Farewell Transmission

I'm feeling now, now that a real plane ride is less than 24 hours away, the weight and mass of this year behind me. I don't understand it, I think I want to get away from it, but its significance pulls me back, makes me afraid of going ahead and leaving when there's still so much more to figure out and to mull over and to appreciate.

When I left home last Christmas, I felt decidedly like I was starting a climb up a huge intimidating mountain, like I couldn't see the top and couldn't know what to expect along the way. I climbed all year and now I'm at the summit, and it's a cliff. Tomorrow I have to jump off. The year ahead looks so bright and airy and open that it's dazzling me; I'm feeling blinded and I can't look right at it. I want to go back down the way I came, to wind down and give myself time to readdress all the things that scared me on the way up, to check out the little spots that I missed, to relive my favorite parts again. The only way to go from here is forward and while it excites and exhilarates me, while I've anticipated reaching this point for so long, now that I'm actually here, with my toes at the edge, I'm scared. The excitement is still there, but I feel like I need a little push.

I suck at endings, and with so many mixed emotions vying for attention these last three days I couldn't even begin to say anything here that sums up what this experience of leaving is like. Luckily, someone else already did, so to close this blog I'll steal her words, which have been swirling around in my head for the last month or so, and giving me peace of mind that I can't seem to find anywhere else.

You are afraid that you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember. Think of the vine that curls from the small square plot that was once my heart. That is the only marker you need. Move on. Walk forward into the light.

The Year In Review

You know? The rice here really isn't that bad, just so long as you don't close your teeth all the way.

Evan Davies
Somewhere in Rwanda
Sometime in early 2010

My friend Evan said this during one of the countless buffets that we all shared during our first few months in Rwanda, and while I'm pretty sure he doesn't know it, this quote has become my mantra for the year, and hopefully a concept that will stick with me for a long time.

You see, the rice here in Rwanda consists of two main ingredients: first rice, and then detritus. Sometimes the detritus is straw or crushed up leaves or grass or some other veggie matter; that stuff usually just cooks right down to rice consistency and presents no problem. Other times, the extra oomph in your rice is bugs; again, these are just as chewable as rice and have the added benefit of infusing your meal with rare protein, so no problem there either. But most often, rocks are your rice's plus one. If you've cooked the meal yourself, chances are you've done a brief pick-through of the dry rice beforehand and removed the larger offenders, but it's almost inevitable that some tiny pebbles have been left behind. And if your rice comes from a local restaurant, where they're cooking up giant batches for a dinner rush? You're dreaming if you think you're getting pure grain. If you've ever chomped down onto a rock right in the middle of a tasty curry, you know that this wince-inducing, spine-shuddery feeling is not at all fun.

So what's the solution? Spend the entire meal ignoring your dining buddies, separating each grain and slicing it in half to ensure that it's rice, not rock? Only eat at the most expensive, elite establishments, where they can afford to pay a whole army of lesser kitchen staff to vet the rice before it reaches your plate? Just avoid rice altogether? None of the above. What Evan discovered, and what I've been rediscovering in situations ranging from rice to exercise to international travel to human relationships this year, is that you just don't close your teeth all the way. You know there will be rocks. You don't fight the rocks. You give them some space, you let them slide down with the rest of the mouthful, you enjoy your meal and you get on with your life.

How many times, here in Rwanda, have there been things to complain about? I wasn't told about a teachers' meeting until five minutes before it was set to start. Somebody's chicken bit me on the bus. The school maintenance crew dug up my vegetable garden. I waited two hours for my meal and then the waiter came to tell me that they don't have the main ingredient. The guy at the post office is holding my parcels hostage. It's 3am and the useless guard dog is literally screaming. My smart, capable students directly disobey me and then look at me with sad, pitiful eyes when they get punished for it. The village kids still lose it when I so much as leave my house, even though they've known me for months. My laundry was just about dry when a freak rainstorm took it all the way back to square one...

Rocks! They're all just rocks in my rice. All of these situations are annoying, but none of them really present anything more than minor irritations. I've certainly done more than my fair share of whingeing here in Rwanda, but during this last term, Evan's quote has been popping into my head almost daily. How about, instead of moving through my life here with a heavy-handed insistence that everything be pure, correct, perfect, thoroughly investigated and shaken down and beaten into faultlessness, how about instead of all that, I just take all the annoyances and inconveniences and perceived injustices and just swallow them down, let them go, don't chomp down on them too hard and ruin my teeth and my meal, but instead just enjoy the larger picture, the delicious curried life in Rwanda, even as I leave room for the rocks?

If I touch my teeth together every time, if I pick through this life I'm living in this developing country on this paltry salary, then I see that there are rocks everywhere. But something about this third term, perhaps my proximity to the end of my time here, the knowledge that soon I won't have this life anymore, or maybe, hopefully, a more fundamental gear shift in my brain, is allowing me to zoom out, and to see that this place, this year, and this life are incredible. I wake up each morning knowing that I'll see beautiful scenery, talk to familiar, friendly people in my village, laugh with my friends, eat good food, and sleep well at the end of it all. On the weekends, I get to travel all over Rwanda, and outside of the routine, I've had the chance to explore chunks of the rest of Africa, and even have one more awesome trip lined up before I come home. I successfully completed a year as a secondary school teacher, even though the thought of getting up in front of a classroom of students used to make me vomit. I stumbled into an incredible group of friends and future travel buddies who could commiserate with me if things got rough, and I had incredible support from my family and friends back home as well. When I look at things like this, when I take big generous bites and don't chomp down too hard, I realize that I'm one lucky slug in a ditch to have had this year that's far more rice than rocks.

--

I handed in my final marks today, which officially ends my duties as a teacher at Stella. For the rest of today and tomorrow, I'll be packing up and cleaning my house, doing laundry, and saying my goodbyes to students and staff here. On Thursday, I head into Kigali for a few more days with my WorldTeach group, and on Sunday, the Copleys arrive in Rwanda! We'll be traveling around East Africa for about three and a half weeks, and on November 23, I leave here for the States. It feels surreal, and insane, and delightful, that I'll be in the USA in less than a month. I can't wait to perfect my home brew of Africa tea and share it with friends, family, and random passersby. I can't wait to use my old typewriters and to go for runs in the daylight. So much to look forward to, and so many good memories from this year to look back on. Murakoze cyane mu amashuti anje, na mu Rwanda!

