Living and Loving and Hating Rwanda

I’ve been in Rwanda for 3 years now, and today marks 3 months until I leave for at least 3 years.  As the big transition quickly creeps up on me, I find myself saying 2 things with increasing regularity, “______ is something I’ll miss about Rwanda,” and “I will NOT miss _______ when I leave Rwanda.”  This blog post will showcase a few things I love and hate about Rwanda at this juncture.

1.  I hate going to the bank.  Back in January, I did a teacher in-service training for a school about an hour away which was super fun.  I got to throwback to my days as an outdoor educator and do teambuilding exercises with 12 Rwandan teachers.  A few weeks later, I received a check for my work.  One day, I was in town and drove around for a while searching for the correct bank at which to cash my check.  I popped in to the bank where I was forced to touch a screen which would print a number for me to watch for above a teller’s station.  I wasn’t exactly sure which button to push, as none of them said anything about cashing checks, so to increase my odds of being prioritized, I pushed multiple buttons, and took multiple numbers.  And then I waited.  And I waited.  And finally, after about 30 minutes, my number came up above a teller!  I went to said teller, gave her my check and a copy of my passport, and she clacked about on her computer for a bit and then signed my check and gave it back to me and told me she was just a supervisor, but now I could wait for my number to get my cash.  Seriously!?  So I waited.  And I waited.  And I waited.  And finally, about 45 minutes later, one of my numbers popped up for another teller who clacked about on her computer, moseyed over to talk to the supervisor, made a copy of my copy of my passport, and finally gave me the 32,500 RWF I came for.  So, I drove my scooter an hour away, led a training for 2 hours, drove my scooter back an hour and got paid about $50, a reasonable $12.50 per hour, but then my search for the bank and subsequent wait for the money reduced my lucrative salary to about $8 per hour.  Next time, I’ll ask for payment in cash.

2. I love the doctor and the pharmacy.  Okay, don’t get me wrong, I don’t like being perpetually ill as I have been for a month now, but I do love that when I am in need of medical treatment, it is readily available without insurance for dirt cheap.  I have had 3 different doctor visits, 2 stool tests, 2 blood tests, 2 courses of antibiotics, 3 other medications, and spent less than the $50 I made in those 5.5 hours of driving, teaching, and waiting.  A fourth consultation occurred via text message prompting me to go to the pharmacy, read my text from the doctor to the pharmacist, and walk away with 22 pills for less than $1.  Can’t beat that…

3.   I hate that I regularly have to go to at least 3 supermarkets to get what I’m looking for.  The other day, in preparation for my pirate parrrrty (see photos on Facebook), I needed crème fraiche for my deviled eggs (well, really I needed sour cream, but substitutions are normal in these parts).  What should have been a quick stop on the way home from school turned into a 30-minute search all over town for a supermarket with crème fraiche.  Finally, by the fifth supermarket, I was on my way to making No Mayo Deviled Eggs.  (Don’t ask about how long THAT took.  Also, don’t ask how many places I went to find Sprite, or 350 gold coins for a party game… Okay fine, 2 hours, 5, and 9, respectively).

4.  I love the courier service.  On Sunday, Patrick, the boy I sponsor to go to boarding school 2 hours north of here called to inform me that someone had stolen his shoes.  Fortunately, we have the same size feet, and I was just wearing out my second to last pair of running shoes, so I could send him a pair without having to brave the market.  So, get this:  I put the shoes in a paper bag, write his name and phone number on it, give it (and 5,000RWF) to my day guard, Magnifique, who then takes a moto taxi to Nyabugogo and goes to the bus station where he pays 2,000RWF, texts me the code, which I text to Patrick, and then Magnifique motos back home, and that afternoon, Patrick has new shoes!  They just put shoes on a bus going that way, drop them off at the station, and he walks to town and picks them up.  All for less than $3. 

5.  I hate how pedestrians disregard vehicles, especially my scooter, but I loved how an old lady today made a joke with me on my way to school acting like I was a moto taxi and asking how much it would cost to drive to the nearby hospital.  Generally humor doesn’t translate around here, but she was funny, and we both knew it!  Made my day.

