Site Visit

We were sent to do site visits this past week, which is supposed to be an opportunity to introduce ourselves to the community in which we will be living, then leave for two months before we return. In terms of what PC expected us to do it was a failure, in terms of my goals, utter success. I wasn’t able to get the paper work done or introduce myself to community leaders, mostly due to the fact that they don’t stick around past midweek and I arrived on Wednesday night. But I was able to eat cheese. The night before I left I bought an entire wheel of cheese, which is nearly gone two days later.

Getting to site started at 730am when we (Kari, my closest site mate) left to go to Nyabugogo, the bus station in Kigali. Got there at 830am and waited on the bus until 930am for it to leave. There have been horror stories about these bus rides, ranging from birthing babies to a minimum of one person throwing up (and not out the windows that open, rather, in purses, sweaters, on PCVs). The ride wasn’t as bad as it could have been. There was a ten minute stop in Nyanza where we ate some popcorn. Another couple hours on the bus and we enter the Nyungwe rain forest. Two hours spent driving through the forest and we exit and see monkeys! Another hour before we drop Kari off and I continue another half hour. I met up with the volunteer I’m replacing and we hop into a taxi. What should only take about 30 minutes took 1 hour because we made circles around the city, picking up people and random stuff to fill the trunk. An hour isn’t that bad though, it could potentially be up to 2+ hours on a bad day I’ve been warned.

After the taxi ride it’s a kilometer walk down a rocky dirt road, past the town center, and into the boarding school. The view from the school is amazing. It sets perched on the end of a hill that drops off into the valley where the food for the school is grown. A few rolling hills, another valley, then the Congo mountain range, which is extremely close, but given the terrain, is a few hours walk at least.

Not much to say about the school itself right now, more to come when I get more familiarized with it, but just quickly, it’s a mixed boarding school, focused on the sciences (math, physics, biology, chemistry, geography, and English are the main subjects). It’s an “excellent” school, which just means it performs exceptionally well and is considered a model school. I will be living on school grounds, currently with the headmaster, however, he’s in the process of building a house, so hopefully sometime I will have the place to myself. There are four rooms, three bedrooms and one dining room, plus a living room. Pit latrine and separate shower place outback, a few cows, citrus tree, lots of shrubs, and some garden space. There’s a guy, think his name is Theofil, who is the cook/cleaner. He’s super nice and is a good cook. Hopefully when/if the headmaster moves out he stays.

Didn’t do much other than walk around town, finish a book and start another. Everything I need to know about the school/community I will be able to learn when I actually live there so I’m not concerned about not knowing enough right now.

Some highlights about my district. It’s called Rusizi. It’s quite possibly the most remote from the country, bordering Burundi and DRC, neither of which we are allowed to enter. From Kigali to my town it’s about 8-9 hours (from when the bus leaves to arriving at my house). Because of the distance, PC thought it necessary to have a regional house where we can go if something goes wrong, we get sick, whatever. It’s really nice, has running water and electricity, beds, and western toilets! There’s a nice book collection happening, some board games (like settler’s of Catan!), a giant regional map of all current and past PCVs, and a pretty well stocked kitchen (including a meat grinder). I’m not too far from lake Kivu, maybe two hours, just given the terrain. There are also hot springs somewhere. My site is quickly building itself up as the best site ever.

So Friday afternoon some of the PCVs, Kari, and I made our way to the regional house to get together and cook food. We ground up beef to make burgers, cut up potatoes and made French fries. I decided that day not to be vegetarian anymore. The main point of doing it was to prepare myself for not eating meat at site because at training meat isn’t very common and isn’t good. But in Rusizi that’s not the case. There’s a German butcher somewhere I believe, 8 slices of bacon can be bought for 3000franc (like $5), and there’s the technology to make burgers, so all in all, I’m going to be quite happy.

Left early Saturday morning, all went off without a problem. Got dropped off at the road that leads us to our villages and took my first moto ride. That was a little scary, but not as bad as I had anticipated. If I didn’t have my giant day-pack on my back I would have had fewer thoughts off rolling off the back side and down the hill. But I made it, alive and well. Can’t wait to end training now and move down to my home for the next two years!