Hospital Visit

3/19/10

I finally visited Gisenyi Hospital, 3 months after preparing all my documents so that I could regularly volunteer there.  Haha just kidding…my visit was not to volunteer.  I was a patient!  I had some digestive issues that were persisting for 4 days.  It was nothing new, but normally it goes away after 2 days.  

So I started thinking that maybe I had caught an amoeba or something, the Sisters also thought that was possible.  It’s pretty easy for foreigners to catch them, so I figured I must have one.  I went to see the doctor that gave me the Hep A booster a few months ago, the same doctor who knows Sr. Rose very well.  This poor guy worked the night shift, 12 hours as the only doc on the premises for the night, and agreed to meet us in the morning.  He didn’t look tired or hungry at all, even though he must have been.  What a trooper.  

Anyways our whole conversation was in French, so that was cool for me.  He gave me a prescription and a tiny glass flask.  He explained to me that I need to bring a stool sample in this tiny glass flask.  Oh my gosh.  This was the first time I had heard the French word for stool and bowel movement, so I was kind of confused.  He picked up on the fact that I wasn’t completely understanding, so he gave a little more detail, and that’s when I realized that yep, he does indeed expect me to poop into this impossibly tiny bottle.  He told me to take it home and bring it back whenever I “succeed.”  Let’s skip the details and just say I’m glad I was in the comfort of my own bathroom for this task. 

I went back to the hospital later that evening to drop off my sample at the lab.  I’ve never before carried a jar of poop in my purse.  The lab tech gave a small chuckle when I pulled out a little brown paper bag with my poop jar inside…I got the feeling most people just bring their samples as is, no discreet little sack.  But usually you don’t have to transport it from home.  Well anyways they did their lab tests, and did not find parasitic infection.  So I just took the meds that the doctor had given me, and after about 4 days I was fine again.  Still not totally sure what it was, “trouble intestinale” seems to be a pretty good catch-all term for undefined digestive problems. 

  Ordination in Goma: I went to the DRC for a day!  Crossing the border wasn’t too much difficulty.  Cost $35, probably would have been $100 if I were not in the company of African Sisters…the customs people know not to try to cheat them.  Goma is much dirtier than Rwanda.  There is garbage all over the sides of the roads.

And there are tons of rocks from when the volcano erupted in 2002 and covered the entire city on several feet of molten lava.

  Fortunately, the city was evacuated in time and no one was hurt, but virtually every building has required reconstruction.  Even though that was 8 years ago, most buildings still have sketchy-looking scaffolding all around the outside (I don’t know how construction workers here do it…they balance on what looks like random tree branches arranged into some kind of grid for building/repairing/painting.).  

Sr. Gisele’s cousin lives in Goma and came to pick us up just after crossing the border.  She drove all of us to the ordination, at which a close friend of the Sisters was going from deacon to priest.  The ceremony was at the cathedral, but the cathedral was also washed away in lava.  All that remains is two walls and the place where they meet, which was at one time the highest peak in the ceiling.  But a “temporary” building has served as the church for the past 8 years. 

Actually I guess this was one of the original parish buildings, and it didn’t suffer much damage.  It was a multi-purpose room, but now it is the everything room.  So it has since been decorated pretty nicely and has a tabernacle, since it is where all the masses are celebrated.  This place was packed as tight as the day is long.  There had to be at least 800 people inside, and there were more people crowded outside and in the doorways who couldn’t get a seat. 

 We were all sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on simple wooden benches, with barely any aisle space for anyone to walk through, and a handful of cheerful, brightly-dressed guys kept coming in to bring more benches and squeeze them into the rapidly-diminishing aisle space.  We were lucky enough to be against a wall, so we had a backrest.  As for everyone else, all I can say is Africans have endurance!  This mass was 4 hours long!  And it was all in Swahili so I did not understand a single word. 

