Adjusting to African Culture… In Africa

Language

Kinyarwanda is a difficult language to learn because it is a conversational language, meaning that there isn’t much structure or rules; rather, a lot of understanding comes from the tone and the inflection of the speaker. Rwandan people are very friendly and they will greet strangers with “mwaramutse,” “mwiriwe,” or “murabeho,” depending on the time of day. One month is a short amount of time to learn a language, so I’ve been memorizing terms and verbs that I use a lot such as, “thank you,” which is “murakoze,” and the verb, “I want,” is “ndashaka.” I haven’t really had to use Kinyarwanda a lot because my host family speaks perfect English and a lot of people here understand either French or English. I’m decent at French and fluent in English, so I can get by pretty easily. It just makes us Americans seem so unintelligent and stubborn because most of us only speak English while these people can speak three. Our Rwandan friend, Alex, said something really profound the other night about foreign languages. He studied English and probably speaks it better than I do, and actually, he definitely speaks it better than I do and I’m going to butcher his eloquent words as I paraphrase him now... He said that learning multiple languages is probably the most significant indication of intelligence. You could be the smartest doctor in the world but, at the end of the day, if you don’t know how to communicate with someone who speaks another language, then what good is your technical knowledge?

Clothing

We received a list of items to pack before we got here. It suggested for females to pack long sleeve shirts and pants or skirts. African women generally don’t expose their shoulders or their thighs. I haven’t seen any women wearing shorts, but I’ve seen some wearing tank tops. My host-mother is extremely fashionable and sported a cute halter-top dress once. Even if we were allowed to bring sleeve-less shirts I still wouldn’t wear them because I don’t feel comfortable. Rwandans already stare at me for being Asian so I don’t really need another reason for them to judge me.

Another muzungu (the Swahili term for “white person”) in Kicikuro, Katie, told us about her seamstress, Josephine, in Kimironko. All you have to do is show Josephine a picture of the dress you want and she can make it. Katie chose her own fabric and dress design off of Mod Cloth and two weeks later, she had her very own custom-made dress for under $20. One weekend all of the girls went to the market in Kimironko in search of the famous Josephine. Well, we found her and she was the sweetest lady ever. She speaks perfect English and all the muzungus go to her for their tailoring needs. Picking out a fabric was hard because the market is full of fabrics hanging on walls six feet high. I finally settled on a pretty green fabric and a classy dress design that Josephine already had and in two weeks, I will have my very own African dress (pictures will be posted soon)!

Children posing for a picture... In Africa.

Food

Rice. Beans. Potatoes. These are the main food groups in Rwanda. We pretty much eat them for lunch and dinner every day. Once and a while our house-boy will change things up and make fish, which has been my favorite meal so far, or substitute plain spaghetti noodles for rice. Breakfast has become my favorite because we usually eat bread with peanut butter or Nutella and a banana. Sometimes our house-boy will cook crepes or scrambled eggs (in a flat, crepe form) or even hard-boiled eggs if we’re lucky. For lunch we usually go home and enjoy the meal our house-boy cooks but sometimes we eat out with the rest of the group.

Dinner time... In Africa.

Fresh bananas... In Africa.

Beer... In Africa.

We have been able to find some American food restaurants. Mr. Chips is a burger place that is about a 20-minute walk from our campus. They have cheeseburgers and chips (fries) for about $4. I don’t if it was because I hadn’t had American food for a while or if it because all the vegetables are so fresh but those chips were the best fries I have ever eaten. Ever. There is also a pizza place and a burrito place farther away, about a 30-minute and an hour-long walk respectively. We actually walked a hour to get our burritos, but they were well worth it. The pizza place is called Sol e Luna and it is really good, too. It’s thin crust and the first time we went I ate an entire pizza in one sitting. It was like that “Shit Fat Girls Say” twitter account, “any pizza can be a personal pizza if you try hard and believe in yourself.” Sol e Luna has 90 different pizzas so it takes us a while to all choose.

PIZZA... in Italy... I mean Africa.

Muy bueno burrito... in Africa.

Rwandans like to take their time when eating out. Waiters won’t come by periodically to check on you. Sometimes it will be an hour after you sit down before someone will take your food order. On average, we usually spend two to three hours when we eat out. I read this about French culture, too. Other cultures actually take time to enjoy the company they are with when eating out, while Americans are more concerned with convenience.

