Greetings from Central Africa!
As promised, I will share a few cultural differences between the good old North Eastern US and Central Rwanda.
- Visitors come over at all hours, any day, unannounced and you are expected to drop whatever you are doing to visit with them. Visiting is a very large part of their culture, but it is difficult to get used to and it is difficult to get thing done when people are always coming over.
- When someone comes to visit you have to escort them part of the way home.
- People are valued very highly here. Family and friends come before anything else, which is why visiting is so important.
- Pairing Rwandans with a stick of deodorant would be a very good combination. People here reek like nothing I have ever smelled before. And considering you greet people by hugging and touching cheeks 3 times on alternating sides followed by a handshake, I get a little too up close and personal with a lot of their smells. At first I thought that they didn't shower but now I know that some (not all) of them do and they still stink!
-Women (and some men) carry everything on their heads from food bags, to couches, to plants, and everything in between.
- Almost every night the electricity goes out at 7 and if we are lucky it comes back on at 9 or 10 but sometimes it's out all night and throughout the next day.
- Church is a big part of peoples lives here (mainly because there is nothing else to do) and they go to church Wed. and Fri. nights for 2 hours and on Sunday mornings it's between 3 and 4 hours. This past Sunday I was at church for over 4 hours in a Kinyarwanda service.
-People are always walking along the streets since most don't have cars so whenever I go out I get followed by crowds of kids calling my name. No one keeps track of the little kids and they just roam on their own.
- Gender isn't a huge issue when it comes to clothes. Generally girls wear dresses and boys wear pants, but people wear what they have. The other day my little buddy Keni who is 4ish was wearing a hot pink shirt that said girl down the side and Emilee (the guy who lives/works here) was wearing a shirt that said woman on the front.
- People also wear the same outfit many days in a row (did you hear that Mom.....you would hate it!) But it makes it easier for me to learn the kids names because they are always in the same outfit.
- Women are named after their oldest child, ie. Mama Eric or Mama Cecil.
-Saying "oh yeah" means "no" in Kinyarwanda!!!!!
- There are many Muslims here and there are three mosques close by and every morning at 4am they play loud music and prayers through speakers. Actually it happens 5 times a day but it's the 4am one that is most noticeable.
- Pay is soo low. The teachers for the Early Learning Program earn 1 dollar a day. The help who clean the house, cook, and do laundry earn 2 dollars a day for working 8 to 9 hours - it's crazy. Things are not cheap here either. They are just as expensive if not more expensive than the US.
- Many people can't afford to eat. Even kids in our Early Learning Program go days at a time without eating - it is really sad.

So that is about it for now, but I'm sure there will be more things that I think of to let you know about. Now I am off to the market as soon as the taxi gets here!

Dana