Ikiruhuko - Holiday

Zanzibar is really awesome.

Uganda is too.

Building large underground rain harvesting tanks is also awesome. They are almost finished.

Awesome!

The rest of your life

Yesterday was the graduation ceremony at my school. There was singing, dancing traditional and modern hip-hop, concessions and speeches. Being there just made me think of my own graduations. Graduation from high school was great. I was so ready to move out and go to college. Graduation from college however was not that great. It just felt like something great was ending. I was never scared that I would not graduate. I didn’t really care about what my GPA was either. I just went through the motions of finishing my degree. I had nothing lined up for me, but I had friends who did. They were going to grad school or had found a job. All I had done was apply to the Peace Corps. I was happy for my friends and enjoyed the last moments of being a college student with them, but I was also surrounded by a cloud of uncertainty.

I think that these students that are finishing secondary school might feel similar to how I felt after college. I’m sure a few of them have something planned, but most of them probably do not. A lot of them will simply be unemployed, which is worse than the condition I was in. At least I had something that I had applied to, which I am now doing.

I asked some of them what they will do now and they don’t know. The common response is they will look for a job. My favorite graduating senior said she will sell clothes at the market. A decent job, but she is capable of so much more.

Only 1% of the country goes to university and if these students want to do that they will have to save up a little before they can go. Getting a loan is not really an option and support is really hard to come by. Something the president of the parents association said while giving his speech was, ‘You say education is expensive, but how about ignorance.’ I agree with him. The cost of ignorance is greater than education, but this doesn’t change that most of these recent grads will not continue their education and it is not because they are ignorant.

Something else he said was a public thank you to me. I have never spoken to him, but someone must have told him about what I do or he felt compelled to say this after I got my own introduction at the beginning of the ceremony apart from the other teachers. He thanked America, the Peace Corps and me for what I do. He then told me to extend their gratitude to the Peace Corps and America, so to any Americans or anyone from Peace Corps reading this the parents of students of Mulindi Secondary thank you. This was the first time I have been thanked since being sworn in as a volunteer, and then it was as a group. I teared up a little when he said this and quickly wiped it away. The headmaster spoke after him and he thanked me too.

I usually don’t feel too appreciated. It is so hard to really gage what they think of me. Do they really need me? Do they really want the help I am here to give? Am I getting more out of being here than I am giving? Is what I am doing sustainable or will it be like I was never here? I am here because I want to find meaning in my life.

As a senior in college I studied Ecclesiastes in two bible studies at the same time. I had been going to both for a while already so when both decided to study Ecclesiastes at the same time I was a little disappointed, but kept going to both of them anyways. Ecclesiastes is a great book. Solomon is traditionally credited with writing it because he fits the character. The book can be summarized into one line that it repeats multiple times. ‘Everything underneath the sun is meaningless.’ In the end it is not going to matter if you have done everything you wanted, lived a good life, worked hard, or acquired knowledge. It is all chasing the wind. There nothing more uplifting and promising than studying the bible. Then again the bible was never supposed to be uplifting. Solomon comes to the conclusion that there is nothing better for a person to do than ‘be joyful and to do good as long as they live,’ and only what God does lasts forever and God does these things so people will accept and love/fear him. The man who turned away from God in so many ways then writes a book about why you should not turn away from God, and it’s not because of your place in eternity but because you will never find meaning in anything else, but you should still enjoy life.

Graduating from school forces you to ask what you are going to do with your life, but I guess you never stop asking that question. Even as an old man who had done everything life had to offer Solomon was still contemplating this. Three thousand years there is still not an answer. I am here doing what I am doing this because I want to do good, but I want so many more things than to do good. I want the experience and everything that I can get out of it. I guess that’s how I’m trying to enjoy life.

I let a teacher use my camera during the ceremony. He was a lot more interested in recording video than taking pictures so I don’t have many good pictures of the evening. I can’t upload videos. This is of the student council.

We are taking pictures so everyone look serious.

I posed for about 100 pictures. My friend Simon told me how “gay” we looked after we took this one. He then told me that we got married and that I was the bride because the other guy was wearing a suit.

The only picture I got with my favorite of the graduating class, Aline the president of GLOW club, and the top of my head is cut off. I am going to miss her being around. I can have a favorite. I’m their teacher not their dad.

Simon and Aline both have so much potential if they were given the opportunity.

The rest of the pictures he took were pretty blurry. I’m pretty tired of them always taking my camera from me. I don’t think I will allow it any more.

Name Change

I just changed the name to this blog. I was inspired by the movie The Social Network. In it Sean Parker tells Mark Zuckerberg that he should drop the 'the' in 'the facebook' and then it would cleaner and cooler. I am hoping that if I drop the 'welcome to' that it cleans things up and my blog will be cooler and more popular. When I say my blog I mean me. I don't really care about me being cleaner though because I live in a village in Rwanda.

The Education System

Something that I have noticed as my first year as a professional volunteer teacher comes to an end is that teachers are not very appreciated. Teachers have to work long days in the classroom and then spend the rest of their time planning lessons and grading. After all of that it’s hard to care enough to want to run a club or coach a sport. That is why no one coaches basketball at my school, but the b-ball court is in pretty bad condition as of late. There is actually only a coach for soccer. I think it takes a lot of work to be good at any job, but most other jobs will have bonuses and overtime or at least pay better than teaching. Teachers also have administration that will make them work harder or get in the way of them doing their job at all. There have been so many times when I have been ready to go teach and we have a surprise meeting about nothing.

