Lots to report since my last post! First, I managed to find some running shorts at the Nyamagabe market a couple of weekends back and I have started running again. I am planning on training for the Kigali Peace Marathon, which takes place in May. I’m trying for the half marathon this year, and maybe if it goes well I’ll try to finish the entire thing next year. If anyone out there has training tips for half-marathons, send them my way!
Second, and more importantly, I met with the Head Teacher at the local primary/secondary school. The teachers there seem very excited to have me help them improve their English, and have also asked me to help out with an English Club for the students. I am very pleased about this, because I feel like helping improve the teachers’ English skills will allow me to indirectly help more people, since it will improve the teachers ability to educate their students. Improving the competence of people here on the ground is, ultimately, the only way to make a lasting impact at my site. While I haven’t started any of this yet (and, naturally, have no idea when I will start), having had this meeting means I will eventually start, which makes me feel like I have accomplished something.
I also had the chance to sit down with the director of my school and hash out what priorities he has for the English program here. Currently, the school has a sort of skeleton curriculum, which I will be responsible for fleshing out over my two years here. It seems like I have a lot of leeway in terms of curriculum development, and may even be able to select a class set of textbooks for the students. If I do a good job, this is another potential for lasting impact.
The school has also hired a bunch of new staff members who arrived this week. I get the impression that the school has been plagued by high staff turnover, but the our new staff seem very excited to be here. For the first time in a number of years, we will have three permanent lecturers for the Wildlife Management Program, and we also have a number of new support staff, including a librarian for our fledgling library. The library is pitifully small, but I have already starting thinking about getting books donated, helping set up a real card-catalog, getting shelves and chairs, and hopefully getting permission for the local community to use the library as a resource as well. I am already way ahead of myself.
I now have confirmation that two of our new staff, the accountant and the head of procurement, will be my future room mates. They are both Rwandan, which will give me a good chance to practice my Kinyarwanda. Although I have gotten used to living alone (and kind of like the privacy), I also think it will nice to have the company of room mates. I will still have my own room, of course, for when I need some time to decompress on my own.
Perhaps the most interesting bit of news to report is about the guests we had this past weekend. Three of my site-mate’s Health Volunteer colleagues came to visit our site, one with her parents and a married couple with a brother visiting from the states. I also had a guest- a friend of mine from college and my semester abroad in Morocco happened to just outside Kigali on a service trip teaching English, and came out to visit for the weekend. Everyone stayed here on campus, where there are a number of guest lodges. It was nice to have everyone so close by, and we all cooked and ate dinner together at my house four nights in a row. While living in DC I got in the habit of hosting small dinner parties, so it was nice to be able to do a similar sort of thing here. Having guests was also a good excuse to cook slightly more elaborate meals than usual, which was also nice. We talked, played cards, and also played the “Inglorious Basterds” game, where you guess the name of the famous person another player has stuck to your forehead.
It was very interesting getting to know some of the Health Volunteers, and to hear the problems they struggle with at their jobs. Hearing about the similar lack of structure, the frustrations, the hardships but also the bright spots of service from Volunteers who have put in 6 more months in-country than I have helped to put my life in perspective. Subconsciously, I had been thinking that there would come a point where everything would click and I would be magically “integrated.” That there was some plateau or place I would reach where things would become clear and make sense. But just like the rest of life, integration is never really done. It is a continuous negotiation, not a static state. Being integrated means reaching a certain level of comfort with the daily navigation of cross-cultural life, but it doesn’t mean the end of that negotiation. I get the impression that, for most volunteers, the better part of the first year is spent figuring out what concessions to make to our host culture’s sensibilities, and what ways we are willing to stretch our communities’ cultural boundaries in order to be ourselves and remain sane. I feel like so far in my service, I may have been leaning to far towards host-culture norms, and it is good for me to have the reminder that it is okay to carve out some space for myself.
A final note- I finally got my furniture! I have a dining room table and chairs, as well as four chairs for my living room. There was some confusion with the carpenter, so the chairs are smaller than I had anticipated and he did not make a coffee table, but I am just happy to have furniture after a month that I don’t really mind. I think maybe I will ask my room mates to cover the cost of the coffee table, and perhaps cushions for the living room chairs since I paid for the furniture itself. We’ll see though.
Before I sign off, I want to answer some questions from previous posts:
Q: What is the daily temperature like? Highs and lows?
A: I don’t have a thermometer, but I am guessing on sunny days it can get up to high 70’s or low 80’s, and on rainy or windy days or nights it probably gets into the 40s or 50s. Because we are at about 8000 feet here the nights tend to be cold.
Q:When will you post pictures of your house? Or site? Or anything else for that matter?
A: Soon.
Q:What are the local religious sects?
A: This varies by region. Traditionally, Rwanda has been heavily Catholic since Belgian colonization. However, because of the church’s role in the events of ’94, many other denominations have become popular. At my site, we have Pentecosts, 7th Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholics, Anglicans, and maybe Presbyterians. There is also a sizable Muslim minority in Rwanda, but very few Muslims at my site. Explain to people that I am Jewish is always interesting, since very few people have any idea what that means.
Rwandan Nights 
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