Because you only swear in once... oh wait

After another 10 weeks of mentally grueling training, I am officially a Peace Corps Rwanda Volunteer. Our swear-in was held on Saturday at U.S. Ambassador Stuart Symington's residence in Kigali. He has a lovely backyard where we held our ceremony under some tents. Our country director, John Reddy, gave a few words of welcome, and then we had some short thank you speeches from PCVs: Michele and Kevin together in Kinyarwanda, I in French, and lastly Katy in English. Then the ambassador gave us some words of encouragement, and we swore our oath. The oath is the most exciting part to me because it's the same words that all U.S. government employees recite. (The PCVs from Mauritania did not technically need to take the oath again, but most of us chose to repeat it anyway.)

Following the ceremony we had some delicious catered food and entertainment from a traditional dance and drum troupe. We were told that the group was created to give opportunities to children from "disadvantaged" backgrounds. Each year they travel internationally, and last time they took first place for all of Africa in a competition in Holland. I am awestruck by how gracefully some of these children can move. One girl pulled me up to join her in a dance at the end. She kept pushing my arms up higher and then would nod with satisfaction when I got them in the right place. It was fun, even though she far outshone me!


Perhaps the only sad thing about training being over was having to say goodbye to our LCFs (Language and Cross-Culture Facilitators, which is fancy Peace Corps-speak for "teachers"). Our relationship with LCFs here was much different than in Mauritania. There they were all male and at least 45 years old. Here there were more female than male, and their average age was 26. (I'm 25.) Also, in Mauritania we had the same LCF for all of training, but here we would switch often so we got to know everyone. They were definitely more like peers here, and we would go out to meals and bars with them in the evenings.



Last week we had a farewell party with a Secret Santa gift exchange, and I was put in charge of the decorations. We had already bedecked the room with paper snowflakes and stockings I sewed out of dental floss (PCVs gotta be resourceful!), but the final pièce de résistance was a one-of-a-kind winter landscape. It included hand-sketched Santa and Mrs. Claus in a sleigh drawn by 12 reindeer, with a few elves looking on -- but each character's face was one of our training staff! Unsurprisingly I ran into a big hassle trying to print the photos, but in the end everything turned out so amazing, thanks to the help of many artistically talented PCVs. I'm not sure the Rwandans really "got" what the scene represented (considering one told me, "Oh, they're goats!"), but they really appreciated it and many were taking photos of themselves next to their little characters.



I'm sure you all know that Peace Corps Volunteers don't earn much in the way of money during our service, but we do get a nice one-time "settling-in allowance" just after swearing in. Consequently on Monday, fresh from opening our new bank accounts, we all raided the shops in Kigali and purchased more than we could ever need for our new homes. Pots, and pans, sugar and spices, brooms and buckets -- we're ready to go! Peace Corps gave us some nice heavy-duty foot lockers to pack our goodies in, and we hauled everything back to Nyanza. We'll be here for Christmas together, and then we begin dispersing to our sites on Monday (in Peace Corps transportation, thankfully). Can't wait!

'Til then, I've got Christmas tunes on my iPod, Christmas lights from Kigali, and Christmas joy in my heart. ;) Wishing you the best. Noheri Nziza!

Winding down and Buyoga-bound!

It's seemed like quite a long road, but my second go of Peace Corps "pre-service training" is drawing to a close. As they say in Mauritania, alhamdulillah -- thank God! I am appreciative of our training staff because it's sure not an easy task to build a Peace Corps program from scratch, and I don't envy their task. All things considered, I feel I've learned some useful and pertinent information, and I feel very ready to start this next chapter!

We closed out our TEFL training with a final all-day technical workshop that I helped to organize. I facilitated one of the sessions, on Community Content-Based Instruction or CCBI (I'd be happy to teach you about it, if you're interested!). Then last Friday, a full nine weeks into our ten-week training, we finally learned our site placements. Usually Peace Corps trainees find out about halfway through, but again since our program is new, they were still coordinating them until just recently.

My future home is called BUYOGA! I have not seen it before and probably will not get to until I actually move there just after Christmas. But I can tell you that it looks like it's about an hour from Kigali, with a motorcycle-taxi ride for some distance off the paved road. When I asked for details from one of the Peace Corps staff members who had visited this place, she gushed, "I LOVE your site!" She said the school has a lab with 15 computers and a brand new library with books donated from World Vision. They also have animal husbandry projects with pigs, rabbits, and cows (including five shipped over from Ireland!). I don't want to say too much more because some of it is still just rumors, but I'll be sure to give you a full run-down once I arrive and get settled in home sweet Buyoga!