For this reason and maybe more teaching is looked at as a temporary job in Rwanda. This year three (including myself) started at the beginning of the year and are finishing it, two have come and gone, three have left for better paying jobs, three who started after the school year started (two just started at the beginning of this term), and one is brought in on weekends to make up for another teacher who is too ‘old and can’t work all of the hours that are required’ (this teacher just won an award – I can’t stand this guy, he doesn’t put any effort into teaching. During exam week there was a day between the elective exams and main subject exams and I was going to have a review for the Math and English exams, but this guy gives a quiz. During exam week he gave a quiz. I am sure that its because he didn’t have enough to make grades for the term. I was only able to review math. Then when I turned in my grades to him for the term he asked me for the grades for the whole year and I didn’t know I needed that, he then calls me lazy and starts talking about me to the other teachers. I can’t understand everything that you’re saying man, but I can tell when you are talking about me). So overall the school added three teachers this year. Of the 18 teachers who have worked here over the last year 12 of them were not working here the year before. Of the six who have been here for longer than I have I can tell that only three have been here for much longer than that (one of them being the award winner), and I know that they will not be here much longer because they are removing lower secondary from this school in the next two years and they all teach lower secondary. Another reason they won’t be teachers much longer is the Ministry of Education is enforcing teachers to have certain qualifications and none of these three have these. In fact, I met someone who works for the Ministry of Education who told me that 50% of secondary school teachers in Rwanda are not qualified to be teaching. The standards are not even that high. All they have to have done is either gone to secondary school for teaching, or go to a teacher training school (I don’t know how involved that is). There is teacher training for unqualified teachers during breaks primarily to learn English that from what I understand most teachers choose to skip. I wouldn’t be qualified to be a teacher in America, but here since I have a bachelor’s degree I am one of the most qualified people working there. There is one guy who goes to school on the weekends in Kigali to get a bachelor’s in teaching and two who go to Uganda to get masters and both of them are getting their masters so they can get better jobs than teaching.

I recently met some VSO volunteers who just started in Byumba, Leslie and Steve. Leslie will be training teachers and Steve will train headmasters. They are much more qualified than I am. They have worked in schools for as long as I have been alive and now they decide to come to volunteer in Africa. Doing that when you retire would be hard to want to do. They deserve to take it easy, but here they are doing something that is really hard. Pretty impressive, I hope they can accomplish a lot. I hope they can at least change teacher methodology enough that they don’t consider it enough to just copy notes from a textbook and then rewrite that on the board for the students to copy into their notebooks with little to no explanation. I haven’t been very successful in changing this mentality.

The administration has not changed much though. Only the headmaster changed because the old one was not qualified so he was replaced. I really like the headmaster. He is pushing the school and teachers to improve and he is the reason for some of the turnover in teachers.

I wrote that when I was attending a ceremony for International Teachers Appreciation Day. For International Teachers Appreciation Day there was no school and instead all of the teachers from Kaniga sector (a sector is like a county) met at my school to celebrate. The ceremony started two and a half late, but I anticipated that so I came an hour and a half late kinda hoping I would be late, but it started later than I had expected. Keeping time is just not all that important here. Lucy’s school also held a ceremony and hers started four hours late.

The ceremony included singing and dancing by students, long speeches, presentation of awards and finally a meal. When I watch my students perform all that I think about is if they can learn how to do this so well then why aren’t they better at math and English. Its cool that they like dancing and they are very good at it.

The next event that the school held was the second edition of the backyard brawl, another sports day with Rushaki. This time it was in Mulindi. Lucy didn’t come because she was at the new group of volunteer’s training. I however was there but I didn’t go until after they had played handball and started basketball. They wanted me to play basketball with them again, but I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about considering how bad we were beaten last time. I just watched and cheered. Everyone kept asking me why I wasn’t playing so I made like 10 different excuses. It was raining and no one told when I should be there were my best ones. We lost at basketball and I wouldn’t have made a difference. Just doesn’t seem fair when we play bball. Rushaki has a really nice basketball court thanks to Scott the volunteer there before Lucy and the closest basketball court to my school is 45 minute walk up a hill. You have to really want to play to go there. We did win at soccer though which was the main event. So take that Rushaki.

30 kids are not loud enough. It’s a good thing we have a megaphone to amplify one of them. Kinda defeats the purpose of a choir.

Every time there is dancing someone tells me to get up and dance with them. I didn’t do it this time. I told them to dance and they wouldn’t. I am still just a spectacle to some people.

Mulindi secondary’s basketball court/soccer field. The hoop that is standing does not have a hoop.

One Year Later…

As of yesterday I have been living in Rwanda for one year. I have been all over this country. It is call the land of a thousand hills and I have seen probably 800 of them. Rwanda is an amazingly beautiful country and I love it here. After living here for a year it is time to reflect.

Moving here was really difficult. I left all of the modern conveniences that make up an American lifestyle; things like a washer and dryer, microwave, oven, television, car, toilet, refrigerator, and showers. Other things I still have because I brought them with me like a computer, and a camera. My ipod was stolen six months ago though. There are some things that have been available here, like an electric hotplate for cooking, electric kettle for heating water to bathe using a bucket, electric lighting, a cat, cellphone, external hard drive to save movies that I get from other volunteers and my friend Simon who downloads them at the tea factory where he works, and internet that is pretty reliable but too slow and expensive to use more than once a day just to check email and facebook so I don’t get to skype. Electricity is pretty unreliable though because they provide to more people than they can handle and that’s only about 20% of the country. One more thing I still have is processed foods because I get a lot of packages from my mom and friends and other family. I just got packages from the Oliveris and Daenzers, thank you for everything you sent me. Even the stuff that I look at and think what am I going to do with this.

I have been working at a secondary school with people I cannot communicate with and teaching students that cannot understand me. Their English hasn’t gotten to that level yet and my Kinyarwanda is really only useful for shopping and making jokes, I just learned a pickup line that relates to both of those things – Uri kwi isoko? – Are you on the market? I do actually have a fairly large vocabulary, but using the language is really hard for me. That is the same problem that my students have with English. I’m making it my goal to get better at the language now that school is almost out. It has been a while since I studied it at all.

