understand me

“Understand me.” 

In Kinyarwanda this word is “umva,” the imperative of kumva which is to hear, to listen, to understand.  When folks want your attention they say, “umva,” “listen.”  It’s not impolite, it’s common, something everyone says.  It’s like how we say, “hey” to get someones attention (“hey, let me tell you what happened today...”).  Today a young man said in English, “Understand me.” I promptly gave him my attention. “I would like to know the name of this in English,” as he pointed to a chicken.  “Chicken,” I said.  “Kitchen,” he replied.  I stifled a giggle.  “The chicken is in the kitchen,” I recited in my head.  This little saying my site mate taught to her students who where always calling chickens kitchens, a  common language mistake.  For some strange reason it’s even a mistake I’ve made.  That’s how I learned the “chicken is in the kitchen” thing.  It’s tough because the word for kitchen is igikoni. When you’re thinking in Kinyarwanda all day and you’re standing out by the igikoni and shooing away the inkoko, and you’re talking to your one English speaking friend, you sometimes accidentally say kitchen when you mean chicken.  Chicken.  Kitchen.  They sound similar, right?  

A few days ago I came to work and this is how I was greeted by the high school girls working as interns at the health center for a few weeks:  “Congratulations!” 

“For what?” I said in English (they like to practice English as much as possible since their entire education system suddenly switched from French to English just a few years ago and none of their teachers are great English speakers). 

“You are smart!” the girl responded in all sincerity. 

Haha!! Congratulations! You are smart! Exactly the way I would like to begin every day of my life. Too bad from there I went on to sit in a staff meeting for an hour where I struggled to keep up with basic dialogue about the patients.

Sunday I went to church with a woman I work with at the health center.  We went to town for church and then went out to eat lunch at a fabulous (read: less than a dollar for a hella Rwandan food, including, of course, french fries with mayonnaise) buffet.  At the end of the meal she leaned back, patted her belly and said, “I am empty.”  

“I think you mean you’re full, Aline, urahaze.”

“Oui! I am full! Ibiryo byenshi (much food)!” She corrected herself smiling and laughing. 

The sweet little lady I have been eating lunch and dinner with says this all the time too.  Somehow somewhere the “full” and “empty” lesson got mixed up.  I, on the other hand, in speaking Kinyarwanda, have the same problem with open and close.  Don’t know the difference and for some reason I have a mental block against learning it. 

Whenever the kids in my neighborhood see me they say, “Oh, Amanda!” They call it out from great distances.  I thought it was really sweet and had no idea why they said it like that until today.  I was walking with my counterpart and when I laughed in response to another, Oh, Amanda, he said, “‘Oh’ is a salutation.”  Got it.  So there’s a reason for the oh.

And so goes the slowly revealing mystery that is language learning.  As frustrating and depressing as it sometimes is, however, I’m becoming convinced that total immersion is the way to go.  During training we studied language for more than four hours 3 days a week.  It was tedious and grueling.  I sometimes hated my language teacher and other times loved him.  It felt like we were living in a jigsaw puzzle and all the pieces were flipped upside down so you had no idea where to place them.  Day by day (if we were having a good day) a piece of language and culture would be flipped over and we could finally see where to put it. Now, everyone in my village loves to talk about how good I am an Kinyarwanda.  It’s great until we get past greetings and basic conversation about family and health.  Then I stare dumbfounded and apologies for not being able to say anything else.  I’m still waiting for the day when I moved beyond talking about what I can talk about to what I want to talk about.  There’s so much I want to say and understand. 

Some other things I’ve done this week are...

... watched some young men make mandazis (really good triangular donuts) in the bakery I just discovered in my village.  Very exciting.  

... made appointments with three community leaders to have participatory community analysis meetings in their areas (including waiting outside their offices for a ridiculous amount of time and felt like I was waiting for the Wonderful Wizard of Oz)

... searched for dance practice, but did not actually find any dancers. I’ve been told there’s a traditional Rwandese dance (Intore) group in my village on Wednesday afternoons, but I have yet to find them practicing. 

