There’s a lot to tell, but I feel like I’ve got nothing I want to say. Much has happened since the start of the school year, and here we are almost at the end of term 1 and I’m finding it hard to know where to start. Our school has grown and is becoming more successful everyday. I would like to think the same about my personal growth but I’m not always as convinced as my rhetoric would suggest. I guess let’s start with the school. Because I absolutely and utterly adore my school.
We opened last month and began classes with about 60 students in the first week. Two weeks later we had capped our enrollment with 90. Part of the push came from the dedication ceremony featuring many prominent individuals including the First Lady of Rwanda, Mrs. Kagame. The girls are nothing short of incredible. Every one of them is an individual seeking to blaze their own trail in the world. It is simply inspiring to work here, especially after the emotional trouncing my school laid on me last year.
I’m not going to say I didn’t see the reserved and relatively empty faces of my old students in some of my new ones who were coming from similar austere village circumstances, but the beauty of the Gashora Girls Academy is its clash of socieites. Emancipating and empowering women in third world countries is a fight--A long and difficult fight that does not always turn out to be very rewarding. GGA brought that fight where it needed to be, at the village level, with many different types of people participating and learning together. The affluent girls from Kigali learn the realities of their country and can collaborate with the girls from the village on ideas for change. In exchange, girls from the village can watch the girls from the cities learn how to be independent.
I get excited just seeing the flourishing personalities, the way the girls confidently to speak up about ideas or concerns, and can freely express their feelings about almost anything. I see progress every day and it does wonders for my soul. I can perceive my impact and it puts sutures on my still torn up heart. I can’t ever make up for my devastating failures last year, but I’m not going to let the past stop me from succeeding in the future. I wasn’t able to perform at the level I wanted in Mulindi, but I can here. The change was worth it.
Although this is the happiest I have ever been while in Africa, I have never been so completely lost in my entire life. For the first time ever I don’t have a plan. Not really. My life plan now extends only about two years into the future at best, and the details aren’t properly etched out. I’ve got a bunch of variables in front of me that seem to belong to different equations. I don’t know how to put things back together again. Which, I suppose, is my real struggle. After having everything unravel on me last year, I don’t know how to put myself back together again. There is a Buddhist principle that says people are unhappy because they are overly concerned with what was and what will be instead of just accepting every day as it comes. So, I’m testing my weaknesses. I’m not good at being aimless, but I’m trying it. If I just move forward a little at a time without thinking too hard about anything, maybe the answers will come to me in time.
I am considering this assignment more of an independent learning experience. My school director is rapidly becoming quite the mentor. He has sort of mastered the art of waiting and listening, and I’m trying to learn as much as possible from that demeanor as well as just his personal moral philosophies. He is certainly the glue that holds the pieces of this school together. If I can learn to be more like that sooner, I imagine I’ll be able to make more positive influences on my world for a longer period of time.
That said, I still work for the Peace Corps. I haven’t cut myself off from them completely but I am trying to limit my interactions. After MSC I think I have a clearer view of who this new Administration really is. No, they won’t let you starve at your site like the last one, but they don’t rate volunteer happiness as a priority. In fact, I would go as far as to say some them genuinely think these years need to include not only removing yourself from the place you know and people you love, but also closing yourself off to all the things that used to make you happy. But being in despair and being desperate isn’t an effective use of my time. I already lived that life for 365 painful days, and while it showed me more of who I really was, it didn’t help me fulfill any of my “Peace Corps Objectives”.
After the next few months, I’ll be home and maybe in graduate school. I received my first rejection letter today from Tufts. It didn’t really bother me that much because I never really intended on going there. It was my litmus test. If I was accepted there I would have been accepted to the others by virtue of Tufts having the most competitive program for my degree. Ultimately, I need a few years back in California. I need to refamiliarize myself with home and try to center a bit more. After that, maybe I’ll have a better idea of what my goals are, and how I’m going to get there again. Ideally, I’ll be able to come back to Rwanda and continue to work at the Academy during school breaks. I’m still working out the details of that with my school director though.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
2011 Update
It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I wrote three separate entries thinking it was the one I wanted to submit to the public, so hopefully this will be my final copy. Returning to America was not like anything I could have anticipated. It was shocking. I mean really physically and psychologically shocking. For my first week I was enchanted by everything, disconnected, and preoccupied with the busyness involved in all of the superfluous details. There were fountains in the middle of shopping malls that spit water for children to play in, or simply for people to admire. I couldn’t imagine what my twelve year old neighbor, Mugeni, would have thought if she saw it and was told it was “just decoration” after years of having to carry Jerry Cans from the source, up our mountain, just so her family could cook at night.
I spent a lot of time hiding in my room with my computer, trying to find a lifeline to ground me into my new First World reality. A few of my friends who had gone through this process before told me it would just take some getting used to. There were things I could get used to, and then there were things I couldn’t. Though, I rapidly got used to all of the food I had missed the previous 15 months, daily hot showers, and reliable transportation. I think it took some time for my friends and relatives to readjust to me as well. After all of the “Hi”s and “How are you”s, immediately followed the “Oh my GOD you’re so skinny”s, and some assessments on the change in my demeanor. I had a lot of people tell me I had become awkwardly quiet and detached. Devan’s phrasing of my transformation was probably the kindest. “There’s stillness about you now,” he told me. It was nice to be around him again and see that he still had absolutely no demands of me. After everything, he is still the one person I can be around and never have to feel like I’m trying to entertain or impress. I could be at zero with him, which was an invaluable emotional sanctuary when things got overwhelming.
I kept myself together until the very end. My last few days at home were tumultuous at best. The thought of getting back on the plane and returning to the place that handed me my ass for more than a year caused a visceral reaction in me. I just wanted to run as far in the opposite direction as humanly possible. Rwanda no longer represented this holy grail of undiscovered potential. It was the place where my dreams went to die, and I suffered the better part of that passing alone. I forced myself onto the plane under the pretense that “things would be different this time.” I had a new school, a new village, and a new job. In reality, I forced myself back because I didn’t think I could ever be able to forgive myself for abandoning my friends to the Heart of Darkness. Every time someone I cared about walked out, it was like one less thread keeping my pieces together. “It takes ten times as long to put yourself together than it does to fall apart,” I would remind myself, and try my best to continue forward with what then seemed like a missing limb.
But it was different this time. I’ll admit, my first few days on the ground I was depressed. I thought about leaving every day, and every day it became harder and harder to come up with reasons to stay. Then, I finally got to move to my school, and things changed. The paranoia of being sent back to “the arena” dissolved. It became clear in the first 24 hours that I wasn’t going to have to fight for the essentials when they brought me to the dining hall and served me a fully balanced meal three times in a day. My house had a refrigerator. My room was like having my own private college dorm. I decorated it with letters and pictures from home like I did my freshman year at Davis. There was always water. Even when it was cold or took time to come through the pipes, there wasn’t any 45 minute hill that required conquering before I could have a shower. My mattress didn’t slope in the middle and I found myself sleeping whole nights through for the first time ever in Rwanda. That was the real kicker. When my door closed, the world stopped moving. I had solace, privacy, and absolutely no one to look out for aside from myself. That’s right. No Meow Meows de la Nuit attacking my housemates, no one waking me up to walk them to the latrine, no one knocking on my door in the middle of the night because of a post traumatic flashback. At night I could lie down, close my eyes, and not open them again until my alarm went off the next morning.
It didn’t take long for me to realize I was going to finish my service. About a week into being a site I made the unconscious decision to stay the course. I didn’t need to think through it. It was just a change in my mood that let me know I was going to be doing okay.
