Sunburns and dirt tan lines

So, Butare has been quite an experience. It’s a fairly small city by American standards, but it’s a college town and a major city in the area, so it’s pretty nice. Except for the lack of free wifi or functional internet cafes. A week without internet has been interesting. I’ll probably camp out at Bourbon for a day when I get back (which is probably when I’ll post this!).

One of the highlights of this week since my last post was visiting the artificial forest and the fish farm at the university. The forest is artificial because it was planted back in the 30s instead of grown wild, but I could hardly tell. It was absolutely gorgeous. The trees were super tall, and every once in a while, we’d run into students just camped out on a fallen tree or blanket just studying. Seemed like a great place to do so. The walk through the forest took about an hour, then we got to the fish farm. Bosco, the Rwandan with us (because otherwise we’re just lost muzungus) had to do some negotiating to get us in, but eventually with the promise of a few thousand francs, they let us in and showed us around. They had pond after pond of fish in murky water, a stable of pigs, hutches of rabbits, and cows. We were trying to figure out how ethical/humane the whole place was (I mean, I can give the American vegan campaign against it no problem, but this is Africa, and we were trying to think in that context). It was interesting. The pigs smelled terrible, but they had their own stalls, which were clean. Must just be smelly animals. Anyway, we walked back home, which took about another hour, and I’m pretty sure I took the best shower of my life—even with the complete lack of water pressure.

You end up getting really dirty here in Butare. There is dust and dirt everywhere, buses and motos stirring up dust, and plenty of dirt and cobblestone roads, so by the end of the day my shoes and feet are five shades darker. Not to mention my jeans, you really can’t get multiple wears out of them here. They get dirty so quickly.

Today (Friday), we had my two favorite lectures so far—one on theater and drama in Rwanda, and one on traditional and contemporary music in Rwanda. Both of the instructors were really great and interesting, unlike some of our lecturers here. Then we saw a traditional dance group and the only all-female drumming group in Rwanda perform, and then we had both a dance and drumming workshop with the leaders! The drumming I picked up pretty quickly (we did Rwandan, Senegalese, and Burundian beats), but the dancing was a lot harder than I thought. American bodies are just trained to move so differently. But it was a lot of fun :) Tonight, we’re going to watch a hip hop group from the university perform, and then tomorrow we head back to Kigali.

We also finally got all of our paper assignments (further proof that I do actually go to school here), and it looks like I have plenty to keep me busy.

Oh, also, there’s an ice cream place here. It’s affordable and amazing. And we had grilled cheese for breakfast. You really just miss the simplest foods when you’re so far away.

Everything is Holy Now

So, we’re spending this week in Butare, a city in the Southern province where the national university is. We got here on Sunday evening and will stay until Saturday. The drive out here was absolutely gorgeous. We got to see the beautiful Rwandan hills uncluttered by city life, although there was certainly farming and rural life everywhere. If I can ever get these pictures posted, you have to see them. Even in the rural most parts we passed through, there were still people walking along the roads carrying baskets, children, pushing bikes loaded with things, etc. I’m really starting to understand the meaning of population density here. It’s incredible.

We first stopped at a museum that had the old and new king’s palace. The old palace would definitely not be considered a palace by Western standards, but compared to the traditional, indigenous dwellings that were once here, it’s incredibly impressive. We entered the king’s compound through an opening in the bamboo fence that surrounded the compound, and inside there was the huge king’s hut, the milk hut, and the beer hut. Each hut had a front room, a living room of sorts, a back room, and a bedroom with the hut being divided by woven partitions. Apparently a young girl and a young boy lived in the milk hut and beer hut, respectively, and were in charge of their respective beverages, which were and are highly valued in Rwandan society. We visited the contemporary palace next, which is now a museum that chronicles Rwandan history past to present. Apparently they’re building a new palace, which looks like an enormous house from afar, on another nearby hill. Things are talked about in terms of hills here—where you live, where something is, how people are grouped.

