A day in my Life in Butare

Things are great here so far. Rwanda is a beautiful country and the people are amazing. The weather is great too since it's on high altitude. The scenery is like being out in California, it is that beautiful with hills and all.

So I spent two days in DC for orientation and got to meet the team there. This is the first Peace Corps group back in Rwanda in 15 years so there's a lot of excitement around it. They had a reception for us at the PC headquarters with the Rwandan ambassador to the US and the Director of PC so that was nice. The trip out to Rwanda wasn't bad, we had two 7 hour flights to Brussels and then to Kigali, the capital to Rwanda. We spent two days in Kigali. the first day we had a meeting with the Minister of Health who shared with is the vision and the country goals related to healthcare. They're excited here as well and we were featured in the paper twice already. the second day we went to the Genocide memorial and museum which was very emotional.

We are now in Butare, 2.5 hours south of Kigali. Butare is known as the intellectual capital of Rwanda with the national university and museums. We're staying at a campus that's run by a group of nuns as part of an NGO. It's nice here. We each have a room with a bed and desk. We share bathrooms but they keep things clean. We're also served breakfast, lunch, and dinner. PC also set this up as a training center for us so they have classes for us in the shape of shacks outdoors. Each class is 4 people and we each get a teacher that teaches us Kenyarwanda. A typical day for me is:

My alarm goes off at 6:00 AM. I take a nice bucket shower (very weak water flow) and now they installed water heaters so at least it's not cold showers!! Breakfast is served from 7:00 to 8:00. Sometimes we get eggs, bread rolls, avocados!!, gebna roomi, nutella, as well as coffee and tea. At 8:00 we start our classes. they broke us into groups of 3-4 with a Rwandan teacher (they speak English) the classrooms are outdoors and in little gazebos in a courtyard garden which is amazing and inviting environment for learning. at 10:00 we get a tea break which they serve with local deserts. 10:30 we’re back in class. Lunch is served at noon. lunch consists of soup (lentil or mixed vegetables), rice or pasta, greens, and some type of meat (usually goat meat). We continue again with classes till 5:00 PM (the afternoon session today involved community activity so we went to the market and practiced our kinyarwandan with the locals) 5:30 we go to a place nearby for some sports activities (volleyball, basket, and soccer) Dinner is at 7:00 Pm after that we either chill outside. Two people have guitars so they play some tunes and we study. I'm usually in bed by 10:00.

It’s amazing how fast we’re learning the language we’re already going out to town and interacting with the locals in the local language.


Murabeho