Good Afternoon Teacher!

This past week was my very first teaching English to my co-workers. The first day was relatively hectic as everyone had an opinion about how I should teach and what I should teach and pretty much everything else that fits in there. So after the first 30 minutes I sat down and let them talk it out in Kinyarwanda. Then they told me what will happen, to which I replied, OK. The second day went much more smoothly, although less people could make it. They said they wanted to learn about health, so I prepared a list of health words and taught them to them as well as drew a questionable picture of a human with all the body parts labeled. We ran out of time, but we had just started doing a role play where one person played the physician and the other was the patient (both words I taught them that day!) So we will pick up there next week.

This is a picture of my health center with the Rwandan flag flying outside. Not long thereafter the flag tore, so we haven't had one for a while.

Last weekend I spent with my fellow volunteers from my training class in Butare. My friend Christine had her birthday, so we all came together for a celebration. It was a lot of fun, but I was actually pretty sad about being away from site for so long. But I stalked up on things to cook Americanized food and I even got to buy the cutest mobile for my adorable little niece. How to get it to Oregon, I will figure out later. Before I left I was worrying that I wasn’t making a good impression with the women at my health center, as I live with three men, and the men are always around me. They are much more social in a lot of ways. But I would sit down by myself to study or work on a project, and then one of my male co-workers would ask me a question about English or what not, and the next thing I know, they’re all asking me questions while the women sit on the other side of the waiting area. But this week I really made an effort to be around the women, and I think it paid off. It’s an interesting culture to navigate, especially not knowing the language, but buhoro buhoro (slowly by slowly)!

They have me back typing reports, which never seems to end. But now I’m typing their required monthly reports, which I’m excited about, as after I can do some yearly analysis to discover trends and the like. I think this will be very informative. I’m also going to start assisting to teach English at the University here next week, two evenings a week. The university here trains all of the people who work in the national parks, so you all must know how exciting that prospect is to me! It’s nice that projects are taking off. It’s also nice to teach English as it’s something that they really do need. For those that don’t know, Rwanda recently switched their national language from French to English. So all of my co-workers who are over 22-ish never studied English. Everyday my co-workers will say something I taught them in English, and they study so enthusiastically. It’s really rewarding. One of the talked about problems that volunteers apparently face is feeling like they actually didn’t accomplish very much during their service. But, I know if I can help my co-workers learn English, even though that’s not my main job, I know I will have helped them a lot. Especially because most of them know French and Kinyarwanda, so they will be close to trilingual which is amazing!

This is yet another picture of the Nyungwe forest with tea fields before it. Will you ever get tired of these, because I never get tired of seeing it myself!?

Other than work, I’m still madly involved in my love affair with Rwanda. The rains are coming and it helps settle the dusty haze that developed. So every day, my view of Nyungwe National Park and the mountains, and hills and everything else, gets more and more beautiful. We also even had hail yesterday, to which I was jumping up and down about and my co-workers were laughing at me. But I had a dream last night, that it hailed just enough that I could teach them how to make mini-three-inch snowmen. It was a very exciting dream. I’ve also begun my usual itch for Christmas. I’m struggling not to listen to Christmas music. I know, I know, it’s September! Haha! Maybe I’ll never learn!

I’ve been cooking a lot of soups, which of course, is no surprise. My mom has called me a soup-a-holic ever since I was somewhere around ten or so when I would eat soup practically every breakfast, lunch and dinner. But it’s been fun as I’ve gotten to cook all my food from scratch. I think my community is both surprised and incredibly pleased with how many onions and tomatoes I buy all the time. I went through two kilos of tomatoes this week, and just bought another one today! I still haven’t figured out the kilo thing though. Some things like veggies, I need way more. Then they try to sell me a kilo of beans or rice, and I have to explain to them that I just simply can’t eat that much. I still have rice from the first kilo I bought the first week I arrived at site. To it’s credit, I think I’m a little burnt out on rice. I did find couscous last weekend in Butare which was really awesome, and I have some lentils, so we’ll see what I can make with all of these things.

I’ve finally gotten to the point that I am eating normal amounts again. Living with my host family, eating carbs, carbs, carbs all the time, I definitely gained weight. So it’s nice to control my diet again. It’s also nice to be able to eat vegetables pulled right out of the ground, and avocados taken right off the tree. It just makes me feel healthier. Even if I ate the same proportions, it feels better because it’s not just potatoes, rice and beans. They also use a TON of oil when cooking, which is a little overwhelming. They think I’m weird that I don’t love their oil. But they think I’m weird for a lot of reasons. I was talking to one of my co-workers/roommates the other day, and told him that after seeing women in maternity give birth, I’m not sure that I want to go through that. To which he replied, why? To which I said, do you want to give birth? This went on for a while including his quoting the bible saying I MUST have children. Then I explained the concept of overpopulation. I also explained the concept that the bible was written by a group of men, which also segued into the idea that there are so many different churches in the world because everybody interprets the bible in different ways. I concluded with, when you want to go through labor, maybe I’ll consider it. We all laughed.

This is a picture of my village from an adjacent hill. The health center is out of the picture to the left, and you head to the right to get to Gasarenda, Butare and even Kigali. To the left, past the health center is Nyungwe, and then eventually the Democratic Republic of Congo.

So, I have continued my church hopping. I went to the Anglican church this morning, which was very similar to the Pentacostal services, but they had the most intense introduction I've experienced so far. When the churches have guests, they introduce themselves to the congregation. This one made us come in front of everyone and with a microphone do the introduction. They love it when you call out hallelujah or amen, but I'm just not there yet, so I stuck with a queit "Imana ishimwe" which means God Bless You. It made them happy, so what the heck right? But after the four visitors were done, they all started singing and clapping, and formed a line to come by and do this hug/handshake thing with each of us. It was intense! I wasn't really sure how to explain the concept of blushing to them, but I'm pretty sure my face was red.

This is my co-worker Emile and I coming back from a baby-shower-esque celebration for our titulaire. They apparently have these about three months after the baby had been born. I've held a lot of babies here in Rwanda which is so unusual because the only baby I held before coming here was my cousin Ally's daughter Gabby, which lasted about 20 seconds and then she started crying and I gave her back. Hopefully I will finally be ready when I make it home to meet Gracie!

Today is September 11th and I'm very sad that I am not in the states right now partaking in the memorials and rememberances. I can't believe that it has been ten years, and it's disheartening to see some of the things that have unfolded as a result of September 11th, 2001. It's also amazing a lot of the things the last decade has held. I have been watching the online news coverage to the best of my ability, but it's also weird being nine hours ahead of Oregon, as it's almost like I'm living in the future. I have to keep doing all the calculations in time to know when everything happened. I was also really disheartened by the comments many people have posted on articles on the news websites. Well, everyone is very much in my thoughts and much love to you all! I hope the next decade brings more positivity to our world and to our country. We could really use it!