The last training hurdle was on Saturday as we had our final language exam, which is an oral interview called the LPI. You have a conversation with a certified tester, and they give you a holistic score. The categories are Novice, Intermediate, and High (each broken into Low, Mid, and High), and then Superior is reserved for fluency of a native speaker.

I was surprised to find that, going into the test, I actually felt more prepared than I had before my LPI in Pulaar at the end of training in Mauritania. True, I was much more immersed in the language there, as I was living with a host family and had language class for about eight hours a day. Here we seemed to spend less time in formal class, but consequently I made more of an effort to study on my own. Plus I think that the second time learning a wildly different, non-Germanic/Romance language is just that much easier. Pulaar and Kinyarwanda have a few commonalities as far as their grammar goes.

Anyway, I took the LPI in the morning, and I felt like it went pretty well. I hadn't studied much per se because I had been reviewing a lot all through training. After lunch that day, our training director told me he wanted to see me in his office. I followed him in, and he told me to take a seat. He's a little bit of a prankster, so I couldn't tell if I should be worried or not. "I want to talk about your LPI," he said. "I am very surprised with the results." Surprised like bad? Did I do much worse than I had anticipated?

He then went on to tell me I had received a score of Advanced-High. I couldn't believe it! For the record, since our program is new we do not have testers who are officially certified in LPI, so this counts only as a mock assessment. But even so, I felt shocked and very humbled, not deserving of such a ranking. Perhaps it's because I threw in some good jokes? Like when I had to pretend I was in the market and I told the tester, "Umva, mucuruzi, ndi umuzungu ku ruhu, noneho gabanya." [Listen, vendor, I'm a white person only on the outside, so reduce your price to something fair.]

Final interviews and recommendations this week, and our swear-in will be this Saturday, December 19th, at the ambassador's residence. Photos to come, promise!

Celebrate good times

It's been a busy few days! This past week was our last of Model School, the student-teaching to prepare us for working in Rwandan classrooms. We had about 500 kids total in 9 sections. Their ages ranged from about 10 to 21. I really enjoyed getting in front of students again, and Model School kids are especially fun to teach because they are the ones who have volunteered to attend class on their vacation! They are very bright, too; I was continually impressed by their skills and vocab.

I observed a class where another trainee, Bethel, facilitated a debate. I had my doubts -- even my sharpest Mauritanian students would not be able to handle such an assignment -- but these kids were totally on point. The topic was whether it's good for English to be the new medium of instruction in Rwandan schools. One boy suggested buying a self-guided CD to improve one's English. "But on those CDs, I find it difficult because I cannot understand the pronunciation," one girl countered. "Well," another boy offered, "you can practice by listening to the radio, English programs like BBC or Voice of America." I couldn't believe it! Real cogent arguments! It makes me really excited about teaching in Rwanda, that these types of activities are possible.

My final lesson was on Thanksgiving, and we talked about other holidays as well. As we brainstormed a list together, the students mentioned Valentine's Day. To check their comprehension, I asked them what happens on that day. "It is a day to visit your friends," one student told me. Any friends, I clarified? "Your honey," he said. Fair enough.

Thanksgiving came to Nyanza in a big way. For starters, somehow Peace Corps rounded up five live turkeys in this country. Then, on Thanksgiving Day, the U.S. Ambassador paid a special personal visit to us from Kigali. His name is Stuart Symington and he was kind enough (on his day off, no less) to bring us yet another turkey, homemade stuffing, and -- more than I could have hoped for! -- genuine pumpkin pie. Also, I congratulated myself for the foresight to bring Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce from America. Yes, it took up precious space and weight in my luggage, but it was so worth it! I cradled my can like a little baby in the hours leading up to our feast. I promise I did share, but I also had a healthy portion myself. (And I may or may not have slurped up the last of it with a straw.)


