Chapter 1: In which the Connors Get to Rwanda (Barely)

So here is the missing first chapter that was having uploading issues last time I tried


Welcome back everyone. At this time Roberta and I are stationed with our host family in the Kamonyi region of Rwanda. We are situated on top of a mountain and it is one of the loveliest sights I have seen. I'll get back to all that later, right now though I'll go through our ordeal in getting to where we are now.

We set off early in the morning from Ashland and after swinging through McDonald’s for one last breakfast burrito we were on our way. It started to rain after we had been on the road for a while but cleared up as we arrived in Duluth, MN This is where the trouble began. After Saying our goodbyes to Roberta's mother and grandfather, we checked our bags in and waited for our flight to O'Hare and then on to Washington DC. Duluth is not a terribly big airport and so we were privy to the functions of the other Airlines. Due to the fog that had been left by the rain the Delta flight in front of our had been canceled. However our flight was still scheduled to go. A little while after that it was stated that it was delayed. Then, about 6 hours later it was finally canceled and we were forced to hire a taxi to ship us out to the nearest hotel. So instead of arriving in DC around 4:00 and having a wonderful night, we were in the airport Econolodge. We did, however, have a fairly nice time, we ordered pizza and watched an exceptionally strange movie that was entirely instrumental and featured a sailor dancing with Arabian themed cartoons. After waking up at 4:00 AM and arriving at the airport, we were told our new flight had again been canceled due to the fog. So then, after talking to the government travel agency, we were told we had to find a way to get to Minneapolis which was about 3 hours away. So it looked as if we would have to hire a taxi that would have cost about $300. Luckily enough, while waiting for the taxi to arrive, we, along with another couple, were able to hitch a ride to Minneapolis with another displaced traveler. As it turns out he was actually driving a company car so he wouldn't accept any payment from us.

The trip down was enjoyable, and as soon as it opened we called the Peace Corps to tell them we would be arriving late for our staging event. As soon as we arrived in Minneapolis we ran as fast as our little feet would carry us and were able to find a plane bound for DC. This plane actually managed to take off and we were soon in our nation's capitol. We quickly collected our luggage, hired a taxi, checked in at the hotel and ran to the Peace Corps Staging event. We only arrived about an hour late, and managed to get most of the important information. I suppose I don't really know what we missed, so I choose to believe this. Afterword we ate dinner at the Chipotle and went back to the hotel to change. We then wandered around until we ran across a CVS, where we bought some stamps, and returned to the hotel where we watched little television before we retired for the night. The next morning we hit up the post office before boarding a buss and heading to the Dulles international airport. We had thought that we were finished with airport shenanigans, however, we were wrong.

After arriving at the airport, handing out our snazzy new official Peace Corps Passports (which look just the same as a regular passport, but who's keeping track?) we piled into line. And found out that in addition to the stipulation that our checked bags needed to be fifty pounds or less, our carry-ons had to be 25 pounds or less in total as well. Luckily we were able to jam most everything into on of our carry-ons that was now becoming a checked bag. We managed to meet the surprise criteria and even managed to have enough room to help out the other married couple get their bags evened out. Some folks were not so lucky and had to pay large sums of money to the Royal Dutch Airlines.

This was my first time spending upwards of sixteen hours on a plane, which wasn't that terrible. On the flight up there I listened to Picture of Dorian Grey and watched the second Ip Man film (In which Ip Man shows the Britts who's boss). On the second half of the trip I finished up Dorian Grey and slept/watched Django Unchained. Eventually we arrived in Kigali not too worse for the wear. I'll stop talking now since this is fairly long. Eventually we will upload more but I make no promises as to when that will be as our internet situation is kind of spotty.

Chapter 3: In which the Connors visit their school

Hello again, hopefully I will be able to adequately sum up what has happened in the last month and a half. From where we last left off, we were studying kinyarwanda and learning how to be teachers. At about week we got to visit the site that we will be living and working for the next two years. We started off by going to the Supervisors Conferance in Muhonga which was a little west of where we we living. We got to stay in a nice hotel with running water. We we very excited to take a hot shower, but unfortunately the shower was exceptionally cold. We managed to make due with the bathtub hand held shower thingy which was warm to slightly hot. It did however end up spraying funny colored water all over our bathroom, which over the course of the few nights we were there, slowly crept into our bedroom. Later we met with our future headmaster, Evariste. He seems very nice and enthusiastic about having us at our school, Group Escolere Jean De La Mennais. The meeting was long and mostly for our Rwandan bosses, strangely enough there was a forty-five minute discussion about what to do if our students believe that they have been bewitched (The solution is to get some old witchy-looking lady to say that she un-cursed them). Us, and four of our friends played Dungeons and Dragons that night, because we are the cool kids.

After the conference Evariste took us up to visit our site and our school. We are in the Burera District which will be re-named “New Wisconsin” as Four out of the five PCVs in the area are from the good old Badger State. The closest town that would be on a map is called Karimbo, additionally we are between Butaro (Where the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation built a giant hospital) and Base where we will probably be buying lots of things we can't find in Kirambo. It rains a lot due to us living in the rainforest and if the sun isn't shining it's wonderful sweater weather. While we were there we stayed at the local Parish with the priests and monks. It was wonderful as they had just refurbished the place so we had a very nice room. There cook was wonderful and we got to eat food that was different than just beans and rice. In between visiting the school the monks showed us around the compound and Berta stated that she thought the bunnies were cute. The Priest heard this and so the next night we ate those bunnies that Berta had pointed out. I suppose there might have been something lost in translation there.

The school was very nice as well, we have a small library and a copy machine (which is a rarity in Rwanda). G.S Jean De La Mennais is right next to the local teaching college, which is run by the same order that was giving us room and board. Evariste had work to do, so it fell to Brother Phillipe to show us around the school. There is a choir that wants Berta to teach English songs to them, an English club that we will probably be in charge of further down the road, and various other clubs that we might grab the reigns for. All in all we had a very good visit and are excited to return permanently in December.

Getting back to our host family was eventful. We had been toying with the idea of meeting up with our fellow colleagues who live fairly close to us. We would have had to go Musanze which was a little out of our way but too terrible. So we left for Base early in the morning by taxi. When we reached Base our driver lept out of the car bought us tickets for Kigali and shoved us onto a buss. Aparently our headmaster had givin him directions to get us on our way. So we reached Kigali very early, ate our lunch of boiled lungs at “Mama Boy”, got hot and board and decided to leave for our host family. Unfortunately the term I was told for our region was not correct and so we got a little unexpected buss tour of Kigali until we arrived right at the same buss station that we had left. This had taken enough time that now our friends were getting into the city as well. So we spent most of the rest of the day and a coffee shop/restaurant. We were out on a balcony when it began to rain, so the staff put several tables together and had us all sit in the parking garage. It was strange and very fume-y but we had hamburgers and all was well. We eventually tried to get back to our town which ended with us all in a “twege.” The term Twege comes from the verb “To Squeeze” which is exactly what one does in the things. For some reason (ie. Rwanda) we were sitting in the buss and the buss station for about 45 minutes while peddlers tried to sell us underwear, biscuits, somebodies passport, a book about rape, fruit, and a wire with about twenty phone chargers taped to the end. After the driver finally showed up, and we were on our way. Unfortunately to trunk kept popping open which put all of our bags in danger of spilling out onto the road. We finally managed to get home safely with all of our things still in the trunk.