Avocado Scavenger and other food stories

So whenever the rain starts pouring here (almost daily), I think of one of two things.  Either I think of singing "Umbrella," a favorite here and a song I've used to discuss friendship and learn English words with the kids and one we frequently reference in the rain, or I think AVOCADOS!

That's because next to my house is a tall tall tree that, at unreachable heights, bears avocados.  There's no way to get them except to wait for a rainstorm to shake them down for you. When it does I run around the bottom of the tree looking for dropped fruit, careful to leave some for the other scavengers.  Then I bring them back to my room, putting one at a time in paper bags to ripen them for future guacamole lunches.

I bring this little lovely occurrence up because I realize I've been withholding important information from you.  What am I eating??

Let's begin.   As you know the village has its own farm, where many of our veggies come from.  We also have a bakery where we get to bake fresh challah on Fridays and buy delicious rolls if it is open.  All the meals are cooked in the kitchen by some awesome chefs who peel tons of veggies and cook tons of rice in big vats to serve around 300 people breakfast lunch and dinner. 

Lunch and dinner are generally the same, although lunch occasionally also means a side of fresh avocados or pineapples (which are about 879430 more delicious than pineapples you eat at home).  Every meal features rice, some sort of bean concoction that often involves sauce or cabbage or green beans or all of the above, and some kind of potato - either sweet or regular - or cooked banana dish, or if you're lucky, sweet potatoes.  It's all fine tasting, and sometimes, when the cabbage is in tomato sauce or the green beans are in peanut sauce or the potatoes are fried, its really delicious.  But of course its repetitive, and its meals for 300 so no veggie gets the attention you'd want it to get.

In order to not get too sick of the same food, and to give myself some sense of choice over what I consume, I've also started cooking a few meals a week for myself and friends.  I've transformed part of my desk into a very awesome makeshift kitchen that rivals that of my friend Kate, who lived in a kitchen-less studio in DC.  I have utensils, cups, a bowl, and a kettle that originally just boiled/sanitized my water but now has become a very convenient pasta-cooker. If I really need a pot (like for hard boiled eggs or corn), I can head over to my housemates' kosher hot plate. 

Having this kitchen makes every day a little bit more of an adventure for food.  When I have a few hours, I walk to the market in the surrounding town and buy whatever vegetables and bread I can find - which usually means trying to shop with no common language with the sellers, a huge crowd of laughing kids, and an understanding that one always buys 10 tomatoes at a time (my walk home is always considerably more burdensome, though fulfilling).  When I or someone else heads to Kigali, we buy cooking supplies that need not be refrigerated (biscuits, chocolate peanut butter, laughing cow cheese, soy sauce and ramen are most important to me).  And when I'm back home with my bounty of food my friends and I try to determine what meals we can fix up. Recent successes include guacamole sandwiches, egg salad, israeli salad and noodles with veggies.  I've figured out the best way to store the veggies and rolls, to ripen the avocados as I want them to be ripened, and to use the salt and sugar as bookends. 

As my friend Mara explained, I've involuntarily become almost vegan, almost a fruitist (is that what you call people who eat only fallen fruit?) and almost a local, organic-only eater. But never has cooking and buying food been so satisfying or therapeutic.  I have an hour each for lunch and dinner, and even though my days are booked, since everyone eats at the same time there's almost no chance I'm "too busy" to eat a good meal, either at home or in the dining hall.  And on a broader scale, I know I'm sharing meals with hundreds of kids who's lives have been hard enough and should be able to count on regular meals, and that's even more exciting.

Ok time to get ready for a dining hall dinner tonight!  Wish me squash or peanut sauce! 

Happy Birthday Dr. King! English Class

What a two weeks!  All the kids are here now and have been getting to know each other and the village and preparing for school starting on Monday.

