First Dinner in the Dark = Success!

Every night here the power tends to go out around 6 or 7pm.... annndd as the days go on, its been going out for longer and longer periods of time. NBD really since we still have all of our trusty electronic gadgets that run on batteries and the wifi is backed up by a massive battery thing that kicks in when the power goes out - so we never really get affected when it does go off since we're still connected to the world lol!

Howeverrrrrrr, we always held off making our dinner until the power came back on - just to be safe! Today was a different story though. The power went off around 6:30pm, maybe a bit earlier, but we were waay too hungry to wait for it to come back on - and thankfully we didn't wait, 'cause it only just came back on about 20mins ago (almost 3hrs - which is really long for Gitarama!). Anyways, we brought all of our light generating electronic gadgets into the kitchen with us along with two trusty candles, and got to work! The result? Probably the best meal we've made yet, no joke lol!

We've had to be pretty innovative since we've arrived in Gitarama because our groceries basically consist of rice, pasta and veggies. There's really only so much you can create out of that - but we're starting to expand and be creative. Tonight we decided to use our mushroom soup as a creamy sauce to go over our rice. We added some veggies and spices to the sauce as well for that extra "kick" and flavour (or something like that...) Mashed it all up together, et voila! Our attempt to cook in the dark actually turned out to be a scrumptious meal! We're so brilliant ;-)

Here it is!:

"The Masterpiece"

Ps. I am well aware that the above does not look appetizing to the human eye by any means, but I swear in the light (once it came back on and from what we could see through the use of light from candles and electronics) it truly did look very yummy in real life! Believe me :-)

Second Weekend in Rwanda: Muzungu Brunch

For our second weekend in Rwanda we decided to take it easy and stay at home in Gitarama. Friday night we met two lovely ladies - Tricia who is from the UK, and Judy who is from Ireland. The previous interns were very close to Tricia and Judy when they were here, so one of them (Lisa) introduced us to them via e-mail so that we could grown our muzungu family here in Gitarama. We met Tricia and Judy for dinner friday evening at Splendid Hotel (the place we stayed our first night in Gitarama). On our way to dinner we also ran into another new Muzungu, a man by the name of Marcus/Markus who is originally from the UK, but lives in Ireland now. Anyways, so Markus joined us for dinner as well :-D

Saturday Tricia had organized a brunch at the African Hills Restaurant for all of the muzungus - everyone was welcome! There was about 11 of us or so in total, plus Monique who is Rwandan lol! Our friend Justine (from the US) is living with Monique, who is the sister of Providence (a lady we work with at UGAMA). That might be a confusing explanation, but essentially we met Justine through our co-worker Providence who is hosting Justine while she is in Rwanda. ;-)

Anyways! We had a really lovely muzungu dinner at African Hills restaurant here in Gitarama. The brunch layout consisted of fresh fruit, crepes, croissants, chocolate filled pastries [yeum!!], omelettes,  juice and your choice of specialty coffees or teas (african tea, cappuccino, americano, regular, etcc) - Amazing! (see pics below)

After the brunch, Joyce and I headed off to the market with Justine, Monique and two of the other ladies, Hetty and Margo. After the market we said goodbye to Hetty and Margo as they went back home, and we dropped Monique off at the hair salon for her appointment. Joyce, Justine and I headed back to Azizi to hang out for the rest of the afternoon.

Sunday we spent the first part of our day doing some laundry and I spent the afternoon sitting on the porch writing in my blog. At night we met up with Justine and went to dinner with these three young Germans that Justine had met near where she is working. We just ate at a local restaurant in Gitarama, then headed home.

Our second weekend in Rwanda flew by in what felt like a matter of seconds, but it was nice to have found a good muzungu community in Gitarama as well! Definitely an enjoyable weekend :-)

Muzungu Brunch

"The Spread"

Cappuccino :-)

Breakfast pt.1 (obv had another plate + fruit lol!)

