Meet the people in my village!

Bwiza and my adopted family
On my first day in the village, I was led down the hill and among the houses by an ever-increasing gang of children. I was completely disoriented by the time Bwiza invited me into her house “to give a sweet potato” (which she was cooking) and a glass of milk. Bwiza is my age (23), unmarried, and has an adorable 5 year old son. Her family, like so many in the village, came here after years in the Congo. Bwiza finished secondary school in Goma and speaks little English: we mostly communicate in French and Kinyarwanda. She is the second oldest and only girl of 8 kids (ranging from 25 and studying medicine in Goma to 8, just a few years older than his nephew). The family is very intelligent and hard-working. The 22 and 12 year old brothers in particular speak impressive English and are very studious. Bwiza is my village best friend - I’ve enjoyed showing her pictures of friends and family and narrating for her the North American seasons on a virtual tour of Boston via my calendar. We trade food, gossip, stories, comparisons of life in America and here, and English/Kinyarwanda lessons.

Philip, the primary school headmaster
Philip is Bwiza & co.’s uncle. He is the headmaster of the primary school (660 students and expanding to cover the first 3 years of secondary with 60 more students expected). We primarily converse in French. He’s been incredibly welcoming, and helped facilitate my English class, grantwriting, and other projects.

Kayihura
Kayihura is the chief of the umudugudu (village). When I first met him he called me “umukobwa wanjye.” He’s always happy to greet me and we’ve been collaborating on the needs assessment, water project, etc.

Robert
Robert is Rebecca’s houseboy/cook/fixer/extraordinaire. He’s been so helpful for me, showing me to the market town 50 minutes away, helping me find eggs and plant flowers and fruit in my garden, and generally just being good company.. One of the smartest Rwandans I’ve met, at 24 he still has 2 years left of secondary school (he’s saved his money and will return to school this January). Robert’s English is excellent and he loves learning slang and expressions, leading to many a discussion about gold digging, keeping up with the Joneses, odd ducks, etc etc.

Mama Benjamin
Mama Benjamin (of the toothbrushing lesson LINK) has a shop is across the street from my office and house. Every time I visit, she gives me a Fanta (I take citron) and refuses to let me pay. The room where she receives guests and customers is decorated with various Catholic images with origami-style frames made from Primus beer labels. (Fitting for a Catholic, yes?)

Mama Shakuru
Mama Shakuru lives behind the office and my house. She can often be found in her kitchen, where she’ll offer me a sweet potato or cup of ikivuguto (Rwandan yogurt). Her family owns a cow and if I ask a day in advance I can usually get a good deal on a liter of fresh milk - 100rwf ($.15 - it’s 200rwf in shops here and 400rwf in Gisenyi). Sometimes I literally stand there with my empty bottle watching Shakuru, 16, milk the cow. I take the milk home, strain the stray hairs out, and boil it. Once in a while they won’t sell me milk - “we need it for Muhirwa (moo-hee-rgwa),” she’ll say, nodding to her affable 3 year old son, belly swollen with worms. How can I take milk from him? A few weeks ago I used some of their milk to make carrot cake pancakes, so I made 6 small ones for every member of their family (I made 7, actually - Robert raved about his). When I brought them over and said they were like amandazi (donuts) but with milk and carrots, 5-year-old Luisa and 7-year-old Samuel went nuts with excitement. Their mother ordered them to wash their hands and all 3 young kids took a pancake. Samuel’s was gone in 2 bites; Luisa made hers last a few seconds longer. Muhirwa took a few nibbles, and his mother asked for a bite. She liked it, but he didn’t - “he doesn’t like sweet things,” she explained, “not even sweet little bananas.” Luisa and Samuel nearly knocked each other over fighting over Muhirwa’s leftovers; apparently they like sweet things.

My English Class
Since mid-November I’ve been teaching a twice-weekly English class to secondary school students, who are on vacation. My class has dwindled from 20 to 5-10 regulars who often show up 10-15 minutes late, but I try not to take too much offense. Some of the kids are top students, others I’m told are cow herders who aren’t currently attending school. Nearly all are boys; I’ve struggled to get girls to show up with little success. We do fun (I hope) activities - fill in the blank, vocab and interpretation of hip hop songs; the human knot to practice directions, listening to American radio stories, debates, etc, working in lessons in life skills and setting goals. I’ve told Robert, who’s a regular, that the class is sometimes like “pulling teeth” - the education culture here is that of rote memorization and little participation. Getting students to interpret song meanings, compare Rwanda to the America of an NPR story, or guess at a new vocabulary word from context can be a painfully slow process.

