Yes, I did bring my camera to Canada....

...I just didn't use it very often.

Standing infront of my parents house and infront of a MacEachern tradition - to fly the flag of your guests. Some how my parents got their hands on a Rwandan flag. Something I could even do in Rwanda!

Perhaps this was East Side Mario's attempt to, after eating their fabulous and authentic Italian food, remind us that we were in Canada and not Rome. Too bad their food was crap.

Lunch on 17th. God how I missed the food at home! (Above photo excluded)

The Long Good-bye

I’m sitting here, in Kibungo, listening to the rain pound on my roof, trying to remember last week. It feels like months ago. It really is a world away. I’m typing in a Word document because my modem isn’t working and district internet is totally unreliable. Sometimes great….sometimes not working at all.

My flight was rescheduled until May 1^st so I had two weeks to kill in Calgary. There are worse places to be but after about a week of everyone I know being at school and only being able to watch so many Gossip Girls in a row, I was starting to get a bit bored. So Monday I volunteered at CBC with the Calgary Reads book sale. (Have I mentioned that this is my favourite time of year???) My job involved….sorting books into categories. Pretty straight forward but I was constantly getting distracted. “Oooooh look at this book….This one is soooo good…..oooooh look at this one. …..I wonder what its about?” I was scheduled to help on Tuesday as well but arrive and there was nothing to do. The sorting was done. Thursday I got to see AMP who I haven’t seen in years and she had just arrived in Calgary from Toronto. “Thanks Volcano for letting me meet an old friend!” Friday I enjoyed a great lunch at Mercado with my dad and brother and then made my way to the arena to wait in line for the book sale. I arrived at 3:15 (it didn’t start unil 4pm) and planted myself in the quickly growing line. Some of the book swap girls – and Shory, who we are trying to convince to join book swap – met me a few minutes later and we were there and ready to build our libraries for a fraction of the price. We were so prepared. Some of the girls were CBC Calgary Reads book sale virgins. But thankfully, I had emailed them a preparation list to help them be successful. It went a little something like this:

1. Bring a Twoonie for the entry donation. Using a $5 bill is acceptable as change will be easy but a $20 is not practical as the time wasted getting you change is time that could be used to search for books)

2. Bring your own bag/box/case for books. Personally, I use a stylish Swiss basket with a padded handle. This pays off when I'm carrying my basket on my arm and the weight of all the books leaves marks on my arm.

3. Bring cash. Give yourself an allowance and limit yourself. For me, it's like a kid in a candy store or Helena Guergis. I just go crazy!!

4. Go directly to the Best Sellers table. Get what you want. THEN check the other tables for the same books. They are sometimes put on different tables as well and you can get the same book for cheaper. If you find the same book, return the higher priced one to the Best Sellers table for someone else to find.

5. Feel free to give your opinion. If someone is fondling a book that you have read, feel free to tell them how good it is. You can do this also even if the book is crap. Because if they take one that you've already read, they will leave one that maybe you want.

6. Work as a team. Working together to get the books you want is more efficient. You may have to give a title AND description of the spine to make searching easier. Going at this alone will lead not only to frustration but you may end up looking at 1996 biographies of Mulroney or Michael Jordan instead of what you really need.

And work as a team, we did! We had our bags and baskets loaded to the brim and then stepped to the side to pare down the pile, so that we could go in for more. Aimey was charged with spending $40 that her students raised for the libraries here (I have converted the rest into American money to bring to Rwanda). At the end of all of it we had piles of books by everyone from Marian Keyes to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and a pile of books for the libraries here.

Saturday….well, Saturday I packed and at 7:20, boarded a plane bound for London. The sky was free of ash cloud and Rwanda – and its nice weather – was waiting.

