FOOOOOD

The aforementioned Nyakabanda Special

Expert in Anal. Chem? I think not.... (pun intended)

So I have just arrived in Kibuye, which is a small city of about 20,000 people located on Lake Kivu (FINALLY! A body of water!!). It is a three hour drive (west, my dad just informed me.. he WOULD know everything to do with the geography of this country) from Kigali, and I was asked to teach an analytical chem course to the 48 first year BLS students over the next two weeks. This is a satellite campus called Nyamishaba, where all of KHI’s students complete their first year. This area was one of the hardest hit during the genocide, and it is evident out the back window of my guest house where there are half demolished buildings on the hill that were failed to be restored. There is a memorial here that I think I will wait to go with C and R to..

 The journey here started on a small bus that 30 people crammed into. Me being just a little bit of an ‘outsider’, of course I sat in the very back corner of the bus, me and my 3 bags jammed next to a Pentecostal man. When this man wasn’t explaining Canadian history to me, asking about the acceptance of homosexuality and the perception of divorce in Canada (‘Dieu a cree les deux sexes pour un raison’ and ‘Non, le divorce c’est tres mauvais’), I sneaked glimpses out the window at this extremely hilly country. On a smoothly paved road where either lane and the shoulders are any vehicle’s game, we drove around corners that would’ve been marked 40 km/hr in the Kootenays at around 100 km/hr. We almost hit several pedestrians (this definitely isn’t Antigonish pedestrian rules i.e. if you’re in the way you’ll get hit) and a few goats, all the while with Akon blasting in the background... but we made it!

The lake is a beautiful turquoise colour, and the campus is on a little peninsula right by the water. Apparently the water is ‘cold’, which by Rwandan/Caroline’s standards is not actually cold, but it is the warmest to swim in at 6 AM. So I’ll let y’all know how that goes... I am staying in a guest house with a living room, 3 bedrooms and a bathroom, all by my lonesome. This is going to be an interesting learning experience, I can’t think of the last time that I stayed alone, had no access to the internet or easy texting/calling capabilities to my friends and family in North America. All I can say is THANK GOD (that Pentecostal man must’ve gotten to me) for music, the outdoors, books and Anthony’s many movies he left :) . I guess teaching will be busy as well as I am supposed to provide 80 hours of teaching in the next two weeks… That is definitely impossible so good thing there are about 20 hours reserved for ‘self-study’, which I have stretched out to about 40 hours…

 Robyn has settled into things in Rwamagana and came to Kigali for a weekend of mayhem (it was Caroline’s 22^nd birthday) that consisted of Indian food, Primus and a lot of happiness. I’m not sure how they usually celebrate birthdays in Rwanda but Hilaire (the guy I talked about last time) was adamant about having the birthday cake before our meal at the Indian food restaurant. I explained to him that the cake was dessert for after we eat and I still didn’t really know if he understood… what a guy. Egide, one of our friends that we visited in Butare a couple of weeks ago, surprised C by showing up at dinner! Peter, who works at the Artisan’s Co-op, and Sarah and Anne (the ladies who work at AJPHRODO also came and joined the festivities.

MOTO Burn update: Everything is healing well, but I think a bad ass scar is forming. Also turf burn (Rwanda edition) sucks too.. not that I haven’t had it before, but when the team therapist insists on putting brown potassium iodide all over it and it looks like I am trying to paint my skin to match my fellow teammates’… They had a greaaaat laugh over that, or it may have been about something totally different, I never know what ‘mizungu’ quality they are laughing at. Kids these days.

Wighland girls: Reeb and I reminisced about the two songs that EVERYTIME these following words were mentioned, singing ensued… Shotty and Nasty. And obviously I’m So Paid had to be talked about..

FRECKLES:
One of my colleagues from KHI: “they will go away soon, right?”
Caroline teaching dermatology (what are the chances) put a picture of me on the screen, then one of her students saw me after class and asked if she could rub my arms..

