Orienting

In addition to moving in to my house here (woot!) and getting to know the routines of Agahozo-Shalom (rice, tea and learning Kinyarwanda constitute a big part of it), I'm in the midst of week 2 of 3 weeks of orientation. Week one was in New York with the JDC staff and now I spend my days in a classroom with the other volunteers, house mothers, counselors and other staff orienting ourselves to the ways of Agahozo-Shalom.

To give you a sense of what I'm doing for a good chunk of the day, I thought I'd manually create a word cloud by entering words that jumped out from my notes into Wordle. Check it:



Thanks, http://www.wordle.net/

Clearly I'm spending a lot of time on values, principles, and other ideas that will make this village feel like a supportive and empowering family. A little different from my last job where our orientation was mainly sessions on how a bill becomes a law and health care reform. Also, the fact that there are many cultures combining for this orientation makes it especially different. Everything is translated from English to Kinyarwanda or vice-versa, and at least once, ironically during the "Communication" session, from Hebrew to English to Kinyarwanda. Phew!

Today we went on a scavenger hunt to find important things around the village. A few photos from the farm segment of the tour:


Ange shows off the tomatoes.


Cabbage and the view from the farm


Solomon introduces us to the baby cows

It is fun getting to know and bond with the Rwandan staff. We all have the same mission, and yet such different backgrounds that I know I'll learn A LOT from working with them.

And now, my Kinyarwanda phrase of the day (well I also learned the word for salt, but it is really hard and has about 100 "u"s in it): Inzozi Nziza - Sweet Dreams!