good eats

Rabbit is a common meat in Bungwe; they're small enough --and quick enough in reproducing-- that you can eat it in a day. Cows would be too much meat and money for our little village. I think I can get goat or sheep meat at our market--Tuesdays only, when I'm working!

In my front yard we planted irish potatoes and carrots under the papaya tree. The dark spots on the left are the holes we dug to put manure (fresh from our cows!) and the potatoes in. On the right are the rows of freshly planted carrots.


Ardo is 100% afraid of my hair (he calls it bugs) and is the cutest little helper. He's the youngest of 4 and loves to help my friend Marita (his mom) peel irish potatoes. At 2 years old.


My mom is cooking dinner! This is a cement stove she uses fire wood with to cook quickly-- quickly compared to the small square stove in the foreground that uses charcoal. The pot is upside down to act as a lid to help the food cook even quicker.



I uncovered the pot! Inside: beans, veggies, and sweet potatoes covered in banana leaves to cook even more efficiently.


Lunch at school: they bring out big pots of beans with the occasional vegetable in it. This is another teacher helping me by holding the pot up while I scoop onto my plate.

My food! Today was my favorite: rice and beans with some lettuce. Yummy!

A typical day I'll eat a piece of bread with tea (Rwandan tea leaves, water, milk, and plenty of sugar; the African way) that I buy and enjoy at one of our 4 cafes in town. I usually go to Brandine's as she's got the most centrally located cafe (across the street from the health center) she's my good friend (I put her pic up somewhere on one of these blog entries), and EVERYONE goes there (nurses crack me up: they begin work at 7am, then around 8:30 or 9 they just sort of start wandering over like 1 or 2 at a time for tea).
Lunch starts at 12:25 at school, but the kitchen staff usually brings out the food like 1:00. I grab my plate (bought it at a boutique down the street) and spoon, keep them in the desk I'm sitting and grading at, and as soon as I see the food train come in the door, I grab my utinsils, rush over to beat the crowd, and get the "muzungu" status: they don't push me out of the way, but wait till I finish serving myself before slapping hands out of the way and letting hunger get the better of them. Usually (like 99.5% of the time) we have beans and irish potatoes (basically smaller, round potatoes compared to russet). Sometimes we get cabbage, carrots, or shallots chopped up in the bean sauce, too! Or we get ubugali, a flour and water mixture traditionally eaten with the fingers. But, as soon as the kitchen guys bring in our 3 huge pots of food, its a mad rush of teachers to crowd around, push, shove, and try to get food on our plates (and the floors, tables, and chairs...) Some surprises you may find in the beans: stems, sand, pebbles.
If I want a snack later I might get a hard boiled egg, bread, or tea at Brandine's Bar again.
Dinner is with my best friend in the village or my host family: any variety of french fries (potatoes pulled fresh from the front yard, washed, peeled, fried and enjoyed), rice, boiled bananas (also taken from some local source), beans (definitely grown in our back yard), shallots (even I can pick these: they grow on a vine holding up our fence around the house), and some sort of tomato based sauce.
I love it! Its all so simple and I've never been so regular in 2 years (hmmm.... fancy that! The time I've been in Africa= the time I've not been... "regular") I could eat beans, rice and fries every day.
Sometimes we have milk as a snack or soured milk as a meal. yes, soured milk. It is delicious! In West Africa they put some sugar in it, but here they just drink it straight.
Its a simple diet, but delicious.

Use Water Wisely!

We Californians are always being warned of the water shortage, especially in So Cal, and people are advised to cut water usage by running sprinklers at night, turning off faucets, etc. Even my title "Use Water Wisely" is stolen from my 5th grade poster competition to encourage students to conserve water. Oh, California! This is how I now have to get, use, and conserve my water:

1. I put a bucket under my roof to collect rain water.
2. Water is poured with a pitcher into the "inside" bucket, leaving out any bugs, leaves, or dirt that made their way in.
3. An old shampoo bottle (1/3L)serves as my "shower" to best control the flow's amount and aim.
4. I usually leave about 1/8 of the bottle full to effectively wash some underwear.
5. Rwandan women--and myself--bathe in the saloon/living room so that AFTER bathing, we use the water on the floor to CLEAN the floors.
6. On hair washing days, I double the amount of water I use (up to almost 1L!) but am very controlled, keeping it in a bucket. Once my hair is clean, I use the same water to wash like 3-4 shirts. Then wash the walls and/or dishes and/or toilet.

Ok, so to be fair if I were cooking daily (I eat at school for lunch and with friends for dinner) I'd use much more water, but with this method I survive on like 1 liter per day (washing hands or random utensils adds up, too!)

PS I won the poster contest in my 5th grade classroom, continuing to the school district or something. But I cheated. My mom drew the poster, I just colored it in. (ah! I feel much better now that's off my chest! Does my 5th grade teacher read this?)

