double post! My week...my life.

25/9
Permanance
Today I got two wonderful cards and they made my day! It was so exciting to feel connected to the world. It also made me feel more like i was here. And more like I was here with purpose and meaning. Which is odd, but I guess it had to do with my name on a box and the "Kigali, RWANDA" listed under that. It's those small, very visual things that seem to strike me and remind me that I'm here and I'm doing this. It's funny how quickly you adjust and even though just about every day I miss home and think of what I'd be doing there and what my friends and family are doing there, I still just think of this as my life. I accept the inevitability of it. It's better that way cause once I'm in a situation, it's so much easier to think of making the most of it. Oddly enough, it's when I get the cards and emails and Facebook messages with people telling me about their lives that I get a happy nostalgia and not a painful one.
I've had a really wonderful weekend because I had the chance to hang out with people. It's funny how much it can mean to just hang out with other volunteers. Like I said before, it's very odd to only see your best friends like once every few weeks. Especially in these circumstances, those sorts of interactions mean the most and give you the best chance to hang out and talk with people going through the same things, experiencing the same frustrations. It's very similar to the tight bond that forms with a Rotary exchange. I like to think about how nice it'll be when I got back to the states and get to meet up with these people again and then with other RPCVs. I feel like there are so many common threads even in the very different circumstances within which we work and they will be a great resource at the end of this. Ditto people that have been through any sort of long-term experience like this. I think in the shorter term, you get so many of the same emotions. You get so many similar feelings, I remember just such feelings on my Alternative Spring Breaks...but the thing about the long-term is that you spend half of your time wanting to go back. But you spend your time learning and living and going back is so much more difficult because people have changed, you've changed and you forget how to live like you did, which doesn't seem to make sense. Luckily, I don’T have to worry about that for a while. Even if some days I wish I did.


1/10
Storm Clean-Up
I truly can’t believe it’s October, though without the change of seasons, it feels like no time has passed. There are no visible signs, everything looks the same, if a little greener because it’s the rainy season. I have mentioned before how much I love the rainy season, that has in no way diminished. I was speaking with another PCV yesterday when we were having sanity-restoring cooking/baking time and she said she liked rainy days for the exact same reason. The pressure comes to us all.
The other day I had a very funny afternoon when a big storm blew in the other day. It looked like a hurricane and it came just as our women’s coop was about to head out. Rwandans don’t go out in rain in general and when a crazy storm comes in, obviously we were waiting it out. Then, it started to hail! It was nuts...and everyone was looking at the little balls of ice and asking me how to say it in English. I’m sure most of them had seen it before, but it’s not a commonly used word, “ice” because no one has freezers. Most bars have refrigerators where electricity is available, but that’s just to keep the beer and fanta cold. No one really sees a need for freezers. Needless to say, it was the highlight of my week. I was soooo close to scooping it all up off the ground and using it in anything I could. I was trying so hard to find something to use it for.
The next day was even more interesting because they were cleaning up. Rwanda is a very clean country for somewhere where everyone just throws their trash into their backyard. So many of them are obsessed with keeping things clean, and if not clean, neat. Many of us Rwandan PCVs are terribly amused by the phenomenon of “sweeping dirt” as we call it. Most people don’t have grass in front of their houses or in back; available space is either to dry or used to grow food. As such, they are always sweeping their “front/back yard” as it were which to us, looks like putting patterns in the dirt. It seems somewhat superfluous. My best guess is, because so many of them run around barefoot all the time, they wanna sweep all the harsh stuff away. So when it came to clean up after the storm, we had to do a lot of squeegie-ing of the classrooms because the windows leak like crazy. Most floors are either dirt or concrete so it’s no trouble and you just squeegie everything outside. However, they took to squeegie-ing off outside as well. I didn’t truly understand that as the space isn’t really used for anything but I chalked it up to Rwandan cleanliness. I have heard that other neighboring countries are much dirtier/messier and I think a great part of that is the Rwandan obsession with appearance. They look down on women for not wearing heels (i can’t do it here on the water-eroded dirt roads without twisting an ankle) and men must wear dress shirts and slacks with shiny shiny shoes except when practicing sports. People will blatantly judge you on your appearance (even if they will never verbalize it because they are also very reserved). I think this may play into the interesting taming of the outdoors via dirt sweeping and outdoor mopping.