Randomness

                                                                                                           

Jarod here. So, once again it has been a while since we have written…sorry.  It seems that lately not too much has been going on so I will see what I can conjure up. 

Oh, first of all, yesterday I was inside while Sarah was outside trying to soak up some rays of sun when I suddenly hear her say in a very much concerned/freaked out voice, “Jarod come here now.”  It seems that during her tanning session one of our little mouse friends decided to share the mat with Sarah and then ran across her leg.  When I made it outside I saw the little dude hunkering behind some nearby rocks.  The little guy and I had some words and end the end…it is sad to say…but, he is no more.  I am not one for hurting animals but when it comes to them keeping us up all night running in, around and all through our house making all kinds of noise…they gots to go!!!

I don’t know if we have mentioned this in any previous blogs but our organization is in the process of starting an Eco-Lodge here in our village.  There is still much fund raising to be done before any real construction takes place but recently the money was raised for the land and it is in process of being purchased right now.  The land is a beautiful 6 or 7 hectares, maybe bigger (I think a hectare is quite bigger than an acre) which basically consists of two mountain sides.  Once of those mountains overlooks the beautiful rain forest while the other overlooks the village with views all the way to the picturesque Lake Kivu…some 30 – 40 kl away.

However, there have been people living on that land for many years now and since the lodge will be built where they now live…they have to move.  This may sound unfortunate for these people but I can assure you, this is God send for them.  Some of these people are living in the worst houses I have yet to see in all of Rwanda…6 or 7 in one house…not to mention the goats, guinea pigs and rabbits they share it with.  As you can see from the picture of the house (which has 7 people living in it and not including the many animals) these are not the best conditions to be living in. 

So, these people are very excited as they will be getting a rather large chunk of change, especially by Rwandan standards to rebuild further down the mountain and closer to town.  With the money given to them for their land and house, they will be able to build a house 2 or 3 maybe 4 or 5 times nicer than their previous one and also purchase a good piece of land to farm on which as you probably know is basically the only source of income for our village.  If you don’t have land here, you don’t have anything.  Let me relate that to American standards…not having land would be like someone not having a job, car, phone, etc.  But, since giving a Rwandan 2,000,000 francs (roughly 4 thousand USD) at once can lead to bad things: a lot of banana beer purchased for one, it being stolen from thieves, as Elise our counterpart always says, “they can eat the money and have nothing left,” their money will be deposited into a bank in the Sector office and small withdrawals will be able to be made.  I think it will be good for everyone.  One thing is for sure, I am happy to see these families get a nicer home for themselves…especially because we know many of these families well as they are some of our sponsored children.

Umm…last but not least I will leave you with a funny story.  So, a month or so ago we were sitting a wedding when I notice an old man sitting across the way from us.  I could not but help notice that he looked just like a chimpanzee.  I didn’t say anything at first but as I kept looking, his facial hair around his mouth, expressions, everything kept drawing me back to that thought.  I told Sarah and she instantly agreed.  So, we decided to ask Elise our Rwandan counterpart, “what does that man remind of you of?”  Without hesitation Elise said, “A chimp”.  He said, “We even call him chimp” and then he proceeded to tell us another interesting story about the man.  Elise told us to look at his hand.  He said that several years ago a chimp came to his field to steal some crops and the man tried to fight him away but the chimp grabbed the mans hand in his mouth and bit off his thumb.  As we looked over, sure enough, the man was missing one of us thumbs.  Anyway, I thought that was interesting so I hope you enjoyed that story.   

I think that is all I have for now…if there is anything anyone would like to know or anything you would like us to write about while we are here…just let us know.  Email or Facebook us and we will be happy to do that.  I wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  Be blessed! 

Jarod

So much to be thankful for.

Man. It seems that so much has happened this week that I want to write about! First of all…Happy Late Thanksgiving to all of you. I hope that you had amazing feasts and wonderful time with family or friends. Jarod and I had a wonderful thanksgiving! There is a volunteer here from New York and I cook up a scrumptious meal for the 3 of us. We had deviled eggs, mashed potatoes, cabbage salad, cinnamon glazed carrots, pork and a YUMMY pineapple upside down cake. I cooked ALL of this on my camp fire stoves. I tell you…I’m becoming quite the little betty crocker. J My nanny will be proud. 

Then, we went to Kigali to spend some time with other Peace Corps Volunteers. It was the best thanksgiving we could have asked for complete with homemade sweet rolls, pumpkin and pecan pie and MANY other fabulous dishes!!! We ate so much AMAZING food that I literally thought I’d die of fullness. I laid on the floor for like an hour recovering. It was heavenly. We also had unlimited internet and hot showers. It was the perfect relaxing time. We talked to our families on skype and the phone…it was just more than we could have hoped or asked for.

