My friend Alaine told me she would drive me to Kigali. I wasn’t particularly pressed for time. I imagined she would arrive whenever she did and I would make a final round to classrooms, say my goodbyes, and speed away before I had a chance to change my mind about anything. She arrived at 10:30, and I wandered around and said goodbye to each classroom and the students studying in the library. One of my students halted me in the library.
Her: Ms. Jenny, you need to see Witness before you go.
Me: What’s wrong?
Her: Nothing. She has something for you.
I imagined it was a note. Several of the students created handmade goodbye letters and handed them off to me, but when I stepped into the computer lab, Witty handed me a flash drive. I accepted it and tried to ask what was on it but she only flashed her most charming smile and replied: “It’s a surprise!”
Technically, I had a medical appointment with Peace Corps at 11am, but I didn’t maintain much loyalty to the agreed schedule. At 11:30 one of my doctors called to ask where I was.
Me: I’m just leaving Gashora.
Him: We agreed we were meeting at 11.
Me: We also agreed that I wasn’t going to be leaving this week.
Him: I have to leave for PST at 12:30. We won’t have time to do your physical today. Why are you late?
Me: It was difficult for me to find a ride from the village with all of my luggage. Plus, I had quite a bit to do. If you were on such a tight schedule, you could have sent a car for me.
He proceeded to laugh over the line for over a minute and then simply said to try my best to get there as soon as possible.
I was ready to be as petulant as possible. I didn’t plan on putting on a brave face anymore. They didn’t deserve my attempts at politesse. When I got to the office, the process was surprisingly clinical. Perhaps I should have expected as much, but after several days of incredibly high emotional, this was a stern contrast. I went to my doctor, did a few of my tests, and then proceeded to the hostel to decompress for a moment. In that time something really amazing happened. I met with my friend and co-worker Kerrianne. She and I were two of six people (and the only remaining volunteers) of those who originally came together to create the PC Rwanda Peer Support Network.
We sat on the patio and just started talking. I let out everything I had bottled up in me about my service, and my life, and my transformation into whatever it is I am now. I Thought it was all going to be very negative, but over the course of that discussion it dawned on my just how completely enamored I was with my work. Now that it’s over, I can say this experience was completely invaluable. There were many challenges, and frustrations, and abuses that did not ever become justified, but I would never have had the opportunity to do what I’ve done, or life the live I’ve lived without the Peace Corps. I would have never met my girls, or learned to appreciate necessities, or understood who I am without this organization. It may be a small extension of gratitude, but I am grateful for having the chance to do what I did these past two years.
I opened my computer and plugged in the flashdrive Witness has given me. It was filled with pictures of my girls. Some were photos from sports games like the faculty-student volleyball game, some were of students reading books in the library, and some were just pictures of different students in front of chalk boards with messages for me.
We love you and will miss you Ms. Jenny! - CEM
The signatures were usually their class combinations, CEM being Computers-Economics-Math. I showed the photos to Kerrianne and started crying again. How could I ever regret anything when I had this? Even if it was for a short amount of time, I had something very few people ever get. I had real, unconditional love—and from 90 different people no less!
The next day I went in for my exit interview with my Country Director and she asked a series of expected questions, and I have a series of unexpected answers. I sounded happy about everything. Ultimately, I sounded very gracious about my time in Africa. I explained my shifts in site, my experiences with post traumatic Rwandans, and my successes with my new school. I showed her all of the notes, books and poems they had left me, and all about their development over the first and second terms, and she validated me. She told me I had the real Peace Corps experience and handed off some parting gifts to me, which included a hug and an invitation to dinner that night.
Before dinner I went to say goodbye to Dative and the baby. I held my niece for the last time in who knows how long and promised to be back as soon as possible. At dinner there were several of my friends. We made an amazing feta and arugula pasta dish, with a side of sweet corn and a dessert of chocolate and chips ahoy cookies. I got to make jokes about things, I got to say goodbye to several of my friends properly, I got to see a human side to administration and really appreciate the work they were trying to do.
Then I came back, sat down, and started to write. Shortly after that, the skies in Rwanda opened up for the last time I would see in many years, even though it’s supposed to be the dry season. Tomorrow I leave. The next day I land. The day after that, I start the next chapter of my life.
It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you. There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do. I bless the rains down in Africa. I’m gonna take some time to do the things we never have.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Departing
On Saturday I had a pre-planned party with my library prefects. I say “Pre-planned” because I had invited them for Fantas and cookies before I realized I would be gone a week later. I decided because I’m closer with them than most other students, I should probably test the departure waters with them first. I think there were already rumors because from the beginning they were asking some leading questions about when I would eventually be leaving the academy. I showed them the letter from UCLA and explained I was going to Graduate School and the reaction was a mix of shock and muddled sadness.
“Wednesday,” they kept repeating. “You’re seriously leaving on Wednesday?”
A day later at dinner, I got up in front of the school and announced that I had to leave. The reaction was mixed. I showed them the letter and said I was accepted to go to graduate school at UCLA and was initially met with cheers that quickly died out. A girl sitting almost directly in front of me looked horrified and asked: “But… Doesn’t that mean you have to leave?” When I gave the date, the room quickly devolved into chaos; students were banging on tables and yelling protests. I channeled Eleanor Roosevelt.
For the next ten minutes I am not me. I am Eleanor. I am poised, and unflappable, and completely focused on the task at hand. I am sure as hell not going to cry.
Peter somehow got them to calm down. I don’t even remember what I said exactly, but I was aiming for something vaguely inspirational that left everyone with the feeling that I never intend to say goodbye and would be coming back to see them at Gashora again. I sat back down at the faculty table and began shaking uncontrollably. Peter then evoked an ovation from the students for all of my hard work and dedication to the school which lasted upwards of 5 minutes and I promptly turned to my colleague and explained I needed to leave. I barely made it halfway up the hill from the dining hall before I was bawling my eyes out.
I spent a few minutes getting everything out at my house before walking down to preps in the library. I wore my shirt students had painted on earlier that afternoon during the World Map project at the Health Center. Needless to say, I spent less time actually tutoring to offering any help at preps and more time being drawn on in sharpie by every student in the library. Now I am never going to be able to wash that shirt ever again. The attitudes were mixed but I’d like to think by the end of the night most students who weren’t initially speaking to me had warmed up to the idea that I was doing what was ultimately right for me.
The next afternoon during assembly my co-worker dedicated the “Irish Blessing” to me and another student wrote a poem for me, which went like this:
We are glad you are our friend
Facially with a smile
Written with a pen
Sealed with a kiss
If you are our friend
Please answer this:
Are you going to forget us or not?
So tell us now and tell the truth
So that we say, we’ll always be there with you
For all people we met, we’re getting so much from your care
We are more aware what it meant
To have friendship like the one we shared
You gave so much so often in so many ways which are special
In gentle words of comfort
In happy words of wisdom
Thoughtfulness you always share in everything you do
Make our gift of friendship dearly treasured
We can’t promise that dark clouds will never haze over our lives
Or that the future’ll bring us many rainbows
But we can promise you our respect, remembrance
And unconditional love for a lifetime
We will always be there for you though we’ll take a risk of using facebook
We advise you this: “Find your purpose, live your purpose and you’ll surely succeed in life.”
We are glad you are our friend
Gashora Girls, we promise never to forget you
Miss Jenny we’ll miss you.
I started to cry. So I put on my sunglasses and haven’t been able to remove them yet today.
“Wednesday,” they kept repeating. “You’re seriously leaving on Wednesday?”
A day later at dinner, I got up in front of the school and announced that I had to leave. The reaction was mixed. I showed them the letter and said I was accepted to go to graduate school at UCLA and was initially met with cheers that quickly died out. A girl sitting almost directly in front of me looked horrified and asked: “But… Doesn’t that mean you have to leave?” When I gave the date, the room quickly devolved into chaos; students were banging on tables and yelling protests. I channeled Eleanor Roosevelt.
For the next ten minutes I am not me. I am Eleanor. I am poised, and unflappable, and completely focused on the task at hand. I am sure as hell not going to cry.
Peter somehow got them to calm down. I don’t even remember what I said exactly, but I was aiming for something vaguely inspirational that left everyone with the feeling that I never intend to say goodbye and would be coming back to see them at Gashora again. I sat back down at the faculty table and began shaking uncontrollably. Peter then evoked an ovation from the students for all of my hard work and dedication to the school which lasted upwards of 5 minutes and I promptly turned to my colleague and explained I needed to leave. I barely made it halfway up the hill from the dining hall before I was bawling my eyes out.
I spent a few minutes getting everything out at my house before walking down to preps in the library. I wore my shirt students had painted on earlier that afternoon during the World Map project at the Health Center. Needless to say, I spent less time actually tutoring to offering any help at preps and more time being drawn on in sharpie by every student in the library. Now I am never going to be able to wash that shirt ever again. The attitudes were mixed but I’d like to think by the end of the night most students who weren’t initially speaking to me had warmed up to the idea that I was doing what was ultimately right for me.
The next afternoon during assembly my co-worker dedicated the “Irish Blessing” to me and another student wrote a poem for me, which went like this:
We are glad you are our friend
Facially with a smile
Written with a pen
Sealed with a kiss
If you are our friend
Please answer this:
Are you going to forget us or not?
So tell us now and tell the truth
So that we say, we’ll always be there with you
For all people we met, we’re getting so much from your care
We are more aware what it meant
To have friendship like the one we shared
You gave so much so often in so many ways which are special
In gentle words of comfort
In happy words of wisdom
Thoughtfulness you always share in everything you do
Make our gift of friendship dearly treasured
We can’t promise that dark clouds will never haze over our lives
Or that the future’ll bring us many rainbows
But we can promise you our respect, remembrance
And unconditional love for a lifetime
We will always be there for you though we’ll take a risk of using facebook
We advise you this: “Find your purpose, live your purpose and you’ll surely succeed in life.”
We are glad you are our friend
Gashora Girls, we promise never to forget you
Miss Jenny we’ll miss you.
I started to cry. So I put on my sunglasses and haven’t been able to remove them yet today.