First Weekend in Rwanda: Kigali

Our first weekend in Rwanda we decided to head to Kigali to meet a new found friend, Miss Lydia! lol! We met Lydia through Facebook before arriving in Rwanda, and she was a massive help to us when we were preparing for life in Rwanda. (Thank you again Lydia!) So when we arrived in Rwanda I sent Lydia a text with my new number and she suggested we come down to Kigali for the weekend to finally meet her and so that she could introduce us to her awesome friends - we obviously took her up on that offer right away lol!

Gitarama (home) to Kigali (star)

Our weekend in Kigali was very fun and luxurious (a lot of time spent at the Serena Hotel [amazing] and nice restaurants, etc) - and expensive lol! But we really had a good time and it was the perfect way to spend our first weekend in Rwanda. Lydia and her friends were very accommodating and took us into their group right away, which is always great! The weekend was filled with nights out and lots of really yeummy food - very western for the most part, but the one Rwandan meal that we did have (beef brochettes @ Papa New Guinness restaurant) was the most amazing yet! (Great choice Guillaume)

Below are some pics from the weekend :-)

First Night in Kigali:

Group Shot @ Papa New Guinness Restaurant

Beef Brochette @ Papa New Guinness *DROOL*

Group Shot @ the Club

Add caption

 Day 2:

Chillen @ the Kigali Serena Hotel :-)

Pool at the Kigali Serena Hotel - Amazing!

Lebanese for dinner! 

Kigali version of a Shawarma plate - it was goood =D

Some Ottawa/Rwanda (new) Friends - Obv. friends with my Ottawa Friends, LOVED it <3 (Michael & Allan)

Day 3:

Spaghetti for Lunch :-)

First Dinner Out in Gitarama & The "Scary" Walk Home lol!

Sooo during our first week in Gitarama, Joyce and I decided to go out to eat at the restaurant down the road (about a 10min walk max - right across from UGAMA). Although it gets pitch black dark at 6:30pm here (crazy, I know), we felt as though we had a decent feel for the walk to and from the restaurant and Azizi House - so we attempted it!

Getting to the restaurant was no problem. The staff was very kind and welcoming (as everyone is in Rwanda, especially at restaurants) and we were served a grand meal (a little too grand though, we had to take half of it home for leftovers lol - no biggie!). We both had chicken, Joyce had "Cameroonian Chicken" (white sauce) and I had chicken with a french name that started with a "P" (red sauce), although I obviously can't remember it now. We each received a side plate of beans, baked plantain and peas as well. I also ended the meal with my new found love, "African Tea". The bill came in a cute little wooden box (as many have now - seems to be the common way to serve a bill here, which is nice!). Pics of our meal, my tea and the bill box are below :-)

The whole meal took about 2hrs (as most restaurant meals do here) and then we were ready to head back home. By this point it was completely pitch black outside, and was around 8:30pm or so.... The power had gone out during our dinner (seems to strategically "go out" around 7pm every night here - that is also becoming a trend lol!), but we had completely forgotten since the restaurant generator kicked in 2 minutes after it had gone out - so needless to say, we weren't ready for the completely dark roadway that awaited us - eeep! Joyce and I spent the next HOUR walking around aimlessly like lost muzungu's back and forth down the back road trying to find our way back to Azizi in the pitch dark. We were hopeless lol. Thankfully we had Christi's number and she kindly stayed on the phone with us and guided us back to the house. 

What an adventure! I swore I would never walk at night again, but obviously that was just me being crazy since it was my first time walking at night lol! Since they we have found that the roads are actually completely lit at night (so long as the power is on), and people are very friendly and safe here! In fact, the night we were completely lost walking back from the restaurant, pretty much every person we met along the path tried to help us in any way possible - even if they only spoke Kinyarwanda. One lady who didn't speak any English or French, actually walked with us the whole way until we figured out where we were going lol! So yes, we are in good hands here :-) We have also memorized the path home to Azizi since our spooky walk - so we also don't look like lost/hopeless Muzungu's every time we walk home after 6:30pm now lol! 