I spend more time alone than I ever have before in my life. I would rather be alone a lot of the time now than have to deal with the awkwardness that comes with being with people. I feel more alone when I’m with a group of people who aren’t including me than when I am by myself watching a movie. Even when I am with friends I don’t always feel like I participate and I feel just as alone as when I was with the other group that wasn’t including me. I feel like maybe I am losing my ability to interact with anyone and not just those who are from another culture, but that could be because the times I’m with my American friends are so few that if every moment isn’t how I imagined how it should be then it is a disappointment. I have realized that I am also pretty hard on myself for not performing socially, morally, and intellectually to the level that I feel like that I am capable of, regardless that I know that I don’t have to.

A lot of volunteers that I started this with have been leaving recently they have been finding other jobs or just leaving because they are unhappy. I wonder if I will ever see them again. The chances are pretty low unless we make an effort to see each other again and realistically that will not happen very much. I’m not going to see the friends I went to college very much anymore either. That’s how life is. Another friend that just went home is Danielle the Fulbright scholar who trained with us. Her scholarship ended so this was how long she planned to be here. I was with her, Hanna (also left) and Hope (staying) in the nicest coffee shop in Rwanda – Bourbon coffee. Danielle had her laptop playing inspirational songs like I believe I can fly and Graduation by Vitamin C then Coming Home by Diddy and till I get there by Lupe. Hanna was saying how they wouldn’t let you do this in America. I left my family and all of my friends to come do this and now the friends that I have made here are leaving to go back. I’m torn on how I feel about it. I asked Danielle how she felt. She said she was sad and excited. I know how that feels. When I left to come here I cried every day for a week and I was so excited to start this. I’m happy they get to go home. It is hard to leave anything that you have invested a lot of time into, but to go home at the end of it has got to feel great because you miss it so much.

A Peace Corps volunteer has to answer one question so many times – Why did you join the Peace Corps? I had to answer this question a lot before leaving and now for a lot of people and to myself, and I will have to answer this question in for people for later in life too. I need to find a good answer that I will be able to give at interviews when I’m looking for a job when I’m done here. They ask you when you interview with Peace Corps and when you first arrive. It tells you a lot about a person that they would do this first of all, but to know why that person is doing it tells you even more. The reason keeps changing. I don’t know what it will be in a few years. When I interviewed to do this I said that I was doing it because of my faith. That doesn’t really tell you too much about me though. I wrote right before leaving that it is because I want to help people. I changed it up once I got here to it is exciting which is more of the reason that I wanted to do it. Now it has changed again. I am still here because I feel like God was telling me to do this and I still like helping people, but not really because it is exciting. Now I feel like I am here to continue to change myself. Never again will I live like this. I don’t know what the future holds and I wish I didn’t worry about it as much as I do. The reason that people don’t give into despair is because they believe the future will be better than the past. That’s why we go through hard things in the present.

There are also a lot of great things about Peace Corps service. Many opportunities that I have been able to take advantage of because I haven’t been scared to go for it.

I know that I am making a difference here. I saw improvement in many of my students’ work. I made the last English exam harder and the scores were worse but not by much. The Math exam was hard for them, but they did well. I think my students have figured out how to learn from the way I teach or I have figured out how to teach so they can learn from me, either way they are doing better and it only took a year. I have so much more respect for teachers now after doing this myself. Pretty sure I do not want to make it my career though.

I am also going to be starting construction of a water collection system in three weeks. The system consists of rain collection and filters to provide drinkable water for the school. The design is by Water for Life of which I am working with Nick Greener. I am really excited about it. Check out the donation page. If we don’t get all the money we will just have to do the construction like my neighbors where you build a little and then wait until you can afford to continue to build.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=696-012

Rwanda has so much left to teach me. I just need to make sure that I am paying attention.

Spiderman

Being a Peace Corps Volunteer is a lot like being Spiderman. I say that because I just watched Spiderman 2. In Spiderman 2 everything in Peter Parker’s life is going wrong. He is helping a hundred people but at the same time he loses his job, can’t pay the bills, failing his classes, disappointing his friends, and can’t help the people that matter most to him. Living two lives is ruining his. He devotes his life to helping people because he feels guilty that he failed to stop a man from killing his uncle. It is his responsibility because he has the ability to help. He then suddenly starts to lose his powers as well because he has too many responsibilities. Now neither of his two lives is going right. He goes to seek medical consultation where the doctor pretty much tells him that he can choose to no longer be Spiderman. Then he has a dream like sequence where he painfully gives up his guilt of killing his uncle followed by him watching a bunch of crimes take place and him trying not to care then he finally confesses his guilt to Aunt May. Next is the turning point of the movie. Peter Parker runs into a burning building powerless almost killing himself to save a baby. He knows that no one else is going to save this baby, nevertheless another person on an upper floor died. Next Aunt May tells Peter that the world needs heroes like Spiderman. Spiderman gives up what he wants the most and his dreams to help others. He now wants his powers back but they still aren’t there. Next he is in a coffee shop with Mary Jane who is once again professing her love for him, but he just like last time can’t be with her because of his duties. The difference is this time he realizes that he is doing this because it is what is right instead of responsibility. Then they are attacked by Doc Oct and Mary Jane is kidnapped and he regains his powers and saves her and the city.

For a while in college I lived two lives. I had two groups of friends. This was divided between my friends that I made in engineering school and friends that I made at Cornerstone – the Christian group that I went to. These worlds were completely separate when I was a freshman and even more when I was a sophomore. They started to morph together a little junior and senior year, but this also changed because I decided to spend more time with my Christian friends, and less with other friends. I feel like this was good and bad because I grew in my faith a lot because of this, but losing friends is always sad especially if there isn’t a reason for it.

