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!