The Workplace: UGAMA/CSC

Just a quick little post to show you where I work and the lovely people I work with! So in Gitarama, Joyce and I are working with a local Rwandan cooperative called UGAMA/CSC ("UGAMA" for short). UGAMA is about the same age as me (lol!) - and was established back in 1988. UGAMA now has over 2,000 member cooperatives through which they mainly provide consulting and training services. Click here to visit their website :-)

My internship position at UGAMA is to act as the Micro Enterprise Development Officer. The exact work I will be doing during my internship is not set in stone yet; but from what I have gathered so far, it seems as though most of our work will revolve around the new project that is being launched between CCA and UGAMA. This project is based on a 3-year pilot project that was carried out previously between CCA and UGAMA that aimed at addressing Food Security through increasing the production and sustainability of 4 of UGAMA's member cooperatives. The pilot project ended up being quite successful, hence the birth of the larger 5-year project that is set to launch next month (October - hopefully). The title of this new project is the "Rwanda: Co-operative Agricultural Growth" or RCAG project -  a 5 year project that will work with 15 of UGAMA's cooperative members (the 4 coops from the pilot project, plus an additional 11 new coops). An explanation of the new project is found below (pasted directly from the CIDA website):

Canadian Co-operative Association

Country: Rwanda

The Rwanda: Co-operative Agricultural Growth project aims to increase food security among vulnerable rural populations in seven districts of Rwanda (Nyanza, Gisagara, Nyamagabe, Ruhango, Muhanga, Kamonyi and Bugesera) and will directly benefit more than 22,000 households and indirectly benefit 132,000 individuals. Building on the success of a three-year pilot project that engaged Rwandan agricultural co-operatives, this project will improve the agricultural production, productivity and marketing capacity of 15 co-operatives and their members. This will be achieved by supporting small-scale rural farmers, organized in co-operatives to improve the quality and quantity of the food they produce, increase their household incomes, and enhance their households' and communities' resilience. (Up to $3,403,000 over 5 years)

Source: http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/acdi-cida/ACDI-CIDA.nsf/eng/NAT-1222104721-LJ6  

Joyce and I have spent the past couple of weeks reading about UGAMA and the RCAG project, learning about the objectives and approaches of each. We're hoping to get out to visit the 15 different cooperatives starting next week, which should be really neat and allow us to become familiar with the cooperatives we will be working with through the RCAG project on a more personal level. We're really excited to get out there and start working.

We have also been introduced to the two CCA staff members who will be representing the CCA side of the project: Brian (based in Ottawa) and Fresnel, who will be joining us at UGAMA in Rwanda next month (October), and will be based in Gitarama for 1 year.

While we look forward to meeting the CCA staff shortly, ther's no denying that the UGAMA staff is absolutely great and have been very good to us so far. We feel very welcomed here at UGAMA, and the cooperative really works together as part of a family. We eat lunch together everyday, which I find very enjoyable (even though they mostly speak in Kinyarwanda so we don't understand some of the convo's - but we still have hilarious conversations!).

As I mentioned in my first post, Emmanuel is our supervisor (aka "boss man") at UGAMA, and he has been really kind to us since we've arrived. I'm not going to go into much more detail about work right now since I'm not that "educated" on the project yet, but I thought I would give a mini-intro to UGAMA, the project, and the staff we will be working with during our stay in Rwanda just so that my  friends and family have an idea of what I'm doing, where I'm working, and who I'm working with!

Here are some pics of UGAMA and this wonderful team! :-)

 L to R: UGAMA Main Entrance; Me@desk; Tea Time; Joyce@Desk

Main UGAMA Building

Little Trees @ UGAMA

Emmanuel & I

    

L to R: Espérance & I; Espérance & Pélagie; Védaste at Lunch time

                       

                 Sample of our daily lunch @ UGAMA :-)                                          My Fav. Tree @ UGAMA (lol!)

           

Home @ Azizi Life

So like I said in my last post, I decided that I'd break the past 2 weeks down into several mini-posts so that I dont confuse myself (and you guys lol!) - this is what happens when you begin slacking! So this post I'm going to use to introduce our new home to you: Azizi Life.