Monday, June 6, 2011
June
“Exit strategies are hard.” – Some American administrator in Iraq—probably
Walking into my director’s office to discuss the need to inform students about my upcoming departure and the dates and time therein, makes me feel like I’m having a divorce. This is doubly true for things like my future visitation rights. I need to leave my school, but I also want to be able to see my girls again. It sort of gives me perspective on split families that use their kids as leverage against each other. I don’t want to be completely out of their lives from now on. I don’t want it to be a fight to have contact with my students. I need them, but I think they need me too. I really believe that when you invest in someone, and you pay a lot of attention to them, and you make them feel special, you’ve made a commitment to them. You can’t just up and peace out without any warning or else it’s a huge betrayal of trust.
The majority of my girls come from very forward thinking, wealthy, and emancipated families, but that doesn’t change the fact that they still come from East Africa. This means almost none of them get the kind of care and attention they need. They’ve never had someone who is genuinely interested in how they’re feeling. They’ve never had someone who really wants to hear what they have to say.
This is where my strengths are. I’m not a teacher. I’m not particularly good at giving or taking instruction, but I do listen rather well, and I do effectively communicate sincerity. The goal is to make the girls feel comfortable talking about themselves. I can’t imagine what a 16 year old in America would do if they were never allowed to express themselves, but it would probably look like some variety of strange new phenomenon in cranial explosions. It’s not fair to the adolescents here that no one feels like it’s worthwhile to just check in and say: “How are you feeling?”
I take time for individual students based on how they’re acting. If a very social person has started to isolate herself, I spend time with her. If a normally excellent student gets poor grades, we talk. If a student is trying to hide that they are emotionally disturbed about something I don’t just ignore her, I ask about the problem. For example, last night I left the dining hall planning on promptly returning to my room, crawling into my bed, and proceeding to feel like dying until I passed out. I’ve been pretty ill for the better part of this last week. Behind me a student was walking up to study hall early and sniffling. I stopped.
Me: Clenie? What’s wrong?
Clenie: Wrong? Nothing.
Me: Are you sick?
Clenie: No, I’m not sick.
Me: You don’t have a cold or anything?
Clenie: (sniffles) No teacher, I’m not sick.
I stopped and grabbed her hand and just looked at her for a second.
Me: Clenie…? Are you sad?
She rubbed her eyes with her other hand and nodded.
Clenie: Teacher! Entrepreneurship is very difficult!
I nodded. “Yeah. It is pretty tough. I think we should go look at your notes. How about that?”
It doesn’t take much to show you care about someone. It really only takes a few minutes of your time. It took me less than 20 minutes to read her notes, understand what the problems were, and help her grasp the topic. Ironically, the topic was “effective communication in business environments” and the notes were not even remotely communicated effectively. She needed some basic clarification of ambiguous pronouns and vocabulary. She needed a big sister to sit down and help her with her homework. That’s where I’ve been excelling at this job. That’s when I feel the best about myself and what I’m doing.
I don’t want to send the wrong message when I leave, and I don’t want it to be a shock or a surprise. I don’t want it to feel like I’m abandoning anyone. I want it to feel like I’m making a natural step forward in my life. It should carry the same sentiment as a family member who leaves for college. It should make sense to a teenager. It should motivate her. The action shouldn’t seem awkward, or sad, or malicious in any way. That’s what I want, but that’s not what I’m sure I’ll get. I don’t foresee a smooth transition. I see a fight. I see a lot of hurtful words and feeling being exchanged, leaving the girls ready to turn inward again because their trust has been broken by the people who are supposed to be caring about them and for them. It’s kind of a diplomatic disaster and I’m not sure how to put it on the right track.
Maybe if I’m lucky, my APCD will be here tomorrow and this will be slightly less of an ordeal than I’m imagining. Or maybe my Director will prove to be a lot less interested in controlling every aspect of the school, and be sympathetic my needing to focus on my own life and needs. In either case… Exit strategies are hard.
Walking into my director’s office to discuss the need to inform students about my upcoming departure and the dates and time therein, makes me feel like I’m having a divorce. This is doubly true for things like my future visitation rights. I need to leave my school, but I also want to be able to see my girls again. It sort of gives me perspective on split families that use their kids as leverage against each other. I don’t want to be completely out of their lives from now on. I don’t want it to be a fight to have contact with my students. I need them, but I think they need me too. I really believe that when you invest in someone, and you pay a lot of attention to them, and you make them feel special, you’ve made a commitment to them. You can’t just up and peace out without any warning or else it’s a huge betrayal of trust.
The majority of my girls come from very forward thinking, wealthy, and emancipated families, but that doesn’t change the fact that they still come from East Africa. This means almost none of them get the kind of care and attention they need. They’ve never had someone who is genuinely interested in how they’re feeling. They’ve never had someone who really wants to hear what they have to say.
This is where my strengths are. I’m not a teacher. I’m not particularly good at giving or taking instruction, but I do listen rather well, and I do effectively communicate sincerity. The goal is to make the girls feel comfortable talking about themselves. I can’t imagine what a 16 year old in America would do if they were never allowed to express themselves, but it would probably look like some variety of strange new phenomenon in cranial explosions. It’s not fair to the adolescents here that no one feels like it’s worthwhile to just check in and say: “How are you feeling?”
I take time for individual students based on how they’re acting. If a very social person has started to isolate herself, I spend time with her. If a normally excellent student gets poor grades, we talk. If a student is trying to hide that they are emotionally disturbed about something I don’t just ignore her, I ask about the problem. For example, last night I left the dining hall planning on promptly returning to my room, crawling into my bed, and proceeding to feel like dying until I passed out. I’ve been pretty ill for the better part of this last week. Behind me a student was walking up to study hall early and sniffling. I stopped.
Me: Clenie? What’s wrong?
Clenie: Wrong? Nothing.
Me: Are you sick?
Clenie: No, I’m not sick.
Me: You don’t have a cold or anything?
Clenie: (sniffles) No teacher, I’m not sick.
I stopped and grabbed her hand and just looked at her for a second.
Me: Clenie…? Are you sad?
She rubbed her eyes with her other hand and nodded.
Clenie: Teacher! Entrepreneurship is very difficult!
I nodded. “Yeah. It is pretty tough. I think we should go look at your notes. How about that?”
It doesn’t take much to show you care about someone. It really only takes a few minutes of your time. It took me less than 20 minutes to read her notes, understand what the problems were, and help her grasp the topic. Ironically, the topic was “effective communication in business environments” and the notes were not even remotely communicated effectively. She needed some basic clarification of ambiguous pronouns and vocabulary. She needed a big sister to sit down and help her with her homework. That’s where I’ve been excelling at this job. That’s when I feel the best about myself and what I’m doing.
I don’t want to send the wrong message when I leave, and I don’t want it to be a shock or a surprise. I don’t want it to feel like I’m abandoning anyone. I want it to feel like I’m making a natural step forward in my life. It should carry the same sentiment as a family member who leaves for college. It should make sense to a teenager. It should motivate her. The action shouldn’t seem awkward, or sad, or malicious in any way. That’s what I want, but that’s not what I’m sure I’ll get. I don’t foresee a smooth transition. I see a fight. I see a lot of hurtful words and feeling being exchanged, leaving the girls ready to turn inward again because their trust has been broken by the people who are supposed to be caring about them and for them. It’s kind of a diplomatic disaster and I’m not sure how to put it on the right track.
Maybe if I’m lucky, my APCD will be here tomorrow and this will be slightly less of an ordeal than I’m imagining. Or maybe my Director will prove to be a lot less interested in controlling every aspect of the school, and be sympathetic my needing to focus on my own life and needs. In either case… Exit strategies are hard.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Everything in Moderation
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/05/15/the_peace_corps_what_is_it_for/?page=full
Despite the plethora of things that really got me fired up about this article, I believe the author manages to accurately put forth the current struggles of Peace Corps in a balanced fashion. He discusses the two viewpoints from opposing camps, and though most of the people quoted seem to me like pretentious airheads that have outdated or overly sensitive opinions, they do have one good thing in common; they are all trying to make this organization work. This article is pretty long, but it’s worth taking the time to look through.
The rest of this blog post is going to be dedicated to talking about all of the people in this article and why their opinions, for the most part, are ridiculous and invalid. If you are an RPCV who thinks they have all of the answers on how to “fix” this organization, you should probably stop reading now.
Recently, it seems like there are a lot of people (volunteers, administrative staff and otherwise) who are having a hard time reconciling the past with the present. I don’t think anyone should be exceptionally surprised by this as it happens all the time in all career fields. Life is malleable and so are people. Things change all the time, and it seems like the older people get the more afraid they become of needing to adapt to the forward momentum of our society. So the story of old guard versus new guard plays out in the most extraordinarily boring fashion, until progress and innovation ultimately win over tradition and rigid structure. The thing that really surprises me about this particular battle in Peace Corps is how polarized the two groups are. It appears like the best thing these relatively intelligent people could come up with is we need to either make Peace Corps the cultural sharing project it started out as, or we need to completely revolutionize the organization and make it about development projects. Well, coming from the stand point of a current volunteer, all I can say to you guys is: stop. You’re both wrong and those are both terrible ideas. However, there is good news! You can both get what you want and even more importantly, while you’re busy feeling better about being right, current volunteers are winning too.
The Three Peace Corps Goals
This may be a lot to remember, so you might need to grab a pen, but here goes. The three very complicated Peace Corps goals. You ready for this?
1. Help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.
Phew. That was a lot. I know the language may have a bit difficult too, so let me break it down for you. The first goal is about bringing people who are trained to do something (like public health, education, or youth development) to a country that has requested that skill set so a volunteer go can help out. This gets confusing sometimes because people on both sides of this arrangement occasionally believe having a volunteer means getting/giving money. But that’s not what this is about. In Rwanda we have a few rules for surviving your service, and rule #2 is: Don’t Give Money. Ever. There should never be a need for a volunteer to be a financial source in their community when they are already providing a free service that was requested by that same community. Anything more is simply greedy. This might squash some dreams about Peace Corps becoming a development based agency, but if that’s what you’re looking to be a part of, go join a NGO. Seriously, if that’s your attitude we don’t want you in our club.
