Paulus o Globus

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Introduction

The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.
– Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Before I start telling you of my experiences as a volunteer in Rwanda, I wann state that I am only telling what I see and experience here. I am telling my single story and I want you to be aware that I will never be able to see and experience the whole country/all of the culture/every person, so what I tell you is only a small part of what Rwanda or even Nyanza actually is.

Also, I grew up in a completely different cultural context than the people here in Rwanda, so I might see something and judge it based on my european/privileged/white upbringing. Of course I will try to stay as neutral and non-judgemental as possible, but my unconsciousnes is still primarly influenced by the norms and values of a society from the northern part of the globe.

Thank you all so much for supporting me on my journey and I hope you will enjoy my Blog.

All the love, Paula

Here is a link to the Ted Talk “The danger of a single story” by Chimamanda Adichie http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

She explains very well how a single story can influence society’s view and opinion of a whole country/culture/people to the level that so much what is also real is lost because it wasn’t told.

Muzungu

“Muzungu” means “white person” and is a kiswahilian word. I am one of only five white people in total living here in Nyanza (that I know about). So I stick out everywhere I go and people tend to react.

Children are mostly pleased and fascinated to see me. Some kids start running towards me as soon as they spot me. I will often get hugs around my waist or touched on my arms by them, which can be very cute. When children are further away and still see me, I hear shouts of “Muzungu! Muzungu!” around me, coming from behind bushes and windows.

(Although Florian told me that a child started crying once as soon as it laid eyes on him. Which… yeah I guess I have been lucky so far then.)

When I make eye contact with people passing them, I greet them, as you do. Of course I learned how to greet people in my first week here, so it is not a big challenge. Often, people will be really impressed with me. “You speak Kinyarwanda!” (or alternatively: “She speaks Kinyarwanda!”, if I’ve already passed them) and want to speak with me, to test out my ability to speak Kinyarwanda, which can turn quiet awkward, because I am really not on an easy conversational level of speaking yet. Most of the time though, people only want to know my name or where I am going, which I am able to understand and answer to, thank god.

Some strangers simply address me with “Muzungu”, when they don’t know my name and somehow want to get my attention. But that only happens when I don’t react to “Sister! Sister!”. And I have to admit, “Muzungu” definitely catches my attention faster, because I know that no one else is meant by that.

Of course, some people are more pleasing to meet than others. I have, for example, a favourite child that always greets me when I am on my way to the market. This child is about 2/3 years old and is absolutely delighted, every time without fault, that it sees me. First, a happy high pitch scream: “Muzungu! Muzungu”, then it will come running towards me, on short legs, struggling a little bit to get up to the path next to the house that is higher up on the hill, until it reaches me. Most of the times it stops right in front of me, giggling and laughing happier than I’ve ever heard a child, and then it runs right back. But when my house mate, Laurin, is with me (he is just much better with children and somehow more approachable), it even comes all the way towards us to hug our legs. It absolutely makes my day every time.

Some more unpleasant meetings occur, when children, but also adults sometimes, tell me to give them money. I understand that, because I am white and privileged, I come across as a very rich person, which – considering the difference of the economic prosperity between Germany and Rwanda – is true to some degree, but I can’t just give money to every person that asks, especially because I don’t even have much more, as I am a volunteer with a budget. Getting asked for money, by students, children, people in the market, gets a little bit annoying after a while, I don’t want to lie. But I got used to it, I just ignore it or tell them “No” and don’t get flustered and thrown off anymore.

So all in all, I do stick out, and I won’t ever stop sticking out, but it is not as daunting as it was during my first week. At the beginning I was really scared, of all the people staring, noticing everything I am doing or where I am going. It is still a little bit weird, but I am definitely not scared of it anymore. Most of the time it is fun, especially when people at the market start laughing, because they are so surprised and happy that I speak a few words Kinyarwanda.

(And if I were to somehow forget where I live, I am sure a lot of people could show me the way immediately.)

