To Market, To Market

I would like to start out by stating, for the record, that I want to learn Kinyarwanda. I think it's important to make the effort and to not just expect people to speak English, and I've noticed that people get really excited when I do use what few words I know, because they're so used to white people coming to their country and expecting everyone to cater to them. That said, I really, really hate Kinyarwanda. Maybe I will feel differently once I've learned more, but it is ridiculously hard. I've always heard that English is the hardest language to learn, and I think there's a reason that everyone Rwandan I've talked to has told me learning English is easy; because Kinyarwanda is actually the hardest language. Seriously. It doesn't help much that our teacher's teaching style is really not working for me. His goal is to teach us enough for us to get by, not necessarily enough to speak correctly, just enough to make ourselves understood. This makes sense, because we are only here for 3 months and cannot possibly hope to understand all the ins and outs of the language in that time. However, I would really appreciate an explanation of the basic grammar structure and rules, because every time another crazy rule we haven't learned yet pops up with a verb we're supposed to memorize in class I just get more confused, but our teacher tells us not to worry about these things because he doesn't want to confuse is. I appreciate that, Jean-Pierre, but I'm already confused. In class on Thursday I was so confused that I literally did not know how to tell him what I was confused about. After a few minutes of asking questions I gave up and started telling him I understood just so he would stop talking to me. Fortunately there's a woman in our group who speaks fluent Swahili, which has a very similar grammar structure, so now that she's gotten her hands on a book of Kinyarwanda grammar she's offered to have study sessions and actually explain the grammar to us. I really hope these happen soon, because at this point I'm too lost to get anything out of class except confusion and maybe some new vocabulary, but I think I'll get it eventually.

That said, you can probably imagine how I felt on Wednesday when Jean-Pierre told us that Friday we would be going to the market in Kimironko and would have to speak to people in Kinyarwanda to get them to teach them new words. I think it was something like, “Are you kidding me? You actually think we've learned enough to do that? Can I call in sick that day?” I was really not happy. Turns out it was not a bad experience, though I was definitely still pretty grumpy about it for at least the first 15 minutes. First of all, the market in Kimironko is HUGE. Seriously, it would be so easy to get lost in there. I definitely didn't know where I was most of the time, I just had a vague idea of which direction I had to go to find the door, which was good enough that we got out no problem. There are people selling everything from fruit to flour and sugar to flowers and jewelry and baskets and cloth and clothes and anything else you could possibly think of. If I bring you back a gift, chances are it came from Kimironko. Individual vendors set up stalls in the market, some of which are in a giant building and others are just under a roof. Most of the food vendors were in the more open area, and there was a speaker system set up with someone I couldn't see saying something I couldn't understand, so it was really loud in there, and crowded. All the stalls are very close together, with aisles only big enough for one person at a time. I felt like I was always in somebody's way. The enclosed area wasn't as loud, but it was certainly just as crowded, and the effect was magnified by the fact that those stalls have walls going to the ceiling from which the vendors hang their wares. This was especially impressive with the fabric stalls, where bright, colorful cloths lined the stalls all the way to the ceiling. Once I got past the initial feeling of being completely overwhelmed it was actually kind of cool. And people were really helpful as well. A few were certainly annoyed that we were just talking to them without actually wanting to buy anything, but a lot of people, after I explained that I was a student studying Kinyarwanda (Ndi umunyeshuri. Ndimo kwiga ikinyarwanda) got really excited and started telling us the words for everything they could see. It turned out to be quite fun. I didn't buy anything, but I'm going to go back once I have a better idea what things should cost and know enough Kinywarwanda to bargain effectively. I'm so excited to buy everyone presents!

Differences

I'm sure many of you back home are wondering how life in Rwanda is different from life in America. Obviously I can't describe every difference to you, at this point I probably don't even know half of them, but here is a list of some of the most prominent or most interesting differences I've noticed thus far:

1. The buses. There is no set schedule, neither are there set routes. The buses usually come around the same time, but not always, but they may come early or late, and once at the last stop, they won't leave to run the route again until the bus is full, which accounts for much of the variation in the timing of the buses. I once sat on a bus for 25 minutes waiting for it to fill up so we could leave, but that was on a Sunday afternoon, it usually doesn't take quite that long. Also, most of the buses here are not like buses in America. They are about the size of 15 passenger vans, and all but the back row have seats that fold down into the aisle so that someone can sit there two. There is no personal space on the buses; for the bus to be full enough to leave, there must be 4 people in each row, regardless of the size of the people or how squished they might be. I'm always very grateful when someone skinny sits next to me.