Thursday the girls arrived and we’ve been preparing for classes ever since. The latest from the Peace Corps rumor mill is that the school year will end in June due to MINEDUCs desire to match its school year with the rest of the East African Community. Man, wouldn’t that be a monkey wrench in the plans on everyone involved in Rwandan Education outside of the Ministry of Education? Even the Peace Corps would have to make adjustments to when they requested volunteers and when they would implement trainings. The school year would start up again in September leaving me to wonder why I didn’t apply for fall semesters at all of my Graduate Schools, but I’m trying not to dwell on how ridiculous this sudden change “would be” until everyone is sure it’s a “will be”.
More on that later.
I spent a lot of time hiding in my room with my computer, trying to find a lifeline to ground me into my new First World reality. A few of my friends who had gone through this process before told me it would just take some getting used to. There were things I could get used to, and then there were things I couldn’t. Though, I rapidly got used to all of the food I had missed the previous 15 months, daily hot showers, and reliable transportation. I think it took some time for my friends and relatives to readjust to me as well. After all of the “Hi”s and “How are you”s, immediately followed the “Oh my GOD you’re so skinny”s, and some assessments on the change in my demeanor. I had a lot of people tell me I had become awkwardly quiet and detached. Devan’s phrasing of my transformation was probably the kindest. “There’s stillness about you now,” he told me. It was nice to be around him again and see that he still had absolutely no demands of me. After everything, he is still the one person I can be around and never have to feel like I’m trying to entertain or impress. I could be at zero with him, which was an invaluable emotional sanctuary when things got overwhelming.
I kept myself together until the very end. My last few days at home were tumultuous at best. The thought of getting back on the plane and returning to the place that handed me my ass for more than a year caused a visceral reaction in me. I just wanted to run as far in the opposite direction as humanly possible. Rwanda no longer represented this holy grail of undiscovered potential. It was the place where my dreams went to die, and I suffered the better part of that passing alone. I forced myself onto the plane under the pretense that “things would be different this time.” I had a new school, a new village, and a new job. In reality, I forced myself back because I didn’t think I could ever be able to forgive myself for abandoning my friends to the Heart of Darkness. Every time someone I cared about walked out, it was like one less thread keeping my pieces together. “It takes ten times as long to put yourself together than it does to fall apart,” I would remind myself, and try my best to continue forward with what then seemed like a missing limb.
But it was different this time. I’ll admit, my first few days on the ground I was depressed. I thought about leaving every day, and every day it became harder and harder to come up with reasons to stay. Then, I finally got to move to my school, and things changed. The paranoia of being sent back to “the arena” dissolved. It became clear in the first 24 hours that I wasn’t going to have to fight for the essentials when they brought me to the dining hall and served me a fully balanced meal three times in a day. My house had a refrigerator. My room was like having my own private college dorm. I decorated it with letters and pictures from home like I did my freshman year at Davis. There was always water. Even when it was cold or took time to come through the pipes, there wasn’t any 45 minute hill that required conquering before I could have a shower. My mattress didn’t slope in the middle and I found myself sleeping whole nights through for the first time ever in Rwanda. That was the real kicker. When my door closed, the world stopped moving. I had solace, privacy, and absolutely no one to look out for aside from myself. That’s right. No Meow Meows de la Nuit attacking my housemates, no one waking me up to walk them to the latrine, no one knocking on my door in the middle of the night because of a post traumatic flashback. At night I could lie down, close my eyes, and not open them again until my alarm went off the next morning.
It didn’t take long for me to realize I was going to finish my service. About a week into being a site I made the unconscious decision to stay the course. I didn’t need to think through it. It was just a change in my mood that let me know I was going to be doing okay.
Thursday the girls arrived and we’ve been preparing for classes ever since. The latest from the Peace Corps rumor mill is that the school year will end in June due to MINEDUCs desire to match its school year with the rest of the East African Community. Man, wouldn’t that be a monkey wrench in the plans on everyone involved in Rwandan Education outside of the Ministry of Education? Even the Peace Corps would have to make adjustments to when they requested volunteers and when they would implement trainings. The school year would start up again in September leaving me to wonder why I didn’t apply for fall semesters at all of my Graduate Schools, but I’m trying not to dwell on how ridiculous this sudden change “would be” until everyone is sure it’s a “will be”.
More on that later.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Airports
So it had been more than 14 months since I had flown anywhere by myself. Incidentally, it had also been more than 14 months since I had left the African continent. I can say things are pretty much the way I remember it, but my perception of all of those things has changed. Being back in major international airports again was this weird juxtaposition of familiar images with foreign implications. It was like watching one of my favorite movies of all times in Chinese with some bad subtitles. I knew how it all worked but it all seemed incredibly awkward.
There was the initial culture shock of seeing all the different kinds of people in one place. It was bizarre to walk by hundreds of travelers and not have them even glance in my general direction. I was invisible again. No one touched me or shoved me… Especially in lines--which was another social oddity. It was weird to have people line up to buy a croissant and coffee, but have that oppressive sense that everyone was incredibly annoyed to have to be waiting for their turn to pay. As if they needed to rush past the cashier in order to make it in time to wait three hours for their flight to board. Everyone is in a hurry here. Sometimes legitimately, but also when there is legitimately no reason to feel pressed for time at all.
There were also just my own issues with accepting how functional things are above the Sahara. I spent a good 20 minutes walking around the mall inside the airport trying to work up the courage to buy a bottle of water with a credit card. I thought for sure they’d turn me down. Who spends 3 euros and charges it to a card? Well, evidently everyone in the Northern Hemisphere. And I remember it being like that too. I used to go to Starbucks all the time, buy a water, or a four dollar coffee and put it on my credit card. Nonetheless, I was seriously anxious about using the card after so long of it being an ordeal to bring plastic into the transaction equation. I felt like an idiot when I handed over the card and she printed me out the receipt without anything more than a “have a nice day ma’am”.
In short, I think this re-adjustment is going to be less of a total cinch than I initially anticipated.
There was the initial culture shock of seeing all the different kinds of people in one place. It was bizarre to walk by hundreds of travelers and not have them even glance in my general direction. I was invisible again. No one touched me or shoved me… Especially in lines--which was another social oddity. It was weird to have people line up to buy a croissant and coffee, but have that oppressive sense that everyone was incredibly annoyed to have to be waiting for their turn to pay. As if they needed to rush past the cashier in order to make it in time to wait three hours for their flight to board. Everyone is in a hurry here. Sometimes legitimately, but also when there is legitimately no reason to feel pressed for time at all.
There were also just my own issues with accepting how functional things are above the Sahara. I spent a good 20 minutes walking around the mall inside the airport trying to work up the courage to buy a bottle of water with a credit card. I thought for sure they’d turn me down. Who spends 3 euros and charges it to a card? Well, evidently everyone in the Northern Hemisphere. And I remember it being like that too. I used to go to Starbucks all the time, buy a water, or a four dollar coffee and put it on my credit card. Nonetheless, I was seriously anxious about using the card after so long of it being an ordeal to bring plastic into the transaction equation. I felt like an idiot when I handed over the card and she printed me out the receipt without anything more than a “have a nice day ma’am”.
In short, I think this re-adjustment is going to be less of a total cinch than I initially anticipated.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
November Update
Well, a lot has happened since I last updated. The most pressing thing on my mind is my prodigal return to the States in a week. I’m leaving next Saturday. That’s so weird. I’ve been on this continent for 14 months now and I’m not sure how I’m going to feel being back in the land of the Free and home of the Sane. A couple of people said I would no longer have a basis to recognize oddities anymore.
Friend: You’re going to see some guy yelling at a parked bus and think it’s totally normal.
Me: Well, maybe the bus door is broken and he can’t get in. I think you’re being judgmental.
Friend: You’re going to go the one restaurant that accidentally puts a rock in your food and just toss it aside when you could be suing, or at the very least getting free meals for a month.