 Actually my day in the Congo showed me just how much Kinyarwanda I do know!  I can at least pick up a few words here and there when people speak Kinyarwanda, but Swahili – zippo.

Afterwards we went back to Sr. Gisele’s cousin’s house, where she had the oldest of her 12 children prepare an insane feast for us.  It was like 4pm and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet obviously because the Mass occupied our normal lunch time (it began one hour late, by the way.  Not at all surprised.)  But because of my “trouble intenstinale,” I was not really hungry.  But everything would have been extremely delicious and appetizing if I had a normal appetite.  It was a smorgasbord of all your typical East African specialties – igitoki (unripened banana stew), ubugari du mais (polenta made from maize flour), isombe (cassava stew), a whole chicken, and a whole fish for each of us, fried potato wedges (which we only have on special feasts…yum!), peas and carrots, and fresh oranges and Japanese plums for dessert.  

We stayed and visited for a while in their pretty typical American-esque house (this woman has a successful business so she and her family are quite well-off by Congolese standards.) and then we went to pray with a neighbor, who I think was a sick woman.  It was again all in Swahili, but she didn’t look well, and she seemed to be in pain.  I felt sorry for her.  She was grateful for the Sisters’ visit.  We finally returned home around sunset.  We left our house before 7am, and we stayed out for 12 hours!

Women’s day 2010: the Monday after our Goma visit was a national holiday – no school or work!  It is apparently international, but America has not embraced it, and I really think we should.  March 8^th everybody, get ready.  It was not very celebrated in Rwanda, but I did see a small parade of older women marching and singing a song about how they will build their country to be strong.  Sr. Gisele’s cousin from Goma had given her a gift for our community: a pagne for each of us!  A pagne is a large swatch of traditional fabric that women wrap around their waists.  The print was one that all the women in her cousin’s family would be wearing.  So, me and all the Sisters (including Sr. Emma, who was visiting for the weekend) donned this pagne.  We had so much fun helping each other tie it properly, dancing around and singing, and trading with each other so we could each have a turn at wearing the complete outfit: one pagne around the waist, another folded in half wrapped again around the waist (this is for mama’s only, to show respect for her husband and children), and one around the head. ( It was actually really tight and hurt my ears! 

 The ladies here are tough and are used to it.  Seriously for like an hour, we laughed and laughed, took pictures, and dressed each other up.  And prior to this we had a great feast with fried potato wedges and rabbit.  Rabbit is actually delicious.  We cook the whole thing, chopped up into body segments.  Sr. Charlotte found the skull, ears removed (but those got eaten too by others).  She picked at it a bit but then decided she couldn’t eat it because it was looking at her.  But many people here have no qualms at all about eating something with eyes.  I’m ok with eating the heads of fish (leaving the eyes and brain and most of the scales), but I don’t blame her for not being able to eat a bunny’s face. 

Our women’s day was not a work-free ‘Vive la femme” day of pampering, we actually had work to do at school.  But my good friend John wanted to come over and visit.  So he came by and told me that there was a youth group who was rehearsing a few theatre and dance pieces, and that they specifically wanted me to come see them.  Hm, ok, sounds cool, just roll with it.  So we went, and it was insane!  These kids impressed me so much.  I had no idea what any of the dialogue was about in this skit, but they were extremely animated and dramatic.  When I think about 12 and 13 year old kids at home, there’s just no comparison to the ability of these kids to fake-cry, fake a fight scene, and any of the other amazing feats of talent I saw!  

Then came the dancers.  There were 2 groups, a boys modern dance and a girls modern dance group.  Both performed in silence because they did not have a boom box.  The boys were very pop-and-lock and in sync, and had a really good routine.  The girls were also very good.  So after all the performances, Alexi, the other leader of the group who speaks very good English and who came to study with us a few times during break, starts explaining everything to me in English.  He says, “So you see, we have a problem.  The problem is this: our dance groups are very new, and so the Nyundo Cultural Center has not helped us yet.  So we have a problem. We do not have a radio.  As you can see it is a big problem because they have no music.  And also we do not have someone who can teach us.  We do not really know how to do these dances because we do not have a dance teacher.  Now, we know that you know how to dance.  And you have a radio.  So we would like to know, if it is possible, if you have some availabilities, if you might be able to help us.  Perhaps you can teach us some of your dance steps and if you can bring the radio that would help us very much.” 

