Placed!

I found out my placement yesterday!

I'll be teaching at Stella Matutina Secondary School in the town of Shyorongi (I think...), situated in the lower part of Rwanda's Northern Province, just 30-45 minutes north of Kigali. Stella (I can call it Stella now because I'm soooo there) is an all-girls Catholic boarding school with about 440 students and 22 teachers/staff. According to my field director, they've requested a teacher for math and science, but may use me for other subjects as well.

Score: I have my own little apartment! It's right across the street from the school, and it seems like the other teachers (/nuns? I can't tell if the other teachers are all nuns) will live nearby, possibly sharing a dining room with me. From what I can tell, I'll have a bedroom, kitchen, and guest room. I won't have running water (hooray for adjustment!) but the apartment and the school are tricked out with electricity and internet! This is big news for me, as I'm guessing it'll make things far easier both for teaching and for communicating with home. The other teachers at the school speak limited English, so this'll be a great opportunity for me to finally speak that fluent French I've been after since 6th grade.

Random little things I think I know about Stella/Shyorongi: The town is somewhat spread out along a main road. It's way up at nearly 6000 ft. elevation, so I'm going to have horse lungs by the end of this. Stella has guard dogs (...what?) with newly-built guard dog kennels. The electricity rarely goes out, but when it does, I can head down to a little shop called La Bonne Addresse and get some tea or milk and bread. The whole school compound has a brand new wall/gate scenario, which locks at 9pm nightly, so if I want to go out after that I have to jump the fence. Fresh fruits and veggies seem hard to come by in Shyorongi, so I'll have to trek into Kigali for those. My cooking setup consists of a hotplate with one functioning burner. Eating lunch with the nuns (if they are, in fact, nuns) is feasible but is likely to result in massive weight gain.

So, obviously, I'm still in the dark about a lot of things. As usual, I've got to just get there and find out. All of us WT vols received our placements yesterday, and everyone seems as excited as I am. Can't wait for meeting everyone, orientation, getting to know Kigali, all leading up to meeting my new little home in Shyorongi!

My family is savage and strong and cool and I wouldn't have it any other way.

If Ross wasn't trekking about, falling into amazing opportunities, and going where life took him, he wouldn't be Ross (it's 4pm in Edinburgh!).

If Ben wasn't doing something ridiculously dangerous, slightly stupid, and so heavily reliant on mad skills, he wouldn't be Ben (it's 5pm in Kabul!).

If I weren't being alarmingly over-laid back about preparations for a life-altering third-world move, I wouldn't be me (it's 6pm in Kigali!).

Cheers to our parents for creating, ever improving, and always holding down the fort in California. And for keeping us in our places by loving the dogs slightly more than us. And for advocating hard for the Devil.

I have high hopes for Christmas 2010.

Birakomeye...

So. So. So.

I got my travel information yesterday. I fly out of Washington, DC on Sunday, December 27 at 9:30am. WorldTeach is putting us up in DC on the night of the 26th so we can all make our morning flight, so I have to be in DC for a pre-departure meeting by 8:00pm on the 26th. Meaning that I have to fly out of San Francisco that morning to make it. So the morning of December 26 is when I leave San Francisco. Leave San Francisco. Leaving San Francisco. I'm leaving San Francisco.

Up until this point, I've had virtually no trepidation about leaving. I knew I would be sad to say goodbye to family, friends, and city, but I was so excited about going that I didn't feel it yet. I'm still as excited about going, but the fear swelled this week. It took some good cries on the way to and from work yesterday just to adjust to the fact that I have mangled my annual, indestructable family vacation with my too-early December flyaway date, and I can't stop myself from getting choked up when I think about those inevitable final goodbyes. I know it's only a couple years, but my plans after Africa don't, at this point, include coming back to San Francisco. This departure date is only three days earlier than I expected, but those were three precious San Francisco days...gah. Stop. Stop. Stop. Who knows what will come of or after this.

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Precicely.

...ariko ndishimiye :)

just shoot me

Not sure why, but I am childishly excited about getting vaccinated. I just made my appointments today (I have to go in THREE TIMES because the damned rabies vaccine has to be spaced out just so). Thankfully, I got so close to moving to the DR that I have a good amount of shots taken care of already, but I still need:

yellow fever vaccine
meningitis (my most acute fear) vaccine
rabies vaccine series
polio booster shot
typhoid pill series
cipro doses (bleagh)
malarials

For the malarials, I have three options: one that will cost upwards of $1,000 for my two-year stay (so we can just strike that from the list), one that must be taken daily and that presents nausea, sunburn, and hormonal muck up in 20% of cases, and one that presents neuropsychological side effects (vivid dreams, anxiety) in 20% of cases. Hmm. I am pretty torn between those last two.

So tell me, friends, which would you rather have messed up: your stomach and skin or your brain?

franyarwanglish

Interesting article pointed out by one of my fellow Rwanda 2009 volunteers:

Why Rwanda said adieu to French

I'm wondering whether I'm going to come out of this experience trilingual or mute.

begging, borrowing, hoping not to steal

So I've been compiling my Rwanda packing list this week (just three months in advance!) to figure out how much stuff I still have to scrounge up before my late-December departure. Turns out, it's a fair amount of stuff. If anyone happens to have anything on this list just gathering dust at their apartment/parents' house/local department store and feels like making a donation to the get-Jo-out-of-here cause, email me! at joanna.a.copley@gmail.com.

for me:

lightweight sleeping bag
high-quality bug repellent
high-SPF sunscreen
small flashlight
batteries
travel alarm clock
swiss army knife
first aid supplies/basic medicines
internal frame backpacking backpack
smallish regular backpack
hot water bottle
iPod headphones
small short-wave radio
thermometer
oral re-hydration salts (anyone?)
water purification tablets
band aids
Pilot G-2 rollerball 07-pt pens (because writing with any other pen is just drawing)

for the children (think of the children!):

maps, posters, calendars, anything that could hold some educational value
portable tape or CD player (upgrade: iPod speakers!)
3D models from chemistry or biology classes or anything of that ilk
BOOKS in English, preferably paperbacks, preferably at a high-school reading level

More to come on both these lists as launch day draws near. Suggestions for things that I should absolutely bring/not bring are also welcome!

Rwanda is attempting to step up their internet game:

Bold Rwanda takes broadband leap

Too much too soon? The development economist in me is fidgeting with excitement.