New Address!

Hello all!

I promise that I will be putting up a post soon about Model School (of which we have finished one out of two weeks) but in the meantime, I have my permanent mailing address. This is the address you will use for the rest of the time I am in Rwanda, and please don’t send anything else to the old address (the one in Kigali). Go crazy with the letters and packages!

Taylor Harveycutter, PCV

PO 47

Musanze

Northern Province

Rwanda

Love and miss you all and I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving! We PCTs are in the midst of planning an all out feast to take place on Saturday, can’t wait!

My Day

November 11, 2012

 

So I realized that I have been under the assumption that you all automatically knew what my days consist of, which is not true at all. I think this kind of post is long overdue!

So technically I don’t have to wake up until 6:00-6:15, however I am usually awake long before that thanks to some unusual alarm clocks. Some mornings, it is the rain (especially since we hit the rainy season), or the plethora of birds that live outside my window. If I am really lucky it can be my host Mama or Papa praying out-loud (sidenote: my house doesn’t have real ceilings. It is almost like a bamboo ceiling with a tin roof over it. Not good for sound protection.) or answering their phone (yes, Rwandans call people at 5AM, sometimes they even come visit then!). So my last hour of sleep is usually on and off, trying to get comfortable on my foam mattress after I realize that I am lying in a crater of my own making from during the night. I get up and use the latrine and brush my teeth into a cup. The first morning of homestay I didn’t know what to do, or where to spit, so I swallowed it. Not a pleasant taste. I have learned. After that I may sweep out my room depending on how lazy I am, this should help to get rid of jiggers (since they live in the dust) but I am not convinced. I go outside to make sure I will be able to get some hot water for my bucket bath, as there is nothing worse than a brain freeze from washing your hair at 6:30 in the morning (also, if someone had told me how cold it could be during the rainy season, I would not have believed them). I get dressed and hope that Mama has put out some tea for me, and if I am really lucky a piece of bread or amandazi (literally doughnut in Kinyarwanda, or a piece of friend bread). If you knew me well in the states, you understood my Diet soda addiction, and so this tea has slid in to take my Diet Dr. Pepper’s place (but ohhhh, Good Lord what I wouldn’t do for a DDP). My Mama will always think I am crazy when I put a tiny bit of sugar in my tea, as I have actually seen Rwandans put in four heaping spoonfuls into one mug.

Most days I have a two-mile walk up a mountain to our training center, but depending on if I have language first, it can also be much shorter. Classes have gotten to the point where we are all so ready to be PCVs, that they can be painful. We have great teachers, especially my beloved LCF (Language and Cultural Facilitator, basically a HCN- Host Country National- who teaches us everything about language and culture) Justin. Justin is an enthusiastic, stick of a Rwandan who is super encouraging and wonderful. After the mid LPI I was transferred to Fanny, another LCF to finish out training with. Fanny is great and I can already tell my comprehension is improving under her tutelage. We get through 8AM-12PM of class and are released into the wild for lunch. My subsite and the one right next to us all go to the same lunch place, Fifi’s. Fifi and her brother Andre have become very good friends during training and she really takes care of us. She knows what we love and tries to always have them for us. She is also someone we can ask questions to about our Kinyarwanda training. After lunch we have 3-4 more hours of class before we are done for the day (or officially done with classes, as we are working every moment of the day). We usually head back up to Fifi’s for a cup of icyayi (tea with milk and sugar) or if it was a rough day we may head to the bar for a cold beer (also the beers here are huge and very 40 like, for those of my college friends who are reading. Yep, I go to Rwanda and get to drink the Rwandan version of a Hurricane. Wonderful) . We try not to go to the bar too frequently, as it reflects badly on PC’s image here in Kamonyi, to have all the white people gathered in the bar, drinking. Many people don’t drink in this country, as they are very religious. My host parents fall into this category and have told me many times that they do not drink (this has been a wonderful conversation to have).

After our drink of choice we head back to our families, as we have a strict curfew of 6:30PM. The sun goes down around 6PM and after that is gets DARK. I swear Rwandans have superior night vision than I do, as they never seem to stumble on the unpaved roads. So for the rest of the night I may take some alone time and then hang out with the family. This usually takes place in the kitchen, which is the heart of the home in such a huge way. Everything is cooked either on the wood stove or over an imbabura (charcoal stove) and can take hours to make a meal. I have passed so many hours sitting on the wooden bench in there, sometimes attempting to make conversation and sometimes just enjoying the warmth from the fire on an especially cold evening. If I am lucky, Glasse will play with my hair, as she is fascinated by how straight and soft it is. We eat anywhere between 7-9PM, huddled around the coffee table in the living room, lit by a lantern, always praying beforehand. I am usually in bed shortly after finishing eating, but not before I take my malaria prophylaxis (I promise PCMOs!!!), usually around 8-8:30. I read for as long as I can keep my eyelids open for and then pass out to the same sounds I wake up to every morning. The peace that passes over me during these moments cannot be understated, I am home.

A Mini-Vacation?

November 1, 2012

 

During training we have to sit through all kinds of lessons on how to thrive in this country: Safety and Security, Medical, Kinyarwanda, Cross Culture and Technical. You have so much information thrown at you in such a short period of time that sometimes you feel like your brain is going to explode and all that will be left are three different verbs all meaning to wash and only one verb meaning to hear, listen, feel, taste and smell (‘tis true, Kinyarwanda is a funny language sometimes). However, one session that didn’t get bogged down in the murk of my head was the medical session on bugs and parasites, and trust me, after you saw those pictures you wouldn’t forget them either. But being a relatively clean and neat person (and not just by Peace Corps standards, which to put it nicely can be a little lower than the usual American), I figured I would never need to worry about actually contracting one of these things. Ohhh how I was wrong.

