Things I Never Thought I Would Say

Two years ago I graduated college and was preparing to head out on my Peace Corps Rwanda adventure.  Now two years later I look back and realize how many things I think or say now I would've never thought or said before embarking on this crazy adventure of mine.  Here are some of them:

"The intestine brochettes are actually pretty good."
One of the traditional foods served at bars and restaurants in Rwanda are Brochettes.  They are skewers of grilled goat meat generally.  The catch is, there are generally two types.  One made of regular meat and one made with intestines.  You might find some made with liver but they sometimes classify those under the regular meat ones.  Anyway whenever I order for myself I always get the meat brochettes for obvious reasons.  However, in the village when I've on, only a few occasions, gone out with co workers or guests of the Health Center they just put in a big order and a lot of the time that means intestine brochettes.  At home, I was always the picky eater.  Nothing on my burgers, dry salads, no weird food etc.  Here, I already stand out enough I just don't want to be the "picky white girl" so I just eat what's put in front of me.  To my surprise the intestine brochettes are quite delicious.  I still wouldn't order them on my own, but I don't have to mentally prepare myself for what's to come.

"It's 9pm?  It's way past my bedtime."
It gets dark between 6:30 and 7 pm every night.  And I mean pitch black.  I'm pretty much always in my little compound and finished cooking/eating by then because, especially during the week there isn't anything to do in the evenings besides be at home cook and head to bed.  Most Rwandans are at home cooking with their own families so it's not like I'm being antisocial.  By the time 7 or 8 rolls around I'm done eating and cleaning up, I live alone so there's not a ton of obligatory socializing to be had, and I've been up since 5:30 that morning so I'm tired and falling asleep in bed by 8.  No shame what-so-ever.  I'll probably never get to do this any other time in my life so I'm enjoying every second of it.

"I don't even remember the last time I ate meat."
Before coming to Rwanda meat was a staple in my diet.  Especially chicken.  That just isn't possible here on my budget and in my village you can only buy meat once a week.  Plus once you buy it you basically have to cook and eat it then and there.  It's freshly butchered that day, (I've seen it) so it is fresh but with our refrigeration there is no good way to store it for a long amount of time.  So, on a regular basis I live off of a vegetarian diet eating a ton of beans to try and get some protein in.

"It's still too cold to shower." (after a week or so)
Yep, this isn't me just trying to keep your interest.  I've gone obscene amounts of time without full on showering.  Don't cast judgement until your only option for a shower is a bucket bath and it's always so cold outside.  When I do shower I usually boil a kettle of water and then add cold water until its hot but bearable.  Using a plastic cup I scoop the water from the bucket and dump it on my head.  Oh, and all of this is taking place in my little "shower closet" outside in my backyard.  So yes, when it's cold outside, and I smell fine and there's no visible dirt on me why put myself through that?

"It has literally been raining for a week." "It's freezing!" (65 degrees) "It's soo hot!" (75 degrees"

I live in the northern region of the country.  It's surrounded by mountains and it's absolutely beautiful.  However when it's rainy season half the year there truly are weeks on end that it rains every single day and sometimes it doesn't stop for an entire day.  The power is generally more in and out during these times, it's harder to get places because the dirt roads turn to mud and since pretty much everyone walks everywhere it takes them longer to get places or even unable to get places causing work during rainy season to slow.  On the positive side once rainy season ends the country is even more green and luscious than before and makes you feel like your in a postcard.  

Secondly, the temperature is pretty temperate year round and after living in it for so long I've become one of those people who can't handle drastic temperature changes anymore.  I openly apologize for making fun of Californians for this when I was in SF.  I understand now.  The temperature changes less than 10 degrees and I go from wearing a T-shirt and sweating to wearing a sweatshirt under my rain jacket and freezing.  Coming back to actual winter is going to be a little rough the first year.

