The Polar Bear Club

“Nicholas, do you know what happened?” says my room mate through the door, alarmed. Of course I don’t know what happened. It’s 9:30, so clearly I’m in bed (yes, I go to sleep on village time.) I had heard a weird popping noise from the other side of the house and the lights had flickered, but I hadn’t thought much of it.
I briefly consider whether I can just ignore this problem, whatever it might be. That’s never worked before, though, so I curse under my mental breath and drag myself out to see what the problem is.
The living room smells like burnt plastic, and there is a smeary black stain on the wall above the power outlet. My cheap, Russian-made electric water kettle has shorted out, melting the plastic surrounding one of the prongs of the plug. The prong in question is firmly lodged inside the wall in the center of the ugly black blotch.
I seethe a little bit at the site, and feel resentment start to grow immediately. I knew this was not my room mate’s fault, but I was pissed off. I could hardly care less about the wall, and to be honest I rarely used the kettle to make tea. But now I would have no choice in the mornings- I could wake up early and light the charcoal stove to heat water, or take a cold shower.
And that’s how I joined the polar bear club.
My site mate is impressed that I still shower every day, and as recently as last week I admitted that if I didn’t have my kettle I probably wouldn’t take them as frequently. So far though, I’ve stuck it out, despite my house being a semi-constant 65-70 degrees and the water feeling easily a few degrees colder than that. My strategy is to a) do some form of exercise before showering (which is probably good for me anyway) and b) to take a deep breath and try really hard not to whimper. And I’m not sure if it’s just some form of Stockholm syndrome or what, but I’m actually starting to like it.

What else is new around here? Well, the rains have been especially heavy in Rwanda this rainy season, and many roads around the country have had problems with minor mud and land slides. To deal with the problem, the government instituted 2 extra days of umuganda, which is compulsory community service. So both Wednesday and Saturday last week, I hopped into a truck with a few hundred men from my sector and we drove into the rainforest to clear the road to the Congo.
I actually really like doing umuganda, which is normally the last Saturday of the month. It is a good opportunity to get out and work with my community, to be seen working together with my neighbors, and to show I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty. There is a misconception in Rwanda that all foreigners are basically pansies who have never done a day of physical labor in their lives, and I think I’ve made it clear by now to you, dear readers, how much I enjoy wrecking these types of stereotypes.
This past week, I taught my first full course unit at my school. The way the curriculum is set up, our students have 12 modules, each containing 4 related course units. Each unit lasts about one week, and this week I had the pleasure to teach Economics and Sociocultural Concepts of Development. It was a little bit daunting at first, but after I got into the swing of it I enjoyed it quite a lot. All said and done, I taught about 25-30 hours (normally I teach 18 a week) and so yes, I was busting my ass all week. But even though the student sometimes found the subject matter boring, they suggested today that I should teach some more course units, which is a nice compliment for me and my teaching style. Next week I’m back to teaching just regular English, though, and that’s just fine with me.
A last note- because I was so busy this week, I told my room mates I would not have time to cook for all of us, but they were welcome to cook if they wanted to do so. They had no problem with that, but they both ate in the canteen every night. So it looks like in general either I cook, or no one cooks. I imagine the eventual result of this will be the room mates hiring someone to cook for them, because unless we work out a plan where each of us cooks a couple nights a week, I’ve had it with cooking for everyone. The point here, though, is we have reached a point where it is understood and accepted that it is not my responsibility to cook for everyone, and I feel like I am in a better place because of it.

Monkey Season

 

I look up from my notebook when I hear the sound of feet. Standing in the doorway fifteen feet away is an adult olive baboon. It’s about the size of a large dog, with bristly gray fur and a long muzzle. The baboon surveys the empty library, and it’s head stops when it sees me. It raises its eyebrows in an almost human expression of surprise; I had been quiet enough that it didn’t known I was in the building. I’ve been told these monkeys can be aggressive, and I’m not sure what will happen if one finds itself in close quarters with a human. Thankfully, after a short pause, it decides to leave. I stand and quickly close the door behind it. I might not be so lucky next time.

Yep, its monkey season all right. The baboons have been at our school almost every day for the last week. By the end of the dry season, they have picked the forest clean, and have moved to the outskirts of Nyungwe to raid crops and scavenge in the villages. They come in troops of 20 or 30 and more or less have free reign of our campus. I think I even heard one on my roof the other day. The villagers don’t like them because they steal corn from the fields and generally make trouble. The children chase them and throw rocks- probably the reason baboons tend to stay away from people. I haven’t seen them be aggressive yet, which is good because I often have to walk within ten feet of them to get to class. They really like going through my compost pile, which is a little irritating, but also is like having someone turn over the compost for me every day. All I have to do is put it back in a pile. So it’s not all bad.

In domestic news, one of my room mates has moved his bed and some furniture into the house , which means he will likely start living with me full time within the week. Having a room mate will certainly change the way I live. I’m used to having the whole house to myself, so I will probably have to adjust my behavior a little bit (aka not walking around in my underwear, etc.) It will be interesting to see how we deal with the eating situation, too. I’m not sure if we will cook food to share together or if we will switch off cooking nights. I imagine we will be eating dinner together, though, since eating food without sharing it is considered very rude in Rwandan culture. I’m hoping having Rwandan room mates will give me a chance to practice my Kinyarwanda since I’ve been speaking a lot of English with the other teachers and my students, but they may want to practice their English with me, too. I’ll be sure to write an update when they actually move in.

