#took my meds bc I forgot I’m not in work for another three hours today <3 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

igiti2019 · 6 years ago

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Day 5 (5/23)

Great day great day great day great day

Today we woke up early for our first day of work! When I woke up I went to the kitchen to hard boil the eggs I bought at the Kimironko Market. One of them cracked and then another one broke while I was peeling it and became an eggy shelly mess, so I threw those away and put the rest in the fridge and decided I would reap the benefits of my culinary work another day. Then we walked to Java House, the cute cafe with the sun logo, and I got a medium americano to go, since we had no time for breakfast. Outside Java House we got a cab and were on our way to work! When we first arrived at work at 10 we went to the third floor where the employees work and filled into a small meeting room that was available. This was perfect because it was small enough for just us 3, it had outlets and a fan, and with the door closed we were able to talk and collaborate. A few moments after getting settled in, Laura, the head of diversity at Kepler, poked her head in to tell us that if we had any questions or wanted to interview her and get her help on anything to let her know. We love Laura. But we had work to do, so we looked at our first deliverable which was to summarize key points of a data set that included data from 3 different sites of Kepler’s college preparation program called ITEME (“small log bridge” in Kinyarwanda). So we each took one site and spent 2 hours in that room summarizing the data! Finding trends, finding differences in gender, in refugees vs. non-refugees, etc. and then comparing the data across sites. At 12, we orded food from Java House with an app called Jumia, which is just like Rwanda’s Uber Eats. We decided we needed a change of scenery, so we went down to the great hall where all of the students can hang out and work, and we claimed a long table in the corner of the room and waited for our food. My lunch was so. Damn. delicious. I got a small dish of rice, a small dish of steamed vegetables, and a small dish of fried plantains, but of course the serving sizes in Rwanda are huge despite the incredibly cheap prices, so I was only able to finish half of it. The other half I’ve boxed up and will have tomorrow, hopefully with one of my prized hard-boiled market eggs. We didn’t do much work during lunch, just talked. Then after lunch we went back upstairs to the quiet room with everyone’s desk offices as I’m calling them, and for about 1 or 2 hours all silently worked on our data, going more in depth, doing other research, etc. until we finished our independent work and needed to collaborate again so we went back to our beloved available meeting room. We worked on our work plan in there until someone came in and kicked us out because they had it reserved for a meeting, and we returned to the great hall downstairs. We finalized that on a weekly basis we’ll plan to be at the office Monday - Friday, and just be very loose about taking days off to attend conferences or work remotely, which I think is just perfect. We also set rough deadlines for each of our 3 deliverables throughout the summer, including work for the case study that we’re meant to be compiling for the class that sent us here in the first place. After we finalized those two schedules Zodi and Ananya talked about some extra curriculars that they have in common until we called a cab and went home. At home things got a little bit icky, because we were all tired after our first day at work, and some of our different preferences were coming up about wifi and electricity use, work schedules, just different differences that will inevitably arise when people live together. I got upset when Zodi gave me some trouble for being so stringent with saving electricity and wifi, so I just isolated myself for a bit and went to my room to cool off. Cried a bit, took an anxiety med, and shook it off, because an hour later we had dinner with our boss in town. We were already kind of running late because it was taking too long to find a cab so we decided to walk, but then Ananya forgot her anti-malarial pills so we had to go back to the apartment but after that we were able to get a cab and make our way to Chez Lando, a higher end restaurant attached to a hotel. Our boss was there waiting for us (she’s really chill so she wasn’t mad at all), and we all sat down and ordered food. For the first time, we experienced what we had all read about – Rwandan service taking forever! Before coming here, we’d all read that restaurant meals can take up to 2 hours just to be delivered to the table, and that’s just a normal thing in Rwanda, but we weren’t experiencing that anywhere we went, we actually noticed that waiters were extremely pleasant and very attentive to our needs. But tonight the dinner took 90 minutes (Ananya timed it) to arrive. But it was well worth the wait! Ashley (boss lady) and Zodi both got Ugali, which is kind of like the outside of mochi if you can imagine that, but as a big blog, and you pick it up with your fingers and use it to then pick up and act as the starchy background for whatever else you ordered, usually spinach, stew, or meats. I’ve wanted to try it since we got here, but unfortunately Zodi and Ashley’s dishes both had meat. But I’m happy that I saw it! It reminded me to look for it next time we go somewhere that might have it. As for me, I got two plates LOADED with vegetables that made my heart sing. I ordered a plain omelette, a vegetable shishkabob, and potato croquettes (a lot of my meals here consist of me ordering things I can eat off of the sides menu and constructing my own meal and I LOVE it), and of course I got one plate with a huge omelette and tons of fresh veggies on the side (including half an avocado oh my god), and another plate with a gigantic roasted veggie skewer, three