The other two goals go hand in hand. I’ve heard volunteers often say that they should be listed as one goal because they feed into one another. This is the cultural part of Peace Corps. This is the reason the program was founded (no, not that supposed “let’s go fight those dreadful Commies” reason, the real reason). It says to go learn how to be someone other than an American. Or a Westerner. Or a gigantic whiny baby who can barely take care of themselves , and see how the other half lives. It says go be somewhere that requires you to really think, and work, and plan, and learn. It says be some place where you can’t just run to a 24 hour pharmacy when you think you’re coming down with a cold, or where you don’t have the means to get food in front of you in five minutes. It says figure out where your water comes from every day. I mean, do you actually know where your water comes from? And saying “the faucet” doesn’t count.
Then, when you’ve done all these things, and you’ve learned some new things, and you’ve come to appreciate life more than any of your college buddies who went on to miserably sit in an office chair from 9 – 5; come home. Try to share what you learned. Show your friends and family how disgustingly wrong they are for maintaining their preconceived notions about developing nations and their so called “plights”. Show that important middle ground that explains how the West isn’t necessarily the Best. We’re not what everyone else should be striving to become. We’re just one of many options, and we have a host of our own issues that developing countries probably won’t ever have, even after they’ve developed.
To say that just because the Cold War ended we need to stop trying to win the hearts and minds of people abroad, is to completely overlook the fact that people will always misunderstand and misrepresent one another.
Hi America. Nice to meet you. I’m your friendly neighborhood Peace Corps Volunteer, which is to say your first line of diplomatic defense against religious extremists and people who are pre-disposed to dislike you without ever having met you. In short, you need me because I do what no other person on the planet does. I make you look good. I make you look good when everyone else is trying to make you look like the most useless and awful thing around (eg. Jersey Shore ). You are a fat , greedy, self-centered, materialistic, stupid, violent, scary, heathen, and I manage to make you come out smelling like roses. Why? Because I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer and I represent and serve my country with honor and respect, so you can become honored and respected by the world.
You’re welcome.
To give a more specific example, I had many friends who were brought to my country of service because of a tragic evacuation from Mauritania. These brave individuals went through an unbelievable amount of pain and rage after being torn from their then homes and families without warning, and then chose to continue to serve. One of my best friends was stationed about as far into the Sahara Desert as the organization allowed at that time. One day an Al Qaeda recruiter showed up in his village. His host brother went to hear the discussion and actually defended Americans. He thought my friend was such a good person that he couldn’t possibly believe what the recruiter was saying was true. You don’t get more concrete results than that. By virtue of just living in that village, my friend stopped someone from joining an organization that generally hates all Westerners. That is the driving purpose for Peace Corps and it is still totally necessary in our world. Peace Corps Volunteers don’t make people love capitalism or democracy, we just make friends. We make friends out in the smallest pieces of nowhere because most American’s can’t. Or don’t. Or won’t.
If you are a Peace Corps Volunteer, I don’t see how the goals are ever unclear. You know what to do and when to do it and why you do it because it’s your life. It’s what you do every day. The thing that makes it complicated is reconciling this very important cultural sharing imperative with your first goal while everyone seems to be trying to stop you from doing exactly that. Quite the conundrum, isn’t it?
Money
Now, I know I said rule #2 is never give money, and that is a very important rule, but there are some obvious exceptions. It’s nice to become integrated and make friends and all of that, but joining the Peace Corps also means working. So despite what Paula Hirschoff says, you are not going on a vacation and you (as I clearly pointed out above) are not wasting tax payer money any more than a soldier serving abroad would be. You are working. Hard. All the time and every day. If this IS a free vacation, I want that quarter of my body weight I lost last year back. I want more than one meal a day, and something else to eat besides tiny rotten potatoes during the rainy season. I also want to go to Thailand so I can hang out on the beach with a cocktail for the remainder for my service. If no one is going to meet these demands, Mrs. Hirschoff is officially total jerk . … … … Yep, definitely a jerk.
Anyway, secondary projects cost money. They are also the only reasons (aside from medical) that you, as a volunteer, should ever have to deal with administration. This is where things get tricky. When you make your service about projects everything gets messed up. In-Country administrations become more like road blocks than people who assist you. Your community is often very torn about what they think is important and it can be difficult to find a consensus of community support for any given project. This is where the volunteers are very much on their own and it shouldn’t be like that. This is the only way in which administrations and staff are really useful. They can become facilitators, and be the support volunteers need, but unfortunately they are a government organization, so that is clearly asking for way too much.
If you ask me, (and I know you haven’t but I’m going to tell you anyway) this is the only way Peace Corps needs to be improved. In a lot of ways, I feel the organization has forgotten that it is about the Volunteers and nothing else. Volunteers are about the three goals, sure, but the staff is supposed to be about the Volunteers. If [you] treated your volunteers better, if [you] gave them the support they needed, and if [you] helped them when they felt like they were fighting everyone, from all sides, every day, [you] probably wouldn’t have 1/3rd of them dropping out every year. Just a thought. There are more resources now than there have been in the past, but they’re not always particularly accessible. In fact, sometimes it seems like they’re unnecessarily inaccessible. Why does it have to be so difficult to get money for a volunteer’s project? Over sight? Transparency? Sustainability? Can’t we maintain all of those standards without making it feel like we have to prove we’re Jesus just to get 500 dollars to replace a tin roof on a Health Center?
In the words of our great President: “Yes we can.”
I’ve never fully understood why the volunteer has to work so hard to raise their own money for a project. Sure, sometimes there are government avenues for project based financial assistance, but really, it’s not exactly substantial. The volunteer already does independent work being alone in a village and working to create a positive American image, so why do they have to go solo on projects as well? Projects, by nature, are collaborative. And volunteers, by nature, aren’t good at projects. We’re just really good at helping. I’m going to raise an idea, and I know all administrative members in Peace Corps are going to recoil, put their fingers in their ears and start humming, but the rest of you hear me out. Why can’t volunteers partner with NGOs for small projects? Let’s face it. It’s a match made in heaven. Volunteers have no money, but know their villages and the needs of their villages. NGOs have a bunch of money, but pretty much no idea how or where to effectively spend it. We both work in the same countries. We both have the same desires. We both have half of this beautiful equation that would really make great things happen, so why not? I’m not talking about getting a PCV to work for an NGO, no. That’s not necessary. But what’s wrong with a little collaboration? Peace Corps is supposed to be all about working together with different people, right? I think opening lines of communication between Peace Corps and NGOs could really help streamline money for projects that would normally be overlooked in the ocean of links on the PCPP website. Let’s develop an example for all of you concrete thinkers.
NGO Smiley in Rwanda wants to donate money to a village school, to improve the education of underprivileged children. So, they put their feelers out to places around Rwanda where they can reach. This usually means places they can drive to, which usually indicates places with paved roads, which will probably lead them to a district capital, which to their tastes may look like a village. But it’s not. So say they discover the Musanze High School, and decide they’re going to ask the school what they need. The headmaster enthusiastically explains they really need laptops for all of their students so they can word process documents, improve their knowledge about computers, and have access to more information from things like the internet. The old desktops in their computer lab are very slow and not all of them work anymore. “Brilliant!” The NGO thinks. “What a perfect project to help all of these under privileged students in Rwanda!” But wait. If you take a turn toward the northern road and ride it until it turns from pavement to dirt (it’ll only take about 3 minutes) and continue between 17 – 20 kilometers you’ll arrive at MY village. You’ll know my village because the buildings are made of clay or cleverly disguised mud-bricks. The students are wearing school uniforms hand-me-downs from about 6 generations ago because their families can’t afford to buy new ones. They don’t wear shoes when they walk up an awfully rocky hill to school. Their classroom has a wall painted black (the black board) and maybe 50 desks crammed in tight rows from wall to wall. They don’t have electricity. Their computer class consists of drawing a computer and its component parts on the board to teach children how it works. If you want your NGO to really change someone’s life, you could come to my school and build a project with me. My headmaster wants a lot of things, but he mainly wants someone to sit down with him and tell him what he is doing is as important as any district capital that is already receiving a ton of money.
But today this kind of collaboration isn’t possible. Staff members hear the word ‘NGO’ and go into anaphylactic shock. It’s kind of ridiculous.
Wrap Up
In the end, I don’t know how misleading the goals of Peace Corps actually are. According to the article, Will Dickinson evidently found them to be incredibly deceptive because he wasn’t always involved in development work. To that, I have to wonder what part of “two thirds of this job is cultural exchange” escaped him. The goals are pretty straight forward. Maybe he listened to his recruiter too much. I could write an entire novel titled “Lies My Recruiter Told Me”, but that’s never turned my attention from the realities of Peace Corps goals.
The main problem with volunteers is we’re usually relatively disgruntled because of how administrations seem to really enjoy throwing wrenches into our plans. Even Beckerman, the author of this article, admitted to being frustrated with Peace Corps Administration on the regular. It’s unfortunate and ineffective that we all can’t be friends. I’ll admit that my own feelings towards my Administration have, on several occasions, afforded no better term than vengeful . First and foremost Volunteers spend a good portion of their day dreaming about Cheeseburgers. Secondary to that, they dream about Peace Corps staff saying “Yes” to them. Way too often, it’s just a dream. I don’t mean to say all projects should be automatically approved and no work should be involved in getting support or money, but it doesn’t always need to be an uphill battle for Volunteers to get resources to people who need them. In Rwanda, we have enough hills. I don’t need Staff members adding a thousand more to my plate.
I only named one solution to the real problem in Peace Corps (bridging the gap between the volunteer and the administration), but I’m sure there are several others. The main point I wanted to get across is we don’t need to divide. Peace Corps is so delightfully unique in its ability to be a grassroots organization and a program of cultural ambassadors. We are the only people who do what we do, and it would be nothing short of a tragedy to try to shift that balance more in one direction than the other. Our work is effective. If administrations are doing their jobs right you are replaced at your site when you leave and new volunteers can sustain your projects, or you can train community members or counterparts to sustain your projects. It doesn’t require a lot of thought; it just requires the will and conviction to keep moving forward.
