Today is my first day for my research internship! As is the way of things here, my first week was funemployment because the whole office was in Burundi...which we, of course, didn't know about until about 3 days before we were supposed to be working. BUT it was good times, we used the week to get reacquainted with Kigali and I got to catch up with many of the Peace Corps crew that were on their way out. It was quite strange seeing them and thinking of where I would have been/how I would have felt had I stayed that other year..but in the end, I felt reassured that I made the right choice for me and being back in Rwanda in these terms is where I'm meant to be and what I'm meant to be doing.
I've got my little office here in Kigali with my two fellow MDP interns, looking out my window at some guava trees and the rolling hills of Kigali. We've got our little house all 8 of us together and we're already absorbing into our group all the expat interns in Kigs, it seems! We've found yoga classes & free film screenings, feels like a normal life a la Dublin, ....but in nice weather! I find that all very encouraging as I've recently developed a plan to work myself out of student debt by living somewhere in the developing world for a couple years after I graduate...hopefully furthering my career, living cheaply AND getting a nice tan! I'm thinking I'll stick to coffee-producing countries just for the sake of my sanity. (In this case, sanity is synonymous with caffeine addiction.)
Plus, where in the US or Europe could I attend events like a baby gorilla naming ceremony?? It was mostly just speeches and a lot of lipsynching performances by Rwandan pop stars...BUT where else could I see a Jeffrey Sachs, Isaiah Washington, two Dutch movie stars, a lady from the Kenyan elephant rescue, and a pompous Nollywood actor ALL in festive traditional Rwandan formal wear (that looks remarkably like a shiny toga....)
And I got to showcase my own Rwandan sing-along talents which delighted all the Rwandans around at the ceremony and prompted the older woman behind me to slap me so hard on the back in joy (rwandans love a hard pat for affection) that I nearly lost my vocal chords. Everyone else around once they noticed (as my original intention was just to sing along with the concert like anyone else) began to bust out their cameras and record the muzungu singing along in Kinyarwanda...don't be surprised when I'm famous here.
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