2. Motos. The most common, and also the most dangerous, form of transportation in Kigali. You just sit behind the driver on the motorcycle and he can take you anywhere you want to go. They are fast and cheap, and also account for well over 90% of the traffic accidents in Kigali, because the zip around cars and many of the people who drive them are wild. We're not allowed to take them because they're so dangerous, and I am totally ok with that.

3. Umuganda. The last Saturday of every month is mandatory community service day for all Rwandans. All business are closed, and people gather with others in their umudugudu (the smallest unit of Rwandan civil society, 50 households) to work on projects in their neighborhoods. It's really a pretty cool idea.

4. Utilities are sporadic. We have running water in my homestay, but because there's not enough water in the region it's not uncommon to turn on the faucet and find that we don't have water for a day or two. In this even we have a spicket outside that I assume draws from a well, and we just bring water inside in buckets to do whatever we need to do. This seems to happen about once a week. It's also not uncommon for the power to go out for 15 minutes or so, though it doesn't happen often. My homestay mom says that this is just because the electrical companies here aren't reliable.

5. Street vendors. I hate them. They sell everything from fruit and candy to shoes and pants and belts. They just walk around, holding out their wares and yelling "Sister! Sister!" following me a few feet down the sidewalk trying to convince me to buy something. They're everywhere, and it's really annoying.

6. People here are really religious, and it's not considered rude to ask someone what they're religious beliefs are. I've noticed that people often just assume that you're Christian, just because almost everyone else is. They have a hard time understanding what Atheism or Buddhism are, just because nearly everyone here is Christian or Muslim.

7. It is 100% ok to describe someone as fat or skinny or by how light or dark their skin is. This makes sense when you think about it, because everyone here has the same hair, skin, and eye color, so generally describing someone as "you know, the blonde girl" is out.

8. Most people get up really early here. Even on the weekends I have not yet been able to sleep past 8 o'clock, and my little brother thinks I sleep super late. I really miss sleeping in.

9. Househelp. Most people here don't have washing machines, ovens, etc., so it is really common to employ live-in houshelp to do laundry and cook and clean. It would be really difficult to come home from work and then do laundry by hand and cook a meal on a charcoal oven, clean the house and haul in water from outside to do so, so most middle class families here have a houseboy or housegirl to do these things.

I can't think of anything else, though, as I said, there are countless other differences, these are just the big ones.

A Day in the Life

Here is a breakdown of what an average day is like for me here:

6:50 am: Wake up, take a cold shower, get ready for school. I wash my underwear in the shower and then hang it up in my room to dry, in case you were wondering. I bought a bar of multipurpose soap and it works really well. I also do it before I actually get in the shower, just reaching in to rinse, so that I'm not under the cold water before I have to be. Every morning I daydream of the hot shower I will take when I get home.

8:00 am: Leave for school. Really I try to leave a few minutes before 8, because sometimes the bus comes a little early. I just have to walk down the street to the main road to catch the bus to Mumujyi (the center of town), and then I get a bus from there to Kacyiru, where my school is. All in all it takes about an hour, depending on if the buses are on time that day.

9:00 am: Start classes. Classes vary by day. Some days we have Kinyarwanda in the mornings, sometimes we have guest lectures on topics such as Rwandan history or pre-genocide identity politics. We also sometimes take trips around the city, which I'll post about later.

11:00 am: Break. This only lasts about 15 minutes, but we all need it so badly. Not only is it hard sitting in a chair and listening for that long, by this time in the morning we are hungry. Breakfast in Rwanda is a very small meal, and lunch is a bit later here too, so this is snack time. We all have lockers at SIT where we can store our passports and other valuables, and they're all mostly full of food.