... prepared my field for planting.  I also took pictures of said field, but left the camera at home just now.

... got my church on twice this weekend. Yep, Saturday and Sunday.  Adventist then Baptist.  Rwandans sure to love to pray.  Actually, I’m getting pretty good at sitting still on small benches for 4 hours at a time.  

... road a semi-broken bike home from church on Sunday racing a thunderstorm.  Did I mention I was wearing a skirt and tights too?  And it was already raining when I was halfway home?  Yea... that was pretty awesome.  To make myself feel better I made tea, ate cookies, and watched TV on the computer all afternoon. 

... finally got some furniture in my house!!! Hurray! Just in time to receive special visitors in two weeks! 

All in all, things are going pretty well here in Kabere Village.  I’m looking forward to planning Global Handwashing Day (Oct 15, let’s get excited!) and doing the participatory community analysis activities.  They nerdy development student in me can’t wait to tell you all about daily schedules, seasonal calendars, and community mapping.  

camp GLOW

I'm still working on some reflections on training... perhaps this week I'll get to that... For now, though, I'd like to share some photos from Camp GLOW this week.

I had the fortunate opportunity to travel a few hours away (probably the most hellacious matatu ride of my life, but I won't get into that now) to a boarding school in Janja where PCV's organized and ran a camp for 40 girls in their communities.  It was so fun and such a great experience!  I got to teach a session on emotions and behavior and help with all the various activities.  There was basket weaving, coins purse making, pizza cooking, jam making, a talent show (which turned into a dance party), and classroom sessions on team building, emotions and assertiveness, and leadership.  It really enjoyed working with other PCV's and getting ideas and brainstorming about next year's camp.

Before I went to camp I was finally able to hire a Kinyarwanda teacher and begin working on my garden! We'll plant seeds in two weeks and I can't wait to share updates about that.  The director of my health center is really excited about doing some nutrition projects and having an example garden plot right there are the health center.  We'll see how this goes since it will be only my second attempt at gardening.  It seems like I'll have a lot of help from health center staff and a local friend who just finished a graduate degree in agriculture in my district.

Here's a little tour of my village...

work

my house

my friend who lives on my front window

One of the "roads" in my village

my new mountains and soccer field 

"it's camp time in the Peace Corps nation!" no that doesn't sound quite right...

The high schoolers in my village go to camp on Monday.  I have to admit to a twinge of jealousy.  How I’d love to go to camp with them!  But, for now, I will loan out a few mattresses and wish them well with much excitement.  I LOVE CAMP! And I’m truly excited for these kids to experience it.  PC/Rwanda, like several other PC programs in various countries holds camps for boys and girls every year called GLOW (Girls Leading Our Word) and BE (Boys Excelling).  It’s almost a weeklong during there are Rwandan volunteers and American PCV’s facilitating games, teaching lessons, and doing other fun camp-y things.  I can’t go yet because I’m supposed to stay at site for 3 months, but you can be sure I’ll be involved next time.  

Maybe I’ll be able to visit for just one day of camp so I can tell you more about it.  Research, right?  I really should check it out before I’m one of the ones responsible for leading it.  Right? Right?  I’m already having to sustain myself from telling my site mate about games and activities she should do. This year’s camp is already planned, but I’m overflowing with ideas for them. 

For now, though, I will direct you to a speech delivered by one of my most favorite people, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  In her speech she addresses campers at a GLOW camp in Malawi.  It further affirms and excites me about how life-changing and powerful a camp experience can be.  I’m so happy there’s camp in Rwanda!  I’m also thrilled Secretary Clinton visits Peace Corps projects.  (side note:  on the day of our swear-in ceremony Bill and Chelsea were in Rwanda opening a Partners In Health/Clinton Foundation hospital in my province.  I was really hoping they’d have time to swing by our ceremony.  Everyone told me that my hope was ridiculous and that he didn’t have time for such things.  But they very next week Hill-baby herself swore some PCV’s into service in Senegal and now she’s visiting camps!  Perhaps my wish wasn’t so crazy after all.  Here’s to hoping I’ll get to rub shoulders with cool dignitaries!)