Next, we visited what was easily the hardest memorial yet, Murambi. Again, I’ll spare much of the details since that’s not why you’re reading my blog, but if you’d like to know more, just email/facebook me. This place, in 1994, was a newly built school that was set to open until the genocide happened. People from the surrounding hills were instructed or chose to gather at this school thinking they would receive help, but instead they were barred from leaving and were systematically killed. Outside the museum (which had a bunch of information on Rwandan history) were two mass graves that had something like 20,000 people. Out back were several school rooms, several of which contained the remains of victims, full bodies preserved in limestone or something like that. It was overwhelming. Apparently this place was taken over by the French during Operation Turquoise, their attempt at making up for the fact that they supplied and trained the genocidiers (which really only gave refuge to the genocidiers once they started losing the war), and turned into a French military base. We got to see the site where French soldiers played volleyball right next to several mass graves. It was just unbelieveable. Definitely the hardest memorial yet.

We arrived in Butare and checked into our hotel, or the convent rather. A group of nuns runs the hotel, so everything is rather Catholic. I have a holographic picture of Jesus on my wall. It’s pretty awesome. So far, we’ve seen the town, visited and toured the university (they have monkeys!! Everywhere!! They’re like the squirrels in America, except we’ve only seen them at the university), seen a movie about arts and drama at the university, met with a group of students from the peace and reconciliation club, and had a class on media and language.

We also went out to a village today (Tuesday) to visit a village/co-op of mostly women who are either widows who are survivors or women whose husbands were genocide perpetrators and have either been imprisoned or released. They raise crops and animals, and they make soap to sell in the market. With the money they earn, they help pay for children’s education, care for the elderly, supplies, and supplies for the poorest families. We met the women at a school, so of course we were swarmed by children again when we got there. Apparently muzungus are a rarity in Rwandan villages. One of my friends compared it to going on a safari, but instead of us looking at animals, the kids are staring at us. It’s pretty funny. They’re all so adorable though!! I’ll hopefully get pictures up at some point. Functional, fast, and free (though I’ll pay a bit) wifi is a rather elusive creature.

Also, I’ve learned since coming to Rwanda that everyone who told me it’s easy to be a vegetarian in Rwanda was probably an omnivore. Sure, there are plenty of options other than meat, but plenty of protein options? Not so much. Like at all. Our meals generally come from buffets and consist of rice, pasta, French fries (even at home), greens, some sort of salad, matoke (plantains), cassava, sauce, beans, and bananas (sometimes passion fruit!). So basically starch, starch, a few veggies, beans, and more starch. And I really don’t like beans, but I’ll try to eat them. I’ve tried adding in nuts, peanut butter, tons of milk, and now eggs, which sounds like it should be enough, but it’s so sporadic, I’m really not getting enough protein. Either I have to get a protein regimen down, or reconsider being vegetarian while here. It’s tough either way. 

Village Life

This post is a bit dated. This past friday refers to last friday. Gotta love wifi. TIA

This past Friday, we went out to the eastern province to visit two villages—the Millennium Village (a village designed to meet the millennium development goals, I think. I need to read up on that more) and a village where survivors of genocide, perpetrators, and returnees (former refugees) now live together.

In the Millennium Village, we first visited a farm that had goats (including a baby!), cows, corn (which everyone calls maize), cassava, little egg plants, avocados, guava, plantains, cabbage, and lemons (which are green here, apparently, like the oranges. I guess we just like to have multicolored fruits in America). We got to taste the cassava too. The farmer dug it up (since it’s a root food), cut the outside off, and gave us each a bite. The inside is a bright white and tastes like jicama, if you’ve had that, only starchier. We got to each take home a few of the crops, which was pretty cool.

Next, we went to go visit a primary school in the village, which was super fun :) I’ll post pictures soon, but basically once the classes let out, we were swarmed by small children who all wanted to shake our hands and tell us good morning :) We saw the kitchen where they cooked lunch for all the kids, and then we saw the computer lab where they had desktop computers donated by different people and organizations and laptops for kids from the government. Apparently the kids get to use them a couple times a week, which was pretty cool.