 Today, our health center finally treated kids for worms!! It was so wonderful to be a part of it. Jarod and I handed out 391 pills for worms to children aged 6-16. We (our health post nurses) also probably treated between 100-200 children aged 0-6 with worm medicine, vitain A supplements, and the polio vaccination. It was so wonderful. We have it again tomorrow and Thursday. It feels so nice to be helping change childrens lives. I felt like we were making a difference today by giving out medicine. These children have worms so badly with generally no access to worm medicine…it was a breath of fresh air for us.                                   

Also, I wanted to list some books for a good read. Jarod and I have read many books while being here and I definitely recommend them!

·         A Thousand Hills by Stephen Kinzer (Rwandan/Kagame’s History)

·         We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gouravich (Rwandan History)

·         In the Kingdon of the Gorillas by Bill Webber and Amy Vedder (Rwandan History) DEFINITELY A MUST!

·         Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

·         Dead Aid by (forgot her name but it something like Mambosa something)

·         The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz

·         Shaking Hands with the Devil-documentary

·         Sometimes in April-movie

We’ve also been reading just random books and I finally read Wuthering Heights! It is a classic written in the 1800s. I loved it. Tragic but good.  We’ve read many more but they would probably be boring to you guys.

I know it’s the last day of the month but I forgot to do November shout outs! So…

November 9^th Happy Birthday to my little sis. 20 years old!! Also Happy Birthday to my father-in-law Terry. Jarod and I hope it was awesome! November 30^th, my bestie….Julie. Happy 26^th-as everyone told me…it only goes down hill from here. J  We love you guys all so much and hope your special days were wonderful.

Ok…I think that’s all for now. I hope that everyone is feeling the Christmas spirit and listening to their Christmas music. Jarod and I have been rocking out for a while. We love you all and thank God you’re all in our lives!! Until next time…

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11-23-10

 

Hello everyone.  I hope this blog finds you all well.  I seems it has been several weeks again since I have written, so I am due.  Anyway, nothing too exciting has been happening in our world…as Sarah mentioned in a previous blog…the crazy and awkward things just seem to be part of life now and not worthy of writing about.

 

Let’s see…our house lady, Louise, has now successfully made it past the Bermuda triangle time line (which is 1 ½ months) where the other 3 girls disappeared.  She has made it almost two months.  We really like her and she seems to enjoy being with us as well.  And, as far as we know, she has yet to steal or lie to us…sounds like a keeper! 

 

So, the other day I was sitting by a lady I have met a few times while she was holding her little baby.  I remembered she told me last time that she had six children so I said…how are your six children?  She responded…I have 7 now…then looked at the 2 month old in her arms.  I began to ask her questions about the little one and soon she said, do you want to take him?  Just to make sure I heard her correctly I asked her to repeat several times…I heard right.   When I said I don’t think we can do that right now she then asked…what do you want…a boy or girl…I have several of each?  I laughed and told Sarah who was standing a ways away what the lady was telling me.  I told her that 7 kids is a lot and that it must be tough to raise that many children.  She then proceeded to tell me that she wants to have 5 more…12 in all.  I told her that it would be very difficult to feed 12 children don’t you think.  She said, I have many sweet potatoes (which is pretty much the only thing many children eat…enter malnutrition).  I told her that it’s not good to eat just sweet potatoes…the kids need other things, specifically protein.  She didn’t seem too concerned and told me that she also had beans planted.  I would like to say this kind of story is rare to hear in our village but unfortunately…it is more of the norm.  But, at least I got a free child out of it…just kiddin…or am I???

 

In other news, our first real Holiday away from home is coming up.  I don’t things will be quite the same seeing as we are 10,000 miles away from our family.  We plan on going to visit a friend in Kigali for Thanksgiving who has an oven and so we’ll be able to cook some food at least close to real Thanksgiving food.  We are pretty pumped about that.  Christmas on the other hand…not quite sure what we are going to do there…that’s still a ways away…or at least it seems.  Oh, we are planning on going to Uganda over New Year’s and going white water rafting on the Nile and then crapping our pants before bungee jumping into it…that should be fun…not the crapping our pants part…it seems that is just part of the experience.  We will be going with two other PCV’s from Rwanda. 

 

It seems there is not much more to talk about…I think I am boring myself just trying to think of things.  So, this is all I got.  Happy Thanksgiving to everyone…eat lots of turkey, stuffing and all that other great holiday food for us.  Take care and be blessed!

 

 

Jarod

Tis the life of Africa....