We, Volunteers, are always trying to do our best. It’s never easy, but we’re trying. Isn’t it about time everyone else tried to meet us half way? Isn’t it about time you believed in us? Helped us? We’re not asking for absolutes. We’re just asking you to try. We’ve been patient, and we will continue to be so, because we believe in this organization and, as always, we want to help. That’s all.
Despite the plethora of things that really got me fired up about this article, I believe the author manages to accurately put forth the current struggles of Peace Corps in a balanced fashion. He discusses the two viewpoints from opposing camps, and though most of the people quoted seem to me like pretentious airheads that have outdated or overly sensitive opinions, they do have one good thing in common; they are all trying to make this organization work. This article is pretty long, but it’s worth taking the time to look through.
The rest of this blog post is going to be dedicated to talking about all of the people in this article and why their opinions, for the most part, are ridiculous and invalid. If you are an RPCV who thinks they have all of the answers on how to “fix” this organization, you should probably stop reading now.
Recently, it seems like there are a lot of people (volunteers, administrative staff and otherwise) who are having a hard time reconciling the past with the present. I don’t think anyone should be exceptionally surprised by this as it happens all the time in all career fields. Life is malleable and so are people. Things change all the time, and it seems like the older people get the more afraid they become of needing to adapt to the forward momentum of our society. So the story of old guard versus new guard plays out in the most extraordinarily boring fashion, until progress and innovation ultimately win over tradition and rigid structure. The thing that really surprises me about this particular battle in Peace Corps is how polarized the two groups are. It appears like the best thing these relatively intelligent people could come up with is we need to either make Peace Corps the cultural sharing project it started out as, or we need to completely revolutionize the organization and make it about development projects. Well, coming from the stand point of a current volunteer, all I can say to you guys is: stop. You’re both wrong and those are both terrible ideas. However, there is good news! You can both get what you want and even more importantly, while you’re busy feeling better about being right, current volunteers are winning too.
The Three Peace Corps Goals
This may be a lot to remember, so you might need to grab a pen, but here goes. The three very complicated Peace Corps goals. You ready for this?
1. Help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.
Phew. That was a lot. I know the language may have a bit difficult too, so let me break it down for you. The first goal is about bringing people who are trained to do something (like public health, education, or youth development) to a country that has requested that skill set so a volunteer go can help out. This gets confusing sometimes because people on both sides of this arrangement occasionally believe having a volunteer means getting/giving money. But that’s not what this is about. In Rwanda we have a few rules for surviving your service, and rule #2 is: Don’t Give Money. Ever. There should never be a need for a volunteer to be a financial source in their community when they are already providing a free service that was requested by that same community. Anything more is simply greedy. This might squash some dreams about Peace Corps becoming a development based agency, but if that’s what you’re looking to be a part of, go join a NGO. Seriously, if that’s your attitude we don’t want you in our club.
The other two goals go hand in hand. I’ve heard volunteers often say that they should be listed as one goal because they feed into one another. This is the cultural part of Peace Corps. This is the reason the program was founded (no, not that supposed “let’s go fight those dreadful Commies” reason, the real reason). It says to go learn how to be someone other than an American. Or a Westerner. Or a gigantic whiny baby who can barely take care of themselves , and see how the other half lives. It says go be somewhere that requires you to really think, and work, and plan, and learn. It says be some place where you can’t just run to a 24 hour pharmacy when you think you’re coming down with a cold, or where you don’t have the means to get food in front of you in five minutes. It says figure out where your water comes from every day. I mean, do you actually know where your water comes from? And saying “the faucet” doesn’t count.
Then, when you’ve done all these things, and you’ve learned some new things, and you’ve come to appreciate life more than any of your college buddies who went on to miserably sit in an office chair from 9 – 5; come home. Try to share what you learned. Show your friends and family how disgustingly wrong they are for maintaining their preconceived notions about developing nations and their so called “plights”. Show that important middle ground that explains how the West isn’t necessarily the Best. We’re not what everyone else should be striving to become. We’re just one of many options, and we have a host of our own issues that developing countries probably won’t ever have, even after they’ve developed.
To say that just because the Cold War ended we need to stop trying to win the hearts and minds of people abroad, is to completely overlook the fact that people will always misunderstand and misrepresent one another.
Hi America. Nice to meet you. I’m your friendly neighborhood Peace Corps Volunteer, which is to say your first line of diplomatic defense against religious extremists and people who are pre-disposed to dislike you without ever having met you. In short, you need me because I do what no other person on the planet does. I make you look good. I make you look good when everyone else is trying to make you look like the most useless and awful thing around (eg. Jersey Shore ). You are a fat , greedy, self-centered, materialistic, stupid, violent, scary, heathen, and I manage to make you come out smelling like roses. Why? Because I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer and I represent and serve my country with honor and respect, so you can become honored and respected by the world.
You’re welcome.
To give a more specific example, I had many friends who were brought to my country of service because of a tragic evacuation from Mauritania. These brave individuals went through an unbelievable amount of pain and rage after being torn from their then homes and families without warning, and then chose to continue to serve. One of my best friends was stationed about as far into the Sahara Desert as the organization allowed at that time. One day an Al Qaeda recruiter showed up in his village. His host brother went to hear the discussion and actually defended Americans. He thought my friend was such a good person that he couldn’t possibly believe what the recruiter was saying was true. You don’t get more concrete results than that. By virtue of just living in that village, my friend stopped someone from joining an organization that generally hates all Westerners. That is the driving purpose for Peace Corps and it is still totally necessary in our world. Peace Corps Volunteers don’t make people love capitalism or democracy, we just make friends. We make friends out in the smallest pieces of nowhere because most American’s can’t. Or don’t. Or won’t.
If you are a Peace Corps Volunteer, I don’t see how the goals are ever unclear. You know what to do and when to do it and why you do it because it’s your life. It’s what you do every day. The thing that makes it complicated is reconciling this very important cultural sharing imperative with your first goal while everyone seems to be trying to stop you from doing exactly that. Quite the conundrum, isn’t it?
Money
Now, I know I said rule #2 is never give money, and that is a very important rule, but there are some obvious exceptions. It’s nice to become integrated and make friends and all of that, but joining the Peace Corps also means working. So despite what Paula Hirschoff says, you are not going on a vacation and you (as I clearly pointed out above) are not wasting tax payer money any more than a soldier serving abroad would be. You are working. Hard. All the time and every day. If this IS a free vacation, I want that quarter of my body weight I lost last year back. I want more than one meal a day, and something else to eat besides tiny rotten potatoes during the rainy season. I also want to go to Thailand so I can hang out on the beach with a cocktail for the remainder for my service. If no one is going to meet these demands, Mrs. Hirschoff is officially total jerk . … … … Yep, definitely a jerk.
Anyway, secondary projects cost money. They are also the only reasons (aside from medical) that you, as a volunteer, should ever have to deal with administration. This is where things get tricky. When you make your service about projects everything gets messed up. In-Country administrations become more like road blocks than people who assist you. Your community is often very torn about what they think is important and it can be difficult to find a consensus of community support for any given project. This is where the volunteers are very much on their own and it shouldn’t be like that. This is the only way in which administrations and staff are really useful. They can become facilitators, and be the support volunteers need, but unfortunately they are a government organization, so that is clearly asking for way too much.
If you ask me, (and I know you haven’t but I’m going to tell you anyway) this is the only way Peace Corps needs to be improved. In a lot of ways, I feel the organization has forgotten that it is about the Volunteers and nothing else. Volunteers are about the three goals, sure, but the staff is supposed to be about the Volunteers. If [you] treated your volunteers better, if [you] gave them the support they needed, and if [you] helped them when they felt like they were fighting everyone, from all sides, every day, [you] probably wouldn’t have 1/3rd of them dropping out every year. Just a thought. There are more resources now than there have been in the past, but they’re not always particularly accessible. In fact, sometimes it seems like they’re unnecessarily inaccessible. Why does it have to be so difficult to get money for a volunteer’s project? Over sight? Transparency? Sustainability? Can’t we maintain all of those standards without making it feel like we have to prove we’re Jesus just to get 500 dollars to replace a tin roof on a Health Center?
In the words of our great President: “Yes we can.”
I’ve never fully understood why the volunteer has to work so hard to raise their own money for a project. Sure, sometimes there are government avenues for project based financial assistance, but really, it’s not exactly substantial. The volunteer already does independent work being alone in a village and working to create a positive American image, so why do they have to go solo on projects as well? Projects, by nature, are collaborative. And volunteers, by nature, aren’t good at projects. We’re just really good at helping. I’m going to raise an idea, and I know all administrative members in Peace Corps are going to recoil, put their fingers in their ears and start humming, but the rest of you hear me out. Why can’t volunteers partner with NGOs for small projects? Let’s face it. It’s a match made in heaven. Volunteers have no money, but know their villages and the needs of their villages. NGOs have a bunch of money, but pretty much no idea how or where to effectively spend it. We both work in the same countries. We both have the same desires. We both have half of this beautiful equation that would really make great things happen, so why not? I’m not talking about getting a PCV to work for an NGO, no. That’s not necessary. But what’s wrong with a little collaboration? Peace Corps is supposed to be all about working together with different people, right? I think opening lines of communication between Peace Corps and NGOs could really help streamline money for projects that would normally be overlooked in the ocean of links on the PCPP website. Let’s develop an example for all of you concrete thinkers.
