Rural Women's Day

Rwanda loves its holidays. This past Monday was Rural Women's Day, and I attended a celebration in the district capitol of Nyakarambi. When my roommate and I arrived the audience was...sparse. It seems somebody did a bad job of advertising and so at the last minute they sent out scouts out to recruit some rural women to...you know...go celebrate being rural women. Nonetheless, once the ceremony got started (one hour after if was scheduled to end) it was actually a lot of fun. There was even a traditional dance performance by some of the local High School kids, I got some video but seeing as the internet here is running only 10kb/second I wouldn't expect to see it on YouTube anytime soon.

For most of the ceremony there was nice weather, that is until the Mayor of Kirehe began his speech. Suddenly a black cloud began racing towards us and the tent we were sitting under began to lurch. One of the local soldiers began calling able men to help hold it up but everyone seemed more interested in saving themselves. I looked over at my roommate who screamed 'Let's get the f*ck out of here!' (he just learned about the 'f-word') and soon I was pushing him as fast as I could run to the car. The scene has descended into chaos and in the background I could hear the mayor begging everyone to just 'remain calm.'

Just then, the tent blew over.

Bon Appétit

I would have to estimate that I think about food about 70% of the day (I’m hungry a lot). Admittedly, I’m not imagining myself eating Rwanda food, because really, it’s nothing to write home about. Despite that…I’m writing home about it.

The food here is probably just as delicious as you can imagine it being. One of the things I’ve become accustomed to eating (AKA it’s what’s for supper everyday) is agatogo. Agatogo is a stew made from ibitoki, a kind of rock hard, unripe banana that’s sticky to the touch. After peeling with a knife you basically boil the bananas into a mush. It looks like [vomit]. Tastes like [vomit+bananas]. Also, it costs about as much as [vomit], that is to say, its costs almost nothing. One bowl of agatogo and you won’t need to eat for the rest of the day, it’s basically glue in the stomach. It also means you can expect to have a bowel movement about once every four days. When I first began eating it, it really made me gag, but I’ve seemed to develop a certain affinity for it. Now, I have to make a confession here, my roommate and I have a cook. She is an old lady and we refer to her as the umuceceru {old lady}. Now before you think that I’m heartless, please realize that she asked us to call her that. She cooks agatogo every night, and does my laundry because no matter what I will never be able to wash clothes in a bucket with one cup of water. Together we pay her about a dollar a day, which I’ve been told is overpaying.

Admittedly, eating agatogo all of the time can do some seriously crazy things to the digestive tract, so we also spice it up a bit. Sometimes we eat rice. If you are feeling real ambitious you can put beans on the rice. If you are crazy you can also crush peanuts and make a delicious peanut sauce. We were eating mushrooms for a while, but it turns out that the man who cultivates them decided he could make a lot more money being a moto taxi driver. Sometimes we buy macaroni and I make macaroni with tomato sauce, but whenever I decided to cook I have to put up with dirty looks from the umuceceru, so I usually cave and let her take over. One time, she caught me cooking for myself and threatened to not come back…so…I’ve stopped doing any household chores.

Now I have to admit, the food isn’t all bad, which brings me to the exciting part of this discussion…bar food! Bars in Rwanda aren’t like the kind back home. They are mostly large empty rooms filled with plastic furniture, lit by a single fluorescent bulb that is usually flickering on and off, and full of drunk abasaza {old men}. The beers are warm, the peanuts stale, but just like America they are great places to meet up with friends, have a few laughs, be harassed by host country nationals, and eat some food.