Azizi Life itself is actually a business run by an American lady (Christi - who I mentioned in my previous post) and a man from the UK, Tom. Essentially Azizi Life works with local artisans in Rwanda to build community development, economic development, increased access to global markets for their products, etc etc... They truly are a very neat company, and do many many great things! To learn more about Azizi Life as a business, check out their website. :-)

I'm here today to talk to you about Azizi life as our home, though - so I will leave the business details up to the website for further explanation in that area lol! We came across the opportunity to live at Azizi Life through our employer (the Canadian Cooperative Association [CCA]) and the previous CCA interns. The Azizi Life accommodations were highly recommended to us, and described as one of the best options in town - they weren't lying! We honestly couldn't ask for a nicer place to live.

We were given a couple of room options from Chrisit when we first arrived (individual rooms, shared room with separate bathroom or shared room with ensuite bathroom) - we picked the shared room w/the ensuite, this way we don't have to worry about sharing the bathroom when others come to stay at Azizi! :-) Azizi offers "Experience Days" where people can spend a day visiting one of the Azizi artisans/partners in their village, and learn what a day in the life of that Azizi partner is like - very neat idea, and people love the experience days so far! This is when others might stay at Azizi overnight, but so far no one has stayed with us yet.

During the day from Monday to Friday, the house/building operates as the Azizi business office, where Christi, Tom and 3 lovely local Rwandan ladies make up the Azizi team, and Beata (the house lady) come in to fulfill their duties. Everyone is usually finished their work day by the time Joyce and I get home (around 4:30 or 5:00pm, but sometimes we catch some of the ladies before they head out. They are all very lovely people, and have all been very kind to us since we arrived at Azizi. At night, Joyce and I are alone in the house - just us two plus the night guard outside. The guards are also very kind, Nepo and Oscar are the two main guards that we chat with most often - they are super sweet! 

Below are some pictures of the Azizi Life compound/buildings.

From L to R: Azizi Life Gate; Building across from ours where the artisans works from time to time; entrance to the kitchen (left) and our entrance to the house (right); and finally, our room windows from the outside (our room takes up the whole side of that building). 

Joyce and I share a very large bedroom with an ensuite bathroom (pics below). We each have our own bed (on opposite sides of the room), a desk in the middle to share, our own closets (although joyce has yet to be able to access hers lol!), and a full bathroom with running water, a flushing toilet and a real shower! I underline those because I had none of them in Ghana, so this is exciting lol! We also have a hot water tank on the side of the building that we can turn on for hot water when we want to have a warm shower, but we also have yet to experience that as it hasn't been producing hot water since we've been here :S lol! We've been waiting for Tom to get back (he's back in the office today, yay) so that he can check it out for us - but for the past 2 weeks, we've been learning how to "build character" through cold showers (I'm not being very successful on the building character part, I must admit lol!). 

So here are some pics of our room/bathroom.... From L to R: My Bed / side of the room - you can see my closet to the right as well; clothesline outside - my laundry drying in the sun lol!; our sink and toilet in the ensuite; and finally, the shower and bath tub! I couldn't get the shower head in the picture 'cause it was made for giant people and I'm clearly a shorty *blushes* lol!

Theeeeeennn, to the right of our room is a nice little lounge area that is great for hanging out/watching moves/playing games, and all that fun stuff! It has 2 large couches, a lounge chair, a table, bookshelf with books and fun stuff, and two games of Cranium (yet to attempt our brain skills though lol!). There's also two large doors that open to the outdoors, but they're always locked (no biggie, cause we have a sweet patio, which you will see in a bit). 

Now, if you turn left out of our room, then around the corner and down a bit, you'll reach the Kitchen Area! (Also adjecent to the Azizi Life Office and Crafts area) Our kitchen is the perfect size and we have a sink (running water), a gas stove/oven, toaster, 2 coffee pots, a kettle, filtered water, a pantry (with food and tons of spices), and a fridge! Woop! Super exciting. There's also another shelf area on the way to the kitchen that holds all the pots and pans, cups, plates, cutlery, etc etc...!

From L to R: Toaster, coffee pots, stove/oven; Sink, etc; Pantry; Azizi shop.