I am writing to you now…I know, it’s been a while but I feel like all those weird awkward situations have become, well normal and it just doesn’t seem good enough to write about anymore. Let’s see, life in Rwanda has been a little more challenging lately. In fact, the last 2 weeks have pretty much been a total vent fest where Jarod and I come home and talk about how angry we are about everything. Completely unproductive, but totally helpful! Jarod even said “I even hate my chocolate right now” the other day. Although later, he corrected himself and said “don’t stop sending chocolate…I can’t go on without it…I might spontaneously combust into a million pieces”.

 

Work has become more and more challenging. We’re feeling completely defeated as so far, 6 months and counting, every single idea we’ve had has been DE…wait for it….NIED! DENIED! So we’re pretty much questioning even our existence here. We hate going to church here because we can’t understand the preacher and sit completely bored for about 3 hours. Everyone is constantly staring at us, no matter what we’re doing and the list could go on. AHH!

 

Instead of venting I’ll tell you about our latest visitors. This week we had 4 Belgians and a Norwegian come to Banda for something called a mobile cinema. They travel Rwanda showing health related movies to Rwandans in hopes of educating them. We were so excited about this and requested they come here. They agreed. The trip started off interesting. First of all they got here and the house lady at the guest house hadn’t boiled water as asked. So therefore, they were exhausted and thirsty with no water. Then, she kept asking us for more and more money to purchase food for them although we knew it was basically impossible that she had already spent all we’d given her. We took them to the market because they wanted to buy some crafts from our village and surprise…they were closed! On Monday, the last 2 people of their party showed up and they absolutely wanted to walk up to the top to pick them up…which we tried to tell them was a bad idea as we live in the rain forest…so um rain happens. Well, they went and it rained.  They were soaked. This then caused one of them to have awful blisters. So as they arrived at the guest house, because they were a little later than planned, their food was cold, they were soaked and we were rushing them to get ready because we had to start the movie in less than an hour and all the equipment was still at the guest house, not set up. So then, it started pouring. I mean, pouring its heart out and we had to carry all this equipment in the rain. We were so afraid it was going to get wet…but we made it.  No worries! We had borrowed a generator from a local person to power the equipment, this however was a terrible idea! I know nothing about generators and as soon as we plugged it up, it shot so much electricity through the wires that it completely fried their expensive surge protection equipment and the DVD player as well as the projector started smoking!!!! SMOKING! So, we had to tell everyone that showed up to go home. As we’re tearing everything down, it’s pitch black dark and pouring rain we decided to carry some things back to the house. For some reason, I said “this is ridiculous, I mean nothing else could go wrong!” IDIOT. I was leading the group home and somehow as I was staring at the ground and falling in puddles I turned right instead of left. Yea. I know. Then, I walked them almost all the way to town without realizing it! I mean, an umbrella over my head + this tiny little green keychain flashlight (because I was unprepared to be out at dark), + staring at my feet = me walking 20 minutes out of the way. As we’re turning around to go back, one of the guys laughs and says, “yea, nothing else could go wrong!” What!! His shoe then breaks and he falls…his blisters are bleeding and we’re all soaked to the bone! We finally make it back to the house and we tested the DVD player and projector on the battery we had here. Supposedly they’re fine! We celebrate!!! I say supposedly because the next morning we plugged them up again and only the DVD player was fine. The most expensive part, the projector was broke. We nearly cried! Then, we go to the community center to pack everything up since we obviously won’t be showing the film that night either. Somehow on the way back, the key to the bedroom with all of the guests things gets lost. We search every where for a key. Nothing! Finally, several hours later one is found but geez!! As we’re walking to town, the other guy slips on the mud and his shoe breaks. He just laughs at this point! We get to town to pick up the skirts the girls had decided to have made and much to our surprise she had confused the directions and made a wrong skirt that was so small it didn’t fit anyone. We then tried to explain we obviously didn’t want it as no one could wear it and she said she’d fix it. Ok, we agree and come back later. She had bought new fabric and made the correct skirt. Woo hoo, we celebrated. Then she told us we had to pay for all 5 skirts as well as the new fabric she’d bought. Say what??? Yea. So then we argued for a while and she finally agreed to only let us pay for 5 skirts because she had “finished” it and not the extra fabric. We didn’t ask her to mess up but still somehow paid for it…hello customer service??? Finally, we go down to the community center to have a dance party since well what else are we going to do with these giant speakers they’ve brought. A staff member had forgotten to bring the battery or the light. So we used the speaker’s tiny battery and danced in the dark till it died! Thank God that was over!!

 

Finally, we sent them on their way this morning. As far as we know…they’ve made it safely up the mountain but well let’s be honest…they’re probably having issues.

 

Oh, tis the life of Africa. Until next time…..

 

Shake Shake Mango Tree

Hello All...Jarod here.
Once again, it's been a long time since we have posted...sorry about that.  Let's see...I know Sarah told the story about Porina and Jeanvier and their mother the prostitute.  So, I think it is only fair to tell you how the story plays out.  Unfortunately, I can't say that it is a happy ending.

