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?