A day in sounds

Before the sun crests the mountain tops, the birds have begun. Their twitters and chirping carry into my open window at an ungodly hour as they announce to the world that the day is here. Despite the time, the adjusting of a radio at full volume is the next to make sure that I am wide and fully awake now. As if suddenly realizing people might still be sleeping, the radio is hushed, only to be replaced with an engine roaring to life in my driveway for no other purpose it seems but to make sure it will start again today. The car sits in idle until the working order is established and is revved one more time before that too is silenced. Yes, yes I am up now. I will get ready for the day. The hour passes quietly until I step outside and am greeted with the dogs, grumbling that they are once again, hungry. Tin dog bowls clash together with their unnatural twang to dislodge the ants before breakfast is served. Finally to work we go. The lowing cows wish the mazungu a good morning as they munch on their grasses. At work I am overcome with sound. The musical interludes of phones ringing, doors crashing shut, Kinyarwanda spoken at speeds and volumes as if trying to outdo one another, each trying to hold 5 conversations with everyone else. A step outside when it becomes too overwhelming. The birds, mellow in their trees now are pleasant and peaceful while the wind shuffles the eucalyptus leaves. A breath of calm. Next door the whistles are blown for recess followed by hundreds of children's voices raising into the air, laughing and calling after friends. The repetitious thud of the make-shift soccer ball come from the boy's side while the girls are chanting and clapping, stomping their feet and jumping in time to the rhythm. I've made it to lunch. The lid of the amandazi bucket pops open while the ijanas jangle in my wallet. Two ijanas for two amandazi please. My feet crunch on the dry and dusty road home. It's the dry season now. No rains. I let myself in the gate with a scraping clank while the continuous indistinguishable conversation of passersby is left outside. Home sweet home, where I get to dictate the noises in my house. Ed Gerhard or Andy McKee inspire my yoga practices which in turn give way to something more upbeat as I move about daily chores. Outside again with a soft snap of the lettuce leaves for my dinner. A match lit, gas hissing, and then a flame roaring softly under my pot of water who will soon begin its rumbling boil so I have clean water to drink. My fork on the plate accompanies the sounds to a movie during dinnertime. Nearly time for bed. The cicadas have replaced the birds in the endless chirping drone of nature. A truck rumbles down the road, threatening to lose a spare part, or an essential one. A stick on the rusted tire rim signals that it is 9:30 and time for me to go to sleep.

Greetings from a long forgotten time

I know, I've seriously neglected my duties in keeping up with this blog. Habit I guess. I am great at starting things. I am enthusiastic and eager, and the routine settles in and it just isn't quite as much fun as it used to be, and yes, I am talking both about the blog as well as my time here.

Don't get me wrong. I would hate to give anyone a wrong impression of this experience. I wouldn't trade it for anything. It has been so eye-opening both in my own personal development, as well as a bigger world that I've only ever seen through rose-colored glasses. Life here has just become life, it just happens to be in Rwanda. Routine and habit have become day to day companions like anyone else's life. Therefore, it is sometimes difficult to weed out the 'experience' from the general living. People ask me if I like being here. After one year, yeah I still like being here. It is frustrating more often that I thought it would be and I still feel so unaccomplished, but that doesn't make this a bad experience. Just different. Any semblance to my previous life has dwindled down to where it only resides in my suitcase where I stash my American goodies to try and ration them, much to no avail. One year in Rwanda, and then later one year at site passed without too much celebration or grandeur. I for some reason thought I might have this great epiphany or a sudden uplifting of my daily life. But, like any other day, it is just any other day apart from the fact that it marked my half-way point in my service. Thankfully I was able to reward myself for that occasion with a trip to Dubai and the Balkans which one of the greatest, most appreciated vacations I've ever spent.

I'm sure some of you have grown bored of my constant refrains for how 'normal' my Rwandan life is. My new resolution is to dig further into some of what I see in Rwanda and how I am feeling in my life and service. Granted, it might not always be positive, and I will try to present all sides of my time here. This probably should've been my opening to my blog, but I might as well start sometime. Like I said, I am great at beginning things. And, this year is like a new beginning. A year of service down, and a year counting down to all the things I have been missing and dreaming about for the past 365 days. (Thank goodness for the Mac & Cheese in my care packages!) I wanted to remind everyone out there reading that this blog only reflect my own personal views and experiences and is not affiliated with Peace Corps on any official terms. I hope you all continue reading I promise I will try to be better about writing!