Take another food, take another tea!

Wednesday, 28.08.2019

I love eating. I especially love eating here.

Let me explain first: It is common to take more than two rounds of food. The restaurants I’ve been to are the opposite in a way, but not really. They are buffet style, where you choose your food and put in on your plate. Yes, you only go fill your plate once in most restaurants, BUT you can bet that everyone has mastered the art of piling up a mountain on their plate that would probably amount to three entire rounds. Probably even more because the meals here in Rwanda are packed with carbohydrates.

Let me give you another example: On school days, I eat lunch in school, in the staff room. Some time between 1pm and 2pm a person carries in the plates first, then a biiig bowl of beans (sometimes with eggplant, or with rice, or with carrots), then comes in another big bowl, with either rice, kasava bread (fufu), or something else, today it was a bowl of whole sweet potatoes, yesterday there was even additional meat and last week a whole avocado for every person in the room.

After someone has prayed over the food, everyone grabs their plate and piles on. I get a reasonable amount, since I was tought to only get what I know I will be able to eat and I am used to eating snacks in between the meals as well. The other teachers – they build mountains on mountains on their plates like you won’t even believe. The impressive thing is that they eat it all, and will probably go for a second round as well.

So, I, with my “small” portion, get told every lunch: “take another food!” “Don’t you want a second round?” “You need to eat!”.

It is not only food they seem to be concerned about. Tea is also very important. Before lunch, there will be two big pots of delicios tea brought into the staff room around 11am. Well, my first days here I was still very shy and sat in the corner and every day, without exception, someone would bring me tea as soon as the tea pots were there.

Now I know to get my tea myself, but if I forget to, or wait even more than five minutes, someone will either ask me where my tea is or just bring it to me.

Today I forgot to drink my tea, because I visited Kevine – the school secretary who is my age and probably my first friend here – in her office during tea time. Naturally, as you apperently do here, at some point she asked me: “have you taken your tea today?”. When I answered truthfully, she was horrified. “Oh, but you should drink your tea! Why didn’t you drink your tea?”.

Conclusion: Tea is very important and you should never forget to take it. And by god, especially never not eat a meal!

I was very amused about her reaction, because by now, I’ve had many such reactions either because I didn’t drink my morning or afternoon tea, or because right now I don’t have any other basic food than rice in my kitchen, which to most people here apparently means that I can’t take care of myself.

Right now, as I am writing this, I am at Florians host family, because Diane invited me to dinner after she heard about the state of my food supplies.

(It seems I discovered a life hack how I will never have to cook for myself again. :’D )

But I do feel very cared for here in Nyanza, because everyone I meet just wants me to eat good. Questions about my culinary skills or what and when I ate last are something I get a lot.

Okay, so I was actually done with this post, but just then Diane came into the living room and said: “You didn’t eat the biscuits”.

To make one thing clear: there was an entire plate of biscuits, to be eaten with the tea and porridge, and I took a cup of porridge, a cup of tea, and a few biscuits. Of course I only took a few, because I was raised to be polite in that way as a guest. But no one else seems to have actually had porridge or tea or biscuits since they’ve been braught out.

So I think she actually prepared those things just for me and expected me and Florian (but he went to the market to buy some things) to at least eat most of the biscuits before we have dinner in an hour or so.

I think this is an even better ending of this post, this being the perfect example of Rwandan food culture. Just know, that while I am writing this last part, I am eating 10 more tea biscuits to make Diane happy (and myself, to be honest).

First Day in Nyanza (part 1)

Monday, 19.08.2019

After having finally reached my new home at 6am, Lilly and I could sleep for 4 hours. At 11am, my mentor Gérome, one of the pastors at Hanika, picked us up to show us around a little bit.

