Okay, so here is a brief (ha) summary of this week:

Thursday morning I arrived, and went straight to Daniel and Neema’s house. Daniel is at a conference in Uganda, and he will return tonight, so I have not met him yet. Neema has been very nice, but neither of us really knows what to do with the other, so we are both being overly polite. Their house is beautiful, and much different than what I had expected. I have my own room, a big one, and the bed is comfortable. It is much nicer that what I thought it would be, but also more basic in some ways. For example, they do have a toilet like the ones in North America, which I was not expecting, and a tv, dvd player, and a nice sound system. But, the kitchen is a charcoal oven outside, in its own little hut. Right now there is a problem with the water. Normally they have taps that work, but Neema said that for the last few weeks they have not been working, so we have a big barrel of water in the bathroom, and to bathe I use a pitcher (like the kind we make juice in) and pour the water on myself standing over the drain. They don’t have a tub, either, instead there’s a corner of the bathroom that is plastic and has a drain, but when you bathe the water kind of goes everywhere. To drink and brush our teeth we use boiled water, although Neema said that many local people drink the tap water, but that it makes them sick.

Today I was going to bathe, but there is no more water in the barrel. The house boy who goes to get it sometimes comes back with nothing because there are too many people, and they fight over it. So, I busted out the trusty baby wipes… (Thank you, Kate Englund, I would have never thought of that on my own.)

Yesterday I went to the Urwego office and met the other interns. There are four of us, all girls, and I think we will be good friends. Two of them are grad students at Johns Hopkins, and they have both done Peace Corps, one in Mali and one in Benin. The other girl is an undergrad as well, from Wheaton College, which is reassuring because I wouldn’t have liked to be the only undergrad AND the only one who had never been to Africa before. At Urwego, I took my computer to IT to get is set up for the wireless network, and the IT guys laughed at me because my software is too old to be compatible with their system! They spent an hour downloading new things and reconfiguring my system so that it would work. It was funny, because you wouldn’t think that the systems in Rwanda would be so advanced, but actually it makes perfect sense. Because the technology here is so new, they only have the latest versions of everything. Like, everyone has cell phones, but fixed (land line) phones are hard to find and very expensive. I bought a SIM card and some minutes for my phone yesterday, and it was $5 for the card and 5 minutes talk time to the US. Normally, I think it is even less than that, but because I was a mizungu (white person) the woman at the shop knew I had no idea what I was doing, and she just tossed out a number to see if I would bite. Lesson learned, always ask a local how much things should be. Also, must figure out how to Skype.

Saturday, we went to a wedding reception. It was not really like a reception, but more like a ceremony with local traditions. The families of the bride and groom invited each other to share milk from a special gourd that represents them becoming one family, and then the bride served food to the husband’s family and vice versa, also to show the joining of the families. There was lots of traditional dance and drumming, and two choirs who were amazing. The coolest thing about the wedding was how many people were there. Probably more than 500, and these are not rich people. They aren’t poor by Rwandan standards, but when they invited us (the day before) along with everyone at Urwego, I was pretty surprised. To have a wedding with 500 people could cost a year of private college tuition in the states. But Arthur (my boss) explained that things that we care about (such as having expensive caterers and enough chairs for everyone) aren’t really important here. The joy that the bride and groom feel is expressed by the number of people who come, and the community would take it as an insult if someone they loved had a small wedding and didn’t invite everyone. The invitations are issued through announcements at work and church, and also by sending text messages to everybody. One friend of the bride and groom will be in charge of tracking down all the phone numbers of the people they want to invite. Then, those people will bring their friends and families, and there you go. We got there a bit late, and there were no seats left, and barely any standing room. But, because we are guests. People offered to share their chairs. During the part of the ceremony where the families drink the milk, they passed around drinks to all of us as well, to show that we are part of their family, too. But rather than the tradition gourd of milk, it was bottles of Sprite, Fanta, and Coke. We ended up sharing, and when the food came, we shared that too. No one expected to be full from the meal, and were more than happy to share one plate among five or six so that so one would b left out. Then, there was a procession forward to present the gifts. Since I have just found out the previous day, I hadn’t had time to get anything (I hadn’t even changed any money yet) so I didn’t really know what to do. EVERYONE was going forward, and I didn’t want to be all alone on my bench. I was looking around to find someone I knew, when a lady grabbed my arm and pulled me into the line. She had a stack of three or four baskets, and gave me one to give as my gift. I didn’t know her, and didn’t get a chance to ask her name or anything. That really espouses the mentality here, I think: People don’t have very much, but they want to show that they have enough to share, and the community participation and sense of belonging is more important than impressing people, or getting credit for bringing a nice gift. It’s really cool.

On Sunday we went to church, and I was the only white person in a church of maybe almost 1000 people. I see white people at work (there are the four interns, and four other people who are with various NGOs who work there) and because Kigali is the capital, there are government people and aid workers from all over the world, so I think that was the first time I had been the only one in such a large group. It was hilarious, especially because the kids are so unabashed, they came up to me in groups and just stared, or tried to touch me, and said “Hi how are you?” but that is all the English they know. When I walk down the street they give me high-fives. I went with Daniel, my host dad, to church, and he introduced me to tons of people. Many of his friends at church are studying at university (he is too), mostly in business, finance, or economics. So, they have tons of questions for me about things in the U.S. related to that. I’m also surprised at how much they follow foreign politics. The press here is not free, really, and there is only one t.v. channel (run by the government, obviously) so I didn’t know how much information would circulate here. But I’ve had many interesting conversations with people about Bush, U.S. politics in general, and especially conversations about the global community and its impact on the situation of poverty and disease here.

Muraho!

Many stories coming soon...