Water and Energy Conservation

 

When I was living at home and then in the dorms at college I never thought twice about wasting energy or water. At home my parents were paying for it and then in the college dorms it was included in the cost of the room. Junior year I moved into my first apartment with my buddies and we had to pay for the utilities. My roommate Chris, aka Cdogg, had lived in an apartment the year before so he was already good at being efficient but I wasn’t. He was always reprimanding me for forgetting to turn the light off in the bathroom or turning off the tv, that I always had too loud for our little apartment, when I fell asleep on the couch with my shoes on.

Then I lived with Matt, aka Magnum. Matt is a conservationist. He donates to the Sierra club enough to get free address labels from them and tries his best to make an urban garden. After living with Chris I thought I was pretty good at turning out the lights, but I had to improve in order to make Matt happy. Matt didn’t use the dishwasher and he turned the thermostat down even though our gas was covered by the landlord who still charged us too much. I even found myself taking up Matt’s cause the next year when I was getting angry at JB, aka Josh, for leaving lights on and I was a jerk when I yelled at him for using his space heater the one day when it was like 60 out.

I am very happy to have electricity here in Rwanda and I think that I am in the minority for that category. Chris and Matt prepared me for my energy situation here because electricity is on a prepaid system. If I use too much I gotta go to the store pay to load more power.

Nothing however prepared me for not having running water. It seems kinda backwards to have electricity but not water. The ancient Romans and Persians had running water. Piping is a lot harder to install than wiring though so I understand why it is like this. What I do have is gutter on my roof that leads to a cistern. Our cistern’s water level has consistently been getting lower since I moved in, and I recently realized that most of the water collected by the gutter doesn’t make it to cistern because of some leaks in the gutter. So what I started doing is when it rains I put buckets under the leaks to collect more of the water. Yesterday I put the buckets out and collected a lot of water in them and then today it rained for about eight hours. I was able to fill up all of our containers completely. I also started doing the dishes using the water leaking from the gutter. It was almost like having a sink. While I was doing this it reminded me of an argument I had with another roommate from last year, Eric aka Jackhammer. We argued over how I used a sponge on the floor and he considered this to be unsanitary and I said it doesn’t matter because the soap is what cleans the dishes no matter how disgusting the sponges are. It seems like such a dumb argument looking back on it. We both must have been having a bad day. I wonder how Eric would feel about the way I do dishes here. I use the same soap that we use for laundry, and the water just came off of the dirty tin roof. I think Matt would be proud though because even though our water was paid for last year he still would stop up the sink and use it as a basin in order to save water while I would just let the water run and admittedly use a lot more that I needed. But using cold water when it was warmer out didn’t bother me.

When we were in training they told us some crazy statistic about how Rwandans only use one liter of water a day or something like that. It sounded made up at the time and I have come to the conclusion that it isn’t because they are conscientious of how much water they use. It is because a lot of them don’t have the collection systems/water connection to have enough water to be wasteful. Also showers are pretty rare; I bathe out of a bucket about twice a week. I have come to this conclusion because I have a maid named Charlotte. She cooks and cleans for us and we pay her about twelve dollars a month and that is after a raise from the previous month when we paid her more like eight. I have watched her use our water and she makes no effort to conserve it. I feel like I have to refill our jugs anytime I want to use them because she always leaves them empty. She is nice and a single mother who lives at her parent’s house and brings her baby to work with her, but her baby’s crying is annoying and she breast feeds her right in front of me, and Devin is suspicious that she is stealing cooking oil from us.

I believe that Americans are wasteful, but it is really because we have the availability of resources and not because we are necessarily more wasteful than Rwandans or other cultures. It is like when a dog gets its hands on a bag of candy. The dog is going to keep eating the candy until it is sick and then it will start vomiting everywhere and will probably follow that by eating the vomit. Even though we do not eat vomit we are the same way because we will continue to use what we think we want until it ends up costing too much(the cost includes things other than money) and then keep using it. This is one of the one of the water collection systems for the town. I think that is a 5000 liter tank. This is at the health center where Devin and Irene work. Gutters leading into a large tank seems to the best/cheapest technology available.

This looks to me like it is a water tank, but I’m not sure and no one I asked knew either.