Between that and the pumpkin pie, it was a true Thanksgiving, not just a cheap Peace Corps imitation. We also made our own stuffing, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole, corn & avocado gazpacho, and a plethora of desserts: apple pie, banana pie, mango-pineapple pie, strawberry pie, chocolate mousse, crepes with chocolate fondue, banana cake, and chocolate-peanut butter no-bakes. DELICIOUS! Some trainees picked lots of fresh flowers in autumn hues for some festive centerpieces. On the walls were kindergarten-like hand turkeys we had traced and decorated, and we also put up a big poster-sheet where we listed things we're thankful for. Then we ate by candlelight with light jazz playing in the background. It was a warm and fuzzy and happy day.


But the celebrations didn't stop there! This weekend was also the most important Muslim festival of the year, which is called Tabaski in West Africa or just Eid elsewhere. It commemorates the sacrifice of Abraham and is traditionally celebrated with a great feast. Mauritanian PCVs never miss a chance to party, so on the heels o Thanksgiving we also brought Tabaski to Nyanza. (There is a Muslim population in Rwanda, but it's pretty small, less than 2%.) We got a 2-for-1 deal on goats, only $44 total.

After a year in Mauritania, I've certainly seen my share of animals being slaughtered, but I still can't really bring myself to watch the act of it. The blood makes me queasy; once that's all cleared away, I find the skinning and organ removal pretty interesting, like a cool science lesson. Goats' stomachs are really big, for instance. Their hearts seem comparatively small -- something I can tell you because this weekend, for the first time in my life, I tasted some heart. It tasted fine because it was smothered in butter and garlic and curry, but the consistency was odd. Squishy, not firm at all, almost spongy. Anyway, we made lots of delicious kabobs (not with heart meat) and perhaps the most wonderful Mauritanian dish, banafe. It's a meat and potato stew with lots of thick broth that you soak up with bread.

The final cause for celebration is that last week I FINALLY got my luggage I'd requested from Mauritania. When we were informed of our evacuation, we were in Senegal and were not allowed to return to Mauritania, but we could give Peace Corps an itemized list of things we wanted (up to 100 pounds). Various staff members went to every one of our sites and attempted to get what we'd asked for. Our Mauritania country director had told us that our bags would be waiting for us here in Rwanda when we arrived eight weeks ago, but unfortunately I guess there was a lot of red tape to sort through.

I'd heard horror stories of other PCVs who were missing a bunch of stuff or who received "surprise" items (like Marta, who got a mysterious pair of gold sequin panties... ?!) But in the end I got all the important stuff, which is pretty amazing and I am really grateful to Aw, the Associate Peace Corps Director who packed my bags. I got all my lesson plans and teaching materials, and my Pulaar language books, and all my clothing. Alllll the other stuff that I left behind I bequeathed to my host family. It's all good, I was going to leave all that stuff for them eventually anyway. Guess they've been living high on the hog with my thick foam mattress and sharp American knives and solar-powered lantern and big buckets and woven mats and...

The Mwami of Rwanda: a brief history

For these ten weeks of Peace Corps training, I am living in the town of Nyanza. It is the capital of Rwanda's Southern Province, yet it's considered rural (which I find funny since there are 230,000 residents and several internet cafés). We're about an hour and a half from the national capital, Kigali.

The coolest thing about Nyanza is that for hundreds of years, it was home to the King of Rwanda and thus was the heart of the kingdom. I've now had the opportunity to visit the museum and palaces here in Nyanza, as well as the national museum in Butare, so I'll share some of the interesting historical stuff I've learned. (Apologies for any inaccuracies; I am far from an expert. Most of the facts here were taken from Rwanda: The Bradt Travel Guide, Philip Briggs and Janice Booth, 2001.)

Because of its geographical location deep in central Africa, Rwanda was very isolated until as late as the 1890s. Unlike neighboring Tanzania and Kenya, here there is no evidence of visits from Arab or Asian merchants. In Rwanda there was very little foreign trade and no known monetary system. Also, notably, Rwanda is one of a few African countries never to have sold its people (or enemies) into slavery.

Written language is only a recent phenomenon in Rwanda, and thus most of its history is known only through oral tradition. It is generally accepted that the Kingdom of Rwanda was founded in the 10th-11th century. In the language Kinyarwanda, the king was called a mwami. As a rule, he was of Tutsi ethnicity and was considered the principal authority of the land. The well-being of the country was inseparable from the health of the mwami; if he fell ill, people worried that trouble was in store.

