In the throes of busyness.....

            It has been yet another month since a blog posting, although it doesn’t feel that way. I guess the long spaces between postings really just calls for longer blogs. Hopefully they’re still interesting enough for all of you to keep reading. Time has been going really fast and I’ve been kept absurdly busy this past month. My animal husbandry project is in full swing now. Although there have been the inevitable hiccups, hair-pulling moments, and moments lost in translation, it is progressing and seemingly progressing towards a positive conclusion. I had a meeting on Monday with the District Veterinarian, which effectively pushed back our training a week, but after some really impressive guilt laying by my counterpart, the Veterinarian agreed to do both trainings (one for chickens, one for rabbits) for free, which is amazing and awesome. So the trainings are on the calendar, and now it’s time to buy materials, which has been an adventure.

Months ago, I asked several people over and over if they agreed with my specs and if they agreed with my pricing. They all agreed, nodding excitedly, impatiently asking me when all of this would reach fruition.  For months I uttered the stereotypical “ihangane” or “be patient” as I submitted the grant with the budget based on the figures they all approved for me. We waited, I made three or four rounds of corrections to my proposal and finally the grant was approved and the money was deposited into my account. So it’s time to buy materials. The tin roofing had to come from the next town over, about a 20 minute moto ride. So, I decided all the tin roofing should be ordered at once and brought to the health center.

Thus we met with another challenge. Now, everyone tells me that one piece of tin roofing is RFW 6,000 ($12) instead of the original RWF 5,000 ($10) that they told me initially. Crunching the numbers I discovered that this is a difference of about $40 which I don’t have. So I wandered about in a panic for a while. I felt frustrated and somewhat hostile that seemingly no one was listening to me as I asked dejectedly what I should do. They told me we must pay the RWF 6,000, to which we circled around over and over with my claim of, “but I don’t have that money.” Somewhat exasperated, I decided I needed to go for a walk to, I decided, visit the nuns. This is not to say I sought spiritual guidance through the somewhat terrifying institution know as Catholicism. Rather, they are members in our project and I needed to inform them of the new training date.

 

Once I arrived, I was greeted with one of the normal full body, body slapping hugs, and amazingly warm greetings, that was so needed at that moment. One of the sisters took me on a tour of their compound, which had an expertly built chicken coop that had just been filled with 100 teenage chickens, backing up against a tranquil garden with flowers and heads of lettuce. We joked about the importance of lettuce in a salad rather than the common cabbage that is served in most salads here. We discussed how we like to cook soup regularly, which is also very un-Rwandan. She brought me into their living room and offered me a cup of coffee, which again, is very strange. More commonly I am offered tea. After the home tour, I was shown where the rabbit hutches will be built, then they took me back to visit with the disabled children who live with the nuns. They are possibly the sweetest kids ever, and their smiles are so big. The whole visit was kind of like therapy and renewed my positivity for the animal husbandry project, simply based on the enthusiasm emanating from the sisters.

So I returned to the health center with my counterpart. On our walk I apologized to her for being so stressed out. “I think that everything is going wrong,” I told her. To which she replied, “Everything will be ok, and we will find a way to make the project work.” I breathed a deep sigh and told her, “I think I needed to hear you say that.” Although I receive positivity and encouragement from my Rwandan community regularly, I also never expected her comment. I never expected that kind of support and resolve. It was an amazing moment, to which I thanked her profusely, along with everyone else helping me with this project.

I like to think that I do a good job of recognizing and acknowledging other people, whether this is true or not. I try to remind myself regularly to thank people, to appreciate people, and appreciate even the littlest thing, like translating a word for me, or letting me borrow a pen. Maybe this is due to years of excessive “You must write your thank you cards” from my mom, or the occasional frustration of going un-thanked when I do something for someone else. Somehow all of the years of being reminded to say thank you, amongst all the other factors has led to this internal, seemingly uncontrollable need to thank. Speaking of which, if I’ve ever not thanked one of you for something you did for me, I’m sorry, and know that it did not go unappreciated.  

 

Anyways, when I first arrived in Rwanda it drove me crazy that there wasn’t a word for please in Kinyarwanda. The language is seemingly designed full of commands, full of demands. Anyone who knows me, even in the slightest knows I don’t really like to be told what to do, I’m very much like my big brother that way. Where did this particular trait come from? I think I should probably spend some quality time trying to figure that out. But anyways, when I first arrived here and people told me “Give me that pen,” “You must come to church,” “You must do this, you must do that,” and my personal least favorite, “You must get a husband, you are old, and you must care for him, cook for him, do his laundry, take care of his children, be a good [subservient] wife.” Ok, so you have to choose your battles, right? After a year and a half of thanking people profusely when I make these same demands, I’ve noticed they have started to do the same to me.

So as I thank all the people helping me to make this project happen, I’ve noticed that they are telling me they’re happy to help, and that they are thankful to me as well. In retrospect, this is an amazing transition, me going from hostility, wanting to scream at the next person who orders me to loan them my pen, to feeling like I am an appreciated and valued member of this country and this community. That’s not to say everything is completely hunky-dory, I mean, I am human, and after my meeting with the veterinarian and being called “muzungu” or white-man like ten times, all energy was drained from me and I went home and took a three hour stress nap.

Post-stress, I was greeted at work the next day with a man carrying five pieces of lumber on his head into the health center. I rushed to the accountants office. “Is that wood for our project,” I asked her. We inspected the wood and she confirmed its quality. The whole time I was thinking to myself, “Holy crap, this is actually starting to happen and finally come together… holy crap!” For once things actually felt like they weren’t really on Africa time. Granted, by 2PM, only 12 of the 50 boards had been delivered, but it was happening. A crew had been ordered to come the next day to begin building the chicken and rabbit houses at the Health Center. The old house was being torn down to make room for the new house. Things are happening. So I went into town to buy nails, hinges, and deadbolts for the houses to distribute to the participants during the training next week. I returned with four kilograms of nails or about nine pounds, and put in an order for a further fifty pounds to be picked up the next day, along with more hinges and more deadbolts, which was all picked up and paid for surprisingly without a hitch.

In spite of the challenges thus far, things are moving forward, but much like life (so it seems) everything that was once at a relative standstill is now moving forward all at once. Over the last month, with the help of some other PCVs, we distributed over 500 applications (to come to “summer” camp) to at least nine local area schools. Since then, we’ve done at least 100 interviews of the students to test their English (speaking and comprehension), their motivation, and their confidence to decide which 50 girls, and which 50 boys can come to camp. My co-planner is amazingly organized, and we work well together, so fortunately we’re on a good timeline, all the lessons are written, the certificates are getting signed, the project is in a really good place.

Not surprisingly however, the camps project has had its obstacles as well. Due to the US Governments bizarre (if I may say so) fiscal calendar, it appeared for a while that we wouldn’t be able to receive the funding until the middle of November, which would effectively leave us one week to buy everything we needed to put on two one-week youth camps. Needless to say, that debacle was frustrating, but of course worked out as well, and the funding has been received. Now for some shopping sprees. I’m really excited for camp this year. My co-planner and I are implementing a lot of different ideas that have not been used at other camps before, so hopefully it goes well, and turns out to be a good model that could be used by other camps in the future.  