Grades in Rwanda

First of all, our grades are done by hand. So in the first trimester I had my little print out of all my students (9 classes, 400 students), complete with little scribbles, crossing outs, side notes, and a pronunciation guide (can you imagine trying to call out names like: Ndasengirumva, Umugwaneza, Irakizamugisha, or Nyiransabimana say them: ...oh, gosh, never mind!) Then I was shamed when all the students want to see their grades and condescendingly look at my scrappy grading sheet. But that was the least of my problems.

After weekly writing assignments, reading each of my 400 students' papers individually and giving out grades for all of them, we were asked to prepare grades before finals. Of course. No problem! But because I teach each class for 2 hours a week, the grades have to be out of 20. Oh. Alright, I can understand its a different system. I get it. And I have to give each of my classes' grades to a different teacher: Each class has a teacher that collects the grades from the other teachers, hand copies the students' grades onto one master sheet per class, then gives THAT to the secretary to type into the school's ONE computer. Right. NO mistakes, I'm sure...

Then, after finals, we have to finish administering tests (different tests for each class, as the kids are allowed to take the test with them when they finish writing their answers onto the provided papers) so that kids can't cheat, we have until Monday to turn in our final grades. I was so ready! 20 point scale! Done! I had my classwork numbers added to my exam numbers, averaged out, calculated, and changed to a 20 point scale, hand written for each student, and given to the appropriate teacher. Oh, but they didn't tell me is 20 points for CLASSWORK and 20 separate points for FINAL EXAMS. ARGH! My students already lost or gained points in my changing scales, "translating" numbers, and doing weird math things to it!

So, unfortunately, some of my grades, well like 99% of them, were WRONG on students' report cards. I'm only totally embarrassed, but the KIDS are haranguing me about what the proper grade should be, and "Teacher! What's wrong with my marks?!" when can they be fixed? how will you fix them? and on and on! And I don't blame them! I'd be totally upset if my grade was lower than what I actually earned in any class!

This trimester I'm ready. I've planned out how many quizzes to give to fit the 20 point scale, when to give them to best prepare students, and just be on top of my game! 5 quizzes this trimester, 4 points each, no problem. Until they just asked for the first quarter of the trimester grade reports. Sigh. Really? So my kids have just one quiz, tongue twisters (graded on pronunciation, capacity to adjust with my help, volume, presentation, and composure). 4 points. So I had to readjust my scaling. Again. Wow.


The good news is that the kids just think I'm a funny American and are pretty forgiving. Teachers must think I'm totally incompetent. And at the end of the day I'm still laughing... at myself!

Just a try

So, I'm jsut throwing this out there: if you want a high school pen pal in Rwanda, there are hundreds--and then some-- that would absolutely LOVE to have someone to practice their writing with!

(Now I don't have to lie when they ask if I've tried or not... ;)

Memorial Week in Rwanda

We're at the end of our 2 weeks of spring break. I wanted to go traveling, but from April 7th to the 13th we also had the National Week of Mourning for the 1994 genocide and I wanted to be in my village with them to experience it and support them. So some of the other PCVs went to Ethiopia, Kampala (Uganda), or others' villages, but I enjoyed just being in the village with my local friends.


Every day for a week people could only work in the mornings, each afternoon people would group together according to oumoudougoudou (say it: oo-moo-DO-goo-do, all the same "ooo" vowel sound, it means neighborhood) and local officials (like my host mom, the district secretary!) would read things from the government that prevent, fight against, and deal with genocide and its lasting effects. This year's theme was fighting against trauma, which they say 2/3 of the population suffers from.

I was told by my neighbor that our village is a Hutu majority (not the group targeted in the genocide) and they were almost all in refugee camps abroad during the majority of the war so very few people were killed from our village. This means there were no traumatic outbursts from people during the memorial week, unlike the majority of the country where people would randomly start screaming, crying, throwing themselves down, and remembering the horrors they went through. There are a few of my friends in the village NOT from Bungwe, but married local men or moved here for work; these women are the ones that HAVE suffered and some of them told me their story. Wow. I don't know how they have found the strength to continue, but somehow they do, and they're even doing really well. For this I really admire the strides this country and these poeple take to rebuild themselves and find new meaning in life. It's obviously really hard still, but they put a great smile on thier faces and continue on so well!




Since I hate being alone all the time and once the sun goes down (at like 6:30pm) I'm all alone in my little house, I spent the night at my friends house (a local house for the un-wed female workers far from home, like a boarding house for professional women) each night to hang out, cook, eat, and be with them. It was really fun to live with locals again! Then every afternoon I went to the oumoudougoudou discussions with a few of the other women in my neighborhood. During the day it was so weird to walk around our usually vibrant village and find it totally empty, like a ghost town. Maybe one or two little kids playing in the road, or a man carrying wood on his head, but basically barren.

So after the Memorial Week I hopped on a litte motorcycle--the only way down the mountain-- (as pictured here) and came to the capital city of Kigali:


no more locally farmed beans, potatoes, or carrots; no more papaya from my front yard for breakfast, no more milk and tea from our little restaurant (as seen here!) for snack. We have wireless internet at this little Americanesque cafe where we can order hamburgers, fries, cookie dough ice cream, pizza and beers! Have a happy day!