The royal palace was located in Nyanza. The original ancient palace has been destroyed, but a replica was reconstructed close to its original site. Now, when I hear the word palace, I typically think of towering ramparts and moats with drawbridges. In Rwanda it was a little different: namely a large compound of circular straw huts. The mwami's personal hut was by far the tallest, with a huge bed ("California king size" does not begin to describe it) made of animal skin stretched tightly across a wooden frame. Outside his hut was a sort of foyer for receiving his subjects, as the mwami served as supreme judge in all disputes. Many smaller huts housed all the mwami's retinue: cooks, hunters, guards, runners, hangmen, and palanquin bearers (to transport the mwami on his covered litter); those in charge of weapons, those in charge of wardrobe, and those in charge of furniture; historians, dancers, musicians, mimes, soothsayers, magicians, and artisans.

In contrast to most of Africa, Rwanda and Burundi were not given artificial borders by European colonizers. They had both been established kingdoms for centuries when, in the Berlin Conference of 1885, they were assigned (as "Ruanda-Urundi") to Germany as part of German East Africa. Interestingly, hitherto no white man had ever set foot there.

The first official European visit to Rwanda was by a German count in 1894. He visited Nyanza and met the mwami, Rwabugiri. The foreigner caused an uproar among the aristocrats when he dared to shake the mwami's hand. Surely disaster would follow, they reasoned! (Perhaps they were right -- the beginning of the end, of life as they knew it...) It's worth noting that at this point the mwami had no idea that his kingdom had been "officially" under German sovereignty for the past nine years. The Germans in fact were rather surprised to find Rwanda so highly organized, with tight hierarchies and administrative divisions.

But Germany didn't stay in Rwanda very long. Belgians invaded in World War I, and a succeeding League of Nations mandate in 1919 officially transferred the territory to them. At this time the mwami was Musinga, but he resented colonization so much that Belgium eventually forced him to abdicate the throne in 1931. His more westernized son, Mutara III Charles Rudahigwa, became the new mwami. To match his new attitude, Mutara was given a new home, built by the Belgians. The traditional straw hut was abandoned in favor of a "modern palace," a Western mansion of polished marble floors. It still stands in Nyanza, although personally I found it far less appealing to walk through than the original home. While the mwami's hut was fragrant, dark, cozy, and peaceful, the Belgian palace is cold, uninviting, vast, and austere.


Mutara generally accepted the colonists and even paid a visit to Belgium himself. In the palace museum there is a particularly striking photo of the mwami, in his traditional robes and headdress, face-to-face with a giraffe in a zoo.

The Belgians later built another, more imposing palace for Mutara. It still sits high atop one of Nyanza's many hills, making it visible from a great distance. Unfortunately, Mutara passed away in 1959 just before it was finished, but today the palace houses a really splendid art museum (with an awe-inspiring panoramic view).


The people of Rwanda started itching for independence in the 1950s, as did much of Africa. In 1961, Rwanda's elected local administrators assembled at a large public meeting with 25,000 supporters. Together, they declared Rwanda a republic, and the United Nations had little choice but to accept this self-determination. Independence was confirmed in 1962.

I believe the museum guide said that the last surviving Queen Mother was killed in Butare during the genocide. But Kigeli V, the last mwami, went into exile after Rwanda's independence. He fled to Tanzania, then Kenya and Uganda, and he is currently living in Washington, DC. This is crazy to me. I wonder what his house is like? Does he insist to his neighbors, "I was a KING in Africa!" -- ?? And they say, "Sure, sure, crazy old man..."

Slowly by slowly

Imagine you're in high school, and you're taking some pretty tough classes. At first you were failing, and you almost wanted to drop out entirely, but you've worked really hard and paid attention and you're finally managing to do well. It feels good; you've earned these successes.

Then suddenly, by no fault of your own, you are informed that effective immediately you are going to have to repeat kindergarten.

This is kind of how I feel right now.

I am still really excited to be in Rwanda, but I guess the newness of it has worn off a bit and I'm realizing that it's not so fun to be a trainee all over again. In Mauritania, I had worked so hard -- to know how to travel from point A to point B, to negotiate the market, and especially to learn to speak Pulaar. I really prided myself on being able to shock locals by being perhaps the first white person they'd ever heard speaking their language. Now I'm back to square one. I go into a little corner store and greet the shopkeeper in Kinyarwanda, but when he lights up and replies with further questions, I can only stammer that I don't understand. I hate that.

