Culture Moments

Those of you who think I spend my day saving the rainforest while teaching Rwandan baby girls how to create microfinance cooperatives are sorely mistaken. PEACE Corps is first and foremost about friendship and cultural exchange. Volunteers are “ambassadors of peace”, and that is what I work hardest at everyday. Some of my favorite cultural exchange moments so far have included:

•   Michael Jackson’s Black or White. I watched the video in the teacher’s “lounge” at the secondary school on my friend Fulahar’s laptop. Eight of us crowded around the screen and watched the late King of Pop dance on the top of the Eiffel tower and sing with a group of “African tribesmen”. I highly recommend you watch the first minute or two so you can appreciate the irony. Almost five months I’ve been pointing at my skin and the skin of whatever Rwandan is telling me I’m rich because I’m white, saying “cimye!” (same!). Thanks MJ, for the validation.

• Birth Control.  After scanning the register of abandoned birth control appointments, I ask one of the nurses why more people don’t use contraception. “PF is for married women who already have children”, she responded. PF stands for planification familiale, family planning in French. This very politically correct term is unfortunately taken too literally in Rwanda. So, being the former Planned Parenthood volunteer that I am-- I try to explain to my counterpart that women of all ages and marital status should be encouraged to use birth control if they are sexually active. Birth control has many benefits I tell her. Like what? She asks. Well, in America many young, unmarried women use it to help control acne, I respond. Suddenly Mama Eric’s eyes light up: ALMA! YOU SHOULD TAKE BIRTH CONTROL!

• Jehovah’s Witnesses, Part II. On our way to visit a cooking class, my counterpart and I ran into two very well dressed young men walking awkwardly through the hills. Mama Fils greeted them with her familiar warmth, asking about their day and work as if she had known them her whole life. When it was clear that I was confused, she explained to me that they were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they promptly handed me newsletters in both English and Kinyarwanda. After they left, I told Mama Fils there are also Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States but people don’t always like them because they come to your house uninvited and want you to change religions To this, she nodded and responded matter-of-factly, “no one here likes them either”.

I get a lot of emails asking me, congratulating me, about my “work”. I am doing (well, more like witnessing) a lot of really fascinating progress at the health center. Still, when I chart a child’s positive growth or correctly show a mother how to sanitize water, I rarely feel satisfied. The 100 grams a malnourished baby gains in a week can be lost in a day, and for all the worms expelled after taking Mebendazole, there are a million more swimming in the water. I am not here “saving the world”, or even my neighborhood. But I am learning a lot, I am teaching a bit, I am greeting and visiting a ton, and I am laughing, everyday with a couple new friends. This is the work I enjoy the most, and feel most satisfied with.