After IST

The two weeks I’ve been back at site since our In-Service training have been uneventful and rather depressing. With my roommate gone at trainings, my counterpart teaching Community Health Workers, and the secondary school students heading back home after finishing their term, it’s been rather dead around here. Because of this my focus has been mostly on preparing for the future and tending to Operation Home Beautification. Because, simply put, I have a really ugly house which is why you haven’t seen any pictures of it on the internet…yet.

During our training in Musanze we invited some of our coworkers to join us for the last few days. These sessions were dedicated to project design and management, and I found the whole experience to be extremely gratifying. My coworkers and I seemed to be all on the same page and we actually came up with some great, albeit very ambitious, project plans. My one coworker is just awesome. She’s incredibly feisty and not afraid to tell it like it is, and possibly a little crazy. Which I fully admit I am too, so we seem to work together quite well. During the training one of my friends ran up to me during a coffee break and told me my coworker was in the hotel courtyard digging up plants. Baffled as to why, I ran into her as she was hauling away the booty and asked what she was doing with all of the hotel’s plants. ‘Taking them back to our house, duh.’ I watched her walked out the friend door, right in front of the hotel staff, with a stack of exotic plants in tow. Seeing as we live next to each and these new plants would undoubtedly make my home look a little better, I really had no problem with her plan. I was just amazed at how ballsy it was. The day after we got back we planted some of the plants she stole borrowed, and I took advantage of the colorful new flower pots I bought in Kigali.

Plants from the hotel courtyard.

My next order of business was to turn my entire front yard into a garden. We are currently in the rainy season and the soil is nice and fertile and just waiting for some cultivating. One morning I woke up early, grabbed my hoe, and began tilling the yard to get it ready for a garden. I quickly caught sight of the umucecuru peering at me through the window and I knew there was no way in hell she was going to let the skinny American boy work in the front yard without a comment. Before long she was heading out, hoe in hand, and began helping me. After a few grueling minutes we both stopped, ready to pass out. She told me this is some of the toughest land she’s ever worked (she’s a farmer, and pretty old so I guess that means something) but for one thousand Rwandan Francs (roughly $1.50) I could pay someone to do it all for me. I told her to make the call and I’m currently interviewing applicants.

See the small patch of dirt in the corner?
That's as far as I got...

My other big project has been turning the abandoned storage space across from my house into a patio area where I can entertain guests. The space, which I didn’t pay much mind to originally, has become the de facto dumping ground for the Health Center and Sector office. Amid agriculture equipment and broken chairs, one can also find unburned boxes of used syringes and bottles of expired pills. My goal to turn junky haven into Ian’s Heaven hasn’t been easy. It took no less than two weeks of prodding for the Sector office to come get their stuff, and I am still waiting on someone from the District Hospital to come and dispose of the medical stuff. I’ve already purchased some buckets of paint and I’m hoping to paint a mural on the back wall with a Rwandan imigongo design.

My future patio, complete with used needles and expired pills!

So despite the relative boringness of these past few weeks, the rest of 2012 is panning out to be quite busy for me. I’m leaving tomorrow for Kigali where I will attend a pediatric conference on working with children who suffer from HIV/AIDS. After the conference I’m heading to Rwamagana (a town about an hour outside of the capitol) to work at a boys camp for the weeks. I’m going to be teaching lessons related to good decision making skills and am also in charge of the monitoring and evaluation of the camp. Which, basically means I’m the guy who is going to be constantly testing the kids and recording the results, I’m sure to be everyone’s best friend. After ten days away from site I’m going to return home, but just for a few days because then I’m heading to the South Province to attend the wedding of the host parents I lived with during training.

The good news about slow weeks is that so far they have few and far between. Time is flying and I’m sure that before I know, it’s going to be the New Year!

In Service Training

The second half of October was a busy time for me (finally!) as I was busy attending our In-Service Training in Musanze. Musanze is beautiful city located in the north of Rwanda. From the balcony of our hotel we could see the breathtaking Virunga Volcanoes, which form the border between Rwanda, the DRC, and Uganda. They are also the home to the famous Silverback Mountain Gorillas, which is the main tourism draw in Rwanda (although a permit is currently running at $750 which means I probably won’t be seeing gorillas anytime soon).