...I hate the poverty and injustice and prevalence of mayonnaise.  I love the weather and the people and their outfits.  I will miss making things clearer by speaking a beautiful blend of Kinyarwanda and English.  I won’t miss the strings of 10 phone calls from strangers in the middle of the night.  I won’t miss living in a gated compound, but I will miss the guys who open that gate for me...

I love and hate this place, and I love and hate that I’m leaving.  

To Market, to Market...

Before I went to London for Christmas, I did some shopping at the local market.  I made three exceptional purchases:  a pair of brand new size 8 long GAP Always Skinny jeans (MSRP $69) for 10,000RWF ($15), a North Face Windwall jacket (MSRP $120) for 5,000RWF ($8), and a long Vero Moda DOWN jacket with a hood (MSRP $150) for 10,000RWF ($15).  And that was me getting ripped off because I’m white! Here I am wearing all 3:

The only thing I set out to purchase but didn’t find was a pair of black leather boots.  In my pursuit of boots, though, I found a pair of shoes that looked strikingly familiar.  I’m now going to tell you a possible story of that pair of shoes.

Once upon a time (in say, 2002 or so), a high school girl went shopping with her mother at a Target in a medium sized town down south.  On that fateful day, the girl’s mom bought her a pair of shoes.  Black flats with a strap over the front with a little black bow, size 9 ½.  Knowing this girl’s mom, the shoes likely did not cost more than $19.99.  That girl wore those shoes to school with jeans and a black shirt.  She wore them to church with a black dress.  She wore them to the mall and the movies and her friends’ houses.  Such versatile shoes were hard to come by, but she had found them!

Needless to say, when said girl was packing for college, she packed those shoes.  She wore them to class regularly (well, actually only when she was wearing black… she had shoes in every color so she never had to wear black shoes with say, a red shirt).  She wore them to the dining hall and to church.  And one Sunday (in say 2007) at church, the pastor announced a shoe drive.  A collection of shoes to go to an organization that sends shoes to people in need.  To women affected by hurricanes and AIDS and floods and famines and things of the sort. 

Now, this girl had a LOT of shoes AND a serious matchy-matchy problem.  Like, she had over 100 pairs of shoes, and there were certain shoes that she had that went with one particular shirt (with matching belt and earrings) and she would never dare wear them with anything other than that shirt that matched them PERFECTLY.  She saw the shoe drive as a step in the right direction for solving her problem.  If she didn’t have 100 pairs of shoes, she couldn’t possibly be so obnoxiously matchy-matchy.  So she decided deep down in her soul to give away her soles.  She gathered up 75 pairs of shoes into several trash bags and brought them with her to church the next Sunday. 

You may have guessed that that pair of Target black flats, size 9 ½ were amongst the shoes she donated that day.  Several times over the course of the next few years, she yearned to wear those shoes but remembered her selfless donation and hoped that some poor woman affected by a hurricane or AIDS or a flood or a famine or something of the sort was thoroughly enjoying those shoes.

After she graduated from college and worked a couple of years in seasonal, residential jobs, that girl moved to Africa where women are affected by AIDS and floods and famines and such.  Since the equator is so warm, she rarely wore closed-toed shoes, but one December, she decided to go north for the holidays.  She needed a pair of shoes that would cover her toes and be versatile enough to wear with most anything.  So, she went to the market.

Searching for a pair of black shoes her size, that girl came across a pair in her size, mind you, that looked strikingly familiar….  Remembering how much she loved those shoes back in high school and college, she inquired about the price of said shoes.  20,000RWF ($30).  Needless to say, that girl did not purchase said shoes, but did enjoy speculating about the journey those shoes had made in the past 10 years.

Presumably, they were manufactured in southeast Asia, Indonesia with probably $3 worth of materials, perhaps by a person who made MAYBE $1 a day.  Then they were shipped off to America in a big boat and landed in a port where they were put in a big truck and driven down south and delivered to Target.  They were labeled with a price of $19.99 and sold to a high school girl.  She wore them for 5 years and then donated them to a charity that sends shoes to people in need.  They were stuck on a truck and driven to Texas, the home of the charity where they were packaged and stuck on another truck to a port where they were put on a boat and sent to another port where they got on another truck and ended up at a market in Rwanda.  Someone with a stall in that market paid the shipper 5,000RWF ($8) for the chance to sell those shoes to an unsuspecting muzungu.  And suddenly, that pair of shoes that was worth $3 (plus the $1 of labor, I suppose) is re-available to that girl for a mere $30, should she choose to buy them and give that supposed poor woman in Africa who is suffering from AIDS or floods or famine $22 or 11x a typical day’s wage for the average Rwandan.  She did not make such a choice. 