The typical bar food in Rwanda are brochettes and chips. Brochettes are very similar to the kebabs that you would eat back in America. They are essentially sticks of goat meat, rubbed up and down with spices and piri piri pepper (or as Rwandans say: pelee pelee), then thrown onto an open fire. Sometimes they are delicious and you can’t believe God could be so good to you, sometimes they come and the meat is a little overcooked but you eat them anyway because, hey, it’s not agatogo. But sometimes…sometimes you spend more time trying to discern what part of the goat they gave you than you do actually eating. Usually, if the meat looks this gross, it tastes even worse. When a bar does this I put them on my bar ‘shit list,’ and make sure to avoid them like the plague. Brochettes are usually accompanied very well with a plate of chips. For about $1.25 you get a giant plates of French fries, a salad of raw onions, and a huge slab of mayo. It’s so good you can cry.

Disclaimer: I feel like I should point out that, would I ever be served this type of food in a bar in America I would probably find it all very disgusting. But here…I’m just that hungry.

My new favorite type of bar food is akabenzi, you may know it better as pork, commonly understood to be the most delicious of all meats. One of my favorite bars serves a ‘pork platter.’ For roughly $3.00, you get a giant platter filled will deep fried potatoes and spices, topped with ONE KILO OF AKABENZI, and the icing on this cake: raw onions. It’s delicious and the perfect meal for a couple of people. Just don’t expect to get much work done the next day; it has the opposite effect of agatogo (see above).

Of course, all of these foods need a nice beverage to compliment their flavors. Primus is, in many ways, the national beer of Rwanda. It’s been around for a while and .75 liters only costs a dollar. Of course you can sometimes down three of these and then you stop to think that holy crap I just drank over two liters of beer! Yeah, the next morning is not a fun one. I also like Mützig, similar to Primus but a little sour tasting sometimes. And my favorite is Turbo King. The posters call it the Alcohol for Men, so ladies, ordering on of these puppies will bring about so discriminating looks. It’s a darker beer (a nice change change from Primus, which tastes like Bud Light with a rusty nail in the bottom), and has an alcohol content of about 7%. A few of these and you will be real goofy, but be aware before you order that the bartender is going to have a new one on the table and uncapped as soon as you finish the one in front of you.

The longer I’ve been here I realize each day is a new adventure and I still have so much more to learn about this amazing country. Except the food. I feel like I can pretty much say I’ve had it all and now I’m ready for a Big Mac.

Explosions!

Monday morning I work up (groggy as usual) and opened the windows to get some fresh air blowing through the house. Upon swinging open the window and breathing in a huge breathe of air I realized I was actually breathing in a bunch of smoke. In fact, the entire village was covered in a fog of it, all coming from the mountain overlooking Rusumo. Now, being in Rwanda, my first thought was that maybe that mountain is actually a volcano. If you’ve been reading the recent news out of Guatemala, that seemed like a pretty scary thing to be happening.

I walked to work for the morning meeting and I could see the rumor mill was already spinning. Everybody was trying to figure out just what was going on. Many of the people I work with live in my market town, Nyakarambi, which happens to be located on the mountain, and seeing as they weren’t there for the meeting I could only surmise that they had died fiery deaths in whatever was going on up there.

Later in the day I got my answer. It turns out an oil tanker coming from Tanzania crashed into another car. As everyone got out (I can only assume to argue about what happened. The truth is the truck drivers drive like idiots) the tanker, being filled with oil, exploded!

Yesterday I went to visit my friend Miranda (the other volunteer in my district) in Nyakarambi, and on the way there drove by the scene of the accident. What I saw was insane. A giant oil tanker, charred and black as night, was covered by about fifty people with machetes, slowly taking it apart. It seemed crazy to me at the time, but how else would they take it apart?! There’s obviously no tow trucks, and I’m sure somebody’s going to find good use for a bunch of burnt metal.

I know this stuff happens back home, probably more often that we know. The thing is when it happens here it seems all the more surreal.

Rusumo, My New Home

The other day I was taking a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood and snapped a few pictures of my new home.

Experiencing Rwandan Medical Care, Firsthand...