Another friend from Uganda, Mohammed, last weekend asked about my ‘skin disorder’..
Robyn’s students were looking at her pictures on her computer and asked if this weird skinned person would come to their class one day. I should start charging a fee…

Quick food picture (Just for you SYDNEY):

C and I call this the Nyakabanda Special. We eat it almost every night because our lunches are SO HUGE we barely even need to eat... Fresh avocado and tomato from the market on the whitest bread you will ever see (what I wouldn’t do for some Dempsters 12 grain right about now), and of course YEAST FLAKES, brought all the way from the Kootenay Co-Op in good old Nelson BC. Recently we have added green pepper and gouda… I have yet to tell you all about African tea and the infamous volcano-lunch.

Stay tuned to see how Lauren fared as a teacher...

 

Not your average Canadian-in-Kigali weekend

While writing this I am sitting on my front porch, sans internet, running water or a flushing toilet, and I couldn’t be happier. This feeling is a result of food (as usual). I’m eating crackers topped with fresh avocado picked up from the market down the road, and I suddenly hear a pleasant surprise. My landlord Pascale, who I knew was a painter, also turns out to be a musician. Right now he is singing a melodic minor-tone ballad (that one is for you Anne MacDonald!) called ‘Rwanda Mon Paradis’ accompanied by a Spanish guitar with an amp that is loud enough for the surrounding neighbourhood to enjoy. The songs sound like they could be background music for a Kill Bill movie.. and are soo relaxing.

No, we don't have satellite TV..

I haven’t mentioned our friend Hilaire yet, a young man C met when she was here in April who is a long-time friend of Elsa’s, a nursing prof at StFX. He, along with many of the other friends I’ve made and even strangers along the way (aka when C and I took a matatu 30 minutes out of town in the total opposite direction of home), would give the shirt off of his back and maybe even his pants to you if you needed them. Even though his English is sometimes hard to understand/absolutely hilarious (‘Okay, tank you!’, and when he answers his phone ‘Hi, I’m good!’ without me even having asked ‘How are you?’), he has been such a good liaison to the community and source of laughter.

I expressed my interest to Hilaire in playing soccer while I was here, and although it was fun playing with a bunch of kids last week (whom, yes, the majority were better than me) I was hoping for a more organized type of thing. The connections people have here are mind-boggling, so somehow H saw a lady on the street who he knew plays for a premier team here in Kigali (I had been looking for a league online and just assumed there were no women’s leagues around). One thing led to another and I found myself at a scrimmage on a beautiful turf field, in a stadium that’s a 7 minute walk from my house,  playing with Association Sportif Kigali (AS Kigali). It was kind of a throw back to my StFX days, feeling extremely nervous and having no idea what the level of soccer is before stepping on the pitch, except now every single person was staring at me as I warmed up, and when I made my first play in the game, there was whooping from the bench. They were definitely thinking: People, even women, play football in Canada? WOW it was a surreal experience trying to communicate on the field in three languages (Kinyarwanda, Swahili and French), none in which I have ever learned to use football terms. All I know is ‘Umva!’= hey!, ‘Sawa’=that’s good, ‘ici’= here! and a hissing noise that is interchangeable in Rwanda for calling motos, signaling to a waiter and asking for the ball. What also didn’t help is that I had just suffered from some moto-exhaust-pipe-burn about an hour before the game and it started to blister (sorry for those of you who don’t like to see stuff like this, but I do haha!).

Progression of nasty moto-burn day 1



Day 3

It felt so good to play again, and the ladies and coaching staff all ended up being very welcoming, after having been extremely intimidating before kick off. I would have to say that after twenty minutes of playing, this was the first time I felt at home in this country. So interesting that this was at a moment where I was surrounded by strangers that I couldn’t even really have a conversation with. That is the beauty of soccer, and sports in general.
 After the scrimmage the coach was on the phone, speaking some language I didn’t know and everyone kept looking at me and giggling. When she got off, she asked me if I was interested in playing with the national team at a friendly the next day…. HELLO!  This was followed by a ton of translated questions the women (aged 17-30ish) had about me such as where I’m from, why I’m here, if I have a fiancé and if not will I marry their brother…

Turns out when I showed up the next day, this was a legitimate FIFA match and they couldn’t card a random Canadian on the Rwanda team (understandable). But I got to sit on the bench and took some pictures. 