Part of this preparation means that the other volunteers and I have each been teaching four hours of English class every morning for the last two weeks.  WAIT, you say.  Why are you forcing our global language on these vulnerable kids? Good question. Let's go into language in Rwanda:

Almost everyone in Rwanda speaks Kinyarwanda, which I am slowly learning.  Since Rwanda is so small it does not host tons of local languages like many other African countries, and Kinyarwanda (or maybe Swahili on the borders) can get you anywhere.  Rwanda also uses French, especially in school, as a national language which makes sense based on the colonial presence that was here.  English was also an option in school, and has been a national language for 15 years, but was used less frequently.  In October 2008, however, Rwanda's government decided that they would switch all education from French to English (click this link to learn more about the political undertones associated with this switch).

So in any case, while some of the kids here do know some English and some knew none, they all needed to review as much as possible before they were to start all-English classes this upcoming Monday. 

Teaching ESL (a new subject for me) for four hours a day was pretty daunting, especially since I'd started my other job in the acquisitions office as well.  As the days went on, though, I had a great time learning with the kids, bonding with them, and having my respect for them grow.

In class we did everything from parts of speech to persuasive writing.  My classes were for fairly strong English speakers and we had a lot of fun increasing our vocabulary and using grammar rules.  For adjectives I brought in pictures on my computer and they described my friend Paul's tall stature, Chris's beard and Malia Obama's curly hair.  For adverbs they wrote short skits and then had to do them over and over again in the style of various adverbs that the class suggested (a la Bean skit, if anyone knows it).  We sang "Penny Lane," analyzing the intent of the Beatles (almost ALL the kids' first Beatles experience.  Amazing) and writing and acting out our own thoughts on what happens next (after the "fireman rushes in, from the pouring rain, very strange").

My favorite classes were the ones where I gave the kids debate topics and corresponding vocabulary and had them prepare debates for the class.  The topics ranged from "When is the appropriate age to begin dating?" to "Should Rwanda preserve its National Parks?" (Check this debate out in the picture above)  The kids had been very shy and reluctant to speak in English in the beginning of the two weeks but by debate time they were mostly excited to express their opinion, and were too interested in getting people to hear their view to worry about their English.  During the debate "Which language should school be taught in: English, French or Kinyarwanda?" I had to laugh as they explained, quite clearly and eloquently, that English was too hard. During this debate they also wisely pointed out that instead of using English, perhaps they should preserve their culture and strive to make Kinyarwanda the next international language.

Another favorite class I did with the old kids (who were here last year) included analyzing an op-ed by the President of Rwanda about international investment in Africa.  We learned great vocabulary, and then when I asked them to write their own persuasive pieces, I learned tons about the problems they see in Rwanda and the village.  We practiced peer review asking each other "so what?" and "why?" after each statement and discussing whether their pieces embraced the complexity of the issue (or, as I explained when defining embrace, hugged the complexity). 

Today, for the last class, and in honor of his birth, I played the kids the video of Martin Luther King giving the "I Have a Dream" speech (worth another listen, if you feel like getting chills, inspiration and a little teary).  The new kids had mostly never heard of Dr. King, although they did know about racism in the U.S.  Even though the vocabulary was certainly the hardest we'd ever seen they were rapt in attention to the video and they followed along in the text, occasionally cheering!  When the video wouldn't load anymore, we read aloud the end of the text, in the same spirit as Dr. King!  The kids then wrote their own dreams, for the school year, their next four years, and ten years from now.  It was really cool to see them enthusiastically writing many sentences in English when, just a few weeks ago, they're responses to my assignments were often simply no response at all.

One thing that I frequently forgot in the business of teaching two big ESL classes, but was occasionally reminded, was how truly awesome these kids are.  A friend from home asked if they hated going to class.  While they were typical teens, talking out of turn, zoning out, etc, they mostly were happy to be in class or at least trying to be present and respectful to me.  But of course, teaching high schoolers is hard and I frequently had to push them to participate or respect each other.  Once or twice I became frustrated when they would question what we were doing in class - we'd never do that in America, instead we'd just zone out - until someone reminded me how importan it is to have people questioning authority.  And during the debates I had to pinch myself to remember that these kids, who are willingly and passionately discussing complex ideas about development and globalization, are also some of the most vulnerable kids I've ever met, with some of the hardest backgrounds, and that they were having this discussion in their third language.  They are resilient, unique and eager and its pretty humbling to be around them. 