It began like any other night. The sun was setting over the mountains like a runny Spanish omelet on a cheap diner plate. I was alone. Well, as alone as one can be in Rwanda. I had just finished eating my supper, rice and wild mushrooms (delicious, but also a gamble every time you eat them…one of these days I’m probably going to ingest a poisonous one). After supper I decided to walk over to my Health Center to use the internet. Thanks to a grant from Partners in Health, we have WiFi all over the center. It’s not exactly high speed, but really I’ll take what I can get. The strongest signal can be found in the waiting room, which usually means you’ll have a small crowd gathered around you to see what you are doing. On this particular night I could see from out my window that the lobby and waiting room were empty, prime time to use the WiFi! I began locking my doors and heading down the hill.

Now, somewhere along the way, the power went out. Living here in Rwanda I’ve realized there’s a big difference between ‘having power’ and having power. For example, I ‘have power’ in the sense that there’s a light bulb in my bedroom as well as a [single] electrical outlet to charge my things. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I have power, because really it’s out about 50% of the time. When the power goes out at night, it’s dark. Very dark. Because of this I’ve become accustomed to always carrying around a small flashlight in my pocket so that I can see where I’m going. As soon as I saw the lights die, I began fishing around in my pocket for my flashlight when...WHACK! I had tripped in one of the water drainage ditches that run around the health center (a necessity when living on the side of a mountain) and hit my head on a brick wall.

I was a little dizzy, and without my glasses (god knows where they flew) I couldn’t exactly see what was going on, but when I went to pick up my computer case I saw that it was a bloody mess. As were my pants and shirt. Not sure if the blood was coming from me I put my hand up to my forehead and…yup it was me alright. A little scared I then remembered that I’m at a freaking health center! I began walking down the corridor to the on call room hoping to maybe get a band aid and be on my way. As I began walking the blood was shooting out of me like old faithful and I came to the realization that I may be needing more than just a little gauze. Upon reaching the duty nurse’s office I saw that she was with a patient but nothing could stop me at the point, I busted open the door with all of my force and then realized I had no idea what to say; I simply pointed my tiny flashlight at whatever was going on up on my head and much to my dismay I got a ‘ya baba we!’ {oh my god!} from both the nurse and the patient! They quickly cleared off the stool that was stacked mile high with papers and began putting gauze on my forehead.

Now, maybe I suffered a mild concussion, or maybe I was just a little scared, but in that moment I couldn’t speak a word of Kinyarwanda. Or French. Or Swahili, or any of the languages swimming around in my head right now. Another nurse entered and they were checking out my head and then motioned for me to go lay on the bed, the next thing I know they were whispering to each other and I distinctly heard the word kudoda {verb:to sew}. I realized I needed stitches, but I could remember our Peace Corps doctor’s stern warning to never use the local Health Centers for medical care, and so I immediately pulled out my phone and called him. The nurse looked at me like I was crazy, making a social call at a time like this!

Hello, he said. Dr. Elite I’ve fallen and busted my head and now I’m here in the Health Center and I can’t speak Kinyarwanda and I think I need stitches and they showed me in the mirror and it looks bad and I’m scared and I think I want you to talk to them and maybe tell them what I should do I just don’t know, I say. Okay give her the phone, he says. [brief interlude where they talk in rapid Kinyarwanda, then, phone is handed back to me] Okay Ian, it looks like since you are so far away from me we’re just going to go ahead and let her give you the stitches, but I should warn you that these are really bad stitches and there’s a possibility you’re going to have a big scar. Good night, and good luck!

Not exactly comforted by his words they laid me down on the table and began cleaning out the wound. Keep in mind the power is still out and so she put the flashlight in her mouth, bit down on it, and began sewing me up. Now, without any kind of numbing or pain killers I’m not afraid to say that I began crying like a little baby. It HURT! But survived, and after washing all the blood of my face (head wounds bleed like crazy!) I realized it really doesn’t look all that bad at all. I also feel stupid for crying, because everyone here survived a genocide and I was scared about a few stitches. But it was a pretty horrible experience and I think I’m going to start following my roommate’s advice from this morning to watch where I’m going (what kind of advice is that?!) because I don’t want any more incidents.