We ended up in the canteen for the University, where he wanted us to have a glass of “Rwandan milk”. Lilly was smart enough to say that she didn’t want any, I was foolish enough to say that I would try some. I only wanted to taste a bit, maybe get half a glass, but as I was told then:

“In Rwanda you can never fill a glass only half full with milk. It’s not good. We don’t do that here.”
So I got a glass filled to the brim with this thick milk. I tried it, I didn’t like it. It tasted like some weird kind of butter milk, very sour and fat. To be polite I planned to drink at least half of it. After 3 sips I finally had to admit defeat to myself, because I retched (very luckily, my mentor was not looking at me) and almost puked.
So I gave up and told Gérome that I could absolutely not drink the milk, I was sorry, but I really didn’t like it. I tried to be as nice as possible, while also making sure that I was never offered any again.

During our “milk drinking time” at the university, the Pastor began talking about Religion – mainly about christianity and the difference of faith in Germany versus Rwanda. He started with something like:

“Do you know the bible? Have you read it?”

– “no, not really”- “Do you believe in God”- “Kind of”- “When I was your age, I wasn’t religious. My parents were and I began reading the bible to criticize it. But as I was reading the bible, all my questions were answered. You should read the bible, you will see”

Continue reading “First Day in Nyanza (part 1)”

Very first impressions – from the airport to Nyanza

Monday, 19.08.2019

During the Taxi drive from Kigali to Nyanza, we had the chance to see a little bit of the country Rwanda already.

The first time I saw Rwanda it was night. Driving through Kigali during the night is wonderful. We experienced with our own eyes what “the land of the thousand hills” really means, because: Wow!

To our right we looked down and saw thousands upon thousands of twinkling lights, in the valley and up the hill on the other side. Even at 3am in the morning, quite a lot of people were out and about, on moto-taxis and in bars or just by the side of the street. We even saw a group of people with their bicycles who’ve clearly just managed to ride up a street on a veeery steep hill.

5 minutes after we had a quick stop for our driver to buy some energy drink we stopped again, at a seemingly abandoned gas station. (Abandoned because it was very dark, whereas in germany, even a closed gas station will have some lights on. Also, there seemed to be no one there.)

But our driver stepped out of the car to pop up the hood of his car and suddenly, out of the shadows, came another person. They wore very dark clothes, a coat with the hood up so you couldn’t see their face. I, a very tired, very-not-used-to-these-kind-of-situations – person, felt like it should have creeped me out, but my excitement of finally being in Rwanda still hadn’t worn off so I was mostly curious and just made some dark jokes about us getting murdered. Luckily, none of the kind happened and after we filled up on some gas as well, we drove off again.

This time we actually left the city Kigali. Every now and then we would bypass a bicycle with big and heavy baggage, due to with the person had to actually shove the bike instead of ride it. As our taxi driver told us, these were farm-workers that always started working this early in the day.

After an hour of driving, even the beauty of the through the dark visible landscape couldn’t keep my eyes open. I fell asleep a few times, waking up every time the driver made a sharp turn or accidently left the asphalted road to skid a few seconds on the sandy part beside the road. After he almost hit a wall and then almost ran over a dog, we had the feeling that our driver wasn’t exactly fit to work at night, as he also appeared to be very tired, to the point where we thought he might fall asleep behind the wheel.

Each of us tried to stay awake and alert, but I for instance remember waking up several times, the most rememberable when he drove over a traffic bumb in full speed and I woke up with my head almost hitting the roof of the car (exaggeration of course, but my heart skipped as if we barely escaped death).

At this point we were already in Nyanza and were welcomed a few minutes later by Florians host-parents Godfrey and Diane. At their house, we experienced Rwandan hospitality for the first time. We were offered tea and bred (it was 4:30 in the morning, which for them apparently was almost breakfast time), and got some delicious omelette that Diane specially prepared for us.

At the house of Godfrey of Diane was also the first time I felt like people here are never in a hurry. Although it was 5am and we were tired they wanted to feed us and let us feel welcomed first. Before I got a bite of that omelette I had been thinking that the only thing I cared for in that moment was sleep; but holy sh*t, I was wrong. I didn’t even notice how hungry I was, because of how badly I wanted to go to sleep.