the speech

---> this just in: my program manager called me yesterday after I wrote this post and told me I should definitely go to camp for at least a few days! Hooray!!! a summary will definitely follow.

vaccination day

Yesterday was vaccination day at my health center.  Which means a whole bunch of Mamas bring in their sweet little (smelly, puke-y, poopy) babies to be weighed, measured, and poked.  Ok, but wait, really they don't get poked with needles, they take the vaccines orally.  I just wanted to say, "weighed, measured, and poked" because I like the sound of it. Anyway here's what it looked like...

oh my, it was amazing.

forgiveness?

This afternoon a young man came to visit me.  I’d forgotten his name and nearly forgot where I met him.  “Narcisse,” he reminded me (when I asked could he please spell it - a “trick” I think I’m using when I forget people’s names), and I remembered that I met him at the market on Friday afternoon. I’d gone too late to buy anything and instead chatted with some women who were sitting off to the side.  He is a cousin of one of those women, visiting on his school holiday (he’s in university in a location I also forgot). He’d walked back to the health center with me that evening and said he would like to learn English and asked for my phone number.  Many people, especially young men, say they’d like to learn English and I don’t want to give out my phone number to everyone who asks so I told him he could find me at the health center if he wanted to talk to me again.  I saw him again on Saturday and he said he specifically wanted to know how to describe family members in English.  Since he was so specific with his request I told him I could chat with him on Sunday.  He said he’d come by the health center then.  I was only a little nervous that I’d arranged a date with him and after confirming with my site-mate I was pretty sure this was merely an English lesson, not a date... hopefully.  But I missed him on Sunday, apparently, so he showed up again today. Tuesday. 

So we drew a family tree and labeled all the people.  He was surprised - pleasantly surprised - that aunts and uncles are simply aunts and uncles and that nieces and nephews are all just nieces and nephews.  In Kinyarwanda each relation has a different title.  You can’t call your brother’s kids the same thing you call your sister’s kids.  Additionally your mother’s brother and your father’s brother have different titles.  AND if I’m talking about my mother’s brother it is a different word than your mother’s brother, and even different if it’s his or her mother’s brother.  Confused yet? Families here are complicated.  And big. 

So when we finished the family discussion he said he had so many questions for me.  Supposedly, I’m the first American he’s ever talked to.  He asked where I’m from and how I got here.  I described the purpose of Peace Corps and the application process.  I told him a bit about my family and going to school.  We were back and forth in English and Kinyarwanda.  I was pretty pleased with our effective communication.  Then he asked if I chose Rwanda or if I was placed here.  If you know anything of my journey, that’s a very interesting question... I think it’s both... 

I’ve been at my site for almost two weeks now.  That’s not a long time... at all.  I’ve been in Rwanda for almost 3 months.  Not a long time either.  I don’t know a whole lot about this place.  But I have read some things and written some things and learned a little already.  I was lucky enough to be blessed with another Peace Corps volunteer at my site.  She is lovely.  Her name is Genevieve (I think this is another little blessing from God, as there is another very important Genevieve in my life that I think of and miss dearly on a daily basis), she’s from the southeast, worked at camp and on a ropes course, and likes to hike, camp, and climb.  She’s people like me.  She’s leaving Rwanda in November.  Her time is coming to an end just as mine is beginning.  Seems like that’s how it always is, right?  Ah, transitions... a constant theme.

I lived my whole 9 months in Missoula either settling in or preparing to go.  During the second half of this time I was focused, academically and logistically, NOT emotionally, on Rwanda.  In preparation (even though I didn’t know my placement when I registered) I took a counseling class on forgiveness and reconciliation.   This idea of reconciliation is constantly in the back of my mind as I walk around every day, making friends, building relationships, and learning from a people who are all too familiar with trauma, pain, violence, and reconciliation.  

This was thrust to the forefront of my mind when Narcisse asked why I wanted to come to Rwanda.  But how do you carefully and respectfully tell someone you are here to learn about their pain?