 

But now camp is in four weeks. My animal husbandry project participants don’t want to wait until January to receive the chickens or rabbits, so I also have four weeks (hypothetically speaking) to monitor 24 animal houses being built, purchasing all the materials to build the houses (in five different communities), and also purchasing 53 chickens and 45 rabbits. So, as I said… everything kind of seems to be happening all at once now… after much down time/idleness. Life is very strange, and if I may say so, very obnoxious at times. But I have no one else to blame as I definitely got myself into this. And, I am definitely happier when I am busy. After all, I didn’t decide to spend two years in Africa simply to be a white be-speckled tourist attraction, at least I don’t think I did.

All of this going on has been coupled with many trips out of my village to do said shopping, organization, and have a plethora of meetings with everyone from other PCVs to the Mayor of Nyamagabe district, headmasters, merchants, and others in between. It has been hectic, but also nice to pretty much always have something to do, somewhere to be, and friends to see. Speaking of friends, I spent three days last week visiting my host-family in Kamonyi. They have their first male PCV living with them (after 4 girls), and I kept commenting on how much things have changed and how much the community has gotten used to our American presence after my group (the first one) arrived in their homes and in their villages a year and a half ago.

 

Since then the community has had four groups of American Peace Corps trainees, approximately 100 people, living there, learning Kinyarwanda and preparing for their two year stint in Rwanda. My host family has gotten so used to having an American live with them, there seems to be none of the awkwardness of expectation wafting through their house anymore, at least not as much. When I was there, we all seemed anxious and constantly in anticipation of what we should all be doing and when. It almost seems calm and easy-going now… that’s not to say that it’s necessarily entirely easy for anyone involved, but the whole atmosphere felt different somehow.

 

In other news… A good friend of mine, in my village, got married a few weeks ago, and she asked me to be in her wedding. It was a strange experience, and although I didn’t quite know what was happening all the time, I tried to follow the lead of the other “bridesmaids” and it all seemed to work out well. That being said, based on my relatively extensive Rwandan wedding experiences, I actually prefer being an observer of these weddings than actually in them. It was hard to get all of the pictures that I wanted of the wedding, as I was being, or trying to be, a good quiet participant until something was needed of me. The dress was also surprisingly uncomfortable.  

But, the wedding all in all was really great, and it felt like half of my village was there. I knew so many people, and I constantly felt like I was greeting another smiling friend. Never did I feel like I was the random white stranger who only knew the bride or the groom, or some random person in the audience that wanted me to come to a random wedding. Ultimately it was a lot of fun, and the whole thing lasted for only about ten hours… hahaha. Most of the pictures in this posting are from that wedding. So anyways, now for some words regarding the inner workings of my head. I often spend time thinking about being back in the states now, as it will soon be upon me. I think about being able to walk through the house barefoot, and to feel carpet beneath my feet, having a TV, staring out windows onto the snow that is starting to fall again. I watched on a movie the other day someone drinking water directly from the tap, and I was lost in awe for a good five minutes. As ready as I am to go home, I’m equally not as ready. This has become such a prominent and surprisingly wonderful reality for me. Am I ready for it to be over? Now… no, I’m not. But, will I be ready? I ponder this question regularly. I’ll let you all know when I do finally figure it out.

 

I will try to post again during camp, if not before with updates from animal husbandry land. If not, you should all expect an impossibly epic blog posting including animal husbandry, camps GLOW and BE, my dad’s visit to Rwanda, climbing Kilimanjaro, Christmas day in Dar Es Salaam, and swimming with the turtles, eating seafood, and laying on the beach in Zanzibar. I have a lot to look forward to and be a part of in the future. It feels fulfilling, and I am very happy… if not ready to hibernate! (Sometimes I wish humans could hibernate like bears, speaking of which, why did Winnie the Pooh never hibernate… something to think about)! Until next we meet… may the world spin madly on. Oh, and Happy Halloween!

Pictures: 1. A girl who lives in my village, enjoying food at the wedding. Her sister was another one of the "bridesmaids" 2. After the bride and groom got the final approval by the pastor, before they entered the church 3. Yves and Adele (my co-worker) and me before the reception 4. With the bride and groom 5. My sitemate Nick and me with the bride and groom 6. The wedding party 7. The woman in blue is my co-worker too and also Yves' mom 8.Chickens outside my front door 9. The sunset from my house 10. BABY GOATS (they're so cute!)

Gusura inkambi y'impunzi, and loving my work!

            Gosh, I can’t believe that it has been over a month since my last blog posting. I’ve spent much of that month running through the motions of my Rwandan life, and indulging in the feeling of having way too much to do. My three main projects are very much underway. I finally, officially, received funding for my animal husbandry project. The project will be working with about 25 community health workers to address malnutrition. There are several existing programs that work with community health workers to teach nutritional cooking to mothers in the community, and via the cooking courses, providing nutritional food to malnourished children once a week. One component of this project will serve to provide protein (meat from rabbits or chickens, or eggs) to these weekly cooking classes. The project is also designed to serve as an income generating activity for the participants. As I say here in Rwanda, tuzareba, we’ll see.

            I am also head over heels plunged into planning Nyamagabe District’s camp GLOW and camp BE. Much of this past month has been spent leaving my village and going to either Butare or Nyamagabe town to work on camp stuff. I had to print over 400 applications, then travel with another PCV to distribute them to all the secondary schools in town. Here, we were greeted with the smiling faces of campers from last year, which was amazing. We are inviting approximately ten boys, and ten girls who attended camp last year to return and be junior facilitators this year. Our camp will be the first that uses this many junior facilitators, so again, tuzareba. But, I’m really excited, as the camps are designed to teach about life skills, but also include a great deal about inspiring youth, as well as promoting leadership.

  We are writing specific lesson plans to be taught only to the jr. facilitators in order to expand on some of the skills they developed at camp last year, which is something that hasn’t been done here before. I’m really excited for camp, and for those of you that know me, I’m happy to be letting out my inner planner and getting to organize, plan for, and develop this year’s camps in ways that I want to. I also have a really great co-planner, which makes everything that much easier. I will be the leader of GLOW camp, Girls Leading Our World, and my co-planner will be the leader of BE camp, Boys Excelling, this year.

So a couple of weeks ago, we went to six different schools and distributed the applications, and next week, we have to go back and pick them all up… then read them all. We will narrow down the pool, and then do interviews amongst the applicants, and finally give them invitations to camp, which will take place the last week of November, and the first week in December. My dad will arrive the last day of the boys camp in December, so I may have to skip out a little early to make it to the airport in Kigali on time. Finally, I’ve finished, with the help of an amazing Rwandan PC employee located in Kigali, my GBV awareness training in Kinyarwanda. I’m in talks with the director of social affairs at the sector level government office about how best to disseminate this information in the community. So, although I haven’t been too vocal this last month, I’ve been wonderfully busy, and so it goes.

This last week, however, I did get out of the office, and had an amazing opportunity to visit a refugee camp that has been built about 40 minutes from my village. The citizens of the camp are from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the west of Rwanda. What started out as estimates of around 7,000 people, has quickly risen to numbers upwards of 14,000 living in around 4,000 houses, on two hillsides, sandwiching the main road. The site is surprising and entrancing from the tiny squeeze buses passing along the road. Every time I drive by, to go anywhere, I stare at the almost absurd number of tiny, white plastic sheeting wrapped houses dotting the hillsides as we drive by. What was once terraced hillsides, covered in farmland, is now barren, brown, muddy, covered with makeshift dwellings.