The market ladies
Each afternoon, just before 4, women start laying out old plastic sacks on the road with piles of cassava, or buckets heaped with sweet potatoes, or bags of irish potatoes. If I’m lucky someone will have avocado, corn, cabbage or soy flour; on 2 occasions I’ve seen miniature mangoes and onions and once each bananas, urusenda hot peppers, and tomatoes. (Pineapples can sometimes be bought from a passing trader.) It’s the only market within nearly an hour’s walk, and as such, many women shop at the market on a daily basis. Various village women sell their surplus starchy roots. I check it out most days because you never know what you might find. Mostly I just find calls of “Agatesi (that’s me), buy potatoes,” “Agatesi, soya,” “Agatesi, come look at the avocado.” The first time I saw mangoes I was with Bwiza, on my way to visit her house. I bought us 10 for 100rwf ($.15) and we sat at her house, peeling fruits the size of a child’s fist and getting their hairs stuck in our teeth as she showed me pictures of her in school, her son’s father, and her “sweetie.”

A busy first weekend

I arrived in Kinihira Friday. Saturday I walked 50 minutes to the nearest market town with R., the scientist’s houseboy (she’s on leave in the US). Gakere isn’t much, but it’s got more going on than Kinihira - there’s actually fruit for sale, there’s a butcher shop and a bar that sells brochettes, and some of the milk bars actually sell sambusa (in Kinihira it’s just bread and donuts). There are a lot more houses, but still no power. R. makes great company - he’s incredibly smart and eager to improve his English but also a great Kinyarwanda teacher. Although he’s 24, he still has a year left of secondary school - he’s been working to save money for it.

Today was Inauguration Day. Apparently each umudugudu was given 50,000RWF ($90) to celebrate - in Kinihira the entire sum seems to have been applied to sorghum beer, with maybe a few Fantas. There’s got to be at least 25,000 imidugudu in Rwanda - that’s a lot of beer money!

In the afternoon I joined R. in his reading group. He admitted 10 kids to the yard and we read a picture book to them, R. assisting my attempts to translate. More kids peered at us from behind the fence. Afterwards I passed out crayons (thanks Auntie K + Uncle C!) so the kids could draw a scene from the book. The book was about a tree that’s to be cut down in the Amazon, and the reasons the various forest inhabitants give about the tree’s importance. The snake’s plea was ineffective here: he said his fathers and his fathers’ fathers had lived in the tree. 16 years ago this village didn’t exist, so the importance of an ancestral home has little resonance in Kinihira.

First day in Kinihira

(It’s pronounced “kee-nee-hee-rah” - I’m learning that around here “k” and “g” are almost always hard.)
This is a lot more like what you might picture when you hear “Peace Corps”: There are a few water pumps in town and only the distant one reliably works. The only electricity comes from the solar panels at the health center and GACP field station (where staff - all 4 of us - are allowed 1 computer charge per week). There are erect power poles awaiting wires. I’m told they were put up before the election as a sign of progress; the power station itself is months from being finished.

The field station and my future house are located on the main street, which is lined with shops and houses. The bulk of the village is a dense collection of houses stretching down the hill behind this street. The surrounding view is beautiful: emerald tea fields, plot being tilled as the rainy season begins, cow pastures, glades of eucalyptus. Behind all this, if it’s clear, Nyiragongo bellows smoke and Karisimbi disappears into the coulds). On the other side of the street, from the field station, Kivu is visible on a clear day.

Cows are an even bigger deal here than in the rest of Rwanda, which is saying a lot. Milk costs 30% what it does in Gisenyi - 120-150RWF/liter ($.25). Cheese in a neighboring village is 1800 RWF/wheel - by far the best price in Rwanda.

This morning I started walking down the street and met sme girls carrying roof tiles on their heads. I asked why they weren’t in school and they said “it’s cold,” though I may have misunderstood. It was cold but that’s a pretty poor excuse. They gave me a tour of the village, introducing me to pretty much every adult who was home. Along the way we gathered 20 or so children - I felt like the pied piper. One gave me a very green passion fruit; another a piece of sugar cane. I was welcomed by a village elder, Francois, who wasn’t actually very old. Upon leaving his house the kids and I came across a circle of people around an open space. What could be more interesting to stare at than the new muzungu? It was a neon green snake. Francois came over and killed it with his walking stick.

I also met Bwiza (“bgiza,” meaning good). She’s 23 (my age) and has a 5-year-old son whose father is in Kigali (I think). She welcomed me into their small house and gave me a sweet potato and a cup of milk. She lives with her parents and some of her siblings - 9 people in total. They have a dirt floor but are fortunate to have a tin roof.

