#burimunsi

[neric21-blog]

This #concert was fire🔥 @gentilmis and @adrienmisigaro made it 👌. It was pleasure to have a professional #gospelsingers like you. 🙏🏽 //GOD BLESS YOU// #burimunsi #gospelmusic #evangelica #music #concertinrwanda #gentilmisigaro #harimbaragarwandatour (at CAMP KGL XUL) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bu2IBitAzsB/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=8b5t7h3kffdl

[misadventuresofmenke]

A Day in the Lyfe.

Now that I’m teaching I thought I would share a typical day in my life at site, currently at least and probably subject to change once I start venturing outside my compound for more hours each day. Currently I wake up anywhere between 5:30 and 6:30am, usually on the earlier side (and strangely I haven’t been able to nap nearly as easy as it used to be). I walk outside my compound to the latrine (which in essence is a more rugged outhouse, a hole in the ground that you crouch over), and say the morning greetings on the way. I return to my house and use my hot water heater, pending electricity, which has luckily been pretty regular in my district (literally the best invention, boiling water on the Imbabura takes FOREVER), in order to make coffee and oatmeal for breakfast. After that I usually add some hot water to my cold water from my jerry can in order to take my bath/shower. We have a bathing room outside in my compound where I carry my tub of warm water and bar of soap and use a cup to take a shower/bath. Returning to my house I dress for school and walk across the road the 10 meters to get there. I usually arrive to school earlier than I have to teach each day, around 8am or so, in order to sit in the teacher’s room and attempt to work on integrating and basically just carrying some presence within the school. Sometimes some of the other teachers strike up conversations, sometimes I work on lesson plans, sometimes I read (my current book is “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down”), and sometimes I sit and stare into the distance while tumbleweeds play across the inside of my brain. My first class (most days) is around 9am. I’m currently teaching 14 periods, 50 minutes each, over four days of the week. Mondays I don’t have any classes to teach. Total I teach 14 hours a week, which equates to 7 classes since each class meets with me twice a week. Six of those classes are English Communication, which I teach to the three upper level secondary classes, s4, s5, and s6. The seventh class is regular English that I teach to s5 MPC. (There are two tracks that you can choose to follow in upper secondary schools: one is MPC or Math, Physics, Chemistry. The other is EKK: English, Key Swahili, Kinyarwanda) Secondary school is over at 2:25pm and I usually stay until around then in the teachers room. After school I walk the 10 meters across the dirt road back to my house where I eat something for lunch. Lately it has been tuna packets and avocado or banana with peanut butter or rice cakes. (Tuna and rice cakes don’t exist here, those came from a care package) Usually following I read some, or watch a movie, or workout (I just started Insanity… tryna lose that carbo-load weight from training). Between five and six I venture outside to light the Imbabura to make dinner. An Imbabura is a metal circular small ‘stove’ that you put coals inside of to make a fire. I usually fill the inside with coal and light a candle to put in the middle. You then carefully stack the coals around the candle and once the candle burns all the way down and some of the coals are lit, you fan the entire thing like crazy to make it become a real fire. (Definitely makes me miss the microwave) Lighting the Imbabura takes about a half hour and then cooking can take anywhere from thirty minutes to over an hour. I usually make just vegetables for dinner, occasionally also pasta or rice. After eating I clean up my dishes with water from my jerry can and my basin. My last measure before settling into bed to message friends with what’s app on my phone or to watch a movie is to tuck in my mosquito net around my bed, which is kind of like having a princess net or a canopy. Oh and some afternoons I get wild and walk 30 minutes to visit my site mate at the local Health Center, where she works as a Peace Corps volunteer, or I will walk into the nearby town, about 45 minutes away to buy produce and rice and small things at the market. Weekends are variable, in that I may have a meeting in Kigali for Peace Corps, or an event in my village, or need to stay home to do laundry (think of washing with water and a bar of soap in a basin outside… totally Oregon Trail life), or just want to travel to visit a friend, orrr to venture to my postal town to pick up packages and mail ;)