On Berkeley

All Berkeley alumni have one thing in common. No, it is not our obsession with Café Strada – apparently some (crazy) people prefer Café Milano. It also isn’t our hatred of the dreaded 8AM MWF in Li Ka Shing or GSB. We don’t all agree that the best Indian food can be found at Indian Flavors Express (RIP to the Bancroft location), that the staff at Top Dog are especially hostile people, that Sproul Plaza should be avoided at absolutely all costs or that the ideal spot for an afternoon beer is Free House. However, what we do share is an uncompromising pride in our school, campus, alumni and football team (okay the last one was a joke). When we see someone walking down the street in a Cal t-shirt, we can’t help but give them a “Go Bears!” and when we meet up with college friends, we spent nights reminiscing and belly laughing about our most outrageous college memories. Berkeley is an incredibly special place and university and was on my mind a lot this past week.

Here is where you will need to use your imagination: this past week, when I was thinking about Berkeley, I was also visiting my site for the first time. Our sites are health centers (health volunteers) or schools (education volunteers) where we will spend our two years volunteering. Site visit is an important, daunting and somewhat uncomfortable week. Trainees spend an entire week in their communities, shadowing at health centers, building relationships with community leaders and local students, and exploring our communities and banking downs. Leading up to six straight days of “practicing” being volunteers, we all tried to squeeze as much information from our supervisors as possible with our still limited Kinyarwanda. What does the West look like? How close are we to Lake Kivu? What are the biggest health issues in the community? And, of course, the volunteer favorite – what is my house like?

My site is located in Macuba Sector, in Nyamasheke District, Western Province. If you try and look this location up on Google Maps, you will not be able to find it. Despite being on the main road, it is a very remote location. It is only few kilometers from Lake Kivu and what feels like a million from Kigali. From the moment we entered the West, I was struck by the resemblance to Berkeley. On the bus ride from Kigali, we passed larger cities and remote rural areas, but when we entered the West, the topography completely changed. I had previously asked my supervisor if our sector had hills. She said, “some”. Enter the language barrier. If I had to describe my site, I would say it is Berkeley fire trails meet the Grapevine and Jurassic Park, throw in a bit of the coastline of Greece, and of course, don’t forget Africa. My site doesn’t have “some” hills – it is the heart of the Land of 1000 Hills.

The Berkeley comparison took root in my mind from the first afternoon at site, and I couldn’t get it out of my head the entire week. Comparing my site to Berkeley not only brought me comfort, but many days brought me laughter in the more uncomfortable moments.

The first afternoon, I was brought to my health center and immediately introduced to half the staff. Recruitment anyone? They were all most definitely sizing up my Kinyarwanda abilities and deciding whether I would be an asset to their work or a minor annoyance they would have to find tasks for. I, on the other hand, was doing everything in my power not to forget their names. It reminded me vividly of Unity Day, where the goal is to meet as many PNMs (bet you never thought you would see PNM on this blog) as possible, make an above average impression on them, and whatever you do, don’t forget their damn names because otherwise, how are you going to know who the heck you talked to that day? This was worse – unlike PNMs, my health center staff were not wearing UC Berkeley Panhellenic Council name tags.

After my initial introduction to work, we proceeded to visit my new home. Must I even mention House Tours? Armed with my Peace Corps checklist, I made sure there were security bars on my windows, a latrine that is to code, and met my new landlord (House Mom). My house is small but clean and cute, and although I will miss the concrete throne at my current house, it has a safe and rather handsome hole in the ground. There is an outdoor room that I have convinced myself is perfect for chickens, and a little shared plot of land where I am personally plotting a vegetable garden. Martha Stewart, here I come! In Rwanda, all of our furniture is built by local carpenters, and based off our very limited conversation, I even think my home will be furnished when I officially move in a few weeks. Pro tip: Find a moto driver who is also willing to help you translate your furniture order from English to Kinyarwanda.

The true highlights of my week, however, were the meals I spent with my five “roommates” for the week – the nuns! I had the absolute pleasure of living in the convent with the Sisters: Beata, Beanthilde, Beanchile, Monica and Marie Claire. Growing up, I had heard many horror stories of nuns from my father and his siblings. These women could not be farther from my previous misconception of nuns. The five women I lived with are absolutely hilarious, kind and generous, and had as much desire to teach me Kinyarwanda as they do to learn English. We spent an hour at each meal of the day, talking, laughing, and eating the most delicious food I have eaten since living in Rwanda. To other trainees – I warn you not to read this. We ate freshly baked rolls with jam and cheese every morning, followed by papaya and mangos they had grown in their backyard. They made sure there was hot coffee for me at breakfast, lunch and 4PM snack, even though none of them drink coffee. We ate beef, chicken and pork – no goat in site, much to my relief. To top it off, every meal was finished off with a slice of homemade cake.

Recently, my host siblings in Rwamagana have been watching Harry Potter on my computer. In one of the first movies/books (apologies in advance to HP fans, I am going to butcher this entire reference), Harry is given a picture frame with a clip – boomerang? – of his parents. If I could have a frame of my meals with the nuns, so I could watch them back when I am living in my new home alone, it would bring me endless happiness. I can guarantee that this will not be the only appearance of the nuns on my blog. I already told them that I need to buy six plates, cups, mugs, etc. because I have five friends who I want to host – them!