We then went to the village of survivors, perpetrators, and returnees and were welcomed by a dance troupe of young girls who first showed us their traditional dance and then took each of us by the hand and invited us to dance with them. The girl I danced with was adorable! Her name was Nadie/Nadia, I think. All the kids speak so softly when you talk to them here, it’s hard to hear them sometimes. We then sat down under a traditional tent where people came to sort out their problems and heard testimonies from both a perpetrator and a survivor about who they were, a brief explanation of their experiences during the genocide, and how they came to be in the village they are now. It seems almost impossible that these people could live so well together. All we’ve heard so far was how horrible the genocide was, and yet here was a whole group of people who had moved past that to living together in peace and trust. They can trust each other to take care of their kids, no problem. It seems almost unfathomable. I couldn’t really comprehend how these people could go from the severe mistrust and fear they had of each other to living in harmony as we saw. Apparently, they were all homeless after the genocide because their houses were destroyed, burnt, looted, etc. Two pastors, they said, came up with the idea of a common village based on a common need of housing, and the current residents worked side by side to construct the village. The common need and common work apparently provided common ground on which they could begin to rebuild their confidence in and acceptance of one another. It still blows my mind, but I guess I still have a lot to learn. We finished with a glass of each banana and sorghum beer, traditional drinks in Rwanda, and with a performance of traditional dance by older girls and boys.

We ended our trip with a visit to a women’s weaving co-op back in the millennium village where there were several women sitting on woven mats weaving traditional baskets that were absolutely gorgeous. A few of them invited us to sit down with them and learn how to weave the baskets. They didn’t speak English, and our Kinyarwanda is very limited, but we still managed to communicate a bit. The lady I worked with had five kids (though the farmer we visited had 18!). She let me weave maybe a centimeter’s worth of the basket before taking it away and doing it herself :P Apparently muzungus aren’t terribly good at weaving Rwandan baskets :P Afterward, we were allowed to buy baskets if we wanted—they were all amazing, it was so hard to choose.

Later that night when we got home, my 7 year old sister, Peace, took the liberty of informing me of the existence of three more siblings—Joanna, Shema, and…something. Apparently they board at another school in Kigali. That brings the sibling total to 11. That I know of.

Also, I tried going out with my sister, Zaina, who is my age, but my father wouldn’t let me because it was too late—at 8:30 at night. So we’ll have to work something out :P

Also, I found out a bit more about my family’s experience of the genocide, at least on my mom’s side. Her sister, my aunt, came over the other night, and my mom mentioned that she was her only sister. I asked how many brothers she had, and she said, no, this was her only sibling. The rest, two brothers (the youngest of whom was 8) and another sister, had died in the genocide, and that my oldest siblings, Zaina (21) and Omar (17 or 18) are adopted children of her siblings. This is the case with a lot of families in Rwanda—several deceased members and several adopted children.

This week, we’re in Butare, a city in the Southern province where the national university is, but that’s a whole other post :) 

School so far

So yes, despite all the fun/crazy/intense times I’ve been here, I have been going to school. We meet for classes at the SIT office, which was originally a house. We meet in what I guess was the upstairs master bedroom or sitting room. We sit on plastic patio furniture, which is surprisingly comfortable, and we always keep the windows open since it’s nice outside. We’ve had several Kinyarwanda classes so far, one culture class, and today we’re taking a history class. Many days, though, we’ll have no classes or just one class and instead go on excursions to places of interest around Rwanda or Kigali, like the memorials or the conference we just got back from. We’re in class or on excursions from 9 until about 5 or 6 every day, so by the end of the day, I’m pretty tired.

Here’s a typical day this far:

6:00 wake up (if you can believe it)

6:15 shower

6:45 breakfast (usually pineapple—hopefully I’m not still allergic to large amounts of that stuff, tea with milk and sugar, and bread

7:10 leave for school

7:15 drop the kids off at school—secondary, primary, and nursery

7:30 drop me off at the bus stop

7:45 get off at the bus stop near school and walk to school

8-9 Chill at SIT, do homework, and write these lovely posts

9-noon Class or excursion

Noon-1:30 Lunch at a local restaurant

1:30-4 (ostensibly. Sometimes 5 or 6) Class or excursion

4-7 Do homework, hang out with the group, use the wifi somewhere, or a late excursion

7-8:30 head home

8:30-9:30 get home, eat dinner, hang out with my brothers and sisters

10:30 or so go to bed

I feel like we’re just go go go all day with a few exceptions. My littlest brother and sister said that they wished they could see me before they go to bed though, so I’m trying to try to get home earlier now. This will be the first weekend I spend with my family, so that’s exciting. The kids are talking about going swimming and playing pool at the tennis club, so that should be fun. Most of all, I’m just looking forward to having unprogrammed down time, which I should really use to study.