I Don't Want to Get Over You

Part 3 of 3: What I Hope to Bring Forward From Rwanda

early morning runs, and generally having a life before work in the mornings

making an event out of meals and lingering over them

patience

being happy with whatever comes to me, even if it's not even close to what I asked for

thinking about how much water I'm using and how to economize

listening to podcasts and the radio

African tea

diving right in with foreign languages and not being embarrassed when I mess up

fully appreciating the ocean

being terrified of something and not letting that stop me from giving it a go

making meals out of whatever I have on hand, and just generally making do with what's available instead of getting the perfect gadget to fit every need

taking rest when it's needed

occasionally having an electricity-free day and doing work by candlelight

traveling with no itinerary

figuring out what I love about my current life and then focusing on that while letting the not-so-great stuff fade into the background, thereby being happy wherever I am, instead of constantly wishing for somewhere else (thanks, Mum :) )

not closing my teeth all the way (see next post)

Oh! You Pretty Things

Part 2 of 3: What I Will Miss About Rwanda

gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous green hills in every direction

all my food for a week costing $2

four day work weeks

playing the muzungu card

awesome birds everywhere, and bird noise outside my window in the mornings

the omnipresence of lizards

Senior 5

students saying "hi teacherrrrrrrrr"

the giant smile on Louise's face when I go to La Bonne Addresse for tea

fabric markets

brochettes and ibyari from Kiyovu Pete's with my Kigali friends

the range of wonderful and horrifying things people strap onto their bicycles and/or carry on their heads

torrential equatorial rain and thunder that still makes me gasp after a year

the simple, stress-free nature of my house

fetching my own water

sitting on my porch in the morning and saying hi to everyone who passes in front of my house

the double-handed wave

constant nuns

the singing that's part of every routine school day

daily life bowing to weather conditions

8am Economat breakfasts

being extremely flexible with the rules/getting out of any sticky situation with a firm "ntakibazo"

seeing people's joy when they hear me use even the simplest phrase in Kinyarwanda

tiny little Ange, who faithfully trots along after me on my runs

heading into Bourbon at any time of the day or night and knowing that one of my friends will be there

the process of picking rocks out of my rice before I cook it

my cellphone ringtone

sleeping under my awesome mosquito net

being around my whole WorldTeach gang

the students who often make me want to smash windows but even more often make me smile, especially when they launch into unprompted versions of Imagine :)

Take This Job and Shove It

Part 1 of 3: What I Won't Miss About Rwanda

being called muzungu

shops opening and closing at random times, seemingly based on whim

an entire nation of close talkers

umuganda

often having nothing to eat but fried bread

food shame

students asking for forgiveness

being heckled by toddlers and mine workers

drunk barflies pestering me about how good God is

3:30am telephone calls from someone I gave my number to under duress seven months ago

being told good morning as dusk gives way to night

Nyabugogo

blaring half/half music/radio static coming from shitty handheld radios while I'm on a beautiful mountain walk

kinyarwanda radio programs consisting of manic laughter followed by 1,000 dropped calls being pumped into my ear at full volume while I'm on the bus

tree tomatoes

rocks in my rice

living with the matrons

mayonnaise

asking a question in class to get students thinking, and receiving a rote memorized answer from a similar topic they've already discussed in General Paper

Senior 4

lack of clear information about anything

endless, endless, endless speeches at any event

Kigali boredom

muzungu prices

the man in charge of parcels at the Kacyiru post office

falling down while running on crazy dirt trails

hand-washing, especially jeans

lack of ice

mosquito nets with holes in them

"it is not possible."

having a western toilet without western running water

the insane leery claustrophobia of markets

and, one more time for emphasis:

MUZUNGU.

Gotta Go Home

...and as extremely excited as I am about the home I get to go back to, it's definitely starting to become real that I'm leaving Rwanda, and it's leading to all sorts of mixed up feelings about my new country, my old one, my friends from all places, my work prospects, my travel plans, my latent desire to own and operate a dairy farm in rural England...klajgfh;kljasdf;lkj.

We had our End of Service conference last weekend in beautiful Gisenyi, where all of my fellow WTers and I gathered to talk about our thoughts on the year, the transition to the next stage of our lives, and how to answer that inevitable and almost universally dreaded question: "How was Africa??!!" It was reassuring to hear that even though we're all heading to different places with different things to do once we get there, all of us are sharing similar fears about gearing up for another drastic change, and sadnesses about leaving the country that we've grown so fond of for all of its lovable illogicalities. A sample of some of the stuff the Rwanda '10 crew has in the pipes:

About half the group is staying in East Africa for the time being:
MV has secured herself a job teaching statistics at INES, a university in the beautiful north, and LN is likely to join her there.
KW is going to direct the adult language (meaning English for grownups, not swearing) department of a private school in Kigali.
KG is going to travel around East and Central Africa and see if he bumps into an engineering job along the way.
EE is devoting her efforts to fundraising for her new nonprofit foundation, started this year in response to some of the issues she encountered at her school.

And the other half are most likely headed back to the west:
MP is interviewing for a big kid job in San Francisco.
JS is heading back to Liverpool to reinhabit her beloved home and teach kids that don't drive her crazy.
JS' is torn between settling into the quiet live at home in Torquay, teaching in rural Namibia for a year, or seeing what China has to offer.
CB is going home to Calgary to start law school.
JB is in New York already, eating every leafy green in the whole city.
And JC is taking the train all the way home to San Francisco, where she can't seem to think much beyond Day One back in her favorite city...

So, we're all in a jumble, but the one thing I think we can all agree upon is that this year has been a weird and wonderful one. I couldn't have asked for a better bunch of people to experience it with.

For me, the most complicated and confusing emotions can be reduced to a neat tidy pile of manageable factoids by making LISTS. So, for the next three posts: lists of the best and worst of Rwanda, and what I hope to tote along with me as I start my new life back home.