1:00 pm: Lunch. SIT doesn't feed us, but they give us money for lunch and there are a few restaurants up the street that we usually go to. This week I bought supplies for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and have just been staying at school and making myself a sandwich instead. Not only do I then get to keep the lunch money, the food at the restaurants is all painfully similar to what we eat for dinner in my homestay, so a pb&j serves the dual purpose of breaking the food monotony and reminding me of home.

2:00 pm: Back to class. Sometimes we watch documentaries, other times we have class discussions about various things. Some days we also have the afternoon off to do prep work for our independent research projects. That has consumed most of our afternoons this week, since our initial proposals are due tomorrow.

4:00ish pm: Class ends. I say 4ish because this varies. We have occasionally gone as late as 6, though we are almost always out by 5. They don't lock the office until 6 though, so I usually stick around until then to do my homework, because I've found that living with a 9 year old is often detrimental to my productivity.

6:00 pm: Head for home. Arrive around 7, though sometimes later. Today on the way home the bus ran out of gas, and then the line for my second bus was the longest I've ever seen it. Public transport in Kigali is less timely than it is in the U.S.

7:00 pm - 8:30 pm ish: Homework. Most of the time. Some days I shut myself in my room to work, other days I take it out into the living room so that I can hang out with Eddie while I read. I only do this when I feel like I haven't been very social lately, because he talks so much that it's difficult to get any actual work done, but I accept that when I leave my room.

8:30 pm ish: Dinner with the family. Almost always consists of rice, beans, and some dish consisting of potatoes and/or green bananas, sometimes with another dish or two thrown in for variation.

After that: TIRED. Always. As you can see, my days are long. However, it does not end here. I try to avoid being on my computer before dinner because I don't want to be antisocial, but everyone goes to bed after dinner (they all get up much earlier than I do), this is my computer time. I'll call home via skype, check my facebook and email, update the blog, etc. This is my time to connect with home and keep in touch, or to write in my journal. This time has its own never ending to do list, so I'm sad that there is so little time between when it begins and when my tired body begins to beg for sleep, which is right about now (11pm). I'm sure you and see where this is going: this post ends here. Goodnight everybody, more to come soon!

Misadventures

Remember yesterday when I said that I had yet to have any horribly awkward/funny experiences in my homestay? I spoke too soon. Really, I think I jinxed myself. Here's the story:

Last night I woke up around 3:30, and I had to use the bathroom. Odd though it may sound, I try to avoid using the bathroom late at night here, because the house echoes enormously and I feel like I must be disturbing everyone flushing the toilet and trying to open the door with the loose handle, but last night was something entirely different. I rounded the corner to the bathroom, and there was water on the floor in the hallway. I think you see where this is going. I went into the bathroom, and the sink was leaking. There was water everywhere! Somehow the hose that carries the water out of the pipe in the wall and to the sink seems to have broken or come loose, and it was spraying water out onto the floor. It really wasn't spraying that much, I'm a little bit amazed that it made such a mess. I didn't know what to do, it was 3:30 am, there was water everywhere, I didn't want to wake everybody else, and I had to pee. I was sleepy and freaking out. I tried to make it stop. There was a valve that looked like it would turn the water off, but no matter which way I turned it it wouldn't do anything. I tried pressing and twisting the hose into its connection with the sink, and that only made it spray harder. I finally figured out how to hold the hose just right so the water would stop, and I must have sat there, crouched on the wet bathroom floor, holding this leaking hose, wondering what to do, for at least 15 minutes before I finally resolved to wake my host mother. I'm lucky she's such a light sleeper, because I was not entirely committed to disturbing her and knocked very tentatively at her door in a way that certainly would never have woken my real mother. I showed her the water and the leak, and she reacted relatively calmly, waking the house boy and telling me to go to back to bed while the cleaned it up. She even had the presence of mind to ask if I needed to use the toilet before she turned the water off, for which I was grateful, because I think I was freaking out too much to have asked. This morning I saw a man in the bathroom trying to fix the leak, and, thankfully, the sink is still functional, it's just now accompanied by a bucket to catch the dripping water, so I was able to wash my face this morning. Toothbrushing can be done with a bottle of water, but facewashing is another thing entirely, and I'm learning to view it as a luxury, just like toilet paper.