and now for something completely different

I’ve been at site for just over a month now and so far (last night aside), everything has been going really well. Before we left training we were assigned with drawing up a plan for our initial three months, a blueprint for integrating at site. While glancing over the plan yesterday I realize that I’ve already accomplished a large portion of the things that I had wanted to. Since being here I’ve successfully gotten my home in order, gotten aquainted with everyone working at the Health Center, met and spoken with dozens of community health workers, introduced myself to local officials, and met with NGOs working in the area. Miranda, another volunteer in Kirehe district, and I have also arranged a meet and greet with hospital staff in the provincial capitol. We are looking forward to meeting with them and building a relationship over the next two years.

So things are looking up…but maybe from now on I should start looking down more often. You know, to see where I’m going.

Training

The past two weeks I've been busy helping with with Community Health Worker training at my site. Community Health Workers (or abajyanama b'ubuzima in Kinyarwanda, try saying that ten times fast!) are locally picked volunteers who work in their respective communities promoting health, passing out meds when needed, checking in on HIV+ patients, etc. The list is endless, and since the program began almost 7 years ago there has been a dramatic decline in the number of deaths reported.

This training was specific to the maternal specialists. They are responsible for checking in on pregnant women living in their umudugudu {village} and checking their progress, giving them advice, and encouraging them to visit the Health Center for prenatal care. It was an interesting few weeks and I too learned a lot. Some topics covered: breast feeding (I've seen lots of boobs here, all I'm saying), checking newborns' pulses and breathing for irregularities, weighing said newborns, and of course, the always important how to properly fill out le fiche {the mother's medical record}. Though the training was certainly interesting, it was also pretty boring most of the time, I was crammed into a tiny wooden bench along with a bunch of ladies, and the classroom we were using (the students are on summer break too) was so hot I could barely breathe. Not sure how any learning goes on there in the afternoon! The experience was good, but I'm ready to get back to work at the Health Center next week.

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Liliose, my counterpart, teaching. She is the head of the community health workers.

Lots of babies at the training.

Role playing, some of these went on for over an hour! I think Rwanda needs a community theatre.

He never stopped smiling, he may have been the only one happy to be there!

Packed in like sardines!

At the end of the week we take the workers into the community to put them to the test!

Border Patrol

Rusumo Falls

Once upon a time there was a beautiful woman living in the Eastern Province of Rwanda. She had many friends and family, and was undoubtedly the most eligible bachelorette in the village. She had many offers (both sexual and matrimonial), and was promised dowries of amashongore {many female cows} as well as a life of eating nothing but avocadoes and donuts. Needless to say it was quite a shock for everyone when she finally accepted an offer of marriage, not from a Rwandan, but from someone living across the border. Not only that, but the man was very poor (and from what I hear, definitely lacking in the looks department). Nevertheless she was entranced and before her friends and family could figure out what was really going on, she had moved to Tanzania and was living a life of wedded bliss. Of course, everything was not perfect. Her husband was cruel and treated her badly. She was forbidden from visiting loved ones in Rwanda and forced to spend all day inside her small mud hut. It was almost as if she was entranced in a spell, and, fearing for her safety, some of her family snuck over to her house one evening to confront her. Upon seeing her kin come to rescue her, the spell was broken instantly. She realized the man had used black magic to seduce her and make her love him. She was angry and packed her few things and began to flee with her family. However, these things are never that easy and as soon as she begins to leave, her husband shows up, and, suffice to say he’s pissed. He threatens that if she leaves him he will place a curse on her and her entire family. The family manages to escape his grasps and returns the young woman back to the safety of her homeland. She is happy and content and wakes up the next morning and dies. She just…drops dead. Now, this same day people witnessed a rather strange phenomenon, crocodiles began walking across the border, and despite the pokes and kicks from villagers, they continued on their path. Apparently, one could walk up and touch the crocodile without anything happening, because, you see, these crocs were on a mission. They walked all the way down to the girl’s village and ate her family. Maybe some friends too.