This pre-service training (PST) is really different from my last experience. (I feel like a broken record comparing the two all the time, but it's impossible not to.) Just one week after I got to Mauritania, I was dropped off in a dusty village of 50 people with only three other trainees. We had no electricity or running water. I was given a room with a host family who spoke only Pulaar. (At the time I arrived to their home, all I could say was "How are you?" -- and smile. A lot of smiling.) For the 10 weeks of training and my following year of service, I slept on the ground on a foam pad. From day 1 I was "eating with my right" -- hand, that is, sitting on the floor around a communal bowl -- and "wiping with my left," in an open-air latrine. I had language class for eight hours a day, sitting outside on the sand in the shade of a grass hut. And it was all wildly exotic, sure, but it wasn't so difficult. Being with a family really forced me to learn intimately all about the culture and language.

But Peace Corps Rwanda is only 10 months old, and Rwandans are evidently more private than Mauritanians, so we were not able to live with host families for this training. Instead, all the trainees and Rwandan facilitators are split between four houses in the same community. We have electricity and tiled floors and Western toilets and toilet paper and brand new bunk beds. Someone comes to clean our house and do our laundry. We eat our meals together, all the trainees and staff, and we have tables and chairs and silverware and individual place settings (such foreign ideas, I know!). All our classes take place in a central location, so essentially I am just with 34 other Americans all day every day. It feels like I live in a college dorm. Clearly, this is not very conducive to foreign language immersion.

So, to borrow a phrase from Rwandan English, "slowly by slowly" I am learning some Kinyarwanda, frustrating as it may be. I am very eager to get my final site placement, but I probably will not find out about that for several more weeks. Since we are the first group of TEFL PCVs, our future sites are new posts, and they have not all been selected yet. This Wednesday through Friday I will be visiting a PCV currently serving in the Health sector, to experience a sampling of life there. It's pretty likely that I won't get to see my own site until the moment I'm dropped off there permanently. So it goes serving in a new Peace Corps country, I guess.

Apologies for the complaining! I am having some good times, I promise. For one thing, the fruit here is absolutely amazing. It's safe to say tree tomatoes are a new obsession, and I'm also enjoying passionfruit and the best bananas and pineapple I've ever tasted.

And in other news, this weekend we had a great Halloween party that I helped to plan. It was the first such celebration for most of our Rwandan staff members, so it was amusing to try to explain to them all the little Halloween traditions we have in America. "You dress in clothing to look like someone different. And you go to houses of people you don't know and ask for candy, and they have to give it to you. And you buy pumpkins and cut them into faces or shapes, and you light candles inside of them" -- how bizarre, honestly.

Somewhat for the occasion of Halloween, but really just for kicks: fellow PCV Megan and I had shaved our heads together last year, so we went the opposite route this time and got long extensions braided into our hair. Synthetic hair is really cheap in the markets here (like just over a dollar a pack) and comes in every color and texture you could dream of. I opted for mid-length brown with magenta tips. The braiding took about four hours and cost me 3000 Rwandan francs, about 6 bucks. Pretty great, I think. It's fun to have long hair again, for a time!

My subsequent "costume" wasn't too terribly original, but the Rwandans enjoyed it... ;)

Land of a thousand contrasts

It has been pretty easy for me to fall in love with Rwanda. Like, head over heels. Of the 37 trainees in my new class, 14 of us are transfers from Mauritania, and we especially are in constant amazement. The word I've most commonly employed to describe my first impressions has been "absurd" -- it's just unbelievable to me how different two places can be and still we lump them under the giant umbrella of Africa. "Night and day" only scratches the surface.

It's GORGEOUS here. Rwanda is called the "land of a thousand hills," and it's no joke -- they stretch on and on, and every inch seems to be covered in green. Even the national capital, Kigali, boasts lush gardens and is one of the cleanest cities I've ever seen (it helps that plastic bags and street food are both illegal). All the vehicles on the roads are in surprisingly functional and attractive condition, which may not seem like much, but consider that in Mauritania and Senegal you were lucky if you got in a car with even one of the following: a working speedometer, interior side paneling, a handle on every window. I couldn't believe that I hadn't seen a single goat until we got well outside Kigali, and even then they are always tied up. (Note that in Mauritania there are 14 million sheep and goats, with only 3 million people. I think that, literally, one was never more than a stone's throw away.) Oh, and the weather? Forget about it. I've been legitimately chilly more often than not. We've had consistent highs of 75-80 degrees every day, and at night I'm snuggling up under blankets.

