And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go to?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? Am I wrong?
And you may say to yourself,
My God! What Have I Done?
“Once in a Lifetime” - Talking Heads
“I will now read the name of the trainee and announce the family they will be staying with, so they can receive you”.
Esperance, a Rwandan national and our new program manager stands in front of the training center room. Her English is nearly perfect, but thickly laced with an African accent, just as with all of our program staff. Ceiling fans spin at high speed, pushing around the hot dusty air around the room, flapping the posters of encouraging quotes and notes from former trainees who had once sat in the same seat I find myself in right now.
This the draft. This is Day One. The first thing we’ve done after in arriving in Rwamagana, a semi-urban town one hour east of Kigali, has been to sit in these seats, glistening with sweat, to figure out which strangers we will be staying with every day for the next 10 weeks. All the chairs in the room are filled; half are with us trainees and they other half hold the host families, smiling and eager to see which of these foreign faces will be their new children.
As Esperance reads some names and as the trainees stand and meet the families, the tension that was palpable before begins to subside. “Alex…..” then I hear some Kinyarwandaspoken at a light speed that denotes it is not meant for us trainees to understand, but rather for the host family she is seeking to address. I snap to attention, but then remember that in our small group of 25 trainee/volunteers, there are two other Alexanders, and that at every juncture in which my name is called, we must all clarify which one it actually is. Alex Jones? Alex E? Alex W? This time I am not the lucky participant. I must continue to wait. Unlike many of my colleagues, I can’t say I’m too nervous. I have traveled, quite literally, days to get here. It is glaringly apparent that I have been studying the language for no more than the past two days. This is going to be uncomfortable and interesting and there is just no way around it. It is a fait acompli. But then why do I feel so hot all of the sudden?
“Jones!”, - light speed Kinyarwanda. Here we go. I stand to meet my host family. Will there be a mama, a papa, and several grinning kids, as have previously greeted my other friends? Will the size of the family be overwhelming? I look around. A single man comes towards me. I smile as big and as warmly as I can, one eye over his shoulder to see if its just him. It can’t just be him can it? I’m staying with host family aren’t I? Did they throw me in with a single guy, a bachelor, in Rwanda to have us kick it and share beers and watch soccer together? Hey this may not be that bad after all. After we hug out a hello in front of an awing crowd, I’m handed my welcome of Rwamagana pamphlet. After we sit down I open it and begin to take a look. Papa: Francois. Mama: Alphonsine.
My new host dad sits next to me and I’m discomforted by how nervous he looks. He squirms in his chair slightly, wiping frequently at the perspiration forming on his face. How is he more nervous than I am, considering I’ve never even been on this continent before in my life? He looks over me and smiles. With my pamphlet open in my hands, he knows what I’m about to do - he can see that I am about to engage him and he slightly furrows his brow and winces at me with a look that says “I know what you're gonna do. Don’t do this”. But non-verbal cues be damned, I have to do it; I’m about to test the waters of communication, and he knows its not a fluent Kinyarwanda he is about to hear. “Alphonsine…..is she here?”. To cover my bases, I both point to her name with one hand while swirling my other pointer finger directly within the vicinity of the room, in what I think is an unmistakably simple miming gesture.
A smile, a nod. He turns away.
“So she is here!” Another point at her name and another point, this time at the floor. Here, I mean - the unmistakable right at our feet here here. Is Alphonsine here?
A smile. A nod. He turns away.
The water is too cold, even for a pinky toe. Good start.
Home Sweet Home
The ride from the Peace Corps training hub to my new home is a 5 minute ride, but my anxiety dilates time to a solid 20 minutes. In the one mile trip, I examine everything with my eyes wide and my jaw slightly clenched. There are people everyone, spilled out in the street and walking as if there are no cars, but the cars won’t stop coming. Motorcycle taxis ferry their customers around, strapped on their back seats, weaving through both pedestrians in the street and the cars and trucks on both sides of the road. Men walk with their goats, all tied together with a single adjoining leash that runs between them. Some have their single goats on a leash which is not tied to around their necks, but their hooves, impinging on their gait. The goats shout out, and I can’t help but laugh at how human they always sound.
We pass by a market on our right that is saturated with people streaming in and out, and though the market is not entirely open air, it’s clear to see that it is filled with produce and small boutiques selling a variety of goods. After clearing the market we take a left and start down the long downhill road that eventually leads us to my house. Women, with a skill I can’t comprehend, balance large baskets of fruit on their heads as the pass by us, walking steadfastly up the hill, step-by-step. Others just sit on their perches along the street. Most stare at the car as it cruises by, some with curiosity, many with suspicion.
