To Gitarama

On arriving in Kigali I was informed that the plan for my internship had changed slightly. Rather than spending my entire time in Kigali working at the Rwandan Development Board, I would spend the first month of my internship teaching at the small Université Catholique du Kabgayi in the city of Gitarama, about 50 km or 1 hour west of the capital.

Thus Saturday morning was spent purchasing a local cell phone, returning to Tina's house and packing/freshening up to head to my new home. Early in the afternoon the UCK van came to the bottom of Tina's street to pick me up. After picking up a few other staff members we were off to Gitarama. The drive was uneventful, I spoke a little with Patrick and Vivens, the men I would be working with, and enjoyed the scenery which is even more green and dramatic outside of Kigali.

After showing me to my room I was left to rest for a while before Patrick came to pick me up. We were going to dinner at the house of a family where Patrick had dined once before, but first he showed me around the universtiy campus. The campus is very nice, though very different from any Canadian campus I've seen. The classes are all in different long buildings with full walls of windows on both sides and completely wooden furniture inside. And only chalkboards for teaching. I have a hard time imagining many of the lectures at the U of S occurring without the sacred powepoint presentation.



On the walk to dinner I had no idea where I was going of where I was as night here is VERY dark and streets are informal and unlabelled. We were met at the gate (houses here are almost all walled in with gates that can lock) but some of the family and brought into the small back yard (concrete though, not grass) where we sat and chatted and had tea. To be fair at this point I mostly listened as the conversation was largely in Kinyarwanda. I met Grace, the lady of the house, Cassie, another woman, Grace's brother and sister-in-law (Kanyana) and Olivia, who is in charge of Public Relations at UCK. As it started to rain we quickly moved inside for drinks and conversation before dinner. I also met most of the children who live in the house, the girls were especially cute and did their best to talk to me and explain to me what was happening on the tv before they were sent to their rooms.

The conversation was somehow hilarious though it consisted of bits of French and English and a lot of translated Kinyarwanda. Kanyana was absolutely hilarious and completely determined to use what English she knew and made Patrick translate for her all the words she didn't know. Since I was drinking Rwanda tea but without milk or sugar (here tea is more like slightly flavoured powdered milk with about three heaping teaspoons of sugar) Kanyana and her husband were convinced that I was sick. Even when I explained to them that drinking tea black is what I am used to they didn't buy it. In fact, they thought the real reason I wasn't taking sugar must have been because I was diabetic.

Patrick and I left around 11 when someone came and picked us up and drove us home. All in all it was a wonderful night filled with a lot of laughter.

Daily Smiles

- playing with sunglasses with Dan before I left Tina's house (see photos)
- one of the young girls hugging me the moment I arrived at the gate of Grace's house
- one fo the girls (may or may not be the same one) taking my hand and leading me into the yard and then into the house
- the look on the two older men's faces when they entered the living room and saw me sitting there - eyes bugging out of their heads. I'm guessing they weren't expecting to find a muzungoo sitting in their living room
- the youngest boy seeming to be terrified of me
- Grace's brother asking me if I thought it was cold here and the look of complete bewilderment on his face when I explained to him that winter back home means -40C