No Children

It's taken me a whole year, but I finally figured out the secret to lovely, stress- and heckle-free running in Shyorongi:

If you can't beat them, get up so early that they can't be bothered.

The constant swarming, screaming, and heckling I was getting from hoards of school children every time I would hit the trails for a run or a walk had basically driven me to the point of staying inside by the end of last term. I hated letting their stupid choices affect my own, but honestly, as much as I loved to be outside, it just wasn't enjoyable anymore. I go hiking for peace and a slice of nature; instead, all I was getting was full-volume screeching and a desire to dismantle my fellow human beings.

And then this term, a flash of brilliance: School kids love to sleep! They do it in my class all the time! They complain constantly about waking up early! Ipso facto, very few oiks would likely be roaming the hills of Shyo before they absolutely had to be. I tested out my theory this last Monday by getting up for a run at 5am. It was dark, but not pitch black, and by the time I got to the downhill stretch (where I need to be able to see where my feet are going so I don't further muck up my ankle) it was full-on dawn. The surroundings were more beautiful than ever, everything was fresh and crisp thanks to Rwanda's night rains, and, best, best, best of all,

no children.

I only saw six (adult) people on the entire run! And not one of them called me muzungu; they all just addressed me with a nice "good morning", almost as though we were both just regular people, instead of one regular person and one blanched freak. The run felt great, and I was back before 6am. I went three more times this week, and I've pretty much figured out that getting up at 5:20am so I can be out the door by 5:25 gives me the perfect blend of light and solitude. Term Three will be full of these runs! Watch out, Bay 2 Breakers 2011.

Note: If you haven't heard the song No Children by The Mountain Goats, hear it now. Learn the lyrics, and sing them at the top of your lungs with your family.

Beyond the Sea

From the newest addition to my top five books, Steinbeck's The Log From the Sea of Cortez:

It is amusing that at any given point of time we haven't the slightest idea of what is happening to us. The present wars and ideological changes of nervousness and fighting seem to have direction, but in a hundred years it is more than possible it will be seen that the direction was quite different from the one we supposed. The limitation of the seeing point in time, as well as in space, is a warping lens.

Among men, it seems historically at any rate, that processes of co-ordination and disintegration follow each other with great regularity, and the index of the co-ordination is the measure of the disintegration which follows. There is no mob like a group of well-drilled soldiers when they have thrown off their discipline. And there is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him. There is no hater like one who has greatly loved.

We think these historical waves may be plotted and the harmonic curves of human group conduct observed. Perhaps out of such observation a knowledge of the function of war and destruction might emerge. Little enough is known about the function of individual pain and suffering, although from its profound organization it is suspected of being necessary as a survival mechanism. And nothing whatever is known of the group pains of the species, although it is not unreasonable to suppose that they too are somehow functions of the surviving species. It is too bad that against even such investigation we build up a hysterical and sentimental barrier. Why do we so dread to think of our species as a species? Can it be that we are afraid of what we may find? That human self-love would suffer too much and that the image of God might prove to be a mask? This could be only partly true, for it we could cease to wear the image of a kindly, bearded, interstellar dictator, we might find outselves true images of his kingdom, our eyes the nebulae, the universes in our cells.

The safety-valve of all speculation is: It might be so. And as long as that might remains, a variable deeply understood, then speculation does not easily become dogma, but remains the fluid creative thing it might be. Thus, a valid painter, letting color and line, observed, sift into his eyes, up the nerve trunks, and mix well with his experience before it flows down his hand to the canvas, has made his painting say, "It might be so." Perhaps his critic, being not so wise, will say, "It is not so. The picture is damned." If this critic could say, "It is not so with me, but that might be because my mind and experience are not identical with those of the painter," that critic would be the better critic for it, just as that painter is a better painter for knowing he himself is in the pigment.

Young Americans

I'm fresh back from southern Africa, where I spent most of August romping around with Morgan. This superhyped trip blew right past my expectations and is definitely the best way I have ever spent an August.

We ended up spending the majority of our trip in three places: Mdumbi, South Africa; Maun, Botswana; and Tofo, Mozambique. All sorts of tiny stops and starts in little places in between. The actual list o' towns traveled to or through, for your amusement and mine, went like this in this order:

Johannesburg (South Africa) - Umtata - Coffee Bay - Mdumbi - Umtata - Port Elizabeth - Johannesburg - Gabarone (Botswana) - Maun - Nata - Francistown - Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) - Mutare - Machipanda (Mozambique) - Chimoio - Beira - near Vilanculos - Maxixe - Inhambane - Tofo - Inhambane - Johannesburg (South Africa).

Fido, Your Leash Is Too Long

Our trip was populated by some damn good dogs. The backpackers in southern Africa, and in South Africa in particular, all seem to come with a collection of super mellow, lovable dogs that don't really belong to anyone and definitely belong to you. We liked to name them even when they already had a name. Some favorites were: Rabbit, a silky shaggy collie-ish thing who followed us along the first beach we walked across on our hike up the coast from Coffee Bay to Mdumbi and then bailed; Melba, whose real name was Wendy, who kicked it with us a bunch during our 4-5 days in Mdumbi and was just generally game for a pat, a tossed stick, whatever; another unnamed shaggy sheepdog at Mdumbi who we affectionately referred to as "the old codger" or "that sweet old dog" because he hobbled around with a wizened look in his eyes and generally acted like he was around 150 years old, until we found out from Anna that he was "maybe four or five" and then we shunned the faker; a briefly encountered scrappy little pup who splashed through the water and boarded our mokoro (dugout canoe) in Maun, then tried to walk down 1-inch-diameter pole like it was a gangplank and subsequently fell in the delta; Killer, a lunatic mottled generic doggy dog who bounded up to us during a hike south of Tofo and immediately threw herself belly up in front of us for a tummy rub, and who then stuck with us for a few hours and whipped herself up into a frenzy circling Morgan on the beach; and finally Ghandi, a GIGANTIC great dane that was definitely more cow than dog, who loped through the streets of Tofo like a friendly bovine force of fury and jousted with strangers if they were up for it. Right now, Morgan is still in South Africa, enjoying the attentions of a 7-month-old lab puppy called Chai. As soon as it looks like I will be in one place for 4+years, I am getting a dog. Until then I will dogsit your dog if it is even mildly cool. I am particularly partial to dogs that are small enough to pick up if need be but too big to fit in even the biggest of purses. Collies welcome. Chihuahuas need not apply.