So, as Sarah mentioned, there were several nights that Porina was left at our hous at night while her mother was out about town doing whatever she does.  Once we returned from South Africa, there were two more occasions.  The first, and I don't remember if Sarah has already mentioned this, Porina ended up staying the entire night with us as her mother never came to get her.  After waking up the next morning and after she had soiled the bed tremendously, we gave Porina some food and walked her back to her house where her mother was still yet to be found.  This was the 3rd or 4th time something like this had happened and I was getting very frustrated at her.  We had told her she has to take care of her children and she just never really seemed to concerned about the fact.

A few nights later, the same situation played out.  Porina showed up on our doorstep just after dark and said she wanted to stay.  We asked her where her mother was and she said in town.  So, we decided to go to her house to see what was going on.  Once we arrive in the house, which was about the size of a single car garage...or smaller, we found her 2 year old brother, Jeanviear laying on the ground asleep with the mother once again nowhere to be found.  This time I became furious at Chantali (the mother).  So, I told our faithful nigthguard Sab, who was close by what was going on and he was pretty upset as well.  I called a co-worker who was in town and asked him to find her and bring her home.  Ole' Sab (pronounced with a long A like vase) was so worked up he didn't want to wait and decided we should go meet them on the way.  So, we start walking at a very very brisk pace.  At some points, Sab started running and I had to keep up.  How this 65 year old half blind man can run down the terrible rocky road in the dark of night is beyond me.  But, it was all I could do to keep up with him and several times I had to tell him to slow down and walk or I was going to pass out!  Once we were about 5 minutes from town, we met the moto with Chantali.  At this point she had had more than enough banana beer.  But none the less, I tried my best in my limited Kinyarwanda to tell her that this was unacceptable and that she must take care of her children.  I explained that I understand she must work and provide for her family but she can't be leaving her 2 and 7 year old by themselves throughout the night.  I also told her that we loved her children and what to help when we can but it is not our job to take care of them and they can't be showing up in the middle of the night and staying with us.

Anyway, Ole Sab had his say to her as well and by the time we reached our house where Jeanviear and Polina were sound asleep on our kitchen floor, Chantali had said nothing.  She abruptly woke them up and said lets go.  Then the weirdest thing happend and I will credit most if not all of this to the extrememly fermented banana juice she had previously consumed.  As she didn't have fabric to put Jeanviear on her back, she took off her skirt which had nothing underneath, decided to do some form of a pelvic thrust towards Sarah so that she would see, laughed, then did it once more to make sure she had been taken notice of and finally left.

I had also told the local authorities about the situation as I felt it important that they know.  After hearing about the situation they decided to have a meeting early the following morning to discuss what they would do to take care of this issue.  So, the next morning, Sarah and I get up and walk to Chantali's house where the meeting was to be held.  Upon arriving there we found that around 4am, Chantali decided she was calling it quits and left town.  We called for her and nobody at the time knew where she was.  This was about a month ago and she still hasn't been seen since.  So, the local leader told the father of Porina who is married to another woman (and supposedly Jeanviear too) he must take responsibility of raising her and a lady nearby said she would watch Jeanviear for a few days until they figure out what to do.

So, at this point the children have now been given to the grandmother (who is supposedly a witch) and they living behind their house in a tiny little room where it seems they keep animals.  It really is a sad thing and we were so torn by the thought that us getting the authorities involved led to the abandonment of the mother and now the bleak and sad situation they are living in.  Sarah spent a lot of time in tears wondering if we did the right thing.  So, that is the story up until now...not a great ending but unfortunately the reality of the tough life here with so many families. The sad thing is this is not the case with just this one family...there are several more cases like this in our village.

Anyway, in other news, we have planted our first garden and are hoping we will start having some crops in the next couple of months.  We have planted: corn, green beans, squash, peppers, carrots, tomatoes, broccoli and salad...let's just hope they actually grow.  The hard thing is keeping the goats and chickens out of the yard...they enjoy munching on the leaves of the squash and green beans.

Also some friends from back home just moved here in August with their entire family...A mom, dad and three kids.  They are working with MANA, a product designed to help alleviate malnutrition in acutely malnourished children.  They have taken it upon themselves to basically be our parents/friends away from home.   They are great and take such good care of us.  It is so nice to know that when we come to the city, we have a nice place to stay, good company to spend time with, some wonderful food to eat and a hot shower to basically set up came in.  Thanks you Raymonds...you guys are amazing!

I know this is getting long and I could write a lot more but I don't have the time and I am sure you are tired of reading...will try to keep this updated more often!  Thanks to everyone for your prayers, care packages and thoughts.  We miss you all.  Take care and of course...GO HOGS!