In the eighteen months between college and Peace Corps I hung out with primarily friends from Cornerstone even though I no longer attended. I in no way was trying to alienate others, but that just seems to happen when you try to make your faith the most important part of your life. I also think that no matter what your friends will always change because nothing stays as it is. A couple days ago I attended the monthly Peace Corps bible study where we studied the first half of Matthew 5 for the second month in a row. The month before I had something weighing on my mind that I couldn’t focus very well on anything else also I have been taking a sort of leadership role at these studies where I have been the teacher and not as much the student. The re-up of Matt 5 part 1 was a lot shorter because we weren’t staying the night and a lot more structured which I appreciated because it was focused but not as organic as it has been in the past which I also love. One thing in particular stuck out to me that we talked about; Jesus says that Christians are the salt and the light of the world. This means that they are the best and most attractive part to the world of unbelieving people. This is not true at all. Most people look at Christians and think they are hypocritical, only trying to convert, homophobic, political, and judgmental. What is attractive about that? Christians are some of the ugliest and worst people of the world when they are any of these, and sometimes I don’t know why I would want to be associated with them.

Jesus is saying that if they were to love the way he is telling them to then they will be the salt and light. He also says that when salt has lost its saltiness then it is useless and must be thrown out. To me this sounds like when Christians are not attractive to unbelievers then they are no longer following Jesus. They will be thrown out. Coming to this conclusion of course raises the question of do I attract or repel the unbelievers that I know. I don’t know and I don’t have to worry about it either because I am saved by grace so nothing I do will take away that saving grace, but what good is faith without works and grace comes at a cost which is all of me. That seems so contradictory to me. How is it that I can both never lose my salvation because God loves me eternally but at the same time lose my saltiness if I don’t give my life? It must be because unless you do the later then you don’t love God which is a requirement for the former. Therefore the reason that unbelievers are not attracted to Christianity as a whole in our post-Christian society is because most Christians do this wrong and historically other than ending the slave trade in England Christians deserve this reputation.

I can say that Christianity is attractive to Rwandans though. Whether they do what I stated above is not my position as an outsider to say, but I personally haven’t found going to church very fulfilling other than a chance to see them let loose a little. They seem to party at church more than in any other situation.

What was great about the break is that I didn’t have to work. I got to spend my time either relaxing or with the other volunteers who I have become incredibly close to. I don’t really get to see most of the other volunteers very often, once a month if that, some once every three months or longer. At the HIV/AIDS workshop last week I saw some people that I hadn’t come across since April and seeing them was like seeing an old friend from high school that I had kept in touch with. Why have I become so close to people that I have only known for a short time and hardly ever get to see? There are some people in this group that I would not have been friends with in America, but are my best friends here. We became close during our training that ended almost eight months ago, but I can’t see how that could still be what connects us. It has to be that we are the only ones who really know what we are all going through. Also there is a mutual admiration that develops for everyone else who is still doing this that brings me to like even the people that I used to dislike.

Something interesting that happened multiple times during the break is that other volunteers completely unprovoked told me that I was a “good guy.” There’s nothing too strange about that except that it happened about four times, all from people I hadn’t seen in a while. What might have elicited it is I wrote an article for SOMA the volunteer publication which was an adaptation of an earlier post about the year and a half before leaving for Peace Corps. In it I revealed that I am insecure about if am in fact good. I think when people meet me for the first time they see a goofball and I like that classification and sometimes feel like I can’t keep it up. I feel like I am failing myself if I can’t make that impression on people. When we all showed up in Philly before leaving for Rwanda the next day we went into a room and introduced ourselves by saying our name, where we are from and a fact about Rwanda. I remember a lot of people’s facts were about gorillas or women in politics and that Jeff’s old nickname was mountain. My fact was that Rwanda is in Africa and the only reason that I remember this is because several people since then have reminisced about the day we met and reminded us that that was my fact. There have been a few other things that I have said that people like to repeat and I usually just smile and appreciate that people are still laughing about something that I said months ago. As people get to know me they find that there’s more to me. At some point it comes out that I am a Christian and all of the ideas about Christians that I mentioned above invade their opinion about me whether they form them or not. So maybe now that we know each other well those ideas have faded and we are looking at each other for what we really are. And maybe I am living like the salt and light Jesus talked about. I can’t say if I have attracted anyone else to Christianity, but that isn’t my concern. God converts unbelievers not people and there is nothing I can do or say that will change someone’s heart. The only thing that is attractive about me is what God does and says through me.

Now that I am once again coming off as holier than thou and explaining the plot of a movie that most people have seen I think I will try to tie things together a little. As a Peace Corps Volunteer I live multiple lives. I live my life in the village where I have a profession and participate in the community, and my life as a United States government employee where I have a hundred rules that I have to follow and friends throughout the country that I don’t get to see very often. It is very similar to how I lived before when I lived the Christian and unchristian lives except now it is more obvious because it is not a condition of the heart (I still live those two lives regularly). It is also similar to Spiderman because I want to spend every chance I get hanging out with my friends or pursue a job offer that would allow me to do exactly that as well as make a lot of money, but I can’t because I have to do what’s right which is stick with my commitment to help Rwanda from the ground up for two years. The Peace Corps staff also puts a lot of guilt on us to fulfill our responsibilities, but that isn’t what keeps you from leaving. You stay because you want to help people.

I draw a lot of attention just walking around.

