My new home

I have written so many drafts about so many different things I want to tell but I simply don’t know how to start. So I picked one at random and it is the one about my new home.

My new home has not much to do with my work or experiences here. It is where I live, but other than that I just want to make clear that this house for the volunteers is not an indicator of how the homes of all people in Rwanda look like.

I live in half a house. It’s quiete big, one story, surrounded by a big stone wall with a big metal door, so I have at least some privacy while living on the school ground.

The other half of the house is lived in by some other teachers of the school. We don’t see much of each other, but I certainly hear them, because the walls are very thin and theres airholes in the outside walls of the house. All the doors could use some oiling – they are screeching like they belong in a horror movie.
Everytime they open a door or simply walk in their rooms, it sounds as if someone is walking through my hallway and I imagine it is the same for them when I move through my home.
Right now, I am still living alone, so sometimes it can be a little scary, especially because the sun goes down around 6pm every evening, making everything super dark.

At the beginning, I struggled a little bit with my new environment. Here, everything is very different to what I am used to in germany and I had to adjust my mind to it all.

Water is probably the biggest difference I’d say. I have running water but it is not drinkable and in germany I practically live off of tab water. I either have to buy drinking water or fill up on it in school.
I have to he careful when I cook, boiling the water before I use it, even for cooking itself.
Sometimes, the water stops running for a few hours and days, so I have to have some canisters of water prepaded for those instances just in case.
Cold showers are also something I don’t really like yet, but I am getting used to them and if I really needed warm water I can always heat up some on the gas stove.

Surprisingly, not having a fridge isn’t really hard on me. My veggies and fruit I just eat in due time and I am perfectly fine without any dairies.

Another major thing that put me off at first is garbage disposal.
There is none.
Well apperently there is a big pit in the area to throw trash in, but people mostly burn their garabage themselves.
The day I arrived, I immediately saw the pile of trash in my backyard and noticed the absence of bins in my new home. I asked my mentors: “How does garbage disposal work here?”, but they couldn’t give me an answer. It was Franka, the former volunteer that lived here before me, who told me what I should do.
So even though I was baffled and suddenly realised the weird smoaky smell floating around sometimes is burning plastic, I was genuinely excited to set things – well, my garbage – on fire every week or so.
(Obviously, the first time I tried it out it was a disaster, but well, I am still learning!)

Oh yeah, organic trash, so all fruits and vegetables are just thrown out of the kitchen window, because there is a small heap of compost under it.

There are some other small issues I have in my home, mainly because things are broken or because the house is very dirty right now, but I already temporily fixed some things with my mad skills and started my cleaning process, so I’d say I am settled in already.