June 26th

June 20th

English and Kinyarwanda lessons are going amazing. I was afraid I was going to be lonely here without the other volunteers, even though there are so many people around I couldn’t (still really can’t) communicate with any of them.  Amahro is much better at English than I am at Kinyarwanda, but, he is in no way fluent. In a way its total submersion. I wish I would have done this sooner; it’s amazing what you can learn about someone when you try to connect with them by speaking their language. Up until recently all I knew about Amaharo was he worked for FVA, and had a pet chicken (who I’m still plotting against). Through these lessons my vocabulary has become more extensive and Amaharo has begun to really open up. I have learned Amaharo is 33 years old, comes from a local village in Gisnysi, he has two brothers and two sisters.  One day he was teaching me how to ask about someone’s family. Practicing, I asked him about his family. Through this lesson he told me he lived in Gisnysi during the genocide (btw its really taboo to talk about that here), he told me Gisnysi was one of the worst places in Rwanda during the genocide, finally he then told me his father fled Rwanda in 1994 and went to the DRC. Not having the vocabulary to push the topic and not really sure what is ok to discuss I didn’t ask any questions. He then continued and told me “they” burned his house, stole his cows, and beat his mother. Next he told me his dad was dead. Still not forcing the subject he told me when his father came back to Rwanda in 1996, the genocide was over but the people who had fled where hunted and killed. Wow, that was a really heavy Language class, what do you say to someone when they tell you that? It’s really taboo go discuss the genocide, but Amaharo seemed like he wanted to. For now I have decided to never bring up the topic, just be willing to listen.

June 21

Thursday was another busy day. I tried to find out some more information about sponsoring children for Matt, and I delivered another baby, this time a boy weighting in at 3kg. This makes it three deliveries now. Each one seems to be getting a little more complicated. This time the mom was in a lot of pain and it took forever to get the baby out… several pushes. Also the baby was born with six figures. Surprisingly I have seen this several times here. I have no clue why, the only thing I can really think of is people tend to marry within their village, so maybe small gene pool if they keep reproducing with each other, just speculation. 

Later that day I finally learned how to test someone blood for HIV. I understood the clinical side of how to take blood but I never understood how it was actually tested. Even though I don’t really enjoy lab work I’m really excited I got the opportunity to learn what they do with the blood once I take it.   There is a lot that goes into diagnosing someone with HIV, and to be the best nurse I feel I should understand all of it. It’s pretty similar to a Ph test. All you need is a drop of blood on the provided strip. One line means negative, two lines mean positive.

Also with my growing Kinyarwanda vocabulary I have noticed the nurse at the clinic seem to like me a lot more.  Still I have no clue what they are saying but I have noticed they are trying to learn a little English. Angel told me they think since I am trying to learn Kinyarwanda they feel they should learn English. You never know, I might try to teach them some English when I have some free time.

June 21 night

Oh my god, I seriously love Angel. I might have met my match when it comes to being blunt. She has no filter when it comes to her body language or the words coming out of her mouth. I love it when people tell you what they are thinking and she does exactly that, she called me deaf the other day because I don’t speak her language. I will show her, I am determined to learn. Today she also commented on my skin and hair. She asked me why my hair was “black” at the top and “white” and the bottom. I had to explain to her it’s because I highlighted it, and, it has grown out. She told me she liked it a lot, but she still didn’t understand why my hair is so dark like hers. She then asked about my skin, she told me it’s not white like the other volunteers. I had to explain to her my mother has darker skin. She then asked me if my mother was black, I guess she put the dark hair and dark skin together and assumed I was biracial. I laughed so hard when she said this; I asked her why in the world she would think that. Angel responded because “you are brown”. She then told me my skin is very pretty. Ha ha, I guess I no longer fit in, I’m not white like the volunteers, and I’m not black like the locals.

June 22

Took several peoples blood today. It’s great but life is getting redundant. Today we had one person test positive, seriously this is the WORST part of working at the clinic. I hate telling people they have HIV. Every day I walk into clinical, look at the faces staring at me and I wonder which person will I be telling within the next few hours about their positive HIV results.  Today it was a lady 25 years old, I honestly have no clue how she got it, but with young unmarried women I’m always fearful it’s result of sexual violence or prostitution. She was devastated and so was I.

On a positive note I finally discovered the clinic does give out free condoms. I also discovered at the nicer supermarkets you can find condoms as well, I still have not been able to find them at supermarkets in poorer areas. At least condoms are available if you look for them.