NGO Smiley in Rwanda wants to donate money to a village school, to improve the education of underprivileged children. So, they put their feelers out to places around Rwanda where they can reach. This usually means places they can drive to, which usually indicates places with paved roads, which will probably lead them to a district capital, which to their tastes may look like a village. But it’s not. So say they discover the Musanze High School, and decide they’re going to ask the school what they need. The headmaster enthusiastically explains they really need laptops for all of their students so they can word process documents, improve their knowledge about computers, and have access to more information from things like the internet. The old desktops in their computer lab are very slow and not all of them work anymore. “Brilliant!” The NGO thinks. “What a perfect project to help all of these under privileged students in Rwanda!” But wait. If you take a turn toward the northern road and ride it until it turns from pavement to dirt (it’ll only take about 3 minutes) and continue between 17 – 20 kilometers you’ll arrive at MY village. You’ll know my village because the buildings are made of clay or cleverly disguised mud-bricks. The students are wearing school uniforms hand-me-downs from about 6 generations ago because their families can’t afford to buy new ones. They don’t wear shoes when they walk up an awfully rocky hill to school. Their classroom has a wall painted black (the black board) and maybe 50 desks crammed in tight rows from wall to wall. They don’t have electricity. Their computer class consists of drawing a computer and its component parts on the board to teach children how it works. If you want your NGO to really change someone’s life, you could come to my school and build a project with me. My headmaster wants a lot of things, but he mainly wants someone to sit down with him and tell him what he is doing is as important as any district capital that is already receiving a ton of money.
But today this kind of collaboration isn’t possible. Staff members hear the word ‘NGO’ and go into anaphylactic shock. It’s kind of ridiculous.
Wrap Up
In the end, I don’t know how misleading the goals of Peace Corps actually are. According to the article, Will Dickinson evidently found them to be incredibly deceptive because he wasn’t always involved in development work. To that, I have to wonder what part of “two thirds of this job is cultural exchange” escaped him. The goals are pretty straight forward. Maybe he listened to his recruiter too much. I could write an entire novel titled “Lies My Recruiter Told Me”, but that’s never turned my attention from the realities of Peace Corps goals.
The main problem with volunteers is we’re usually relatively disgruntled because of how administrations seem to really enjoy throwing wrenches into our plans. Even Beckerman, the author of this article, admitted to being frustrated with Peace Corps Administration on the regular. It’s unfortunate and ineffective that we all can’t be friends. I’ll admit that my own feelings towards my Administration have, on several occasions, afforded no better term than vengeful . First and foremost Volunteers spend a good portion of their day dreaming about Cheeseburgers. Secondary to that, they dream about Peace Corps staff saying “Yes” to them. Way too often, it’s just a dream. I don’t mean to say all projects should be automatically approved and no work should be involved in getting support or money, but it doesn’t always need to be an uphill battle for Volunteers to get resources to people who need them. In Rwanda, we have enough hills. I don’t need Staff members adding a thousand more to my plate.
I only named one solution to the real problem in Peace Corps (bridging the gap between the volunteer and the administration), but I’m sure there are several others. The main point I wanted to get across is we don’t need to divide. Peace Corps is so delightfully unique in its ability to be a grassroots organization and a program of cultural ambassadors. We are the only people who do what we do, and it would be nothing short of a tragedy to try to shift that balance more in one direction than the other. Our work is effective. If administrations are doing their jobs right you are replaced at your site when you leave and new volunteers can sustain your projects, or you can train community members or counterparts to sustain your projects. It doesn’t require a lot of thought; it just requires the will and conviction to keep moving forward.
We, Volunteers, are always trying to do our best. It’s never easy, but we’re trying. Isn’t it about time everyone else tried to meet us half way? Isn’t it about time you believed in us? Helped us? We’re not asking for absolutes. We’re just asking you to try. We’ve been patient, and we will continue to be so, because we believe in this organization and, as always, we want to help. That’s all.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Term 1 end
As the term came to an end I found myself finally getting into a flow with the school. My role had become more defined and my job on the whole became a lot easier for me to handle. While the hours I work still probably constitutes as exploitative by volunteer standards, I don’t really care. What would I be doing in my free time anyway? Oh yeah, hanging out with the 90 incredible, beautiful, and amazing girls we have at our school.
Finals went off mainly without a hitch. My grading was done before the middle of the week and it was pretty much smooth sailing from there. The next week was a dead week, but we were told to have classes in any event. Most of it was filler but some of it was also building on a foundation for the next term. We also were able to have more school wide activities, like capture the flag and a talent show.
Before the inception of “Capture the Flag”, by yours truly, there was some talk about a field day, or relay races, or some intermural matches in football and basketball, but I pretty much demanded we have a Capture the Flag game. It turned out to be a lot harder than I anticipated given my lack of accounting for the fact that I’m still in Rwanda (…Stupid hills). So needless to say, everyone got a work out and I was horribly sore for a good two days afterward.
The teachers split up on different teams and I was often faced off with the Biology teacher, who also happens to be faster than a speeding bullet. That may have had something to do with the fact that he was running downhill the entire time but, I still managed to jail him a few times. The most spectacular being when he kept crossing a bit over our line. Eventually I just ran behind him and we played chicken with each other until we both managed to slip on the same patch of loose dirt and went crashing into the side of the hill. I don’t bruise easily, so it was hard to notice, but my shoulder definitely hated me for the next week.
The talent show was a perfect showcase of how awesome my girls are—and also my co-workers. The other two American teachers and I organized 3 songs we performed on stage including a rewrite I made of “Umbrella” by Rihanna, for the Gashora Girls Academy. Each teacher had a verse specific to the class they taught, but because Esther and I both teach English I just rewrote the Jay-Z rap to do myself. Unfortunately, the response from the girls when we began was too hilarious for me, and I busted up laughing in the middle of the second line. We still managed to make it through the song and to the extreme pleasure of all those who are interested in blackmailing me in the future, there is a video.
There girls did everything from songs, dramas about HIV/AIDS awareness, monologues, comedy skits, and fashion shows. All of these things were completely unprompted by professors. The girls wrote, and performed the pieces on their own without any help or instruction from staff. My personal favorite part was the first half of the fashion show. The girls kept this a pretty big secret and we were all surprised at their creativity. They took things from around their dorm, like linens, curtains, and pillow cases and made really awesome looking clothes simply by tying them a certain way or pinning them. I was floored. I know people got pictures and I’ll try to post them soon, but I have to find them first. Apparently, all of the clothes were designed by our Headgirl, which makes me wonder if she wouldn’t make better use of her skills in the fashion industry rather than in medicine.
In effect, I miss them already. We’re going to be starting up the next (and my final) term in about a week. It’s weird to think of how soon it’s all going to be over, and I’m having daily internal struggles over how I feel about leaving. In the end, I guess it’ll be okay as long as I get to come back.
Finals went off mainly without a hitch. My grading was done before the middle of the week and it was pretty much smooth sailing from there. The next week was a dead week, but we were told to have classes in any event. Most of it was filler but some of it was also building on a foundation for the next term. We also were able to have more school wide activities, like capture the flag and a talent show.
Before the inception of “Capture the Flag”, by yours truly, there was some talk about a field day, or relay races, or some intermural matches in football and basketball, but I pretty much demanded we have a Capture the Flag game. It turned out to be a lot harder than I anticipated given my lack of accounting for the fact that I’m still in Rwanda (…Stupid hills). So needless to say, everyone got a work out and I was horribly sore for a good two days afterward.
The teachers split up on different teams and I was often faced off with the Biology teacher, who also happens to be faster than a speeding bullet. That may have had something to do with the fact that he was running downhill the entire time but, I still managed to jail him a few times. The most spectacular being when he kept crossing a bit over our line. Eventually I just ran behind him and we played chicken with each other until we both managed to slip on the same patch of loose dirt and went crashing into the side of the hill. I don’t bruise easily, so it was hard to notice, but my shoulder definitely hated me for the next week.
The talent show was a perfect showcase of how awesome my girls are—and also my co-workers. The other two American teachers and I organized 3 songs we performed on stage including a rewrite I made of “Umbrella” by Rihanna, for the Gashora Girls Academy. Each teacher had a verse specific to the class they taught, but because Esther and I both teach English I just rewrote the Jay-Z rap to do myself. Unfortunately, the response from the girls when we began was too hilarious for me, and I busted up laughing in the middle of the second line. We still managed to make it through the song and to the extreme pleasure of all those who are interested in blackmailing me in the future, there is a video.
There girls did everything from songs, dramas about HIV/AIDS awareness, monologues, comedy skits, and fashion shows. All of these things were completely unprompted by professors. The girls wrote, and performed the pieces on their own without any help or instruction from staff. My personal favorite part was the first half of the fashion show. The girls kept this a pretty big secret and we were all surprised at their creativity. They took things from around their dorm, like linens, curtains, and pillow cases and made really awesome looking clothes simply by tying them a certain way or pinning them. I was floored. I know people got pictures and I’ll try to post them soon, but I have to find them first. Apparently, all of the clothes were designed by our Headgirl, which makes me wonder if she wouldn’t make better use of her skills in the fashion industry rather than in medicine.
In effect, I miss them already. We’re going to be starting up the next (and my final) term in about a week. It’s weird to think of how soon it’s all going to be over, and I’m having daily internal struggles over how I feel about leaving. In the end, I guess it’ll be okay as long as I get to come back.
Monday, April 11, 2011
We do not forget. We do not forgive.
Last year around this time I left the country. It was my first time out of Rwanda since I had arrived in October. A few friends and I went to Uganda to celebrate our birthdays and our newly lifted ban from leaving our sites. I wanted to see more of East Africa, but if I had to be totally honest, I was scared about being around for Memorial. It all felt too close and too new. I was told plenty of stories about how awful it could get. So, I made a personal vow to stay around and see it for myself this year. Frankly, I think I’m adjusted to the shock factor of the Genocide at this point because the only thing that really seemed to bother me was the psychology behind the Rwandan week of mourning… Not the woman that ran down the street, screaming hysterically yesterday… Not the music videos featuring images of the dead playing on every television all day long. I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing…
Whenever I need to deal with trauma I find things to do. I focus on learning another language, or I pick up knot tying, or I try to adopt some new kind of activity that takes my mind off of the things I don’t want to remember. But in Rwanda they force you to remember. They force you to relive the unthinkable every year for multiple days on end. Everything closes, village meetings are mandatory, and abstaining from any part of Memorial is seen as Genocide denial. That means they can throw you in prison for supporting Genocide dogma just because you’re not taking part. The psychology of the country, the general lack of empathy and inability to relate to others, becomes a lot clearer when I think about a nation of people who have no control over dealing with the traumatic aspect of their lives.