huge potato croquettes, and for some reason also boiled peas and carrots. It was so damn good. It all cost $4. So… yeah. I’m pretty sure my eyes were just giant stars when the waitress put it in front of me. It looked like a lot, and I thought I would be able to save some of it to add to my lunch tomorrow, but I surprised myself with how quickly I actually finished it! (Except for one of the potato croquettes I gave to Zodi and the fresh veggies that I couldn’t eat bc they’re raw and potentially have cholera bacteria on them but I did eat the avocado because it has a peel so sue me.) During the 90 minute wait and the meal afterwards, Ashley told us about her time living in India in college, her time doing the Peace Corps in Guatemala, her eventual move to Rwanda, her recent move within Rwanda, and her upcoming move to Ethiopia (uhhh… hello.. Can you say “dream life”?????????) We asked her questions about Kepler, and WE FOUND OUT THAT IT’S ACTUALLY SAFE FOR US TO GO TO KIZIBA REFUGEE CAMP. This is huge for me. We had been worried that the recent Ebola outbreak in DRC would make it unsafe to visit the Kiziba Refugee camp, one of Kepler’s campuses, but Kiziba hasn’t accepted any new refugees from DRC in years! I can’t even explain how much it means to me that I will soon be stepping foot onto what I’ve built all of my work around, all of my goals, all of my projects and classes and research. When Ashley saw my excitetment at the news, she stopped smiling for one of the only times that night, and warned me that, “It’s really… a lot. It’s extremely difficult to be there and see it, especially for you guys who have never seen something like it before. But as soon as you get there, people will be following you and touching you, and the poverty is really extreme.” But I’m so ready. I want to see, I want to experience, I want to understand, and then I want to think, and I want to help. June is Refugee Awareness Month, and June 20 is World Refugee Day, so this timing is pretty serendipitous. We need to send our passports to the government and get government clearance to go, and we always need to tell them when we plan to go so that they expect us. (It’s a 4 hour drive up a mountain, so we couldn’t just pop by anyways.) The Kiziba campus graduation is July 5th, so Ashley said that we could certainly go with Kepler for that, but I’d like to go sooner if possible, even just once. It’s $100 to get a 4-wheel drive car (which is necessary for the journey) to take us there, but that’s only $20 more than a regular car would cost. Kepler employees are there Monday - Friday, too, so we would have people who could show us around and speak English with us. At our dinner we also found out that Sylvia, who had become our new supervisor after Obed was leaving to work at a different Kepler location, was now also leaving for a new job somewhere else. So next week we’ll find out who our new supervisor is! It’s too bad, because Sylvia and Obed seem great, but we’ve also met some very cool employees at Kepler like Laura, Cristine, Teppo, Joell, they all seem great, and Ashley seemed confident that we were being placed with the right person. We were ALSO told that tomorrow the president of Southern New Hampshire University, Kepler’s biggest partner, is coming with a group of about 35 people! Ashley is coordinating the whole thing, so she said that we could go and be flies on the wall, but we can’t talk to her because she will be at maximum stress limits. It’s 8:45-12, so I’m hoping we can go at 8:45 and see as much as possible. After that, we’ll hopefully meet with Sylvia to finalize our work plan and get ideas from her about where to go for data, etc. Then it sounded like Ananya and Zodi didn’t want to do a full work day tomorrow, so I’m not sure what will happen after that. Bruno (landlord) is bringing us a rice cooker tomorrow, so I may go back to Kimironko Market and buy some more eggs (since I’ve already lost 3) and some rice by the kilo. 6 organic eggs for $1.20! Did I already tell y’all that?! Anyways after dinner Zodi and Ananya said they no longer wanted to go happy hour at the Inema Arts Center so I had to text Innocent and tell him we would be there next week. Which was very sad, and I really wish we could’ve gone, it would’ve been nice to celebrate our first day of work with 2 for 1 wine!!!! But also it was late, and we need to get up early especially if we’re going in at 8:45! So we taxied home with the SWEETEST French-speaking old man I have ever met and I love him with all my heart and I wish we could’ve gotten his number and used him as our driver every time. (Most taxi drivers give strangers their numbers so that they’ll just call them instead of calling a random cab) He would even be perfect because since he drove us to our impossible-to-find apartment, he knows where it is! If I ever get in his cab again I’ll get his number… We came inside and I took.. My first… RWANDAN SHOWER. (That’s what I’ll be calling it.) But like full on cold shower with a detached shower head I had to move around me without spraying water, squatting down to wash my hair so I wouldn’t get water everywhere, it was great. Very refreshing of course, but also I always love experiencing those little things that make a country definitely different from my country, even if it’s “less comfortable” or considered “worse”. ANY part of a new culture, good or bad, I love discovering it. Now I’m in my room writing this under my mosquito bed net, which I actually love. It’s like a fort. When I got back to my room after my shower and got changed, I threw my phone, backpack, and water bottle under the net and then climbed in. I just throw anything I need for the night in, and then get in! It’s just like a fort!! I love it. Okay that’s all I have to report on today. We used up over half our wifi that we had bought for 30 days in just 3 days, so I’ll post pictures tomorrow when I have work wifi….

Peace!

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