We haven’t had water in the staff residences since this past Thursday, which has been something of a challenge. Normally I have running water in my house, so I don’t have to haul water here like I did during training. However for the past couple of days, I’ve been surviving on the water in my water filter (about 10 L.) Luckily, the rainy season has just started, so I was able to collect a good amount of water yesterday and refill my filter, flush my toilet, wash my dishes, and take care of some other necessities. The ludicrous thing about the situation is that I have a water catchment system built onto my house. There is a tank that is full of water- it must have about 20,000 liters in it, but there is no tap, so the water just sits there, unused. Meanwhile it is raining every day, so water is running out of the joint between the tank and the pipe from the roof, and all the while the school is paying to have water

piped in. I just don’t understand. I’ve talked to our groundskeeper, and hopefully we will have a tap on our water tank in the near future.

A last vignette to leave you with; last Saturday, my site mate came to my house to make lunch. We made a Mexican feast- refried beans, tortillas, salsa, it was great. While we were cooking, a few of the neighbor children came over to see what we were doing. They poked around the yard a bit and spotted the herb sprouts I had potted in half-water bottles. I was rolling tortillas inside, and saw them looking at the bottles. Afraid they might knock the plants over, I tried to get their attention by rapping on the window. Instead, I accidentally put my hand right through the glass. The children looked at me dumbstruck. The muzungu had just smashed his hand through his window and was now spouting gibberish Kinyarwanda at them. They had no idea what was going on. Meanwhile, my site mate couldn’t see the children from where she was standing. To her, it looked like I had walked away from my tortillas and put my hand through the window, totally unprovoked. She laughed for about half an hour straight. Somehow I avoided cutting myself, so in the end the only damage done was to the window and my dignity. I felt pretty ridiculous at the time, but no one has mentioned it since and the children aren’t afraid to come visit me, so I guess it’s water under the bridge already.

 

Project FatNick Update: I have been thinking about the lifestyle changes that might be contributing to my loss of weight. The most likely changes I can come up with are A) eating less meat (but I already ate very little) B) eating less cheese, which could be a significant factor but will be a hard problem to solve, and C) drinking less beer. I’m thinking that beer may have been one of my major sources of empty calories, and empty calories are really what I need to put weight back on. Obviously, this is not really an unpleasant chore. We’ll see if it works.

 

 

First week of School + Project FatNick

My students are back! Hooray! As I’m writing this blog post, it is Wednesday, the third day of our first week of school for 2012. Our students (or half of them, anyway) arrived on Monday, and since then my life has been pretty hectic. I’m teaching a total of 15 hours each week- 10 hours to our KCCEM students, and another 5 or so in the evenings to staff members of the school and Nyungwe Park. I’m doing a lot of work to prepare lessons as well as working on a long-term curriculum for the semester. When I get a chance, I’m also helping to develop the catalog of our library, especially by registering for online databases and downloading digital copies of relevant journals.

It’s nice to be busy again. For those of you who don’t know me well, I’m something of a workaholic. I’m also glad that campus is more lively now that the students are back. A number of the my coworkers leave the school every weekend to visit their families, so weekends have been especially quiet. Most of our students will remain on campus, though, meaning weekends won’t be as lonely as they used to be.

The downside to having more to do on campus is that I am spending much less time out in the community. As I’ve noted in previous blog entries, I was spending 3-5 hours a day out playing cards, walking around, and chatting with people for most of the last two months. This week, however, I have been so busy either teaching, cooking, or preparing lessons, that I haven’t really been able to leave school at all. I’m going to have to make a real effort to continue spending time with the people I made friends with over my first months at site.

The pull away from the community and towards my school isn’t only because of my work schedule, though. It’s also just easier to stay on campus. In general, I feel like I relate better to the students and staff here than I do to many people in my community. Part of this is obviously that many people here speak relatively good English, so it is easier to be myself on campus. But I worry that part of it is socioeconomic, too. Out in the community, there is the perception that because I am a foreigner, a muzungu, that I must be rich. This means people treat me differently than they would a Rwandan, and although this is to be expected, I don’t much like it. On campus, I don’t have to deal with any of that. I feel like I am perceived as just another person, which is refreshing. Nonetheless, it makes me uncomfortable to think that I may get along better with KCCEMers than villagers just because we come from more similar socioeconomic backgrounds. There’s something faintly elitist and distasteful about the thought.

Anyway, the point of all that is: I like my coworkers and students, and I like my community, and I don’t like having to choose between them. So I will just have to work harder to make time for both groups.

Meanwhile, my other major activity is Project FatNick. The Peace Corps Docs tell us that something like 99% of men lose weight during their Peace Corps service, and I am no exception. In an effort to keep on what little weight I had, I have initiated Project FatNick. The project goes as follows: buy and cook more carbs than I actually want to eat. Then eat them. Start buying eggs, lots of them. Eat those too. See an avocado? Buy it. Eat it. Add an extra tablespoon of oil to everything. Start eating breakfast. So far I haven’t noticed any difference, but from what I hear these things take time.

Oh! I almost forgot, I got a package from Dad and Grammie this week. It was sent around Christmas, and there was worry that the homemade peanut butter chocolate fudge inside wouldn’t be good when it arrived. I am happy to report that my Grandma’s fudge is indestructable, and remains delicious despite long periods of nonrefrigeration. The fudge, along with the rest of the goodies that were in the package, will soon be a tasty part of Project FatNick.