Lady on the Water

On the second afternoon of our Botswana trip, rather than navigating us to an island so we could get out of the mokoro and walk around, Steve took us on a watery search for hippos. We poled into a little part of the delta we hadn't seen before, and after a few minutes we started hearing the explosive snorts and sighs that we realized were hippos doing their hippo thing. Morgan was superkeen to see a hippo and kneeled in the back of the boat, scanning our immediate environs like a hawk. The snorts and sighs and splashes got louder, until finally, a few yards away from us through the reeds, a hippo! Just the top of his head was out of water, so we could see his eyes and comically small ears, flapping at us as hippo ears do. Classic. I kept being reminded of the jungle cruise at Disneyland, except that when I looked around I realized that no corny jokes were wafting from the nonexistent PA system and that the hippo I was staring at was not animatronic but was very, very real and capable of consuming me. We poled around to the other side of the lily-filled pool that the hippo was lounging in, and sat to watch. There were four of them in all, and they kept poking the tops of their heads out of water, snorting as loudly as cannon fire, and then slowly sinking out of view again. It reminded me of a slow-motion game of Whack-A-Mole, and I feel that I must apologize to hippos in general for constantly comparing them to unreal game experiences. They're just so weird! Maybe my brain was having trouble accepting that me and these real-life creatures were hanging out in the same pool at the same time.

When evening settled in, Steve poled us away from the hippos into another bit of delta, where we sat in the mokoro and watched the sunset. This post-hippo sunset was one of the highlights of a much-highlighted trip for me. The peace that descends on the delta as the sun is going down is total and infectious. It seems at first like everything is silent, but then you realize that this is the most beautifully lively silence you've ever come across - bell frogs hollering at each other with their beautiful tinkling call, birds wrapping up their thoughts for the day, the occasional hippo snort ripping through it all but somehow not disturbing the peace, but adding to it. And me and Morgan, in the middle of it. As we watched the sun get swallowed by the delta, playing in my head and adding to the serenity was

Lady on the water
Make me rich, make me poor
Lay your flowers at my door...

Wasp in the Lotus

During some downtime at camp on our little island in the Okavango, we were sitting near the water reading our books. I felt something tickling my leg under my jeans which turned out to be a big, ugly, squishy spider. Not gargantuan, but definitely big enough to merit an expletive if you saw it crawling on the wall in your house. I immediately felt hostile towards this invasive spider, so we nudged/shoved it with sticks and leaves until it was about a yard in front of us, where we could keep an eye on it. It sat in the crook of an elephant's footprint, thinking about what it had done.

Less than a minute later, we witnessed what was surely one of the most heinous takedowns that the Okavango had ever been home to. A wasp, about a centimeter in length and of an iridescent dark blue color, landed on the back of the spider. The spider's body was about as long as the wasp itself, but then he had legs to back himself up, so we put our bets on the spider. An epic struggle ensued, with the spider thrashing around trying to free itself from the wasp and the wasp raising its stinger ever higher as the thrashing continued, waiting for the moment to strike. And strike he did, plunging his stinger deep into the spider's squish with a sickening finality that brought Morgan close to losing his lunch. The spider squirmed and writhed for a while more, but his movements steadily slowed as the wasp removed his stinger and withdrew a few inches to survey his handiwork. Once the spider was completely paralyzed, but not quite presumed dead, the dastardly wasp came back and proceeded to deftly remove all eight of the spider's legs. Then he took off, leaving body and legs in a foul heap, no doubt to go report his conquest to all his asshole wasp friends. When we revisited the site later, the legs remained in their mangled pile, but the body was nowhere to be found. Never before have I rooted for or mourned a spider, but I did both that day.

Coming in From the Cold

Our original plan, sketched ever so vaguely in the weeks and months leading up to this trip, was to spend something like a week each in South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia before I had to head home. However, Morgan flew over Namibia on his way in, and said that it "looked cold". South Africa was pretty cold, and at night even Botswana was cold, and after two weeks of traveling we decided that warm sounded like a better idea, so we switched it up and headed over to Mozambique and the Indian Ocean it hugs.

Basically everything about Tofo was totally delightful. Our days were: Get up just after the super earlybird sun, swim, make a breakfast of fried eggs and honey toast with Ricoffee (coffee plus chicory! get some), swim again, lay in the sun reading, swim, make a lunch of huge veggie sandwiches and fruit, take care of any "business" that needed attending to that day (emails, international phone calls, surf board inquiries), swim, lay around reading some more, swim, get dinner at a restaurant on the beach, have a beer and some chocolate while looking at the nighttime ocean, and go to bed. Occasionally there was a hike or a surfing lesson (from Morgan to me, of course) thrown in there. This pace of life was pretty ideal, and here in Rwanda for the last week as I drift off to sleep I am usually thinking about Tofo. Is there anything better than being hot and going in the ocean to cool down? Or being sandy and going in the ocean to wash off? I love that the ocean is the natural balm to its surroundings. I love that it's there and that we are allowed to play around in it. I love staring at it, I love smelling it, I love hearing it. I love being right on the edge of the map. I love being warm, especially after being cold.

When You're Smiling

As most readers of this blog would know, I took this trip through southern Africa with my boyfriend, Morgan. Despite never having been outside of the Bay Area together before, and not having seen each other for seven solid months, I was pretty unintimidated at the thought of spending nearly a month in his company.

There's something about being crammed into a minibus and watching the sun sink below the horizon as you barrel along a dirt road towards a town that is nothing more than a name to you. You have no idea how close you are to your final destination and even if you do make it there tonight, it'll be very dark when you do, and you have nowhere to sleep, and you have very little money. You are hungry and you are tired. Everyone is looking at you like you are out of your mind just for being there. Alone, I'd probably be fighting back tears at this point. With Morgan though, this just turns into yet another adventure, another "can you believe we're here right now?", a time to laugh at how you got into this minor mess and to look forward to seeing how you will get out of it. We know that even if we have to spend the night huddled in our sleeping bags on the pavement like the vagrants we have become, it's really not a big deal, and instead of moping and turning on each other and then laughing about it years later, we'll just laugh about it right now.