Me: Only one rock? Dude, that’s sounds like an awesome place to eat! We should go.
So, hopefully I won’t actually be that bad, but I know there are things that are going to appear really strange to me. I know I’m going to miss the Rwandan way to make exceptions for things on a case by case basis. I remember what it was like being in the States and having regulations standardize everything to the point of ignoring extraordinary circumstances. I like being able to state my case. I like being able to say, “I was hoping you would understand and could help me…” and then actually have some professional representative give me the nod. At home, the fact is, codes come before people. That’s going to be hard to readjust to.
In other news, I’m making my site change to Gashora. I’ll be joining up with a Seattle NGO called the Rwanda Girls Initiative to build a special girls school that focuses on training girls in Math and Science disciplines. I really like the headmaster and I’m already feeling productive in the some of the projects I’ve started for the team. Yes, this means I’ll be working while I’m home. Africa has changed me a lot, but I’m still that girl who takes her homework on vacation with her.
The school will open in February, but hopefully I’ll move in a little before that. The ordeal that has arisen over where to keep my things while the housing is being constructed turned out to me more of a headache than I expected. I talked to my APCD a little more than a week before I wanted to move out and he said I could choose my move date, under the condition that I worked out a place for my things to go with my new Director. So I did. We decided I would move out on a Friday and I spent a week packing up my things.
The Sunday before moving day I got a call informing me that a trainee was coming to my site for an orientation visit. “Please help him with a general understanding of the village,” they told me. Okay. Simple enough. But on Monday I got a knock on my door at 9am and this kid was standing on my doorstep with one of the senior teachers. “I think he will stay with you and that is okay,” said Professor T with some questionable glances at my PJs. I scowled on the inside, feeling slightly spurned that no one decided to inform me that I was going to have a visitor during the week I was trying to move out. We put his things in the guest room and I tried to help him get to know the town as much as possible. Technically that job belonged to my old Headmaster but he was completely M.I.A. for the entire week.
On Wednesday I had to leave for a Peer Support meeting in Kigali so it was another chunk cut out of my packing time, but at least we got a lot of important ideas hammered out for the weekend presentation at Stage. When I returned that evening I started cleaning out my trunk and sent the trainee into town to buy me some new locks. On Thursday in the midst of my fierce cleaning and packing Frenzy I got a call from my APCDs assistant.
Him: Hello. I am calling to confirm your move from site.
Me: Yeah. Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Him: We are going to send the car on Tuesday.
Me: … … … What?
Him: We are sending the car to pick you up on Tuesday.
Me: No, my move is on Friday. I already worked it out with my Program Director.
Him: Well, he is sick today and not in the office.
Me: … Listen. I know this isn’t your fault, but I’m not going to be here after Friday. I need the car to come then. We already agreed on it.
Him: There are no cars available for Friday.
Me: Well, then MAKE ONE AVAILABLE.
Him: We can come pick you up on Tuesday.
Me: I won’t be here! What am I supposed to do?! Just leave and lock my stuff in the house?!
Him: I guess so.
I hung up the phone and considered the odds of my spontaneously turning into Ghost Rider. After a few minutes of my head not bursting into flames, I sat down for an hour and designed a different packing plan that would allow me to carry essentials with me for just the right amount of time before my vacation in only two backpacks—Because I am freakin’ a genius.
The moral of the story is that my things did get safely moved, mainly because my old sitemate took my keys and kept an eye on everything after I left. It’s good to know that even when you can’t depend on your superiors, your co-workers totally have your back (thanks times a million Devin).
I presented at stage, and moved onto National Exam grading which was not even remotely what I expected. After a meeting with the Director of the exam council and asking him about lodging I started getting nervous. He told us we were being housed in school dormitories. Now, that might not seem bad upon first glance, but Rwandan school dorms are often buildings that ought to be condemned by most standards. When we arrived at the site we were told to pick rooms. The rooms were medium concrete rooms with broken bunk beds stacked one next to the other, no sheets or blankets, and no mosquito nets. Each room had about 40 – 50 people in it. The doors didn’t lock much less have handles and the bathrooms… Well, I’ll spare you that much. I panicked and called my APCD.
Me: You need to get here. The housing is unacceptable, even by Peace Corps standards.
Him: So, is it just you that has a problem with the housing, or is it everyone.
Me: You need to get here.
And to his credit, he did show up on a Sunday night before even stopping home to see his family. He took one look at the lodgings, apologized, and then found us an awesome place close by to stay in for the remainder of the exam correction.
Unfortunately, because nothing ever works out as smoothly as one would hope, correcting National Exams was a complete and total crap shoot. Leaving all improvements to make grading effective aside, we were not welcomed there. Teachers were incredibly dismissive of us. At first I thought it was a sexism issue. The male teachers didn’t want to hear what the young white girls had to say because they were too busy imagining us in indecent situations. After all, it’s hard to respect sexual objects. (I wish I was making this up but I heard people saying terribly unprofessional things about all of us every day I attended marking). But as it turned out, they didn’t have any intention of listening to what the boys had to say either. I chalked it up to being an intimidating force, seeing as they probably never had an authority on the subject matter come in and explain how it actually worked. I guess it doesn’t really matter. I never showed up because I thought I could affect the students who took this year’s exam. I showed up because they said that was the only way I could have any involvement in the creation of the next year’s exam. Next year I won’t have to argue with any of them about answers. I’ll have written the test myself and had 8 of my friends edit it or one of my friends will write and I will be one of the 8 people editing. It won’t have structural, spelling, or grammar errors, and these kids will have an actual chance at succeeding.
BAM.
It is definitely time for a vay-kay.
See you dudes soon.
Friend: You’re going to see some guy yelling at a parked bus and think it’s totally normal.
Me: Well, maybe the bus door is broken and he can’t get in. I think you’re being judgmental.
Friend: You’re going to go the one restaurant that accidentally puts a rock in your food and just toss it aside when you could be suing, or at the very least getting free meals for a month.
Me: Only one rock? Dude, that’s sounds like an awesome place to eat! We should go.
So, hopefully I won’t actually be that bad, but I know there are things that are going to appear really strange to me. I know I’m going to miss the Rwandan way to make exceptions for things on a case by case basis. I remember what it was like being in the States and having regulations standardize everything to the point of ignoring extraordinary circumstances. I like being able to state my case. I like being able to say, “I was hoping you would understand and could help me…” and then actually have some professional representative give me the nod. At home, the fact is, codes come before people. That’s going to be hard to readjust to.
In other news, I’m making my site change to Gashora. I’ll be joining up with a Seattle NGO called the Rwanda Girls Initiative to build a special girls school that focuses on training girls in Math and Science disciplines. I really like the headmaster and I’m already feeling productive in the some of the projects I’ve started for the team. Yes, this means I’ll be working while I’m home. Africa has changed me a lot, but I’m still that girl who takes her homework on vacation with her.
The school will open in February, but hopefully I’ll move in a little before that. The ordeal that has arisen over where to keep my things while the housing is being constructed turned out to me more of a headache than I expected. I talked to my APCD a little more than a week before I wanted to move out and he said I could choose my move date, under the condition that I worked out a place for my things to go with my new Director. So I did. We decided I would move out on a Friday and I spent a week packing up my things.
The Sunday before moving day I got a call informing me that a trainee was coming to my site for an orientation visit. “Please help him with a general understanding of the village,” they told me. Okay. Simple enough. But on Monday I got a knock on my door at 9am and this kid was standing on my doorstep with one of the senior teachers. “I think he will stay with you and that is okay,” said Professor T with some questionable glances at my PJs. I scowled on the inside, feeling slightly spurned that no one decided to inform me that I was going to have a visitor during the week I was trying to move out. We put his things in the guest room and I tried to help him get to know the town as much as possible. Technically that job belonged to my old Headmaster but he was completely M.I.A. for the entire week.
