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.