Line up, so official FIFA-style

One of these things is not like the other...

There were probably about three hundred people watching! The coach jokingly told me to go get a Rwandan Citizenship so that I could play with the national team for the next year but I think playing with AS Kigali for 3 months (season doesn’t actually start til December) will give me my soccer fix. Plus I have to come home sometime, right?
And to think I was contemplating leaving my Copa’s in Nelson…

C invited some friends from Butare and Kampala to hang out last night as a sort of preliminary birthday celebration for her and we had a good ol’ fashioned round of Waterfall (or Sociables for all you easterners) while listening to Ja Rule and Celine Dion. The Rwandese love this Canadian drinking game and one of them even brought the rules back to his university in Uganda, bad influence we are. Everyone seems to enjoy our little house. Concrete floors are a great idea for housing said celebrations as many a Primus/Mutzig is bound to be spilled.

Our living room

FOOD pictures are still on their way, as well as some more info about what I do Monday to Friday at KHI. Who would’ve thought that, after reading my blog, I actually have work to do here?
My roommate from four years at university is also on her way, she will be teaching and organizing a nursing workshop in Rwamagana. I’m sure this Newfie’s three month stay will be accompanied by many a story…

Much love :)

PS. On Friday I was asked by my beautiful friend Charlotte, who I grew up with in Nelson, to be a part of her wedding party next August… SO EXCITED!!

Here comes the rain again...

It's rainy season in Rwanda! Believe it or not, yesterday I was wearing jeans, a sweater and a jacket. Probably not the Africa many people had in mind! I miss my wool socks...

My room at the KHI guest house (sans mosquito net)

SO since my last post I have moved houses, from the richer part of the city, full of embassies and large businesses and banks, to what the people I work with at KHI call the "sketchy" part of the city. It's a really safe place though, we're in a gated compound and our landlord lives right in front of us. Here, finally, are some pictures of where I live!

My new room in Nyakabanda, pretty ballin' ! Who knew
the biggest bed I would ever sleep in would be in Africa

And a picture of the mosquito bites that I am now recovering from as a result of said move.

Nyakabanda is right next to Nyamirambo, the part of town where a large Muslim population exists. I had never lived near a mosque before, so needless to say when I was awake at 4:30 one morning (as a result of too much Primus, one of the types of beer in Rwanda with which I have become acquainted) I was terrified when I heard a strange voice outside of our house. Turns out it was the call to prayer and that I had better get used to it as it happens every day, several times a day. I'm starting to find it soothing.

University basketball court: people standing RIGHT on the
sidelines and baselines, and sometimes just right on the court.
Some guy even went out on the court and took a picture with the
referee...

Well this weekend Caroline, Sarah, Anne (a young woman from France who works with Sarah) traveled to Butare, the small city where Caroline did her nursing placement in April. It was a beautiful drive, with its many hills and corners it kind of reminded me of the Monashee with wider roads and more houses along the way. I was astonished that there were villages along the whole way. Then I realized that there are 11 million people in a country the size of Nova Scotia/the Kootenays, and that if 900,000 people live in Kigali, the rest of them must live somewhere! We took a 2 hour bus ride that cost 2,200 frw (Rwandan Francs, 1 USD = 500 Frw) to this town that houses the National University of Rwanda, where we came across this basketball game. SO NUTS.

View on the way to the genocide memorial, with terraced farmland and at the bottom of the valley, potatoe gardens. Somewhat reminiscent of Peru.

S, A and I visited the genocide memorial near Butare (C had already done this in April) and it was quite intense, to say the least. This is one of the only pictures we were allowed to take.

Hard to explain how it felt realizing that the bodies we were looking at were the result of a horrendous situation that took place just sixteen years ago. Whenever I had seen bones before, it was in a museum and they had been preserved from centuries ago. This was much closer to home than that.

