 times “I speak in English” all the while hiding when I’d look up. As the monkey was walking across the wall into the neighbors though, she yelled out “there’s a monkey behind you!” Where that fully developed sentence came from, I have no idea! But I was very proud of her and quite impressed.
The nutrition lesson went well. I gave them all a quiz to do before the lesson, to get their knowledge level, and my goodness it is NOT impressive! Very few got many answers correct. But now I know what needs to be taught, so that’s good. We went over the food groups and I made nutrition cards, where there’s a picture of a food an its name in Kinyarwanda. They sorted these into the food groups and then used them to make complete meals. It was sort of difficult for some of them, but by the end of it, I think it made more sense and they were able to do it on their own. I tried to teach that eating many different types of fruits and vegetables is good and eating massive amounts of carbs is not. Carbohydrates are necessary, but when a meal consists mainly of carbs, that’s not a good thing. After the nutrition lesson, we went back to the garden and added manure, compost and coal dust (for the carbon), and then ate lunch (after washing our hands, of course). We thought we’d have to take the bus again, but we just had to wait 20 minutes for the car to pick us up on the way back. About 3 minutes into the drive back to town, we saw a truck that had fallen into the ditch hood-first. So, we all got out to gawk and talk to people and find out what had happened. The guy’s tire popped and turned him into the ditch. His wife got hurt and had to go to the hospital, but he was ok. They tied the back of the truck onto the back of a bigger truck (one that hauls things) and pulled it out of the ditch. After the excitement was over, we got back into the car and drove to the office.
I repeated the same lessons, permagardening and nutrition the next two days with the youth peer educators. We didn’t make another whole permagarden, just added another bed and looked at the previous beds made by the adults. They were annoying and frustrating to work with because they just kept giggling the whole time and not really paying attention.
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