Another big difference between cultures is that Rwandans typically eat dinner late. Our host family is very accommodating and we usually eat dinner any time between 7pm to 8pm. Other host-families will not eat until 9pm. Rwandans also eat A LOT and our host-mother, Agnes, likes to comment on how little we eat as she piles rice and beans onto her own plate.

To thank our host-family for their hospitality, we’ve cooked them several American meals. The first was spaghetti and garlic bread and the second was fried rice and hot dogs (I know this is a strange combination but our host family really likes rice and I needed to contribute my awesome Asian cooking skills).

Our attempt at American food... In Africa.

Plumbing

Before I came to Rwanda, I was picturing myself going to the bathroom in an outhouse and dumping buckets of cold water on me to bathe myself. Well, I was right about one of these and thankfully it was the latter. Our host family has a western toilet and a showerhead; however, the water doesn’t always work so we have a large bucket of water on reserve to pour on ourselves. I was able to get used to this situation fairly easily. It also helped that we would walk in the sun all day and get pretty hot so a nice cold bucket shower felt nice.

Indoor plumbing... In Africa.

Mosquitos

I knew mosquitos were a problem in a lot of African countries, but I didn’t quite understand just how prevalent they were. For example, if you find yourself outdoors in a t-shirt and capris as the sun sets you better run home before you are eaten alive. It’s like a scene from a scary movie where all the inhabitants in a small town shut their windows and doors at sunset to protect themselves from some imperceptible danger, which in this case takes the form of hundreds of mosquitos. Mosquito nets help a lot, but you need to check your net before you turn out the lights because even if one mosquito is in your net at night, you will wake up to at least 10 bites. I was really lucky during my first week and didn’t receive any bites but then I started getting them on my feet and ankles. You can’t feel them biting you, but you can definitely feel the bite afterwards. The itch is unbearable. I will scratch my bites until they bleed and one time I was foolish enough to spray some bug spray on me after I had been itching a bite and it stung like hand sanitizer on a paper cut (which I have also been foolish enough to do).

Before I got here I was really paranoid about contracting a disease spread by mosquitos, such as malaria or dengue, and this fear was only heightened after taking BIOL 416 (Viruses and Diseases) the previous semester.

I’m currently on Malarone, which requires as much attention as birth control (it must be taken at the same time everyday starting two days before your trip and seven days afterwards and it must be taken with milk or food) and costs as much as an iPhone 5, so it would really suck to get malaria at this point.

My bed... In Africa.

A Brief History Lesson… In Africa

*Disclaimer: I’ve never studied Rwandan history in depth and all my facts come from museum visits and the Internet.*

When I first told family and friends that I would be traveling to Rwanda, their first reaction was that of surprise, which quickly turned to worry. Whenever the word “Rwanda” is mentioned, most people think of the word “genocide” next.

Before the 1950s, citizens of Rwanda lived under Belgium rule. They were divided into three different tribes: Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa. The Twa tribe made up a small population of Rwandans and, according to my Kinyarwanda professor, they are comparable to our Native Americans. They keep to themselves in the less populated areas of Rwanda. The difference between the Hutus and the Tutsis was the number of cattle they owned. The Tutsis owned at least 10 cows and the Hutus, who made up the majority of the population, owned less than 10 cows. It wasn’t until the European colonization that the difference between Hutu and Tutsi became racial. The Belgians mandated that Hutus and Tutsis carry identification cards, which deepened this divide. Furthermore, even though the Tutsis were not the majority of the population, most of the Rwandan leadership positions were given to them. However, once the Rwandans tried gaining their independence from Belgium, Belgium leaders switched power to the Hutus in an act of defiance. The hostility between the two tribes kept growing until it culminated in April 1994 when the President of Rwanda was killed when his plane was shot down. This was the spark that ignited the genocide. Hutu extremists took over the government, blamed the Tutsis for the assassination, and began the mass slaughtering of the Tutsis [1].