This looks like a water collection pit/well, but I have no idea how or if they use it.

This is another view of that last one. I want to know how they use this crane looking thing.

That is it for my village as far as water collection goes. I’m sure they have something else at the tea factory though because they need water there too.

This is me at school in my “teacher uniform”

The beginning of “English Club” (I should just call it film club because I just show movies on my laptop every week) by the end I will have more like 20 students compared to the 100 that I start with. The movie I think held their attention the best was James Bond.

KOBOYI spilled the beans.

Mist filled valley outside my house.

Living in Mulindi

I have been living in Mulindi for over a month now and everything is going great. I have made a lot of friends and I just got a cat yesterday that Lucy picked up in Kigali. Devin and I named the cat KOBOYI Wigwam. Its like the Rwandan names. Devin came up with both parts of the name and asked for my approval. Lucy got one too but hasn’t named it yet. We didn’t check with our landlord. I hope its not a problem.

At School I feel like I have hit a stride with teaching. Although I know that they do not understand a lot of what I say planning lessons has become easy. At least for math class. English class takes a little more creativity. My favorite lesson I have done so far is when I taught the Star Spangled Banner last week. After I finished singing it I had them sing Rwanda Nziza for me. I feel like I hit all three of the Peace Corps’ goals in that class. I hope they try to learn the Star Spangled Banner because I’m gonna try to learn Rwanda Nziza. Another thing that worked great for the most part is something that I’m sure English trainer Allison would have never taught us, but thanks to Math trainer John I had them grade each others tests. It was obvious they had never done this before because it was pretty chaotic. After class the class chief told me how he thought it was a bad way to grade because he was concerned about the points. I care a lot more about whether they are learning the material than what they score on their test though so I explained to him how I saw that there was 100% participation and for the problems the students had gotten right or wrong they had no other choice but to see what it should be because they have to grade the other person’s test. If this leads to grade inflation and cheating I will deal with that later. What they score in my class isn’t going to matter really when they take the national exam. I also told him that if there is a problem with the grading they can come to me with it and I will correct it, which I feel is another benefit because they have to take responsibility for their grades. The most obvious benefit that I didn’t mention to him though is that it saves me a lot time. I hate grading.

At home everything is going great as well. I still love my roommates and I’m getting to know them pretty well. We play games, watch movies, and cook together. Last week we baked a pineapple upside down cake when Lucy came over that was dericious. I have gotten a bookshelf and a table for my room so my stuff is no longer all over the floor. We started a garden. At least we dug up an area where a garden will go. We still need plants. Devin and Irene are both doing well and we all love our new cat.

Another thing I love about here is the views. This is definitely the most beautiful place I have ever lived. I wake up many days and descend into the mist filled valley where my school is built.

Not everything is perfect though I am still struggling with learning Kinyarwanda, I am not too discouraged because I’m only one month out of training. What is frustrating is the extra language here. All of Rwanda speaks Kinyarwanda, but in my region they also speak Igikiga. When I say all of Rwanda I do not mean all Rwandans either. There are a lot here who may know less Kinyarwanda than I do, but that’s really not too likely. Kinyarwanda and Igikiga sound similar as well so when people are speaking a lot of the time I don’t know if it is in Kinyarwanda or Igikia. Except this one woman who works at a shop near my house who always says hello to me in Igikiga. Another thing is that the Kinyarwanda they taught us in training sounds different that what they speak here probably because of the Igikiga so I have had to relearn a lot of words I thought I had down. In the whole world Kinyarwanda is only spoken in Rwanda and it is not the most localized language that they speak in Mulindi. Also in the region they speak French and Swahili. So if I am diligent in studying I have the chance to come out of this experience pentilingual. I am not expecting this of myself of course, and the day that I can consider myself bilingual will call for a celebration. BYAAA!! There are a lot of other things I’d rather learn than Igikiga, but it could help me when traveling in Uganda even though I hear they speak English there. And I’m here so I might as well give it a shot. At school they speak Kinyarwanda though.