Homestay

I got here Monday night, and we all moved in with our homestay families Thursday night. It seemed like no time at all, like we just got here and were just barely starting to get acclimated and they were throwing something else at us. I'm starting to think that's SIT's thing. Really, I'm pretty sure they do it intentionally. Anyway, we were all incredibly nervous about moving in with our families. It's hard enough navigating a new culture, then add learning how things are done in people's houses (how do we do laundry? what do we do with feminine hygiene products?), then the fact that we'd be living in such close quarters with people who were from a completely different culture and that we could accidently do something to make things really awkward or offend them or make them laugh at us or think we're really weird (etc., etc., etc.), and then there are the more mundane difficulties of moving back in with a family with things like rules and curfews after living on your own for years. Oh, and there's no guarantee that they'll speak any English. You can see why we were scared.

I wish I could compile for you a collection of the everyone's different homestay stories. Some of them are awkward, some are beautiful, and a lot of them are absolutely hilarious. I have laughed so much in the last week. I makes being awkward Americans so far from home so much better that we can laugh so hard about it. Unfortunately, I can only tell you my stories, because they're the only ones I know well enough to recount without doing them great injustice.

I'm afraid my stories are not very funny, or especially awkward, but though it may make for less exciting reading material, I consider it a good thing. So far I think I've had one of the smoothest homestay experiences of the group, largely because everyone in my family speaks very good English. I live with a single mother and her children (I found that unexpectedly comforting similarity to home). My mom, Melanie, is a banker, and her children at 9, 13, 15, and 24, though the oldest, Juliet (everyone calls her Julie, so I have a sister named Julie here too!) is actually an adopted niece. Many children here go to boarding school, so I haven't met Vanessa, the 15 year old, yet, because her school is too far away for her to come home on the weekends, but Nice, the 13 year old, comes home every weekend, and Eddy, 9, goes to school nearby and lives at home. They are all very kind, and have done their best to welcome me into their family, answer all of my cultural questions, and generally make me feel at home. I am also lucky, because, unlike many of the homestay families, we have running water, with an actual flush toilet, not a pit latrine, and a working shower. No, we do not have hot water. Most people here don't. I'm glad it's warm, but I still hate the cold showers. Every morning when I shower I just barely turn the water on, so I can easily avoid being under it until absolutely necessary, and I dream of the amazing, long, hot shower I'm going to take when I get home. Really, that's going to be the first thing I'm going to want to do when I get home.

I'm starting to feel settled here. I take the bus to school every day, walking just around the block to the bus stop, catching the bus downtown, and then getting on another bus to Kacyiru, the district where my school is, and then I have a 5-10 minute walk to school. It's really pretty easy, and as I've gained confidence in my ability to get around I've started to feel more at home here. I'm also lucky in that my mom is not very strict, and wants me to be able to "be free" here, so, unlike many people, I don't have a curfew; when I ask when time I should be home, she just tells me that it's really not safe to walk home after 8, so I come home before then, but could stay out later as long as I called. It's nice, I was a little concerned about how I would deal with that. Surprisingly, I've found that the hardest thing about the homestay for me has been adjusting to having younger siblings. As a twin, my exposure to children has been limited. I've never spent extended periods of time with kids, at the most I've just played with them for a few hours and then given them back. Even my campers at Teameffort were at least middle schoolers. Even though African children so far seem to be much more mature than American children, I'm starting to think that I just don't like kids. Eddy is great, and he enjoys helping me with my Kinyarwanda homework (this morning at breakfast he was quizzing me on numbers), but sometimes his very typical 9 year old behavior drives me nuts. I'm grateful that I have my own room and can escape sometimes. I know I will return home with much more patience than I brought with me.

Don't worry, I do have a few funny stories for you.

The doorknob on our bathroom door is broken. It's intact but loose, so you have to jiggle it around for a bit before it catches and opens. My first night here, I didn't know this. So I went into the bathroom and then when to leave and could not get the door to open. I was wiggling, jiggling, otherwise maneuvering every way I knew and I could not get it to open! I was imagining myself being stuck in the bathroom after only having been in the house for 2 hours, going to school in the morning and telling everyone how I'd had to wait for someone to walk past the bathroom so that I could call pitifully for help. Fortunately, that did not happen. I got the door open, and I think I'm finally getting the hang of it, but I still try to avoid going to the bathroom at night because I feel like I make such a racket trying to open the door that everyone in the house must hear me.