No one has written a great symphony or even a concerto about Africa. Why is that so?

The music of Africa is too wild, too free, too accustomed to death for romance. Africa is too crude a stage for the small scratching of the violin, too majestic for the piano. Africa is only right for drums. The drum carries its rhythm but does not steal its music. Timpani is the background, the music of Africa is in the voices of the people. They are its instruments, more subtle, more beautiful, infinitely more noble than the scratching, thumping, banging and blowing of brass and wind and vellum, strings and keyboard.

The Power Of One Bryce Courtenay

Happy Half Century

For most, March 1st passed fairly uneventfully marking one day to the next, though within this certain community, it represented a milestone. For 50 years, Peace Corps has been sending its willing volunteers to all parts of the world to help as best they can. To many on the outside, it means saving the world, one country and two years at a time. An all-out do gooder who is crazy enough to volunteer their own life in the service of others. In some ways, yeah, that is what I have been working at. The chance to make some smidgen of a difference. Looking at this from the inside however, it's more than just a good theoretical idea. Like any government bureaucracy, Peace Corps deals with its rules and regulations, sometimes sacrificing the appeasement of its volunteers to be able to function in a country completely unlike any other, even from its own neighbors. Personalities, discrepancies, necessities, and niceties must cooperate together to produce a working system of volunteers able to serve their villages. There will always be lapses in organization and maybe a slight oversight to the humanness of its volunteers but what other organization so large will give you this experience. We live as Rwandans in their towns, in their jobs. (Yes, I have checked and I actually do have the same monthly salary as my co-workers) We are given an opportunity to stretch our own boundaries and claim this service for ourselves. Though is it aggravating, Peace Corps somehow manages to be the laid-back hippie parent as well as the overbearing one, letting us decide where to focus but keeping us within their guidelines. We learn as we go, we grow, we serve others, but mainly we just live. Happy Birthday Peace Corps; though sometimes I hate you and sometimes I love you, I am glad to be a part of this.

A year in review

Trials and triumphs... It is impossible to describe this past year without both of these. Granted, they might've been small, sometimes insignificant, but it is the addition of all these that have created this past year. February 2010 saw me leaving a cold, bleary, and wholly American land, to touch down in the heat and humidity of East Africa, completely unaware as to what Peace Corps service actually meant. Despite all the agonizing frustrations and looming uncertainties, I began my this new life as a volunteer in Rubengera, due west of Kigali and just 15 glorious minutes from Lake Kivu, which has turned out to be one of my greatest saving graces. Even through these past 365 days, at times I still feel just as lost as to what it means to be a Peace Corps volunteer. It often comes as a shock to remember I am serving here instead of just living. Day to day life carries you so effortlessly through the months that sometimes you forget you are moving; it's only when you decide to look and see where you are going that you remember. The good days are marked with people calling you by your real name instead of 'mazungu,' children stopping on their way to school to sing to you, watching the sun blaze into the mountain's vivid colors, swimming in Lake Kivu, and realizing you are living in Africa (how cool is that!!!). The bad moments, though not as often still mar those days with shouts and taunts of 'mazungu', an intense craving for some comforting American thing, a blank look when you cannot express yourself in Kinyarwanda. And, though I haven't accomplished the projects I have set out to quite yet, I am still working; Rwanda is being patient with me. It seems, like most experiences in life, as soon as you conquer one battle, another is just over the next hill waiting to take you on; and since Rwanda is the land of 10,000 hills, there are a heck to a lot of battles to deal with. Thinking through it though, it doesn't feel like I have fought a year's worth of battles yet. I guess that would be the most prominent thought and emotion that comes to mind when I think about my one year mark. One year didn't feel quite as long as I was expecting, and since there were no parades or parties to mark the occasion, it passed quietly. Just another day when I pass cows on my way to work, listen to Kinyarwana all day and try to speak lousy French, bathe from a bucket, then fall asleep beneath my mosquito net until I do it all over again.

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A walking contradiction

**This does not reflect the views of Peace Corps, or even my overall impression of Rwandans, it is simply observations about everyday behavior that seems to be contradictory. Please don't look at this as being cynical or angry, just a commentary on my life here...