There were tons of high notes in this trip, and of course I loved those. That's the easy part. But what really makes me smile when I think back on this month is that even the low points are great memories thanks to my awesome travel partner. Even when we're enduring the horrifying hell bus through Zimbabwe, even when we're being told that the train we've looked forward to for days and trekked across half of South Africa to reach has been mysteriously canceled and replaced by yet another bus, even when we're asleep on the floor of freezing Park Station because we were dumped there seven hours early, even when we're being hassled by urchins who feel they have claim on our money for some reason, even when we're roused from sleep by a knock on the post near our tent to say that everyone else is waiting and could we be ready for our three-day trip in less than sixty seconds, please?...all of these are good memories, and I would experience them all again, with him.

Plus, give him a glass of wine or two and he will promise to die defending your honor, if need be. How cool is that?

As Time Goes By

When I was a kid, I would look forward to and prepare for vacations to an extreme degree. I would make a paper chain (where you tear off one loop every day and watch the chain dwindle with mounting excitement) sometimes hundreds of days in advance. I would make a detailed list of every individual item I was going to bring with me, then make a separate list to show which things were ready to be packed, then a list for which things were already packed, and then at the end I would cross-check the three lists, finally making one final list of everything I knew was going with me so that I could make sure that everything came back home. I would write out a to-do list for every day during the pre-vacation week so I made sure that nothing would be bungled last-minute (I was really into lists...). I would make sure that my room was completely spotless and everything was in order before I left, so I could come back to a distinct lack of chaos. On departure day itself, I would be up by 5am (even if the plane didn't leave till 4pm, like on England trips) so I could be ready and showered, allowing time to deal with unanticipated emergengcies. I was always an advocate of getting to the airport 4+ hours early. Why the hell wouldn't you?

In college and in my youngun SF life, I relaxed a bit. Last year, the night before an England trip, I began giving thought to what to bring with me at around 2:45am, and realizing that nothing I owned was even remotely clean, I trekked back and forth to the (mercifully existent) 24-hour laundromat on 20th and SVN (sketch!) a couple times, after which I watched the entirety of She's Having a Baby before actually packing anything.

Here in Rwanda, it seems that I've entered my second childhood. My southern Africa trip has been anticipated with a 100-day-long paper chain. I made an itemized to-bring list about three weeks ago and spent a good amount of time honing it carefully until a final list emerged triumphant last weekend. I had a to-do list every day this week. Yesterday, I couldn't help it - I completely packed my bag, fully 48 hours in advance of departure for a four-hour flight. I am now spending my final day here making my house completely spotless, so I'll be returning at the end of this month to something approximating a museum exhibit of my Rwanda life.

It's been kind of fun to relive my anal-retentive childhood days in the lead-up to this trip, but I think that's mainly because I had little else to do these two weeks. I'm going to look at this as the death throes of my insane need for organization. Next vacation, I'm looking forward to chucking a random selection of rumpled clothes into the nearest available backpack five minutes before liftoff and heading, carefree, out the door.

We Used to Vacation

With Term Two officially and totally wrapped up and all my exams marked and my marks handed in ON TIME, I am now on vacation. Three days in, and let me tell you, it is a rager.

I've got two weeks before I leave for South Africa (actually only 10 days now!), and since my funds have effectively dwindled down to zero I decided to hang around in Shyorongi for this stretch, enjoying the quiet life. I figured that since one of the most delightful feelings on the planet is taking a day off work in the middle of the week, I would probably enjoy what was akin to taking ten days off work in the middle of the week.

I anticipated being pretty bored, so I'm happy to report that I really haven't been at all. Aside from all of my usual delicious diversions/time wasters (Archers, movies, long walks to nowhere, books, yoga, excessive tea) I've been listening to and taking notes on a couple of Cal classes, partly to keep my hand in (two years since university!) and partly to keep my general knowledge on the up (seven months of talking about nothing in rudimentary English and I am slightly concerned). One of them has been pretty cool, and the other has been fantastic:

HIST-7B (American History From the Civil War To the Present): This one is just pretty cool. It's a pretty standard take on modern American history, which I generally like learning about and which the professor seems to generally like speaking about. Definitely just a refresher of stuff I've been taught multiple times before though (we're barely out of the Civil War yet, so maybe my mind just has yet to be blown) and I really wish that I have access to the readings for the course to flesh it out a little. Hah! I never thought I'd pine for course readings.

ESPM-114 (Wildlife Ecology): Awesome! Here's a topic that I know virtually nothing about, but it's infinitely understandable and enjoyable if you've ever spent more than five minutes at a stretch outside. The prof is starting small, looking at individual animals and what factors define their niche, how they select their habitats, etc., and then will eventually move on to whole populations and how they interact with each other. Listening to this course has already made my long Shyorongi walks way more interesting, because now every time I see a lizard I can't help but think of how it might be thermoregulating, right this second. One lecture yesterday was going over the basics of how individual animals are inclined towards specific habitats (via genetic encoding, imprinting, and learning), and I was struck by how completely this applied to me, as an animal, in my search for a habitat. More narcissistic thoughts on this in a future post.

Other bits of media I've been taking in on vacation so far:

Requiem for a Dream: This is a movie that I wish I could erase from my consciousness, but I can't and now it's in there forever. Normally, I am more than game for disturbing drug-related movies, but the fact that this one was so wholly depressing, that it offered no light at the end of the tunnel but just continued to sink lower and lower until it eventually just gave up and died, made me want to go back in time and convince myself to give it a miss. Lots of my friends here have compared it to Trainspotting (one of my favorite movies), but I don't think they could have more opposite messages. If you like the idea of living with, and even enjoying, imperfection, watch Trainspotting. If you just want to cry/die, watch Requiem for a Dream.

The Pianist: Again, not an upper, but definitely a solid WWII movie with amazing music and an ending that's stuck in my mind and maybe even changed my actions a tiny bit over the last couple days. Also, a perspective that I've never really seen before, which seems rare nowadays for WWII.

