so I've been pretty bad about updating online in the past month, mostly because I've been all over the place and still without a functional computer! In Rwanda, we'd call it "somehow difficult" to update without a computer!
BUT NOW! thanks to the beauty that is America and wi-fi IN MY HOUSE and computers all over the place, I'm back.
So I'd say that's pretty much the biggest news to report, I'm actually back in AMERICA!
About 2 weeks before Christmas, during one of our usual Sunday conversations, my parents gave me the most beautiful surprise and the best Christmas present of my life. We hatched a plot to bring me home and surprise my dear sisters and friends. My first challenge of the homeward-bound journey was getting my leave request to the Peace Corps office in Kigali. I don't know if I've mentioned this but there's not really a mail system per se, in Rwanda. There are probably 6-8 post offices in major cities and they have PO Boxes for businesses primarily and a few individuals (mostly ex-pats). BUT the population at large does not use this system. So if you wanna get things places withIN the country you have to use bus companies essentially as couriers. You put the name of the place or the person it's going to and their cell phone number on a manila envelope and throw it on whatever bus or moto driver is going from your town/village. I'm lucky enough to have a bus that leaves from my village every day at 6 AM to get people into Kigali and because I speak kinyarwanda, (which they find an absolute HOOT), I'm in with the bus drivers. So I got up at the crack of dawn (5:30 AM) to give my leave form to the driver. The beautiful thing is that you don't have to pay for it, the scary bit is you have no real guarantee it'll get there. So, I put my envelope on the bus with the intention of calling the Peace Corps to let them know when it would be coming so they could send a driver down to the taxi/bus park to pick it up. This was my first insurance since technically the driver is supposed to call when they arrive. I also took the driver's number as insurance policy #2. So I wait around and carry on with my day and then finally call Peace Corps after when it should have been there. She told me it hadn't been there when the driver went to pick it up. I immediately called the driver and couldn't understand him, for the life of me, I couldn't understand a word he was saying. I was just about to lose it because if this form didn't make it, I couldn't go to America...then I was the lucky bug and beneficiary of divine intervention, quite literally. One of my nuns was there at the bus park coming back from their retreat and translated everything for me and called Peace Corps to meet up with them to give them the envelope. I was the luckiest being in the world so it finally made it and my heart beat normally again!
Somehow, I made it through the 13 days from finding out I was coming home to coming home. We had a training in Kigali for the last week before I came and I had making Christmas Dinner for my fellow PCVs to look forward to.
A bunch of people from my group came in and I even got to see my dear Danae before she headed off for her holiday adventures. I had a lot of help and put together a great Christmas Eve Eve dinner of goat cheese/apple spinach salad, tomato/fresh basil bruschetta, baked mac n' cheese, garlic mashed potatoes, ham and even christmas sugar cookies. We couldn't really decorate them but it was one of the few times it actually felt like Christmas while I was down there. We even had some "instant snow" from the 5 (!!) Christmas packages I got from my family before we had planned my coming home. Then we went out dancing and had a wonderful Christmas Eve Eve! I got on my plane on Christmas Eve but my reactions in coming back to all this after almost 8 months in Rwanda will have to be another entry all together!
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
We're here to GLOW!
"1! We're here to GLOW!
2! We wanna show...
3! that we can be...
4 more More MORE MORE!!"
This is what we had 60 young Rwandan girls chanting as they walked from class to class, at meal times, and every morning in the past week. It seems simple and even silly but I truly think this has been one of the most significant things I've done in the past 7 months.
Camp GLOW was this past week. I've mentioned this previously but it stands for Girls Leading Our World. I spent this time with my fellow volunteers from the Eastern Province, 9 Rwandan facilitators and the girls. We gave them lessons on sexual and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS prevention, biology & myths/facts as well as goal setting, decision making and career planning. While all these lessons I think did benefit the girls greatly, the most valuable part of the week as giving these girls a place to be comfortable, a place to be themselves, a place where no one is telling them to cook or look after a baby or go fetch water or sweep the dirt. We were there with bead-making and friendship bracelets and tie-dying t-shirts. We had dance lessons and time for them to play soccer and a carnival night and a talent show. This is just like any summer camp in the states BUT that idea doesn't even exist here and especially for girls to be with just girls and be themselves. And no one is telling these girls that what they say is important or even that they should be speaking up.
One of the more powerful moments for me was the "I can't" funeral. The girls had to write something that people have told them they can't do on a piece of paper. Then the girls would tear up the paper, throw it in the fire and say "I CAN." Now, the powerful part for me wasn't the affirmation itself but more so the subjects of their "I can't." They were saying things like, "I can't make decisions for myself." "I can't decide what I want to do with my life." We would be told things like, "you can't be an astronaut cause you suck at science." But these things seemed so simple and possible that I hated that people had been telling them they couldn't. I liked that we gave them the chance to be themselves and not be guarded, to speak up and have someone actually listen to them. This, I think was the true power of the camp.
I loved it.
2! We wanna show...
3! that we can be...
4 more More MORE MORE!!"
This is what we had 60 young Rwandan girls chanting as they walked from class to class, at meal times, and every morning in the past week. It seems simple and even silly but I truly think this has been one of the most significant things I've done in the past 7 months.
Camp GLOW was this past week. I've mentioned this previously but it stands for Girls Leading Our World. I spent this time with my fellow volunteers from the Eastern Province, 9 Rwandan facilitators and the girls. We gave them lessons on sexual and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS prevention, biology & myths/facts as well as goal setting, decision making and career planning. While all these lessons I think did benefit the girls greatly, the most valuable part of the week as giving these girls a place to be comfortable, a place to be themselves, a place where no one is telling them to cook or look after a baby or go fetch water or sweep the dirt. We were there with bead-making and friendship bracelets and tie-dying t-shirts. We had dance lessons and time for them to play soccer and a carnival night and a talent show. This is just like any summer camp in the states BUT that idea doesn't even exist here and especially for girls to be with just girls and be themselves. And no one is telling these girls that what they say is important or even that they should be speaking up.
One of the more powerful moments for me was the "I can't" funeral. The girls had to write something that people have told them they can't do on a piece of paper. Then the girls would tear up the paper, throw it in the fire and say "I CAN." Now, the powerful part for me wasn't the affirmation itself but more so the subjects of their "I can't." They were saying things like, "I can't make decisions for myself." "I can't decide what I want to do with my life." We would be told things like, "you can't be an astronaut cause you suck at science." But these things seemed so simple and possible that I hated that people had been telling them they couldn't. I liked that we gave them the chance to be themselves and not be guarded, to speak up and have someone actually listen to them. This, I think was the true power of the camp.
I loved it.
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