People speak barely above a whisper talking face to face but on the phone they shout and will listen to the radio at full volume

They will clean their shoes obsessively and their dress is impeccable but sometimes lack olfactory hygiene

Women won't show above the knee but have no qualms about breast feeding anywhere

Use hands to blow their nose, cough into, sneeze into, and .... but they always hold bread or muffins with a napkin (even if the muffin already has a wrapper). Straws are not touched with the hand, rather pulled out and placed in the bottle with the teeth.

They get water from a pump and have to hoard it (not washing hands, etc.) but if there is a car, it will be washed almost every day

During dry season when temperatures are in the 90's, mothers use at least 3 layers to wrap their children on their backs. Also, if there is a newborn, they will be in long sleeves, a blanket, a entire zip-up fake blend blanket, with another blanket on top. During the wet season where day temperatures in the 60's, mothers let their children walk around in shorts and tank tops.

People always talk about having to portray yourself as 'serious' in order to be respected in the work-place. Yet, after an hour impromptu staff meeting in the morning, the nurses then proceed to gather and gossip and chat for another 45 minutes before doing anything productive with patients

The children on the bus go...

Rwanda children have me confused. More often than not, children are quite content to walk beside you or just stop and stare, yelling 'mazungu' in your direction, yet you take a step towards them and they scatter like spooked antelope. A mother, trying to be friendly will try to deposit her small kid into your lap where they promptly take one look at you, seize with terror, and let out ear splitting shrieks until the mother removes them again. It's great to look at the novelty white person, but don't let it get too close. But somehow, on the bus these rules cancel out. Now, in America people sitting on a bus have their nice personal space and can conveniently ignore everyone else around them. You could probably do that on Rwandan buses though it gets a little more difficult when there are 4 adults and 3 children trying to sit on 4 seats. Riding back to Kigali after my New Year's holiday, I was crammed in the back between two mothers, one with one child, the other trying to juggle two on her lap. Like most Rwandans, as soon as the vehicle started moving, the mother began to nod off leaving her older son standing squashed in the corner looking out the window. I felt awkward and sorry for both mother and the boy who had barely enough room to move. Pretty soon, the bus began lulling the boy as well and he tried in vain to keep himself upright while napping against the window. After several unsuccessful attempts I figured, why not. I motioned for him to sit on my lap to which he promptly scrambled over his mother. No fear or anxiety, just thankful to sit down. Granted, I was still a mazungu to stare at with the strange skin, but somehow the bus equalized us and he wasn't nervous about sitting with me. The novelty of the mazungu lap wore off quickly and he snuggled up to nap. Honestly, where else would you pick up a strange child and have them curl up to sleep against you. Where else would a child be allowed to sit with a stranger. The pure innocence of that simple act is such a powerful reminder that despite the name calling and frustrations with kids here, they have such a huge capacity to love and trust without questions asked.

Be strong and patient

I am starting to lose track of what I have written about now, though I am pretty sure I have mentioned this in previous entries. I was just struck by the concept again today at work and wanted to share. Komera and Ihangane; probably the two most commonly used phrases in Rawndan culture. Be strong and be patient. If someone next to you stumbles while walking you tell them to be strong. A neighbor is describing a difficult money or health problem, you tell them to be patient. Even laboring women are told to be patient, though I doubt that's what they want to hear at that moment. Be strong and be patient. It fits this culture so well. Such a simple sentiment but one that can have so much meaning. Ihangane, be patient. It's said time and time again in so many different ways. Anything worthwhile is worth waiting for. Often we get weighed down by the trivialities and we forget to look at the bigger picture. We get caught scrutinizing and stressing about things we can't control. Be patient. Things take time. Especially in Rwanda where Africa time seems to be at its best. It will get done, eventually. Life doesn't revolve on the extra minute or two you would save rushing through your days. Be patient.

Komera. It is such an inclusive word. A common greeting around my area is "Ukomeye" meaning are you strong? Not just a simple 'hello' or 'good morning' but a question about you and how you are doing in all possible senses. Are you strong? This also fits with their version of good morning or afternoon which translates more to 'you have survived the morning or afternoon?' Life is tough. More often than not it kicks the crap out of you for no apparent reason, so how encouraging is it to have someone make sure you are strong enough to handle it. Be strong. I like to think that this goes further then a quick response to someone tripping or a passing greeting. Be strong, not just in your body but in every facet of life. Be strong in love, be strong in beliefs, be strong in joy. How much more simply can you put it. Even in hard times, there is someone who will be there to look at you, smile, and tell you "Komera."