Hand washing with my roommates and our help: Best help ever.
Basket weaving at the millennium village
Female Dancers
WEEK 1
SATURDAY 11:20am
I left Toronto at some godly hour of 11:20 am for a 13hr flight trip to Ethiopia. I had a 3hr layover and a flight to Kigali that day. Chilling in the wait room, I stumbled on other EWH students and we all embarked on the 2 hr. flight from Addis Abba to Kigali. We arrived Kigali at 12:40pm local time.
SUNDAY 12:40pm
From the airport, we ventured to the IPRC to meet our host famiies. My first impressions of Kigali were rather pleasant. I was taken aback by the vast hills and red sandy color that donned the city. Upon arrival at our home for the next 4 weeks, we decided to explore the streets. We started with the corner stores and open Market Square. But because we were jet lagged, fatigued and sore we decided to call it an early night.
MONDAY 7am
At 7 am, we experienced our first bucket shower. It was exciting but it was just the beginning of a rather eventful day. We had a nice breakfast of ginger tea and bread. The day started with a little bit of orientation and introduction to the participants of the program. After, we needed to get Internet started up which required us going into town. We took motos (okada, bikes, scooters) whatever you call them to town. I probably haven’t used those in almost 10 years now. Oh Lord! The excitement. Getting to town, we tried to get the Internet fixed but to no avail. We were starving, so we ate at our first Rwandan buffet stand, which was just the beginning of many buffet type restaurants. We did a bit of exploring to another open market, up the hill and down the valley. Made a pit stop at an Internet café and played a game of cards for a couple of hours. We headed back to home.
TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY
I still struggled with jet lag and a bit of homesickness. I started enjoying the routine though. Kinyarwanda lessons are lots of fun because we all struggle with pronunciations but survival instincts take over, we literally cannot function in without speaking the native tongue.
THURSDAY
I haven’t laughed this much in so long......
This thursday was not particularly great or bad. It was an okay day. I had a lab earlier on and blew up the transformer of my converter. I tried fixing it with a soldering iron but I completely destroyed the whole package. I decided to buy some snacks and head to the computer lab for more work. Mr nice guy Portuguese broke his laptop and he was in sour mood. we ended up talking about the days unfortunate events while he taught me a bit of Portuguese which I forgot in no time.I can’t remember the details of our conversation but I know it fell somewhere between scienceyyy and funny jokes. But I just remember us laughing away all the troubles we faced today
FRIDAY, SATURDAY
It was ground breaking day at the college. A project that was funded by the Korean government at the IPRC. They are to build a new teachers training college. After the ceremony, we had cocktails {or as they say, we raised the roof} and a group of cultural dancers entertain us. This week, we couldn't make it to the hospital so we visited the BMET lab at the school. It was a nice day getting introduced to the devices that we had only seen in theory. we played around with oxygenators, patient monitors and infant warmers.
On Saturday, we had a tour of Rwanda. We started off at the memorial site in Nyamata village of the eastern district. This memorial site was church where a large number of Tutsi people were murdered. The tutsi people believed that the church would be a scared hiding place for them since this was the case in 1992. But, this time was different in that the hutu's blindly followed orders from the government and executed all the people at the church. In the memorial site housed a burial ground of up to 50,000 tutsi people. The stories of how people were massacred were told and I find them a little bit gory for sharing.
After that , we visited the reconciliation village with about 56 hutu and tutsi families. The formation of the village was encouraged by the Rwandan government to promote peace between the tribes. We had the opportunity to hear stories of two survivors of the genocidal period from both tribes. The account was quite heartbreaking both also brought an opportunity for reflection in our own lives. Through their stories, I found that I finally understood the saying " TO AIR IS HUMAN AND TO FORGIVE IS DIVINE". We danced with the villagers and shared a drink with them.
We also visited a basket weaving site and learnt a bit of how to basket weave. DAMN!!! it's really difficult,my hat goes off to the women. We visited a health centre and a farm to end the tour around Rwanda.
I really enjoyed the first week so far. I like my team mates, my host family and the people of Rwanda. Hopefully week 2 will have more exciting endeavours to be talked about.