On Wednesday I had to leave for a Peer Support meeting in Kigali so it was another chunk cut out of my packing time, but at least we got a lot of important ideas hammered out for the weekend presentation at Stage. When I returned that evening I started cleaning out my trunk and sent the trainee into town to buy me some new locks. On Thursday in the midst of my fierce cleaning and packing Frenzy I got a call from my APCDs assistant.
Him: Hello. I am calling to confirm your move from site.
Me: Yeah. Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Him: We are going to send the car on Tuesday.
Me: … … … What?
Him: We are sending the car to pick you up on Tuesday.
Me: No, my move is on Friday. I already worked it out with my Program Director.
Him: Well, he is sick today and not in the office.
Me: … Listen. I know this isn’t your fault, but I’m not going to be here after Friday. I need the car to come then. We already agreed on it.
Him: There are no cars available for Friday.
Me: Well, then MAKE ONE AVAILABLE.
Him: We can come pick you up on Tuesday.
Me: I won’t be here! What am I supposed to do?! Just leave and lock my stuff in the house?!
Him: I guess so.
I hung up the phone and considered the odds of my spontaneously turning into Ghost Rider. After a few minutes of my head not bursting into flames, I sat down for an hour and designed a different packing plan that would allow me to carry essentials with me for just the right amount of time before my vacation in only two backpacks—Because I am freakin’ a genius.
The moral of the story is that my things did get safely moved, mainly because my old sitemate took my keys and kept an eye on everything after I left. It’s good to know that even when you can’t depend on your superiors, your co-workers totally have your back (thanks times a million Devin).
I presented at stage, and moved onto National Exam grading which was not even remotely what I expected. After a meeting with the Director of the exam council and asking him about lodging I started getting nervous. He told us we were being housed in school dormitories. Now, that might not seem bad upon first glance, but Rwandan school dorms are often buildings that ought to be condemned by most standards. When we arrived at the site we were told to pick rooms. The rooms were medium concrete rooms with broken bunk beds stacked one next to the other, no sheets or blankets, and no mosquito nets. Each room had about 40 – 50 people in it. The doors didn’t lock much less have handles and the bathrooms… Well, I’ll spare you that much. I panicked and called my APCD.
Me: You need to get here. The housing is unacceptable, even by Peace Corps standards.
Him: So, is it just you that has a problem with the housing, or is it everyone.
Me: You need to get here.
And to his credit, he did show up on a Sunday night before even stopping home to see his family. He took one look at the lodgings, apologized, and then found us an awesome place close by to stay in for the remainder of the exam correction.
Unfortunately, because nothing ever works out as smoothly as one would hope, correcting National Exams was a complete and total crap shoot. Leaving all improvements to make grading effective aside, we were not welcomed there. Teachers were incredibly dismissive of us. At first I thought it was a sexism issue. The male teachers didn’t want to hear what the young white girls had to say because they were too busy imagining us in indecent situations. After all, it’s hard to respect sexual objects. (I wish I was making this up but I heard people saying terribly unprofessional things about all of us every day I attended marking). But as it turned out, they didn’t have any intention of listening to what the boys had to say either. I chalked it up to being an intimidating force, seeing as they probably never had an authority on the subject matter come in and explain how it actually worked. I guess it doesn’t really matter. I never showed up because I thought I could affect the students who took this year’s exam. I showed up because they said that was the only way I could have any involvement in the creation of the next year’s exam. Next year I won’t have to argue with any of them about answers. I’ll have written the test myself and had 8 of my friends edit it or one of my friends will write and I will be one of the 8 people editing. It won’t have structural, spelling, or grammar errors, and these kids will have an actual chance at succeeding.
BAM.
It is definitely time for a vay-kay.
See you dudes soon.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
September finished out with some unfortunately causalities to the Peace Corps family, but also some awesome parties. I was tragically unable to see one of my R2 health chicas off because her flight left in the middle of the week, but I think I can safely say she knows she’ll be missed. We also said goodbye to two of the embassy marines. During this event, I discovered that knowing your friends means knowing when your friends are going to try to be lame. Charissa and I were invited out to a going away dinner and dance fest, so I called her the day before to confirm she’d actually be going out.
Me: So, when should I be there?
Charissa: Well, the dinner is at 6.
Me: That’s cool. Do we know where we’re going dancing yet?
C: I don’t know if I’m going dancing.
Me: What? You’re totally going dancing.
C: I didn’t bring anything to wear.
Me: Ah-ha! I figured as much, so I brought something for you.
C: … You… You brought me a club outfit?
Me: Yeah, it’s super adorable. You’ve played this card before. You’re going to have to come up with some better tricks if you want to keep hating fun.
Her better trick turned out to be passing out by 11 and making me feel guilty for telling her to come out. Luckily, the Marines weren’t as forgiving as me and she ended up at Cadillac in spite of her protests. All in all, it was probably my best night in Rwanda so far.
The school semester is almost over, and I feel like it went by to quickly. This term was so short and I had some of my lessons stolen from be due to illness, and abrupt changes in curriculum. For example, one day during a lesson on how to approach the reading comprehension portion of the National Exam the Dean of Discipline walked into my classroom and told me I was needed in the teachers lounge.
“But, I’m in the middle of a class.” I said.
“The Director needs to see all teachers now.” He replied.
So, I left the students to work on some of the problems in groups and begrudgingly walked to the teacher’s lounge where everyone awaited whatever important news the Headmaster was about to announce. This news was actually that it was “International Peace Day” and we had a specific lesson to teach to all of our students because of it. I glanced through the lesson and was less than thrilled that I was going to postpone my instruction on the National Exam for an incredibly inane lesson about the consequences and merits of War and Peace respectively. The design of the lesson was to show how, in effect, Peace was good and War was bad. Sure, okay. But could we go into a little more depth than that? I mean, if we have to do this in any event, can we make it a lesson on personal empowerment? At least that’s what I intended to do.
One of the exercises asked the students to draw what they thought the world would look like if Rwanda, Africa, and the Planet were at peace. I walked up to the board and drew a large box, and inside largely wrote the words:
“War is over!!!”
And in a much smaller text below I scribbled:
“[If you want it…] Merry Christmas from John and Yoko.”
A student raised there hand. “Teacher, what is John and Yoko?”
Me: They were musicians. Several years before you were born, they put up big posters around the world that looked exactly like this. Why do you think they did that?
Student: Because there was no war then.
Me: No. There was war. In fact, there was a lot of war.
Student: Then why?
Me: To remind people that bad things end when you want them to. You have the power to stop things you don’t like. So, they were saying, war ends when you decide you want it to end.
The Headmaster walked in during this discussion and asked to see the progress of their art project. I told him we were in the middle of a discussion about War and he tersely explained to me that a discussion about War was not part of the lesson plan, waited for me to assign the next section and then left the room. It’s always a pleasure to have intellectual progress with my students interrupted in favor of promoting the lowest common denominator of education. You want your kids to learn something? Stay out of my classroom and let me teach them.
A little before my one year anniversary in Rwanda was “National Teacher Appreciation Day”, which involved us all making the several kilometer hike to the sector office of Kaniga. I thought I lived at the top of my mountain but evidently I don’t, because if they were true I would live in Kaniga. So, if you back into the hills a little ways and travel up you eventually arrive in Uganda, or the sector office. Same thing, really.
