This morning I headed out early for another school visit and I decided to be ambitious and go out to Jarama. It's not a good sign when locals laugh and say 'Whoa! That's far." What's "far" to a Canadian, though? 10 hours to Vancouver is a day trip, after all. This isn't even that far. So, an hour on the moto should be fine, right? Right! Okay, so I wasn't considering that a) it's a motorcycle, not a comfortable VW Golf with good music and that b) the road is not paved and it's rainy season so it's not even flat. It's full of ruts and ditches and goats and people. Patrick more or less knew how to get there but we had to stop and ask for directions. Thankfull the popoulation density of Ngoma District is no less than 319 people per square kilometer. (Look up Canada's...) So we could ask many people for directions and we were all heading to in the right direction when we came a fork in the road and, for the first time, no people. Like this is the only place in Rwanda with no people but...not for long. Okay, get directions and continue on. We arrived over an hour after we left. It was a beautiful drive around Lake Sake and rice fields and the land stretch before me. I was so close to Burundi that my cellphone automatically changed to the MTN equivalent. I got off the bike, shaky and sore and tired and tried to send an SMS to my director but hit send twice to the wrong person first.....Okay, so quick 2 hours at Jarama and then on the bike again to Gashanda where I watch a sample lesson of a teacher teaching colours. She had the teachers "race" to pick up items of a certain colour. Those teachers are competitive. One even took off her glasses to get in there and win. Half way through the evaluation the rain and hail started and things have to virtually stop. The noise on the tin roofs is deafening. I gave the trainer a few ideas for "rain delays" which may help but it's nearly impossible to do anything until the rain lets up. Which it did in time for me to journey back to the district. Got there and saw Frodauld who was busy as usually. Made a few copies of evaluation sheets (while the rain came again) and headed home when the rain stopped.
Back home I started to take apart my keronsene stoves which, incidently, aren't 100% fixed. Why I thought this was a good idea, I don't know. My electricity wasn't even working so I thought 'If I break these, I'll having nothing to cook with tonight' but thankfully I'd bought Kibungo's version of McDonald's. The only fast food here are samosas. Deep friend and tasty but I don't think I'll eat them when I'm back in Canada. Stove apart and spread over my back year and my phone rings. It's Elie here for my French lesson which I have change to once a week Kinyarwanda lesson instead. I'm just so tired that twice a week is too much and I think I want to work on Kinya to be able to communicate a bit better instead of saying the same old thing. The lesson was mbeza (good) and after he left, Jean my guard, and I worked at the stoves. He gave me a stick and I did it! I changed the wicks on the stove and put it back together. I felt like a frickin' genius. I had been getting frustrated because it wasn't working and Old Anna would likely have given up and got someone else to do it for me. But there is a sense of satisfaction in doing things yourself. Ha! you're all saying.....no kidding. Yes, well, there are things I'm learning here.
So, tonight I finally sat down with two pots of water boiling (one on my electric burner that I got a few weeks ago) and one on my newly fixed and working like a charm kerosene stove. Water for washing, boiling and a great bucket shower. I'm still nursing bed bug bites and am frustrated but for now, a few things are going right! Tomorrow I've said only one school visit. My tail bone and abs are suffering just a tad from the Long Way Down and so I think 30 minutes one way is about all I can handle. Plus it's market day and I need carrots. I hope they have them.....
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