And that, my friends, is the story of those strikingly familiar-looking shoes as I see it.

Thanksgiving

So, yesterday was Thanksgiving, my third Thanksgiving in Rwanda.  Thanksgiving 2010 was the first day of freedom from doctor-ordered bed rest from malaria.  I went straight from the clinic to the Bennetts’ house where I ate like someone who hadn’t eaten for 3 weeks, as I (someone who had lost 18 pounds from not eating in the previous 3 weeks) felt I had every right to do.  Thanksgiving 2011 was a bit healthier (but not in terms of the food consumed) and also spent at the Bennetts with 3 turkeys cooked up straight from the backyard and 3 tables of people celebrating together.

Thanksgiving 2012 was a bit different.  The Bennetts and their whole mission were gone on a retreat, but keeping in step with tradition, I still had Thanksgiving at their house.  I acquired a new sense of appreciation for the two Thanksgivings before as I played host and cooked a bit myself.

It was a long, but beautiful day. I work at an international school. While the highest percentage nationality is American, we are by no means the majority.  The compromise is a half-day on Thanksgiving Day and the day off on Friday.  After the bell rang at noon, I directed a piano tuner to my house and took psychological tests for graduate school admissions while he tuned our horrifically out of tune piano.  Then Natalie and I packed up our supplies and headed to the supermarket.  Nothing is closed on Thanksgiving here, so we had no problem doing our shopping right before doing our cooking.  Except that, as usual, multiple necessary ingredients were unavailable at the supermarket of our choice… We’ve learned to adapt.

We got to the Bennetts’ house and started to cook around 3.  I whipped up 2 good casseroles, and what should have taken an hour at best took a good 3 hours.  We joke about the Pinterest pins that boast of amazing dishes with JUST 3 INGREDIENTS! and how each of those 3 ingredients requires a good 10 ingredients here to create a similar effect.

For example, chewy no-bake cookies and cream bars.  3 ingredients:  Oreos, marshmallows, and butter.  Butter- check! Oreos?- butter, sugar, vanilla extract (hopefully you brought a year’s supply from the States!), semi-sweet chocolate chips (maybe you can find a bar of dark chocolate that you can now cut into tiny pieces), egg, flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking soda, confectioners’ sugar, milk… and at least 3 hours of work- check!  Marshmallows- first ingredient gelatin- not available in Rwanda, and Pinterest FAIL.

So, back to my casseroles.  I used my mom’s trusty sweet potato casserole recipe.  Only 3 of the ingredients posed some difficulty- can of yams, packed brown sugar, chopped pecans.  So, I sent my worker to the market to buy a kilo of sweet potatoes (which are very dense and white inside) which I baked for an hour and peeled and mashed for another half hour.  I added a little molasses to the raw sugar, and I substituted almonds for pecans.  It was no mom’s sweet potato casserole, but it tasted all right.

We were going to be lacking in vegetables, so I wanted to find a recipe to fill that void.  Cauliflower and broccoli casserole.  Perfect.  So, again, rather than grab a bag of frozen California mixed vegetables, I acquired a head of cauliflower and a head of broccoli from the market.  Next, rice, onion, butter.  No problem.  And then 1 pound of processed cheese food AKA Velveeta.  We don’t exactly have Velveeta readily available, but we DO have Nouvelle Vache AKA Happy Cow cheese.  Google how many grams in a pound:  453.  120g per package, so I bought 4 boxes and I unwrapped 30 portions.  I didn’t have to cube it, though, because it was in nice workable wedges.  Cream of chicken soup- no Campbell’s here!  I heated up some cow’s milk straight from the dairy, added a couple bouillon cubes and some flour, and oui la!  Then the Ritz crackers.  Well, the German Butchery rarely sells anything with English written on it, but my basic French told me that Petit Beurre means small butter and that surely those crackers would suffice.  Plus there was a picture of wheat on the package.  Suffice it to say that my basic French failed me and I ended up with shortbread cookies instead.  Oops!  Good thing Barb had an opened package of some sort of crackers on the counter…

All in all it was a successful meal, albeit a lot of work!  We had chicken, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, broccoli and cauliflower casserole, corn casserole, fruit salad, green salad, green beans, saffron rolls, mashed potatoes, rhubarb pie, and pumpkin pie.  The 7 of us ate approximately 1/3 of the food available which means no cooking for the whole weekend (as though I would cook anything other than my usual Ramen or fried eggs, anyway).