 I was so extremely flattered, and I accepted the offer with gratitude.  Of course, I told them that first I’d need to ask the Sisters if its ok, but I saw no reason why they wouldn’t want me to go dance with these kids.  Alexi translated my response for the kids, and they all erupted in cheering and applause.  It was delightful.  We went immediately to see if I could bring the radio right away and they could do their modern dance routines with music.  Sr. Gisele gave her permission, but the electricity was out so we ended up not being able to dance again.  But overall, this was a rockin Women’s Day – I got a pagne and I was invited to be a dance coach!  What more could a woman want!

Since this invitation, I’ve gone to dance with these kids at 3 other rehearsals, and at one of them there was a representative from the Nyundo Cultural Center, who basically also invited me to come present Zumba to any other groups supported by the center.  This has not yet been realized.  Actually I see that this could easily become a big deal in which I’m pulled in too many directions.  Even just with this group of kids, they want to rehearse all the time.  They always ask me if I’m available today, tomorrow, when when when???  So I forsee that too many people/groups might want me to come dance with them.  But honestly, what a great problem to have!  Still, I need to practice saying “no” to people. 

Creepy or annoying guys have largely left me alone, yay!  Let me share with you an SMS message I received FOUR TIMES from a former student who I actually do not even know.  There were lots of people who came to class during vacation that were not involved in Patronage, and therefore I don’t really remember them that well.  But somehow they all passed my phone number around so it was not unusual to get calls from people just wanting to say hi long after vacation class was finished.  I was always nice to them on the phone and sustained a bit of conversation with them when they called.  Well, look what it brought me (typed exactly as-is): Good evening how areyou me i AM OK ILOVE YOU SO MACH WHY YOU HIDDEN YOUR HART IWANT TO SEE YOUR FACE YOU ARE STERIAES GIRL YOU GO IN AMERICA ON WHICH DAY WHOT HERITEGE DO YOU LEAVE ME I WANT TO LIVE IN YOUR HEART GOD KEEP YOU HAPPER GOOD NIGHT THANK YOU

And that’s our good friend Jean- Paul.  No, I did not respond to this text, nor to the couple of calls I’ve received from him since.  And no, I do not plan on leaving him any “heritage” or giving him a place to live inside my heart.  Good golly.

Chin chin during recreation: zumba has now been brought into the school day!  One day it was raining really hard during the 20 minute break, so Sr. Charlotte wasted no time in telling me to go get Chin Chin!  This woman is so inspiring to me.  We plugged in the radio, she kind of randomly herded a few kids into a room, and she just started dancing.  Of course I joined her also, but I was really uncomfortable because the kids sat down to watch as if it were a show.  I told her that they need to get up and dance, not watch!  But we just kept dancing for a little bit, and in no time a few of them got up and joined in.  By the end of the song, we had like 15 students dancing with us, and about 30 watching.  Sr. Charlotte asked them in Kinyarwanda who wanted to learn, and pretty much all of them arranged themselves accordingly so I could properly teach them, and then we began the song again.  They had so much fun, hootin and hollering and going crazy.  It was a rainy day well-spent.

Exams: our students take exams March 22 through April 2.  By helping prepare for exam week, I’ve come to appreciate our American university exam system even more.  As stressful as it is, our exams really sharpen us and make us strong, intelligent individuals.  Don’t get me wrong, they serve the same purpose here in Rwanda as well.  But, due to the nature of the educational system and all its inefficiencies, the exams are also very inefficient.  The exams can be equated to an American “worksheet.”  The questions on them are basically straight-up recall, and there are only maybe 5 questions on it.  The students get 3 hours to take one such exam.  Some subjects had more in-depth questions, like a text in French or English which had accompanying comprehension questions and a grammar and vocabulary section as well.  But as a general message, I’d like to tell all you scholars back home to embrace those difficult questions you see on your exams – they really are making you a better student who will become a great professional. 

