oh computers

Its with great hesitation that I begin to type this post. And unfortunately, my concern has already proven to be well founded. I spent three days last week running all over Kigali in my attempts to get the laptop my work has leant me in working order. I had to buy a new adaptor cord and charger and attempted to get the keyboard fixed. Apparently, I'm not the hard nosed business person I thought I was! I told the electrician I needed the s key on the laptops keyboard fixed. The end result after hours of waiting around in a little store which was the size of a good walk in closet… three of the computers keys were now broken and I still insisted on paying the electrician because he seemed to have done his best! Everyone in the little shop now knows me by name due to my frequent visits...but unfortunately they all think my name is Christine.

I finally agreed to buy an external keyboard. This is the first time IM using the new keyboard and I’ve already found many problems. Even though I specifically said I needed an English keyboard, this is definitely a French keyboard. The keys are in the wrong places, the shift key doesn’t work`, so I have to hit caps lock to get a capital, and the apostrophe key doesn’t work, unless I hit control alt delete before I hit it! Also… I had the viruses removed…but as I have learned this morning…they are all still thriving…much like whatever animal is running around in our ceiling every night. It usually wakes me up twice me up at least twice a night when it and its friends decide to have dance parties and jump all over the place. Enough of my woes! I can think of many things that would be much more interesting for you all to read about

Even though Ive been in country for 6 weeks as of yesterday, this past week has brought me through a lot of firsts. I taught my first English class at an organisation called sisters of Rwanda, I went to the first of my soon to be weekly visits to an orphanage started by mother Theresa, and for the first time, Ive really felt as though Im a contributing member of my organisations staff! Ì now have a concrete work plan of my own and have helped translate a document. Its still far from, perfect, but Ive also noticed that over these past two weeks some of the French I learned throughout my primary schooling in French immersion has resurfaced. It has also been reinforced by local phrases and expressions that are becoming a part of my every day vocabulary. My ´Kinyarwandan is horrible…but none the less Im trying to use it as much as I can. Ive learned how to say “I want to go to” which is a very useful phrase especially when flagging down one of the moto taxis. I had to laugh at myself the other day when for the first time I spoke to a taxi driver only using my limited Kinya. I must have done a good job because he replied using the same language instead of switching to French or English. Unfortunately I didn’t understand his response and said in English “Im sorry what” His response had been to quote the price of the fare and i couldn’t remember if what he said meant 6 or 7 hundred. He mistook my inability to understand the language as an unwillingness to pay such a high fare...and without me ever bartering, he dropped the fare by 200! Im learning that Im sometimes most effective when Im not even trying and unfortunately the opposite is also true.

One of the strangest things that comes with living here has been realising that I am inadvertently part of this country's elite. I can afford to eat at the expensive restaurants, and if I miss the public bus I don’t think twice about jumping onto a moto, thereby paying 8 times as much. Last night Laura and I met up with another Canadian, and two of her Rwandan friends. One of the Rwandan guys brought along another British guy. Turns out that the British guy, some kinda garden architect who must have been at least in his late 30s, had just arrived in country the night before had been hired by the Rwandan gov to design a giant garden for a new museum. As we all sat eating on a balcony overlooking the night time cityscape of light covered mountains, it was hard to digest that the very same morning I was overcome with tears after leaving the orphanage where I had spent 2 and a half hours playing with and singing to 23 little one and two year olds who cried every time I set them back on the ground. More than any other time in my life Im being forced to meditate on the inequalities that exist between my life of relative ease and the lives of those I now interact with daily. I wonder how Paris Hilton will internalise all these realities when she visits the country next month!One of the biggest lessons I'm learning is that I need to give myself some grace as I work things through.

This afternoon Laura and I are both going to a three day work shop in a rural village in the western province. The workshop is run by the Trauma and healing department of my work, and its goal is to promote dialogue and renew the relationships that were destroyed during the genocide. Over the three days, the families of victims and offenders will live together as they participate in Trauma recovery workshops. This is the first group or individual counselling most of the villagers will have experienced.

Yesterday afternoon I decided that I wanted to visit the Gizozi Genocide Memorial and education centre before participating in this workshop. Laura and split a cab to the centre but I wanted to walk around on my own. The intern who worked with my organisation before I came left last week, but before she left we went for a long walk around our neighbourhood and she told me what had happened where I currently live and work during the genocide. Some of the mass killings took place just down the street from me in a school and a field. Living where many people died and knowing people who lost their families made reading about the lead up to the genocide in the memorial very difficult. The genocide is built on a hill top overlooking Kigali and over 250,000 people are buried their in large mass graves.