SATURDAY 11:20am
I left Toronto at some godly hour of 11:20 am for a 13hr flight trip to Ethiopia. I had a 3hr layover and a flight to Kigali that day. Chilling in the wait room, I stumbled on other EWH students and we all embarked on the 2 hr. flight from Addis Abba to Kigali. We arrived Kigali at 12:40pm local time.
SUNDAY 12:40pm
From the airport, we ventured to the IPRC to meet our host famiies. My first impressions of Kigali were rather pleasant. I was taken aback by the vast hills and red sandy color that donned the city. Upon arrival at our home for the next 4 weeks, we decided to explore the streets. We started with the corner stores and open Market Square. But because we were jet lagged, fatigued and sore we decided to call it an early night.
MONDAY 7am
At 7 am, we experienced our first bucket shower. It was exciting but it was just the beginning of a rather eventful day. We had a nice breakfast of ginger tea and bread. The day started with a little bit of orientation and introduction to the participants of the program. After, we needed to get Internet started up which required us going into town. We took motos (okada, bikes, scooters) whatever you call them to town. I probably haven’t used those in almost 10 years now. Oh Lord! The excitement. Getting to town, we tried to get the Internet fixed but to no avail. We were starving, so we ate at our first Rwandan buffet stand, which was just the beginning of many buffet type restaurants. We did a bit of exploring to another open market, up the hill and down the valley. Made a pit stop at an Internet café and played a game of cards for a couple of hours. We headed back to home.
TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY
I still struggled with jet lag and a bit of homesickness. I started enjoying the routine though. Kinyarwanda lessons are lots of fun because we all struggle with pronunciations but survival instincts take over, we literally cannot function in without speaking the native tongue.
THURSDAY
I haven’t laughed this much in so long......
This thursday was not particularly great or bad. It was an okay day. I had a lab earlier on and blew up the transformer of my converter. I tried fixing it with a soldering iron but I completely destroyed the whole package. I decided to buy some snacks and head to the computer lab for more work. Mr nice guy Portuguese broke his laptop and he was in sour mood. we ended up talking about the days unfortunate events while he taught me a bit of Portuguese which I forgot in no time.I can’t remember the details of our conversation but I know it fell somewhere between scienceyyy and funny jokes. But I just remember us laughing away all the troubles we faced today
FRIDAY, SATURDAY
It was ground breaking day at the college. A project that was funded by the Korean government at the IPRC. They are to build a new teachers training college. After the ceremony, we had cocktails {or as they say, we raised the roof} and a group of cultural dancers entertain us. This week, we couldn't make it to the hospital so we visited the BMET lab at the school. It was a nice day getting introduced to the devices that we had only seen in theory. we played around with oxygenators, patient monitors and infant warmers.
On Saturday, we had a tour of Rwanda. We started off at the memorial site in Nyamata village of the eastern district. This memorial site was church where a large number of Tutsi people were murdered. The tutsi people believed that the church would be a scared hiding place for them since this was the case in 1992. But, this time was different in that the hutu's blindly followed orders from the government and executed all the people at the church. In the memorial site housed a burial ground of up to 50,000 tutsi people. The stories of how people were massacred were told and I find them a little bit gory for sharing.
After that , we visited the reconciliation village with about 56 hutu and tutsi families. The formation of the village was encouraged by the Rwandan government to promote peace between the tribes. We had the opportunity to hear stories of two survivors of the genocidal period from both tribes. The account was quite heartbreaking both also brought an opportunity for reflection in our own lives. Through their stories, I found that I finally understood the saying " TO AIR IS HUMAN AND TO FORGIVE IS DIVINE". We danced with the villagers and shared a drink with them.
We also visited a basket weaving site and learnt a bit of how to basket weave. DAMN!!! it's really difficult,my hat goes off to the women. We visited a health centre and a farm to end the tour around Rwanda.
I really enjoyed the first week so far. I like my team mates, my host family and the people of Rwanda. Hopefully week 2 will have more exciting endeavours to be talked about.
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