Welcome to Rwanda! Mwaramutse!

I have now officially entered the second part of my study abroad; the Rwanda portion. I was looking forward to this as you all knew, and now it is here! It really is impossible to compare Rwanda to Uganda because they are so completely different. Both have gone through extreme tragedy and are coming out the other side in very different ways. In the case of Rwanda, development has become the main focus. This is why once you enter the Kigali suburbs you see nice sidewalks, internet cafes, electricity, restaurants and hotels as far as the eye can see. In Uganda we had these things, but never consistently; especially the electricity part. Kigali reminds me of pieces of other cities I have visited: Chicago with the wide clean streets with so many trees, Sydney with the cultural and language differences and the influence of Asians on both business and population, and even Richmond, Va at times because of the beautiful rolling hills.

At night, when you are atop one of the mille collines (1,000 hills) you can see the beautiful twinkling city lights. It really is quite a different image than the Ugandan night scenery. In Uganda once the cities electricity went out around 7pm (not always), the only lights were businesses with generators to run their power. Walking around in the city at night was actually somewhat scary. I do miss Uganda however. Mainly the comfort of knowing where the good food is, how to get to and from school, what my family expected of me, etc.

Here in Kigali everyone knows and remembers the genocide, but it is not openly talked about. In fact the city has become so developed it feels like a European city, but there is an air of secrecy or false normalcy everywhere. We have all been told to watch what we say to who about the killings, identity (hutu and tutsi and twa) and the government. I am doing a good job of that so far, but when you ask certain questions you can pick up on the truth and sadness that lies behind the answer that is given.

I moved into my new homestay family tonight at 8ish. I have a lot of sisters, a mother, and a few “nieces and nephews” and/or cousins. This time our academic coordinators found our families by going through a local high school, asking the older students learning English if they wanted to host an American student. I think that was a really great idea because some of our families know each other, all the high school kids can talk about our/their experiences just as we do amongst ourselves and we both are leaning new languages. In terms of languages, Rwanda est beacoup difficile parler (lots harder to talk/speak). Everyone speaks Kinyarwanda (which I am learning for 2 hours a day for 6 days), many people speak French, and not so many speak English. I am really hoping to pick up a good amount of Kinyarwanda because it is the most useful for getting around and interacting with my family, but at the same time my 4-5 years of french education is totally coming in handy! I really wish I had brushed up on my french more, or brought a dictionary or something, but I didn't so I am butchering everything I say and taking forever thinking of what I want to say. I think my french will also get better with time here.

In my family, as far as I can tell, the 18 year old Rosette has the best English and understands some of my french. My two other sisters have spoken English to me briefly, but it seems the language of the household is Kinyarwanda, which is to be expected. Recently my mom has been trying to speak the few English phrases she knows to me when we are together, which is not too often. She owns and runs a small breakfast and milk restaurant. She works all day and doesn't come home until after 8 pm, so we only interact when I stop by her shop which is located at the local bus park. Lets just say the milk, or amata, here is not exactly what I'm used to at home. They poured me a glass which was more like unsweetened yogurt than milk. Yuckky, but I tried it which is what matters to my family. Overall the food here is good, it's just African... which means bland and carb filled. I feel like I am always bloated here. And for those of you that know me, I am not an anti-carb person, but they are in everything you eat here and you begin to notice how unhealthy it feels to be eating this way. We have potatoes and rice at every meal, and bread is served as a snack or breakfast also. As funny as it sounds coming from me, I miss fresh veggies and berries! We aren't aloud to eat salad here because the water the veggies are cooked in is not safe for our system, but it is also just not something they eat. Most people do not have refrigerators, so if you can't boil it, you can't eat it!

Kigali really is such a comfortable place to be for me though. First of all there are so many westerners in the city center all the time. I actually counted 12 white people in cars in the morning traffic today, and that was only along one block. Of course I am still called Muzungu, and there are places (my neighborhood) where I am the only white person as far as the eye can see, but it's less unsettling now that I am used to it.

Overall I would have to say I feel great here, it is hard to adjust to a new family again, but everyone is so welcoming that those apprehensions go away pretty fast. I definitely think I will stay here for awhile, but at the same time I miss Gulu and Uganda a lot too when I think about it. I'd say, at this moment I am not ready to come home at all. I love it here in East Africa and would like to enjoy as much of it as I can. I know I have to come home, but I want to stay for awhile!

Lots of love from Rwanda to all my friends and family.

Mwiriwe.

Finally some pictures... only 6 months after the trip!

Hello readers and fellow travelers.

I decided it was important to "show" everyone what I had been experiencing last semester in East Africa through some of my pictures from my travels. I know it has been quite some time since the semester, let alone since my last post, but I hope to keep this blog going as I know that I will return to East Africa soon (even though I have no exact plans yet)!

I'm going to be taking Swahili next semester at Johns Hopkins University in order to prepare myself for future travel, research, and gain the skills I will need to (crossing fingers) work in East Africa one day.

Alright enough talking. Enjoy the visuals!

An IDP camp we visited in Northern Uganda. Look how close the houses are to each other and you can get a picture of what living there was like for the Acholi people during the height of LRA violence.

Some of the local Gulu high schoolers showing us Acholi dances.

The Acholi Elders (part of the council) and Dr. William on the far right, at a lecture we attended in Gulu about the traditions of Acholi people (where we saw the dances above).

Back in Kampala: This is what the girls dressed "inappropriately" had to wear over their shorts and skirts in order to enter the Kasubi tombs. This is where a few of the Buganda Kings (th Kampala and central Ugandan people) are buried and their wives and children still live in mourning.

This is Kasubi Tombs.

