Week 2

It’s been a long week! It’s strange not having a routine—the days feel longer, and more relaxed than at home but looking back on what we’ve done since Monday I feel accomplished. We might not actually have many concrete things to show for it, but the project plans are becoming more clear and things are falling into place. We went into Kigali on both Monday and Thursday for meetings with World Vision to discuss our Sprinkles project. It was pretty exciting to be at the national head quarters! Kigali is a treat for us because of the food options, the coffee, the shopping and the taxi moto rides J On both days our meetings were in the morning, we would go somewhere for lunch and then we would debrief and do some work before heading home. Normally I really enjoy going on long drives and even sitting on long greyhound rides (I find it rejuvenating to just sit and look out the window while listening to music), however the drive on Monday was far from rejuvenating. I think I have mentioned the city buses before. They are the size of a Volkswagen westvalia and they squeeze 19 people into it! So you are squished up against the people beside you and there’s really no way to move around or shift your weight. So I found myself having an internal debate the whole way home trying to decide whether I should start eating even more French fries so that my bum would get more padding…fortunately for my health, we discovered that there are bigger buses that go into Kigali and certain times, so we planned accordingly and left at 530 am on Thursday!

On Tuesday we had a full day of meetings (the Kibungo Health Centre in the morning, the Dean of the Faculty of Rural Development, and then a team meeting with Sunk Kyu to write a report and hammer out some details of the project), Wednesday was a relaxed morning and then meetings in the afternoon and evening (we had our first meeting to recruit some INATEK students to work with us), and Friday consisted of more meetings! Even today, Saturday, we spent much of the day using our brains to work through the survey, plan some student training, meet with Judy on skype (the professor heading this project who is currently working in Cambodia) and meet with an INATEK staff member. I also had to do laundry today (hand washing 5 shirts, underwear, two pairs of pants and a scarf takes some time!), and I finally felt up to doing some yoga. It felt very productive.

I discovered a few things in the past few days…the first was a GIANT spider in my bedroom! I tried to handle the situation on my own and spent several minutes planning and practicing my execution using a tin mug and some postcards, but when it came down to it I couldn’t do it on my own. I texted Kathy to see if she was awake because I needed support. To my surprise she got out of bed and came equipped with a headlamp, a glass and some paper and as soon as I pointed to the spider she went at it without hesitation. In my opinion that might not have been the best way of going about it as it took her about 5 attempts to actually capture it. Picture Kathy hitting the glass against the wall over and over while the giant spider is dancing around, and I’m screaming and yelling “I thought we were going to talk about this first!” over and over…not my finest moment. Once captured we took a picture, and then left my room to find many people staring at us…not unusual in Rwanda, but this was especially awkward given the circumstances, as well as because it was a big group of academics that had been at a conference at the university and were spending the evening in the courtyard outside my door. I have to admit that I had only used my mosquito net once since arriving at St-Joseph’s, but seeing that spider has been a better incentive than the risk of getting malaria, and I plan to use it for the rest of the trip. The second discovery was the tell tale signs of bed bugs, the 3 bites in a row commonly referred to as “breakfast, lunch and dinner”. Some of you may know that I became quite the bed bug expert when my roommates and I got them while living on campus 2 years ago. At UBC they had an employee that specifically dealt with bed bugs…he even had a big office so you can imagine that this must be quite a big issue on campus. The UBC bed bugs were taken very seriously and our rooms had to be completely evacuate of all our belongings and fumigated 3 times. It was quite a hassle, but looking back on it now I wish I could have the same treatment here. I have no idea how they would handle this situation here…so I think I’ll just have to deal with it. The THIRD discovery was a joyful one! We were walking back from our meeting today and saw 2 empty yogurt containers outside. We immediately went into the St-Joseph store to inquire and found out that they have yogurt available! I’m sure this will become a regular treat for us. My morning porridge just keeps getting better! I bought a kettle, mugs, a spoon and Rwandan honey…I also brought almonds and cinnamon from Canada, so my breakfast feels just like home. For dinner today I was mixing fries with my pasta (that definitely did not feel like home)…and the sad thing is how exciting it was to have the plain pasta noodles! We have resorted to mixing all of our various starches (fries, rice, sweet potato, banana) together to increase the flavour. Today there was a pureed soup that Gurjeet poured all over her starch..she was able to pretend (Hook style) that she was eating “alfredo pasta, cheesy fries and curry rice”. It’s good to be creative!

I have more to write but not enough time! I will post this now and try to add more about the project later. And I’ll put up some pictures…