The weekend before our training started some of us met up in Kigali to do a little shopping, drink some cold beers, and just catch up. Unfortunately for us, a group of Education volunteers working on a TESOL project in the city we also planning on crashing at the Case de Pasage (fancy French name for the shitty Peace Corps Hostel in Kigali). By the time Darren and I arrived there were no beds left, which means we ended up spending the night on the floor. It was pretty uncomfortable and Darren managed to leave with 111 mosquito bites (he counted). I think I got 3 but I probably complained just as much. Early Sunday morning we decided to get out of Kigali and visit our friend Amanda, who lives about 30 minutes away from Musanze. The bus ride up north was both beautiful and terrible. The scenery truly is breathtaking. I realize I’ve already used that word in this post, but I really can’t think of any other way to describe it. The farther north you go, the greener everything becomes and the steeper it gets. Unfortunately for those with weak stomachs (me), the ride is horrible. The bus goes around and around and definitely does not do it slowly. Luckily, one of my comrades was packing some motion sickness medicine so I managed to survive the journey. Once we finally arrived in Musanze, it was late and we began looking for a moto driver to take all five of us to Amanda’s house.

On the road to Amanda's house.

Now, if I thought the bus ride was bad, the moto ride was 100 times worse. Because of the heavy rain in the northern part of the country the roads wash out very easily, and a short motorcycle ride can turn into a treacherous journey. One of our friends fell off; another one lost some of her belonging during the bumpy ride. Once we finally reach Amanda’s house my legs we shaking so hard I could barely stand. That night we cooked some soup and gathered around her small living room (she has a beautiful house!) telling stories and reminiscing over our past three months at site. The next morning we made a plan to go on a short hike to see a waterfall nearby. Amanda’s village could hardly handle the group of abazungu making their way around town and we managed to say mwaramutse {good morning} to hundreds of people. 

Trying to dodge the mud.

We began walking through some of the fields that lead to the waterfall and tried our best to avoid the muddy paths, but it was no use, by the end of our trip all of our shoes were caked in mud. We were getting a little lost but stumbled upon a small abatwa village where they were making pots out of clay and firing them in a giant bonfire. After some quick words and unclear directions, the women ended up ordering one of the young boys to accompany us to find the isumo {waterfall}. We soon had a parade of about twenty kids following us, and it seemed to grow larger and larger in each town that we passed through. We finally reached the elusive falls and were treated to beautiful views of the Virunga Volcanoes.

Making pots to sell at the market.

 After returning home to finish our breakfast we got back on some motos to make our way to the hotel. The moto ride was just as bad the second time around, the only difference is that I got to walk my shaken up body to my luxurious hotel room. Okay, it wasn’t that luxurious, but seeing as I’ve been living in the boons for the past six months it seemed like heaven on earth. Spring mattresses! Hot showers! Breakfast, lunch, and dinner! No banana mash!

Although the hotel was nice, the training itself, unfortunately, wasn’t all that great. For weeks some of us Health 4 volunteers had been working with the staff to make our In-Service training more in tune with our needs and wants but it seems they didn’t take too much of our constructive criticism to heart and a lot of the training proved to be a wasted effort. Despite that, there were a few bright moments. We have a new Director of Programming and Training and he seems really optimistic about making Rwanda an ideal post (a fancy term to mean a good Peace Corps country to serve in). I have always believed that if Peace Corps invested a little bit more into the program here, Rwanda is set up to be one of the best posts in East Africa, so I was happy to hear him talk about this. At the end of our weeklong training, we had an additional three days to discuss Behavior Change and Project Design/Management. Our counterparts joined us for these last few days and I think this proved to be one of the most successful components of the training as it gave us an opportunity to get all of us on the same page about what we can do as volunteers in our community.

Virunga Volanoes.

 Once the training was over I took the long journey home, which basically involved driving from one end of Rwanda to the other. It was exhausting and what’s worse is that when we arrived home we could see that the road leading to my village was washed out due to three days of nonstop rain. Last night, after contemplating what to eat for dinner a lady showed up at our door selling fish from the river by our house. Considering she was selling them for about 75¢ a pop we quickly bought a bunch and I went about cleaning and preparing the fish for dinner. It was a nice alternative goat meat (the only real meat you can get to eat here) and as long as the rainy season continues I think we are going to be treating ourselves to many more fish dinners.

IST proved to be the reboot I was hoping for and that I desperately needed. The week before I left I was feeling a little depressed about everything and I think ten days away from site in a fun city was exactly what I needed. I feel reenergized about what I am here to do and am happy that the counterparts who joined me at the training are now excited about working with me on various projects. Time will tell about whether or not their enthusiasm persists, but for right now I’m going to be idealistic about it all. After all, isn’t that why you join Peace Corps?

Halloween Party. Seeing as I already have a scar on my head,
I was Harry Potter.