The forest, some tea and times in Komonyi...

Welcome to Rwanda... The below is where I will be living for the next two years! Crazy right?

This past week was spent on what they call site visits. I traveled out to my where I will be working and living for the next two years. It is so amazingly beautiful. In general Rwanda consists of probably somewhere around one million hills which makes for beautiful scenery but a lot of winded treks up hill. My health center is on top of a hill (no surprise there) overlooking kilometers, in every direction, of tea plantations. But they are planted precariously on the slopes of these hills. It’s quite a site. I’m also within walking distance of Nyungwe National Park, which is gorgeous. There are 13 different kinds of monkeys and chimps in the park, but as of yet, I’ve had no run-ins.

The trip was really awesome and I will more than likely have electricity, which is kind of awesome in regards to computer-ing. I will potentially be working with community health workers CHWs – there are two at the health center, which serves 30 villages (umudugudus) and there are 6 CHWs per village. This means I will be doing outreach and training and similar things with this population which is pretty exciting, but daunting as it is very open-ended. My site visit was amazing and frustrating. My supervisor is currently on maternity leave which left me a little lost at times, but everyone was very friendly. I had the awesome opportunity to help distribute various tools to the CHWs which also allowed me the opportunity of introducing myself to all of them. There was a great reception, especially when I continued to participate and communicate (in Kinyarwanda) with each of them.

The Below picture is of Nyungwe National Park.

Anyways, one of the volunteers who will be close to me and myself spent Saturday in the nearest town, where we went to the market. We both wanted to buy igitenge (sarongs) but the merchants continued to try to charge us white people prices. After we stopped by the bar for some Guinnesses (YES, they have Guinness!!!!!!) and brochettes (commonly known as meat on a stick). They are so good and more than likely they were goat, but I spend very little time dwelling on what it is I’m eating here. One of the downfalls of not having electricity is that there are no refrigerators. But please don’t let this deter you if you have left-overs. All you must do is simply re-boil it the next day! Yeah, as I said, I try not to dwell on some of these details!

I am now back at home with my wonderful Rwandan family who called me all week checking in to see how I was faring. I dove out of the peace corps car with backpack and some other bags through a crazy down pour right into my awaiting family. I am very well taken care of. My site visit really solidified the Kinyarwanda I already know as well as fostered the learning of health-related words which was much needed as now I usually focus on the ones I need all the time. Today we covered past tense, which is kind of daunting.

I’ve shared with some of you, but Kinyarwanda is a very difficult language to learn. In English, there are 2 noun classes, singular and plural. Spanish, French, etc. have 4 masculine plural, masculine singular and the same for feminine. Kinyarwanda has 16! I can’t even begin to explain them! Anyways, I finally understand the difference between learning a language in country versus in the classroom and I would pick it this way any day! I also invite everyone to visit. This country is quite incredible/interesting in beauty, politics, social norms as well as everything in between. I am so happy to be here.

The above is a picture of me with my youngest brother Saj and my sister Chantal, the second oldest girl of my four Rwandan sisters! It's not necessarily tradition in Rwanda to smile during pictures, so I'm always telling them, "Urasecca!" or in English "You Smile!" Then they laugh at me so it tends to work surprisingly!

There have been some flaws of course. One is mold, yeah I know, nothing new in the Willamette valley of Oregon. But we have what we refer to as Lincoln log beds. They are only a couple inches off the floor and have about 25 pieces to them. The design is really cool and great for storage, but they are moldy here. Also, we have to clean our rooms once a week (at least) to keep the chiggers and other scary bugs away! By cleaning the room, I mean removing all the bedding (including the bed) and putting it in the sun to kill, mold, bed bugs, everything potentially thriving there. Then we must sweep and mop the cement floor, which is a lot of work as I have to clean up my footsteps as I walk around as I refuse to take my shoes off out of fear of Chiggers.

OK, Chiggers are evil bugs that are found in the dust that bore into our soft soles of our feet and multiply very quickly. They need to be removed individually by needle. Gross I know. Fortunately my site is colder, so I’m hoping there is less concern of snakes and the like. I do need to be wary of monkey bites though, at least when I go into Nyungwe! I am doing very well although I miss everyone. I do have a cell phone (whether I’ve mentioned it or not, I don’t know) but if you want to give me a call, get in touch with one of my parents! I also just bought a modem so I should be able to skype soon! So that’s an avenue as well.

More to come as always…