More Pictures

Here are three more pictures. One is a picture of me on a walk up a big hillside near my site in Musange (I don't really like the photo, but I don't have any others of myself and I thought one would be good so everyone believes I'm still quite healthy). The other is a picture of the bike they gave me (flashy a bit? That makes it easy to convince people here that I'm not rich....). And the other picture is of an imbubura which is the charcoal stove used for cooking here. Their are some gas/kerosene stoves, but they are few and far between and most everyone uses something similar to this one. I'm still planning to explore the possibilities of a kerosene stove before I go to my site.

Okay, I'll try to post more at some point soon....

This is just going to be a photo upload, and since it takes forever I'm only putting up a few. One of them is a picture of my bedroom where I'm currently living in Nyanza, and the other pics are from my site in Musange (in Nyamagabe District).

The pictures from my site are pictures of the building I'll be living in. It's kind of like a motel style rowhouse building owned by the school. I don't have any pictures from the inside, but there are just two rooms, one will obviously be the living area and the other one will be my bedroom. They are currently building me a latrine and bathing area outside of my rooms (basically right in front ha..). It is supposed to be done by the time I get there in January, and one of the PC Staff will be visiting it before I move in, and I'm fine with whatever so I'm sure I'll be perfectly happy. In all honesty, I prefer this to having been given some huge house which would make me feel weird and set me apart even further status wise and make it harder to integrate. And it's right next to the school, and very close to the market (which is only on Monday and Friday) and the water tap in the center of the town (which is pretty key, trust me, other volunteers will be having to pay people to haul water for them from far away).

I'll post some other photos of my site and the school when I get a chance. For now I'm about to go do some work for "umuganda". I might have mentioned it before, but one Saturday every month it's like a community work day when all residents go out help clean up the roads, cut grass, help with construction, and any other imaginable public works activity. It's pretty cool, though sometimes it's difficult to convince people that as a muzungu I'm not going to break in half from doing just a little bit of manual labor...

Also, I got a USB internet modem, and our center now has wireless access (though quite slow), so for the coming weeks I'll hopefully be blogging more and adding many more pictures. I'm thinking of setting up a flickr account or something to streamline that process, but if so I'll post a link on here.

- Dylan

Site Visit

I apologize in advance that this post will be brief, but my time at the internet cafe right now is slightly limited, so I'll try and give as many details as possible in a concise post.

I arrived back to Nyanza from my site visit only a few hours ago. Everything went pretty well, an experience for sure. To start, my site is about an eighty minute "moto" ride from Nyanza. There are no buses which run from Nyanza to my site, which is located in the Musange Sector, which is in the Nyamagabe District, which is in the Southern Province. My "cell" {kind of like a large neighborhood} is called "Masizi", and the "village" is called Karama.

It's a small place, located in the valley between some notable hills/mountains. The school I will be teaching at has about 300 students, split up between three different "grades". Perhaps a brief outline of the Rwandan education structure is needed, so here goes: There is Primary School, which is basically up through sixth grade, and then there is Secondary School, which is basically 7th, 8th, and 9th {where I will be teaching}, and then there is Upper Secondary, which is 10th, 11th, 12th. Secondary 7th, 8th, and 9th translates to "S1, S2, and S3", or may be called "Form 1, Form 2, and Form 3". My school is specifically only for S1, S2, and S3. I'm not sure what grade or grades I will be teaching yet [I'll explain why that is in a moment].

So I arrived Monday morning, and was met by the school Secretary and the Headmistress/Dir Ajoint. I learned the day before my visit that the Headmaster was going to be out of town for a training conference in Butare. So for the whole time there, I never met the Headmaster. However, I stayed at his house the whole time, and was cooked for and helped by his live in help/domestic worker as they call it.

After dropping my stuff off in the house, I walked around a bunch, talked to people, saw the town, and saw where I'm going to live. I will be living almost right next to the school, which has advantages and disadvantages, but I'm alright with it. It's not a house, more like a unit of a few rooms in a rowhouse kind of setup. I will not have electricity, but there are places in town and the at the school where I can charge electronic devices. They told me they are also building a latrine and a bathing area for me, which came under construction yesterday, so all seems well and that things will be good. Water is readily available at a tap in the center of town, and there is a small market on Monday right in town, and then on Friday there is a large market (which I never got to see because I left in the morning, but the Monday market was of ample size, so I imagine the bigger market should be plenty sufficient for my needs).

The school itself is small but nice, with the standard three person desks for students and blackboards at the front and back. There is also a reasonable amount of books in the main office, which I only nominally looked over but appear useful.