Having the Azizi craft shop in our home is quite dangerous - there's already like 24 things that I would like to buy lol! But it is also quite exciting since we don't have to travel far to purchase nice local crafts and beautiful gifts for our family and friends (yes, that's you guys! =P )

Now, as if that wasn't exciting enough, we also have a lovely porch that overlooks the Rwandan hillside and the beautiful Azizi gardens that are also available to us for wandering through / enjoying. I wrote yesterday's blog post on the Azizi porch, staring out at the scenery you see in the pics below, #NBD.

Jealous, right?! So that's basically how I'm living in Gitarama at the moment - it's quite a swell set up if I do say so myself! Really fortunate that Azizi had room for us and was willing to host us for the next 6months, quite happy! :-)

25 Hours Later...

So I've obviously been a huge slacker at posting in my blog since I arrived in Rwanda two weeks ago to the day (and almost to the hour - we [Joyce and I] landed in Kigali around 1:30pm Rwanda time on Sunday, 9 Sept. 2012). After 25 hours of travel time, flying from Ottawa to Toronto, Toronto to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia - 13hr flight), Addis to Kampala (Uganda), Kampala to Kigali (Rwanda), and then finally Kigali to Gitarama (where I will be living for the next 6months).

I was really dreading the 13hr flight from Toronto to Addis as the longest flight I have been on before that was probably a maximum of 6hrs and I became super restless in the last hour of that flight, but surprisingly 13hrs didn't turn out to be so bad! The airline we flew with was Ethiopian Airlines, and the service much resembled that of KLM (one of my favourite airlines to fly with). Everything on the flight was free, and we were given lots of nice goodies at the beginning to ensure our flight was a comfortable one - a gorgeous pashmina-like blanket, toothbrush and toothpaste, a sleeping mask, earphones and even some comfy wooly socks! Amazing! (Clearly doesn't take much to impress me lol)

The meals were really enjoyable as well - first was a beef stew with mashed potatoes, green beans, some sort of greek-like salad, a bun and a delicious chocolate cake/brownie.... the second was spicey chicken with rice and peas, bean salad and fruit salad - yeeeum! And then of course unlimited drinks (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) and all that other fun stuff! :-)

Pics of plane food and freebies 

I was also fortunate enough to have a young American girl sitting beside me, with the seat in between the two of us free (so lots of leg and body room and free space in between the 2 of us). We had some nice chats about what we're both doing in Africa (she was heading to Kenya) and about our lives in general - she was young, about 18 or 19 I believe, but very adventurous and fun to talk to!

Flying over Ethiopia was probably the most enjoyable part of the flight - what a GORGEOUS landscape! The pictures I captured do not any justice to the view I actually saw out my plane window - stunning! Ethiopia is verrrry lush and green, with many mountains and hills rolling over the countryside. Definitely a country I plan to return to and visit - the scenery was absolutely beautiful!

Four of us from the CCA IYIP program were flying from Ottawa to Addis - Sarah (who is placed in Malawi), Farhana (placed in Uganda) and Joyce and Myself (Rwanda). When we arrived in Ethiopia we had a 3 hour layover - not long enough to get bored, but not enough time to take a short tour of Addis either, so that was somewhat unfortunate. But we still managed to make an adventure out of it! After waiting in Terminal 2 of the Addis airport for 2hrs and not seeing our flight/gate number showing up on the tv screen, we finally realized that we were in the wrong terminal and had to take a bus to Terminal 1 in order to catch our flight to Kigali. Good thing we noticed an hour before the flight time because we had to go through security to get out of Terminal 2 and then hop on the bus outside and drive over to Terminal 1. This actually didn't take as long as we expected, but we were still grateful to arrive in Terminal 1 with about 30mins remaining before departure time - *phew!* Farhana, Joyce and I sadly had to leave Sarah by herself in Terminal 2 though, as her flight to Malawi was leaving from there.