In the afternoon I visited the health center with my new counterpart, M., to meet the titulaire (director). Then I tried to read while kids gawked at me through the fence, so I talked to them a bit. The scientist has been here two years, so you’d think they’d be used to a white woman by now. At the afternoon market (4-6pm daily) there were only irish potatoes and sweet potatoes. This is typical. If I’m lucky I might find cabbage, corn, or avocadoes - you can see why I’m eager to start a garden!

I was able to carry on a decent conversation with many people here: the extra four months of Kinyarwanda since swearin make a huge difference. Many adults also speak Swahili and some speak French because the majority of the population was repatriated here from Congo after the genocide. I’m hoping my French will get some much-needed practice and I might try to pick up some Swahili.

It was a great first day. Because inauguration is Monday, I’ve got a 3-day weekend to explore and make more friends (or at least continue building my army of children). I’m really excited about many potential projects here!

There’s an active volcano in my backyard

I moved to Gisenyi on May 11, but my temporary house wasn’t ready until the 16th and then I left town for a permagarden training (more to come on that topic). Now I’ve had a chance to get settled a bit, although I’m still waiting on furniture.

Besides sharing the house with my sitemate, which is not ideal for my language development, local integration, or identity formation as a volunteer in Gisenyi, I love the location. The neighborhood children are wonderful, the neighbors in general seem nice, and this is the view from the chair in my room where I’m writing this:

That’s Nyiragongo, the active volcano that lies about 20km (12 miles) over the Congolese border (which is maybe half a mile from my house). Did I mention it’s active? It glows red at night, lighting up the smoke billowing from its plateaued peak. You can also see the big dipper in this picture:

The intensity and shape of the red smoke cloud change by the minute, providing me with endless after-dark entertainment. The novelty might never wear off.

Acrobats and teenage hospitality

I made it to site! More on that to come, it’s been a bit busy and I don’t have much time to write.

A PCV friend of mine who’s been to Gisenyi a few times promised to introduce me to a group of acrobats. I don’t know what I was picturing when I heard there were acrobats in Gisenyi, but I was surprised. They’re a group of youth ages 8-20, mostly male but with some females. They practice after school. We met them in the evening, and they showed us to their clubhouse – a small house near my future temporary home with a sitting room decorated entirely with Christmas decorations, including a fake tree, lights, and mistletoe! (We decided not to get into a cross-cultural lesson about mistletoe.)

We hung out with four of them, talking in English and Kinyarwanda, and they showed us pictures of their performances. They’re self taught and I can’t wait to see them perform live (watch this space at some point for pictures/video).

It was then that I experienced the most incredible moment of hospitality – this group of teenage boys served us not only tea and sugar but beans and chapatti! They can’t possibly have very much money, and yet they essentially fed us dinner. A prime example of Rwandan hospitality.

The envelope please...Gisenyi!

I’m headed to Gisenyi for the next two years! I spent 4 days this week visiting my future home. My hosts were unbelievably kind and my future coworkers are wonderful. The work will be more along the lines of community and business development than health work: my primary project will be helping cooperatives develop capacity and find markets for their projects.

I’m still coming to terms with being an urban volunteer and mourning the loss of the extremely rural Peace Corps experience I so badly wanted. But, urban development issues are complex and interesting, I think I’ll have more work to do in an urban setting, and there are some great perks to Gisenyi (beach, fresh fish, hotels with internet and beach and hot showers I can “borrow,” a daily market with fabulous produce and fabric and shoes).

First Impressions: Rwandan Radio

The songs were a mix of Rwandan, dancehall, and what you’d hear 6 months ago on an hip-hop/rap station. The DJ would periodically turn down the volume on a song to talk in heavily accented English (not necessarily about the song), then turn the song back up, then turn it down and offer an interpretation of the song, then turn it back up for the sole purpose of fading it into the next song. Also, the DJ sometimes sang along to the songs.

Not sure if this is typical of Rwandan radio or unique to the program that happened to be on.

First Impressions: 1000 hills is a pretty lowball estimate

- The hills are endless and gorgeous. There are countless shades of green: grass, trees, crops, the dark green shaded by clouds over a valley, the bright green illuminated by the sun.
- The clouds are intensely beautiful. The rain is intense.
- I’ve fallen for the architectural beauty of Vienna and Paris, but as far as capital cities go, Kigali is the most naturally beautiful of any I’ve seen.
- The smells are of fresh rain, wood burning, faint pollen.
- The carrots and (sorry Maine) potatoes are the most flavorful I’ve ever eaten.
- The paved roads, at least around Kigali and Nyanza, are in better shape than many roads in Boston.
- Every Rwandan I’ve met has been incredibly nice, especially Peace Corps staff.