Second story. I told you that we have a working toilet. This is true, but we are lacking the lid to the tank, so that we have to reach in and pull the lever to get it to flush. Not a big deal, I've done that with American toilets. Last weekend, while Mom was gone visiting her Vanessa at boarding school, I went into the bathroom and noticed that there wasn't any water in the tank. Mom had mentioned when I moved in that sometimes there wasn't running water, so I went to ask Nice how to flush the toilet when there isn't running water, expecting that she would just tell me where I could fill up a bucket to dump into the tank. Not a big deal. Turns out it was even less of a big deal: the water was working, the tank just hadn't refilled, so Nice showed me how to turn on the water to the toilet (just like you would for an American toilet), so that the tank would fill up and I could flush, and then the water would stop automatically when the tank had refilled again. It was much simpler than I thought. Great. Still not a big deal. What was a big deal was when I went back to the bathroom a few hours later and realized that the water had not stopped automatically, and that the tank had been filling and overflowing for hours. Half of the bathroom floor was flooded and it was spilling out into the hallway. I am so grateful that all the floors here are concrete, because Eddy simply got a squeegee and pushed all the water out the backdoor into the yard. I think I'm the only one who thought that was at all a big deal, but it still remains the most embarrassing moment of my homestay thus far.

Last one, and this one is ongoing. Laundry here is done by hand, and I still have not figured out how to wash my underwear. My family has a houseboy (really common here), and my mom told me to just give my laundry to him. Our directors at SIT had warned us that if someone else was going to do our laundry we should not give our underwear to them, and I'm really grateful they told us that because she didn't say anything about it. I was going to just ask Mom about it, but this house is really small and I have yet to have a moment alone with her when Eddy isn't around, and I don't want to talk about my underwear in front of him, so I've just given up on that plan and decided to figure it out for myself. There is usually at least one pair of underwear hanging up in the bathroom, so I think people just wash one pair when they shower. I've heard that that's what other people's families do. Anyway, I have two clean pairs left, so I'm going to go buy some laundry detergent tomorrow and just wing it!

That's all for now. I hope you enjoy my homestay adventures. More to come soon!

It's About Time

I know, I know, I'm very late. On the bright side, prepare for blogging madness! I'm finally starting to get a sense of my schedule, now that orientation week has finished and we're settling into a routine. I don't usually have a lot of free time, so my goal is to do regular, short posts, since I'd rather not spend huge chunks of time writing long ones. So, since I already have very much to say, I'm going to just post something short every day for the next few days until I get caught up.

And so, back to the beginning..

I didn't get to Rwanda until 3am Tuesday. I left Atlanta at 5:30am Sunday morning, and was supposed to land in Kigali Monday afternoon, but my flight from D.C. to Ethiopia was delayed, so I missed my connection to Kigali and had to get on a later flight out of Addis Ababa. What made this all especially miserable was that, since I had to leave my house at 3:30 am Sunday, I decided to just take a short nap on Saturday and then sleep on the plane. That was a very bad decision; the stresses of travel are amplified enormously by lack of sleep. Lesson learned.

The thing that struck me first about Rwanda was how dark it was. As my flight began to descend towards the Kigali airport, I looked out the window and all was dark. I looked out towards the horizon and could hardly tell where the earth ended and the night sky began. The scene seemed so peaceful and natural compared to the constant, buzzing glow of Atlanta.

Beautiful though my first impression was, my first day was miserable. It was almost 4am by the time I got to the hotel where we would spend our first days, and we had to get up at 7:30 for class. Everyone in my group was so kind; they remembered that Monday had been my birthday and sang happy birthday to me at breakfast before I'd even learned everybody's names, but still there was a voice in my head all day wondering what the hell I was doing there, saying I hate it here and I want to go home where I can sleep. That was a long day, but a good night's sleep made Tuesday much better.

Speaking of a good night's sleep, it's time for me to get one. More on orientation week tomorrow!

I'm Sorry!

I promise, promise, PROMISE that I will post tomorrow. I just bought a modem on Friday, and have spent what little internet time I've had since then catching up on emails to family and friends. Tomorrow after class I will go hang out in a coffee shop and write a lovely, long update for all of you.