The conference that we went to this past week was hosted by SIT and some local center that works for peace and conflict resolution. It was at the Hotel des Mille Collines—Hotel of a thousand hills, after Rwanda’s nickname. This is the hotel from the movie Hotel Rwanda. It’s changed so much that it’s hard to imagine everything that took place there. The conference drew people from all over the world—Argentina, Mexico, the US, Canada, England, Nigeria, South Africa, the Balkans, Uganda, and a bunch of other places. We listened to a key note speaker the first day and then went to a bunch of paper presentations the next day. And of course we basked in the glow of the free wifi and western atmosphere—it’s funny how you come to miss that even though you thought it’s what you wanted to escape.

Another thing I wanted to mention was the cleanliness of Kigali. Apparently being clean is an important value here, and the streets and homes here reflect that value. There are street sweepers everywhere that keep the roads clean using these brooms without handles made of some sort of twigs or brush. Also, they cut their grass by hand with machetes—who knew?

Genocide Memorials

Yesterday, Monday, we went to some of the genocide memorials around Rwanda. I’ll spare you some of the worst details since I know that’s not why you’re reading my blog, but fair warning, it was pretty hard to see, so it might be hard to read. If you want to know more, just message/email me and I’ll tell you.

The first memorial we went to was a Catholic church where about 5,000 people had been killed. In past attacks on Tutsis, people had fled to the churches and were safe there, but this time, that was not the case. Many times, priests were foreigners and either left their congregations or led the militias or soldiers there to kill the people. The original buildings have been preserved, including the holes blown in them by grenades. In the chapel, all of the pews, stone benches, were lined with the clothes of victims—each pew was piled at least a foot deep, and the clothes were very dirty and torn. There were clothes on the rafters too. The whole church now serves as a burial site, so in the back, they had the bones of many of the victims who were killed there on shelves—arm and leg bones, hips, and skulls. In the front, they had both the objects brought by the victims and the weapons used by the perpetrators—spiked clubs, machetes, but they couldn’t have the guns or grenades out. They also took us to see the sachristy, kitchen, and Sunday school where people were also killed. The next memorial was a bigger Catholic church where 20,000 people were killed. Maybe it was 40,000. They did the same thing with the clothes on the pews and displayed the artifacts on the altar. They had bones displayed below the chapel as well as a coffin of a woman who was killed. Out back, they had the tomb of an Italian lady who stayed to help the victims when most other westerners left. They also had several mass graves that contained all the bodies of the victims who died at that site. The mass graves were catacombs of sorts. We walked down these steep stairs into this dark, narrow passage no more than 2 feet wide that had shelves of bones and caskets stacked high. That was incredibly moving. We were all so silent throughout the tours of the memorials.

Later that afternoon, we went to a memorial in Kigali—Gisenyi, I think it was called. This was a museum that our teacher, Apollon, helped design. He was featured in the museum a few times as well. The museum contained pictures, captions, stories, videos, and artifacts from the genocide and began with life before colonialism, then showed life during and after. When it got to the genocide, two of the pictures got me most—but I’ll only tell you about one unless you want to hear about the other. The one picture was of the same church we were in only a few hours earlier—the first memorial we visited. I could pick out the places where I was standing and walking—places, in this picture, covered with bodies. It was intense, so much more real. Another part that really got me was pictures of scars and wounds of survivors. The last part of the museum inside had profiles of children who were killed telling us what their favorite foods were, favorite color, best friend, etc. and then how they were killed. It was so incredibly sad, especially since they were just kids—how could they have even remotely been a threat?? Out back, they had several mass graves and memorial gardens. The gardens were beautiful and were a good way to wind down. I think there were several hundred thousand people buried there. Over a quarter million.

We came back and had a debriefing session, talking about what all we saw and thought. The memorials were a very hard thing to see. The clothes and the bones just made everything so real, as if it weren’t already real enough. What struck me most, though, was that although this happened almost 18 years ago, this city and this country are so vibrant. There’s so much growth and development that has taken place, that is taking place, and that is planned that it’s incredible. Even though everyone here over the age of 18 has a story, this city still carries on. Not to gloss over the immense trauma that I’m sure everyone sustained, though. It has definitely affected the culture and the people, but it also seems to have given the survivors a drive to move forward.

