Rwaza Girls Secondary School

The building with a blue roof is my school: Rwaza (pronounced gwaza) Girls Secondary School. If you were to pan left from the picture, you would see the volcanos.

There's no place like home

After three weeks of training, I finally arrived at my new home. Departure day was quite draining as we were waiting around most of the day so we could all say goodbye to each of our group members as they left. We have all gotten pretty close and it was bittersweet moving on to the next stage. There are three other volunteers near me in Musanze (formerly Ruhengeri) and the four of us were picked up by Father Jean-Pierre, one of the headmasters. The ride in the mini-taxi (small bus) took about 2 hours and the view was breathtaking. I was the first to be dropped off and in typical Rwandan fashion, we were all ushered inside my headmistress’s office to sit down, be introduced to whoever was around, and sip refreshments.

As we sat down, Sister Martha (my headmistress) went to her desk and whipped off a cloth that was covering a tray of glasses, a jug of cold milk, several fantas, and half a dozen beers. Welcome to Rwaza Catholic Girls School; have a beer. Or a glass of sour, yogurt-like milk. After greeting several sisters, as well as Katie, the Peace Corps volunteer that will be my neighbor and colleague this year, we all sat down to sip our drinks. While the 5 of us volunteers shyly requested Sprite and Fanta Orange, Sister Martha poured herself a glass of beer and added some Sprite to it, giggling over the bug that was floating in it that she couldn’t seem to get out. Sister Marie Agnes however declined the offered drink saying she couldn’t drink this early in the day because she wouldn’t be able to think straight during prayers.

During this meeting I was told that I was their new daughter, they were very happy because now they had two daughters, Katie and me. Later I was taken down to my “house.” The main room has a small table on which was a plastic bottle full of flowers and a sign that said “WELCOME.” I was ushered in and was sung a welcome song that went something like this: “Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, weeeelcome….Murakaza neza, murakaza neza, murakaza neza, murakaza neza” and was accompanied by clapping.

I'm very much looking forward to spending time with the people here. I have just returned from a game of basketball. That's right, I just played basketball. Father Charles, the priest at the orphanage down the road guilted me into it. He said it doesn't matter how you play, just that you do it...turns out he's an amazing basketball player and quite competitive. When he showed up with a dozen or so orphans, he told me "These are all my children, there are 50 in all...its because I don't have family planning, they just keep coming."

The views from Rwaza are spectacular, you have to drive up a mountain 6 kilometers on a pothole filled dirt road. The whole way you are surrounded by green valleys and hills and views of the 5 largest volcanoes in Rwanda. I have yet to get a really good picture of them, but once I do, and once I learn their names, I will put it up.

Water and Tea III

The crowning jewel to our water logged, tea-less day was our 3am wake-up call. I woke up to a mosquito buzzing in my ear and as I repositioned myself under the netting I realized that there was some kind of drumming/singing going on nearby. In my half-asleep state I didn’t think twice about why, at 3am, there would be what sounded like a native ceremony going on in the hotel. It didn’t take long for me to wake up and realize that not only was Susan also awake, but our neighbors, Joanna and Jane were giggling on the other side of the wall. After sending them a text message, we met them out on our balcony to exchange complaints over the half wall. They told us that the group of men that had been watching the Angola-Malawi soccer game in the hotel bar were still there and had broken into a mix of ABBA and Rwandan drinking songs, accompanied by drumming on a yet unknown object. Our program director had been on the phone with the hotel manager who was planning to avoid asking the men to leave by simply turning off the power to the hotel. Five minutes later, as the four of us munched cookies, laughing and trying to guess who of our group would still be asleep through all of this, the hallway lights turned off.

After 30 minutes of barely fledging din, the power turned back on and our giggles gave way to exhaustion. We headed back to our beds oblivious of the time when the noise actually faded. The next day, our usually reserved program director, Eric, put on his papa bear face and went to have a talk with the police and the hotel manager. The threat of twenty paying customers leaving early, coupled with extra police guardianship the following nights was enough to guarantee us a good night’s sleep for the rest of the week.

Water and Tea Part II

Now we come to the tea. One of Rwanda’s main products is tea, and we all have been enjoying the local brew which can be bought at almost any establishment. After a disastrous meal at the hotel the night before, we decided to go find a hole in the wall for dinner. (We had waited 2.5 hours for our food, and when it arrived discovered that when the menu says vegetarian pizza and grilled ham and cheese, they really mean spaghetti and pea pizza and hamburger sandwich). After passing several uninviting holes, we stopped at one which turned out to only have tea and bread. So, we asked the shop owner where we could find some brochettes (goat kabobs…mmm). He nodded and began deliberating with several people while we waited in the street, our skirt tails accruing children by the second.