As for the culture of Rwanda, it is much less conservative than in Mauritania. Alcohol is far from illegal here (during just our first week in-country, we had a total of three Peace Corps-sponsored events with complimentary adult beverages). When we reached our training site for the first time, the staff members were lined up to welcome us. I feel accustomed now never to extend my hand to a man to shake, but here the men HUGGED us -- I almost didn't know what to do! And many women dress quite fashionably, in fitted jeans and knee-length skirts and bare shoulders, and few cover their heads. It's all very hard to get used to! I actually feel almost inappropriate walking around in my Mauritanian "clown clothes" (as I've nicknamed them for their crazy bright colors), although people on the street do get a kick out of it.

But for all this beauty and infrastructure and impressive development, there is of course always this specter of the 1994 genocide. It hadn't been much in my consciousness for the first day here, I admit. Like I said, it's so easy to fall in love with this place. But on our second day in Rwanda, we visited the national genocide memorial in Kigali. As we assembled in the parking lot before entering, I was next to our bus driver and I happened to notice a thin, slightly jagged scar the length of his forearm. And it hit me so sharply as I realized: that's but a pale reflection of the scars inside. (Since then, I've been aware of scars on many people I meet. And you don't wonder if they fell off a moto, or if they had a cooking mishap; you just know.)

The grounds of the memorial are tranquil and beautiful. A total of 260,000 bodies have been laid to rest here, and more are continually added as remains are found. The museum inside goes first through a detailed history of the country and what led to the genocide. I was surprised to learn that the distinction between so-called ethnic groups had been determined rather haphazardly in the 1930s by the ruling Belgians. On census day, those families with 10 or more cows had "Tutsi" stamped on their identity cards, and the rest were declared "Hutu."

This genocide was disturbingly calculated. Death lists of Tutsis and Hutu moderates were pre-prepared, allowing the attackers to act very efficiently. An estimated 800,000 to 1 million people were killed within the first 100 days (an average of 7 per minute), and more in the months and years that followed. There was a large room filled from floor to ceiling with 4x6 photos of just a fraction of the dead. So many stories cut short: a beaming bride in white, a teacher in his classroom, a whole family in front of their home.

Most heart-wrenching was a room dedicated to all the children and infants killed. Large pictures of wide-eyed, smiling faces were accompanied by plaques sharing some personal details. "Favorite food: fries and mayonnaise. Best friend: her sister. Personality: clever in school." These innocent tidbits painted a happy reverie, which was brutally shattered as the last line for each child gave a blunt and succinct "cause of death": Hacked with machete. Bludgeoned with club. Shot in the head. Set on fire in a church. Grenade thrown into her shower. Stabbed in eyes and head. Smashed against a wall. Children.

And it's all so fresh. Anyone you meet, anyone you pass on the street who is over the age of 15 is a survivor. He lost all his brothers; she lost all her children. As I make casual new acquaintances, I've learned never to ask about anyone's family. The story is often just too painful.

But ever onward, ever onward. The Rwandans on our Peace Corps staff team are wonderful and are so excited to have us here. The people we pass as we walk to language class are kind and patient with our mispronounced greetings. The children are eager to learn and somehow seem far less aggressive here than Mauritania. Surprisingly, most speak passable English already. I tried to practice my nascent Kinyarwanda skills with a child of about 5: "Amakuru?" She answered, perfectly, "I am fine, thank you."

So, it's amazing to be here, and at this time in particular. Murakaza neza mu Rwanda -- welcome to Rwanda.


Peace Corps Rwanda Trainees -- October 9, 2009

Take 2

Hello, world! This is just a quick entry to announce the unveiling of this beautiful new blog. I recently attended a wedding (shout-out to Brandon & Mel!) where the overarching theme was GREEN, symbolizing new birth. I'm feelin' it.

This is a new beginning for me, and I will be moving to much greener pastures -- literally. Mauritania was 75% Sahara desert, and Rwanda is the temperate, grassy "land of a thousand hills." It will be a welcome shock to go from 120 degrees every day to 75-80, all year round!

I head to orientation tomorrow, fly out of JFK Wednesday, arrive in Rwanda Thursday. Peace Corps, part deux...