A Day in the Life

6:00 AM- I wake up, realizing I’ve pressed my cell phone’s snooze-button too many times to make it for a run. This happens often, which I always regret later in the day when someone inevitably reminds me how much weight I’ve gained since arriving. They say in Peace Corps you learn a lot about yourself; I have learned I am an emotional eater. 

6:30 AM- The tea kettle on my kerosene stove is ringing. I have hot water for my bucket bath, oatmeal, and coffee. I have always been a morning person and I take after my father in truly relishing this peaceful morning ritual. Sipping the delicious Rwandan coffee, I try to relax and prepare for the day.

7:00 AM- Daily Health Center staff meeting, which begins anywhere from five to twenty minutes late. These meetings help me gage language progress. In seven months I’ve made a lot of progress but still not enough to give me confidence to contribute my opinions during the meetings. Accustomed to running meetings in college, this is often a source of frustration for me. 

8:00 AM- I spot the new nutritionist for the international NGO that works in my district. The organization have just started a “new” nutrition program across the district—which is exactly the same as the HEARTH program the previous volunteer worked on, except it has a different name, and therefore everyone I work with insists on completely dismissing all previous work and starting from scratch. I want to show the nutritionist all the data I’ve imported onto excel from the nutrition work I’ve built on, and discuss with him how we can collaborate. I take my computer to his office, and realize it’s broken. The nutritionist is busy and my lack of visual aids and language skills makes him quickly lose interest.

9:30 AM- I sulk back to “my office”, only to realize that my counterpart has left for the primary school in the village furthest away from the health center. She’s gone to work on the national Maternal and Child Health Campaign that is being implemented across the country this week. I’m frustrated that she didn’t let me know she was going, since I try to take every opportunity I can to leave the Health Center to make field visits and get to know the community better.

10:00 AM- M&CH Campaign is fully underway. I help the staff distribute Vitamin A supplements to children under 5; mebendazole (which kills intestinal parasites) to children under 14; iron and folic acid to pregnant women; and bleach (to clean water) to all mothers. This is very cool, but at this point in my service I’m itching for a project of my own. What I’m doing can and should be done by health center staff. My attempts to conduct “education sessions” as I give out medicine are received with blank stares by mothers, terrorized faces by children, and hysterical laughs by my coworkers.

12:30 PM- A friend from the hospital invites me for lunch, which I accept immediately despite being exhausted from the morning activities. Peace Corps is all about integration! On our way, I see a few nurses staring and whispering to each other, to which all I can do is sigh. Rwanda is fairly progressive when it comes to gender relations, but two young people of opposite sexes enjoying time together seems to translate to gossip in small towns everywhere around the globe. But, lunch is delicious and our conversation is a rather comical mix of Kinyarwanda, English, and French on topics that range from Colonel Kadafi to why my father insists on 600 cows.

2:00 PM- Back to work, which in the afternoon is slow to nonexistent. I sit with the nurses, help distribute medicine, try to understand the conversations around me, and try to laugh off the jokes. Teasing is a huge part of Rwandan culture, which on a good day is funny, and on a bad day unbearable. Today is turning out to be rather difficult, so the various imitations of my poor Kinyarwanda pronunciation, the poking of my acne, pinching of my muffin tops, and demands for money and American visas are not appreciated.

5:00 PM- Work day is over! As I leave the health center with a coworker, another nurse invites us for drinks. Despite my exhaustion, I accept. I might not be saving the world, but at least I’m making friends!

6:00 PM- As we sip our sodas, I’m feeling inspired to study more Kinyarwanda. The two nurses are talking and giggling, and I’m getting parts of it, but still feel pretty left out. When I realize my friend is telling the other nurse about her brother’s newborn son, I jump in the conversation. “Congratulations! Your family must be so happy,” I exclaim. Both women become silent and the nurse tells me in French, “she’s an orphan, her parents died during the genocide”. There’s a few seconds of awkward silence and then the two women continue the conversation as usual, but I remain dumbfounded. This part of Rwandan history and culture, no matter how good my language gets, I will never truly understand.

7:00 PM- I’m ready to go home after a long day, but just as I get ready to say goodbye, one of the men who works at the local government office comes to greet us. In a loud voice, so that everyone at the bar can hear us, he begins to berate me. “ARRRRIIIIIMAR! Where have you been?! What work are you doing?! Why have you not come to see me?!” I’m caught off guard and embarrassed that everyone is now staring at us, but he continues, telling me how much the previous Peace Corps Volunteer did for the community, how well she spoke Kinyarwanda, and how good of friends they were. “She gave me reports every week! What work are you doing? You are not seenable! You do not speak Kinyarwanda!”. This hurts, a lot. I try to remain calm and collected, when one of my supervisors from the health center comes over and tells me “Alma, people at the health center are not happy because you refuse to speak in English with them. They want to learn English but you only want to speak in Kinyarwanda”. Confused and exhausted, I tell the government worker that I am not the previous volunteer, that I do not like comparisons, and that if he has specific work he wants me to do he can talk to me at work. Rwandans seldom show their emotions and talk about them much less, but I make sure he understands that what he has said has made me unhappy. I say goodbye to everyone else and head home.

8:00 PM- Frustrated and exhausted, I get into bed. I want to tell someone about what just happened: talk about my emotions and get advice, but who? Tomorrow I can talk to my counterpart about it, but the language and cultural barriers will make the discussion limited; I can call another volunteer, but the truth is not having gone through training in Rwanda, I have not formed very close friendships with many other volunteers; I can call home—but explaining the situation, the context, and the repercussions make relatability and any advice offered rather strange.

Through this blog I try to document the more positive aspects of my days, but I would be lying if I said it was all easy and fun. I get a lot of emails asking me to describe what my average day is like, and what my most difficult challenges are. There is no such thing as an average day, and what I might consider difficult one day I might find easy and enjoyable the next. What I just described is a particularly bad day, but the difference between a bad day and a good day generally depends on my attitude, and maybe my computer not breaking.