Anna Karenina: Wonderful in every respect. Reading this book feels like sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner: every bite is a delight and you know it's not going to be over any time soon. Why does anyone ever fear Russian authors? I'm sure there are all sorts of metaphors and social commentaries and blah blah blah that I'm missing, but who cares? This is just an awesome story that's easy to read and keeps you thinking without weighing your mind down. I'm only just over a quarter of the way through, so I can't compare it to my beloved Brothers Karamazov yet, but if AK keeps on like this, it might well surpass.

Desert Island Discs with Kirsty Young: In spite of the fact that I often want to throttle the humble smuggery right out of Kirsty Young, this is a really great show that's been both introducing me to some entertaining people I'd never heard of before and giving me a nice new perspective on some that I had (the Ricky Gervais episode is glorious). It's also led me to form and constantly revise my own list of eight desert island discs in my head, just in case I become spontaneously famous and am forced onto the show with little warning. I'm ready for you, Young!

...well alright, since you asked, here is said list, in its incompletion, as it stands now:

When I Live My Dream ... David Bowie
I've Got a Thing About Seeing My Grandson Grow Old ... Cat Stevens
Musetta's Theme ... Puccini (La Boheme)
Strangers ... The Kinks
La Vie en Rose ... Louis Armstrong
Cello Suite 1 ... Bach
Greetings to the New Brunette ... Billy Bragg
American Tune ... Paul Simon

Still, tomorrow's gonna be another working day, and I'm trying to get some rest.

That's all, I'm trying to get some rest.

La Vie en Rose

Today, Shyorongi has an amazing summer feeling. There are no real seasons here except Rainy and Dry, but right now, with the perfect temperature and a perfect breeze, and possibly my internal clock waking up and remembering that it's July, it certainly feels like summer. I distinctly remember years ago, pulling away from a traffic light as I turned from Gregory Road to Pleasant Hill Road in Iago the blue Honda Civic who is no more, driving slowly with the window down and feeling the first really warm sun of summer, listening to Breathless Over You by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, feeling light and free and surrounded by just the right amount of attention and inattention from the great cast of characters that was my family and friends, all cloaked up in the pure unnecessary refreshing happiness that only summer brings. I've thankfully felt that way on many occasions since, and I feel that way now.

I'm more than half way through my year in Rwanda, and I find myself feeling good about

students who poke their head around the door while I'm in the staff room just to say hi teacherrrrr, and then give me giant grins when I say hi back.

my Dean of Studies, Regis, who I wasn't too keen on at the beginning of the year but has since proven himself to be a super pleasant, hard-working, accommodating guy who puts all the other DOSs to shame.

gorgeous Shyorongi with its endless miles of red dirt trails and green surrounds.

my parents, who listen to my gripes and ask about my day and have interesting days of their own to tell me about and who are charging into Africa in November with excitement and vigor.

the very existence of mangoes, let alone their recent arrival in my village!

my Rwanda buddies, who don't ask if I want to visit so much as receive a phone call informing them that I am on the way and proceed to put a curry on for dinner.

Tommy the dog, who is taking one for the team by enduring his extreme depression due to separation from his BFF Michy in order to give the entire of E.S. Stella Matutina a decent night's sleep.

my closest friends from home, who keep in just the right amount of contact - enough to keep me in the loop and remind me of how much fun they are, but not so much that I don't miss them something awful and look forward to being around them FT soon.

my brothers, who must be awesome if I miss them this much, who show me up to be the least adventurous member of the family, and who I can't wait to see sometime in the next 1-10 years.

the glow-in-the-dark Jesus-on-the-crosses (fact!) that exist in every room at this school, and the fact that I am the only one here who would ever think to find them funny.

my boyfriend, who against all odds manages to make me like him more every day, and who spends his days roaming the wilderness in defense of rare plants, and who will be hopping on a plane in less than one month now :D

St. Paul's, the mission that gives us good cheap food and an overwhelming sense of comfort as our first Rwanda home.

Stella's language department, which holds its meetings in English just for me.

the Archers, which I am obsessed with, and am off to catch up with right now.

Term Two is over, just exams left now! It looks like I'll be flying to South Africa, rather than overlanding, so I'll be leaving at the end of this month (!!!) after a week and a bit spent relaxing in lovely Northern Rwanda with Meghan et al. Term Three is a short one, and then The November of Mum and Dad In Africa happens, and then it's homity home home home. In this lovely summer glow, I can't help feeling like the rough part, the adjustment and the heartache and the frustration and the boredom and the why-am-I-here-ness, is more or less wrapped up. These last four months feel like the final upswing of the W-curve, where I soak up the country I'm finally feeling comfortable in and enjoy it till the finish.

Off I go home, knocking on every wooden surface I see on the way.

Where Do the Children Play?

When I got back to school a day before this term started I found that I had been given a whole new slew of classes, one of which was "C.P.". Luckily, this turned out to stand for Creative Performance (rather than the dreaded Computer Programming), but when I asked my DOS what that actually meant, he vaguely mumbled something about drawing and/or dancing and then wandered off. Since the rest of my schedule is packed with infuriating Computer Science classes, I've taken C.P. as a carte blanche to do whatever I want with my O-Level students. Near the beginning of the term, I decided that since I love plays, and live in a seemingly theater-free country, I would spend two months having the kiddos envision, script, and ultimately perform group dramas.

The performances finally started this week (the performance itself is their final exam for the term) and with a few minor exceptions, they are ON FIRE. During their lessons and in general around campus, the kids are pretty subdued, and by and large they hate talking out loud in class, so it's been a giant pleasant surprise every time this week when a near mute student takes the stage and launches into an Oscar-worthy display of emotion. Predictably, a handful of the students whose borderline malicious impishness makes me blind with rage in their computer classes have turned out to be star actresses; one S2 kid named Safi, who I've banned from the computer lab for life, made me laugh till I nearly cried during her group's drama today.