Now it's off to bed for me, as I am going on a picnic to Lake Mugesera (you can see it in the background of my header picture) tomorrow, which means four hours of hiking.  I imagine this also means learning a lot more Kinyarwanda, as sadly, the longest phrase I've learned is "imfite inama ninjoro," which means "I have a meeting tonight."  Too telling. 

 Wishing nzozi nziza (sweet dreams) like Dr. King's to you all!

Fragile Growth

This weekend I took a short vacation to Gisenyi, a little beach town situated on the shores of Lake Kivu.  I was a little apprehensive about the trip, both because of the town's proximity to the Democratic Republic of Congo and the the eventuality that Lake Kivu will explode due to a build-up of gases in its waters (as far as I can tell this explosion is not going to happen for quite some time, but I'm not sure.  Geologist friends?).

But the trip was a big success!  We stayed with my boss' family and thus were treated to easy and comfortable lodging and a delicious dinner with many more dishes than any thanksgiving dinner might offer in the states.  We had breakfast at a resort surrounded by lush and dramatic mountains, the lake and beautiful flowers and I could have sworn I was in Hawaii (or my dad's backyard).  We made our way through the market to buy lunch (bread, peanut butter, bananas, avocados, cookies) and even found a friendly bartender who allowed us to have lunch in his bar when, after buying the delightful picnic lunch, we realized that due to the taboo of eating in public here, there was really no appropriate place to sit down and eat it (even without the taboo we likely would have attracted more attention and kids than would have been comfortable).  Saturday evening we walked along the shore of the lake watching kids swim and practicing our French with one of our French-only speaking hosts (although that walk did end with the slightly overwhelming appearance of hundreds of bats swarming over our heads).  Even the travel to and from Gisenyi was nice - on the way I sat next to a Rwandan university student who was on his way to study the gorrillas for four months (the gorillas and monkeys are about an hour from Gisenyi).  On the way home a "rest stop" included traditional dancing and deliciously barbequed potatoes to snack on, as well as views of tea fields, eucalyptus groves and the always dramatic Rwandan hillside. 

Amidst these adventures and vistas, the history, memory and effects of the genocide frequently manifested themselves.  A memorial on the road to the Hawaii-like resort marks where, for some time after the genocide, buses would be stopped and Tutsis killed.  This continued until the bus riders would refuse to separate between Hutu and Tutsi and the whole bus would be torched.  Throughout the province signs articulated a critical mission in Rwanda, saying that there, they fought genocide ideology with their hearts and minds.

But most poignant for me was seeing how the land, the actual geography of Rwanda, is so related to the memory of genocide and violence.  We stopped to look at a beautiful winding river from a cliff, and upon learning about it, found that it is where many were drowned during the genocide.  While gawking at the bright red sky around the still-active volcano on the Rwanda-DRC border, we were told that perhaps it wasn't a reflection of the active volcano spewing fire, but rather a reflection of houses burning in the DRC, something common in the country still ridden with violence, much of it related to Rwanda's past.  Standing on the shores of beautiful Lake Kivu I couldn't help but remember that it was where many bodies were dumped during the genocide.

Lake Kivu is located on a rift that is expanding, or in other words, as far as I understand, it is under Lake Kivu where the Earth is literally growing. This growth probably makes the beautiful mountains I enjoyed that host acres of farms and house gorillas.  But this growth is also related to the build-up of gases that will one day cause the lake to explode, unless some method to remove the gas is put in place.  For now, there are efforts to turn the gas into an energy source for Rwanda.  But, the volcano which currently only erupts into the DRC, could easily trigger an eruption of the lake in Rwanda.  I don't want to read too much into the geology, but it seems like the fragile balance of growth and energy production and building gas pressure and nearby volcanic activity occuring at Lake Kivu all too closely mirrors the fragile, hopeful, possibly tourism producing, calm that Gisenyi and the neighboring areas are trying to maintain.

Ok enough geographic/political metaphors and time for bed - tomorrow morning I teach English for four hours in a house named "Benazir Bhutto!" 

But first, some photos of the trip:

Beautiful Lake Kivu

Picnic Lunch!