I spent a good portion of the afternoon waiting for something to happen. I considered calling up a moto and going home to sleep my day off away, but some friendly advice from another PCV kept stopping me from dialing. “Sometimes you just have to be bored with them,” she said. “That’s how you actually get to know them and that’s how you actually become friends.” So, I waited on a bench and watched clouds with Jo, the Secretary and the Animatrice for a solid three hours. Eventually the ceremony started and I was glad I stayed. Some of it was just speeches given by sector, cell and district officials in order to thank teachers for their hard work, but a lot of it was also performances from students in from the surrounding area. This meant dancing, freestyle rapping, acrobatics, and skits. I got pulled up to dance with some of the students when they were doing a Rukiga dance I had never seen before. Luckily, it was incredibly similar to industrial stomping minus any of the arm motions, so I managed. Shortly thereafter, the cell executive walked up to me and privately asked if I would “tell how I see Rwandan education”. That was all I got. How do I see Rwanda education? I don’t know. I’m not even entirely sure what that means, but I managed to talk about it for about ten minutes. Had this been the first time an African had put me on the spot to say something of interest about an incredibly vague topic, I might have declined saying anything at all, but no. This was probably about the eighth time something like that had happened, and I like to think because of it I’m getting rather good at spontaneous monologues.
The ceremony ended when it started to downpour, and we all went inside for drinks and a relatively late lunch.
The middle portion of this month was a pretty major slump for me. A series of unfortunate events caused me to revisit my second term philosophy of giving up on trying to improve life in Rwanda. I had a friend ask me what the problem was and I frankly told him that living here is equivalent to seeing the very worst in humanity everyday and trying to convince yourself that there’s something redeemable in that.
“I used to get mad about things. Like all time. There is so much injustice here. The kinds of things that people just ignore, are the things we make jokes about at home because it’s so far out of our ability to comprehend,” I said.
“You’re expecting too much of them,” he told me. “They lived through a genocide. Everything ‘bad’ that happens from here on is going to be compared to that-- and by that comparison things are going to seem ‘okay’. They’re not ignoring problems because they really think it’s all right. They’re ignoring it because they want the nightmare to be over.”
“It’s not good enough,” I said. “This country is destroying my soul. I used to be motivated to do things. I had the desire to fight all the things that were wrong and tear them down, but today, I just didn’t want to do it anymore. Sometimes things just seem so ridiculously criminal and I have to wonder what it would be like if we just let this continent eat itself. Or the world for that matter. Just let things happen like their going to. I could remove myself from assisting entirely. I mean, are people really worth it? Are we really worth helping?”
“Jeez, Jenn. What’s got you so intent on being upset?”
I told him. And he listened. And then he told me a story.
“Once upon a time, there was a girl who was good at a lot of things.
She thought that meant she was probably good at everything.
And maybe she was.
Then she saw some stuff that is impossible to be good at.
But then she was okay.”
[It’s not worth it to give up now.]
Maybe you’re right.
Me: So, when should I be there?
Charissa: Well, the dinner is at 6.
Me: That’s cool. Do we know where we’re going dancing yet?
C: I don’t know if I’m going dancing.
Me: What? You’re totally going dancing.
C: I didn’t bring anything to wear.
Me: Ah-ha! I figured as much, so I brought something for you.
C: … You… You brought me a club outfit?
Me: Yeah, it’s super adorable. You’ve played this card before. You’re going to have to come up with some better tricks if you want to keep hating fun.
Her better trick turned out to be passing out by 11 and making me feel guilty for telling her to come out. Luckily, the Marines weren’t as forgiving as me and she ended up at Cadillac in spite of her protests. All in all, it was probably my best night in Rwanda so far.
The school semester is almost over, and I feel like it went by to quickly. This term was so short and I had some of my lessons stolen from be due to illness, and abrupt changes in curriculum. For example, one day during a lesson on how to approach the reading comprehension portion of the National Exam the Dean of Discipline walked into my classroom and told me I was needed in the teachers lounge.
“But, I’m in the middle of a class.” I said.
“The Director needs to see all teachers now.” He replied.
So, I left the students to work on some of the problems in groups and begrudgingly walked to the teacher’s lounge where everyone awaited whatever important news the Headmaster was about to announce. This news was actually that it was “International Peace Day” and we had a specific lesson to teach to all of our students because of it. I glanced through the lesson and was less than thrilled that I was going to postpone my instruction on the National Exam for an incredibly inane lesson about the consequences and merits of War and Peace respectively. The design of the lesson was to show how, in effect, Peace was good and War was bad. Sure, okay. But could we go into a little more depth than that? I mean, if we have to do this in any event, can we make it a lesson on personal empowerment? At least that’s what I intended to do.
One of the exercises asked the students to draw what they thought the world would look like if Rwanda, Africa, and the Planet were at peace. I walked up to the board and drew a large box, and inside largely wrote the words:
“War is over!!!”
And in a much smaller text below I scribbled:
“[If you want it…] Merry Christmas from John and Yoko.”
A student raised there hand. “Teacher, what is John and Yoko?”
Me: They were musicians. Several years before you were born, they put up big posters around the world that looked exactly like this. Why do you think they did that?
Student: Because there was no war then.
Me: No. There was war. In fact, there was a lot of war.
Student: Then why?
Me: To remind people that bad things end when you want them to. You have the power to stop things you don’t like. So, they were saying, war ends when you decide you want it to end.
The Headmaster walked in during this discussion and asked to see the progress of their art project. I told him we were in the middle of a discussion about War and he tersely explained to me that a discussion about War was not part of the lesson plan, waited for me to assign the next section and then left the room. It’s always a pleasure to have intellectual progress with my students interrupted in favor of promoting the lowest common denominator of education. You want your kids to learn something? Stay out of my classroom and let me teach them.
A little before my one year anniversary in Rwanda was “National Teacher Appreciation Day”, which involved us all making the several kilometer hike to the sector office of Kaniga. I thought I lived at the top of my mountain but evidently I don’t, because if they were true I would live in Kaniga. So, if you back into the hills a little ways and travel up you eventually arrive in Uganda, or the sector office. Same thing, really.
I spent a good portion of the afternoon waiting for something to happen. I considered calling up a moto and going home to sleep my day off away, but some friendly advice from another PCV kept stopping me from dialing. “Sometimes you just have to be bored with them,” she said. “That’s how you actually get to know them and that’s how you actually become friends.” So, I waited on a bench and watched clouds with Jo, the Secretary and the Animatrice for a solid three hours. Eventually the ceremony started and I was glad I stayed. Some of it was just speeches given by sector, cell and district officials in order to thank teachers for their hard work, but a lot of it was also performances from students in from the surrounding area. This meant dancing, freestyle rapping, acrobatics, and skits. I got pulled up to dance with some of the students when they were doing a Rukiga dance I had never seen before. Luckily, it was incredibly similar to industrial stomping minus any of the arm motions, so I managed. Shortly thereafter, the cell executive walked up to me and privately asked if I would “tell how I see Rwandan education”. That was all I got. How do I see Rwanda education? I don’t know. I’m not even entirely sure what that means, but I managed to talk about it for about ten minutes. Had this been the first time an African had put me on the spot to say something of interest about an incredibly vague topic, I might have declined saying anything at all, but no. This was probably about the eighth time something like that had happened, and I like to think because of it I’m getting rather good at spontaneous monologues.
The ceremony ended when it started to downpour, and we all went inside for drinks and a relatively late lunch.
The middle portion of this month was a pretty major slump for me. A series of unfortunate events caused me to revisit my second term philosophy of giving up on trying to improve life in Rwanda. I had a friend ask me what the problem was and I frankly told him that living here is equivalent to seeing the very worst in humanity everyday and trying to convince yourself that there’s something redeemable in that.
“I used to get mad about things. Like all time. There is so much injustice here. The kinds of things that people just ignore, are the things we make jokes about at home because it’s so far out of our ability to comprehend,” I said.
“You’re expecting too much of them,” he told me. “They lived through a genocide. Everything ‘bad’ that happens from here on is going to be compared to that-- and by that comparison things are going to seem ‘okay’. They’re not ignoring problems because they really think it’s all right. They’re ignoring it because they want the nightmare to be over.”