To put it in perspective, a friend once asked me if I celebrated Veteran’s Day.
Me: No.
Him: So then you hate the military.
Me: What? No! I wouldn’t even know how to go about it. I don’t really know that many people in the military.
Him: There are ceremonies and parades in most cities, but you aren’t required to attend.
Me: Well, that doesn’t mean I hate military just because I don’t go to Veteran’s Day parades.
Him: Exactly.
In Rwanda, [we] do not forget. [Our] ghosts are an intrinsic part of us that [we] will never release, or be at peace with. Because of that, in Rwanda, [we] do not forgive. For all the talk of reconciliation, the reality is that one does not ever accept the kind of atrocity that occurred in 1994. It would require being more than human to be able to turn to the man who murdered your family, or the person who turned away when you were screaming for help, and say: “It’s all right, I forgive you.”
I think it is equally as true that you never forget the face of the person who ruined your life as it is that you never forget the face of the person who was your last hope. That’s why being Umuzungu during Memorial is so difficult. You are that last hope that turned their back. You are the supposed friend who stood at the sidelines and watched. You are another tally in the column of The Unforgivables. I know there was nothing I could have done for a genocidal country when I was 8 years old, but that doesn’t make a difference to anyone here. I’m a representation of the most atrocious form of criminal neglect that ever existed. My life now belongs to trying to ensure that future generations don’t have to carry that weight.
I can deconstruct all of this. I will never be able to erase these years or these experiences from my mind and I only had to witness the remnants. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to experience Genocide in its entirety, and to have to relive it every year because of orders from on high. I know you can’t just forget something to find peace with it, but you don’t have to wear that scar all the time as a constant reminder either. I don’t think either extreme will work to resolve that issue. Sometimes you just need to be patient. Sometimes you just need to live and see how events unfold and where life takes you. Sometimes you can’t just will things to work or to be better. I think people will ultimately learn to put themselves back together, given enough time. That doesn’t need any intervention. That just needs understanding, some humanity, and some nurturing of your newest generations.
Whenever I need to deal with trauma I find things to do. I focus on learning another language, or I pick up knot tying, or I try to adopt some new kind of activity that takes my mind off of the things I don’t want to remember. But in Rwanda they force you to remember. They force you to relive the unthinkable every year for multiple days on end. Everything closes, village meetings are mandatory, and abstaining from any part of Memorial is seen as Genocide denial. That means they can throw you in prison for supporting Genocide dogma just because you’re not taking part. The psychology of the country, the general lack of empathy and inability to relate to others, becomes a lot clearer when I think about a nation of people who have no control over dealing with the traumatic aspect of their lives.
To put it in perspective, a friend once asked me if I celebrated Veteran’s Day.
Me: No.
Him: So then you hate the military.
Me: What? No! I wouldn’t even know how to go about it. I don’t really know that many people in the military.
Him: There are ceremonies and parades in most cities, but you aren’t required to attend.
Me: Well, that doesn’t mean I hate military just because I don’t go to Veteran’s Day parades.
Him: Exactly.
In Rwanda, [we] do not forget. [Our] ghosts are an intrinsic part of us that [we] will never release, or be at peace with. Because of that, in Rwanda, [we] do not forgive. For all the talk of reconciliation, the reality is that one does not ever accept the kind of atrocity that occurred in 1994. It would require being more than human to be able to turn to the man who murdered your family, or the person who turned away when you were screaming for help, and say: “It’s all right, I forgive you.”
I think it is equally as true that you never forget the face of the person who ruined your life as it is that you never forget the face of the person who was your last hope. That’s why being Umuzungu during Memorial is so difficult. You are that last hope that turned their back. You are the supposed friend who stood at the sidelines and watched. You are another tally in the column of The Unforgivables. I know there was nothing I could have done for a genocidal country when I was 8 years old, but that doesn’t make a difference to anyone here. I’m a representation of the most atrocious form of criminal neglect that ever existed. My life now belongs to trying to ensure that future generations don’t have to carry that weight.
I can deconstruct all of this. I will never be able to erase these years or these experiences from my mind and I only had to witness the remnants. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to experience Genocide in its entirety, and to have to relive it every year because of orders from on high. I know you can’t just forget something to find peace with it, but you don’t have to wear that scar all the time as a constant reminder either. I don’t think either extreme will work to resolve that issue. Sometimes you just need to be patient. Sometimes you just need to live and see how events unfold and where life takes you. Sometimes you can’t just will things to work or to be better. I think people will ultimately learn to put themselves back together, given enough time. That doesn’t need any intervention. That just needs understanding, some humanity, and some nurturing of your newest generations.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
To call for hands from above, to lean on, wouldn't be good enough.
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.
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.
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.
Monday, August 16, 2010
The end of vacation
My last weekend of vacation was exactly what I needed. On Thursday I went into Kigali to talk to the psychologist who was sent from Washington. In the process of doing so, I had the opportunity to get know Laurent (our new PCMO) who is nothing short of incredible. After only five minutes of conversation it was clear that this guy had his ducks in a row.
I was coming in to get advice on how to deal with trauma victims and individuals who suffer from severe post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He told me he was planning to put together a peer support group for volunteers who dealt with people suffering from PTSD, and asked me if I would be available for a training session before the next stage began.
“I’d like to get a small group to present the topic of PTSD in Rwanda, but I would need you guys to attend a training first.” He said.
A training? What? You mean… Someone is actually going to organize, prepare and present pertinent information for the new trainees? Via the current volunteers who deal with the subject matter everyday? It seemed so logical, I forgot I was talking to someone who worked for Peace Corps, but then again I’ve become horribly jaded to our administrative process. The idea of having someone who truly intended to assist in the lives of and facilitate the purpose of the volunteer was tragically foreign to me. My only thought after our interaction was: “He. Is. So. Cool. I hope to god he doesn’t bail like the last two PCMOs.”
Talking to the psychologist helped me recollect myself in regards to my ongoing struggles with Jo. We came up with several good activities to try to pull Jo out of her head, and discussed the prospect of introducing her to some PTSD literature in French. We also focused on my need to be able to let go of things and accept that just because I see something as a problem, it does not mean it’s my problem to fix. I can’t be Jo’s counselor, babysitter, or mother. Anything I try to do to fix her will be like putting a band-aid on a gaping flesh wound. In the long run, she’s the only one who can change her mental state.
A group of us stayed a day at St. Pauls and the moved over to the Procure because it’s about 2000 francs less expensive. After we bought the rooms in the morning, ran some errands and came back, the man working the front desk informed us that there was a slight problem and he needed our help.
Procure Attendant: There is a man coming who is sick and he needs a room with a double bed.
Me: Okay?
PA: There aren’t anymore rooms with double beds.
Me: If he’s one guy why does he need two beds?
PA: Because he’s sick.
Me: So what?
PA: He has someone coming with him to attend to him. I need one of you two move into a single room.
Me: … Well, if you’re going to move one of the pairs of us into a single room for this guy, I want an upgrade. So, you should give me one of the singles with a private bathroom.
PA: … What? No.
Charissa: Whatever, I’ll just sleep on the floor. Let’s just exchange.
A few hours later an R1 Health Volunteer showed up asking for a room. ‘Elle immediately jumped on the chance to split a room with her if there were doubles available.
“There aren’t.” I said. “We had to move because they’re sold out.” But they went to verify in any event.
Five minutes later the health volunteer was in the process of buying a double room. I got up to see what was going on.
Me: What are you vacancies?
PA: What vacancies? There are none.
Me: You’re joking right? You just sold this girl a double room. Why did my friends have to move into a single room, where someone is going to sleep on the floor, if you still have double rooms available? Just give us on of those.
PA: There are no double rooms.
Me: You JUST sold one to her.
PA: Well… The sick man…
Me: Whatever! Where even is this guy?!
PA: Well, he’s left now. He is not staying.
Me: So you have rooms.
PA: No.
Me: But you’re selling her one.
PA: No. We haven’t exchanged money.
Me: That’s totally beside the point!
PA: There are no rooms here. All of you can just go to St. Paul.
He got up to leave and I walked away from the room to stop exacerbating the situation. It was clear to me that there was never any “sick man” and that the reception clerk was just trying to con us from the start. It’s not as easy to sell single rooms, so if he was able to push two people into single rooms he could fill them all and still sell all his doubles to different clients. He’d be making more money overall. I was about ready to break something when all was said and done. Given my karmatic history (R.I.P MS Sea Diamond), maybe his office will legitimately get hit by a meteor or something. Moral of the story? If you’re traveling in Rwanda, your money is probably better spent at a hostel that ISN’T the St. Famille Procure in Kigali. Because those guys are ready, willing, and prepared to screw you over with a smile.
Later on that day the Ed PCVs plus Liz made a mass exodus to Hot Racks. It’s a pretty stylish restaurant which serves cocktails, a full roast pig, and has a solid menu. On Saturday they have a dating show for locals and ex pats. Contestants get to eat for free. It’s the old 90s dating show type, where you can’t see the bachelor or bachelorette who is quizzing three potential dates. I was a contestant and decided in advance I didn’t want to win, so I tried to come up with the worst answers possible.
“Contestant number 2—I might kiss you tonight. If I tried, where would it be?”
“… Um, probably the side of my head as I turn it away from you, creepshow.”
“Contestant number 2—If I were to take you on a long romantic get-away, where would you want me to take you?”
“The Seychelles.”
“… The… Sea Shells?”
“Dear god man, get map.”
“Contestant number 2—If you could have any super power, what would it be?”
“Invisibility.”
“Why?”
“Because then I could spy on you when you inevitably try to cheat on me.”
I was one up’ed an hour later when ‘Elle was interviewing her potential bachelors as “Maria, the Mexican in Rwanda looking for her mother”. Most of the bachelors (being PCVs) also adopted personas like “The Situation”—the ‘roid raged Guido from Jersey Shore.