June 25, 2012

My weekend was amazing! Thursday night I took a bus to Kigali. This was the first time I have traveled by myself for a long distance. I am actually impressed with myself, I was able to find the right bus to Kigali, get their safely, and once there flag down a motor bike, negotiate the price, and then direct my driver to the guest house. I know it doesn’t sound that hard but try the added element of being alone, not speaking the same language and my lack of direction. Once I got there the other volunteers were waiting for me to go out to the club. We ended up going to one of the biggest clubs in town, Thursday nights are Raga night here. It would have been pretty fun if the power didn’t go out within ten minutes of getting there. No generator for back up, the club was completely dark. Rolling with it we decided to leave and bar hop around Kigali. We even found a karaoke bar… my favorite, too bad it was full of a bunch of Beyonces, no way am I getting up there to sing now! Regardless I had a blast.

The next morning Charlotte and I tried to get up early to plan our weekend, that failed terribly. For the last week we had been talking about going to Nyungwe National Park. We made reservations with a hotel but we still didn’t have way to get there. Not too keen on renting a car (bc of my last experience) and having no idea if a bus would take us that far finally we decided maybe we should go into town to find the bus schedule. We found a bus and it would be leaving in a few hours, even better they said they would drop us off at the hotel. Later that day four of us pack up and took a five hour bus ride to Nyugwe National Park. It was a beautiful drive through southern Rwandan, complete Rainforest. Once again I saw a huge refugee camp, I honestly had no idea they sent refugees that south. Because it was such a long bus ride we ended up driving in the dark. Looking out the window I was able to see the stars for the first time and they were BEAUTIFUL.  Then our bus came to a halt, middle of the Rainforest, in the pitch black, our driver said we were here and open the door. Confused I asked are you sure this is the hotel, he said yes so we all got off. Pitch black and no idea where we were, we walked down an unpaved road into the forest. Once again freaked out, I went over every possible scenario of how I could die. We kept walking until we found someone at end of the road. It was the security man from the hotel… thank god. Apparently the power had gone out so that describes the total darkness. He directed us toward our rooms and then the power came back. Once I could see, I realized I was at a very quaint hotel in the middle of the rainforest, INCREDIBLE!!!! It even had running warm water. So excited I hopped in the shower, lathered my body and hair with soap, and when I was about to be clean for the first time in 4 weeks the water turned off. Pissed I looked up at the drain and the knobs thinking I had somehow turned it off. Nope, I guess the water just shuts off whenever it wants to. Next came the string of four letter words, I tried to rinse my hair with a water bottle, but, I ended up sleeping with soap in my hair.

The next morning we all got up and found our way to the Rangers station. There we decided we would do the Canopy tour and the Waterfall hike. First the Canopy tour (this time we decided in favor of a guide).  The Canopy Tour was a 2 hour vigorous hike into the heart of the Rainforest. Good thing I’m somewhat is shape because if not I would have died. Straight up and down, over rocks, in the mud, through the forest we made it to the 2km long canopy suspended 100 meters above the forest floor. If you are afraid of heights this is defiantly not for you. We were at the top of the trees looking down on all the vegetation and wildlife, stunning. All you could see for miles was green forest, talk about in the middle of nowhere. Walking back across the canopy my guide pointed out there was a viper hanging on a limb above my head… Screw that, I ran across that canopy so fast.

After the canopy and the near death experience with the viper we headed for the Waterfall. The waterfall hike was 5 hours. Not as vigorous but a difficult hike. You really got to be an outdoors person to enjoy Rwanda to its fullest. We continued to hike deeper into the rainforest until finally we arrived. Seriously the waterfall looked like a scene out of Tarzan or King Kong, absolutely perfect. As we got closer you could feel the mist from the waterfall. Our now 5 hour hike was worth it. I tried to take it all in but the beauty was almost surreal. I looked up and all that I could see was trees, trees, and more trees.  After enjoying the waterfall we now had a 3 hour hike back to the ranger station. As we stared back it began to thunder, it looked as if any minute it would rain. I thought it was cool, we would be able to experience the rain in the rainforest. My friends didn’t think the same, oh well it’s not my fault they didn’t bring a raincoat.  The rain held up until about the last hour of the hike. We made it back safe and just in time for dinner. This trip was going off flawlessly.

That night charlotte and Julian stole the first shower from me. It was freezing cold, ha ha serves them right. That night, right before bed I turned on the shower in hopes that by some chance warm water would come out. To my surprise it was more than warm, it was burning HOT!!! Sooooooooo excited I took my first hot shower since I have been here. The pressure sucked but still it was hot! So happy I bragged to Julian, charlotte, and Gabby about my amazing shower. They told me F off… ha ha, sucks to suck.