The genocide lasted approximately 100 days and death toll estimates range from 500,000 to 1,000,000. It’s hard to imagine barbarism of this magnitude and it’s something that one cannot understand until it is right in front of him/her…

Our first weekend activity here was a Millennium Village Tour. The mission of the Millennium Villages Projects is to address “the root causes of extreme poverty, taking a holistic, community-led approach to sustainable development [2].” During the tour, we stopped at various locations that have benefited from this outside involvement. We visited a primary school, a small clinic, a farm, and a women’s basket-weaving cooperative (yay souvenirs!).

Baskets... In Africa.

A classroom... In Africa.

A hungry cow... in Africa.

The first stop on the tour was the most memorable, though. We stopped at a church. Back in 1994, hundreds of Tutsis came to the church to seek refuge. Today it serves as a memorial.

Outside, there is a large cavity in the cement at the entrance of the church, a remembrance of the slaughtering. Inside, rows and rows of clothing filled the church. The hundreds of people who died in the church are gone, but their clothes remain silent and still 19 years later, haunting the church like ghosts. The tour guide pointed out a once white alter cloth which was now stained red with blood. Sunlight peeked out through the bullet holes that pierced the metal roof. The clothes were dirty and also stained with blood. Our tour guide then took us to the lower level where a coffin stood in the middle of a white-tiled room. Inside the coffin was the remains of a woman who was raped multiple times before she died. I’ll spare you the gruesome details of her death, but to give you an idea, this is when I started crying my eyes out. I just couldn’t believe the brutality that was used to kill these people. It’s hard to think that human beings could be capable of such apathetic cruelty. There were three skulls on display on top of the coffin. One was from a man who was killed by a machete, the other was from a man who was killed with a spiked club, and the last died from a bullet to the head. On a separate visit to the Kigali Genocide Memorial, there is an area that is dedicated to the child victims of the genocide. The room is filled with large pictures of children, ranging from 2 months old to 10 years old. Under each picture is a plaque that gives some more information about each child. Facts such as name, age, favorite food, favorite toy, are included. The last fact on each plaque is how the child died. It was astonishing to see in such blatant terminology, “Cause of death: Machete,” or “Cause of death: Thrown against a wall.”

The tour guide then led us outside again, this time to the tombs behind the church. He opened the door to a staircase leading six feet underground. I knew what was at the bottom of those steps, yet a disturbing curiosity pulled me in. Shelves of human skulls and bones enclosed a body-width wide aisle, making you feel like you were being buried in the tomb itself. You couldn’t escape it. To your left and to your right, about a foot away from your face, was a dead person’s skull. Your only hope was to close your eyes and pretend you weren’t breathing in the deceased remains. No museum or memorial in the U.S. would ever allow its tourists to do something like that. It was an overwhelming experience that just added to the reality of the unbelievable massacre.

Before we left, two people were allowed to sign the guestbook. I was one of them and wrote the following:

Name: Krysten M.

Location: Arizona, USA

Comments: May the innocent who died here rest in peace and know of a place far greater than heaven itself.

Our last stop on the tour was to a small village, where genocide perpetrators and victims live together peacefully. We heard first-hand accounts of the genocide from two different men. The first speaker was an elderly man who was in jail for nine years. He was released and returned to his home only to find all his family and friends gone. The other speaker was a man who was only 11 when the genocide occurred. Both his parents were killed by Hutus and so he and his siblings fled to Burundi, which is just south of Rwanda. He also came back to Rwanda after the genocide but once again found it an unfamiliar place. Once the genocide ended, perpetrators asked for forgiveness by apologizing to the family and friends of their victims and divulged information about where their remains lay so that family members could give the dead a proper burial. Both these men were able to forgive their perpetrators and even live next door to them now.

I have so much respect for these people. It must take an insane amount of empathy for someone to forgive another for killing his/her family and friends. It was hard for me to believe that they could live together so peacefully, but I had just heard two first-hand accounts and I was also surrounded by the living proof in this small village. I guess time does heal all wounds.

Dancing... In Africa.

Rwanda has made significant strides since the genocide, but they never forget the past. Every year one week in April is devoted to remembering the genocide. Rwandans visit their nearest memorial and television channels constantly play documentaries of the genocide. Since so many people were killed, it was difficult to dispose of the bodies at the end of the genocide. Because of this, another task during this week is to search for human remains so that the victim may still receive a proper burial.