We’re going to see another memorial in Butare in about a week, and that one is supposed to be the toughest of them all. It’s another church, I believe, and essentially, the place has been preserved and untouched since the genocide. That will be quite a day.

So yeah, sorry if this was too much to read. This is the reality of Rwanda, though. And it’s inescapable. 

Wifi!!!!

So, it’s been awhile since I updated, and so much has happened. I guess the last post was more of a cultural briefing in terms of what I encountered in a given day. Since then, we’ve had Kinyarwanda lessons, which have been pretty helpful but have also made me realize how far I have to go. We also had an exercise where we got dropped off in pairs at some random place in Kigali and had to find our way home using public transportation. Ben and I got dropped off at this huge market a ways from our hotel and were told to buy a few things and then come back and explain the market to the group. The market was essentially a farmers market on steroids. I will never look at Conway Locally Grown or the farmers market in Dallas the same way ever again. The market is in this big, open-air building that is divided into sections—fruit, vegetables, flours, fish (whole, dried, etc.), beef (hanging by the leg, of course), chickens (live, of course), crafts and clothes, and hardware. That place seriously had everything. You’re supposed to bargain while shopping there, and our teachers wanted us to do it in Kinyarwanda—we really struggled with that. But we made some friends in the process. Speaking a little Kinyarwanda as a muzungu who has only been in the country a few days in a very African market works wonders on both attracting attention and disarming people. I passed around my photo album from home a bit, and we bought some mango, avocado, pineapple, oranges, and Japanese prunes/tree tomatoes to share with the group.

I’m also getting used to being stared at wherever we go. Ben and I were the only muzungus at the market except for this one lady we saw for like 2 seconds. We basically get stared at everywhere we go. The only reprieve I get is from other westerners, who essentially pay no mind to other westerners. It’s weird. Sometimes they’re the only familiarity I get, yet we basically pass each other by—like in America. It’s weird.

But shopping in the markets is the best deal to be had. Nakumatt—the walmart/target/sears of Kigali—is pretty expensive, and the German Butchery in MTN center, another mall, is super expensive—like $14 fruit loops and $20 dove shampoo expensive. It was crazy.

We moved in with our host families on Sunday night. Mine is great! My mom’s name is Marie, my dad’s name is Tom, and They have 8 kids, two of whom are technically cousins—Ian (4), Peace (7), Fabiola (9 or 12?), Yvonne (9 or 12), Iyvan (13?), A daughter studying in America whose name I forget (15), Omar (17), and Zainabu (19). My father is a businessman in the farming industry and a pastor in the Evangelical Restorationist Church, and my mother is a businesswoman, and I think she at least sells milk from the family farm, but there might be more that she does. Zaina works at a hotel in the evenings, so I have yet to see her since I get home at about 6 and leave at about 7:15 when she is still sleeping. Omar is the reason I’m in this family. He goes to boarding school at Les Amis des Enfants College (high school), which is the school we are partnered with. He left for school this morning (Tuesday), so I said goodbye to him last night and told him I would come visit him at school. I talked to the 15 year old in America Sunday night—she goes to a private high school in Kentucky. Iyvan is the jokester of the family, from what I gather. He’s a funny kid. Fabiola and Yvonne have really been helping me out. They’re really nice. Peace is adorable! She’s always smiling, and she loves to do my hair! Iyvan even straightened my hair last night—or at least tried to. Ian is adorable as well. The first night I was here, they took me to see the family farm, and he rode on my lap the entire way and just fell asleep. So cute! My dad’s dad, so I guess my grandpa, is staying with the family for a while as well. He’s 95 and still has his own house and car! Super impressive. Going out to the farm was really cool. In Rwanda, cows are a sign of wealth, and this family has lots of cows. They asked if I had any cows in America. I tried explaining commercial farming and that most people were no longer farmers, but I don’t think that really made sense to them. Iyvan, I think it was, told me that his father would give me a cow :) They were all curious about my phone and my camera, so they took those and were looking through my pictures and music—their father has an iphone, so they knew what they were doing. Then we went out in the pasture and played frisbee, gracefully—or sometimes not so gracefully—dodging the cow patties. The farm is way out in the country, so we drove through rural villages to get there—the part of the country that I really wanted to see and experience. After that, we came back and had dinner. My family lives in Nyarutarama—essentially the Highland Park/Chenal/Beverly Hills of Kigali. I was a little disappointed that I would be so well off, but I do still feel like I’m getting the full cultural experience. As westernized as my family may be, they are still very Rwandan. Or Rwandese, I should say. All of the kids in my family speak good English, as does the father, and my mother speaks a little English. They all speak Kinyarwanda at home though, so I still need to learn. My room is very nice for Rwanda. I have a double bed, a room to myself, and a table for my luggage. My bathroom is pretty simple, but I have a toilet seat! Really, most bathrooms don’t have that. My sink doesn’t work, and my shower is very cold, but it’s alright. Maybe I’ll figure it out eventually.