On Saturday, a group of friends and I decided to make the trek out to see another group of PCTs when I noticed that it felt like there was something in my foot. Figuring it for a rock, I promptly forgot about it until later that evening. Deciding to be proactive I take a look at it, only to realize that I have a jigger. What is a jigger you ask? A jigger is a devil of a bug that burrows itself into your feet and lays eggs. You get them usually by walking around barefoot (which I do not) in dusty areas (aka every road. Ever). Damn my [un]luck.

Trying to sound nonchalant the next day, I send the good Doctor a text trying to downplay it, hoping for the life of me it isn’t a jigger. However I immediately receive a call from him, saying he wants me to go to Kigali. Wait a second, I can go to Kigali for this? Kigali, the magical land of hot showers, non-Rwandan food, toilets and not being stared at?!?!? I jump on board, scheduling a time to meet with him the next day.

So not only do I get to go to Kigali, I also get to go in a Peace Corps car. PC cars are not how we normally get around. We normally get around in squish buses, adequately named. Also PC cars have air conditioning. Not that Rwanda is overly hot or anything (actually I am currently wearing long sleeves, long pants and smart wool socks to stay warm, damn you rainy season), but nothing screams America more than air conditioning. (There is actually a video of my happiness upon learning I would be going in the PC car, check it out here: http://whatshouldpcvscallme.tumblr.com/post/34162310954/that-time-i-got-to-ride-in-a-pc-vehicle-with-air) Once we reached the paved main road (as opposed to the dirt roads) I closed my eyes. With the a/c, smooth ride and VOA pop station playing in the background, I could almost believe I was back in America. It was incredible, thank you jigger.

The doctor’s appointment passed in a blur of cutting bugs out of my foot and begging the doctor to let me stay in Kigali overnight (which he did, being the moment in which Dr. Laurent became my favorite person in the world).  That night I indulged in Chinese food and hot showers (yes plural), scrubbing off the dirt that bucket baths just can’t get to. Feeling like a real person again, the next morning I felt an eagerness that I didn’t expect. I was ready to get back to training, back to my friends and back to village. But thanks jigger, for thinking that my foot would make a welcoming home, I really needed a little vacation.

Life, Lately

November 1, 2012

 

So much has happened since I last posted and I will try and update you all as much as possible. The week after site announcements, our tight knit group of 34 was dispersed throughout the country for the first time since we met in Atlanta. Needless to say we were all a little anxious as we left Kigali with our respective headmasters to discover our soon-to-be homes. Luckily, my good friend Alex lives close to me (well a three hour walk…) and we travelled together accompanied by my headmaster and her headmistress. About fifteen minutes after pulling out of the bus station, as Alex dozed beside me, we entered jaw-droppingly-beautiful territory. The bus zoomed over and across mountain ridges. The omnipresent volcanoes were off in the distance, their distinctively sharp peaks rising high above the mountain ridge. Needless to say, my eyes were glued to the window for the hour bus ride. Once we got to our stop the PCV I will be replacing in December, Ally,  was waiting for us.

Ally is a member of Ed 2, and she came into country in Fall 2010. During my week with her, she took me all over our village, showing me all the best places to buy food, credit, pasta, and electricity (in Rwanda you purchase much like we buy phone credit. You go and buy however much you want and then insert it into a box on your house and you will get as much electricity as you pay for) and igitenge, the colorful and beautiful cloth that all women wear here. We also spent a good bit of time at the school. I met tons of teachers and forgot tons of names. I spent a lot of my time in the library with Jimmy, the school’s librarian, who is such a kind hearted individual. I have a feeling Jimmy and that room will be a nice source of comfort for me over the next two years.

Site visits were perfectly timed. Our group was beginning to get burned out from training and all the stresses that go along with it. Speaking for myself, it was wonderful to have a week to make our own decisions, whether it is what time we ate, what we ate, and what to do during the day. I forgot how liberating it could be to make your own decisions!

It was definitely hard to come back to every-minute-of-your-day-is-planned-and-you-must-follow-it, but it definitely helped that my greeting crew consisted of all the little girls from my neighborhood including my beloved sister, Glasse. So for the last few weeks we jumped back into the swing of things. Classes and language and host family interaction filled our lives up again. However, now we were building to something, the Mid-LPI. The LPI is the oral language test (LPI = Language Proficiency Interview) that we have to take at the end of training. If we don’t reach a certain level, we have to retake it at a future training and there is a chance you can get sent home in extreme cases. This past Friday (October 26) we had our Mid-LPI to see how we are doing so far. I felt pretty good during the interview, only to realize after that I forgot to use the past tense. Doh! You win some, you lose some. I ended up receiving novice high, only one level lower than what I need to swear-in in December, so I feel super confident that I will reach Intermediate low by the end of training.

This week has been a blur of sleep deprivation, Kinyarwanda lessons, and trying not to forget it was Halloween. The rainy season officially arrived with a fury, leading to me falling asleep to the sound of rain on a tin roof more often than not. Tomorrow marks the end of week 7 of training (HOLY SHIT WHERE DID THE TIME GO) which means only five more official weeks of training, with the last one being in Kigali (aka land of magic and cheese). I am so thankful for all of your support, I appreciate it more than I can say!!