Follow a hearty meal with an additional 7 friends and a rousing game of Taboo, and I’d say it was a pretty successful Thanksgiving. 

I am thankful to have a loyal house worker to do my bargaining at the market and wash the dishes and the floors and my clothes.  I’m thankful for a wonderful roommate and the company she provided in the kitchen all afternoon.  I’m thankful for plenty of food in a land where many go without.  I’m thankful for friends and fun and a day and a half off to think on what I’m thankful for.

Some Days

Some days are really awesome, like really, really awesome.

And some days the ATM “detains” your debit card…

And some days your left shoe breaks rendering itself unwearable in the middle of the day…

And some days you spend 20 minutes on Skype with Apple Support describing how iMovie freezes your computer, when you open iMovie and freeze your computer rendering your Skype unusable…

And some days you spend another 20 minutes explaining the same situation to another Apple Support man when your computer freezes again re-rendering your Skype unusable…

And some days after you spend another 20 minutes explaining the same situation, they finally give you someone with a call back number who, after you call them back after your computer freezes again re-re-rendering your Skype unusable, cannot actually solve your problem but will pass it on to the engineers who will get back to you in 2-3 business days…

And then some days you go to the store to buy juice and realize you left your wallet at school…

And some days you go to school and realize that your wallet was actually in your purse the whole time…

And some days you go home and unlock your bedroom door to find that the lovely afternoon rain has flooded your bedroom…

And some days an invitation to a southern friend’s house for some biscuits and gravy rights everything that is wrong with the world.

First World Problems in the Third World

So, I got back to Rwanda Thursday evening, and the Olympics opening ceremony took place the very next night.  Several things to note about this beloved occurrence that happens only once every four (okay, two) years:

I don’t have TV at my house, so I attempted to find the opening ceremony streaming live on the Internet, which it was by BBC… if you happened to be in Great Britain. I searched a bit further and found that the Olympics were being broadcast online all around the world… in 68 whole countries.  That’s 136 fewer countries than are represented in the Games, and as you might have guessed, Rwanda doesn’t rank in the top 68 countries on the worldwide web.  So, being American and all, I checked out NBC, which was showing the opening ceremony three and a half hours after it actually happened but only to people who have cable and are in the US.

Out of luck?  Not so much.  I found a stream of the BBC coverage online somewhere! But, only so many feeds were available in my country, and I was not one of the lucky winners, unless I wanted to pay $9.99 for the month.  After much deliberation, I decided it was a wise investment, as I would likely spend far more than that on drinks at restaurants where I could go to watch the Olympics for “free.”  So, I paid ten bucks to watch the Olympics for a month, and what do you know?  As soon as I paid it, the feeds got reallllllly bad, so I kept up with things via Twitter.  Just as I started to find better feeds, they started getting pulled, purportedly because it was not yet showing in the US and NBC was cranky about people seeing the ceremony live.

But did that thwart me?  Nope.  I found another feed from CTV in Canada to watch the parade of nations live.  And do you know what they did?  Went to a commercial break right before Adrien Niyonshuti and the rest of the Rwandan team entered the stadium. 

So then, I waited until the ceremony was playing in the US (which was about 1:30am here), and I watched that thing, by golly.  And I saw Adrien carry the Rwandan flag with his game face on, and thanks to jet lag, I wasn’t even that tired when the US team entered the stadium at 5am.  I went to sleep before they lit the flame, but then I woke up this morning at 10:30, just in time to see a rerun of the lighting of the cauldron.  Who knew I could have just gone to sleep like a normal human being and woken up at a decent hour to watch the whole thing?

Watching the coverage from three different countries was very telling about their different cultures.  The BBC had VERY few commercials.  NBC had them every ten minutes.  CTV fell somewhere in between.  And now I’m watching Eurosports coverage and the announcer just wished the American swimmer would slow down so a Brit could qualify, which is not something I’ve ever heard while watching the Olympics before…