 

Months ago, before my mom’s visit in May, I began seeing dark semi-trucks marked with big bold black letters reading UN across the sides, pass by my health center en masse either in the direction of DRC, or in the direction of the refugee camp. Fleets of white land cruisers marked with organizations like Oxfam, UNHCR, and others have increased immensely in my district. Sitting down at the Golden Monkey Hotel, in Nyamagabe, rarely goes without glimpsing other foreigners now, pulling up in the same land cruiser fleets. Passing through the area with the refugee camp, is now traveling through masses of people, wandering along the roadside, selling bread or cans of cooking oil with USAID stamped on the side of them, watching the cars pass, children playing. Even the market has changed so dramatically in the last few months, from a barely recognizable clearing along the road to wooden structures, and boutiques built to sell wares. It’s a shocking transformation.

I decided that the camp was a place that I really wanted to visit, to see how it actually was relative to the images of refugee camps that inundate American Media. This also seemed like one of the best opportunities I would have to do so, potentially in my entire life. Even though it’s location is 40 minutes from my village, it is located next door to my district hospital. Walking from the bus stop I ran into at least five different people I knew, worked with, or had become friends with in my time in Rwanda. Although it is 40 minutes away, I still feel that it is a part of what I consider my community, at least my extended community.

Regularly there are at least two police guards standing watch at the entrance of the camp, and I’d heard rumor that foreigners couldn’t just show up and visit, which I have to say I agree with. Can you imagine your life, being uprooted from your community, your home, your country, living in houses with nothing but plastic sheeting to protect you from the elements, and also being a tourist attraction? It actually kind of angers me, and yes I recognize the hypocritical nature of that statement, as I was going to visit the camp much like a tourist, and I do have mixed emotions about the visit, and what I represented in going. I can’t say that I myself am above my judgment of others.

In my time here, through various events, and the fact that this country feels smaller than Weston, Oregon and its population of 600 people at times, I have met much of the district’s leadership. Through umuganda (the monthly day of service), my relationship with my sector executive, and lots and lots of weddings, I had met the chief police commissioner, the mayor of the district, the chief of the local military branch, and many others. So, I started in on my phone tree to seek out permission to visit the camp. Everything looked surprisingly well after my first phone call to the police commissioner. Which was answered with a cancellation the following week, and thus a scramble to get permission in just a few days.

My second call was to the Mayor of Nyamagabe district, who, thanks to his mother being my co-worker, took my call, even though he was on paternity leave after his wife gave birth to a baby girl the week before. I attended his wedding about a year ago. He directed me to the vice-mayor, who then directed me to the refugee camp director, who referred me back to the mayor. From here, he informed me that he would get in touch with the Minister of Disaster and Refugee Affairs here in Rwanda. This was followed by a text saying I needed to e-mail a copy of my passport to the assistant to the minister to receive permission. Fortunately, being on the main road has offered me the benefit of almost regular electricity, and therefore, my health center also has a copier, which has a scanning function. Granted none of my co-workers really know how to use the Canon machine, and I give weekly tutorials, but it has been quite a perk, and come into handy regularly.

So, I went about scanning my passport and sending it in. I received a letter from the assistant to the minister, signed by the minister and stamped with the official seal of the department, granting me permission to visit the camp. After printing the letter, again on the amazing copier here at my health center, I discovered that it gave the date of Friday the 14^th, and not the 21^st, for me to enter the camp. So I had to e-mail the assistant back and graciously request a new one. She then typed a new letter, had the minister sign it again, and re-emailed it to me. I’ve noticed in my cross culture experience sometimes it can be difficult to actually convey how truly grateful you are, in either language. But I am so immensely appreciative of her help, and I couldn’t help thinking about how our e-mail transactions would have occurred stateside rather than here. Rather than her gracious apology for the typo, I envision this transaction requiring lots of forms, and maybe a dash of bureaucracy if I had been in the US. But needless to say, her assistance was amazing.

Friday arrived. Leaving my bag with a German girl I had met a week before, who is working at the hospital, I ventured down the road, feeling daunted, apprehensive and intimidated. I met with the camp director, who after our many phone calls was already referring to me as his friend, and he organized for a guide to come and assist me in a tour. Much to my relief, the citizens at the camp knew Kinyarwanda. So, as I waited, a mob surrounded me curious at the foreigner, but the crowd grew immensely once they discovered I could speak Kinyarwanda. I had some of the most respectful conversations with people in Rwanda that I have ever had. I told them once that I didn’t like to be called muzungu, and they listened seemingly thoughtfully to my reasoning and nodded in agreement, correcting anyone who said it thereafter.

We talked about where we were from respectively, they taught me a song in Kinyarwanda and then they all laughed as I performed “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” for them. I learned from the camp director about their plans for handling education, health care, and other challenges in the camp, in an already established community prior to the camp being built there. Finally my guide arrived and she took me up the larger of the two hills first. I was quickly overtaken by adorable children screaming gleefully and running after me grasping for my hands to guide me through the camp. Over their shouts and repetitive greetings in English, French and Kinyarwanda, I asked my guide questions about the camp, the number of people, the number of houses, water conditions, sanitation conditions, processes for development, improvements, food distributions.

We walked through rows and rows of the white plastic houses. I envisioned the houses in the rain, water and mud running down the hillsides, families of around five living in a maybe 8 ft. by 10 ft house, using communal kitchens, communal bathrooms, and communal showers. I thought about attempting to understand what that could possibly be like, but understanding that I really can’t possibly begin to reach comprehension. The people looked happy, they looked content, and as if they had found ways to exist, to create a new world. I was impressed at how well run the camp appeared. There was no one running around in crisis looking for their metaphorical cut off head as they were the metaphorical chicken.

On the second hill, there were canvas hunting style tents with families living in them awaiting the “to-be built” plastic houses. There was a medical unit, where patients could be referred to the local health center, then to the local hospital if necessary. The food distribution tent sits on this second hill, right along the main road, emptily awaiting it’s once a month distribution of staples like rice, beans, potatoes, flour, and oil, amongst other things. Children played soccer endlessly on the field at the base of the hill, and mothers in colorful fabric sat above watching them. The camp was not what I expected.

Much of my expectations were based on the images of extreme poverty, malnourished children barely there yet with bloated bellies, emaciated people, people wearing barely rags, and other such images. The kinds of pictures on those commercials showing babies with flies buzzing around them, where a heart-wrenching song is playing and appealing to your sympathy in the background. I expected feeling physically ill because of the visit, feeling depressed, hopeless, impossible. Instead I met some amazing people and saw a refugee camp that appeared outwardly well run. This of course is not to say that problems do not exist en masse in this place, or refugee camps in general.

There were so many scenarios where I had to wonder if a crisis were not to occur at any moment. The market has seen prices increase over 200% since the arrival of the refugees. That’s more than I could afford even. The children (and most of the people are women and children) haven’t gone back to school yet, and the plan seemed to be rotating local children and refugee children in the local school. Communal bathrooms, hygiene, water issues, clean drinking water, health, especially now that we are reentering the rainy season, and it’s a very wet rainy season in Nyamagabe district. There is nowhere for the people to farm or grow food. One tent had three chickens pecking around the ground where the children were sitting and playing. Another refugee camp in Rwanda recently suffered a cholera outbreak. So many things could go wrong so quickly, if they aren’t already.