"I can't wait to do laundry back in the states!"
No one truly can say they like doing laundry right?  Well back in college when I was doing my own laundry I loathed it.  I basically would wait until I had no more clean clothes to finally force myself down to use the machines.  Here, I have to wash my hand.  It's way worse.  I still put it off which I always regret when I have an entire weekend filled of scrubbing piles of clothes and I can't feel my fingers.  But the one thing I always think about is how much I will appreciate a washing machine when I get home.  It's probably at the top of that list I have going in my head of things I will nver look at in the same way again once I'm home.

"I LOVE Avocados!"
I was an avocado virgin when I arrived in Rwanda.  (alert the firing squad now)  The texture always put me off.  I never ate guac, or at them in any form.  But during training I', not exactly sure what happened that caused me to try it but I did and my life was changed forever.  Now I eat them all the time and can't imagine my life without them.  Luckily for me I can buy them here for around 10-15 cents a piece depending on the season.  It really does make me sad thinking about the cost of them in America.

"I just spent less than $3 on my food for the week!"

With Avocados being so cheap would you believe me when I said those are some of the more expensive foods at the market?  In general I can make between $2-$3 feed me for the week easily by shopping at my local market.  It has taken some time for me to get more creative with my cooking since it has taken me so long to even start to get the hang of cooking on my charcoal stove.  But at my village market I can get a wide variety of veggies and starches that can all be boiled, fried and mixed with different sauces to provide me with a week of fresh, nutritious and delicious meals.  I still have no true love for cooking and probably never will but shopping at the local market and learning different cooking techniques from neighbors mixed with ideas from pinterest have expanded my palate widely!

"I drank 6 Fantas today."

I might have mentioned this before, but Fanta is huge here!  It's widely sold and is the choice drink at all celebrations.  Whenever I visit someone or attend a wedding or any ceremony I'm handed Fanta after Fanta and when I tell them I''m satisfied after two I always get a little pressure to take another.  Sometimes I stand strong at 2 and other times their insistence is so much I just take another.  6 is not an exaggeration, it's my record and I plan to never do it again.  It happened on  a day that I attended a wedding consisting of all 3 ceremonies in the same day.  I don't think I ate anything the rest of that weekend.

"I really need to wash my shoes."

When was the last time any of you have actually washed your shoes?  I bet you can't remember unless you have a job that gets your feet dirty on a regular basis, you trail run or hike a lot, but even then you don't wash them every time you use them.  Well here where the roads are dirt, you walk everywhere, and you are quietly judged by how clean you look washing your shoes is a necessity!  Along side laundry I have to scrub my shoes on a regular basis in order to keep looking clean.  By now it's totally normal but when I think about it, it's such a weird habit to have developed.  

"My best-friend at site."

During training a common statement we heard was that in Rwanda it's hard to develop deep friendships/relationships.  Me being someone who isn't the most outgoing person upfront was basically convinced that I would make it through these 2 years with simple work relationships.  I was soon proved wrong.  Having Emiliene enter my life has been amazing.  She has helped me adjust to Rwandan life and in turn I've helped her with certain things.  It's been a friendship built on mutual appreciation of one another.  The generosity and joy that has been shared between the 2 of us is something I didn't see coming and will be a part of my life forever.  She's one of the biggest reason I'll be back in the future to visit.  (Her and Etienne of course!)

"I really wish I had a better connection to be able to read more news articles."
Back home I wasn't really a fan of reading the news.  I was naive and living in my own little world.  I always felt like the news was depressing, it caused arguments, and I wasn't sure where I stood on a lot of the issues talked about so the many biased sources made me a little crazy so I took the easy way out and just didn't pay attention.  Now that I've finished college and have been serving here I've been exposed to so many different people, different opinions, and different perspectives that I've started to crave the news and the information about what's going on all around the world.  Maybe it's from being so isolated with almost no access or my slowly found opinion and voice but I want to be able to read, hear, or see what's happening and applaud the positive thing, condemn the negative things, and resist the injustices.  The only right way to do that is to do it INFORMED.

"No I'm not married, yes I finished university." (eliciting shocked faces all around)
"Why is EVERYONE getting married and having kids?"

