Getting settled

I'm currently sitting at work wishing I had something to do! The lady I need to meet with still hasn't shown up and I've been sitting here for almost two hours...oh Rwanda. The drive to accomplish things that has always pushed me to suceed is driving me crazy here. I want to do things and I can't. As someone told be a few days ago..this land teaches you "to be" and not "to do"...ahhh. The organization that I'm supposed to be working with is facing financial difficulties so a lot of people are coming to work but are not being paied/have nothing to do. I don't understand how they can be laughing and joking with eachother...aren't they frustrated? The joy people have here is overwhelming at times because it seems so disconnected from its surroundings. I guess its built on something deeper than the things I can see. I had tears in my eyes at church this Sunday when the youth choir performed a song about looking to the future. Anyone over the age of 15 has been through hell and for them to have such hope is completely humbling.
A week to the day that we got here...we had to move everything out of our house because the Rwandan government is enforcing a new anti malaria program. They are spraying every house in Kigali with some type of chemical which is supposed to kill mosquitos when they land on the walls. I had to sit on the lawn with all of our stuff piled around me for almost 5 hours. One guy in a spraying suit covered all the walls in the house with the chemicals and then said that no one could enter for two hours...I decided that it was better to wait outside for longer than two hours as two children in another village died when they entered their house to soon. The advantage of being outside is that I practiced my kinyarwandan with my landlord and he practiced his english.

The best way to get around town is by motor taxi. The kichikiro district market, is about a ten minute walk from my house. I walk down to the centre of it and then have to barter with the motor cycle guys to see who will give a fair rate. Even so, its very cheap with a 12 minute ride costing less than two dollars Canadian. My worst motor cycle rideso far is the second one I ever took, and it was on my third day here. I had been in town with some Americans who were showing Laura and I where to buy the basics and do our banking. Laura got a ride back on one of their motor cycles and Bethany and I took the moto taxis back. There was a traffic jam leaving the city and Bethany and I got split up but my driver didn't want to slow down so he decided to drive in the lane for oncoming traffic. We were going full speed towards oncoming trucks and cars and then he'd dart back into a spot on the right side of the road to let them pass. I finally said "Bootero" which sorta means slow down. He adjusted his rear view me to see me when a piece of dirt managed to slip under my face guard and hit me in the eye! I couldn't stop my eye from watering so it looked like I was crying. I think he felt really badly that he had scarred me so much that I started craying (which he hadn't) so he drove me past the normal drop off and over to the other side of the street where he thought I lived. I finally insisted that he stop cuz I didn't really know where I was anymore. Through our inability to communciate I said thankyou..and then went for my first walk alone in Rwanda...in an effort to try and find my way back home. ( turns out I really wasn't that far). Trial by fire.