No one knows how long these 14,000 people will be living in this refugee camp. No one has any idea how long unrest and war will continue in the DRC. No one knows how long this place could sustain the population increase, hospital staffing issues, lack of education, lack of natural resources, lack of money or outside funding. The visit was so wonderfully enlightening, and one that may never be repeated in my life. In the back of my mind, I see the smiling faces of the people surrounding me before I entered the camp, children chasing me through the rows of houses, tumbling over each other trying to hold my hand. Each time I ride by the camp on a bus, I still stare mesmerized at the hillside, watching it, more slowly now, continue to grow.

BEing in Nyanza

            This past week I donned my camp-counselor persona and ventured into a new part of Rwanda. Nyanza’s Camp BE (Boys Excelling) began on Sunday August 12^th, and continued on to Saturday. My experience was filled with games, teaching about gender roles and peer pressure, and lots of arts and crafts. Although I had a lot of fun, it’s a good thing that I never tried to become a teacher. Two days of it was enough, and sustaining my enthusiasm non-stop from 7AM to 10PM beyond those two days seems relatively impossible. But, it was so much fun. I try to think back on my camp experiences, like 15 years ago. How was the experience different? Well, I wasn’t learning about preventing HIV or gender roles, that’s for sure. I remember playing Mafia with around 50 kids on the shores of Lake Courd A’lene, Idaho, staying in large burlap tents, my dysfunctional attempts at arts and crafts, singing songs, playing games, staying up until 8:30 in the morning (that was a questionable camp theme – night owl camp; keep the kids up all night, and have them sleep all day).

 

            So I reflected on my camp experience and tried to bring out this supposed inner enthusiast and kid person. Surprisingly, I found it. As a group leader, I met with my boys every day and tried to play new games, hear about what they were learning, and make camp feel somewhat campy. I heard my Kinyarwanda getting better every day, and surprised myself with the ability to explain all these random games in Kinyarwanda without stumbling or confusing my audience. The games were even successful too! One of my favorites was “monkey, monkey, gorilla,” the now Rwandan version of “duck, duck, goose.”

             The boys were impressive though (for the most part, there’s only so much 14-18 year old boys can give before they have to start acting like goofy teenagers again, which was ok too). In my gender roles lesson (which I’m not too fond of teaching anyways) several boys asked questions like, “what if we see a girl who is being treated poorly, what do we do?” and “how can we work to make our lives and girl’s lives more equal?” and “how do we change?” During HIV awareness videos, my group told me how they would help protect themselves and others from HIV. I was concerned as a wave of “wows” echoed through the audience when a woman was telling a man off for assuming she’d have sex with him because he brought her gifts, but was surprised when the boys were impressed by the woman and valued her reaction to the man.

            The camp left me hopeful and proud of these boys, and more confident in the future of Rwanda. I compare these boys to Rwandan men I know, how creepy they can be, how they tend to profess their love for me (or any woman) before even asking our names, age, job, anything, before considering our wishes. I think about my male co-workers who have told me they would never carry a baby on their backs because people will laugh at them, and how they think it’s a man’s right to decide when his wife will have sex with him. I see these men, who I respect, yet also loathe at times for their sexist behavior, and superior mentality towards the opposite gender, then I think about these young boys, how much potential they have, and who they may or may not become, and it’s inspiring.

 

            As HIV prevention videos played from a projector in Kinyarwanda, I gazed through the darkness at all these young boys, intermixed with a Peace Corps Volunteer here and there. Less than 11 months left in my service in Rwanda, and I was shocked, in the darkness, to realize that this has become so normal to me. I know I’ve ranted a bit about the differences between here and there, home and my new home, even toilets in Rwanda and toilets in America; but at this moment, I started thinking about how, when I do go home, no one else will have spent the last two years of their life sitting amongst Rwandans. Consciously, I know this, but how separate, or different our lives have been when I do make it home, is daunting and exciting all the same. The days of commiserating about class schedules and professors are beyond my scope. I can’t walk up to my best friend and say, you remember those Rwandan children who would run up and hug you every time they saw you, screaming “Komera, Komera” (be strong) until you walked out of their line of vision again.

            It is possible, I’m sure, that this is simply a function of getting older, when friends begin to live lives that take so many varying paths, in so many varying directions, one could stand at the intersection forever just trying to make an educated decision about which path they’re supposed to take, follow, or create. So, as much as my life has changed, I realize that everyone else’s has too in the 16 months since I boarded my first plane towards this adventure. I realize that so much has changed, yet so much will be the same, and at times I feel like there is so little about me that remains unchanged, and other times I defiantly claim that I am exactly the same as I once was. It is a confusing dichotomy and ultimately easier to put at the back of my mind as I venture out of my front door, dreams of Kilimanjaro on my mind, and head off along another Rwandan dirt road into the depths of my community.

            From pondering the future of Rwanda, and my own future, to rushing back to a wedding in my village, my week ended in a fluster of celebration. People no longer stare (as much) when I enter into a church, dressed in my igitenge best, and begin snapping pictures per request of the bride. Much to many different lore, weddings are supposed to be sad for the bride in Rwanda. She is supposed to be sad that she is leaving her family. This is extra strange when the couple has already been married for five years and have a daughter together. I can assume they got married because she got pregnant, but apparently never actually had the wedding ceremony. A great, more modern, Rwandan couple, I have really enjoyed visiting them over my time here. I would watch her as she drinks an Amstel beer and frowns as I decline her offer to join her in drinking, yet again. She’s also the only woman who asks me every other week if she could use my nail polish, nail polish being forbidden in some religions here.

            Saturday, she dresses in one of the biggest wedding dresses I’ve seen, and definitely the most form-fitting, and of course, as white as could be. Their daughter Kenny, is also dressed in a white dress that she flings about her constantly, I assume enjoying the swishing sound that it makes. I enter the church about an hour late due to impossibly full busses and sneak up by the pulpit to snap some pictures. The bride sees me and a big grin moves across her face. The rest of the wedding seems to follow this trend. She struggles to maintain the tradition of sadness at leaving her family, yet huge smiles momentarily crease her face throughout the ceremony and reception. This feels like one of the most light-hearted weddings I’ve been to in Rwanda thus far. We all laugh as she tries to pick up to groom and carry him in her arms, but he is surprisingly one of the biggest (both tall and weight-wise) that I’ve encountered in this culture. The tradition of holding the glass while the other one drinks is acted out, as a box of wine on a silver platter is carried to the couple. The box even has a spout on it for ease of pouring.

            The reception takes place on the top of the hill by the entrance to Nyungwe. A procession of wedding-goers makes the two kilometer trek in their fancy clothes, and we sit overlooking the forest. They feed us, although all of our cheap plastic forks break, and the well-dressed women struggle with the task of gracefully eating their food. I even get a piece of the small wedding cake. We give our gifts to the couple, which thanks to the bus delay I was able to buy them a basket, although, what do you give a couple who’ve already been together for five years. I walk up, and greet the bride, handing her my gift. We do the traditional hug, touching our cheeks together, left side, then right, then left again, and her smile is huge. Then I move to the husband who happily greets me, smiling and saying, “Munezero!” We repeat the traditional hug. Then the health center presents a gift, and we are all called out in a line to present it. I know nothing about this because I have been gone for a week, but I join them all the same. Not having any clue what is going on has become such a common and accepted part of my life; I learn to go with the flow.

