Rwanda, Week Three

Sorry everyone for the long gap between posts. My first two full weeks in Rwanda have been hectic, and it has been hard for me to find access to the internet. Things have started to settle into more of a routine now, and hopefully I will be able to post roughly once a week from now on. I am not going to go back through and fill in everything that has happened since leaving the U.S., because too much has happened in the interim, but I will try to give you an idea of what my life is like.

I am living with a family in the district of Kamonyi about an hours drive away from the capital city of Kigali. Although Kamonyi is part of the southern province, it is really considered central Rwanda. I live in a small farming town that stretches along a single dirt road following the spine of a long hill. On either side of the road there are houses and fields of bananas, coffee, and sweet potatoes. In between the houses, you can look out and see layers of hills receding into the distance, and in the morning the low valleys are covered in mist.

 

My family consists of a father (Elias), a mother (Providence) and their two son (Peace, age 7 and Senga, age 5.) Elias works in construction, and Providence is a seamstress in a small tailor shop in town. They are very kind and patient, and seem
very happy to have me living with them. I am trying not to be too much trouble, and so far we seem to be getting along just fine. I have been learning how to do household tasks from them, such as cooking on a wood stove, keeping the house clean, and doing laundry, and they have been immensely helpful so far.

The food is much better than I expected after talking to people who had visited East Africa before! It is a lot of beans and starches, but luckily that is more or less what my
diet was for years in college, so that did not take much adjustment. Usually a large meal (lunch or dinner) consists of 1-2 starches, most often rice, boiled plantains, or potatoes, but sometimes sweet potatoes or cassava, one vegetable (often green beans, carrots or cabbage) and beans. Some sort of sauce, either made from leafy greens, peanut flour, or cassava leaves is usually served as well.

My days are very long, and totally dominated by Peace Corps activities. I have been waking up 5:15 to go running with some of the other Peace Corps Trainees, and after I
shower (AKA bucket bath) and have breakfast, I usually head out for my day’s activities between 7:15 and 7:45. Peace Corps has provided us with an hourly schedules for what we will be doing until December 15^th, when all of us trainees will (hopefully) be sworn in as volunteers, and depending on the day, we generally have language class or other training from 8am to 4:15 pm, although often we finish
later. After that, I usually go home to help around the house and study Kinyarwanda, the native language, until dinner time, which is usually around 8:30 or 9. I generally get to sleep around 9:30 or so- rinse and repeat. Saturdays we have half-days of language class, and Sundays are our only free days. So as you see, I’ve been quite busy!
It feels like I’ve been gone for months already, even though it has really been just over 3 weeks since I left home. I think odds are good that this is going to be the longest three months of my life.