Welcome home…. Or rather, welcome to my home… This is a picture outside my home on my very first night at site!!!! It’s so beautiful, or Ni heza cyane! – Just a quick rant about Kinyarwanda. There’s the whole obnoxious noun class thing, but there’s also the fact that they have very few words. It all depends on the emphasis on the syllables. For examples gusura can mean to visit or it can mean to fart. Gusura is visit, but gusuuuura is to fart. Easy mistake right? But the other thing is that –iza means good, pretty, attractive, smart, and many other positive adjectives. This is annoying! So when I want to say sweet, pretty, nice, good, and many others when describing a person, in Kinyarwanda I can only say mwiza. When describing a place it’s heza (that’s the whole noun class thing!) Anyways, long story short. They need more words.
As one fellow trainee said the other day, “I’ve never learned a language that actually made me appreciate English before learning Kinyarwanda!” I would often times agree with that assessment! hahaha
Well, I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer. We had our swearing in ceremony in Kigali this past Wednesday. Dressed in our traditional Rwandan garb (most of us) we swore in at the US Ambassador’s residence. Apparently there may have been an article on it in the Rwandan New Times newspaper, or a broadcast on national television. It for sure made it on the radio as we heard that. We were allowed to be unleashed on Kigali and to fend for ourselves and I think for everyone it was a success.
I learned how to get back and forth to the town center using public transport, which in my book was a huge success! (Kigali is HUGE by the way!) Anyways, I finally bought some sunglasses – mine broke on the flight to Rwanda. I also made some other purchases that I am so happy to have now that I am here at my site! I ate some ice cream, which is always rewarding, and I ate lots of American food, like a hamburger!!!! Yep… it was awesome! I also purchased some green and yellow Nike flip-flops, which I had to throw in here, only to emphasize how awesome the Oregon Ducks are!
The above picture is of my host parents and the one down below is me with my oldest host brother Nafta, and my youngest host brother Saj.
“Site Installation” as the Peace Corps calls it, which was really shoving as much as we can into a compact space and being driven to our sites and thrown out with a fond farewell and a “do good work!” However it is organized, ours happened yesterday. It was a long day. I was the last one to be dropped off, which was nice to see some other PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers – the PC loves their acronyms) sites and to see more of Rwanda. But I was glad to arrive. After cooking, arranging my room a little bit and visiting my co-workers, I ate and watched some TV on my computer and ended up going to bed early! It was nice. One of the hardest parts of my job will be the daily 7 am meetings! OY! I might try to figure out the logistics of bucket-bathing in the evening, while trying not to be bitten by imibu, more commonly known to us as mosquitos!
So I am officially at my new home, amongst the tea covered hills, next to the Nyungwe Forest. No monkeys yet, don’t worry! I am so happy to be here. I’ve had such a positive experience so far. When I did my site visit a month ago, I was much more stressed out and the constant calls of “Muzungu!!!!” got to me a little bit. But I’ve enjoyed my interactions so much, so far. Maybe it’s because my Kinyarwanda is better. Maybe, I’m just not as stressed out now, being unleashed into the world of Rwanda all on my own.
Since I’ve been here, I have adventured to various places to buy different things. I cooked “Grandpa Haggerty’s Spaghetti” last night over charcoal and I’ve had like 10 cups of tea out of my new electric teapot! I also used it to heat up my water for my bucket shower this morning! I love it! Anyways, today I ventured into town with one of my co-workers to talk to a carpenter. Hopefully next Tuesday I will be able to pick up my two bookshelves that they are making!
Other than that, I have spent today beginning to compile all the information on my community so far in my community needs assessment that I need to put together for the Peace Corps. It’s a really awesome tool, and I am glad that I’ve been able to add it and “Participatory Analysis for Community Action” or PACA to my tool book. So, I began the compilation, which has helped me think about what I would like to learn in the next three months (broadly of course)! I will actually begin this whole working thing on Monday morning, and between now and then, I need to study Kinyarwanda, collect myself, eat, maybe fit in a movie, do some reading and go to church on Sunday.
Church is a great way to be accepted into the community, and since my health center is housing me with three of my male co-workers, which is commonly frowned upon in Rwanda, I think I will need the positive attention. Since my host family was Pentecostal, I may try to adventure there on Sunday as my co-worker told me it’s only two hours! I think he may be lying! Some Rwandans seem to really love their church here! I will try to switch it up though and attend different churches over the course of my time here though ( I hear the Catholics usually have the shortest service with only 1.5 hours!) Sorry mom, but I may need to make that my service of choice. The Sunday services though are usually really cool because they are half singing and dancing. The other day I walked into my host family’s church to everyone dancing up and down the aisles and singing. It reminded me of the scene in Blues Brothers, where Jake and Elwood finally see the light and join the dancing! It’s kind of awesome! 
This last picture is from Swear-In on Wednesday. It has some of the new volunteers, some teachers, Gordy the program manager, Mary the Country Director and some others. This is after we had all stuffed our faces with amazing American food or rather food we're more used to, like quiche, pizza, spring rolls, carrot cake!!! And of course they had meat on a stick! 
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