            I snap some more pictures, then the bride and groom gracefully dance their way out of the reception to the cars that take them to the after party. I retire to my home before this though, and listen as the music from the party travels through my front door into all hours of the night. Standing in my doorway, I can look down the hill and across the road to their house, watching at 11PM the people singing and dancing, and knowing that box of wine and probably many others, and cases of Primus and Mutzig beer have been consumed amongst the celebrators. Asking my titulaire the next day, he says they finally came home around 1AM. People always ask me how American weddings compare to Rwandan weddings, and I always say that they are pretty similar, but shorter. I claim that we Americans tend to be impatient and wouldn’t want, or maybe wouldn’t have the energy, to sit at a wedding for up to 13 hours. Maybe I’m wrong though. My wedding knowledge is almost solely based on Rwandan experience at this point.

            Thus is another event filled week in the life of me. My first batch of pickles turned out good, all of them eaten already. I also made a coffee cake the other night. I wonder though if my newfound cooking skills end at the Peace Corps oven, and about how well they will transfer over to a westernized kitchen, temperature control, specialized bake ware, all of those things. I guess we will see. Otherwise my life speeds on towards its Rwandan conclusion. My nightly dreams are now dedicated mostly to my pending Kilimanjaro trip. They also include post-hike resting on Zanzibar’s beaches, gazing out at the other side of the Indian Ocean, knowing that my toes touched it’s waters off the beaches of Indonesia four years ago.  I dream of walking up a mountainside, gazing out at the world, seeing snow, sleeping exhaustedly at night, and sleeping well without even the malicious efforts of mefloquin able to interrupt my slumber. I dream of seeing my dad and of Obama bags hung on the wall.

            In case you couldn’t tell where my mind has been as of late, my dad comes in a little over three months. It doesn’t feel like my mom was here that long ago though, and I miss her so much already. Time is going so fast, and although it’s stressful and sad, it’s exciting too. I am sure a piece of me and my heart will forever be stuck in the East African jungle, with my host family, running from the baboons, eating fresh avocado and mango, but I also miss the comforts of my American home so very much. My family, my friends, driving a car, the next adventure, although I still don’t know what that will be. But the downhill slope is getting steeper and everything is moving faster, and soon enough I’ll be somewhere else, doing something new, paying my students loans, and other bills, OY! I can’t believe it. You should all probably start gearing up for the words, “This one time in Rwanda” pouring out of my mouth incessantly, because it’s bound to happen. But before then, I will continue to strive for what my BE boys wrote on their group flag (without any prompting from me), “With all sides of the earth, with unity and peace, we will have a brighter future.”

The first steps down the hill...

            The last few weeks have been busy and somewhat hectic in spite of my barely leaving my village. The fourth of July kicked off the month with barbecued summer sausage hot dogs, and real Heinz ketchup, and the month has closed with a celebration at an Ethiopian restaurant to say goodbye to one of our Peace Corps bosses. The in between was mellow yet immensely productive. The most exciting news, at least in my eyes, is that the first draft of my grant proposal to do an animal husbandry project has been submitted. Much to my norm, I wait impatiently to move forward and to receive feedback, but if PC has taught me anything, it’s “ihangane” or that I must be patient. I’m trying. My co-host of camps GLOW and BE in the Nyamagabe District, and myself, have been busting away the plans for this next year and to get the necessary pieces submitted as well. 

            Needless to say, I have lived in a productive world this last month. But July hasn’t only been sitting in front of my computer, crunching numbers yet again for my project budget. Lots of other Peace Corps volunteers made it out to visit us in our village on the edge of the forest. It seems to have become a fun habit, at least for myself, that when guests come, we do dinner at my site-mate’s house. We, and by “we” I mostly mean Nick, has made some incredible food, and it’s a really nice reprieve from the norm, although I do love my veggie soup diet. I’ve learned how to cook in Peace Corps, in a place where everything doesn’t come pre-made in jars or boxes. Although I can say I do slightly miss the frozen food aisle at the grocery store, fish sticks, frozen desserts, waffles…

            But my Grandma should be proud. I still remember the sound of her voice when I said I didn’t know how to make biscuits from scratch while in college. Just the other day though, I made a carrot bread, which was amazing… so, as they say in Rwanda… “slowly by slowly.” Sometime in the near future, my site mate is going to teach me how to make pickles too! PC service is about to get a whole lot easier!

            Continuing with the food theme, we had a dinner celebration to say goodbye to Gordie, our DPT (or some acronym). He was the second in command for PC Rwanda. Health 3, my training class, ten of the thirteen of us, took Gordie out to Ethiopian food to say goodbye, and thank you. A volunteer in Zaire, back when the Democratic Republic of Congo was Zaire, Gordie worked on fish farming, and extended his service there for at least four years. For many in my group he was our go-to person. We sought him out for advice on projects, different resources and general life in the PC. When I was freaking out about a potential site change, Gordie was the one who helped me to calm down, and see that it’s not the end of the world. Needless to say, he’s really going to be missed here.

            PC has rules about the length of time any one person can work for the organization. After which they have to take a break equal in time to that which they were employed. So if you worked for PC for five years, you’d then have to take a five year break before returning. The rule makes a lot of sense, but it’s really unfortunate when we’re forced to lose such a great asset to the organization… that’s not to say there aren’t a lot of other really amazing people to do the job out there. So we said goodbye with dinner and stories of our favorite Gordie memories, and of course many thanks too.

            In other news… my health center decided to do a separate genocide commemoration event this week. On Tuesday, we loaded into a squeeze bus and headed to Murambi Genocide Memorial. This was my third trip there, and yet still had a different dynamic, and it conjured varying emotions. The first time I went was over a year ago with my PC training class. Feelingly right off the plane, we were brought to this insanely emotional place with people we really didn’t know. It was uncomfortable, confusing and scary. I returned this May with my mother, which again had a different feel. The major differences that time were that our guide spoke English, so I understood what was going on, the history and the circumstances. They had also finished the museum, so we could walk through and learn, in English, in detail about the events of the memorial.

            Finally, this time… the car dropped us off at the main road and my 20 coworkers and I walked the three kilometers to the memorial. In front of us was a purple banner stating who we are and what we were doing there. The health center of Kitabi remembering the genocide… never again. The “never again” is the tagline, so to speak, of Rwanda’s genocide commemoration. Each consecutive year has a separate theme too, this year’s being focused on the future. Anyways, we walked the dirt road, banner carried in front of us, moving aside for cars and motos. Arriving at the school grounds, we silently walked up the gravel entryway, holding our bouquets of flowers wrapped in purple ribbon. We start the tour at the mass graves, observing a moment of silence, then laying our bouquets upon the graves that hold approximately 18,000 people.