I will say that I don't expect many abazungu [plural of muzungu which means white person generally, or more technically it means foreigner but is primarily used for referring to someone who is white] have been through my village, so of course I was quite the site. I'll be a bit of a celebrity in that sense for quite some time, but the people are nice and I was received quite well on the whole.

I will try and write a second part to this post, but for now I'll leave it at that. I'm back in Nyanza now, back to training and language work, and after another week I start "model school" which is basically practice teaching with real Rwandan students from the area. I'll try and write more soon. I love and miss everyone.

- Dylan

About Time....

I wrote the post below a few days ago, but due to failed attempts to get a strong enough connection to the internet, I’m not posting it until now…If I had more time I’d add more recent updates, but since I do not have such time right now, I’m just going to add one bit of news, which is that I will indeed find out my permanent site placement sometime tonight, and next week I will be visiting it…Also, I’m seriously considering investing in a USB modem here, pending that I confirm I’ll have signal at my site. If that is the case, I should be able to make more regular postings on here…But I’ll wait on saying whether that will happen for sure or not…

[Start Previously Written Post]

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted, I apologize for that but the internet speed here has made it nearly impossible to do anything but check basic gmail. If I ever get a decent connection I’ll post some of the pictures I’ve taken, but for now just getting this up is a major accomplishment.

I’m not quite sure where to begin, it’s probably impossible to relate every minor detail or event, so I’ll just try to offer a few snippets on certain events and then I’ll offer a bullet point list of my observations/experiences/etc…

Overall things are good, training includes very long days filled with language sessions, tech training (training us to be teachers), safety and security sessions, and cross cultural sessions. In a typical training day so far, I get up sometime around 5:20 and 5:30, and drag myself into the bathroom for a bucket bath. Now quite conveniently, about a week ago we got an electrical kettle. Now, your first thought might be that we would use said kettle for water for tea or coffee. Not so. Instead, we use it to heat up a pot of water, and then pour that into the cold water we use for a bucket bath. The result? A mildly warm bucket bath which isn’t unpleasant at all. It’s quite a luxury, and I won’t have such a device at my site unless I purchase one myself (which I may or may not elect to do, based on the price).

Anyway, after bathing and getting ready, usually the bus comes and picks us up around 6:45a. The fact that our house gets a bus is not typical, it’s only because we are one of the 2 houses which live a one hour walk from the training center (which we still have to walk at times, but not usually). The six of us in our house, which includes myself, 3 other trainees – my roommate Jed, Charles, and Shawn – and the two LCFs (language and cross cultural facilitators) Valence and Jean Pierre then pile into a 12/13 person seater minibus along with the four girls and two LCFs from the other house nearby.
8am is usually language class, then a 10am tea/snack break, and then either more language or a cross culture or safety and security session, it just depends. Lunch is from 12-2p, served at the center. On some days I walk into town and try and use the internet (the operative word there is “try” ha). At 2pm we often have a tech session, but some days it’s a cross culture or safety and security session…

We are usually done around 5pm with everything, and depending on the day we may have dinner at the center, or with our resource families. Wednesdays and Fridays are usually reserved for dinner with your resource family, and Saturday and Sunday are days we are on our own for dinner (cooking or a restaurant).

My resource family is very nice, and their house is about a ten minute walk from where I live. My resource family mother has six sons, though a couple of them are older so only a few of them live with her. They are extremely nice and warm and welcoming, and I am constantly given more food than I believe my stomach can hold, though for fear of offending them, I eat everything I’m given. The cups of hot milk and tea after dinner often send me over the top. And even though my Kinyarwanda is still extremely basic (to say the least), one of the sons speaks good English, so between that and my mispronunciations and pantomimes, we can usually communicate fairly effectively. And I have been allowed to help with the cooking, though up to this point that has only really consisted of slicing a few things and being in charge of stirring something in a put.
A little bit about my neighborhood…