Monkeys on the roof of a lodge/hotel we stayed in toward the end of the Rwanda portion.

Some lovely pics from Akagera National Park in Rwanda. I LOVE zebras and want to ride one so bad!

My sisters Rosette and Alice in the house where I stayed during ISP with some SIT gals!

This was my last night in Kigali so they came over for dinner and some photo ops.

More pictures to come!

Tumultuous times at the end of my stay in Uganda.

Since my last blog post a lot of S*@& has gone down. I don't even know if I can remember it all. I'll start by saying I noticed that the word to describe the events of this week was definitely tumultuous!

So we left Gulu, which means we said a farewell to our families, on Wednesday. We drove the 5 hours to Kampala, stopping only twice. Once for lunch at the same exact restaurant we had visited on the way to Gulu; none of us were excited to say the least. I had plain rice and a soda, thankfully I had chocolate to tie me over on the bus. Our other stop was at Luwero Triangle in the Buganda region of Uganda. There is a mass grave of all the skulls and remains found throughout the “triangle” during the early years of the conflict when Museveni and his soldiers were fighting the then brutal government for Ugandan leadership. While it was quite sad to “see” these human remains, it was not nearly as bad as I had thought it would be. They are covered by some type of tile covering/lid and only a small opening shows what, or who, lies inside. The hardest thing for me was to remember that those skulls had once belonged to people just like you or me. Since we do not know who they were or where they were found and they are literally just piled 6 ft deep into the grave, it is very difficult to think of the site in terms of the personalities and family members lost. (Or maybe that was just me).

When we finally got to Kampala I began to recognize parts of the city and got excited about being back. We stayed in the same hotel as our orientation, the Jeliza Hotel. This I was very thankful for. In fact I ended up with exactly the same room, only this time I roomed with Hanna Newman (my Goucher buddy). It had been a long hard day, and people were ready to eat dinner and head their separate ways. Well.... dinner preparations took almost 2 hours, though (I think) they knew our group was coming. Not too much happened that evening after dinner.

The next day, Thursday, we had 3 lectures scheduled. As usual some were completely interesting topics but horribly disengaging lecturers, and some were quite dynamic. I don't remember the specifics. After classes my friend Danielle and I walked to a cute coffee shop 2 ½ blocks from the Jeliza. It is called 1,000 cups and it is to die for! There were many other whites there (and Africans too), one of which I actually recognized from the Gulu Coffee shop (he's an SIT alum who now has a Fullbright Scholarship to work in Uganda). I wrote a paper, attempted to write the other (more important) paper but failed and enjoyed 2 mocha espressos before deciding to walk home in the dark. I did almost get hit by a Boda-boda on the way home, but that is a common occurrence in the horrific traffic and driving conditions of the city that is Kampala.

The real drama happened that night at the hotel. So my friend Taylor has been feeling horribly sick for about 3 weeks now, almost the whole time we've been here, but she keeps receiving different diagnosis from each doctor. She has been told she had malaria (of course), an upper respiratory infection, food poisoning, a bacterial infection and more. Each of these diagnosis has come with different treatment courses which she had been following. I just have to say, she has been such a trooper about it the whole time. She goes to the clinics or hospitals, gets “check out”, tries the treatment and continues to feel sick.... on and on! Well on this particular night she was NOT feeling too hot, but there was no one to take her to “the surgery” where the good/better doctors are, it was closed and the 24 hour phone line was not picking up. So Taylor suffered through the night with little sleep, waiting for the moment she could go to the doctor who was most likely trained in Europe and could give her a better check up.

All the while this is going on, my other friend Tonia was out with 2 of the guys from our trip at a Salsa dancing class. As Tonia and Jeremey were finishing their dance, he spun her and when she finished spinning her knee popped out of socket! Unfortunately ambulances in Kampala are on “African time”, so the three of them had to wait a LONG time for the ambulance, and none of them had the 60,000 shillings needed to pay for the drive. All of us back at the hotel found out about this during another of our late dinners. Jeremey had called the academic director and then called my friend Alex to inform them of the situation. Alex went around the dinner tables and collected money from us to help pay for Tonia's hospital bill. Our program director, Stella, and Alex had also called a taxi of their own to meet the three in trouble at the hospital, but the taxi never showed up! In the end, our driver Mouna picked the three of them up, paid the ambulance fee with SIT money, and brought them back home. We were all freaking out before they got back, because we really didn't know how bad it was or if she would get taken care of. We learned a few lessons from this that have been MUCH talked about in the last few days. We need to have “emergency money” available for situations like this and dependable drivers.

To get back to Taylor quickly, the next morning (even though she'd been awake all night worrying and in pain) she was taken to “the surgery” to get checked out along with Tonia for a check up. I quickly learned once Tonia got back that Taylor was in trouble. Apparently the medications prescribed to her by her Ugandan doctors could have been fatal if she had continued to take the combination! This scared all of us, especially some of her closer friends (myself, Hanna, Kat, Laura and Alex). We were all emotional and frustrated with the way the medical situations had been handled by both our Ugandan AD and the doctors in Uganda. Taylor was given a sedative so that she could sleep through some of the pain, and then she was headed back to the hotel where the rest of us had been attending lectures even though we were a wreck (myself especially). In the end she is fine now, but it was a terrifying ordeal for her in terms of medical care in this developing country. It really makes you think about the Africans who only know and trust this kind of care. And there are so many people who can not even afford the “better” care Taylor was receiving in Gulu. It's eyeopening and very saddening to think about.

Well that's all for Uganda! I had a great time, even though this post may have not made you think so.
I'll post soon from Kigali, Rwanda with an update. Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to my posts.