“It’s not good enough,” I said. “This country is destroying my soul. I used to be motivated to do things. I had the desire to fight all the things that were wrong and tear them down, but today, I just didn’t want to do it anymore. Sometimes things just seem so ridiculously criminal and I have to wonder what it would be like if we just let this continent eat itself. Or the world for that matter. Just let things happen like their going to. I could remove myself from assisting entirely. I mean, are people really worth it? Are we really worth helping?”
“Jeez, Jenn. What’s got you so intent on being upset?”
I told him. And he listened. And then he told me a story.
“Once upon a time, there was a girl who was good at a lot of things.
She thought that meant she was probably good at everything.
And maybe she was.
Then she saw some stuff that is impossible to be good at.
But then she was okay.”
[It’s not worth it to give up now.]
Maybe you’re right.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
September update
Well, there’s only a little bit of September left, so I can safely say I’ve survived it. In just a few weeks I will have been in Rwanda for an entire year. How weird is that? I don’t feel like I’ve been here a year. A long time sure, but not an entire year. I’m counting down my weeks until December, when I’ll be back in the United States.
As I walked up the mountain with Jo today she asked me why I seemed to be so down recently.
“I miss my home.” I replied. I wasn’t going to get into the details of my defeatist attitude. Trying to explain what I had given up to be in Rwanda, only to experience a complete lack of return on my attempts to impact the village would have been like trying to describe a color that no one had ever seen before.
“But you are on the computer all the time. You talk to people at home everyday.” She said.
“It’s more than that. I miss being a human.”
She didn’t immediately understand. “I think you miss the things you can’t touch in America.” She said.
“No. I miss being a person. In Rwanda I’m a lot of things. I’m a spectacle, or an exotic animal, but I’m not a person. I miss being a human being.” I explained.
“A human being? Jenny! You aren’t a person in Rwanda? What a thing to say.” She laughed. “I see you miss your country. It is understandable.”
It’s not a feeling any volunteer can properly explain to their counterparts in Rwanda. The total alienation that I experience in the village can be all consuming. Not five minutes before my attempt to define my loneliness, she noted that a primary aged girl walked up to me and held my hand for a moment. This seemed particularly extraordinary to her because in her own words, “The girl was not afraid to touch you or come near you!” But somehow, the idea that I’m not treated like a human being in Rwanda was too much of a stretch for her. It’s funny what host country nationals are willing to accept as logical and what they aren’t.
In that vein, I had another interesting conversation with her while walking to school one morning. We met a groundskeeper on the road who told us that her daughter was sick and that she had to go home to take of her.
“Ihangane,” we both said. And I went on to advise that if her daughter was showing symptoms of malaria, she should visit the health center for medicine. The response I received was a mélange of incomprehensible Kinyarwanda and Urukiga, then a flat “No.”
Needless to say I was a little shocked by how seriously she rejected the idea of getting her sick child medical attention, and when we said goodbye and went back to walking toward school Jose kindly began to explain to me what had been said.
“Her daughter is sick with sorcery.”
“Sorcery? Like, she’s under a spell?”
Jose was delighted that I understood. “Jenny! You know sorcery? Yes, it is very dangerous. She must pray to make the illness go away.”
“… But, you know that here is no such thing as sorcery, right Jo?” I asked thinking I already knew her answer, but was totally caught off guard when she began to protest.
“Jenny! Sorcery is real! She cannot take her daughter to the doctor or she will die the moment they try to give her an injection!” She explained.
“Uh huh… And how often to people die of sorcery?” I asked.
“All the time!” She replied enthusiastically.
“Don’t you see the logical flaw in that way of thinking?” I attempted to explain how any illness could be considered sorcery if the general public believed seeking medical attention would kill them. It would take very little, especially given how terribly paranoid Rwandan society already is. If someone in the village doesn’t like you and one of your loved ones gets sick all they would have to do is claim it is a magical sickness in order to punish you, because you’d already believe seeing a doctor would only exacerbate the situation. Then their point would only be proved when your loved one’s health continued to fail and you continued to deny them the medicine that would normally cure them. The cycle perpetuates itself.
“But Jenny,” she protested, “there are lots of diseases that doctors cannot cure. It is because of sorcery.”
“Like what? HIV/AIDS? There is no cure, but doctors can help prolong your life or make you more comfortable while they research a cure.” I replied.
“Well of course. That’s the exception.” She told me, and I promptly gave up on trying to put my logic up against her years of village propagated fear mongering.
So many people are afraid to open their eyes--not because they know they will see a world that is drastically different from the one they’ve been imagining, but because they’re afraid that that world won’t have a place for them. In a lot of ways I think Africa knows it’s been left behind, and it is terrified by the idea of trying to play catch up. Then again, I suppose there are people everywhere that prefer not to try things because they’re afraid of failing. Accepting, or even considering a new idea is much more difficult than my American heritage always made it seem.
Lastly, I suppose I can let the news out. I’m attempting a site change. The idea has been bouncing around in my head ever since my family visited and I got my sea legs back, so to speak. This village is nubbing me, and I am not helping them the way someone else probably could. My efforts are better directed elsewhere; ideally at an all girls math and science school that is opening in the South-East this next year. I’ll post more on that when the details are hammered out. Hopefully we’ll be discussing some of the terms this week.
As I walked up the mountain with Jo today she asked me why I seemed to be so down recently.
“I miss my home.” I replied. I wasn’t going to get into the details of my defeatist attitude. Trying to explain what I had given up to be in Rwanda, only to experience a complete lack of return on my attempts to impact the village would have been like trying to describe a color that no one had ever seen before.
“But you are on the computer all the time. You talk to people at home everyday.” She said.
“It’s more than that. I miss being a human.”
She didn’t immediately understand. “I think you miss the things you can’t touch in America.” She said.
“No. I miss being a person. In Rwanda I’m a lot of things. I’m a spectacle, or an exotic animal, but I’m not a person. I miss being a human being.” I explained.
“A human being? Jenny! You aren’t a person in Rwanda? What a thing to say.” She laughed. “I see you miss your country. It is understandable.”
It’s not a feeling any volunteer can properly explain to their counterparts in Rwanda. The total alienation that I experience in the village can be all consuming. Not five minutes before my attempt to define my loneliness, she noted that a primary aged girl walked up to me and held my hand for a moment. This seemed particularly extraordinary to her because in her own words, “The girl was not afraid to touch you or come near you!” But somehow, the idea that I’m not treated like a human being in Rwanda was too much of a stretch for her. It’s funny what host country nationals are willing to accept as logical and what they aren’t.
In that vein, I had another interesting conversation with her while walking to school one morning. We met a groundskeeper on the road who told us that her daughter was sick and that she had to go home to take of her.
“Ihangane,” we both said. And I went on to advise that if her daughter was showing symptoms of malaria, she should visit the health center for medicine. The response I received was a mélange of incomprehensible Kinyarwanda and Urukiga, then a flat “No.”
Needless to say I was a little shocked by how seriously she rejected the idea of getting her sick child medical attention, and when we said goodbye and went back to walking toward school Jose kindly began to explain to me what had been said.
“Her daughter is sick with sorcery.”
“Sorcery? Like, she’s under a spell?”
Jose was delighted that I understood. “Jenny! You know sorcery? Yes, it is very dangerous. She must pray to make the illness go away.”
“… But, you know that here is no such thing as sorcery, right Jo?” I asked thinking I already knew her answer, but was totally caught off guard when she began to protest.
“Jenny! Sorcery is real! She cannot take her daughter to the doctor or she will die the moment they try to give her an injection!” She explained.
“Uh huh… And how often to people die of sorcery?” I asked.
“All the time!” She replied enthusiastically.