"I'm only 24, I'm sill super young."

The most common question I get besides where I'm from is whether or not I'm married and how old I am.  The university question gets thrown in there every now and then as well.  It's shocking to a lot of people here that I can be 24, not married, no kids, and have a bachelor's degree already.  I've spent a lot of time explaining that it's very common in America for women not to be married until they are older because we want to go to school, start careers, and make some money before settling down.  They usually nod or laugh or try to deny it ad convince me that I'm just weird.  But this is a concept we always try to introduce to young girls we work with at schools and camps showing them that it is an option to not get married and start a family right away.  It's really hard to change the minds of a culture so deeply rooted.  It has made me then look at my own culture back home and sometimes I feel like a hypocrite saying that most women wait until they are older to get married because my Facebook news-feed has been filled with engagements, weddings, and baby announcements for the past 2 years and I just sit here in shock and feeling like the weirdo who has a lot of other plans thought out but not necessarily in this socially constructed way.  At the beginning of my service I felt uncomfortable that all of my thoughts, and future plans weren't falling into this mold that I thought they might after serving in the Peace Corps.  When I started I thought this would "get it out of my system".  Boy was I wrong.  It's only been in the last few weeks that I've started to embrace the fact that I'm only 24 years old and nope I don't know what's next in terms of career or future really.  My Peace Corps experience has done the exact opposite of what I thought it would.  It has shown me so many more paths that I can choose and my plan is to continue exploring them.  I won't get sucked into one path until I know it is exactly what will make me happy, purposeful, and proud.  Life is an adventure and I plan to continue exploring.  

Just a little over 2 months until I'm back and the next adventure begins!! Get ready! <3 p="">

The End of the Marathon

Another airport post coming at you!  Greetings from Greece!  I am here waiting for my first flight of three in order to get back to Rwanda after the most relaxing two weeks of my life.  I'm going to brag a little bit because this trip to Greece was not only relaxing but it was an amazing adventure I got to share with my boyfriend Will.  We spent a couple days at the beginning of the trip in Athens doing the typical touristy site-seeing.  We saw Zeus' temple, the Acropolis, and a lot of other ruins and historical sites.  It was fun attempting to remember the facts about Greek Mythology I once had been forced to memorize and realizing we were walking where some of the greatest thinkers in history walked.

After Athens we hopped on a ferry for 7 hours (7 hours on the Ageon Sea isn't too bad) and headed for the one and only Santorini.  Santorini has always been on my bucket list of places to travel.  The iconic views and photographs in movies and all over the internet have always caught my attention and so finally I got to see it first hand and let me tell you it was even better in person.  Our hotel was right outside of Fira right in the middle of the island along the water.  We had a perfect view of the iconic sunset right over the ocean.  It was basically the scene on every postcard.  We rented a quad and drove around the island to see all the vineyards and beaches covering the Island. Then we decided to make the hike from Fira to Oia.  Now, being outdoorsy and fit when the trek was described as a "hike" we kinda took that with a grain of salt thinking it was more to prepare the wide variety of travelers for a decent walk.  Well, it was definitely a hike.  It was about 7 miles there and then 7 miles back definitely not just a "difficult walk".  But the views were unlike anything I've ever seen.  It was definitely worth it even if our legs were  bit sore the next couple of days.  The next day we decided to take the quad up there so we could find Amoudi Bay and go cliff jumping.  It was the last thing I needed to do before heading to the next destination.  Well, even after driving over we still had to trek a little bit in order to get there but once we made it, it was so much fun!  It definitely brought me back to summers back home spending so many days out on the river or cliff jumping at our spot.  It was the absolute perfect last day on the Island.