Fetching water

Our cistern is empty. The dry season has been in session for almost two months. Up till now we have been making it by with the water that collected on our roof, but now even that has gone dry. My worst nightmare has become a reality. Some things have gotta change. Devin and I talked about it a little bit before how we are going to have to only have Anualnita – our maid wash our clothes once a week and also find someone fetch us water from the spring every day.

Finally this morning I was let in on why my clothes that I put out to be washed on Monday were not. Anualnita decided that she wants to wash our clothes all day on Fridays at the spring. I don’t have any problem with this except that its already been over a week since my clothes were washed and since getting here I have lost a bit of weight and I don’t have much that fits me anymore.

Today is my day off so I stayed home from work while Irene and Devin both went to work. After they left I decided that I wanted to see where this mystical water is. I asked Devin earlier in the morning and she told me about two that I would have walked past a hundred times, but never noticed, neither sounded too far away so I wanted to go get it. After I finished washing my underwear I told Anualnita that I wanted to fetch water. She didn’t want to do that though.

In Kinyaranda –

me – “Let’s go fetch water.”

Anualnita – “It’s very far.”

me – “I want to see where it is.”

Anualnita – “Down there.”

me – “I need you to show me.”

Anualnita – “Okay, I’m coming.”

I then went into my room and changed my clothes to get ready to fetch water, but when I was doing this I noticed that the clothes that I was putting on were really dirty. So I changed it up and decided that we would do laundry down there.

me – “We must do laundry there.”

Anualnita – “No, I will do it here.”

me – “No we can do it there.”

Anualnita – “It’s far.”

me – “I understand.”

Anualnita – “I need to cook and Irene said to _______.” I’m not sure what she said here.

me – “Let’s go.”

Anualnita – “I’m coming.”

So I changed clothes again and we left for the spring. The spring was a fifteen minute walk downhill away from my house. Anualnita carried my clothes and I carried an empty jug. Everyone on the way there thought it was hilarious that I was going to fetch water. White people don’t do that, another chance to disprove a stereotype and feel guilty for being white. The worst was a guy who told me that I should carry the water in my car and Anualnita agreed with him. I don’t know why people assume that I have a car. I have never given any indication that I own a car. It would be pretty hard to hide if I did have one. Even though I don’t want people to think that I have a car. I would love to have a car and I would put my and everyone else’s water in it.

We arrived at the spring and did my laundry. Anualnita laughed when I started helping wash my clothes as well as everyone who came by. It didn’t really matter though because everything that I washed she washed a second time. When she was rewashing my clothes I started talking to a guy who was filling up his jugs. His name was Kenety. Kenety fetches water for people for 150 franks a jug (a quarter). I then hired him to bring us two jugs of water every day starting tomorrow.

Once we finished the laundry Anualnita packed it up and I grabbed the full jug of water. This jug of water I think is twenty liters and weighs fifty pounds when it is full. At first I tried carrying it on my head like I see everyone do and I went about a hundred steps and couldn’t go any further. Remember that I said that I said that the path to the spring was all downhill therefore the way back is all up. I have gotten used to climbing up this mountain because I do it every day on my home from school, but I don’t do it with a fifty pound jug of water on my head. I could barely walk with this weight on my head sloshing around. I moved it to my shoulder, then to my hand, then to my other hand, then to my other shoulder. This continued the entire way home switching about thirty times. The fifteen minute walk to the spring took about forty coming back.

I was exhausted when I made it back. Anualnita who carried my wet clothes on her head went right back to work cooking and whatever Irene had told her to do. My back hurts now.

I like finding out more about people’s lives here. Most people don’t have someone to fetch their water or have a cistern to hold it so they have to do it themselves. I couldn’t do that every day, but no one can. I’m sure that I would get really good at it though if I did. I’m happy I went and did that though because now I know what I’m paying for and it is really worth it, both Kenety and Anualnita.

Koboyi watching me walk away with a water jug.

“You’re fetching water? Use your car white man.” If only I had one.

I think I lost more water than what I carried up.

Kenety making his living.

Anualnita making hers.

Where is the Love

I have been in Africa for nearly nine months now and I miss less of America all the time. I used to crave a burger a lot, but now even though I will always take meat when it is available, I don’t think about it anymore. The best part of restaurants anyways is being able to spend time with friends. For a while I was obsessed with keeping up with the NFL and on the day of the Superbowl I tried to download the Steelers and Ravens playoff game, but after purchasing it on itunes I saw that it was 1.75 GB and would take 50 hours so I gave up on it. I was able to get my hands on some unlimited internet last weekend thanks to Lucy and finally downloaded it. I really enjoyed watching it, but not like it would have been if I was in America with other fans. I used to miss the whole celebrity scene, but that’s really only because I miss making fun of it with my friends. I love keeping up with what is new, but that really isn’t all that hard to do here. Everything that I miss about America really points to who I miss in America. I love going to Pirates games, but I wouldn’t do that alone even if dinner was given to me and I could meet the players after the game. Life is meant to be shared

The things I would have loved to go to America while I have been here include the weddings I have missed and my sister’s graduation. Weddings are so much fun. Drinking and dancing to celebrate the joining of two people. Graduations are also a lot of fun. I love to celebrate others: weddings, graduations, birthdays, and any other ceremony. However Rwandan ceremonies are slow and not fun from my experience. My problem is I couldn’t love myself in America even though I was always surrounded by people who loved me. At my own graduation from college I was discontented. I didn’t want my parents to take me out to an expensive restaurant because I didn’t feel like what I did was that great. I did order something expensive once we were there though. I’m not competitive because I don’t want to win. I don’t want the praise. On my own birthday I avoid telling people that it is happening. That way when people don’t show up to it there isn’t the disappointment. I would rather make it possible for someone else to have fun than the other way around. I think if you can’t love yourself you can’t love anyone else. I had to come to Africa to learn how to love myself. I realize this now because of what is missing. I still don’t have it figured out and I would be willing to bet something else will happen next week that will make me hate myself again. I just don’t find myself loveable.