After a few drinks and a few dances, I left Hot Racks with my friend Steve to attempt the now failed: Operation Kitten Rescue. I had mentioned earlier that I was interested in getting a kitten, and he said he had a lead for me via a friend. However, when we got to her house and I saw the kitten, I wasn’t entirely convinced the poor thing would last the night even if I had the money to rush it to an animal hospital at that instant. I decided to leave the kitten, but before I had a chance to give directions back to Hot Racks, Charissa called me to inform me she was going to hang out with the Marines at Top Tower Casino.
“Sweet! I was going to go there after I dropped you off! You can just save me the trip.” Said Steve.
So I went to my first Rwandan Casino. It was like a teeny tiny Vegas that didn’t have slots and didn’t provide free drinks to gamblers. We sat at the Black Jack table for about an hour and Steve fronted me five dollars so I could play too. After the hour was up I had gone from five to thirty five dollars (not including the chips I spent on drinks), but there was still no sign of Charissa. We ended up going back to the hostel because Janelle needed the room key and it was about 1:30am. Charissa was still missing. She reappeared at the Procure the next morning, however, porting an unusually sunny disposition. I’d speculate on the events of her evening, but I’m afraid she might try to “refocus me” if she ever reads this.
I was coming in to get advice on how to deal with trauma victims and individuals who suffer from severe post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He told me he was planning to put together a peer support group for volunteers who dealt with people suffering from PTSD, and asked me if I would be available for a training session before the next stage began.
“I’d like to get a small group to present the topic of PTSD in Rwanda, but I would need you guys to attend a training first.” He said.
A training? What? You mean… Someone is actually going to organize, prepare and present pertinent information for the new trainees? Via the current volunteers who deal with the subject matter everyday? It seemed so logical, I forgot I was talking to someone who worked for Peace Corps, but then again I’ve become horribly jaded to our administrative process. The idea of having someone who truly intended to assist in the lives of and facilitate the purpose of the volunteer was tragically foreign to me. My only thought after our interaction was: “He. Is. So. Cool. I hope to god he doesn’t bail like the last two PCMOs.”
Talking to the psychologist helped me recollect myself in regards to my ongoing struggles with Jo. We came up with several good activities to try to pull Jo out of her head, and discussed the prospect of introducing her to some PTSD literature in French. We also focused on my need to be able to let go of things and accept that just because I see something as a problem, it does not mean it’s my problem to fix. I can’t be Jo’s counselor, babysitter, or mother. Anything I try to do to fix her will be like putting a band-aid on a gaping flesh wound. In the long run, she’s the only one who can change her mental state.
A group of us stayed a day at St. Pauls and the moved over to the Procure because it’s about 2000 francs less expensive. After we bought the rooms in the morning, ran some errands and came back, the man working the front desk informed us that there was a slight problem and he needed our help.
Procure Attendant: There is a man coming who is sick and he needs a room with a double bed.
Me: Okay?
PA: There aren’t anymore rooms with double beds.
Me: If he’s one guy why does he need two beds?
PA: Because he’s sick.
Me: So what?
PA: He has someone coming with him to attend to him. I need one of you two move into a single room.
Me: … Well, if you’re going to move one of the pairs of us into a single room for this guy, I want an upgrade. So, you should give me one of the singles with a private bathroom.
PA: … What? No.
Charissa: Whatever, I’ll just sleep on the floor. Let’s just exchange.
A few hours later an R1 Health Volunteer showed up asking for a room. ‘Elle immediately jumped on the chance to split a room with her if there were doubles available.
“There aren’t.” I said. “We had to move because they’re sold out.” But they went to verify in any event.
Five minutes later the health volunteer was in the process of buying a double room. I got up to see what was going on.
Me: What are you vacancies?
PA: What vacancies? There are none.
Me: You’re joking right? You just sold this girl a double room. Why did my friends have to move into a single room, where someone is going to sleep on the floor, if you still have double rooms available? Just give us on of those.
PA: There are no double rooms.
Me: You JUST sold one to her.
PA: Well… The sick man…
Me: Whatever! Where even is this guy?!
PA: Well, he’s left now. He is not staying.
Me: So you have rooms.
PA: No.
Me: But you’re selling her one.
PA: No. We haven’t exchanged money.
Me: That’s totally beside the point!
PA: There are no rooms here. All of you can just go to St. Paul.
He got up to leave and I walked away from the room to stop exacerbating the situation. It was clear to me that there was never any “sick man” and that the reception clerk was just trying to con us from the start. It’s not as easy to sell single rooms, so if he was able to push two people into single rooms he could fill them all and still sell all his doubles to different clients. He’d be making more money overall. I was about ready to break something when all was said and done. Given my karmatic history (R.I.P MS Sea Diamond), maybe his office will legitimately get hit by a meteor or something. Moral of the story? If you’re traveling in Rwanda, your money is probably better spent at a hostel that ISN’T the St. Famille Procure in Kigali. Because those guys are ready, willing, and prepared to screw you over with a smile.
Later on that day the Ed PCVs plus Liz made a mass exodus to Hot Racks. It’s a pretty stylish restaurant which serves cocktails, a full roast pig, and has a solid menu. On Saturday they have a dating show for locals and ex pats. Contestants get to eat for free. It’s the old 90s dating show type, where you can’t see the bachelor or bachelorette who is quizzing three potential dates. I was a contestant and decided in advance I didn’t want to win, so I tried to come up with the worst answers possible.
“Contestant number 2—I might kiss you tonight. If I tried, where would it be?”
“… Um, probably the side of my head as I turn it away from you, creepshow.”
“Contestant number 2—If I were to take you on a long romantic get-away, where would you want me to take you?”
“The Seychelles.”
“… The… Sea Shells?”
“Dear god man, get map.”
“Contestant number 2—If you could have any super power, what would it be?”
“Invisibility.”
“Why?”
“Because then I could spy on you when you inevitably try to cheat on me.”
I was one up’ed an hour later when ‘Elle was interviewing her potential bachelors as “Maria, the Mexican in Rwanda looking for her mother”. Most of the bachelors (being PCVs) also adopted personas like “The Situation”—the ‘roid raged Guido from Jersey Shore.
After a few drinks and a few dances, I left Hot Racks with my friend Steve to attempt the now failed: Operation Kitten Rescue. I had mentioned earlier that I was interested in getting a kitten, and he said he had a lead for me via a friend. However, when we got to her house and I saw the kitten, I wasn’t entirely convinced the poor thing would last the night even if I had the money to rush it to an animal hospital at that instant. I decided to leave the kitten, but before I had a chance to give directions back to Hot Racks, Charissa called me to inform me she was going to hang out with the Marines at Top Tower Casino.
“Sweet! I was going to go there after I dropped you off! You can just save me the trip.” Said Steve.
So I went to my first Rwandan Casino. It was like a teeny tiny Vegas that didn’t have slots and didn’t provide free drinks to gamblers. We sat at the Black Jack table for about an hour and Steve fronted me five dollars so I could play too. After the hour was up I had gone from five to thirty five dollars (not including the chips I spent on drinks), but there was still no sign of Charissa. We ended up going back to the hostel because Janelle needed the room key and it was about 1:30am. Charissa was still missing. She reappeared at the Procure the next morning, however, porting an unusually sunny disposition. I’d speculate on the events of her evening, but I’m afraid she might try to “refocus me” if she ever reads this.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
July Update Pt. 2
When my family got off the plane it was relatively late. The flight had been delayed about 40 minutes and they had to fight their way though about 300 other Muzungus before they could exit the baggage claim. We stayed at the hotel for a day and let them recover from then time change and excruciatingly long flight, which they tell me, was exacerbated by a screaming Rwandan child the entire 8 hour leg from Brussels to Kigali.
“I thought I was going to kill that kid. Like seriously. I really considered it.” Tam told me.
“Don’t kill the kid; just strangle the mother. You’re automatically eliminating all the other mistakes she would have inevitably made, and promoting an end to bad parenting.” I replied.
My mother stared at me in horror for about thirty seconds before I assured her I was joking. Mostly.
I started their tour of Rwanda by taking them to my site. Many of the locals kept asking how long I would be staying, and the answer of “Oh, we are only going to be here for the afternoon,” seemed nothing short of shocking. My housemate threw a minor tantrum when she supposedly discovered that I wasn’t going to be there with my family for the entire week, despite the fact that we had repeatedly discussed my schedule for my family vacation. On the part of my family, they seemed to handle my site fairly well. I was very impressed to see them make it up and down my mountain with very little trouble. They saw the campus, met some of my students, took some photos and then walked back to the house without as much as a comment on the temperature. I guess the months of hiking preparation paid off.
After visiting my site, our Rwandan tour began. We met our driver, Bizimana, right after our return from Mulindi. Our first stop was to the Akagera game park which was fabulous. The lodge itself was beautiful and relatively vacant so we had a lot of space to move around. There were also animals that would just walk onto the lodge grounds. Baboons would hop down from the roof and hang out on the dinning room balcony, which was nicely juxtaposed with sunsets over the Lake Ihema. Driving through the National Park, we were assigned a personal park ranger who could explain just about any fact about any animal we saw. Akagera has several families of zebra and giraffes, and the ranger insisted that we drive off road on multiple occasions in order to get the closest (and therefore best) photos possible. It was a perfect introduction for my family to Rwandan hospitality.
“Wait, are we allowed to do this?” My family asked as the ranger encouraged them to exit the Range Rover for a better view of the wildlife.
“I dunno. But, they want you to have the best experience possible, so I’d just roll with it.” I replied.
After Akagera we returned to Kigali for an exceptionally short night, due to our 3am wake up call. If you want to see the rare Rwandan Mountain Gorillas and you plan on staying in Kigali, don’t stay up late the night before. However, since the Larrs never listen to rational advice like that, that night we went out for a fabulous dinner and drinks with several of my best PCV friends at Heaven. Heaven is the only restaurant in Rwanda where one can get a cocktail. Even at the nicest hotels, when you order the most basic drink (say, a screw driver) the bar tender will bring out a glass or orange juice and a shot of vodka and allow you to do the honors of mixing the drink yourself. So this was a rare treat for all of us.