At Church today I was sitting there thinking while trying my best to listen to the sermon while a kind man next to me translates everything for me. The translating was really great when I first got here, but now its kind of annoying because I want to try and make out what they are saying on my own. I let him translate the sermon, but I told him to stop translating the songs. While I was sitting there with this guy talking my ear off I started making more comparisons with this church and the American church. Churches like this one in America have always seemed fake to me. The feel like such a performance. They are like that scene in Borat. He goes to the large megachurch and they are all running up and down the aisles, dancing and screaming. I think that scene in Borat is very funny, but it also makes me extremely sad and upset. Here it seems so much more genuine because they have so little. I know that there isn’t really a correlation between a persons possessions and their behavior and the problems in that we experience in America are just as real as they are here, but when Rwandans cry out for God’s help and love it is easier for me to believe they are earnestly want it. I say want also because I believe that everyone needs it and all that we have to do is want it. It is very important for a Christian to be genuine. Christians need to be transparent to the rest of the world. It is very hard to be that honest, but that is what Jesus calls us to be. I miss my church North Way back in Pittsburgh a lot as well as my bible study and discipleship group, and now that I have offended everyone who wasn’t in one of those and probably some of them who were let me end this bog with a picture of kittens.

KOBOYI Wigwam is on the right and the grey one is his brother.

These are my own opinions and do not represent those of the Peace Corps.

Heroes Day

Tuesday was Heroes Day so I had the day off. Heroes Day is a day to remember Rwanda’s heroes. I would say that it is most like Memorial Day for the US. From what I understand they have a list of heroes made up by the government. I think that everyone on the list has already died. The night before we tried to bake a cake in an oven made of a smaller pot in a larger pot that we learned how to build in training. We have also baked bread in this oven the week before that turned out really good. While we were mixing the ingredients I started calling it hero’s cake. After I got the charcoal lit on the first try for the first time we baked it for two hours. The hero’s cake although delicious wasn’t finished, but we didn’t want to wait for it any longer. Devin said that it was appropriate because it was a lot like a hero that was taken away before finishing the fight. I responded by calling it an anti-hero cake. Irene didn’t like the cake too much. She said it was too sweet. I think that it might have been the syrup we poured on it as a sort of frosting.

On Heroes Day I went looking for any kind of celebration because earlier that week the Peace Corps Country Director said that there would be local celebrations. Irene told us that they only celebrate in Kigali though and she was right. At least they don’t throw a celebration in Mulindi which is a little strange because Mulindi’s nick name is the land of heroes because here is where Paul Kagame’s forces base was during the genocide. I did stumble upon a meeting/fundraiser being held about what the town’s next service project should be. I contributed a little and met the head of the village which may change pretty soon because today is elections for the local government throughout the country which means I get another day off. I haven’t had to work much this week. If nothing else talking about the next service project for the town is pretty heroic so after that I was pretty satisfied. Later, Tito, one of the teachers from training came and visited me and we went out to a restaurant where he tutored me in Kinyarwanda a little. He is still looking for a new job. It was great seeing a familiar face. It was pretty heroic of him to come.

Some other hero stories from this week include one where Irene had a Spiderman bag and I told her that Spiderman is a hero and she disagreed with that completely. Spiderman in Kinyarwanda is Igitagangurirwa-umugabo. I learned that word because our house is infested with spiders and they still scare me daily. Another story I have is about yesterday where in my English class we talked about heroes. I asked them to tell me who one of the heroes was then what they did and finally we transformed the two or three sentences into one connecting the clauses using who. For example: King Muhata III (probably not really his name because I can’t remember what his name was) who gave away cows and fought against the colonists expanded the kingdom of Rwanda. This lesson elicited excellent participation and was a lot of fun. The last hero story I have is about how Devin goes to Bgomba secondary school which is between four and five miles away for two hours on Mondays and Wednesdays for English Club to try help the senior 3 students there. I went with her on Wednesday to help out. Bgomba is in much worse shape than the school where I teach. I don’t think that the student’s English ability is worse in comparison to my students, but they are one year closer to taking the national exam and they are definitely not ready for that. My school has nicer classrooms and more resources, but Mulindi is a boarding school and Bgomba is a public school. I think the administration at Bgomba from what I saw is trying to improve their facilities as well so that is pretty heroic too.

This is the view of Mulindi that I get walking down from my house. 

Here is a series of views of and around ES Mulindi

The classes I teach in are in the building on the left.

The Cafeteria

Around back

One of my classes

Working on the basketball court.