Small World

It is a small world after all. While on an impromptu trip to Kigali I figured out just how small. My cravings have moved east to Indian food and so Elizabeth and I went to the capital for a curry dinner. We decided to stay at the same place we had stayed for orientation but upon arrival the nuns who run the hostel were nowhere to be found. While we were waiting a group of Peace Corps volunteers arrived who also needed to get in to the office. As we stood around chatting I was struck by the realization that I knew one of the girls. I turned to her and said, “Did you do Semester at Sea?” and she said, “Ohmigod we went to that beach in Brazil together!” SO WEIRD. Here we are, literally on the other side of the world, and we run back in to one another. She also went to university with a girl I used to row with in high school and is good friends with a friend of mine from Prague. All this we ascertained while on the ship and even then we thought it was weird and small worldish but this was just creepy. Also really cool at the same time. We had a class together on the ship which was by far my favorite class I ever took in college. It was Third World Development and I guess my current situation illustrates just how big an effect it had on me! Anyway, it was really great to see her, we decided we were just destined to have weird parallel lives so we may as well be better friends.

I have been cooking some impressive meals if I do say so myself. All from scratch and all organic. On Friday I made really good pasta sauce, tonight I made Chicken noodle soup sans chicken and on Thursday I made curried rice risotto with tomato, onion and garlic all without a cookbook. Considering my diet in San Diego consisted mostly of restaurant food, mac and cheese, and cookie dough (my roommates can attest to this) I’m pretty proud. So I’ve been doing pretty well with the cooking, but Elizabeth says job creation is important, or at least that’s how I justify it, so now I have a girl who comes on Saturdays and Sundays to help me clean and do laundry and whatnot. Instead of calling her my housegirl I call her my housefriend since she is the same age as me and lives alone as well which is apparently really unusual. I tried to explain this to her but she doesn’t speak a word of English and my Kinyarwanda is about as terrible as my French so when she comes to visit we basically talk to each other exclusively in a language the other does not understand and then burst out laughing. It’s fun for the first couple minutes. I am so happy with the job she does. She even cleans my shoes! The Rwandese foot/shoe obsession is a little weird to me but hey I can’t complain about clean shoes. The only problem is she is stealing my condensed milk. Here, condensed milk is called Nido and oddly enough I love it. Also it’s a status symbol to drink it which is opposite from the ‘west’ but this ties in to the fact that its pretty expensive relatively. I’m not sure if she sees it as a perk of working for the local Mzungu or what but my big tin of Nido I bought a week ago is almost gone! I think I will have to lock it away next time. I’m locking away condensed milk from my ‘housefriend’. Sometimes when I read back my blog I think my life is really weird.

I was talking to my favorite little sister in the world (shout out!) last night and for some reason I got to thinking about how strange my life really is. According to my friend Dan all good writers are self-absorbed tools so I’m going to test it out. Unless the whole starting a blog thing…..? Anyway, I am constantly walking here. Whether it be to school or to the bus or to the store or what have you. And it’s a weird thing this whole white skin deal. If not for the constant “mzungu” or “seestah” I really sometimes get in a zone where I forget how much I stick out. Every once in a while I see another American, there are a zillion of them in Butare, and I think wow I stick out as much as that person. It’s a very weird and out of body thing. I’m not naïve enough to say that skin color does not matter in America but obviously the degree to which one sticks out is significantly less since we are one big happy melting pot. SO it is really strange to be living in a town and constantly be a spectacle solely based on the color of my skin. Yes I officially feel like a tool I don’t think I’ll be doing much more of this self-indulgent stuff.
Speaking of self-indulgent I have a new one for the therapy couch, I tried to take my Senior 1’s to the computer lab on Friday as promised but the other teacher took the lab before I could find a key! I was livid. He then proceeded to tell me, in French, that I didn’t have class that hour because he had erased it off their schedule on the blackboard. After all that threatening in the class before and then I couldn’t even follow through! It all felt a little too Kabarore for me so my turrets took over and I started berating him in very rapid English and then stormed off to a thunderous applause from his class of Senior 3’s. I’m not sure they would be applauding if they had any idea what I said but I find this method to be very therapeutic if not slightly psychotic. I also have given a lecture on karma to one of my neighbors who yells at me in Kinyarwanda literally every time I walk by and then laughs hysterically. I let him know how beautiful the furniture he makes is and how I would never buy a piece of it and there must be a reason why no one else buys it either. Is it bad if my coping mechanism is the exact same as the reason I have to cope in the first place?

One last note: Yes Kate, rapport! That’s the one☺

O and P.S.S My bff little sis got in to TWO UNIVERSITIES! I’m so happy. Is that enough of a shout out to get you to read my blog now you little brat/cuuuuute?