Sarah, Anne, Caro and I enjoying African tea (noms!) at our motel in Butare

C took us to CHUB yesterday, the hospital where she did her nursing placement in April. Saw some more stuff there that I had never been exposed to before, having never spent a lot of time in a hospital (I'd better get used to it, knock on wood). We toured the pediatrics department, the neonatal clinic and some other rooms and it was all very open with no curtains between the beds, and sanitation was not at its best. I really appreciated that C brought us in there as it gave me a new appreciation for our Canadian health care system and how our health care workers are trained. Totally different standards of care, that's for damn sure.

Okay time for work, this is the first full week I will be doing (alone, the lovely Anthony Cotter is en route to Montreal after having finished 5.5 months with KHI) as last week was shorter because of Kagame's inauguration on Monday and the end of Ramadan on Friday.

Biggest billboard I have EVER seen! Kagame is the lankiest
president ever. His strut reminds me of Kyle/Terry.

I miss everyone at home and am so appreciative to hear from some of you :) It really is difficult getting used to being in a huge city, no matter what country you are in. Having lived in only Nelson and Antigonish (both population of 10-20,000) Kigali makes realize that fresh air and nature are hard to come by.

Stay tuned for my next blog post about how people perceive my freckles (hint: 'is that an allergic reaction?') and about possibly one of my favourite things in life: FOOD. Also, C and I have spotted many matatus (Vans they cram 16 people into for transportation within Kigali), with many a rap-star/soccer team/name-brand painted on them. A personal favourite: Justin Beiber's face painted all over it. Pictures soon to come.

Muzungu! Muzungu!

This is what Rwandans will forever refer to me as. It's a Swahili word for 'white person' or 'person with money'.. it isn't anything derogatory and is actually extremely precious when the person saying it is a 3' tall child with huge, stunning brown eyes.

Speaking of stunning, that is how I would describe this place. Not only the people but also the surroundings. Kigali is a spread out city that is extremely hilly with crazy traffic patterns and absolutely no logical grid system. The people are so friendly, every time we meet someone they say "First time in Rwanda? You are most welcome here". Seriously. Every single person. They also like to laugh at you when you try to speak their native language, Kinyarwanda. Good thing my friends/family trained me to be good at getting laughed at over the years.. And I don't care how many people in life have told me they never see me without a smile on my face, these people are literally ALWAYS smiling. Contrary to popular (North American) belief, I feel more safe here than I do walking around Nelson at night, and this is a city of 2 million people!! Feel better now Mom?

Caroline, my roommate and fellow St FX graduate, and I just got our luggage back today (Thank God). As fun as it was not having any contact solution or extra clothing, it was definitely time for a personal hygiene update.

Upon our arrival we were met by Anthony, another X grad hailing from Tsawwassen BC, who is just finishing up his internship at KHI in the Biomedical Lab Sciences (BLS) Department. Ravi is the other Coady associate in the Nursing Department that Caroline will be 'replacing'. I have a lot to live up to as A just finished teaching an intense Applied Immunology & Microbiology course (what do those words even mean!?) to third year BLS students, and was just successful in receiving funding for a rural outreach program that I am now expected to implement (gulp). I am SO excited about this as I did not expect to be directly working with HIV/AIDS in Rwanda, a subject I definitely have a passion for. This program will have me working with the third year BLS students at rural Rwandan secondary schools, educating the students about HIV/AIDS/ safe sex practices and offering rapid HIV testing and counseling on site. This is a HUGE deal because even though 95% of these schools have student anti-AIDS clubs, they don't have the means for accessible HIV testing. Much more to follow on this topic...

Other highlights of being in Rwanda include:
-the buffet lunch at KHI. It's referred to as the volcano, I've never seen people pile so much food on one plate
-moto (sketchy dirt bike) rides. Really fun and the most efficient means of travel in Kigali. It isn't out of the ordinary to drive on the wrong side of the road on these babies
-avocados. Everywhere and so delicious
-je dois parler en francais encore. C'est different que l'ecole parceque maintenant je VEUX parler en francais
-the music at a sit-down bar we went to last night called Car Wash. It featured top 90's/00's artists such as Shania Twain, LL Cool J ft Jennifer Lopez (pre-JLo days), Nelly, Tupac and many, many more.

I'll soon post some pictures of all that is Rwanda for those of you who are visual learners...