The shop owner, who introduced himself as Jared pointed to two young boys and told us to follow them to the brochettes. We said goodbye and thank you and headed off in a cloud of munchkins. My friend Joanna, who was walking behind me, later told me that I looked like Wendy with the Lost Boys. We arrived at a restaurant neighboring our hotel and turned around to see that Jared had abandoned his shop to follow us and was in negotiating mode:

Jared: What would you like to eat?
Us: What do they have?
Jared: They can make anything.
Emma: Can I have some cassava?
Jared: (after consulting the waiter) no, they don’t have that.
Emma: Well, what kind of vegetables do they have?
Jared: (consultation) They don’t have any vegetables left.
Emma: Then can I have a hard boiled egg?
Jared: (consultation)yes, they have that, and they have brochettes.

We finally settled for brochettes and chapatti (greasy, delicious, flat bread) and when Jared was satisfied that we would be well fed he left with a promise to come learn English from us the next day at the school. The waiter then asked for our drink orders, several of us ordered the standard Fanta Citron and Fanta Orange, but three people asked for tea. The waiter requested to converse in French, and as the majority of us can all speak clear, precise French at the very least to order food, we agreed. The conversation went something like this:

Joanna: Do you have tea?
Waiter: Aye?(huh in Kinyarwanda)
Joanna: Du thé? Ichayi (tea in Kinyarwanda).
Waiter: Ah oui, Ichayi. How many?
Joanna: three, three ichayi.
Waiter: three…na amata? (with milk?)
Joanna: Oya, no amata…no milk.
Waiter: No milk? Nido?! (powdered milk brand)
Joanna: Oya, no Nido, no milk.
(waiter leaves…then returns 20 minutes later with the fantas)
Waiter: mumble, mumble, mumble in French/Kinyarwanda Nido mumble, mumble thé, mumble, mumble, lait.
Joanna: Ichayi? You have tea?
Waiter: oui, oui, mumble, mumble, Nido.
Joanna (in clear French): We would like three teas without milk.
Waiter: Ok.
(waiter leaves, then returns later with a can of instant coffee in his hand).
Waiter (in French): Do you want some of this in your tea?
Joanna (in French): No, no coffee, only tea.
Waiter: Na Amata?
Joanna: No, we don’t want coffee in the tea, we don’t want milk in the tea, we only want tea.
Waiter nods.
Waiter returns with three mugs of hot water, some sugar, and the can of instant coffee.
Waiter: smiles, Du thé.

We had a good laugh over our hot water and fantas about the fact that we had clearly said tea a dozen times in three different languages and had still ended up with coffee. Still baffled by how a request for no milk in the tea could result in coffee, I’m not convinced that it was due to language misunderstandings. I find it more likely that there was some cultural matter that we were unaware of. Perhaps Rwandans never drink tea without milk after 5pm on days when African Cup games are on. Or maybe its faux pas for some members in a group to drink tea and some not to when sitting in a cement gazebo. Or possibly, the goat they had slaughtered for our brochettes had eaten all the tea, so we were getting it anyway, but just in another form…. We will probably never know.

Water and Tea Part I

Of the most notable qualities of Rwanda, water and tea definitely have a place, and yesterday I learned a lesson in culture from both of them.

Rwanda’s temperate climate is partitioned by two rainy seasons, one of which we are currently at the tail end of. While there have been a few very sunny days, most have been somewhat rainy, and about three times a week there is thunder and lightning. Our group recently arrived in Nyanza, where we will be teaching a free English training session for the week. Here, we are staying at Heritage Hotel. When my roommate and I walked into our room for the week, our jaws dropped at the TV, full length mirror, balcony, and yes…the squeaky clean bathroom attached to the room, we felt like royalty…at least we did until yesterday afternoon.

We discovered that the hotel restaurant has really good hot chocolate and most of us were sitting drinking some and lesson planning when a huge thunder storm rolled in yesterday after lunch. I was silently watching everyone duck and run for cover as the heavens let loose when my roommate Susan came running in to alert me that the Nile was being rerouted through our room. The scene that unfolded was a perfect example of cultural disparity. Two other rooms of people in our group were being overtaken with water and we all became a hive of activity, running around asking for towels, moving things off the floor. Our other group members rushed to their rooms to bring us towels and rugs to soak up as much water as possible. As we were doing this, we alerted the Rwandan staff of the situation. Two workers came and looked in our room, then stood around talking, pointing to the dripping from the ceiling and the crack under the balcony door. Two others came up 10 minutes later and went out onto our balcony which was at this point a tile bathtub with no visible method of drainage. It struck me as absurd that in a country with two rainy seasons that a balcony could have been designed so poorly. I mean, did this happen every time it rained? As my bafflement reached a peak, the local worker reached down and scratched at a small black mark in the tile. As I looked closer I saw that it was in fact one of three tiny drainage holes which were filled with dirt. I saw that nothing immediate was going to be done about these blocked holes, and my American self had had enough of standing around doing nothing, so I went in search of more towels.