My family also has several helpers, as they’re called here—a gateman, two maids/nannies, and a few people that work outside. I think there’s a driver too. It’s common in Kigali for families to have 1 or 2 helpers, but I think my family has 5 or so. And they all have their own living quarters at the house as well.

Also, Ls and Rs in Rwanda are essentially interchangeable, so I get called Sala or Sal/Sar, as my mom says it. The R here is pronounced like the R in Spanish, slightly rolled. And for the life of them, Rwandans can’t pronounce Alissa.

To get to school every day, we take mini busses—these vans with 3 rows of seats in the back which fit 4 adults, usually. And not American “fit,” but Rwandan “fit,” which means you get rather close to the people sitting next to you. The standard fare is 200 franc, which is 33 cents one way—pretty good. You can also take moto taxis to get anywhere, but we’re not allowed to take those unless we absolutely have to since they get in a fair amount of wrecks. 

I'll post about the genocide memorials we went to next time. I'm having to write my posts on word in advance since I don't know when I'll have wifi. Hope you all are doing well!

EDIT

Also, here are my first round of pictures! They upload slowly, so I can only do so many at a time https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1502070761945.2033899.1539480852&type=1&l=367c9018fa

We made it!

Wednesday:

Good morning from a rather balmy Kigali! The past two days have been such a whirlwind. America seems so far away right now. So, from the beginning:

As evidenced by my mom's pictures, my parents dropped me off at DFW around noon on Monday. We said goodbye, then I headed to Chicago to meet up with everyone else on my trip. We were delayed in Chicago for at least an hour because of mechanical difficulties, and we were worried we weren't going to make our connection in Brussels--and the next flight out was two days later. Thankfully, since there were 32 of us going from Chicago to Kigali, they held the plane for us. The flight to Brussels was alright. It was just super long (8 hours) and I wasn't able to really sleep for more than an hour. The flight to Kigali was better. It was 8 hours as well, but I managed to sleep through most of it. I also probably had my last ice cream and cheese for the foreseeable future. We arrived in Kigali around 8 at night on Tuesday, cleared customs (which was almost too easy), met up with our program directors, and headed to our hotel.

We went out for our first Rwandan meal shortly thereafter. The food is really delicious. Usually, they have a salad of sorts with finely shredded lettuce and carrots, rice of some sort, beans, banana or some sort of starchy root, sauces made from cassava leaves and/or peanuts, the best french fries, and a few other things. The bananas here are the best. They're so sweet and flavorful! And everything we drink here is, by necessity, bottled. We usually have water, soda, juice, and occasionally beer. We got back to our hotel and crashed. I was only really able to sleep for 4 hours that night, but it was alright. Our hotel rooms are pretty basic--two twin beds, two desks, a bedside table, mosquito nets that hang from the ceiling, and a cement floor. The bathrooms are pretty interesting too. I've come to learn that toilets in Rwanda flush either by pulling a string or a knob on the top or by pushing a button. And most of them don't have toilet seats.