So as I said, I live about as far as possible from the training center in Nyanza. That said, my neighborhood is very nice and welcoming. There is a small market like a couple hundred feet from our front door, which will prove increasingly convenient as I learn better how to barter and buy things (everything in outdoor markets here requires bartering, and even more so since I’m a muzungu and thus automatically presumed to be rich beyond anything). The neighborhood is predominantly Muslim, and there is a rather nice mosque about a 5min walk from my house. Every time I go outside, there are children saying hi, shaking our hands, and speaking in Kinyarwanda or trying to speak in English (which is usually always “good morning”, no matter what time of day). We are just about the most interesting/weird/strange thing to move into this umudugudu (village) in quite a long time, if not ever, so it isn’t surprising. But the adults in the neighborhood are just as nice as the kids, and I think slowly starting to get used to our presence…
Okay, so now, I’m just going to offer some bullet point snapshots of some interesting things and observations I’ve made since being here.
- Nearly all soda comes in glass bottles, which are all recycled and rebottled (they are always faded, evidence of their reuse). This, along with the ban on plastic bags in the country gives you an idea of some of the environmental prudence here.
- Running and exercise is pretty common here, and on my few morning runs so far, I’ve come across numerous other people running. I’d say the main downside is being passed by a truck which typically emits a black plume of exhaust that I am forced to try and hold my breath while running through, or just inhale the aromatic fumes…
- I recently bought a towel! After two weeks of using a small quick dry camp towel I brought with me (which does not wrap all the way around my waste), I bought a normal size towel in the market for 2500 RWF (Rwandan Francs), which is about five dollars (I’m pretty sure I overpaid a little, but it’s a good towel).
- I don’t like to generalize at all, but I will say that Rwandans are incredibly clean people, and they make every effort to keep themselves and the things they own as clean as possible. People sweep the dirt in the front and sides of their houses every single day, their clothing is kept clean and unwrinkled, and as a man, keeping your shoes shined as a big thing.
- The repetitive and almost never changing cycle of sunrise and sunset here may start to get mundane after a while, especially because I thrive on the variance of weather and day lengths…On the upside, the lack of lights and the elevation make the night sky here amazing on clear evenings (sometimes cloud cover is an issue).
- Towards the end of this week I will find out my final site placement, and next week I will go visit it. I’m both excited and nervous, but one way or the other I’ll soon know where my home will be for the next two years…
I don’t expect my observations offer a thorough reflection of my life here, but hopefully it gives some insight. If I ever get an internet connection capable of allowing picture uploads I’ll put some up, but for now my admittedly sparse descriptions will have to suffice.
Anyway, I hope everyone is doing well and I love getting emails even if I don’t have the time/connection speed to respond right now (what I’ve been doing is downloading them onto my laptop to read at night and then trying to write a response). I’ll try to write again soon….And “supposedly” I find out my final site placement this Thursday, so when I do learn something I’ll try to let everyone know…

- Dylan

Greetings from Kigali

(As a note, I predrafted this last night on my laptop and transferred it via flash drive, so it's not 100% up to date but pretty much).

Friday 10/22/10

Greetings to everyone from Rwanda! I regret that I did not have the chance to post anything sooner, but things have been quite busy as you might imagine, and internet connectivity scarce. And just as a note, this entry may be a little dated when I actually post it, as I’m writing it on my laptop on this Friday night, and I’ll save it to a flash drive and post it when I get to an internet café.

Just as a brief rundown, I’ll start with things since arriving here in Rwanda…

The flight and everything was problem free, and we arrived in Kigali and were immediately met by Peace Corps Rwanda staff. After a decent though not overly long wait to get through customs, we got our baggage (none of it get lost, I good omen I’m thinking for the rest of my time here), and then loaded up the baggage on one truck, and the 71 of us then squeezed into three small-medium buses.

After a 40min bus ride, all crammed in on buses (though they were pretty nice Toyotas), driving up and down through the hills of Kigali, we arrived at the Centre we are staying at (don’t recall the name, sorry). And let me just say that Rwanda is beautiful, a truly amazing sight. All I’ve seen so far is Kigali, but the hills are amazing, it is extremely green and the red clay in the soil really adds to the incredible beauty of the hillsides. I’ll do my best to start getting some pictures up here when I can.

Today (Friday) was a really long day, filled with information sessions about safety and security, money and banking info, cultural customs and norms, some languages basics (mainly greetings), and of course, the fun part, a medical information session. This sessions was accompanied by medical consults and of course some fun shots which took place spread out throughout the rest of the day. I received a shot for meningitis and rabies, but I still have to get shots for tD and typhoid (at least I think those are the two I still need).

The food has been excellent, although we have eaten every single meal at the Centre we are staying at. I think they have been trying to ease our adjustment to the local cuisine, though tonight I had my first taste of goat since arriving in Rwanda. Other than that it has been a mix of things including: rice, potatoes, beans, soup (some sort of veggie soup), cassava, plantains, salad, chicken, and today we had some awesome breaded and fried fish during a tea break in the morning. I’ve also realized that I may end up drinking a lot of soda here, because that’s basically what is served with every meal. Though no need to worry, they have supplied us with tons of water in our rooms for now, and today we got a nice look at what our water filters look like and how to put them together…They basically look like big Lipton iced tea taps you would see next to a fountain soda machine.