From Addis to Kampala was a nice short flight and we said farewell to Farhana as she disembarked the plane in Kampala. From there we waited about an hour or so in the plane before flying out of the Kampala airport and off to Kigali. From Kampala to Kigali was also a very short flight - about 1hr or so later we had landed in Kigali! Yaaay, finally arrived in Rwanda! My home for the next 6months :-)

Passing through Rwandan customs was fine, which was a huge relief given that some previous interns had run into so issues with their entry visa at customs - but luckily we had no troubles. Best yet, ALL of our luggage arrived in Kigali with us - thank you Air Canada and Ethiopian Airlines! ♥

We were greeted at the Kigali International Airport with a very warm welcome from our Supervisor at UGAMA/CSC (cooperative I will be working at for the next 6months), Emmanuel. Emmanuel helped us load our ridiculously overweight luggage into the jeep, and then off we were for the gorgeously scenic 45-60min drive from Kigali to Gitarama (town where I am living and working).

Joyce and I were so incredibly exhausted by this point that unfortunately we weren't the most exciting muzungu's (swahili word for foreigner - aka. our new name in Rwanda) to accompany him on the drive from Kigali to Gitarama - but I did manage to hold a decent convo for almost half of the way before the fresh mountain air and exhaustion sent me into a comatose state lol!

Joyce and I had made arrangements to live at Azizi Life House for the duration of our placement through Christi (one of the Azizi Life partners) prior to our arrival in Rwanda; however, we quickly realized we had failed to inform Emmanuel about our accommodation arrangements when he told us that he had booked us a hotel to stay in for the night (oops!). No problem though, we were flattered by Emmanuel's thoughtful gesture and said that we would simply let Christi know that we would move into Azizi Life the next day - no worries!

Emmanuel had book two rooms (a separate room for each of us, crazy!) at the Splendid Hotel in Gitarama, with all expenses (including meals) paid for by UGAMA/CSC - how nice!! Definitely very unexpected and extremely kind of them, we felt really welcomed and already in good hand! :-)

Splendid (pronounced "splendeed" here, lol) is a really nice, clean hotel that is actually located just a short walk down the road from Azizi (where we live now). The staff at Splendid are very kind people, and the food is definitely enjoyable (we went back to the restaurant this past Friday for dinner as well). Our first meal in Rwanda was definitely not a Rwanda one - I ordered Spaghetti Bolognese and Joyce had the pizza, yeum! lol! Although, this was the first night I sampled the delicious "African Tea" that I have now officially become addicted to in Rwanda. The tea (from what I've gathered) is basically a combination of hot milk and water (or just hot milk), spiced with ginger and sometimes tea masala, a tea bag and sugar (sometimes added, sometimes I add it myself/or add more... lol!). It's amazing! I've attempted to make it at home a couple of times since then and have been relatively successful, but still nothing compared to how the Rwandan's make it!

After dinner we both parted our separate ways to our rooms to sleep - socializing was not at option at this point as we were both zombies lol. In the morning we were warmly greeted by the staff and served a lovely meal in our room, which consisted of a large omelette, toast, passion fruit, tree tomatoes (another fruit - the red one below), mini bananas and tea for me and coffee for Joyce! :-) Scrumptious! (see below)

Emmanuel picked us up around 1pm, as promised, and drove us to Azizi Life to meet Christi and get settled. Upon arrival, we were greeted with a big welcoming smile from Christi, who then gave us a very quick tour of Azizi and helped us bring our luggage into our room. From there, Emmanuel said he wanted to quickly bring us to UGAMA to show us where we will be working, and then he would return us to Azizi to spend then rest of the day settling in. Emmanuel told us not to come into work until Wednesday morning, giving us the remainder of Monday and all of Tuesday to get settled in to our new home and surroundings - how nice was that?!

Christi was (and still is) VERY helpful and an awesome resource to have here in Gitarama. She has been living here for 5years now, so she is very familiar with the area, the people, the culture, and even knows how to speak Kinyarwanda! (jealous!) She gave us a short intro to Gitarama and Rwandan culture, answered a million of our questions and gave us a little tour around Gitarama, which was super nice! We really appreciated (and still appreciate) her patience with us as we asked our many questions (and continue to ask many questions) and as she helped familiarize us with the area and culture.

I think I will end my intro to Rwanda post here, and explain the rest of the past 2 weeks in a series of other mini posts to follow. But at least for now, for those of you that already didn't know (which shouldn't be anyone by now lol) - you know that I have made it safe and sound to Rwanda! :-)