Next we headed to Paros and found a really great deal on a nice hotel right on the water and the most relaxing environment which is why we ended up spending 5 days there.  Each day we woke up went to the breakfast buffet and ate too many pastries (well at least I did) and then proceeded to lay by the pool al day long reading and napping.  Yea, it was that amazing!  Then once the sun started to go down we would walk along the water to the little town for some food aka gyros since that is what we lived off of!
While I'm on the topic, the food in Greece, Oh My Gosh!  No shame, I'm returning with a few extra pounds than when I left and I've never felt better about it.  We ate so much feta cheese, gyros, and any sort of flaky pastry you can imagine.  I definitely over did it but that's what vacation is for right?  Back at the hotel in Santorini they also had a breakfast buffet that was to die for and they would always bring out a special traditional breakfast dish to go alongside the assortment of treats we were already binging on.  It was amazing.  I don't think there was a single restaurant we went to that disappointed, and more often than not they loved surprising us with a treats both sweet and alcoholic!  I could go on and on about the food and the hospitality we felt but it would take forever but overall it was amazing, relaxing and the most amazing vacation I could have imagined.


So, you may have noticed my title "The End of a Marathon" and be thinking well what does that have to do with her vacation?  Well I now only have three months left as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  It's pretty crazy to even think about.  In comparison to 27 months three is pretty much nothing.  Also, since I'll be running my 3rd and final 1/2 marathon here in Rwanda in a couple weeks I thought this analogy was perfect.  I'll never forget the end of my first 1/2 marathon.  I was already dead from having run 15 kilometers and those last 5 seemed like nothing.  I had run 5Ks so many times whether it was in high school cross country or a casual weekend run, 5K was an easy day, like how I'm initially thinking about these next 3 months.  Well, during that first 1/2 marathon that "easy" 5K was the hardest part of the entire run.  I kept feeling like it would never end no matter how much I kept forcing my legs to keep moving.  I know it's not going to be easy.  I still have a lot of work to finish up in my village, bittersweet goodbyes to say, and a lot of anticipation for what's next.  After spending 2 weeks with Will and now being apart again for these three months I know it's going to be even more difficult than before.  There's a lot I'm missing in these next few months like my brother's high school graduation, my friend's bachelorette party, and a lot of things I'm looking forward to that will test my patience.  Talking about this isn't me complaining, but rather identifying some of the big challenges that will definitely test me as I finish, just like during that last 5K every part of my body was tested whether it was my burning lungs, aching legs, or my sun burnt skin.  It took more than just my physical abilities.

This is how my entire service has been.  It's been a test of so many aspects of my being and it's been 2 years of lessons learned.  I can confidently say that I am no longer the girl who left 2 weeks after college graduation.  The woman I am now is the person I plan to bring back and introduce back to my family, friends and society and I'm so excited to work just as hard as I have throughout my entire service and finish this adventure strong and soar into the next phase.

Now, I'm headed back to Rwanda on full of determination and confidence.  I already have a to do list going with tasks for finishing up projects, a new personal workout  program in the works as well as studying for my personal trainer certification, and just simply enjoying the time left in Rwanda.

Many of you might recall me talking about my friend Emiliene.  Shes's been my village support person from day one.  Well, she recently has become unemployed due to some difficult circumstances.  But as always, she doesn't let that stifle her radiant smile and the love she shows for her son, her family, and pretty much everyone around her.  Since the day she found herself without a job she took action and decided that to continue to receive an income the best route for her was to start her own shop within the village.  As you would imagine starting your own shop isn't a simple task.  So I decided to help her in her endeavor especially since her main reasoning is to be able to continue giving her son a good life (a boy I've come to love so much) and to eventually put herself through university to study Social Work.  I've been helping in the planning, budgeting and overall organization of the business starting (who needs business school?).  Will has also started a fundraising page that you can easily donate to to help with some of the start up costs.  It's an investment not only in the lives of their family but in a women who is the definition of a strong confident, empowered and empowering woman.  Check out the website here https://www.generosity.com/fundraising/emilienne-s-business/x/16221521
Please take a look an consider donating even a small amount.  It really is for an amazing cause.

Now as I board my flight I'll leave you with this, even though I'm almost finished with my service I have a lot of posts I'm planning to make in that time so keep reading the best is yet to come!