We were also given our extensive medical kits today, which contain everything from lip balm and insect repellent to cipro and some other intense pill in case you actually get malaria. Did I forget to mention that we were started on mefloquin when we arrived on Thursday? I’m not sure if it was from being over tired or the mefloquin, but last night I dreamt of being chased and by rats, and then I woke up with my hand near my mouth, apparently trying to expel a large insect which in my dreams had somehow managed to fly and get stuck in the inside corner of my mouth. If that’s as frightening as the dreams get, I think I can handle it.

Sleeping under a mosquito net is an interesting experience. In some ways it feels charming, as if I’m sleeping within the confines of some very elegant fabric which is supposed to comfort me. But then I actually look at the net in the morning, and then I think about the fact that it’s main purpose is to prevent me from getting dangerously ill from mosquito bites. It gets less charming very quickly after that….

Tomorrow (Saturday) we will be visiting the Gosenzi (sp?) Genocide Memorial. It’s obviously an incredibly sad thing to go see, but I’m still very interested and I’m sure it’s an important thing to take in during the early part of my time in Rwanda.

I have not had an incredible amount of interaction with Rwandans beyond those employed here by the Peace Corps. That said, the staff here, mostly Rwandan nationals, has all been incredibly nice and welcoming. Many of them are the ones responsible for teaching us Kinyarwanda and helping us to adjust to this new culture, they are called “LCFs” (Language and Cross Cultural Facilitators). Once we get to Nyanza and are assigned to our respective houses for the next eleven weeks, we will be living with at least one LCF in each house, an attempt to help reinforce our language learning since we are not living with host families as PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) do in most countries.

I haven’t been here long at all, but in some ways it feels like weeks. I can’t explain why, and it certainly doesn’t imply anything negative at all, it’s just the way it feels. I expect it’s the jetlag and lack of legitimate sleep, coupled with all the various different sessions and such we’ve been sitting through….I’m eager to get to Nyanza and begin actual training, but I know once I do it’s going to be one long eleven week blur (but we do get one day off a week…). For now that’s all, I wish everyone the best…..

Learned a few things lately....

So here's a couple things I've learned recently:

1. There are 71 people (including myself) in the group scheduled to depart for Rwanda on October 20th. About 50ish are English teachers, with remainder teaching math and/or science.
2. For my pre-servivce training, I will be living in Nyanze (less than 60 miles outside of Kigali)
3. During pre-service training I will be living with other volunteers in a house (with an undetermined number to a house), along with our language/cultural instructors
4. I will not be living with a host family during pre-service training or at my final site placement (though I could be living with other staff from the school I work at, or something like that)
5. The school year in Rwanda runs from January to the beginning of December, with about a 5 - 6 week gap between the end of school of December and the beginning of the new school year sometime in January. This is apparently a prime time for vacation and travel home.
6. The Peace Corps (PC) Education Program in Rwanda is basically two-pronged: teaching students directly, and working with teachers themselves. The first year is apparently focused on direct student teaching, and then, after you have experience, you will be asked to do more work with assisting in the training of teachers.
7. This is only the second group of education volunteers being deployed in Rwanda, and the first group was only 23 volunteers (but there have been a couple other groups of health volunteers). There were also about 14 transfers from Mauritania (PC pulled out of Mauritania last year). What does this mean? It means for nearly all of us in this group, we will be heading to sites which are new and where PC volunteers have not served (at least not since pre-1994).
8. At first, packing seemed like something that could be kind of fun. I was totally and utterly incorrect.
9. Time does not pass at a constant rate, anyone who believes it does is just plain wrong. The question for me is, at what rate will time pass starting from now until about January 1st, 2013?

>3 Weeks

So it is exactly three weeks from yesterday that I will be boarding a plane from JFK Airport to fly to Brussels, and then on to Rwanda. Less than three weeks! It seems like just a few days ago that I was trudging through day after day of teaching tennis on Nantucket, with seemingly no end in sight and no word whatsoever from the Peace Corps.

And now, I'm nearing my final few days in Arlington staying with Ashley and Mishka, Ashley's self-proclaimed "canine substitute" for me during my two year stint in the Peace Corps. A cute little six week old Vizsla (pronounced "Vee-shla"), I'm counting on him to help soften the impending difficulties of my departure. While nothing can necessarily make this time "easy" (read: not miserable) for Ashley and I, hopefully having someone to come home to will bring some comfort.