So, this was my introduction to my new home. Apparently around these parts there’s a lot of witchcraft. So I’ve been warned not to piss anyone off. We’ve also been warned not to shake hands with anyone, especially old ladies. When you ask why you get a simple one-word response: poison. Now, I don’t really buy any of it, but my roommate informs me that he was also skeptical; having grown up in the city, and it wasn’t until he began living out East that he saw this black magic with his own two eyes. I’ve definitely heard some crazy stories over the past week and as much as I’d like to share them all on my blog, it’s probably not the best thing for me to do, this being available for pretty much anyone to read.

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I had my own interesting experience at the border this past weekend. After surviving our first week at site, some of us decided to celebrate by getting together on Saturday for some much needed R&R. My good friend Miranda was also celebrating a birthday, and so it was decided that we would be going to her house. Of course, after only living in the house for a week it was still relatively empty, and seeing as my living quarters are fully furnished, we decided to do the shindig at my place. Much of the weekend involved sharing good stories, cooking good meals, and drinking good pretty shitty wine. Now, wine here is way expensive, often ranging from $20-30 for just a bottle. I had mentioned to my roommate once that I really like wine. I had also mentioned that I would like to take my friends over to see the border. Now apparently, in Tanzania the wine is way cheaper than what is sold here in Rwanda, and so my roommate suggested paying a border hopper to go buy us some cheap wine in Tanzania and bring it back to us. Before long we were in his car heading towards Tanzania.

The ride out east is a beautiful one. The mountains here are more like hills, and from what I hear; they make for amazing picnic spots. Driving around with my roommate this past week has been an interesting experience because it has allowed me to see parts of Rwanda that the public buses don’t go and places Peace Corps certainly would never take me. Right behind my house, for example, is a long road that heads to the border, in America we would most likely refer to it as the ‘backroad’ route, but here it is also a very important road that connects several villages. The thing about it is that you can walk for almost a mile and not see another person. It seems I’ve found the one place in Rwanda without any people, and considering that I’m currently living in the most densely populated country in all of Africa, that’s quite a feat. Another place I wouldn’t normally get to: the border.

Sketchy border crossing.

Now, my notions of what the border would look like before moving to Rusumo were a lot different. I pictured a pretty, grassy plain with a large ‘Welcome to Tanzania!’ sign. Instead, you drive to a sketchy town that makes Tijuana look like Monaco. All around are dozens of semi trucks and truck drivers speaking different languages from all over Africa. Walking around the streets are women wearing short skirts and tons of makeup, and though I don’t want to assume (for all I know they are truck drivers too, or border guards), I’m pretty sure they are ladies of the night. If you catch my drift. There’s also a few hotels but I think they tend to pair up with said ladies of the night. The border between Tanzania and Rwanda is actually a river, and the bridge connecting the two countries travels over Rusumo Falls. The waterfall was actually very beautiful, though dirty of course (Rwanda is just so damn dusty!). Convincing the guard that we just wanted to see the waterfall and weren’t planning on actually crossing over was a little bit of a feat, but before we know it we were walking across the bridge. Of course, somewhere along the line we may or may not have slipped some money to a man who returned almost an hour later (I was getting worried there for a bit!) with a 5 liter box of incredibly delicious cheap white wine. To thank my roommate for bringing us to the waterfall we all wanted to take him to a bar and buy him a drink. After doing some convincing he said he knew of one close by that was wheelchair accessible. The bar had a nice back courtyard where we enjoyed some cold Primus and akabenzi {pork} skewers. Seeing as this was the first time that I have eaten pork in almost three months, well, I was incredibly happy. Being the always gracious host, my roommate had invited our borderhoppin’ friend. While we were ordering beers he ordered himself a bottle of cognac and then drank the entire bottle over the two hours we were there. So there was that.