I haven’t found a lot of love in my village. I try to express love for them, but I don’t feel like I get it back most of the time. Simon is my best friend by far. We joke around a lot and I really enjoy his company. We play sports and watch movies and sing Taylor Swift songs together. I feel like I can also connect with him intellectually better than anyone else I have met here. My roommate Irene is also amazing. She is a lot of fun to hang out with because she is so chill. I think that is because of what happened to her when she was eight. I wish she could walk. I can’t help but think about what she would be like if hadn’t been literally crippled by bigotry.

The love I do get is from other volunteers. Devin is awesome. She has great insight on all kinds of things and we get along great, but even though I think we could have been friends had we met in America I don’t think we would have gotten to know each other too well. That’s part of Peace Corps though – you force yourself to do things that you wouldn’t normally do. Lucy is awesome too. I already see a lot of her, but I wish it was more. She is always helping me to put things into a more realistic perspective. They have both become really great friends. I’m happy to serve so close to them. I don’t get the chance to see the other volunteers as much as I like either. The Peace Corps puts us all together for two and a half months for training and then set us to work at a reasonable distance from each other and we are supposed to never see each other. Whenever we get together we talk about how we wish we could spend more time together like this and complain about the problems we face in our villages. However I do feel loved by them more than I do from Rwandans, and I am tired of excusing that with culture.

The other place I find love is from packages from America: food, games and whatever. BP 50 Byumba Rwanda. Thanks Mom, Jessica and Chris and Christian.

For two years before coming here I lived with Jesύs. He is a really great friend. He would throw really big parties in our apartment and invite over all of his Latino friends. These parties would go until the cops shut them down. We spent a lot of time together when we were living together and I now that I have another great roommate that isn’t American I can really say that I love living with people who are not American. It just adds a fun aspect that you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Even though Jesύs and I had a lot of fun together I always felt like he enjoyed his Latino friends more. I am the same way though. I had more fun with my American friends. I always tried to include him in whatever we did and he would often come, but he didn’t always have fun. The one time we went camping and he disappeared into the woods. We didn’t find out where he was until the next day which worried everyone until we found out. Turned out he called a friend to come pick him up. I think I understand what was going on that day a little better now. I like my Rwandan friends, but I would rather be with my American friends. The excitement of being here has worn off. I guess I like being a tourist because when you are a tourist you always feel like doing something exciting. I still feel like doing exciting things, but I’ve run out of things to see in my village and if there are things yet to see I’m not excited about them. And the administration doesn’t want me to travel outside of my site.

Two months ago I expressed my interest to another volunteer that I met a few weeks after coming here. I noticed her immediately because she presented a session to our training group about integrating into the culture. She was joyful and friendly and spoke the language incredibly well. I talked to her at dinner by using the Kinyarwanda that I had learned earlier in the day. I asked her if she had any children and why she didn’t. She then went into a long Kinyarwanda explanation which she had to tell me what it meant in English after she had finished. She said that I should pick a girl and that I could choose whoever I wanted because I’m white. She was still teaching me culture I guess. I thought to myself ok here is my choice. She told this story to someone else when she was explaining how she knew me.

After that we only hung out a handful of times, but I always had a great time. At In-service training I had gotten the idea that she might have feelings for me when she kissed my cheek one night. That at least told me that she isn’t repulsed by me. The next month I told her that I told her that I had been crushing on her, but she didn’t give me an answer right away. In fact she wanted a week to consider it. I thought that wasn’t too much of a request and we still had a great day together, but it turned out to be really hard to wait for her. I felt like I had to keep my composure and do whatever I could to convince her that I was worth being her boyfriend. Also that week I fell off my bike and had a concussion. Also her friend gave birth to an unhealthy baby. We talked about it at the end of this exhausting and painful week. She told me about how she doubted herself when she was with me, and that made me feel pretty awful. She told me no to being my girlfriend but she would like to get to know me better. I lost the composure that I was trying so hard to keep after this and started crying. She wasn’t very comforting, but neither was I.

I then called her periodically to either talk or try to meet up with her, but it never worked out until a month after the last time we talked. In the meantime I talked to some friends about her and what happened and I got a lot of advice about it. The best advice was probably the one that I didn’t want to hear the most from someone who knew her a fair amount better than me; to give up on her. We spent an afternoon together finally but she had a meeting to go to and after took off without saying goodbye. The next weekend I called her for some advice, as someone who has been here longer, with something new that I am going through which I might write about here after it plays out. Her advice didn’t really help me at all and then she told me that she didn’t think it would ever work out between us and I admitted that I felt the same way at this point even though I didn’t want to admit it. I guess she had gotten to know me well enough by then and didn’t like what she saw.

I wanted her to fill the emptiness that I was feeling. I wanted someone to show me the love that I so desperately need here. I turned her into something she’s not. I made her my Jesus. She could never live up to those expectations. I have such high standards and I will never find a girl that meets them. One of those standards is that she needs to love me back.

I imagine I sound really love and homesick at the same time. I have something else that I can’t get out of my head right now. I think that I just wrote this because I wanted to get my mind off of that. All of my sadness is leaking through that into this though. My relationship maturity has a long way to go. So does every other part of me.

The President accepting his urn.