After unloading my life, which is contained in two bags off the roof of the truck, I walk to the front gate of of house. It’s a green, wrought iron gate with points at the top. On either side of the gate, which is about 8 feet long, is a brick wall that has large shards of glass glued in such a way to stick straight up all along the periphery of the house. The striking imagery of it doesn’t bother me at this point, I’ve already been culture shocked thoroughly. Plus, it’s great do-it-yourself security.
When my host dad knocks on the door, the thin door slightly wobbles under the weight of his fist and sends out a resonating sound that only a flimsy piece of metal can produce. I can hear the flipping of flops coming to let us in. The door opens and we’re greeted by a woman who could be none other than Mama Alphonsine, who, according to my host dad, had been with us the whole time back at the Hub and magically teleported back to beat us home. She is a woman of average height with closely cropped natural hair. Her eyes gleam with warmth and she smiles wide as she embraces me in a big hug. As shaken up as I am, I smile wider than she does and hug her right back.
She guides me down the outdoor corridor that leads to the back of the house, passing the front door to my left. We pass into the courtyard, and it is clear that this is where all the action happens, if not solely the large majority of the domestic workload. Two clotheslines bisect the rectangular courtyard, and clothes cover every inch of them. I see a small shirt for a toddler that advertises Mackinac Island in Michigan, surrounded on either side by long african patterned fabrics. The bisection of the clotheslines separate two distinct but equally important parts of the household compound - the actual house itself and the four functional rooms of bathing area, storage room, water room, and outdoor latrine.
Before we actually go inside the house, I am shown the rooms. Each door is a wooden picket door, painted blue, secured with a twisting nail that slides along a well worn groove in the door. To open the latrine door she takes her fingernail and uses it to bend the nail down and relieves its pressure, allowing the door to swing open. The latrine is as simple as it gets. It is a hole in a ground made of cement and the hole leads to a place that I can only pray that no man will ever have to see. The shower room is similar to the latrine - similar enough to make me think that someone may mistake the two very different rooms, causing what could only be called an abject compromise of sanitation and human decency. But I’m sure that the family, at this point knows the difference. I suppose I am more worried about myself.
The next room is a room that is dedicated to the storage of water, and the water is housed in a series of “jerry cans” which to me look like oversized motor-oil containers, but in this case they have been repurposed to provide the necessary oil for the human machine. The next room over is the storage room where an abundance of potatoes, vegetables and rice are stored. Without knowing much about the Rwandan diet, I know that I am looking at the majority of my future meals.
My host mom smiles at me again with genuine happiness and excitement and I smile back. She seems nervous to begin talking, and at this point, I’m in the same boat. I already tested the water with Papa Francois and it was a conversation that was Dead on Arrival. Would things with her be better? “What is your name?” She asks me in a stilted but understandable English. Her accent is even heavier from what I’m used to, but at least its clear that the waters are warmer.
“Alex, my name is Alex”, I say to her. She looks at me confused. I repeat my name several more times but my accent is as incomprehensible to her as hers almost is to me. I decide to get my notebook and write it down. “Alex,” I repeat slowly with a finger pointing to each letter “A-L-E-X”. She looks at it with consternation. Then, suddenly, a eureka moment seems to have dawned on her. “Ah! Alexei!” she exclaims. I laugh. Yup thats me, Alexei - a Black American with a Russian name who has found himself in Rwanda.
You Refuse
I am eating dinner at the dinner table, but in a pitch black darkness that is only pierced by the harsh light of my iPhone. In the few hours I’ve been here, the light has simply flickered on and off, with no warning and no indication of when it will return. This of course, doesn’t bother anyone in the household, and is accepted as a matter of course. The lights always flicker in the evening when there is heavy usage I’m told. But I at least get some acknowledgement of it from my host mom.
“The light,” she gestures to the single fluorescent lightbulb that allows us to see in the conjoined dining and living room of the small house, “is a-very danga”. I nod with a bemused smile. I have come to find out through my mom’s broken English that when something is very dangerous, or as she hilariously puts it, “a-very danga” that just means something is bad. Its not necessarily an indication that something is harmful or damaging to one’s health. Mosquitoes are a-very danga. Cold water for a shower is also a-very danga. We haven't come across any yet, but I’m sure my host mom would also agree that hydrochloric acid is a-very danga. I think most westerners would agree.
I’m not too concerned about the dark at this moment however, because it has taken the eyes off me. Since I have walked in the door, the two children of my household - Sevya 6, and Sandrina 4 - have been staring at me in what I can only describe as a contemptible silence. I thought I could break through their silence but their gaze has been unrelenting all day. Earlier in the day, when I began to squirm under the immense weight of their tiny eyes, I pulled out what I thought would be my ace of spades - my acoustic guitar. I began to play a few songs that immediately came to mind. And in that moment in time, I could say with confidence that I was the only black man playing “Tangerine” by Led Zeppelin on acoustic guitar for a couple toddlers on the entire continent of Africa. It was quite the achievement, but the feat was not met with cheers or smiles, but rather with their cold stare.