Nyanza

Nyanza is a city. That’s at least how I would call it. One of the locals told me – a neighbour of Florians – that they only see Kigali and Muhanga as real citys and rather refer to Nyanza as a town.
Nyanza is quiete big, but only because it is so spread out. In Rwanda in general you won’t find a place where no people live or work or the land is used, unless you are hiking up the national parks to the top or something.

Nyanza is the same, so the city center consists of a few streets that are very busy. In the middle is a massive market hall (I will add pictures later), where you can find almost everything (if you know where to look).
Theres Food, Fabrics, Shoes, Clothes, little convenience niches.. the list goes on and on.

If you leave the city center, you can immediately walk on paths in between fields of green, everywhere people greeting or staring (if you are a Muzungu (white person) like me)

Approx. 10 minutes walk from the city center.

I’ve been to the center of Nyanza a few times now, but I am still not ready to go there alone.
The market is massive. So so massive and busy. It simply is overwhelming trying to orientate myself.
Even today, the forth time I went to the market, I had a list with a lot of things I wanted to buy and ended up going home with not even half of it.
I wanted to buy vegetables, more basic food like potatoes and pasta, sauce, fruit, and cleaning supplies and the only things I managed to buy were the fruit.
But my bag was full anyway! Because you get so much for so little and I was very excited about the fruit.

Although I have to admit that I got ripped off by one lady (or failed at bargaining in kinyarwanda).
1000 Francs (1€) for a Kilogramme of that delicious I-don’t-know-what-it-is-fruit. I know that it only is 300 Francs (30ct) at most but in that moment I was so stressed trying to understand and speak kinyarwanda as well as buy anything, I just payed her and let her to laugh about me with her friend.

Anyways, Nyanza is very beautiful. In the pictures above you can see a little bit how green and hilly it is everywhere.
No matter where you are, you will probably have a great view everywhere you walk, because you either are looking down a mountain or at a mountain, but most of the time it’s both.

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 back of the house where my entrance door is. This is the view from my door.

This is the front of the house, view from the gate. This is the entrance door of my neighbours.

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.

Paula in Rwanda

Sunday, 18.08.2019

My journey starts at the airport in Hamburg on the 18th of August. I flew four hours to istanbul, where I met three other volunteers of my organisation, Florian, Lilly and Alina, who would also stay in Rwanda for a year. Together we flew to Kigali, where we would arrive at 00:05 at night.

Upon stepping out of the aeroplane, we were very excited – and nervous. Getting our one moth holiday visa was – at least for me – fairly easy. Alina and Florian struggled a bit, but that was because they didn’t have their adress at hand and after some minutes of panic it all worked out.

Each of us was supposed to be picked up by one of our mentors of the organisations, to be taken to our new homes, but stepping out of the airport we were only greeted by a german volunteer, Leander, who was working with Alinas Organization in Kigali, and wanted to greet her together with the – absent – mentor.

Lilly, Florian and me apperantly had to wait a bit longer, which, as Leander told us, is quite common in Rwanda. So we settled down and waited…and waited some more… until it was almost 2am and we decided to look up the telephone numbers of our mentors, because we got the feeling that nobody was going to come to pick us up.

We were very thankful then, that Leander and Alina decided to wait with us, because none of us others had a working rwandan Sim-card yet, so Leander let us use his phone. After some confusing phonecalls during which it was established there was some miscommunication due to which all of our mentors were sleeping soundly in bed because they expected us to arrive at midday (12pm) and not midnight (12am), we finally found a solution.

Because we three all had to go to Nyanza, 3 hours away from Kigali, it was nonsense to wait for someone to come pick us up, so we took a taxi to take us to our mentors. The taxi drive to Nyanza was a whole adventure in itself but that will be another blogpost. Important is: We finally arrived in Nyanza at 6am on the 19th of August.