Narcisse continued with his questions and asked if I knew of the history of this country, specifically the events of 1994.  I was told in my PC Pre-Service Training that people don’t really like talking about it, especially to outsiders, but here was this young man bringing it up only the second time I met him.  I had a hard time finding words... even in English.  He got to his point and asked why, knowing how violent the people of Rwanda can be, and knowing how much tragedy they’ve experienced in recent years, I would want to come here?  “Don’t you have fear?” he asked me.  He looked back at the family tree we had drawn.  He point to his father, his aunts and uncles, and a few of his cousins.  “I lost all of these family members,” he said.  The only words that found me were, “I’m so very sorry. I can’t imagine...”  

I would like to say that I regained my composure, but, honestly, I was close to tears the whole time.  I was able to gracefully manage my emotions, though, as I explained to him that anyone - everyone - is capable of the kind of violence that happened in Rwanda.  Given the circumstances, a war like the one here could have happened in my country too.  “People are people,” I said, as I still try to believe it.  I wanted to tell him that there was a genocide in America (even though it's not officially labeled as such), the difference being it wasn’t stopped and was fairly successful in wiping out an entire civilization, but I think that is a conversation for later, and even then, how can I try to compare the two histories.  I tried as best I could to explain that, no, I’m not afraid, that Rwanda stands out as a successful country among others in East Africa... that the infrastructure, the leadership of the government, the healthcare system, the economy are all growing successfully and Rwanda is setting an example for other nations.  

In the end he said, “You have no need for fear, Amanda.  We are strong, we have a very strong president, and we love peace.  You are welcome here.”  

These words from a young man who lost his father and most of his large family at a young age.  Who still lives in the place where that happened.  Who understands more than I may ever what it really means to forgive and make reconciliation.  

After I walked him out to the gate of our compound and said goodbye I came home and organized some things in my house.  On my last night of that forgiveness and reconciliation class in Montana we met at our teacher’s house.  Everyone shared their stories of their final projects.  Many were very personal.  As a part of one classmate’s project a poem was shared.  As I walked out the door that evening someone handed me a copy of the poem.  Somehow this is one of the few things that made it into my bags to Rwanda.  I must have shoved it in my school bag and never taken it out.  I found it among some PC paperwork last night.  The last stanza is this:

We forgive mostly not from strength

but through imperfections, for memory

wears transparent as a glass with the pattern

washed off, till we stare past what injured us.

We forgive because we too have done

the same to others easy as mudslide;

or because anger is a fire that must be fed

and we are too tired to rise and haul a log.

From "How Divine is Forgiving" by Marge Piercy

I won’t pretend to understand forgiveness and reconciliation from the perspective of a Rwandan.  I don’t even think I will ever be able to understand what it means here.  I’m still wondering if you can have reconciliation without forgiveness... and if some things are unforgivable... What does forgiveness even mean?  Can all injuries be looked past?  

But I do understand injury, suffering, and anger.  Both sides of it.  

So as I am transitioning in and Genevieve is transitioning out, and we talk daily about our lives on this side and at home, we inevitably talk about our own injuries, suffering, pain, and anger as well as the pain and suffering we know, are getting to know, and have known here in Rwanda.  One reason I think it’s so important to be here is to look directly at the suffering that my own culture ignored and only tried to stop when it was too late.  I want to, as much as I can, feel it and acknowledge what happened.  As a human I feel a responsibility to the ones who died and to the survivors.  And I want to know that, somehow, I am a part of it.  And, maybe, I can bring a little peace and love where there was pain.  And maybe, hopefully, I, too, can learn how to “ ... stare past what injured us...”

and so I took the oath

“What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” -Jack Kerouac

This was the card I pulled from a bag of quotes given to me by a dear friend just as I departed from Montana to make the trek to Rwanda as the Peace Corps truck was driving away after dropping me off.  It perfectly describes the way I feel right now (and how I felt leaving Missoula... and Rome... and before that Nairobi... ) and facilitates a sweet mix of homesickness, fear, relief, and excited anticipation.  

