African time (1 of 2)

So much for keeping up to date! I’ve been a terrible blogger of late, mostly due to having too much going on, but also, and in some ways as an extension of, the daunting thought of getting my blog back up to speed. How do I even begin to summarize the month of April? The highlight was my mother’s arrival on the 1st. Together we traveled back to Nyanza where she got to meet many of my favorite students and teachers, then on to Kigali where we visited the always depressing but very informative Genocide Memorial Museum, and finally on to Musanze to see the gorillas.

We woke up very early to get to the meeting point for the gorillas by 6 am. I was both apprehensive and excited but most of all nervous that I would be the most out of shape in the group. Elizabeth’s family joined us and she and I had been joking for weeks that we would be gasping for air bringing up the rear. Turns out I’m not in as bad of shape as I thought. The hike was awesome, I felt so authentic literally bushwhacking through the jungle then again there were the random freak-outs after the guide yelled, “ANTS!” and we all started sprinting and at first not really understanding why. Turns out ants in the jungle are nasty little buggers and most of us had actual ants in our pants after the commotion. After about an hour and a half of trekking uphill we finally reached the gorillas. We went to see the Kwitonda family and it…was…AWESOME. Normally you are supposed to stay seven meters back from the gorillas but our family was in a grove of bamboo so the guides were cutting back branches and beckoning us closer and closer until all of a sudden we were just a few meters away from a huge silverback. They tell you before you get there not to point but of course I was beside myself with excitement and was totally that tourist pointing at him and then the rest of the family as we came across them. Elizabeth has a video of me whispering as we approached the gorillas, “this is the coolest thing I’ve ever done” which is absolutely hilarious. It was amazing though, and I didn’t expect to react so strongly since I’m not really an outdoorsy hiker type but it was the experience of a lifetime and I strongly recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity.

We left Musanze the next day back to Kigali. Our trip back was complicated due to the fact that we were traveling on the Genocide Memorial day. One thing that jumps out the most about Rwanda is the constant stream of people walking along the road. No matter how desolate a stretch of road may seem you cannot go more than a kilometer without seeing someone walking along. Not this day though. The town was deserted. We knew the busses were not going to run until the afternoon and so we went to an empty but open hotel to have a coffee. The radio broadcast of the ceremony at the stadium in Kigali was playing and we could hear the emotion in the speeches although we obviously could not understand them. All of a sudden we were struck by an American voice thick with emotion speaking to the stadium full of people. The man was a pastor who had been living in Kigali at the time of the genocide and he spoke of the men and women who stood at his gates protecting his family telling the killers of how their children played together. My mom and I, both being pretty emotional, were all welled up his speech was so heartfelt and full of a gratitude. After composing ourselves, we went to the bus station at the time we were told the busses would start running but of course the town was still completely dead. Definitely a case of Africa time but can you really berate tardiness on a day like that? My mom and I settled on a cab and paid the extra money quite happily, well she did anyway, it was a good situation to be in with my mom/money!

Naturally, I was very sad to see my mom go. Thank you to everyone who sent things, all the goodies and supplies are greatly appreciated although I’m not sure my mom appreciated transporting them since I heard about how heavy the bag was every single time we talked leading up to her arrival. I was so happy she got to see my life here. It’s simple and I love it that way. I’m writing this at my house alone on a Friday night and I can honestly say there is nowhere else I would rather be, which will come as a huge surprise to anyone who knew me when I lived in San Diego! Anyway, I had a little taste of the not so simple Kigali ex-pat life the night my mom left when I went with Elizabeth’s family to Heaven restaurant. Yves was visiting me in Kigali so he came along which had me viewing the whole ex-pat experience through a local’s eyes. None of the entrées were less than fifteen dollars and we each ordered an appetizer, main, dessert, and a couple cocktails. Yves looked beside himself when he saw the menu and apart from the waiters he was the only Rwandan in the place. The meal must have cost at least $250 which is equivalent to the GDP per capita in Rwanda so to say the least I felt pretty guilty about our indulgence and Yves’ perma-deer in the headlights expression didn’t help matters!

Our holiday over-indulgence didn’t stop there though. Elizabeth’s mother and brother left and then she, her father and I were off to Gisenyi on Lake Kivu. The guidebook describes Gisenyi as Costa del Kivu but we were there during rainy season and genocide memorial week so mostly we just thought Costa del depressing. The town was deserted and somewhat run-down but the lake is undeniably gorgeous and the hotel we stayed at had hot showers so I can’t complain too much.