Field Day

I am not an athlete. I do love sports though. I just downloaded using Lucy’s modem with unlimited internet the Steelers and Ravens game from January. In college I went to about sixty basketball games and only missed about four home football games. I am asked a lot what game is my favorite and I tell them golf. Every time that I tell someone that I like golf I hope that they will play it too so maybe we could play together, but that hasn’t happened yet. In elementary school I played little league and would never swing and when I was in the outfield I would sit on the ground and pick dandelions. In middle school I played one season of football. The daily practice killed me. I really had no idea how to play football even at the end of the season. I didn’t even know the rules until I started watching it in high school. In high school I played the base drum as well as other assorted percussion instruments in the marching band and I was also a boy scout. I learned a lot in boy scouts including a love for hiking, but I spent a lot of hiking trips at the back and even alone because I couldn’t keep up with everyone else when we hit those hills.

Last weekend Mulindi visited Rushaki on Saturday for a field day. Rushaki is the school where Lucy works. I was told that I would be playing basketball, also that I needed to bring my camera. Because I work for the school and own a camera I have become the schools photographer. It is easy to feel like I’m being taken advantage of, but I realize that cameras are rare here so I’m just the friend of convenience that they never had before. No different than if I was to ask my friend to help change the oil on my car because he knows something about fixing cars (that is if I had ever owned a car). All the same I still don’t like it when people ask me if they can have my camera or computer or to give them pictures but that’s because I don’t know how to explain that I can’t print them.

After they told me I would be playing basketball with them I kept getting asked if I knew how to play. I told them yes and they would respond with “we will win.” I don’t exude confidence on the court by any means so I don’t know where they got the idea that having a big uncoordinated white guy on their team would give them the win. I told Lucy about this and she expressed what they were thinking by saying that having an American on your team is like having an NBA player. I on the other hand was thinking about all of my experience of playing ball in America that I don’t stand a chance playing with all these black guys. I’m pretty bad among white guys.

I thought that the game would be the teachers of Mulindi versus the teachers of Rushaki, but students were playing too. Before we started I could already tell that we were going to lose because other than everyone thinking that I would be their best player, my team was taking pictures while the other team was doing layup drills. When we did start the coach asked me which position I was and I told him I could play center, but the positions that they were using were more like soccer than basketball positions. There were two “defenders” under the hoop. The center was at the foul line and then the “offence” was at the three point line. According to the coach I was in the wrong position as soon as the game started because I was standing too far back and I was blamed for giving up the first basket and taken out of the game after a minute. I watched from the bench as my team got destroyed because of in my opinion our terrible zone defense. At half time the score was 24 to 6. The coach kept trying to be the gym class hero by taking outside shots and had about ten air balls.

During half time the coach was yelling at his players, which I couldn’t understand so I tried to encourage them to change to a man defense which I had to do in English because I definitely don’t know basketball terms in Kinyarwanda. I asked them if they understood which they said yes, but if they did they ignored me because they did not “man up” like I told them to. I got put back in and this time I bodied up with whoever was near me. I made my presence felt the best I could. I feel like I was playing pretty good defense, but they wanted me out again after five minutes. I told them no because I felt like I probably wouldn’t go back in. I kept getting fouled as well so I started performing for the ref who called maybe five fouls the whole game and three were because I elicited them. I went out at the end of the third quarter after we went 8 – 0. Even though we didn’t score in that quarter we played our best defense.

The final quarter we bled points. The coach finally made one of his desperation shots though. I took over the substitutions at this point to try to give everyone else some more time and get the coach out of the game because he was taking this friendly game way too seriously. The final score was 66-9 I told my friend Sera about this and she asked me the only logical question – “Were you playing the Globe Trotters?” I of course replied with yes and then started humming the song.

After that we got some food with all the teachers and I endured some criticism for not scoring. The ref thought I was a good player though. I told him that he was probably the only one who thought so. I wasn’t the worst player out there but far from the best.

Being so bad at sports has made me very uncompetitive. I used to be pretty competitive at video games, but I gave that up when I started losing at that a lot too. I do enjoy pretending like I’m competitive sometimes, but I rather congratulate whoever beat me than gloat when I win.

The Lakers?

Umuganda

Something I love about Rwandan culture is Umuganda. Umuganda is a once month mandatory community service in place of taxes. Even though it is mandatory most people skip it. So obviously it is not enforced very well and the people who do show up to participate are more there because they want to help than any other reason, but the police are there and they are supposed to arrest those who refuse to help (except in the cities where it is enforced and that is how they are able to keep them really clean). Living in Pittsburgh, for a long time I volunteered with an organization called the L.I.V.I.N.G. Ministry. L.I.V.I.N.G. is an acronym that I have heard many times, but can never remember what it means. What they do is care for the homeless. They are located in Pittsburgh’s North side and do stuff like provide food, clothes, job opportunities and more importantly in my opinion spiritual guidance and prayer. These guys depend on donations for their salaries and need a lot more help than I do because they don’t have a government that supports them. Instead they need to depend on God to provide for them and while I can live comfortably making under $3000 in a year they live in America where the necessities are more in both cost and quantity. I feel like they are braver than I am because not knowing when you are getting a paycheck is scary. I grew to know everyone who works for the L.I.V.I.N.G. really well after volunteering for them so long and taking every opportunity I had to help them. One of the founders, Mike, who I got to know very well through a discipleship group my senior year, left last year to try to further his education which he told me only one year before that he hated school. I wish I could call him and see how he is doing. His leaving opened up a position for one of my best friends, Jenna, to be the Volunteer Coordinator and I know she is doing a great job. When I was leaving for Rwanda she gave me a deck of cards with their logo on it and a t-shirt that I regrettably left at the Holiday Inn in Philadelphia when I was trying to make my luggage lighter to avoid any kind of hassle when I left the US.

