Culture Shock: Round 1

Last week was very busy and full of new things:

monday morning we left Butare at 7am for our 2 hour drive to kigali for a counterpart (person from our new community who can show us around and introduce us to our new home and job) conference and then on Tuesday, we headed to our site with our counterpart. we also found out our exact site location and job descriptions. Here are my details:

-i will be in the province of Kigali.

-its a small rual town (smaller than BS), but less than an hour from downtown kigali.

-for my primary project, i will be working at a health centre (not sure exactly what i will be doing, but anything from teaching family planning, working in the SIDA (AIDS) center, data management, delivering babies (haha...they think so), and other such activities.

- some secondary projects could include: teaching english to secondary school students and health centre workers, coaching a girls futbol club, doing something with coffee, and any other organizations that could fun to work with. (this could change depending on the needs)

the organization i will be working for is Twubakane (which mean "we grow together"). This org is funded by USAID and PEPFAR - two huge American Aid organizations. All the supplies in the health centre have huge stickers that says: provided by USAID!

About my housing:

Currently, i will be living inside the compound of the health centre, but it has a lot of "things" that need to be fixed: all the windows are broken, i have no place to bathe, i share a latrine with a man, i was refused when asked to see the inside of my house :/, but my attitude is a lot better now than it was. Some positives: there is supposed to be electricity and they are bringing a pipe in so i will have running water (pretty excited).


My site visit was definitely harder than expected! I can laugh about it now, but I had to leave my site for two days and have a “WHAT THE HECK AM I DOING IN AFRICA??” moment. Then I went back to my site to give it a second try and loved it! I spoke more kinyarwanda than I have ever in one day, became a pharmacist in less than 5 mins, and had the joy of learning that a need for teaching English is a must!

I met up with friends Saturday morning and we enjoyed the fairly new NAKAMATT (African 24hour Walmart) and a Burbon coffee shop (filled with white people and real lattes). It was good to learn that I was not alone in the questioning why I am here and happy to know that it will go away and comeback in spurts.

There is now less than a month before we are sworn in as volunteers. We have been invited by the US ambassador to be sworn in at his house! Its pretty exciting!

Also for some more news, Peace Corps Rwanda has just received more funding for more volunteers so in approximately October will be getting 25(ish) English teacher and then more volunteers in January. How exciting 100 volunteers in Rwanda! It’s also exciting because we will become the support system for the new volunteers!

My birthday was great! My second birthday in Africa (first was my 19th) We all went to dinner and just enjoyed the evening and then my closer friends surprised me with a birthday cake (nutella icing). It was fun to just relax and forget about work. I also got to talk to parents, heather, and brad. It was much appreciated.


Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes and all the prayers and support!

I really like mail (letters are great) and my address will be the same as it is now, but this is PC so changes to be expected.

Feel free to email me with any questions!