Crying when I leave – people are so sweet here.  They really let you know that you’re appreciated.  Fr. Antoine told me of a saying in Kinyarwanda which means “The tears of a man are within his stomach.”  A male figure in Rwandan society must be strong, therefore he does not cry when others are present, even at funerals or tragic events.  Basically it means that even though a man does not cry in public he still has a heart within.  So he still feels pain and sorrow, but it is only manifested inside. 

So Fr. Antoine and I were joking around about when I will leave, and he said that people will think he is pregnant due to all the tears that will be inside his stomach.  Vincent also gave a similar comment about how all the teachers will cry so much when I leave!  And now more frequently the Sisters mention with regret that the day is drawing ever nearer!  It’s a bittersweet thing for me.  Really, I’m excited to come home.  But of course, I’m sad to leave. 

-        I really speak quite a bit of Kinyarwanda now.  We had a Mass for all the students right before their exam week began.  It was rather poorly organized, and ended up taking up the entire afternoon.  Fr. Antoine also came for confessions, and instead of having the kids go back to class and come out one at a time when it was their turn to go if they wanted to, we instead had everyone else just wait outside under the gazebo and rehearse the songs we’d sing at Mass afterwards.  So we sat there for at least an hour and a half, just singing and singing.  I laughed and goofed off a lot with “my brother,” Jean Claude, who is a crazy teacher.  He always asks me tons of questions in Kinyarwanda, with complete seriousness, and asks me why I read from an English bible since I am Rwandese and speak Kinyarwanda.  Many students were also chuckling when they turned around to see if I was singing along to these Kinyarwanda songs, and lo and behold, I was.  And I’ll also add that after Mass each morning, there is usually an old mama or old papa who comes to talk to me in Kinyarwanda.  I always say the greetings that I know, then just smile and nod, then just wish them a good day and head off to school.  It’s nice :)

-        Congolese = dance, dress well- the Sisters had someone come by to fix our television antenna, so now we receive a few channels.  During dinner we usually put the TV on.  But the Rwanda stations don’t always come in, so we often watch Congolese TV.  Listening to them comment on the Congolese news casters and commercials is so amusing.  They just go on and on about how the Congolese are a really joyful people.  They say that for the Congolese, even if you don’t eat, you still dress your best.  And that really is true – they are well-dressed people.  Mme. Bora is one of our teachers who commutes from Goma each day, and she always looks fantastic in a bright traditional print of some kind.  And also, even if you don’t eat, you dance. 

We see lots of Congolese dancing during our dinner TV hour.  I really like watching the Sisters’ expressions when they watch TV because they’re amused by the smallest things.  There’s this Coke commercial that really is nothing special by our standards, but they were narrating their way through the whole thing, “Look at this can of soda!  Its dancing!”  At the same time, I ask myself why we have a TV.  It seems like an unnecessary expense, but at the same time we do watch the news when it comes in, so that’s important.  I trust that the Sisters know what they’re doing in terms of taking their vow of poverty.  There are just a few things that I think are inequalities in terms of how the people just on the other side of our fence live and how we live.

 Example: we eat bread with butter, jelly, cheese, or peanut butter for breakfast.  But during Lent we’ve decided to eat maize porridge 3 days a week as a sacrifice, and to use the saved money to send to Haiti.  Most people here eat maize porridge every day.  So why don’t we also eat porridge every day?  Food is a tricky subject because we eat certain things that are perceived as “rich people food” simply because they are nutritious.  Therefore, by eating well, we prevent sickness, which keeps the community’s cost of doctors visits etc low, and enables us to work more efficiently for the good of the students.  Ok so that’s the food issue.  But as for the tv, I’m still not sure.  Some people have a TV, but many don’t.  Many people have electricity just for light, but they don’t have radio’s or microwaves or tv’s.  So why do we have a tv?  