Plus, I have loaded a plate with delicious food. The dinner that Mama Alphonsine has put together is phenomenal. A meat stew with a delicious red sauce, a rice dish called “Pilau”, beans and passionfruit and bananas to top things off. When I put it on my plate, I did it in the American way. You pile food as high as your eyes and stomach can both agree on, then in a caveman like manner you wolf down the food with as much veracity and with as much speed as you can manage. When the plate is done, you are done, and dinner is over. I grew up with two brothers. If you don’t eat fast, you don’t eat.
In the darkness I finish my food, and the lights decide that it’s time to come back on. When the light comes back, she can see my empty plate, scraped down to the very last rice grain, and my excited eyes, eager to meet hers in order to convey what a wonderful meal she had prepared without getting bogged down in the English vocabulary that I’m not sure she even knows. Instead she looks at me with concern. “You are refuse to eat!” she says with hurt in her eyes. The grammar isn't quite right but of course is understandable.
“No! Not at all! I just ate! I took a big plate, I was very hungry so I ate very very fast”. My plea falls on deaf ears, in the truest sense, because not only did she not heed my message, I’m not even entirely sure it was comprehended. I even use a patting of my belly, accompanied by a crude puffing of my cheeks like a fat guy to further accentuate my message. No matter. The pot-tops come off, the serving spoon is wielded. A second portion, courtesy of Mama Alphonsine herself is heaped on my plate; a serving size almost as large as my first. I smile and laugh, so does she, and I keep eating.
As I continue to eat, I notice that I am becoming slightly more settled in. With some good food in my stomach, and my room mostly situated there is a sense of relief that starts coming down. I find myself smiling a lot and gleefully taking in this wildly different environment. I wanted to do something new, I think to myself, and here I am. A certain amount of pride sinks in over me. I think I will be fine here.
Afterall, my host mom seems like a wonderful person. We have thus far been getting along wonderfully. There is a clear intelligence in her eyes and she has made me laugh several times throughout the day and offered to help me put my room together and get my basics taken care of. And, of course she is the only person in the family who speaks English. Maybe the kids do, but at this point I wouldn’t know. They speak to me only in the universal language of suspicion and what I think may be disdain. Of any Rwandan I have so far spoken with, I perhaps understand their message the most clearly.
With my comfort in my immediate domicile, my mind's tunnel vision slowly dissipates and I begin to take note of my broader surroundings. There has been an odd droning noise, a noise that sounds like a man yelling into a megaphone, that has been going for awhile now. Must be a protest maybe? A crazy man with a microphone? I can hear goats making their yell, and its so close that I can only assume that it is no further than the house next door. I hear a goat with a deep voice, followed by a higher registered yell. Ah, a baritone and a tenor, I think to myself, good for the neighbors.
While the goats continue their lovely harmonies, the drone of the man continues and continues. His vigor increases with each passing call until he is whipped into a yelling frenzy. I have to say something. Is someone being hurt?
“That noise,” I cut the silence to my host mom, “what is that, is something happening, is something wrong?”. She responds with a deep nod of recognition and compassion, as if it was only a matter of time I recognized and began my ordeal. “It is de…de…Islam prayer. All the time”. All the time? I think to myself, I don’t like the sound of that, what does she mean by all the time? “What do you mean, all the time? How often is that?” I ask with a palpable worry leaking through into my voice. “It is a-very danga”. Oh god. I hope its just danga and not a-very danga.
With this knowledge, my evening sours. The loudspeakers of the mosque that stands no further than 65 yards away from my new home blares a call to prayer at all hours of the night and day. From a cursory research check with my friends at Wikipedia, we are square in the middle of Ramadan, which I understand is when Muslims finally just get to let loose and just have at it. Great for them, and for God, I suppose, but not good for my sleep.
I sit back and start to take everything in through a noticeably darker lens. I look through a filter that inherently has the highlights of the life I left behind in America juxtaposed against it. The people, the silence, the comforts, the coursing electricity. How could I have taken electricity for granted all this time, I think to myself desperately. What a fool I have been! Electricity all this time and I never stopped to really appreciate it! This is the first of many of these petty and comical exchanges I will have with myself as my time goes on.
The sounds around me become a cacophony. I hear the goats, but their melody has degenerated into a domestic dispute. The mosque man is still in a frenzy, a frenzy I think he can’t sustain - but apparently his experience and fervor overrides his fatigue. It goes on and on. Babies at the house on the other side from us are wailing crying. I look at the kids at the table and they don’t touch their food, apparently taking me to be their main entertainment for the night. The light flickers off once again. And in the dark I hear my host mother again, remarking at my empty plate, “Why you are refuse to eat?”.
I ask myself for the first time:
My God. What have I done?