            Next we are taken to the classrooms where around 200 bodies preserved in lime are on display. Just like with my mom’s visit, I walk along the outside of the building. I don’t want to see them again. Out of the corner of my eye, I occasionally see a glimpse of the victim’s twisted bodies, or a preserved face in agony, and I struggle to fight back tears behind my oversized sunglasses. The key difference on this visit to Murambi, was the accompaniment of Rwandans. Some were crying and also refusing to enter the rooms. Stupidly, I forgot that I was enlisted to carry a roll of toilet paper in my tote bag, for this purpose and finally realize to pull it out for people after the tour was over. I keep my focus on the rolling hillsides in the distance, but every now and then the smell of lime wafts over me and chokes me. I’m vaguely certain that every time I encounter this smell in the future, the images of these people will pass through my mind.

            The only other time I really recall the smell of lime however is at the Jackson family’s ranch in Oregon. They keep lime in the outhouse to keep animals and insects away, or subdue the smell, I’m not too sure. I think about this as I gaze over the Rwandan hillsides, about the face of my best friend hiking through the hills on her family’s property, about such a beautiful place’s memory being triggered by this smell, and how it is now shadowed by the image of hundreds of genocide victims. I watch my co-workers as we walk through the museum, some not removing their sunglasses until we part ways in the evening. I watch them listen to the guide, who I’ve tuned out as she is speaking Kinyarwanda, and I’ve had this tour enough times before. I sit on the benches watching, outside of the crowd, reminded that as much as I try, I can never be completely integrated into this culture. These are things, memories, history that I can view from my outside perspective, yet not comprehend.

            This was the first time I really experienced my co-workers mourning the 1994 genocide. Most of the talks that took place during genocide commemoration week in April were attended by other villagers. I only saw a co-worker there once or twice. It was an interesting experience to attend this memorial with Rwandans, and Rwandans that I have relationships with, that are my friends. Afterwards, we returned to the health center and had fantas and brochettes (meat on a stick). My titulaire turns to me and says, “Munezero…. amakuru?” I respond with the typical, “I am fine, and you?” He replies that he doesn’t know. I make a joke about the large beer in front of him and ask “are you drunk already?” My co-workers laugh, and then another turns to me. “We cannot be ok today, because of where we were,” he says to me, “but, we are moving forward.”

            With 11 months to go in my service as a PCV in Rwanda, every time I say I do not know something, or do not understand, I am met with, “But you must, you are Rwandan now.” I have inside jokes with my Rwandan friends and family. I even look at other white people or foreigners with a tinge of judgment and elitism. “How could they wear that, don’t they know it’s culturally inappropriate?” “Is that person seriously stopping on the side of the road to take pictures of Rwandan children out of their car window?” “How come they don’t know the language?” I find myself lecturing Rwandan men on their poor behavior because they think they can get away with things; that I do not know any better. But I do, I have learned.

 I think about life back in the states, about a medium rare steak, being able to have a beer at a bar wherever I want, carpeting, hot showers, bug-free beds, shorts that show my knees, swimming without the fear of potentially horrible diseases, going out at night, driving. I also think about the things I’ve forgotten… what would a US American’s response be to a random stranger sitting on their lap in a sardine packed car? It’s not normal for two straight men to hold hands walking down the street? What are personal space boundaries? What is considered a personal question? What is it like not to be stared at constantly? What is it like to not be recognizable to everyone and have people yell out my name in greeting as I walk down the street? What is it like to not be asked why I do not have a husband, I am after all, already 24 years old.

I have had so much time, the last fifteen months to analyze who I am, who I am becoming, and who I want to be. I’ve thought about where my life will go after Peace Corps, and what I want to be when I eventually grow up. But it’s interesting as well to look at my idea of “normalcy” and how that has changed with this experience. Although I am sure I will readjust quite quickly when I do make it home in almost exactly a year. But it’s really strange to think about how truly different life is in the USA compared to Rwanda. It’s amazing how we are able to adjust and adapt to our surroundings. A year ago, I struggled with balancing myself and this culture, and now I wonder if I will not struggle with that same thing in a year’s time, when I return state side. Time has gone so quickly, and so much has happened in the time that I’ve been here. I like to joke with my Rwandan friends that I am not really Rwandan, yet I’m not really American anymore. I feel somewhere in between. Maybe I’m finally working towards becoming a citizen of the world.

             A year ago today, my beautiful niece (who I still have never met) was born. Her second birthday seems so far away, yet that is when I will finally be coming home to the states. Her second birthday feels potentially a decade away, but the year I have left here as a PCV in Rwanda, feels like it will be finished  tomorrow. Soon enough I will probably be enduring culture shock yet again, simply sitting on my family’s living room couch. I foresee myself standing next to the fireplace switch and simply flicking it on and off in amazement, or finding things to microwave just for the sake of heating things up instantly, or staring indefinitely at the frozen food section of the grocery store.  But before that time, I will hopefully have reached the summit of the highest peak in Africa, and traveled to more African countries, and finished an animal husbandry project to help malnourished children, and had at least four more girls and boys empowerment camps here in Rwanda. Wherever this adventure, and the ones to follow take me… tuzareba… we shall see!

Pictures: 1. Mushrooms being grown at my health center 2. Health 3 and Gordie at his goodbye dinner 3. Justin and Callixte sitting on the water tower by my hosue 4. My coworkers and I at Murambi

MSC, PEPFAR and some PST!

            The past two weeks were spent rambling about the Rwandan countryside, from training to training. It all started back on the banks of Lake Kivu at Centre Bethany for MSC, or in non-Peace Corps lingo, our mid-service conference, which happens around the time of a volunteer’s one year in service mark.  Nine months have gone by since we were last here at IST, and we have roughly nine months to go before our COS conference (or close of service conference). MSC went so well. Some super awesome volunteers from my group worked really hard with Peace Corps staff to make the conference a success and as beneficial as possible for the 13 of us remaining, as we enter our last year of service. We all talked about our projects, life thus far in Rwanda, ways to improve for ourselves and future groups of health volunteers.

So we conferenced, hung by the lake, and ate way too much food. The last day of MSC, a group of us, and Gordie (the director of programming and training for PC Rwanda) took a boat out to Napoleon Island, also known as the bat island. We started following the trail along the shore of the island, into a slightly wooded area. As we continued a sort of chirping sound continued to grow and swell amongst the trees. Our boat guide had disappeared into the woods and we heard banging and whooping noises. All of a sudden hundreds of bats began streaming out of the trees and circling overhead. Soon the bats grew to thousands and the sky was seemingly more black than it was blue. They circled above us, annoyed at the sounds that forced them from their fruity binging. The chirping continued as the bats swirled above us for what seemed like at least ten minutes. Finally they resettled themselves and we continued our way around the island, a little shocked and a lot awed by the sight. It was truly amazing.

The island was beautiful and diverse. We emerged from the forest onto an open yellow-grassy hillside, very reminiscent of my Dad’s property on the Middle Fork of the John Day River.  Water lapped the banks in little coves wrapped in scraggly tree branches and sunlight making the water bright blues and greens. Finally we reached a point sticking out into the lake, with a wide view of other islands drifting off towards Congo, and even back in the direction of the shores of our Rwandan home. We rode the boat back, and just like IST nine months before, I felt so at home riding the crests of the waves, being back on the water. Even the simple act of listening to the lake, the movement of the water, makes me feel like I am sitting on a raft on the Grand Ronde River, or alongside the Pacific Ocean, or next to the John Day. It feels like home, and reminds me, ironically, of all the places I feel most grounded.