.

I am Solemnly Floored by Sr. Gisele's Strength and Endurance.

3/16/10

I am solemnly floored by Sr. Gisele's strength and endurance.  She rarely comes home after Mass to get breakfast.  It is not unusual for her to go straight from Mass to her office and remain there till the school day is finished, and then some.  She does not eat, and she doesn't get much sleep either.  I don't understand how she lives.  But she does it, day after day.  

Today was one such day.  It is now 4:30pm and she is just now sitting down to her only meal that she's had today.  And it doesn't really show.  She still talks, smiles, encourages students, walks here and there with a normal pace.  It is simply her devotion to her vocation and a God-given strength that keeps her going.  Joselyne has properly called it "the spirit of Mary Mazzarello" that continues to propel her forward.  She says that she forgets her stomach when she has lots of work to do. 

Actually today I was blessed with an unnatural strength too.  Maybe she is just so used to it that she has that unnatural strength every day.  For me, I had to prepare our tea after Mass.  It takes me much longer than it does anyone else, and I don't know why.  So, I didn't sit down to eat anything, and I hurried over to school but the Mot du Matin had just finished.  Well, I expected that I could go back to the house and eat in peace and then catch up on cleaning and laundry, as well as continue my book cataloging in the secretariat.  Well, Innocent, our new cuisine teacher, called to say that he'd be coming late.  He taught 3 hours of cuisine in 3eme hotellerie.  Thankfully it was 3eme, they're the best class.  

So I had to run back the house and get my English stuff, because we couldn't find his cuisine notes.  Plus, even if he had left them, would they really have taken 3 hours of notes???  I think/hope not.  But I wouldn't put it past us to expect them to simply "debrouillez-vous" ("you'll manage.")  I grabbed one piece of bread and a slice of cheese.  And actually I was not weak or hungry at all the entire morning.  Even at 12:30 when I came to eat some lunch, I was not starving, as I expected to be.  

So, perhaps Sr. Gisele's physiology has evolved to be like mine today, all the time.  Or perhaps that miraculous change is the spirit of Mary Mazzarello.  Only God knows.  But I will always be humbly reminded of the people who truly work for the glory of God, enduring all kinds of suffering and not letting the world know about it. 

.

I Thank God for Sending Me to Gisenyi

3/15/10

I have some days where I am given the grace of stepping back and seeing just how far I've come.  I remember the first day I arrived…everything was new, the food was different, I had no clue what to expect.  Today I was freed from a brief struggle about what my mission duties are.  I was caught up in my fresh-out-of-college, American efficiency mindset, and all I could see was that the past 2 months or so have been spent doing random things.  

All I could see was that I have only 2 steady, consistent students who have actually made progress (Sr. Rose and Fr. Antoine).  I kept thinking about all kinds of "what if's" or "if only I had done this…" and imagining up false realities that are not what my true mission experience has been.  But in Mass, I received a great reassurance that His will for me is to do those small tasks around school.  He wants me to be an on-the-spot subber, to give students notes, to teach English when it’s the hardest group who is afraid to talk, to play with the kids and to organize the books in the secretariat.  His will for me is to fill in those little gaps.  And He does want me to continue being a friend.  I guess that is the one thing I feel that I have been able to do – be a friendly presence. 

I haven't rendered anyone fluent, I haven't brought any great strides to anybody's English ability (except for Fr. A, he'll testify otherwise…what a great man) and I haven't made any sweeping changes in anything.  But I know that by the grace of God, I have simply brought my presence.  Kids know me, they dance Chin Chin when the see me, the old ladies with their igitambalo's and walking sticks see me every day in their church, and the Animators and other friends greet me often.  I need to acknowledge the beauty of the simple ministry of presence.  This is, I'm just now realizing, what Fr. Alfredo of the Xaverian Missionaries advised me right before I left.  