“Don’t you see the logical flaw in that way of thinking?” I attempted to explain how any illness could be considered sorcery if the general public believed seeking medical attention would kill them. It would take very little, especially given how terribly paranoid Rwandan society already is. If someone in the village doesn’t like you and one of your loved ones gets sick all they would have to do is claim it is a magical sickness in order to punish you, because you’d already believe seeing a doctor would only exacerbate the situation. Then their point would only be proved when your loved one’s health continued to fail and you continued to deny them the medicine that would normally cure them. The cycle perpetuates itself.
“But Jenny,” she protested, “there are lots of diseases that doctors cannot cure. It is because of sorcery.”
“Like what? HIV/AIDS? There is no cure, but doctors can help prolong your life or make you more comfortable while they research a cure.” I replied.
“Well of course. That’s the exception.” She told me, and I promptly gave up on trying to put my logic up against her years of village propagated fear mongering.
So many people are afraid to open their eyes--not because they know they will see a world that is drastically different from the one they’ve been imagining, but because they’re afraid that that world won’t have a place for them. In a lot of ways I think Africa knows it’s been left behind, and it is terrified by the idea of trying to play catch up. Then again, I suppose there are people everywhere that prefer not to try things because they’re afraid of failing. Accepting, or even considering a new idea is much more difficult than my American heritage always made it seem.
Lastly, I suppose I can let the news out. I’m attempting a site change. The idea has been bouncing around in my head ever since my family visited and I got my sea legs back, so to speak. This village is nubbing me, and I am not helping them the way someone else probably could. My efforts are better directed elsewhere; ideally at an all girls math and science school that is opening in the South-East this next year. I’ll post more on that when the details are hammered out. Hopefully we’ll be discussing some of the terms this week.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Tanzania
Before I get too far away from when the event actually happened, I figure I should probably write a little bit about Tanzania. After the tour of Rwanda I hopped a plane with Mom and Tam and landed in… Well… Bujumbura, Burundi. It wasn’t well communicated to us that we did not actually have a direct flight to Tanzania. In fact, there are signs plastered all around Rwanda which promote Rwanda Air’s new direct flights to Dar-es-Salaam 3 times a week. So, I suppose all that is African for “just kidding”. In Rwanda’s defense, it may have just been the airline company, but to say that I was disappointed with RwandAir would still be a gross understatement.
I reserved the tickets to Tanzania for my family and I months in advance, and offered to pay at that moment but they wouldn’t let me. Evidently the tickets weren’t concrete enough to purchase when I reserved them. I realized later it was because they intended to change the time of the flight 3 times. It was nice of them to tell us that was happening a week before we left Rwanda. ‘Cos, you know, we didn’t have to notify the tour agencies or hotels or anything. In any case, when my Mom got to Rwanda we took a day to bounce around Kigali and stop by the RwandAir ticket office where I had the most unprofessional experience of my life.
Customer Service Rep: May I have your reservation receipt?
Me: Of course.
CSR: Okay, this flight time has been changed from 2pm to 6 o’clock am. I think there are no problems.
Me: Um… Well, there’s certainly nothing we can do about this development. The prices are still the same, yes?
CSR: Of course.
Me: Well, then it’s fine.
So my mom handed over her credit card for the purchase of 3 international plane tickets. We’re talking multiple hundreds of dollars. And this is when RwandAir so kindly reminded me that I was in a third world country.
CSR: Oh… You want to pay with a credit card…
Me: Well, yeah. I’m buying plane tickets.
CSR: I don’t think the machine is working. Let me check.
[After a few seconds]
CSR: Yes, our machine has been broken for a few days. We cannot take credit cards right now.
Me: You’re joking. So how am I supposed to pay for this?
CSR: Well, I think you can go to the bank and bring back cash. We accept dollars and Rwanda Francs.
Me: You want me to pay for three plane tickets in Cash?
CSR: Yes, I think there is no problem.
Yes, I think you’re a horrible, racist, imbecile. Between the lines you should be able to read what she was actually saying, which was: “Well, you’re a Muzungu. Obviously you have hundreds of dollars in cash, on hand, to dole out whenever you need it.”
I was furious, but Mom took the news with an incredibly even temper. If an airline in any other part of the world had a broken credit card machine for more than a day they would have a serious problem on their hands, because a grand total of 0 clients would pay them in cash. RwandAir gets away with it because they have people who have reserved tours and safaris in advance and basically have no competition when it comes to flying out of Rwanda.
Dear Worldwide Investors,
If you are looking to a place to make a buck, start by building a friendly and effective airline service that flies regularly out of all the East African Community countries.
Sincerely,
Me
Once we actually made it to Dar-es-Salaam, I rapidly fell in love with the country. It was a breath of fresh air to see how cosmopolitan the city was. I had forgotten that diversity existed in Africa, and I had forgotten that the world is a much larger place than Rwanda made it seem. Our hotel was called the Movenpick and it was huge, served cocktails, and run by the Swiss, so it was about as Western as it got. The reception handed me a little 3 X 5 leaflet and I opened it to discover a key card inside. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to have a key that opened a door electronically. It’s too bad that it didn’t stop the housekeeping staff from stealing my cell phone.
I spent most of my time in or under water. The pool was really nice, but I was also romantically attached to the idea of spending a good portion of my stay in the Indian Ocean. We spent an entire day in the sand on a small island right off the coast of Dar, where I finally felt that click of readjustment to being myself again (it only took two and a half weeks). Looking back on the experience, I wish I had been more social and engaged with local population, but I was overwhelmed. In that respect I missed out on getting clearer insight as to how everything managed to run so smoothly in Tanzania. Despite what anyone wants to believe, in America we have taken a social stand to vilify Islam. It’s a result of our civilizations clashing. The West doesn’t understand Islamic cultures, and even if Islamic cultures can understand Western mentalities, they certainly aren’t willing to accept them. Except that I’m evidently wrong in this assessment of our world. I saw it in Tanzania. I saw these two opposing view points co-existing, and even being friends. It made me think, if it can work there it should be able to work on a larger scale too. It just needs the right planning and coaxing.
However, I did get to have an interesting conversation with my driver in Zanzibar about his feelings on the likelihood of an East African Community ever getting off the ground. His concerns were surprisingly identical to the concerns the European Union had and still grapples with today. He seemed to think it was never going to happen just because of the inherent self-interest of individual countries, but I walked away thinking, “Hey, I can work with that”.
To top off my stay we had sushi on the slipway. It was good sushi too. I could have dumped all of my spending money just on that. The next few days included a sort of whirlwind tour through Zanzibar, Arusha, and Ngorongoro Crater. The Safaris were nothing short of breathtaking. I wanted to see an elephant and I got to see a hundred. They would come so close to the care you could almost touch them. I also was able to do my fair share of people watching because being on safari in Tanzania is evidently the new international tourism hotspot. I didn’t catch so many Americans, but the Brits were everywhere, Germans too, a few Japanese, Koreans, Chileans and one particularly memorable Mexican couple. We were stopped above a waterhole where there were at least fifteen elephants drinking and bathing when one urinated and then walked away from the water, presumably to find some shade or food. Moments later another elephant walked up to the same spot and began drinking.
From the Land Rover next to me I heard a shrill voice begin to explain:
“In Mehico City, Eherybody drink pe-pe.”
My sister and I dropped our cameras and slowly turned out heads to look and verify that this was actually happening.
“Yes. It happens all tha time. It’z ohkay.”
Yeah. This was really happening. I wasn’t sure what to make of it though. Should I think she’s trying to compare people in Mexico to elephants? Should I conclude that she’s saying elephant hygiene is equivalent to human hygiene in Mexico City? Should I get mad and tell her to stop being a horrible harpy wench? Luckily, someone in her car settled my dilemma.
“I don’t believe a damn word you’re saying. Freakin’ crazy lady.”