I got involved in the L.I.V.I.N.G. Ministry because my friends were involved with them and volunteering with your friends is fun. They just finished a project last year that they were working on for about four years. It is a halfway house for the homeless. They bought a condemned house and completely rebuilt it using mostly donations and volunteers. When I am doing umuganda I feel like the same way that I did when I was working on that house. The biggest difference is that there isn’t free pizza after you finish working. Since finishing this house they bought the house next door and are making the North Side a better community a little bit at a time. There are a few other organizations in Pittsburgh North Side that do similar work and the difference that they are making is incredible. I would hate to see Pittsburgh without these organizations because I know those people would be completely neglected otherwise.

The first umuganda that I went to at my site I wanted to get stuff done at my school. I saw some work that needed doing so I showed up to that with a plan. First thing was to try to get the basketball court playable. Devin came with me and we took my new hoe that I had just bought because I was planning on gardening, and since then we have with success with carrots and cilantro, but all of the tomatoes died. I organized the students to clear out all the weeds growing on the dirt playing surface. Then we put a hoop on the back board that was missing one. I let one of the students go crazy taking pictures with my camera and I think I already put some of them up here. After that we played some four on four. It was very fulfilling and I felt like I was doing some for real development work, although since then the weeds have all grown back and it is once again unplayable.

The next umuganda I returned to the school where I walked around and helped the students in their normal chores like piling wood and sorting beans. I spent most of my time talking to students who were trying to improve their English. I don’t mind this at all and I even enjoy it most of the time, but it is also my everyday so umuganda just felt like more teaching other than a little bit of bean tossing.

The next two months I skipped umuganda unintentionally but also without remorse. So far both of the umugandas that I had participated in had been for nothing. I didn’t see why I was going to these things if it was going to be the same as every day or be undone in in two months. This of course is not the right attitude to have. I know that every minute I spend with these students could have an impact on them. I also know that nothing lasts forever and no matter what I am doing for umuganda it will eventually return to its original state unless it is maintained. My entire service might result in no change in anything or anyone other than myself, but that wouldn’t make it worthless.

Last month I went to the first umuganda that I have been to that was for the community that I live in instead of at the school. The goal was to carry rocks that were being quarried out of the side of the mountain three miles up hill so they could be used to build a poor family a house. I showed up prepared to work at 8 AM. I brought my empty backpack so I would have something to put the rocks in which is very different than the normal way of carrying the rocks on your head. I made my way to the village center and started asking where umuganda was. The kept telling me I was in the right place and it would start soon. I passed the time by greeting everyone who was out there and offered water to a lot of people. Some of the men I offered water to would tell me no because they wanted ikigage (sorghum beer –the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted, I tell people that it makes me sick which it hasn’t done but I am confident that it would because I do not trust their home brewing). I can’t help but think that they must like to get the party started early if they already want something alcoholic. They invited me to go get drunk with them and after carefully considering their offer I decided that it wasn’t worth risking the reputation that I had built up by drinking at nine in the morning. One of them told me that ikigage is for the morning and water is for the evening.

After finishing my water at 9:30 I decided to return home and refill. I told the housekeeper when she asked me about umuganda that they weren’t doing anything, but that I was going back out anyways. On my way back out a girl whose name I didn’t really catch, but didn’t correct me when I started calling her Ashanti, asked me where I was going and when I told her umuganda. She let me know that I was going the wrong way. Unlike everyone I was hanging out with in the village center Ashanti was on her way to do her civic duty. I walked with her over to the quarry, stopping along the way to give someone who was digging a ditch a drink. He turned out to be my neighbor that is only home on the weekends and hadn’t met yet. When I started loading up my backpack with rocks everyone started laughing after the first rock, then after the second they were seemed impressed, then after the third rock they seemed shocked, when I reached for a fourth rock they shouted at me to stop. I decided they were right and I didn’t need to take that fourth one, but I did carry a small one in my hands. Each of the rocks that I took I wanna guess weighed between ten and twenty pounds and the one in my hands was about five. Ashanti took one that was probably about seven pounds. We walked up the mountain together greeting everyone we came upon. When we reached our destination the people who had already finished carrying rocks up were resting and some of them laughed at me because they thought I had only brought up the one small rock in my hand. I tossed that one on the pile and then removed my bag and unloaded it to gasps and cheers. Everyone was thanking me and my reply was the same to all of them, “Ntakibazo, nkunda gufasha.” – no problem I like to help.

I made my way back down the mountain with Magenzi the village boss and Stan the grounds keeper at the health center. They are the kind of people that I want to be. These guys are running the show trying to develop the community. They both thanked me for helping and I thanked them as well for their organizing.

That night there was another guy who started making fun of me for only carrying up a small rock to which I became defensive about and told him about the rocks I had in my bag. I also visited my neighbor later who saw me loading the rocks into my bag. She told me how impressed she was and that made me feel good. It feels good to be recognized for helping, but I don’t need recognition so for all of the other people who thought I only carried up one small rock I am not going to argue with you if you want to laugh at me, but come on man, I bet I carried up more than you did.

One of the conversations I had that morning was with a guy who asked if they did umuganda in America. The obvious answer is no because what we do is different. In America we are required to pay taxes and then we have people whose full time job is to do what they do for umuganda. He also asked me about the machines and told me that they don’t have any in Rwanda. I proved him wrong immediately by pointing to a motorcycle and a truck transporting the newest shipment of tea and asked him what those were, but he isn’t all wrong. America has machinery that unless you are trained to use it you really shouldn’t touch it so that wouldn’t be a good idea for umuganda. Americans do umuganda though. The L.I.V.I.N.G. Ministry does umuganda in a very similar fashion to Rwanda. They don’t have the best tools or materials, but they have people donating their day off to work to improve the community.

The Gorilla Naming Ceremony from in the crowd.

My buddy Jonathan and I at the school’s African Child Ceremony.

Children dressed in gorilla costumes. Still haven’t seen any real ones though.

Me in my gorilla pose.