So how does one get prepared to leave for two years? I've thought about this, and I've concluded that you really cannot get fully "prepared", because with the Peace Corps, you really don't know what the hell you are getting prepared for. I don't know which city I'll be living in for pre-service training (the 10 week training period before I am shipped off to my "permanent site" which is where I'll be working and living for the next two years), and I certainly do not know where my final site will be. What will my community be like? Where will it be located? What will my living conditions be? (I don't really care at all about my living conditions, whether I have running water or electricity or whatever. The only thing I really would like is consistent internet access so I can stay in touch better. I think Ashley would strongly agree with this...Am I wrong Love?). Will I be living with a host family? What will my internet access be like. What ages will I be teaching? (For anyone who didn't know, my primary project is teaching English in a secondary school. The most detailed description I have received up until now is that I will be teaching the age equivalent of 7th - 12th grade in American schools, which only reflects the age of my students, for I have no idea how basic or advanced their English language abilities will be. In 2008 Rwandan schools switched from using French to English....If you are realllllyyyy interested, here's a couple articles talking about the switch http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/14/rwanda-france and http://www.buzzle.com/articles/229555.html and http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h5vwAUGsnmZmLHPpGRBtL0j7HROQ

What I was saying before? Oh right, not being able to actually prepare for leaving. But I suppose I should qualify that statement, because it is true that you can prepare in the physical sense (well, kind of. I don't think you can prepare for inevitable traveler's diarrhea and random sicknesses. And oh, awesome side effects from anti-malaria drugs, I hear that I should start getting prepared for some tripped out dreams). But in the psychological sense, you can only do so much. How does one prepare to leave family and friends (and of course youuuuuu Ash) for so long? Or mentally prepare for indefinitely trying hardships, but which you cannot possibly imagine? The hard times every volunteer has with loneliness, lack of visible progress from the work they've done, difficulties assimilating within one's community, etc....I could go on and on with a list of things which all fall under the heading of what I like to call "shit that will be difficult to deal with" (poetic, nay?). The best solution I've come up goes roughly something like "getting mentally prepared to deal and not flip out when shit becomes difficult".

Anyway, if anyone is interested in a few of the specifics I have right now.....

Staging (read: fly to the same city as all other Rwanda volunteers leaving at the same time as me and go through some pre-service orientation stuff, talks and exercises to help you prepare, etc). Staging will be in Philadelphia on October 19th - 20th. I will fly to Philly on the morning of the 19th, and then take a bus on the 20th from Philly to JFK Airport (I think it's because it's cheaper to put us up in Philly then NYC for staging, but it's much easier to fly from JFK).

Pre-Service Training: October 21st - Dec 29th, 2010. I'm not sure which city in Rwanda this is being held in yet. But during this time, all the volunteers in my group will be in the same city. Training includes intensive language training (in the native and universal Kinyarwanda language), safety and security training, health training, training to help you acclimate, and of course, training for your primary project (for me, learning how to actually teach a classroom ha...). I'm sure there will be other parts I haven't listed....

Service: Dec 30th 2010 - Dec 30th 2012. After pre-service training, I will officially "swear in" as a volunteer, and then after that I will be sent to my permanent site, probably in some rural community (though I do not know how far from Kigali or another larger city I will be, it varies a lot. I've read a lot of blogs from volunteers right outside of Kigali, so who knows). This is where I will remain for my two years, and where I will actually be able to begin settling in and trying to become a part of a community...

Home: Any day after Dec 30th 2012. Given how long it takes to travel, I'd say it's unlikely I'd be back on U.S. soil to celebrate the New Year, but I should be back sometime shortly thereafter...

And at some point during these dates, I will have vacation time to visit home and to travel. I accrue 2 vacations days for every month of service (this does not accrue during the pre-service training in Rwanda, so I only start earning vacation time in January 2011). I can use the vacation time however I want, I just have to inform Peace Corps Headquarters in Rwanda and get it approved (it's a security protocol). And of course, visitors are always welcome :). The only exceptions are no visitors during the first three months of my service, or the last three months (I'm pretty sure at least. And I don't believe I can travel during these times either).

Anyway, that's enough for now I think. I'll try and start posting more regularly, and adding things like how to send me stuff (and how to do so while minimizing the chances of it getting lost or having all the items inside ransacked), and where my pre-service training city will be, etc....