September 26- October 12

It has been a while since I have been able to do an update, so I’m not really sure where to begin!  The past couple weeks have been very intense.  Not only has training been difficult in and of itself, but we also have been getting very deep into the matter of the genocide.

Last week we visited the genocide memorial in Kigali.  The main exhibit is dedicated to the history in Rwanda leading up to this horrific event and straightforward facts about what happened, accompanied by pictures and videos of interviews with survivors.  Although I of course knew the main facts, it was so disturbing walking through, being flooded with all the information and hearing personal testimonies.  If anyone had managed not to cry throughout that part of the museum, they certainly did not in the children’s exhibit.  This portion displayed blown-up photos of children, each with a description of things such as their favorite things to do or their best friends, and ended with the way in which they were killed.  It made the horror of the genocide even more real to me.  The memorial is also the resting place for a quarter of the people who were killed during the genocide.  Mass graves hold over 250,000 bodies.  The extent to which the genocide wiped out a generation is just mind-numbing.

The complexity of emotions and the disturbing reality that this monstrosity occurred only seventeen years ago makes it impossible for me to really express myself in such a public forum, but it is clear that this is going to be an ever-present ghost in the room during my two years here.  Everyone we come into contact with was affected in some way by the genocide, but hardly anyone talks about it.  Peace Corps had a man come in to talk to us who has provided interviews for books and speaks to groups about his personal and the overall Rwandan experience.  He shared with us the fact that there were events, mindsets, and planning leading up to the genocide fifty years before it occurred, yet the extent to which the country suffered was still completely unfathomable to him.  Dealing with the fact that the people of Rwanda have been through something that is so impossible for me to understand is clearly going to be the biggest challenge of my post here.

On a much lighter note, this past weekend we visited the national museum of Rwanda in Butare.  We got a lot of information on the more distant history of Rwanda, including life-size models of a historic home compound, which was pretty cool.  The best part of the day, however, was getting to eat something besides rice and beans!  Butare is the second biggest city in Rwanda, a crazy concept, considering that it is nowhere near the American concept of a big city, but this did mean that there were some Western-style restaurants.  I couldn’t decide between my two favorite things, burgers and pizza, so I got both!

Technical training is going well.  We have had several current Peace Corps volunteers come to speak with us, which has been very helpful and given us tons of information.  One thing has become very clear: every volunteer has a very unique experience.  It is impossible to predict what our time in Rwanda will be like, how we will interact with staff and students at our schools, or how we will be integrated into our communities.  We do find out our sites on Friday, which will at least give us an idea of what is in store: what province we will be in, what kind of school we will be working at, and which volunteers we will be near.  We’re all very excited to find out!

The language, however, is still a huge challenge.  Every time I start to feel like I’m getting it, some new surprise comes up, like the fact that there are sixteen different noun classes, each with different conjugations of the same verb and different prefixes for the same adjective.  I am definitely missing the now, by comparison, simplicity of Spanish.  I am doing a better job of getting my point across in Kinyarwanda, but I still don’t have much I can talk about with my family, which means the homestay is still pretty awkward and uncomfortable, although my relationship with the eleven-year-old daughter is very good.  She has taken on the role of my Kinyarwanda tutor, and we also have lots of little games we like to play together, like hide and seek and thumb wrestling.

I hope that soon I can get some pictures up of the gorgeous place I am living, but right now I don’t have enough internet strength for them to load.  One thing is for sure, I am not going to get tired of the panoramic views of rolling green hills and valleys, which is the backdrop almost anywhere you look. 

It is crazy to think that I have been here for almost a month now.  The strange thing that all Peace Corps volunteers agree on is that time passes both quickly and slowly during service.  The US seems a lifetime away, yet it is still incredible that I am already on my fifth week here, and that we are a third of the way done with training.  I am starting to get into a routine and to get really comfortable with the other trainees, which is a great support network.  We are all going through the same things, both positive and negative, whether that be struggling with the disconnect from friends and family back home, or enjoying learning a brand new culture.  We definitely keep each other sane!

In the coming weeks I am going to continue language and technical training, visit my site, and start working with a “model school” to practice teaching.  There is a lot to look forward to and I am very excited to see where this adventure is going to take me!