We then went on a very eventful trip through the Nyungwe national forest. Which was more about our endless hunt for gas then the actual forest thus including somewhat humiliating forays into tea plantation worker housing and amusing enactments of the act of putting gas in to a car trying to get our point across. We ended up going village-to-village getting liters of gas at a time until we reached Cyangugu at the southern tip of Lake Kivu. Also our car finally succumbed to the endless potholes on the Nyungwe road so we had string holding up the running boards of the car, which was cause for endless amusement as well as work for enterprising villagers at every place we stopped. We had not planned on going all the way to Cyangugu but the quest for gas proved it necessary. Why we left Butare with an empty tank I will never understand but the eleven tedious hours in the car I will never forget.

My two-week holiday came to an end with a mid-service in Kibuye for the program I am here with. Kibuye, in the center of the lake, is beautiful and was by far my favorite of all the lake side towns I visited in my Tour du Rwanda. Seeing all the other volunteers made me realize how happy I really am here. Everyone had so many complaints about their schools and living situations which is really just so boring to listen to especially when surrounded by gorgeous scenery in perfect weather. I imagine most of my contentment comes from having previously been in such a bad situation. I know how bad it can be so the lack of communication and disorganization is relatively inconsequential. Although, I did just find out that my English classes are not counted on the student’s report card. Which wouldn’t bother me had I not spent HOURS marking 300 exams and then painstakingly recording all their grades in a timely manner for the reporting period. I think the entire exam experience has proven that exams and I are just not meant to be. I will not be partaking in the exam hullabaloo this term and my sister’s arrival right in the middle of them will make the perfect excuse.

So now I’m back. When my mother was here she opened the door to three little boys while I was out running an errand. Those three little boys (the poubelle boys) have now turned into twenty and seeing as how my porch is a flat surface (that whole land of a thousand hills thing is true) they play very lively games of soccer on it almost every day. Little Emmanuel is by far my favorite and I just found out that he and his two brothers and mother are homeless. They sleep on a mattress behind my house. All the boys dress in rags and their ball is a scraps of plastic wrapped in string. They are so much fun and I love playing with them and teaching them English which has actually proved very helpful in improving my Kinyarwanda. Anyway, if anyone has old clothes for boys aged about 4-12 and want to send them my sister is coming in July and they would be greatly appreciated.

I was greeted by my Rwandan mother Mama Cyizere (chizAray) and father Papa Cyizere when I returned to school. She is the school accountant and he is a scientist at the instititute of agriculture in the north but he returns home every weekend. They invited me to come eat with them and asked me what day I would like to come for dinner. We settled on that Saturday which I had no idea was the Genocide Memorial Day for Nyanza. I arrived to their house on time, of course, and they arrived thirty minutes later in purple bandanas. Yves had told them I like Amstel, based purely on the fact that I had one on my birthday two months before but nevertheless the rumor around town is that I can’t get enough of the beer. So of course they had bought me FIVE! I have had about five drinks in total since I arrived in Rwanda four months ago so the task of drinking them was extremely daunting. I think I was on my second by the time the issue of the nature of the day came up and my alarming cultural faux pas was almost too much to bear. So THAT’S why everything was closed today I thought. Then I remembered when Mama Cyizere told me she had lost her entire family in the genocide in Nyanza fifteen years earlier and I just wanted to curl up in to a ball at the awkwardness of it all. It was 7:30, I still hadn’t eaten and there were still three beers lined up waiting to be drunk. I began to panic about whether or not I should stay for dinner. My cultural alarm bells were ringing but I couldn’t decide if it was just the alcohol talking. I decided to open another beer and grin and bear the rest of the evening, which after confirmation with Yves turned out to be what was expected of me. Needless to say, the walk home is a pretty fuzzy memory!

Papa Cyizere was very angry with Mama Cyizere for not having told me about the genocide memorial day so she is now my official informant at the school. Last Friday was Rwandan Labor Day, which is taken very seriously here. Not really having any idea what to expect, I was told to arrive at the school at 8am. Not wanting to be left behind I arrived at 7:50 and I think I have finally learned the African time lesson. No one else arrived until 9:30. The headmaster wasn’t even awake when I got here! (He lives at the school) When we finally got to the stadium it was 10:30 and the parade, which was supposed to begin at 10, wasn’t even close to beginning. At 11:30 we finally started marching. And by marching I mean marching army style. So embarrassing. I guess when everyone is doing it, it’s not so bad but I did have the added bonus of being the only white person there. As usual I was quite the spectacle but it was a great experience if only for the blog-worthiness of it all! The entire town was there and after the march around the stadium the organizer grabbed my arm and brought me straight to the governor’s tent to sit on the chairs. I’m not one to pass up a seat especially with the prospect of listening to three hours of Kinyarwanda speeches looming!

I’m finally back to my routine and the students seem to have readjusted to my accent so we are all getting along swimmingly. I have begun a new project that I think is worthy of its own blog post but I am beginning this term with a newly defined sense of purpose which leaves me very excited!