I woke up with the sunrise yesterday morning at around 6 am and couldn't get back to sleep. My roommate Alissa woke up then as well, so we just hung out, unpacked our stuff, and took in the beautiful view we have from our balcony (pictures to come!). I was able to skype my parents for a bit, which was cool. We have wifi here, but it's not too strong or reliable. I tried skyping Marvin later, and before we could even get a good conversation going beyond "I can't see you" "what did you say?" "are you there?," the wifi went down and didn't come up til later that night. Breakfast yesterday was good too! I've learned, though, that I probably ought to take my malaria pills after eating. Makes life a lot easier. For breakfast, we had an omlette, tea, bread, and tiny bananas. After that, I walked around the hotel for a bit and sat down to read. The view from here, and from all of Kigali really, is amazing. I now get why Rwanda is the land of a thousand hills. There are hills everywhere, and even though they've been developed and people live there or there are businesses there, much of the greenery is still there, so there are basically rolling hills of houses and tropical trees everywhere.

Speaking of the tropics, it really feels tropical here. The temperature ranges from the 60s to the low 80s, and the humidity is pretty high. Year round! Last night, we were talking to some Rwandans, and this guy was telling us how "cold" it was--at probably 65 degrees with high humidity. But even though it's so warm, people still dress really well. Men wear slacks or nice jeans with a collared shirt, and women wear either western style business clothes--skirts or slacks with a nice shirt, or more african style clothes--printed dresses and head wraps or wrap around skirts and a shirt. We try to dress as similarly as we can, but of course, we get stared at wherever we go. It's a bit weird being the center of attention like that, but I guess it's not terribly common to see a mizungu (white person) walking through your neighborhood either. On the way to lunch yesterday, there were kids out playing in front of a house on the road we were walking down. We greeted them in Kinyarwanda, which made them laugh, and kept walking. We soon heard feet quickly following behind us, so we turned around to see them all running toward us. We gave them all high fives and hand shakes and asked them their names, but that was about all we were able to say. They were adorable though! I really hope I get to work with kids for my internship.

After lunch, we went to Town to get our currency exchanged and buy phones to use while we're here. The currency, Rwandan Franc, is really pretty. But the way we're used to thinking about the value of money here is all off. Things are worth thousands of francs here, where as things are generally worth less than a hundred dollars in the US. A beer is a thousand franc, sunglasses, 5000 franc, etc. but a thousand franc is worth about $1.65. Thank god (or imana, rather) for the currency converter on my phone! We went to Bourbon, a coffee shop, for tea and coffee, and just as we sat down and tried to get on the wifi, the power went out. Had it not been for the lights going out, you would have never known. Life just continued as normal, no one really reacted much. TIA (this is africa, hakuna matata--which is actually a real swahili word!).

After that, we came back and had dinner, then went to a club called Shooters about a mile or so away. When we got there, they were having a spoken word night--all in English. As we learned the next day, we'd found the diaspora bar--a place where the young, educated people of Kigali and those who have been abroad go. They did a bit of poetry, then Joseph, a super outgoing guy in our group got up there and sang Kanye West's Heartless, and everyone just went crazy and started singing along. We got a few drinks, danced, and hung out til about 1 when we left. The walk home took us about 30 minutes. The club was a ways off the main road, and anything off the main roads are bumpy, packed dirt roads. We got to the main road, passed the US embassy, met a rather, er, charming lady who had had one too many to drink, got back to our hotel, and crashed.

It's early friday morning now, and I started this post on wednesday! So much to say :) I'll talk about thursday on my next post

Last Update from the US!

So here I am, sitting in my bed for the last time for 5 months. Tomorrow, I'll get on a plane at about 1, head for Chicago, hang out for a few hours and meet up with the rest of my group, minus Joseph, and then head to Brussels then Kigali. We'll get in at about 8 and then head to our hotel (which has wifi!). We have orientation for the first week, then we'll move in with our host families. We have five 2 week intensives for classes (Kinyarwanda and field methods, Rwanda: History, Culture, and the Arts, Ecology and sustainable development, microfinance and poverty reduction, and an internship seminar. Then we'll take a two week trip up to Uganda to do field work then come back and start our internships! I'll be back in the states on June 1st. I don't know anything about my host family, my internet access, or my internship yet, so that's getting to me a bit, but not too much. We'll figure it all out when we get there. For now, I'm all packed up for the most part and ought to be getting to bed. Next time you hear from me, I'll be in Rwanda!