Tuesday-
I had a horrible nights sleep. We went to bed very early last night, but the Rwandan students stayed up with the light on until at least midnight. The were talking at 2am, and then turned the lights on at 5am and started mopping the floor. All morning until I got up at 6:45 I could hear the mops banging up against the bed frames as they tried to get under our beds. I was really cold and grouchy when I got up.
Breakfast was eggs on chipote, with milk tea (boiled mile with tea and sugar mixed in). We drove about a half hour to pick up our interpretors who stayed in the village for the night. half of our group waited for the others to get dropped off at their site, and for the taxi to come back to get us. We sat around outside a some sector government building (I think). a huge crowd of Rwandans gathered and stared at us. I think they must have Mzungu sensors, because a crowd always gathers wherever we go. I took a picture of a really adorable girl that was playing in the dirt, then some guy came up and told me I needed to pay them for the picture I just took. I apologized, and stopped taking pictures.
We went to three households with Felix to do interviews. The interviews were about five pages long, and had various questions about the households and their health, educations and financial situations. One of us will ask the questions for Felix to translate, while the other two write down observations in a notebook, or play with kids. The families were all very poor. The first interview we did was with a man who was a widower. he was very friendly and joked that he didn't need to keep going for HIV tests.. because (duh), his wife died. Cassie, Tim and I were a good team. all of the families were very nice to us, and the neighbors were curious to see what we were doing, so they would stand nearby and watch. People seemed to laugh a lot when we asked if they went for Family Planning.. most families had about 10 children. The children in the village were excited to see us and wanted to play with us or just look at us. It was hard to see such beautiful kids be so underfed, and clearly suffering from skin infections and other illnesses.
We were all very tired when it was finally lunch time ad we met up with the rest of the group. We at what the school had packed for us - two tree tomatoes, a piece of bread and a hard boiled egg. Not very filling. Everyone was in a terrible mood and wanted to call it quits for the day. We decided that since everyone had completed at least three interviews, it was time to go back, because we were all too tired and grouchy to do any more interviews.
We got back to Matimba and got in bed. We all took about a three hour nap, that was really satisfying. I spent about thirty minutes talking with some Rwandan girls. It was a little bit awkward because of the language barrier, but I was happy that they seemed to want to talk to me. At dinner we met the school's only American teacher. Her name is Susan and she is here with a program called World Teach. She was very sweet. I have so much respect for her, I think she must feel really lonely and isolated out here. Dinner was pretty good. I felt dizzy and sick, probably from dehydration. I typed up the interview I did today on Tim's laptop. Poor Tim had the snacks he had brought with him stolen from his bag while we were gone. He was really upset. I would be mad too if somebody went through my bag and took my stuff, especially food because we are always hungry here. But I guess I can't blame the students for wanting to eat something that wasn't beans, rice or porridge.
Vestine and I too a jerry can to get water and take bucket baths. I love Vestine, she is very funny. She definitely does not enjoy roughing it. My bucket bath was surprisingly satisfying. I used a bowl with about a gallon of water in it to wash my body and my hair. I was very proud of myself for being able to use so little water. The only negative to bucket baths is that it is cold water, so I didn't feel as clean as I would have if it had been warm. The Rwandan girls told me I was sick when I came back into the room. I told them I wasn't and they kept insisting that I was sick. Then one of them said that they saw me taking a pill. I realized that they thought my malaria pill was medicine. I explained that the medicine prevents me from getting malaria. It was nice that they were concerned.
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