What a wise man, and I barely even know him.  God truly works through him.

A Bunch of Things I've Been Wanting to Document:

3/2/10

A light rain is a daily occurrence.  To a large extent, people just deal with it.  They still walk in the rain, they continue working outside, they put on their pagnes (wraps of fabric that actually aren't at all waterproof, but it keeps the rain mostly off your normal clothes), and those who have umbrellas whip them out.  But, when it rains heavily, that's another story. 

 Heavy rain, which happens maybe once a week, is evidently a valid excuse for coming late to school/work.  Everything stops and waits for the rain to settle down.  One morning, it had rained like crazy the whole night and it was still raining pretty hard at 7:20am when school started.  Well, at 7:20am we had about 20 students and zero teachers.  We basically hung out and waited until more people came to begin classes.  Finally the day began as usual by around 9am, when the rain was less heavy.  There is no tardiness recorded, no unexcused absences, no repercussions for faculty members who don't show up when it rains.  Its just kind of accepted.  Hm.

I did have a really fun time though playing volleyball in the rain later that day.  This was more of a light rain, the kind that doesn't shut down all business operations.  We were planning on having practice for the TTC matches, but it ended up being anybody who doesn't care to get wet, come on out and play.  So I went and had a great time getting wet and hitting a volleyball around with some of the coupe couture girls whom I didn't know at all because I never teach in coupe couture.  It was a very awesome way to build some rapport.  Its always a good thing to get to know your students outside the classroom!

I love people like Sr. Rose who share what's on their mind pretty freely and easily.  One day last week, she was distraught about Pascaline's dilemma.   Pascaline is a girl who knows the Sisters at Rugunga, and had the misfortune of losing both of her parents in the same year a few years back.  I think both were sick.  Because of her relationship with the Sisters, they've agreed to help her out.  She is the oldest one out of her siblings, and needed work in order to provide for them.  So she cooks and cleans for us while we are teaching at school.  She really does a lot for us, and she works a long day, from about 7:15am till 5pm, Monday through Friday, and a half day on Saturday.  

Well, she presented to Sr. Rose her problem: her sister recently got sick and is now at the hospital.  She needs her paycheck now in order to go visit her and put food on the table.  She said that last night they did not eat.  Sr. Gisele is the person she needed to talk to about this because she's the superior, but she was in Nairobi for a conference.  So Sr. Rose made an executive decision and decided to give her the cash she needed.  There was even more complexity in this, something about how Pascaline had previously asked to receive several months' worth of pay all at one time in order to pay for some kind of expenses.  So now this month she only received 12,000 rwf.  That's about $60.  For one month.  

So Sr. Rose was re-telling this to me, about how it was heavy on her heart because it is technically not in her power to give this money to her; the superior needs to approve it.  But she said she needed to listen to her conscience.  This continued into a discussion about how the poverty here is unlike anything I've ever seen.  She pointed out to me Patience's house, right across the street.  Patience and her 2 little ones, Neli and Jacqui, whom I love, live in a cinder-block house about the size of my bedroom back home.  The roof is made of old, rusty, tin slabs that other people have thrown away.  There's a bright yellow curtain over the door.  Sr. Rose told me all about how many houses here have roof problems, and when it rains you need to just put a couple cups on the floor to catch the drops and find a new place to stand. 

She said that it is important for us, the outsiders who come in and build schools and other institutions, to set high standards.  That is the reason why we built a nice school, keep it very clean, and make the landscape really decorative and pretty.  She said that whatever standard the people see in these places, they will always be living below that standard.  But it inspires the people to keep their homes clean and tidy, like they see every day at school or wherever.  

So it is very important to set an example of dignity and cleanliness, both in the appearance of our environment and in our own physical appearance.  

,