Nyanza!

14 January 2010

The cows are mooing and the birds are chirping this morning in Nyanza. Our group of fearless volunteers ventured the winding country roads of Rwanda on Sunday to arrive at Nyanza, a small town about 1.5 hours outside of Kigali. Here, we are giving kids and adults free English lessons for this week as the last part of our training. The country side surrounding Nyanza is absolutely beautiful... rolling green hills, misty mornings, blue afternoon skies (wellsometimes - we are in the rainy season after all), markets, and streets lined with people carrying food, wood, mattresses, or anything you can imagine on their heads.

On Sunday we spent the afternoon at an orphanage playing soccer and learning how to say "tickle" to kids in Kinyarwanda. The kids are amazing soccer players, not that I was surprised, but given my size I think we were pretty evenly matched :) Playing with kids is always good for the soul; it seems the more time you spend with a kid, the more you become one.

The hotel we are staying at in Nyanza is actually pretty nice: comfortable beds, running water, our own bathrooms, a TV to follow the African Cup, and even hot showers (again, sometimes). However, as we learned the hard way, this does not mean that we should expect the same service as we are accustomed to in the states. On Monday we ordered food from the hotel... fries, goat brochettes, and pizza, not anything too terribly fancy, but we waited two hours!! I keep thinking back to two summers ago when I was a waiter at the Athenaeum Hotel in Chautauqua, NY and how many unsatisfied customers would complain about a 20 minute wait when the kitchen was dealing with an influx of at least fifty customers at the same time. Here, food requires patience (ihangahe in Kinyarwanda). But, on the flip side, we were guaranteed fresh food - the goat pen is just at the back of the hotel.

Back to the part about the rainy season. Last night I experienced the most intense storm I can remember in my entire life. It started around 8PM and lasted well into the night and the next morning. It was not just raining during this time, but constantly lightning and thundering. For a while it was right over top of us and the flashes of lightning were like staring at the flashes from a photographers camera - bright white - and the thunder would follow with a sudden crack that reverberated in your chest. The power in the town went out several times, which left everything pitch black. Imagine watching a storm with no lights. When it wasn't lightning, you literally could not see anything - not even the person standing next to you. Then a flash and a series of bolts lighting up everything around you like a strobe light. It was pretty incredible.

Finally, I will leave off with a few more first impressions about Rwanda that I left out in my previous post. First, it is not impolite to stare here. Add to this the fact that I am a muzungu (white person) with white hair, and you can imagine what it's like sometimes to walk down the street. Secondly, if you want to get someone's attention here in Rwanda, you hiss at them. My hissing skills are slowly developing and I am anticipating culture shock when I come back to America and receive strange looks when I hiss at the waiter or my friend across the way. Finally, Barack Obama is a major hit here. Walk down any street and you will see "Obama Saloon" (Saloon is their word for Salon), and vendors selling "Obama Pants."