An appropriately blunt African American man cut her off from making any more blanket remarks about Latinos. My sister and I just sort of shared an awkward smile with him and shrugged the event off.
I also got to see lions. And not just any lions. I got to see cuddling lions. They were absolutely adorable in that slightly creepy way, where you know that even the smaller ones would end your life if there wasn’t a sheet of reinforced steel between you and them. But forgetting that fact, they seemed incredibly docile. They would stroll past the cars or nap nearby in the sun as if we weren’t even there gawking over them.
By the end of the tour we were all exhausted and poor Mom and Tam had to turn around and get on a plane back to California in just two days. I hear that didn’t go so smoothly, but the point is they got home. Saying goodbye at the airport was a lot harder than it should have been. When I told my friends about it the general reaction was: “You went with them to the airport?! Are you crazy?! What were you thinking?!”
Evidently, everyone else says goodbye to their family via taxi cab, or outside the gate because the separation can be a bit too hard for volunteers in Africa and their families. I guess I didn’t get the memo. But I never do things by the book anyway. Plus, I’ll be seeing them in no time. I’m already almost halfway through September.
I reserved the tickets to Tanzania for my family and I months in advance, and offered to pay at that moment but they wouldn’t let me. Evidently the tickets weren’t concrete enough to purchase when I reserved them. I realized later it was because they intended to change the time of the flight 3 times. It was nice of them to tell us that was happening a week before we left Rwanda. ‘Cos, you know, we didn’t have to notify the tour agencies or hotels or anything. In any case, when my Mom got to Rwanda we took a day to bounce around Kigali and stop by the RwandAir ticket office where I had the most unprofessional experience of my life.
Customer Service Rep: May I have your reservation receipt?
Me: Of course.
CSR: Okay, this flight time has been changed from 2pm to 6 o’clock am. I think there are no problems.
Me: Um… Well, there’s certainly nothing we can do about this development. The prices are still the same, yes?
CSR: Of course.
Me: Well, then it’s fine.
So my mom handed over her credit card for the purchase of 3 international plane tickets. We’re talking multiple hundreds of dollars. And this is when RwandAir so kindly reminded me that I was in a third world country.
CSR: Oh… You want to pay with a credit card…
Me: Well, yeah. I’m buying plane tickets.
CSR: I don’t think the machine is working. Let me check.
[After a few seconds]
CSR: Yes, our machine has been broken for a few days. We cannot take credit cards right now.
Me: You’re joking. So how am I supposed to pay for this?
CSR: Well, I think you can go to the bank and bring back cash. We accept dollars and Rwanda Francs.
Me: You want me to pay for three plane tickets in Cash?
CSR: Yes, I think there is no problem.
Yes, I think you’re a horrible, racist, imbecile. Between the lines you should be able to read what she was actually saying, which was: “Well, you’re a Muzungu. Obviously you have hundreds of dollars in cash, on hand, to dole out whenever you need it.”
I was furious, but Mom took the news with an incredibly even temper. If an airline in any other part of the world had a broken credit card machine for more than a day they would have a serious problem on their hands, because a grand total of 0 clients would pay them in cash. RwandAir gets away with it because they have people who have reserved tours and safaris in advance and basically have no competition when it comes to flying out of Rwanda.
Dear Worldwide Investors,
If you are looking to a place to make a buck, start by building a friendly and effective airline service that flies regularly out of all the East African Community countries.
Sincerely,
Me
Once we actually made it to Dar-es-Salaam, I rapidly fell in love with the country. It was a breath of fresh air to see how cosmopolitan the city was. I had forgotten that diversity existed in Africa, and I had forgotten that the world is a much larger place than Rwanda made it seem. Our hotel was called the Movenpick and it was huge, served cocktails, and run by the Swiss, so it was about as Western as it got. The reception handed me a little 3 X 5 leaflet and I opened it to discover a key card inside. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to have a key that opened a door electronically. It’s too bad that it didn’t stop the housekeeping staff from stealing my cell phone.
I spent most of my time in or under water. The pool was really nice, but I was also romantically attached to the idea of spending a good portion of my stay in the Indian Ocean. We spent an entire day in the sand on a small island right off the coast of Dar, where I finally felt that click of readjustment to being myself again (it only took two and a half weeks). Looking back on the experience, I wish I had been more social and engaged with local population, but I was overwhelmed. In that respect I missed out on getting clearer insight as to how everything managed to run so smoothly in Tanzania. Despite what anyone wants to believe, in America we have taken a social stand to vilify Islam. It’s a result of our civilizations clashing. The West doesn’t understand Islamic cultures, and even if Islamic cultures can understand Western mentalities, they certainly aren’t willing to accept them. Except that I’m evidently wrong in this assessment of our world. I saw it in Tanzania. I saw these two opposing view points co-existing, and even being friends. It made me think, if it can work there it should be able to work on a larger scale too. It just needs the right planning and coaxing.
However, I did get to have an interesting conversation with my driver in Zanzibar about his feelings on the likelihood of an East African Community ever getting off the ground. His concerns were surprisingly identical to the concerns the European Union had and still grapples with today. He seemed to think it was never going to happen just because of the inherent self-interest of individual countries, but I walked away thinking, “Hey, I can work with that”.
To top off my stay we had sushi on the slipway. It was good sushi too. I could have dumped all of my spending money just on that. The next few days included a sort of whirlwind tour through Zanzibar, Arusha, and Ngorongoro Crater. The Safaris were nothing short of breathtaking. I wanted to see an elephant and I got to see a hundred. They would come so close to the care you could almost touch them. I also was able to do my fair share of people watching because being on safari in Tanzania is evidently the new international tourism hotspot. I didn’t catch so many Americans, but the Brits were everywhere, Germans too, a few Japanese, Koreans, Chileans and one particularly memorable Mexican couple. We were stopped above a waterhole where there were at least fifteen elephants drinking and bathing when one urinated and then walked away from the water, presumably to find some shade or food. Moments later another elephant walked up to the same spot and began drinking.
From the Land Rover next to me I heard a shrill voice begin to explain:
“In Mehico City, Eherybody drink pe-pe.”
My sister and I dropped our cameras and slowly turned out heads to look and verify that this was actually happening.
“Yes. It happens all tha time. It’z ohkay.”
Yeah. This was really happening. I wasn’t sure what to make of it though. Should I think she’s trying to compare people in Mexico to elephants? Should I conclude that she’s saying elephant hygiene is equivalent to human hygiene in Mexico City? Should I get mad and tell her to stop being a horrible harpy wench? Luckily, someone in her car settled my dilemma.
“I don’t believe a damn word you’re saying. Freakin’ crazy lady.”
An appropriately blunt African American man cut her off from making any more blanket remarks about Latinos. My sister and I just sort of shared an awkward smile with him and shrugged the event off.
I also got to see lions. And not just any lions. I got to see cuddling lions. They were absolutely adorable in that slightly creepy way, where you know that even the smaller ones would end your life if there wasn’t a sheet of reinforced steel between you and them. But forgetting that fact, they seemed incredibly docile. They would stroll past the cars or nap nearby in the sun as if we weren’t even there gawking over them.
By the end of the tour we were all exhausted and poor Mom and Tam had to turn around and get on a plane back to California in just two days. I hear that didn’t go so smoothly, but the point is they got home. Saying goodbye at the airport was a lot harder than it should have been. When I told my friends about it the general reaction was: “You went with them to the airport?! Are you crazy?! What were you thinking?!”
Evidently, everyone else says goodbye to their family via taxi cab, or outside the gate because the separation can be a bit too hard for volunteers in Africa and their families. I guess I didn’t get the memo. But I never do things by the book anyway. Plus, I’ll be seeing them in no time. I’m already almost halfway through September.
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