I smiled at our waiter and ordered a Vodka Martini--extra dry, with extra olives. And ten minutes later I had one! I may or may not have gotten a little misty eyed after the first sip. So, what? Shut up.
In any event, the outing brought us back to the hotel around midnight. I slept most of the way to Ruhengeri in the car, which worked out better than I could have hoped because for the majority of the drive the sun was still down. We stayed at a lodge next to the trekking center, grabbed a bite of breakfast, and then rushed over to the briefing—which really wasn’t much of a briefing at all. The walk to the Gorillas site was only about 35 minutes so our guide, Papa Francois, gave us tid-bits of information while we hiked. The group only had about 9 tourists, but including porters, and armed guards (which I inaccurately thought were meant to protect us from wild animal attacks) we had about 15 people hiking towards the site. The guards and the porters stopped just outside the glen where the Gorillas were hanging out and Papa Francois gave us a few last bits of advice for dealing with gorillas.
“So, if a gorilla comes up to you and grabs you and pulls you somewhere, just go with him. Sometimes they like to play.” He said.
My mother and sister laughed until it became clear that Papa Francois was being perfectly serious.
“…But I don’t want to get grabbed by a gorilla.” My mom stated with deep concern.
“… Well, it’ll be a unique life experience!” I encouraged.
To my disappointment, no one was kidnapped by gorillas. For the most part they seemed perfectly happy to peacefully co-exist with us sitting a few feet away and snapping no-flash photos. The experience was relatively reminiscent of my daily life with Rwandans villagers. We would stand a few feet away and gawk at the gigantic furry creatures as if they were from another planet, and they would occasionally send us an exasperated glance or grunt in return.
“Don’t worry Mr. Gorilla.” I thought. “I know exactly how you feel.”
A few of the younger ones approached us on a few occasions, but the guides helped diffuse the situation before anyone came within touching distance. Kwita Izina (the baby gorilla naming ceremony) happened just about a month earlier, so there were baby Gorillas on the site as well. I got video of one playing with his older brother and doing somersaults in the grass. So. Cute.
We rejoined the porters and guards about an hour after meeting the gorillas. Papa Francois began telling anecdotes about the dangerous geographic make up of the Virguna area. It was at about this moment it occurred to me that the armed escorts weren’t for protecting us from potential animal threats, but rather to shoot any straying, foreign militants. Ouch.
When we returned to the Lodge Bizimana had arranged a surprise birthday celebration for my mom, complete with cake, songs, and a card from the hotel. It was pretty adorable. The following days were non-stop treks around the Virunga area (where I met a kid I am determined to sponsor), and took part in Golden Monkey trekking. Eventually, the tour ended with a down tempo day in Gisenyi beside Lake Kivu. The proprietor and I had some interesting conversations, not the least strange of which went about like this:
“So, you live in the Mulindi of Heroes?”
“Yes. It is a great honor.” I replied.
“Have you gone to see Kagame’s house yet? I mean, where he stayed during the war?”
“No, but I have seen Kabuga’s house. I drive past it when I go to Rushaki.”
“Ah yes. He is a bad man. He is very old and will probably die soon,” he said with nonchalance I normally don’t hear used when discussing Kabuga.
“I have heard a lot about him. Like he just got mixed up in the wrong affairs.”
“Oh well, all rich people are like that.” He stated.
I raised my eyebrows. “Like what?”
“You know. Sponsors of massacres and things like that.”
“… Are they, really?” I smiled awkwardly. I had no idea how to respond to his statement and luckily Tam arrived at that exact moment and dragged me onto the veranda for a picture of some weird species of lizard. Saved by the sister.
To balance out the crazy, I also met, Betty, who quickly became one of my favorite Rwandans of all time and solidified my desire to work in Gisenyi if I do a third year in Africa.
After Gisenyi we retuned to Kigali for a night and then had another obnoxiously early wake up call so we could make our 7am flight to Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. More on that trip later.
“I thought I was going to kill that kid. Like seriously. I really considered it.” Tam told me.
“Don’t kill the kid; just strangle the mother. You’re automatically eliminating all the other mistakes she would have inevitably made, and promoting an end to bad parenting.” I replied.
My mother stared at me in horror for about thirty seconds before I assured her I was joking. Mostly.
I started their tour of Rwanda by taking them to my site. Many of the locals kept asking how long I would be staying, and the answer of “Oh, we are only going to be here for the afternoon,” seemed nothing short of shocking. My housemate threw a minor tantrum when she supposedly discovered that I wasn’t going to be there with my family for the entire week, despite the fact that we had repeatedly discussed my schedule for my family vacation. On the part of my family, they seemed to handle my site fairly well. I was very impressed to see them make it up and down my mountain with very little trouble. They saw the campus, met some of my students, took some photos and then walked back to the house without as much as a comment on the temperature. I guess the months of hiking preparation paid off.
After visiting my site, our Rwandan tour began. We met our driver, Bizimana, right after our return from Mulindi. Our first stop was to the Akagera game park which was fabulous. The lodge itself was beautiful and relatively vacant so we had a lot of space to move around. There were also animals that would just walk onto the lodge grounds. Baboons would hop down from the roof and hang out on the dinning room balcony, which was nicely juxtaposed with sunsets over the Lake Ihema. Driving through the National Park, we were assigned a personal park ranger who could explain just about any fact about any animal we saw. Akagera has several families of zebra and giraffes, and the ranger insisted that we drive off road on multiple occasions in order to get the closest (and therefore best) photos possible. It was a perfect introduction for my family to Rwandan hospitality.
“Wait, are we allowed to do this?” My family asked as the ranger encouraged them to exit the Range Rover for a better view of the wildlife.
“I dunno. But, they want you to have the best experience possible, so I’d just roll with it.” I replied.
After Akagera we returned to Kigali for an exceptionally short night, due to our 3am wake up call. If you want to see the rare Rwandan Mountain Gorillas and you plan on staying in Kigali, don’t stay up late the night before. However, since the Larrs never listen to rational advice like that, that night we went out for a fabulous dinner and drinks with several of my best PCV friends at Heaven. Heaven is the only restaurant in Rwanda where one can get a cocktail. Even at the nicest hotels, when you order the most basic drink (say, a screw driver) the bar tender will bring out a glass or orange juice and a shot of vodka and allow you to do the honors of mixing the drink yourself. So this was a rare treat for all of us.
I smiled at our waiter and ordered a Vodka Martini--extra dry, with extra olives. And ten minutes later I had one! I may or may not have gotten a little misty eyed after the first sip. So, what? Shut up.
In any event, the outing brought us back to the hotel around midnight. I slept most of the way to Ruhengeri in the car, which worked out better than I could have hoped because for the majority of the drive the sun was still down. We stayed at a lodge next to the trekking center, grabbed a bite of breakfast, and then rushed over to the briefing—which really wasn’t much of a briefing at all. The walk to the Gorillas site was only about 35 minutes so our guide, Papa Francois, gave us tid-bits of information while we hiked. The group only had about 9 tourists, but including porters, and armed guards (which I inaccurately thought were meant to protect us from wild animal attacks) we had about 15 people hiking towards the site. The guards and the porters stopped just outside the glen where the Gorillas were hanging out and Papa Francois gave us a few last bits of advice for dealing with gorillas.
“So, if a gorilla comes up to you and grabs you and pulls you somewhere, just go with him. Sometimes they like to play.” He said.
My mother and sister laughed until it became clear that Papa Francois was being perfectly serious.
“…But I don’t want to get grabbed by a gorilla.” My mom stated with deep concern.
“… Well, it’ll be a unique life experience!” I encouraged.
To my disappointment, no one was kidnapped by gorillas. For the most part they seemed perfectly happy to peacefully co-exist with us sitting a few feet away and snapping no-flash photos. The experience was relatively reminiscent of my daily life with Rwandans villagers. We would stand a few feet away and gawk at the gigantic furry creatures as if they were from another planet, and they would occasionally send us an exasperated glance or grunt in return.
“Don’t worry Mr. Gorilla.” I thought. “I know exactly how you feel.”
A few of the younger ones approached us on a few occasions, but the guides helped diffuse the situation before anyone came within touching distance. Kwita Izina (the baby gorilla naming ceremony) happened just about a month earlier, so there were baby Gorillas on the site as well. I got video of one playing with his older brother and doing somersaults in the grass. So. Cute.
We rejoined the porters and guards about an hour after meeting the gorillas. Papa Francois began telling anecdotes about the dangerous geographic make up of the Virguna area. It was at about this moment it occurred to me that the armed escorts weren’t for protecting us from potential animal threats, but rather to shoot any straying, foreign militants. Ouch.
When we returned to the Lodge Bizimana had arranged a surprise birthday celebration for my mom, complete with cake, songs, and a card from the hotel. It was pretty adorable. The following days were non-stop treks around the Virunga area (where I met a kid I am determined to sponsor), and took part in Golden Monkey trekking. Eventually, the tour ended with a down tempo day in Gisenyi beside Lake Kivu. The proprietor and I had some interesting conversations, not the least strange of which went about like this:
“So, you live in the Mulindi of Heroes?”
“Yes. It is a great honor.” I replied.
“Have you gone to see Kagame’s house yet? I mean, where he stayed during the war?”
“No, but I have seen Kabuga’s house. I drive past it when I go to Rushaki.”
“Ah yes. He is a bad man. He is very old and will probably die soon,” he said with nonchalance I normally don’t hear used when discussing Kabuga.
“I have heard a lot about him. Like he just got mixed up in the wrong affairs.”
“Oh well, all rich people are like that.” He stated.
I raised my eyebrows. “Like what?”
“You know. Sponsors of massacres and things like that.”
“… Are they, really?” I smiled awkwardly. I had no idea how to respond to his statement and luckily Tam arrived at that exact moment and dragged me onto the veranda for a picture of some weird species of lizard. Saved by the sister.
To balance out the crazy, I also met, Betty, who quickly became one of my favorite Rwandans of all time and solidified my desire to work in Gisenyi if I do a third year in Africa.
After Gisenyi we retuned to Kigali for a night and then had another obnoxiously early wake up call so we could make our 7am flight to Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. More on that trip later.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)