Soon after we piled back into my roommate’s car and began racing through the Eastern Mountains. It was probably one of the scarier moments of my time here so far and the fact that my friend kept whispering to me from the backseat that ‘car accidents are the leading cause of death amongst Peace Corps Volunteers!’ really didn’t help. Turns out we had to take our borderhoppin’ friend back to my market town, about 15 minutes away from where I live. To make a long story short, we almost hit several people and were also involved in a minor fender bender. Luckily we made it back home safe and sound, just in time to make a delicious supper and enjoy each other’s company.

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My backyard.

I’ve been at site for almost two weeks now and though I’m enjoying being here, it has also proved to be quite a challenge. Rusumo is an endemic area when it comes to malaria, and after a few nights of mosquito blitzes I’m able to see why. Even though I sleep with a net, they still find their way in and my body is completely covered in bites. In the morning they line the walls of my shower room and so I have to spend a minutes beating the walls with my towel to get them to buzz off…literally. Of course they usually come back rather quickly. Mosquitoes aside, my living situation is really good. I moved into a fully furnished apartment, thanks to my roommate. If anyone out there is thinking that I’m ‘roughing it’ in a hut somewhere then you’re mistaken, the fact is we even have a TV here (granted it nearly electrocuted me when I tried to turn it on once so I don’t really touch it now). Last week I had ordered some furniture from the local carpenter, well actually I had my roommate do it so that I could get a deal and not the muzungu price. The quoted 50,000Rwf and he managed to talk them down to 30,000Rwf (around $55). I got a desk, a chair, and a large wooden bookshelf to keep all my stuff on. When it came time to pick up the stuff I waited until my friends came so that they could help me to carry it over to my house. Due to all of our adventures at the border, we weren’t available to head over to the carpenter until late at night, after giving him a call around 9PM he said it wouldn’t be able a problem. After climbing up the hill and wading through a graveyard of furniture lit only by moonlight we stumbled upon three men sitting on a bench. Now, I’m not really sure if any of them actually worked there but they showed me the stuff and we argued prices for a bit and then we all realized that while my friends and I were slightly buzzed from a few Primus these men were trashed out of their minds. Insults were thrown in Kinyarwanda, and soon two of them men were fist-fighting while the other one screamed at them (the only thing I managed to understand was the one thing he was shouting over and over again: inzoga {alcohol!}. I handed the man the money and we made a dash for it. Now the furniture is safe and sound in my newly decorated bedroom, which gives the whole place a homier feel (which, trust me, was badly needed).

Living here has its other challenges. Despite scoring high on my Language Proficiency Interview, I still only understand 20% of what people are saying to me. Add to that the fact that people here are very shy, and half the time they’re speaking to me in either French or some kind of Swahili. Most days end with me popping a few Ibuprofen because I have such a bad headache. The sun here is killer, and a smart man would wear the sunscreen that Peace Corps provided. I usually abstain because it feels like rubbing castor oil on my skin and never really seems to dry. Also, we’re currently in the dry season, which means the sun is high in the sky, there are water shortages all across the Eastern Province, and the dust is everywhere. When I blow my nose it’s usually red, not from chronic bloody noses but simply because I spend the whole day breathing in dirt. Also, according to my teacher back in Kamonyi, the dry season often times makes people go mad, and tie that in with all the witchcraft going on around me, and I would say it’s quite the time to be here!

But the past weeks have had their ups as well. I can finally work on my own schedule, and after the grueling three months of training, this has definitely been a welcome change. Now that my room is looking more like a room, I enjoy spending time in there and it has proven to be a nice little sanctuary when I am feeling down. The community I am living in is great; the people here are incredibly friendly and eager to talk to me when I go for walks. The staff at the Health Center is also really great, and though I still feel like I have a long way to go in terms of integration, I’m taking it day by day. The view from my window of the sun setting is incredible. The cool night air is relaxing. The cell phone reception here is superb (believe me, it’s a big deal!) Peace Corps service is a series of ups and downs, and so far I’m riding the wave and enjoying the experience.

Now if I could just find some candy…