A few thoughts since I have some time on my hands

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain

So I found this quote the other day and was thinking about it when I was at book swap last night (thank you, Eyjafjallajokul, for enabling me to attend). It was great and, of course, made me miss living here. Great books, great girls, great wine/margaritas. The Rwandan book swap I started is good too but we have to substitute the wine and margaritas for Fanta and melange......... Anyway, I was there, sitting infront of the large pile of books dreaming about the day when I can read anything I want and any book is just a short jaunt away at a Chapters and someone asked me about Rwanda and said the standard "Good for you for doing it and taking a risk" or along those lines. I have to say that those words were so helpful to me before I left because, while the outside Anna was cool, calm and collected (Oh yeah, spiders and malaria. Ha ha! Can't wait....), the inside Anna was freaking out about making sure I had enough pairs of socks in my suitcase and money in my bank account. They were helpful before I left and gave me so much support. Now, I think Well, if I can do this, ANYONE can do this! And I was telling the girls about the flight out. The calm cool and collected person sad down in 23A (Window seat) on her way to London, looked out on the tarmac and said, out loud, "What am I doing???" I swear the my heart rate and sweat glands went into over drive and I realized (maybe too late) that I was moving to Africa for a year. I freaked out. I would say that I put myself out of my comfort zone and sailed away from my safe harbour. But I had friends and family as my life raft and their support made it possible. It is the best thing I could have done. In twenty years when my pension is a little bit lower than my friends, I won't think about the few dollars that might give me a nice latte. I'll try to remember how to say coffee in Kinyarwanda. A few years ago, I promised myself that I didn't want to live a life where I began a sentence with "I wish I would have...."

Maybe getting out of your comfort zone isn't flying to Rwanda. Maybe it's reading a new type of book or trying a new food or going to the gym and trying the free weights (okay, that's me. It scares me to try free weights. Too intimidating....). Whatever it is, if you're thinking of taking a leap and sailing away from your safe harbour, remember that you have life jackets and life rafts. Besides bed bugs, what could go wrong?

Explore. Dream. Discover.

Today in the Globe and Mail

Canada apologizes for role in Rwandan genocide

Anna's Suitcase goes to....NOWHERE!!!

And here I wait....

I woke up early yesterday to check the status of my flight to London. It was cancelled. Now, I was half expecting it but thought that, by some miracle, it would be flying. So, I began to unpack my half-packed suitcase. Nte kibazo (I never spell that correctly). So, I began the long wait on the phone with Air Canada where - after 45 minutes - the woman said "I hope you're sitting when I tell you this." May 1st!!!! That was the earliest flight out of here and that was just to London. She managed to also get me on a flight to Kigali but a later one as my original one was full. Great. Okay. Only waited an hour and a half for all of that. Whoo hoo. Except then she called me back to inform me that because I originally bought two tickets (instead of one ticket all the way through), I'd have to book my London-Nairobi-Kigali flight on my own. Sigh. Two hours later it was settled. I'd leave May 1st. Okay...no big deal. Just will have to adjust some timelines for workshops I'd scheduled before I left. There is nothing I can do about it. And I can get to the CBC Reads Book Sale which happens to be one of my favourite times of year. Silver lining, right?

And now I'm listening to the radio and checking the Air Canada website and wouldn't you know it? The flight to London is on time. I missed it BY A DAY!!!! (Secretly I wouldn't be sad if it, too, was cancelled......okay, well not really. I'm sure many people just want to get home.) From all the stories I've heard, I feel lucky. I'm at home, with my boxes of clothes out of storage, I have electricity and friends and family and bagels. Plus I can continue putting television series onto my new, fancy external hard drive. (Which, by the way, is one thing every volunteer should do before they leave for a placement).

And so, it will be another 10 days before I can share with you adventurous stories of flying maggots, water shortages, motorcycle rides, goat brochettes or the sheer comedy of living in a place where you try, but rarely succeed, to speak the local language.

***WANT TO HELP A RWANDAN LIBRARY?

If you can make your way to the CBC Booksale to get yourself a few good paperbacks (Can I recommend Pillars of the Earth or anything by David Sedaris?) then why not buy a book or two for the library in Rwanda? A few dollars for a good quality child's book and then a few more to mail it to me in Kibungo, and you can help with this project. Please contact me for details.

Kiss my ash, Iceland

Two years ago I travelled to Iceland and found that it was a little piece of heaven alone in the north Atlantic. It's a beautiful country and easy to travel around. I worked in the north part of the country for two weeks and travelled along the southern coast for a week. It is my favourite place on earth. It is home to Europe's first democracy and has a 99% literacy rate. The scenery is stunning. And now? Since I've been there the economy has collapsed, McDonald's pulled out and now its volcanoes are causing havoc in the skies. I'm supposed to be heading back to Rwanda on Monday and, while I'm holding out hope that the airports will re-open, I've also read that the last time this little volcano underneath the Eyjafjallajokall glacier erupted was two hundred years ago and it lasted for 18 months. Hmmmm........