My days were otherwise spent in a variety of ways. Every morning we attended 6:30AM Mass – I cannot even try to compare that to my life at Cal, I am unable to draw a single comparison. I shadowed different coworkers at the health center, met moms who receive milk supplements and attended my first mini meeting with the community health workers in my community. I rode motos down the back roads of our village with my supervisor, Beata. I met with priests, community members, government officials and children at the local secondary school. I visited my banking town, Kamembe, which is located at the bottom tip of Lake Kivu adjacent to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In our cab ride back to site, I kid you not, there were nine passengers squeezed into a car the size of a station wagon. I have begged so many Uber drivers to squeeze just “one extra” before loading in an additional three people over the limit. My Uber rating unfortunately reflects this habit. In Rwanda, it is the complete opposite. The cabs will not leave until they are stuffed to the brim, and you suddenly find yourself sitting on the lap of the stranger next to you.

Peace Corps reminds us that the most important thing we can do during our first weeks and months at site is to build relationships. Relationship building is the foundation of the Peace Corps method of development. Because I am located at a Catholic health center, I found myself spending the majority of my time with nuns, priests, members of the dioceses and the leaders of the Catholic school. We visited the home of a sick man, schmoozed after mass, shared meals and homemade pineapple hooch, and I secured myself an invitation to a party celebrating the priests. Wow – I had officially made it, in only a few short days. This was going to be better than an invitation to a date party or invite. My initial flattery and excitement, quickly turned into confusion. What exactly is a priest party? Would there be an open bar? I hoped it wasn’t a Vitali night, but since it was Wednesday night, I thought Wine Wednesday may be a safer theme bet.

The night of the “priest party”, I was summoned from my room at 6:30PM. A bit earlier than our usual roll out from the DG house, but I could adjust. Our girl gang marched off into the night with Sister Beata leading the pack in her white bomber jacket, followed by the rest of us in our cardigans. Classy, but still cute. At home, I typically would swap the cardigan for a black suede jacket but wasn’t sure exactly what type of party I would be attending and thought I would play it safe. After a short walk, we arrived at the church, and walked inside. It turned out that by “party” the nuns really meant “church service”. In my slightly disturbed mind, throughout the hour-long service, I kept waiting for someone to shut off all the lights, turn on a strobe light and start blasting Chainsmokers or some other “college” music. Was this hazing? Where was the bar? The music? Everyone was dressed rather conservatively for a party? Was showing this much of my calves appropriate or way too risqué?

When the church service finally ended, we were ushered out the back entrance. Ahh, this was starting to feel familiar again. We entered the priests living room and I was once again convinced that I may be at a fraternity party. Quite the contrary – about thirty of us sat in the room and drank beer and Fantas (the two official drinks of Rwanda), ate dinner, and listened to speeches and prayers from every priest and a few visitors. This was definitely not the type of party that I attended in college, but at a four-hour event spoken entirely in Kinyarwanda, you have to keep yourself entertained. Comparing my experience in real time proved so funny that I found myself chuckling visibility at rather inappropriate times. Although not at all similar to the parties I am used to at Cal, I felt welcomed and honored to have received an invitation. It provided yet another opportunity to familiarize myself with members of my community, including my landlords and village chief.

As the party was wrapping up, one of the priests tried to convince me of the health value of beer. After a few minutes of back and forth – “Inzoga ni ubuzima (Beer is health).” “Oya. inzoga ni mibi (No, beer is bad)” – I gave up knowing it was an argument I was going to lose. In that moment, he looked me in the eyes and stated, “Beer is death”. I immediately thought of Vaibhev, a friend from high school who we lost to alcohol poisoning at a Berkeley party almost four years ago. All I could muster was a faint, “Rimwe na rimwe” (sometimes). Vaibhev’s death was a defining moment in my college career, and profoundly changed the way I saw Berkeley. It was a challenging intersection of my high school and college lives, which I had often kept separate until that point. I can’t speak for everyone who was friends with him, but I believe that losing a friend at such a young age left many of us feeling lost, confused and in exceptional, sometimes inexplicable, pain. I like to think that I was able to channel some of this pain into taking new and challenging risks – I spent the following summer in Cape Town, left Berkeley for my final semester to intern in Washington D.C., moved across the country to Boston for my first postgrad years, and now am living in Rwanda and training to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. Many of our friends were inspired to Live Like Bhev – to take risks and choose the less conventional path, but always to do so with a huge smile on our faces and good friends by our sides.

On Friday, we all traveled back to Rwamagana. We conveniently arrived in Kigali with plenty of time to enjoy some of the finer things in life – iced coffee, salad with white meat chicken breast, ice cream, cookies, cake, and of course, more iced coffee. I even had the luxury of a hot shower with running water. I have not been that clean since stepping off the plane, and guarantee I won't again for the foreseeable future. The highlight of the day was reuniting with friends, sharing funny stories from our weeks, and all acknowledging our mutual excitement (and fear) of returning to our sites. Well, maybe the highlight was the ice cream. Unclear.

Everything was brand new this week, from navigating my way to and from my new home, to meeting my coworkers and neighbors, and immersing myself in both the culture of Rwanda as well as the Catholic Church. Strangely, it simultaneously made me feel a strong sense of nostalgia for my Berkeley years. I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane and a quick glance at my next two years – and of course, Go Bears!