One Year!

So June 13th marked my one year in Rwanda and I now have only one year left in my service. It is hard to wrap my head around the fact that I have already spent 13 months in this country. At first, especially during pre-service training, time seemed to be moving painfully slow. The thought of 27 months was overwhelming and seemed like a huge chunk of my life. Now that I am halfway done, and looking back on the past year, it feels like it has flown by. Its funny how time does that; how it can feel so long and so short simultaneously.

Anyways, my first year in Rwanda has been incredible. I have learned a new, extremely difficult language (in spite of my 8^th grade teacher’s insistence I don’t have the aptitude for learning languages). I have traveled all over Rwanda (myself and with my parents!) and went on a fabulous vacation to Tanzania and Zanzibar. I have been constantly put outside of my comfort zone and learned that no matter what I do, I will always be a stranger here. I think that has been the hardest thing to come to terms with. In training, we are constantly being told to “integrate” and to really become a member of the community. Although on a certain level this is possible, at the end of the day I am still a foreigner who, despite my conservative dress and language abilities, stands out in the crowd. To say the least.

Another factor that makes living in Rwanda more difficult is how closed-off people are. This is due to their turbulent history, which makes trusting people nearly impossible. Don’t get me wrong, I have made some wonderful friends here that I plan on keeping in touch with long after I leave. However, for the most part I have not found people to be as welcoming as I had hoped.

Being useful and productive has been an almost daily struggle. When I pictured working at a health center, I imagined days full of interesting and challenging tasks. Reality was that the first few months I played a lot of solitaire in an office waiting around for people to give me some work to do. It was extremely frustrating, until I realized that waiting wasn’t getting me anywhere and I needed to make things happen for myself. So I wrote a grant and held a nutrition training for all the community health workers in my sector. We taught them how to make soy milk, tofu, compost piles, and to cultivate mushrooms. Now I am also involved in a microfinance training project, organizing a girl’s empowerment camp, and a member of two Peace Corps committees. So much for being bored! It took probably about six months at my site to really know where my place was and what I should be doing. But on some level I still don’t know. That ambiguity has been one of the most difficult parts of my service. I love to have a “plan” and know what I should be doing. However, it has been a wonderful learning experience and has forced me to become more independent.

There are still days when I get frustrated, where I don’t want to leave my house because if one more person calls me mzungu (white person) I will lose it. There are days where I wonder if I made the right decision to join the Peace Corps. But now those days are few and far between. If I had to do it all over again, I would. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but so far it has definitely been worth it. So, Rwanda, looks like I am on board for another year. Lets make it even better than the last one.