Another great surprise: These kids aren't exactly Tarantino, but their overall concepts for the dramas are not bad at all. Love triangles, and the forgiveness or lack thereof that they entail, seem to be the themes of the day. My favorite drama today was about a man who helps his best friend in a time of need, only to have said best friend run away to Zanzibar with the man's wife. That one was particularly awesome because the group included a Puck-esque character (I'm reeeeeeally reaching here; pretty sure they don't know who Puck is) in the form of a housemaid who stirred the pot and commented under her breath on the behavior of the main characters. Most of the dramas are really funny, too, and the more the audience laughs, the more the actresses ham things up.

A few weeks ago, some of the classes asked me if they could use "special dress" (read: costumes) for their performances. I said of course and didn't think anything more of it, because where the hell were these girls, who essentially live in prison and can't even have hair, let alone excess clothing, going to get costumes? Well, they made it happen, in a big way. The girls showed up on stage this week swathed in kangas (ubiquitous colorful sheets of fabric that I guess they all have), scarves, cleaning aprons, paper hats, track pants (to represent male characters), and basically anything else they could get their hands on to differentiate characters and help their stories. They also took it to the wall with props, using ping pong paddles as serving platters, colored paper to represent food, money, gifts, etc., hand mirrors as cell phones, pencils as straws and cutlery, and generally putting every scrap of material lying around the school to good use.

All I required of these kids was for each group to write and perform a ten-minute drama. They beavered away for the entire term and, largely unbeknownst to me, put in a ton effort to make their performances awesome. I can't wait for more of these next week, and hopefully I'll sneak some pictures, too.

All of this means that we are finally at the end of Terrible Term Two! This term has been a beast; it was a month longer than the last one, and almost everyone in our WorldTeach group had a pretty rough time of things at one point or another. But now it's the last day of regular teaching, and it feels fantastic. Next week is "Examens Hors Serie", which are the "minor" exams, including Computer Science and Creative Performance. The week after that is "Examens En Serie", or the "major" exams. The only one that applies to me that week is Senior 5 English. The exam weeks are pretty fun for teachers, because even though we've got a ton of grading to do, we can do things at our own pace and generally have lots of free time while all the pressure rests on the students' shoulders. And after that, on Saturday, July 17, less than three weeks away now, I'm freeeeeee!

Ah.

Canned Heat

On my first day in Shyorongi, when the nun gang was showing me around the school grounds, I was introduced to "the new dormitory", which looked to me suspiciously like an abandoned dirt field on the mysterious west side of campus. Thanks to the constant effort of our alarmingly hard-working handymen, the dirt patch has been quickly transformed in these five months into a beautiful red brick dorm with space for what looks like about 250 students. The uninhabited dorm was the only quiet, student-free place I found on campus and has a beautiful view of the misty hills of central Rwanda, so I used to like to sit on its steps at night and watch the stars come out. But, of course, our uber-efficient school cannot let good resources lie fallow for any length of time, so I was a little bummed but not surprised yesterday to get a text from our DOS inviting me to the inauguration of the new dorm at 4:30pm.

The inauguration was a much bigger to-do than I expected. Every student in the school was crammed into one half of the cement courtyard that wraps around two sides of the dorm, and the other half was set up with chairs and tables for the non-student attendees, which included the teachers, school administration, nun gang and various visiting nun friends, the local priest, the police chief, and various other local bigwigs that I think may have helped in financing the dorm. Everyone filed in according to their station and took their seats, and the festivities kicked off with a song that everyone sang heartily and I swayed along to. The priest led everyone in a prayer and a student read a passage from the Bible. Then, a bucket of water was trotted out for the priest to bless, after which he dipped a pine branch in said water and proceeded to flick it all over the crowd, making sure that all of the non-students got an individual splashing.

All the adults and a few select students then followed the priest on a tour of the inside of the dorm. The students sang the whole time, and the priest continued his blessed flicking over every inch of the interior. The dorm is totally packed with beds (really, it's just wall-to-wall bunk beds, with space enough for a slim person to walk between the rows and one 1'x1' bedside table for every four sets of beds), but it has lots of sunlight and seems like it'll be pleasant place to live for the kiddos. Once we had finished our slow crawl through the dorm, the priest flicked his holy water all around the outside of the dorm, and finally we headed back to our seats in the courtyard.

A few speeches followed from the headmistress, the priest, the police chief, and a couple of the visiting nuns. All was in Kinyarwanda, so I didn't understand anything, but it appears that the police chief is quite a character because his spiel got a lot of laughs. He mentioned me directly for some reason at one point, and I had to stand up and wave. Maybe it was the fact that I had no idea what was being said, or maybe it was the fact that they lasted for an hour, but the speeches seemed interminable.

Finally, after the last speech wrapped up, the dancing began! Traditional Rwandan dance is a popular hobby among the students, and the best of them were picked to dance for the ceremony. The younger kids came on first, all in traditional costumes (for this dance, that meant wrap skirts with sort of streamer-tassle things hanging from them in the school colors with bells tied to their ankles to keep time) and did a sort of mellow but intricate dance, accompanied by surprisingly skillful drumming from one of my favorite S5 students, Brigitte, and singing from the rest of the girls. After this dance, refreshments were brought out. It's never clear to me whether or not food is going to be provided at school gatherings; sometimes we blow right through dinner with nary a mention of a bite to eat, and other times they go all out with beers and food. Luckily, this was an all-out occasion, so out came the trays filled with Fantas and Mutzigs. It was freezing, so I had a beer, even though this may be a little scandalous for a woman to do at a gathering. Next, they brought out sambusas (little meat-filled dough pockets of fried yum) for the adults and amandazi (sort of like giant unsweetened donut holes) for the students. While we were eating, the older kids (about ten of them) came out to do their dance for us, and basically knocked it out of the park. Their costumes were long black-and-white wrap skirts with a big sheer white scarf/sheet thing tied around their shoulders, which they tied and untied and wafted around as part of the dance. Their dance was more lively than the younger kids', and even included each pair coming forward from the group to do a sort of freestyle. They were so fantastic! This group basically consisted of an all-star cast of some of my favorite students, and it was great to see them letting go and clearly loving what they were doing.

