The Day My Hot Plate Died

During the first couple of weeks here, I relied pretty heavily on my hot plate. Oftentimes, I thought to myself “What would I do without this awesome device?!” Then at the start of week 3, it went to meet that Big Man in the sky. Unfortunately, the death of this beloved item came on the same day that I was sent home by my health center for having a cold. So basically I go home to rest and eventually drag myself out of bed with the intention of making lunch. I finish all the prep work  only to then find out that the hot plate is kaput and I have no way to cook the damn stuff. Luckily I own a coal stove, but…no coal. So I put on some rain boots (it’s about to storm) and hobble down the street to some shops in the hopes that I will be able to locate coal. After looking in a few stores to no avail and having one woman tell me I would need to travel 90 minutes away to purchase some, I basically decide to stand in the middle of the street on the verge of tears moping in Kinyarwanda that I’m sick and hungry and just want coal to cook, until luckily an onlooker takes pity on me and helps me find a guy selling some out of his house. I cannot tell you how relieved I was in that moment. At home, I struggled to figure out how to light the stove until I finally asked my neighbor for help. In the end, I got it to work and actually cooked real food at my site sans electricity. For me this story brings up 3 important points:

1. It amazes me that many Rwandans cook on a coal stove every day, as it is my opinion that this is a difficult, messy, time consuming pain in the ass.
2. Rwandans are extremely helpful. Over the last 3 months I have had people bend over backwards to help me figure things out without expecting anything in return.
3. I miss American kitchens, but feel some personal satisfaction that this story ended in me successfully using a charcoal stove.

The good news is that as a result of this mishap, I decided to ask my neighbors if it would be alright for me to eat with them sometimes and they seemed on board. I have already had lunch and dinner with them a couple of times and I’m hoping to make this an ongoing thing. They seem to enjoy being friends with the foreigner next door and I certainly enjoy eating food that I don’t have to cook. Makes me wonder if I would have previously been as generous to a confused foreign neighbor in America…food for thought. Generally, I’ve been doing much better at site since the last post. I received some of my furniture from the carpenter, which is great. Here’s a photo of some dudes transporting my bed and kitchen table down the street via their noggins.

I also learned that a papaya looks a lot like a large avocado…after accidentally purchasing what I thought was an avocado, only to be very confused upon cutting it open. Work wise, I feel like I have some concrete plans on the horizon. I signed up to help out with a couple of upcoming girls camps and a 6-day (100 mile) malaria prevention bike trip. More to come on the bike trip, but I am NOT in shape and I might die. lol At the health center I helped out with a baby-weighing, which involved a ton of local women coming in with their babies (ages 0-5) to check for malnutrition. First we put each kid on this wooden plank that measures his/her height. Then he/she has to sit in these little blue shorts that you attach to a scale hanging from a rafter. And the kid just kind of hangs there in the air for a minute squirming around until you can get a read on the weight. And the final step is to use this little measuring tape called MUAC on their arm to determine bicep width. This was a rough day for me, as it involved speaking/understanding a lot of numbers in Kinyarwanda, interacting with many people at once including terrified screaming babies (in the baking hot sun) and attempting to write down Rwandan surnames that are super confusing to spell. At one point my supervisor Jeanne was like “You got this, right?” and then walked away to take care of something else. During the 10 minutes she was gone, I fumbled around trying to figure out what the hell I was doing and trying not to panic. By the end I basically felt like a big time failure, but Jeanne was really supportive and assured me that I am an umuhanga (smart person) and that I just need practice. Overall, it was a good experience to be a part of, and an activity I will probably be helping out with more in the future. It was sad to see that some of the kids were, in fact, suffering from malnutrition, but luckily the health center gave out boxes of shelf-stable milk to the mothers of those particular children. And they did some follow-up home visits, which I also tagged along on.

Before I forget, a belated thanks to everyone for the much-appreciated birthday wishes. Last weekend I was at a regional meeting in a larger town about an hour and a half from mine. I was able to hang out with some seasoned volunteers to talk about trials and triumphs of being a PC volunteer. They were very welcoming and even made me a bday card and some banana bread, which I was able to enjoy with an adult beverage. So woot woot to that. Additionally, my awesome friends Kate and Nick back in Boston gave birth to a sweet little baby named Cole during the same week, so congrats to them! I am sad to not be around to great this little dude, but pumped that our birthdays are so close. Maybe we can host joint Power Rangers-themed bday parties post Peace Corps? Just throwing the idea out there. I mean it’s cool if they’re pirate or Star Wars-themed too. I’m not picky—whatever he’s down with. haha