Water is not running, and electricity is out. Perfect time to write a blog.

When I last wrote I believe I was off to yet another workshop. I went to Musanze, which is also in the north, I am in the north but central, this is north but west side of the county. Apparently there is a way to get there more directly but I went into Kigali, 1 ½ hours north of me which is the central hub and then took a private bus rented for all the people attending the conference about 2 hours to Musanze. There were 8 peace corps volunteers, and about 30 Rwandan counterparts. The concept of the workshop itself was really great, it was all about savings and lending groups in Rwanda, however, since we are in Africa everything is very drawn out, and give Rwandans the chance to talk they will go on forever, and then complain that things took to long. I am a little disappointed that I didn’t get to see musanze at all, we were in the workshop every day from 8 am to 6 pm, and the sun goes down at 6:15. However I cannot complain, we were put up in a very nice hotel, I had a hot standing shower in a clean tub and there was wireless internet, too bad I didn’t have my computer, I am working on traveling lighter.

Energizers…so on the first day of the workshop they asked different people to volunteer for different roles, a time keeper, a note taker, a reporter, two energizers, as well as a few more miscellaneous position, so I volunteer for the energizer position, figuring it would involve a few group stretches every once and a while, no big deal. So the first day goes well, and then the next morning the staff reads aloud reviews people wrote of the first day. Everyone was a complaint that the workshop ran late AND there were not enough energizers, well I didn’t know I was supposed to interrupt the group every 30 minutes to entertain everyone. So day two and three there were many energizers. Let me tell you, this took some imagination with a language barrier and some creativity to keep everyone happy. I thoroughly embarrassed myself numerous times leading exercises including Simon says, human knots, jumping up and down, songs, dances, the garden state concept of making a unique noise and movement in a spot where no one else has done the same thing, it was beyond ridiculous but that is what they wanted.

After the workshop I went back into Kigali. We got in after sunset on Friday night so I spent the night at another PC volunteers house. Two girls are living above the office they work from in Kigali, which definitely has some pros and cons. I am very grateful they were able to accommodate all 6 of us that were stranded, a major plus to the alternative of having to pay for a hotel. The next day I went to my counterpart’s house, she had asked me to spend the weekend with her family. I met her three children and husband. And saw the nastiest cockroach in my room there, I tucked my mosquito net in very tight after I killed him with my shoe, not a bug that I was willing to trap and let outside politely like I normally do. So far all of the children in Rwanda have been very well behaved and polite, minus them always asking for money. Well I met an exception, still a cute kid but wild. When he jumped on the table and started licking the powdered milk out of the bowl when his mother left the room, well you can paint the picture of this 4 year old for yourselves. Sunday I went to choir practice followed by church, no singing for me, then lunch then back on a bus to site.

Now to the title of the blog, sorry if I have lost any of you on my stream of consciousness blog post, no running water. So I come back from dinner at my host family house next door all ready to put water up to boil so I can shower, and there is nothing coming out of the spicket. I have plenty of water filtered to drink, im glad I prepared that ahead of time. I don’t know why the water is out, when it will come back, or if this will happen often. Ill get it all sorted out in the morning. There is a community spicket near by, I can get one of the village kids to bring me water in a gerry can if necessary. Once I realized I couldnot shower I took out the computer to start this blog and the power went out. So im 0 for 2 right now, but many volunteers never have power or water so im usually ahead of the game. I’m getting better an functioning in the dark, I try to always put my belonging in the same spot so I can find them, and cell phone have flashlights, it is great!!

More to come soon since I promised to update on a more regular basis