What Can I Possibly Say?

I can't believe it - I'm in Rwanda, and as my title suggests, I definitely can't summarize my feelings in one title, and I kind of doubt I'll even be able to in an entire blog. I'm sorry (especially to my mom) for not blogging anything earlier, but we've been really, really busy - I haven't even had time to properly think about everything I've experienced so far, much less formulate it into proper words. If I go to sleep this instant I'll have just under 7 hours of sleep, so we'll see how much sleep I'm willing to sacrifice in order to record my time so far. I'm guessing it will be a while before I am fully caught up.

I continued my previous practice of being unable to sleep on plane journeys, so I was fairly tired when we arrived in London on Sunday morning. We walked around the city seeing a few big sights, but to be honest I was not really paying attention. A lot of people thought it was weird, but I spent a lot of the time in London on the phone with my former flatmates in Scotland. I brought my phone I had in Scotland, and since I'd already seen the sights of London (and know they'll be there next time I visit) I just took advantage of the opportunity to talk to some of my best friends in the world. London is a great city, but I value my friends more. The one time I wasn't on my phone, though, was one of the coolest experiences I'd had in my life, when we technically had our first taste of being in Rwanda: visiting the Rwandan embassy in the UK. I've never been in a foreign embassy before, and don't really see it happening anytime soon, so it was a really cool experience. We met the Rwandan ambassador, who was really nice and gave us his card (coolest souvenir ever) and said if we ever wanted to do some work in Rwanda to contact him. Definitely keeping that in mind!

We then flew to Nairobi (in Kenya), where we first experienced Africa Time, as we started to board for our flight to Kigali about an hour before take off and ended up sitting in an intermediate room for about 1.5 hours before actually getting on to the plane. After boarding we found out that the plane would in fact be flying to Bujumbura first, then flying to Kigali. Apparently this decision was made sometime as we were waiting in between 'pre-boarding' and 'boarding'. I just laughed and soaked it up as part of the experience, before even getting to Rwanda.

A lot has been said about what that first step off a plane into Africa is like... and I think it's probably just about all true. You immediately know you are walking somewhere you have never even been close to before. Smell is the sense most closely linked to memory and my first memory of Rwanda is a humid, damp, grainy smell with a little more to it that I guess I just have to call Africa.

We met up with our drivers who will be escorting us for the whole time we're in Rwanda, so it should be pretty cool to really get to know them. We headed to our hotel, which is very nice, actually maybe too nice. I'm very much used to travelling on a shoestring, and staying in a more localized, in tune with the surroundings type of place. Here we're very much in a bubble - gated and fenced off from the rest of the city and given the services of hotels I would never dream of getting in America. I feel like I've unintentionally adopted a bit of an air of superiority here, and I feel a little guilty about it.

After our much needed shower, we rode around in our 7-passenger jeeps for a tour of the city. Although it did little to dispel my feelings of acting extravagant, it was easily the most culturally shocking experience of my life, and I absolutely loved it. I have essentially sworn off taking photos (we already have 13 other students constantly taking pics, and we're all going to share, so what's the point?) and instead just devote myself 100% to just taking in the experience. Venturing a guess, I'd easily say I asked our driver close to 100 questions in hour few hours driving. I learned soooo much about the country from him, but what sticks the most in my memory is the people. Some people smile, wave, and give a friendly 'muzungu!' (the kinyarwanda word for white person, a subject i could probably write a whole blog about alone). And sometimes people look at our enclosed caravan of rich foreigners with an easily translatable look - something like 'why the **** are you taking a photo of me?' And that's totally, completely justified! I absolutely despise the fact that I felt like we were on a safari for humans at times. Reverse, the situation, and I would feel exactly the same. If some rich foreigners drove around Ames in a fancy limo taking photos of people living everyday lives and smiling and laughing I would be seriously offended. People deserve respect.

Regardless, I was really glad we went on the city tour, particularly because it put our last item of the day into such a real perspective. We visited Gisimba Orphanage, where we will be working at regularly, and I faced an experience I will neverevereverever forget. As we got out of our jeeps and were greeting the director, Ashley came over with a kid she was really close to when she came last year. As I was watching how happy they were to see each other, I felt something on my hand and looked down to see a child had appeared from somewhere to grab it and lean on my leg. As I was trying to say hi to him, another kid grabbed my other hand and started to look at my watch. Within 15 seconds I had about 4 kids holding on to me, feeling my hairy legs, and staring at my watch. As I was showing them all how to use my watch I realized that this is what I came here for... a life-changing experience.

So that was my first day in Rwanda. I still have all of today's activities to talk about, but I seriously need some sleep so it's not happening. Waking up at 6:30 tomorrow and checking out a school!

If anyone ever has any questions about what I've done or what I've experienced or learned about Rwanda in general just let me know, I'll be glad to answer!