When we had finished eating, the one of the dancers pulled the headmistress from her chair and got her onto the dance floor. I was immediately terrified that I would be pulled up too, and I barely had time to acknowledge this fear before Alice, one of my prize S5PCM students, came up and yanked me from my seat, telling me, "You MUST, teacher." I threw my crippling fear of public grooving to the wind and did my best imitation of a freestyle Rwandan dance. I even tied my scarf around myself like a Rwandan kanga. The kids flipped their biscuits, and the adults clapped and hoorayed, and with everyone cheering me on in spite of my turning their respected traditional pastime into a gawkish funky chicken, I felt more at home and accepted by my school than I ever have over these past five months. Soon, everyone was dancing, all the kids and the teachers and the nuns and the police chief and even the priest, and it was wild and glorious an so much fun.

Often times, my students drive me crazy, and I can't wait until I'm 9,000 miles away from them. But seeing them enjoying themselves, letting loose and having fun, reminds me that they really are a remarkable collection of girls. They're incredibly hard-working and disciplined, they put up with all sorts of garbage from the administration, they take their rough schedule in their stride. And then, the one chance they have to kick back and relax, they make it their business to make sure that everyone is included and is as happy as they are. I am learning from them in the most cheesily inspirational made-for-TV-movie ways, and I'm happy to know that I'll miss them when I'm gone.

The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side

Got a text from Mitesh early yesterday afternoon to say that his dad, who's visiting this month from the US, was making chili and that we were all invited. I immediately canceled my plans (read: put my Buffy DVD back in its case) and hit the pavement after school to wait for a bus into Kigali. The buses were few and far between, and soon I saw the school's pickup truck trundling down the lane, choc full of nuns. Oh a whim, I asked if I could have a ride into town in the bed, and the good-natured sisters agreed. Getting a ride into town is an awesome treat, because 1) it's way more fun to ride around in the open air than crammed into a taxi; 2) it's FREE and therefore wonderful; and 3) it's rare and therefore exciting. It was late afternoon and the weather was perfect as we drove along the beautiful road from Shyorongi to Kigali.

The one downside of hitching into town is that you have no control over where you get off. I was itching to get to the bank, which is perched at the top of the most heinous calf-busting hill in Kigali. So my second pleasant surprise of the afternoon came when the nun's truck rolled right on up the hill and passed straight in front of the bank. I hopped out, said my thanks, and skipped up the steps to check my balance. Surprise number three: I'm lousy with money! Alright, maybe not lousy with it, but I was definitely shocked and happy with the amount that's piled up in the last couple months. I've been making a decent effort to save and have done without some comforts to do so, so this was a great payoff. I stopped by Simba Supermarket to get some wine to contribute to the chilifest, and bought some phone credit on my way out. I got 1,000Frw worth, but when I plugged the credit code into my phone it said that 1,200Frw had been added to my account! Turns out this is a promotion that the phone company is doing this summer, but I didn't know that yet. Feeling like the luckiest sluginaditch in the northern province, I skipped along to the Patel compound for dinner.

DINNER. When I got the chili announcement, I was expecting a pleasant snack with friends. Turns out, Mr. Patel is a chili aficionado, and he had commandeered the whole kitchen of his hotel to make a feast for us. When I got there, they were making fresh roti to go with the chili and chopping up carrots for a starter salad. Inga showed up soon with a veritable trough of delicious homemade guacamole and chips. There was even quality shredded cheese for the chili - I haven't seen decent cheese in five months. It was a FEAST! We ate and drank to our hearts' content and beyond, and it felt great to be in such good company.

This morning, after a pleasant sleep on a concrete floor that's never felt so soft, I caught a moto to the taxi park and snagged a front seat in the next bus to Shyorongi, another rare treat. I sat reading my book with my feet on the dash, enjoying the early morning cool. I saw a woman selling oranges and beckoned her over. The "oranges" here are a trial - they're the green sour kind with the tough, clingy skin, so eating them is not such a pleasant experience, but one wants one's vitamin C so I bought a couple. I stuck my thumbnail through the skin of the lightest one and was surprised at how easily it came away, then even more surprised to see a bright orange fruit underneath, instead of the pale yellow mish mash I expected. The skin came off and the sections separated easily, but I was still keeping my hopes as low as I could - this couldn't possibly be what I thought it was. I popped a wedge into my mouth and, honestly, squealed with delight. It was a SATSUMA! A sweet, tangy, intensely flavorful Christmastime treat. I ate the whole thing with my eyes closed, cementing my reputation as the weirdo muzungu of the taxi park, and it was one of the most pleasant incidents of my time in Rwanda so far.

On the ride back up to Shyorongi, the girl sitting next to me struck up a conversation in perfect English. She was working for a company that set up distribution centers for health supplies (like bed nets and condoms) in rural communities, and she's working in Shyorongi this week. She's a National University graduate who's spent a good amount of time in the United States, and was super pleasant to talk to. We traded numbers, and I hope I see her again. I hopped off the bus in Shyorongi and made it to school in time to snag some podcasts before my first class. Sweet!

Tower of Babel

The language situation in Rwanda: In rural villages, most people speak Kinyarwanda. In competitive, religious schools, most people speak French. Near the capital, Kigali, you can find the highest concentration of English. I work at a competitive religious school in a rural village near the capital. Shyorongi is Babylon, right after God got angry.

Most of the rural Shyorongi villagers rarely get the opportunity to practice their French and basically never get to try out the English they know. So whenever I go for a stroll around, people open the floodgates and release every foreign word they've ever retained, probably worried that they may never get the chance for a glowing white apparition to appreciate their efforts ever again. When I pass by the little kiddos that live on my running trail, their unvarying reaction, day after day, is

"goodmorningteacherhowareyoufinethankyouwhatisyournamemynameis____byebye"

after which they collapse breathless in a fit of laughter at this crazy ol' thing called life.

An old man followed me up the hill today muttering a string of sweet nothings into my ear in French. No one ever seems to be peeved when I don't respond, so usually I just listen quietly and then say goodbye when it seems like they're finished. Whenever I say even the most basic of hellos in Kinyarwanda, most people lose their minds with ecstasy and amazement, so maybe they're expecting the same thing when they show off their Euro languages to me. Sorry, Shyorongians!