I asked a man at the front desk who walked me down to the supply closet. This was locked. Back to the front desk to rifle through some keys in a drawer. No luck. Several phone calls were made, then I was signaled to wait while he knocked on several doors and exchanged a few lines of Kinyarwanda at each one. Again, no luck. He came back and asked me what room I was in and beckoned me to take him there. When we arrived, the man on the balcony was scratching at the drainage holes with a screwdriver and a woman was using a plastic bowl to bail water onto the ground below. Two others had moved a ladder into the room and were doing something with the dripping ceiling tile. My front desk helper took off and I joined my roommate in standing awkwardly, trying to determine the next course of action. Eventually we joined in with another Rwandan woman who came in and began to wring out the towels over the side of the balcony. Wring, soak up more water, wring, soak up more water. This continued for 15 minutes, the two of us with our American haste, and she in typical Rwandan slow motion, and here we were together twisting white hotel towels from three floors up, smiling at each other and the absurdity of the situation. People tell me that math is the universal language…I say, so are dripping towels.

Picture 1. This is the inside of the "Neo" bus.




Picture 2. Ben and I. Ben was a guest speaker who came and gave our group a language and culture and history lesson. He became friends with all of us and has been showing us around the city. A few of us went with him to see a choir performance at a local church.



Picture 3. Our group during an orientation session. We meet in a conference room at St. Paul's Mission, the place we are currently staying. Tomorrow we are off to Nyanza for a week of teaching practicum. Then back to Kigali for a few days before heading off to our sites.

Transportation

The other day, our group did a scavenger hunt around Kigali as a way of helping us get to know the city and how to get around it. Aside from taking the taxis, none of us had really had any experience with transportation around the city. The whole exercise was very good as it forced us to ask for directions and deal with the language barrier (I found that using my French was much faster than trying to stumble through our questions in English).

There are three main modes of transportation in Kigali, the most expensive and most convenient being a taxi. It typically costs about 2000-3000 rwf (Rwandan francs) which is about $4-6, but you can take 4 people and the driver will know exactly where you need to go.

The second kind of transportation is the moto which varies in prices around $1. Like taking a taxi, you have to haggle a little to get a lower price. Once we have mastered haggling over they prices in Kinyarwanda rather than French or English, we should be able to get cheaper rates as the drivers won’t take advantage of us for being “muzungus”. Since my only experience on two-wheeled vehicles is a bicycle, my first moto experience felt like Mario Cart Live. As soon as the price is negotiated, you are handed a helmet, which is always too big and has multiple cracks and probably a large chuck of visor missing. You swing your leg over the side, being careful not to burn your leg on the muffler. Now that you are cozily situated on the seat behind the driver, you grab either him, or the handle behind you and hold on for dear life. Some drivers’ speeds boarder on recklessness, in which case you have to tell them to slow down (something we learned to do in Kinyarwanda: pole, pole). Others putter along at a moderate pace allowing you to enjoy the scenery. Usually they stop the moto by slowing down at the last possible second and spinning the tail end of the moto around to land you right at the curb. You hop off, remove and return the helmet and pay the agreed upon fee. The whole thing is very exhilarating.

The third kind of transportation is the bus. As far as we can tell, there is no visible way of determining where a bus is going, the only way to do it is to ask. About 2/3 of the buses are plain white and yellow, but the other 1/3 have names like: “T-pain,” “Kayne West,” and “G-Star.” I recently rode on “T-pain” which is painted in orange and purple tiger stripes and had a bedazzled interior. Its costs 120rwf to ride and they cram 16 people in each bus at a time. While the Rwandans may be more modest in dress than westerners, they have no qualms about physical contact with strangers. If the bus is full, you won’t be able to move and might just find someone in your lap. The bus system is quite organized and everyone knows when to move over, when to get out, when to pay, and what bus to take. There are two workers on each bus, the driver and then another who stands by the door and collects money and makes change as people get off, or before the end of the main hub. He jumps in and out of the car, whizzing the door open or shut while the van is in motion. It is all very efficient and smelly (deodorant is not used liberally here.)

The traffic here is fairly slow-paced and the streets are not crowded. The preferred mode of transportation is walking, although the quality of the gas fumes makes up for the quantity of autos on the road. We have been advised that the transportation here is all very safe and now know how to use it all, so we feel much more at home. To add to this feeling, I have learned enough Kinyarwanda to have a 2 minute greeting with a local. One thing about Rwandans is that they rarely just say a passing hello, their greeting is to ask how you are and listen to your response. Those I have spoken with in Kinyarwanda light up immediately when they hear you attempting their language.