Sometimes is hard to believe that the genocide even happened. Once weekend we went to the Milles Collines, which is the real Hotel Rwanda and aside from a plaque outside the hotel, all other remnants of the past are gone. It’s not until I see random bullet holes in buildings or “remember the genocide” banners on buildings that I remember that hundreds of thousands of people died in this exact spot less than 20 years ago.

Hotel Rwanda... In Africa.

[1] J. Rosenberg. “Rwanda Genocide – A Short History of the Rwandan Genocide.” [Online]. Available: http://history1900s.about.com/od/rwandangenocide/a/Rwanda-Genocide.htm

[2] Millennium Villages. [Online]. Available: http://www.millenniumvillages.org/

An Acquiescence... In Africa

I've finally succumbed to one of my biggest pet peeves: study abroad blogs. I hate it when people think that just because they are studying abroad they think we at home want to read about how they went to the Louvre this weekend or what they thought of the local beer at the pub down the street. These blogs aren't unique or exciting and I, personally, could care less about why you thought the "Mona Lisa" was extremely overrated.

However, MY blog will be nothing like the rest. I feel that since I am finally done taking classes in Kinyarwanda (the local language only spoken in Rwanda), French, and medical devices, the “study abroad” part of my trip is over and I can finally begin to write about more exciting experiences, like working in a developing hospital in the northern providence of Rwanda, which is I what I'll be doing for the month of July. Also, unlike Europe or Australia, Rwanda provides a unique setting, and I want to shed light on the small African country since most people only know of Rwanda because of the brutal 1994 genocide (and not to mention the Academy Award nominated movie, Hotel Rwanda, starring Don Cheadle).

To start off, I'll give a little background on my situation. I've been in Rwanda for the past four weeks participating in a program known as the Engineering World Health (EWH) Summer Institute.  EWH strives to help improve conditions in hospitals in developing countries through donated and repaired medical equipment. The problem with these hospitals isn't the lack of donated equipment, rather, they often lack the resources to operate or to understand how to use or fix the equipment. University EWH chapters help repair broken medical equipment or work on design projects to help solve common engineering problems seen in these countries; however, students are only able to help indirectly. This is where the summer institute comes into play. The summer institute sends undergraduate students (typically in biomedical engineering) to work in a developing hospital (in Nicaragua or Tanzania) for a month to directly meet the needs of the hospital, whether it is by repairing broken equipment or by building benches for a waiting area. I, along with 12 other students, was chosen to participate in the pilot year of the summer institute in Rwanda. Because we are the first class, we've adopted the  "learn as you go" mentality, which will be duly noted throughout this blog as we struggle to form some sort of a precedence. But I believe one of the best ways to learn is through trial and error and I am excited to pave the road for future students.

For the first month, we are taking classes at IPRC Kicikuro, located in Kigali, which is the capitol of Rwanda. We are in class from 8am to about 5pm, Monday through Thursday. On Fridays we travel to the main hospital in town, CHUK (Central Hospital University of Kigali), to help fix broken medical equipment. In the second month, we will travel to different hospitals throughout Rwanda with our teammates to help repair medical equipment there. Just the other day, I found out that my two other teammates and I will be working at a hospital in Musanze, which is in the northern providence of Rwanda.

Broken anesthesia machine... In Africa.

For those curious about the title of my blog, you obviously do not follow me on Instagram or are unfortunate enough to not be on the receiving end of my Snapchats. I say this in a patronizing tone because I find my uploads extremely amusing (not to be conceited or anything). It started off one momentous day when I was able to receive WiFi in our classroom. I wanted to show my friends my everyday life via Snapchats and began with mundane pictures of my classroom, my lab assignment, and even my water bottle. To these pictures I added the caption, “My classroom… in Africa,” or, “My homework… in Africa,” etc. etc. I did this mainly to highlight the fact that I still had all these basic things found in America but the fact that I was in Africa made them more exciting. Once we began our weekend adventures to the rainforest and to the safari, my Instagrams and captions started to get more compelling, but hopefully I can keep some irony as I venture into the next leg of my journey…

My backyard... In Africa.

African dancers... In Africa.

An Boilermaker... In Africa.