So MSC was a success. This was followed by PEPFAR….. ugh! I have to say I do appreciate all the work done by Peace Corps staff to put PEPFAR together, but it was a relatively tortuous three days following MSC. We had members of our health centers, or other places of employment come and participate in the training about HIV/AIDS. Unfortunately the presenters were awful though! Some other volunteers may be more forgiving than I, chalking some of the negatives up to a language barrier, but I am not I guess. I literally struggled with restraining myself from leaping across the table and strangling one presenter who actually said, “we must protect the soldiers from the prostitutes, because the prostitutes know when the soldiers get paid and they will target them.” Granted this was very much a final straw with this guy for me, but it was quite infuriating.

On top of the presenters and the lack of what I would consider valued information, the conference was coupled with very bad behavior on my counterpart, or co-workers, side of things. He was actually quite embarrassing to me. He was the only person who would cut in front of everyone for food, for the bus, anything. He made plans to skip out of the conference to visit the Pentecostal church repeatedly, after PC had paid for him to come.  He also made rude judgmental comments about other PCVs, the presenters, and the conference. I was embarrassed by him, especially because he was one of my favorite people that I work with, and I thought he was a patient, thoughtful, and non-judgmental individual, qualities that I really admired in him. But I guess my expectations got the better of me, and I definitely learned a lesson, but it was a disappointing one to learn.

So skipping past the rest of PEPFAR because it simply was what it was and there is no sense dwelling on it via blog, I spent three days in Kigali relaxing and eating good food. My initial plan was to head to Gisenyi in the northwestern corner of Rwanda and be on vacation for a few days, but due to an ATM debacle in which money was deducted from my account, but not given to me, I was relatively money-less so to speak. Finally we got paid for July and I was able to enjoy some good meals in Kigali before heading to Kamonyi to help out with the next health group’s pre-service training (or PST). Kate and I ate out at a place called The Manor, which felt to both of us very much like we were in Vegas in the middle of Rwanda. Granted, I’m sure if I were in Vegas I would probably laugh at the comparison. But this place had at least three stories, an endless swimming pool with a live band playing the lulling tones of “sexual healing” and three different restaurants, Italian, Indian and another one that just didn’t seem as important as the first two. The food was amazing, and it was the spiciest curry I’ve ever had, but amazing just the same!

Otherwise, I hung out in Kigali and passed the time with internet at Bourbon coffee, resting, reading, and a few other things along the way. Saturday I headed to Kamonyi and was met by a feast put together by the health trainees. They made pineapple fried rice, curry, guacamole, French fries, a Mexican dish, fruit salad, egg scrambles, and some other things thrown in there too. It was amazing and a really awesome welcome for me to their training. I spent the week visiting the different language classes and offering my opinion on life in Rwanda, being a health volunteer, and what their service might look like in the two years to come. They are a great group and also really positive, which was a nice reminder to where I was when I first arrived in country and where I am today in my service, with one year left. Although I feel like I am in a very positive place, and continuing to move forward in this experience, it was really nice to be reminded of where I am coming from, and how much I have changed.

The group was really fun and I think they will be a great addition to our PC Rwanda team so to speak, or our community, or our family, depending on your desired level of sappiness.  I left PST the following Saturday at 6:30 AM to try to make it to Butare before umuganda, or the monthly day of service. The police stopped us in a random town about 20 minutes from Butare however, and we were forced to disembark to squeeze bus and do umuganda. It was kind of fun.  I met people from my own community who were also stopped and forced from their buses. We just did some hoeing for a couple hours and chatted about life in Rwanda. I have to say that it’s really cool that I can now say I’ve lived in Rwanda for over a year and this is in part, my home. It worked out kind of perfectly however, as I arrived in Butare at 12, right when the market and the restaurants were re-opening post-umuganda. So I filled my bag with produce, grabbed a burger, then headed back on down the road to home, where I hadn’t been in 2 ½ weeks.

Now I am back, and sort of back to work, as Monday, July 2^nd was an observed holiday the 1^st being independence day for Rwanda. The 4^th is also a holiday, liberation day. Independence day here is the day Rwanda gained independence from the colonialists and liberation day is the observed last day of the 1994 genocide. So, in other words, I have half the week off, which is actually much needed. I am exhausted from my wandering ways the last two weeks, and although it is a much appreciated part of my life, I don’t see much time for rest any time in my near future. But, this is the life I enthusiastically signed up for over two years ago when I first submitted my Peace Corps application. So somehow, I am cresting the Peace Corps hump and everything will be downhill from July 13^th, my one year mark in service, and one year left to go. Fourteen and a half months ago, I pondered this 27 month commitment and could not see the end anywhere. But now, I can’t believe where it all went and how from here on out, I only have less than a year before I have completed my Peace Corps service. How did that happen?

I guess much like everything in life (I can assume, as I’ve only had 24 years of it thus far) that I must now figure out what comes next, what comes after Peace Corps. I have a lot of ideas, dreams, visions, hopes, for the future in mind, but not exactly sure what will actually come to be. I would love to do seasonal employment in Antarctica. I would love to go to grad school. I would love to continue traveling the world. I would love to be home and spend some time maybe working for a nonprofit. I would love to go back and work in Glacier National Park. There are so many things that I would absolutely love to do, but just don’t have any definitive plans for the daunting FUTURE. Anyways, any ideas, suggestions, or insights would be much appreciated! Miss you all, and until next we meet… may the summer air be perfect for barbecuing and a life outdoors, and you all have a happy fourth of July!

The translation of grief...

            Around mid-night, already struggling in my attempts to fall asleep,  I heard my landlady unlock her door and enter the house. Surprised by the late hour, I lay in bed listening. As the hours continued into the night and on to the early morning my slumbering attempts were met with the sounds of voices, wood chopping and chairs being moved. Two AM into three AM and so on, I listened as people gathered outside our house around a camp fire talking. Curious and frustrated by my inability to sleep and to find sleep amidst their conversation, I tossed and turned questioning everything. Why were these people, Rwandans, whose lives generally seem to revolve around the amount of useable daylight that can be found each day, awake at two AM, having a bonfire?

            Her husband was sick for about a week. I heard him coughing at night through the thin door that separates my home and their living room. Reports came to me that they were traveling to the hospital 45 minutes away. Talking with Mama Diane, my landlady, we discussed his illness. Sick in the stomach, coughing, and headaches were some of the symptoms she mentioned before they left for the hospital. Before wishing her a safe journey, I complimented her Rwandan dress and her newest hairstyle. The next time I saw her was the day after her husband, the community “umusaza” or old man, passed away. Also the father of a co-worker of mine, we were informed in the morning meeting at the health center that “Papa Peace (Peace being my co-worker) died last night,” something I already knew or at least guessed, based on the campfire vigil held outside my house.

            As strange as it may sound, I like to think a have a pretty good ability to deal with loss and interact with others dealing with loss. I feel like I’ve learned what to say, how to approach loss with people and how to help them. Maybe these are false assertions about myself. But now I find myself attempting to tip-toe out of my house to avoid Mama Diane, to avoid confrontation of the situation. Uncomfortable with the complete lack of knowledge on how to help with this kind of loss and in the appropriate way. Although I really didn’t know the man, and unfortunately my first interaction with him was slightly creepy, I am not overly saddened by his loss, but I find myself sitting here with a familiar ache in my chest.

