When it rains...

...hundreds of Rwandans flood the streets on the hunt for isenene-- cicadas, large grasshoppers, whatever you would like to call them. Apparantly, the heavy downpours of this past week (or perhaps that was just a coincidence with some kind of mating season?) have brought out literally thousands of our crunchy, flying green friends. And what better way to cope with the plague-like infestation than to hit the streets armed with illegal plastic bags, shake out the trees, and catch the little buggers. And then? Bring them to market to sell, of course!

I'm not sure who exactly will be buying and eating all of said cicadas, because as far as I can tell, most Rwandans don't actually eat them. Everyone I have asked has looked slightly taken aback, as if I had just asked them to cook a meal without a gallon of oil and at least 3 starches (an idea which definitely causes a stir). Then they reply that its the Congolese who love eating cicadas. I might be mistaken, but there are not enough Congolese in this region to eat the thousands of cicadas I have seen collected and brought to market. So, either they are merely catching them for sport (Why wouldn't you want to chase cicadas around all day and satisfactorily stuff them in sacks, or squish them as the children do...?) OR they secretly do like eating them, and are just using the Congolese as a convenient cover-up. It's hard to say, but my suspicions lie more strongly in one direction. To back up this opinion, we were served fried cicadas with dinner the other night. They tasted more like crunchy oil and salt than anything else, but not too bad...

Two nights after the cicadas rolled into town, round two of the Biblical plagues struck. I'm not sure where they came from, (the torrential rain? always a good guess) but a sudden storm of gnat-like bugs have certainly rivaled the cicadas in numbers and square inch coverage of walls, floors, and ceilings. I turned on the light in our bathroom the other night and within 15 seconds a black swarm hurled through the window and made quite a resounding chorus of thuds as they hit the walls (and my face) and settled in for the night. Needless to say, my mosquito net has been serving as a particularly safe haven during the past few days. So, what's next? Maybe the frogs? Or boils? Hail seems unlikely here, but at this rate, who knows...:-P

My view. For real!

Land of a thousand and ten hills

This is the lovely view from my front porch in Nyanza. Nice huh? And some people have been asking for my address again. It is:

Peace Corps Rwanda

Julie Greene, Peace Corps Trainee

BP 5657

Kigali, Rwanda

There is no zip code for Rwanda. And from January on, you can change "trainee" to "volunteer"

Word

Can icecream be sent in the mail??

Yikes! I have now been in Rwanda for five weeks and 5 days (but who’s counting?). It’s about time to give y’all a look into things…I’ll break it down…

THANKSGIVING!

We had a pretty epic Thanksgiving celebration, with mass amounts of food prepared for close to 100 people, all on little outdoor charcoal burners and a giant charcoal pit for the turkeys. We did our best to replicate the classics, like green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, hot apple spiced juice, and of course turkey and gravy. Dessert was a little trickier, but we managed to make something along the lines of apple crisp along with frosted cookies. I am still fruitlessly searching for a pumpkin or some variety of squash because this pumpkin pie craving just won’t fade!! It was a great time though—I’m not sure I’ve ever had such an intense food coma…

TRAINING

There are 68 of us trainees, living in the city of Nyanza, about 2 hours southwest of the capital city Kigali. Our days look something like: food, class, food, class, food, sleep. With some breaks here and there, and lots of wandering through the community, town center, and market trying not to look like a complete spectacle (Not very successfully J…) I have made myself a little too well known in two particular shops—one with Cadbury chocolate bars, and one with lollipops that taste like butterscotch. Yup. Typical.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about training—we’re learning Kinyarwanda, which is pretty hard but overall going well—I really enjoy it and feel like I’ve made pretty decent progress. We’re also learning some teaching methodology/strategies, which I don’t feel quite as adept at yet, but it’s coming along. Buhoro buhoro, slowly slowly, as they say here.

This week we started “model school” where we work in teams to teach/observe each other teaching for four hours each day. Our students are local kids who chose to come to our classes during their school break. The classes range from about 25-60 students, and the levels of English vary considerably, so its pretty challenging, but definitely beneficial. We’ll be continuing model school and language training for the next four weeks. During the last week of December we’ll wrap training up, and swear in during the first week of January. Then, its right off to site and…well…the real deal!

SITE-- Nyaratunga cell, Nyarubuye sector, Kirehe district, Rwanda

My site is located in Rwanda’s southeastern-most district, Kirehe. Compared to where we have been living during training, the area is much lower in elevation, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still incredibly hilly, which I love. The highest point in the district is about a 5km hike/walk from my house, and from there you have a view of some of Rwanda’s lakes and a national park to the north, Tanzania to the east, and Burundi to the south. I’m really close to the border with Tanzania, and supposedly Kiswahili is more widely spoken in this part of Rwanda, although I didn’t encounter it much during my visit.

But let’s back up to getting to my site. I’m about 4 ½ hours from the capital Kigali, but my village is pretty far off the main paved road, and up a series of pretty steep dirt roads. So, I get off the bus on the main road and from there take a motorcycle taxi the rest of the way. Depending on how fast or slow the driver wants to go, this is between 30 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes… I would say both of those are extremes and the trip could comfortably and safely (loosely defined) be completed in 40 minutes, but I’m not the one driving…I was also told that during the long rainy season, there will be times when the dirt roads become impassable even for the motorcycles, in which case I won’t be able to leave my site. The only thing about that is that I’ll have to do a lot of my shopping in the town along the main road…The items I saw for sale in my village included oil, sugar, rice, biscuits, milk, beer, soda, cell minutes, and oddly enough a shoe shop bigger than the one with food? There is a small market next to my house on Saturdays, which I didn’t actually see because I left on Friday, but hopefully that will provide fruits and veggies for the week! During my 5 days at site, I ate plantains twice a day every day as the main component of the meal, so those must be around J

It’s a very rural community—the primary livlihood is subsistence farming (of mostly plantains, haha). Other occupations include primary and secondary school teachers, drivers for either the moto taxis or the buses along the main road, and there is also a USAid sponsored health center nearby so I met a few nurses. Aside from the “town center” (which consists of the little food shop, shoe shop, beer/soda establishment, my house and a few others) the area is a patchwork of fields and homes and some rocky hills than cannot be farmed. The secondary school I will be teaching at, G.S. Migongo, is a 30-minute walk from the center/my house. There is a primary school right across the road from it, and a Catholic church next door, which is also one of the National Genocide Memorial sites. As in many places around Rwanda, my site has a very intense history in terms of the genocide. I won’t get into it here, but if you want to know more of the history in my area you can look up Nyarubuye, Kirehe district.

It will be an intense experience, to say the least. But I’m looking forward to finally settling into a permanent location, getting to know the community, and hopefully getting involved in some of the local activities!

I think that’s more than enough for now. I will try to update this in smaller, more frequent posts in the future! Please hit me up with any questions you have, or just stories and news from home!