I’ve been at my PC placement site for a week now.  It’s been good and it’s already been difficult.  I passed all my tests in pre-service training, including the language test with acceptable scores, but this doesn’t mean the first few months at site are going to be easy or that I’m completely prepared.  I have a long way to go with my language skills and a lot to learn about community health in Rwanda (even though my village thinks I’m fluent and that I’m a doctor).  

This week I have...

... been making babies cry in record numbers as I sit in reception of the health center shadowing the intake nurse.  I’ve also gotten much better at numbers in Kinyarwanda as I tell people what the scale says when they step on it.  They love it and almost everyone laughs at me. 

... been (mostly) successfully cooking dinners on a hotplate in my unfurnished (except for one table and one chair) house.  Then sharing said dinners with the nurse who stays on the compound during the week and shows up at my door at dinnertime each evening.  A few nights she has come over early in the evening and said simply, “don’t cook.”  She cooks for me and I share with her what I’ve made.  So far I’ve been very well fed.  

... walked my ass off visiting folks in my village and neighboring villages.  My health center serves 27 villages.  We are in a volcanic mountainous region.  The soil is crazy rocky and my colleague (who’s legs, in all seriousness, are the same height as my shoulders) is the tallest man I’ve ever met. I’m jogging beside him trying to keep up.  Mostly I’ve been successful at introducing myself, but yesterday at a community meeting (with about 300 people) I was asked to give some kind of health message and I embarrassingly declined.  What do I have to offer yet?  I don’t even know how to say much past wash your hands and use family planning.  

... been labeled daughter, mama, girl, old lady, intelligent person, rich person, clueless person, strong person, available person (for marriage), doctor, foreigner, and probably more that I couldn’t understand. They don’t yet know what to make of me.  One things for sure, though, they’re welcoming me with joy and encouragement. 

... found comfort in pictures, letters, and coffee from home (thank you, my IYFD sisters).

... kept fit by shaking my groove thang in my empty house along to workout videos.  When neighbors show up at my door I am sweaty and embarrassed as I try to explain myself.

... spent too much money today at this cute cafe with “free wifi” that doesn’t work and electricity that’s been out most of the morning. 

... been overwhelmed at the tourist and missionary groups that just came in for lunch. 

... enjoyed the mix of Boys II Men, KC and Jojo, Toni Braxton, and  Shania Twain on the playlist at said cafe. What is it with music in African restaurants?  It's always so good. 

... taken a few pictures, but regrettably have left them in my camera in my house in the village.  Next week... hopefully...

... been surprised by the fact that even after living in Africa for more than 5 years now I still haven’t integrated my understanding of time.  When folks say something starts at a certain hour, what they really mean is that we will start thinking about walking there at that time.  Yesterday I went to a meeting that was more than an hour’s walk away from my health center that supposedly began at 2 p.m.  We left at 1:55, arrived at 3:10, but not to worry, as the executive secretary of the sector didn’t arrive until 3:15 and began the meeting at 3:30.  He also answered his cell phone during his hour-long speech, which bothered no one.  Why I still show up for work each day at the scheduled 7 a.m. staff meeting time I don’t understand.  Perhaps I will integrate... folks in America are annoyed at my lateness... maybe I’m somewhere in between cultures in my understanding of time.


... took an oath to become a Peace Corps Volunteer in Rwanda.

There’s so much more I want to write about, but I’m limited by internet availability, time, trips to town, and your attention span.  I’m going to try to write once a week and I’ll include reflections on my pre-service training experience as well.  But, for now, here’s a little of what I’ve been up to in the first week of being a sworn in, constitution defending, capacity building, culture exchanging, PCV. 

I already miss you!  If you comment, I'll read it and try to respond!

look! Rwanda is beautiful.

 peace and friendship

 out my window

 Mama Sarah

 the crazy kids I hang out with at home

 my besties. they're my little cousins. the taller one's name is Emma. thank you, Jesus, for giving me an Emma.

my front door. come on over!