I sit helpless amongst some 15-20 Rwandans, maybe the 10^th batch of visitors of the day, sitting staring about the living room, showing support. Mama Diane is off in the bowels of the house, wandering outside, greeting other guests. We sit, they serve us Fanta, and we sit. Helplessly I wonder what this is supposed to mean, how this helps, what Mama Diane really needs. Public displays of emotion being relatively frowned upon in this culture, Mama Diane doesn’t cry, she doesn’t seem to show any emotion really. Her six daughters float around the house giving us Fanta, checking on the work in the kitchen, also seemingly emotionless, at least to our Americanized expectations of grief.

I am told the vigil, the guests, will continue for three days, then it will just be the family. Although, I wasn’t particularly close to any of these people, and just moved into this home a month ago, the thin door between our homes masks no sounds. It places me into the middle of their personal lives, feelings and reactions. Uncontrollably, I am involved in the intimacy of their grief, yet have no idea what that means, or what I am supposed to do with it. I feel as though I’m a part of it, but I’m not. Even if there was something I could do, I have no idea what it is, or how to do it.

            Years ago, Felice told me about her support group for parents who’ve lost children. She told me, how other members of the group were seemingly afraid of her when she entered. They looked at their pain of losing one child relative to her losing both her daughters as not equal. They seemed to view their pain as minimal relative to her loss. But Felice said something that has always stuck with me. It was something to the effect of grief being immeasurable. No one person’s grief is greater or less than another’s and we all grieve differently and incomparably. We never have the right to judge someone else’s grief or their grieving process.  

            My experience with grief and mourning is so seemingly diverse to me; between friends, boyfriends, parents, family, and Felice’s family, at one point a second to my own. I’ve experienced friends refusal to talk to me about our loss. I’ve watched people drowning their loss in a drug or booze induced haze. I’ve had friends who talked about it incessantly, about the person, about our memories. I’ve scrap-booked, made mixed CDs of our songs, played all our favorite movies over and over, and helped Felice in a foundation dedicated to the lives of my best friend and her sister. I have been screamed at, belittled, cried to, laughed with, and have done all of those things myself as well. But this experience is new.

To this day, the worst sound I have ever heard is that of Felice crying. The agony and pain of her sobs still resonate within me. I remember sitting on the stairs outside her bedroom, for close to an hour, listening to this sound, a sound so complete of pain, of anguish, that I couldn’t breathe. This sound has stuck with me all this time, and still cripples me to hear it. On the Balinese beach with her and two of my best friends, they held her as she cried into the Indian Ocean, the final resting place of her girls. Feeling uncontrollably and physically ill from this experience, I walked away and sat wrapped within myself, toes digging into the sand, waiting for the pain to stop, waiting for their crying to subside. 

I watch my parents, still brought to tears at times, over the loss of their parents, and their friends, and it wakes a sadness in me as well as a stronger love of them and who they are and continue to become. I have laughed hysterically with my friends over memories of Lindsey. We’ve cried hysterically, we’ve drunken ourselves into feelinglessness.  I’ve even gone so far as to tattoo myself over loss. For a while, loss was all-encompassing in my life, and has contributed immensely in fostering the person I am today. For years I would give myself panic attacks thinking about losing more people. What would I possibly do if I lost my brother, my parents, my friends? I would find myself on a road trip, heading home alone in my car, walking across campus, hyperventilating thinking about the inevitability of loss. Sometimes these “episodes” were so bad I had to stop my car, or sit down before I could function again. Every now and then it still hits me. There is never a day that I don’t miss all the people I love, yet have lost. I wonder what they’d think of me today, what they would do if they were a part of each adventure I take.

Unfortunately, I am becoming accustomed to death and the processes that stem from it, and I think somewhat unfairly at the age of 24. I know what it looks like in so many of its forms. Yet, I find myself lost in translation. As I sit in the living room of my landlady amongst a large group of people, yet feeling so very alone, clueless as to what we are doing, and why we are doing it. I think about what it was like after the plane crash. I remember sitting at Felice’s house, waiting, watching the news, trying to listen, experiencing the emotion of others. Unbelieving, I was hopeful at first, then I was stunned, then I was so emotionally exhausted I barely functioned. I don’t remember throngs of people coming and going in those first few days. Months later however, before the memorial service, I remember a house full of people, vaguely, as I had locked myself in Linds’ room working on projects, only emerging to make a cocktail, maybe steal food, or go to the bathroom.

But in that gathering, people were lively, they were emotional. They told stories of the girls and of their father. They laughed, they cried, they drank themselves into the necessary stupor. I remember bodies of people, but not who they were, they shuffled through the house beneath my Lindsey sanctuary. So I sit here in this room, in Rwanda, watching people from every facet of the community, leaders, farmers, school-teachers and otherwise come and go. The diversity and number attributes, in my eyes, to his importance and value in the community. We sit in the living room of the deceased and I wonder, is this is how Mama Diane needs/wants to grieve. Her face, her interactions, convey nothing, she is seemingly emotionless, yet noticeably exhausted.

When I get up to leave, still unsure if it’s acceptable protocol, I thank her and tell her the typical “ihangane” or be patient. She glances at me and says “Munezero, hari ibibazo”, there are problems. I ask how I can help as this is what I know how to do, and she smiles slightly, I assume at the absurdity of the question. She says to come sing tomorrow, to help hold vigil, and to be here. Tossed into their grief, an unrelenting fly listening on the wall, through the door, I listen helplessly, yet with good-intentions of acclimating, of being a part of this part of their culture. I feel lost though… this is not how I have experienced grief. The protocols, the expressions, the actions, it’s all something I can’t quite imagine, comprehend, wrap my head around in such a short period of time, in such a small space. I guess this is a cross cultural experience however, but so far, maybe, this has been one of the most difficult, or feelingly difficult, to wrap myself around, and knowledgeably embrace.

Tomorrow comes after another sleepless night listening to the voices around the campfire, which really makes me want to crack a beer and tell stories for hours, but of course I must reign in my “American-ness” in this regard. I must not sit with the drunken men. I must be a good conservative Rwandan woman. Exiting my house on “tomorrow’s” morning, I am met with rows of benches already filled with people waiting for the burial ceremony to start. Sneaking off to work for a few hours, I watch as people continue past my health center, dressed in their best, assembling on these benches. A quiet melancholy sound echoes down the hillside towards me for at least an hour before I return. Once the ceremony begins we are told to stand and directed to walk through the house where the family, his wife and eight daughters, dressed all in white, wait around the casket singing. We walk past them, some of the girls wearing dark sunglasses even though they are inside. The women’s voices catch as people pass the casket, pressing their hands against it for one last goodbye. A small piece of glass over his face is built into the casket, and I see his face turned to the side, much more like he was sleeping than the standard on the back, hands crossed in front posture we often utilize.

They carry the casket outside, stories are told, songs are sung, and every now and then, a few rain drops fall onto the quiet crowd. The crowds rise again following the casket to the side of the house, where the umusaza is buried, with a layer of cement poured above his body. A cross is placed at one end, a large picture of him leaning against it, with bouquets of flowers for a backdrop. Fanta and sorghum beer is served to the waiting crowd, a few more songs are sung, then the crowds disperse. After, Mama Diane asks me if this is my first funeral in Rwanda, as her grandson squeals in terror next to her at the sight of me. To this, she laughs and I smile, and I leave her to her family.