Here are a few pictures from my visit and from the roads that are now washed away:

One of the glaciers near the volcano. It's either Eyjafjallajokull or Myrdalsjokull....I ALWAYS mix those two up! (prior to eruption...obviously)

Popular camping spot near the volcano

A dormant volcano in north eastern Iceland called Grabrok.

Toto, I don't think we're in Kibungo anymore.

Dorothy's clue that she wasn't in Kansas were the little people and all that colour. My clue I'm not in Kibungo....the SNOW!

My small (suitable for carry-on) suitcase is unpacked and will likely remain so. No, I’m not staying in Canada but I need to travel back to Rwanda with a big one, what with all the Sidekicks and everything. It’s surprising to me how easily I have become accustomed to life back in Canada. I can’t decide if it’s because I’m just visiting and haven’t actually had to work while here or if sliding back into life was just that easy. More likely its what another volunteer friend of mine said – you use one part of your brain for Canada and another for Rwanda. So, as I sit here for a quick recap, remember that I have 7 days left of snow before I destined for the land of banana trees and geckos.

I arrived in a haze that lasted for a few days and made my way into my school to say hello and give a short presentation for some students who raised money for the library project. Being in the school was surreal and I’d forgotten completely how to talk to students. I was visiting one class and someone hit the light switch by accident. The classroom went dark and my first thought was “Uh oh. There goes the electricity….” I had a chance on Wednesday to get together with a bunch of friends for drinks at a sports bar with a t.v the size of my house. Instead of the entire town gathered around a 20inch t.v. to watch a soccer match, it was televisions everywhere and sensory overload. Thursday was hot tub and Cesar’s at Ang’s but Easter came and went and the traditional family dinner – which includes, always, my brother and I fighting over hidden Easter eggs, was postponed so that my parents could get a head start on their vacation. Instead, I spent Easter with Amanda and Aimey, a few bottles of wine and the card game Wizard. Coincidently, I spent the next day with a hangover.

Easter Sunday Aimey and I went geocaching, which is essentially finding a hiding cache from coordinates. Sounds easy if you have a fancy GPS but our first one was a “micro” cache and we didn’t find it. The second was much more successful and we left Easter mini-eggs as a treat. Geocaching is new to me but apparently the whole world has been doing it for years. It's a great idea and I'm already wondering how to use this when I'm teaching next year. Great to teach kids about coordinates. (Follow the link above for more info). I’ve also had a chance to get out to the mountains to enjoy Banff like a tourist. And I felt it….I was FREEZING. It snowed and we still decided to hike up Sulfur mountain. I had just bought trekking poles – which is to save my knees when we hike Kili this summer – and I’ve realized that I will NEVER hike without them again. They look hard core, which I definitely am not, but my knees whispered “thank you” when I was finished.

Today I’m enjoying the snow and, unlike most Calgarians, am not pissed off that it’s the 12^th of April and STILL snowing. I’ve been enjoying swimming any day that I can – and NOT at risk for catching Bilharzia. I’ve been enjoying the CBC and hearing the news as it happens. I’ve been enjoying Starbucks and the ability to get food whenever I want it as well as showers that don’t take an hour to prepare. I’m also enjoying anonymity of not standing out like a novelty every time I walk down the street. BUT I am missing a few things: I’m missing the taste of avocados. Yes, you can buy them here – in the WINTER – but they have no flavour. I miss bananas and pineapples and Rwandan coffee. I miss the wind whistling over my motorcycle helmet as I wind through the valleys of the Eastern province. I miss getting up close and personal with my fellow Rwandans when I take the bus. I miss busy chores that make me tired and fall asleep as soon as I hit the pillow. I miss being able to say “Nte kibazo” when something goes wrong and I miss the slow pace of life. So, besides realizing that I have an awful lot of friends who’s names begin with the letter A, I’m realizing that Jeremy was right. You are where you are. Enjoy it.

Ah....this is the life!

Look at the view.

"In winter - travel not recommended."

"In spring - use caution. Upper trail may be snow covered or icy."

Only a few more steps to Africa!

Hidden cache

There it is! (And yes, that IS a Tim Horton's coffee in my hand.)