Dawn til Dusk...a typical day

Our mornings usually begin around 6am with the noise of a shower through the thin walls or the loud voices of the staff outside our house preparing breakfast. We attempt to sleep until about 7am, where the talking, cooking, showering, and toilet flushing inevitably forces us out of bed. We crawl out of our mosquito nets, and I (Cait) into the cold shower (if that's really what you can call it). I wear flip flops into the shower (to protect against any unknown foot fungi while here, eww), and turn on the water. Amy and I have discussed that even though the showers are consistently cold, we continue to turn the hot nozzle on, just in case any trickle of warmish water decides to come our way. The shower has two water spouts, one that drips from the top and a hose that pours out the bottom. After bringing the hose up to a level where you can wet your hair/rinse, the pressure completely leaves the hose, so you must use the spout that drips from the top, which is now pouring out more steadily--it's quite the balancing act. After the shower, I usually attempt to dry off with my hand towel size camping towel, which is definitely not as absorbant as it claims to be. I did decide to splurge on a normal towel at the a mall, so that's made a real difference. After getting dressed, I head to breakfast, which usually consists of white bread or rolls, jam and peanut butter, some type of fruit, and tea and coffee. The toaster at the house is a little tricky, it toasts very well done, and only on one side. If you leave your toast in there for longer than 30 seconds its char-grilled. We have found that the most effective technique is to toast each side side for approximately 15 seconds, flipping in between. The coffee is on-and-off, some days quite watery, but others really nice and strong. The powdered milk for coffee and tea is actually alright, but after looking at the container's label, I think it could be baby formula. After breakfast, and some conversations with the other volunteers about their days, we usually head back to the room to pack all the necessities for the day. This includes, but is not limited to, bug spray, sunscreen, chapstick, pen and notepad, hand sanitizer, tissues, flashlight, hair brush, english-kinyarwanda dictionary, umbrella, swiss army knife, journal, book, camera, cell phone, computer and/or zip drive, lunch/snacks for the day, and utensils for said lunch/snacks. We learned the last part the hard way when we bought yogurt, but didn't pack spoons and had to try to drink the yogurt from the containers. Passion fruit was even trickier--trying to suck or use our fingers to get it out proved very embarrassing because of all the people walking by our little picnic. So after showering, eating breakfast, and packing our necessities, we head off on our 45 minute walk to work. As we walk down our road, Niboye (pronounced Nee-boy-ee), we come across women sweeping the street (what the point of sweeping dust away that will be there again in a few hours, we don't know), men landscaping for their Umudugudu (village community), and children walking to school. The men and women sometimes greet us with a Murakoze (Good morning), or just stare and stop their work for a moment. The children will regularly shake our hands and say 'morning' or 'how are you?', and sometimes (as happened the other day when we got lost, and were losing hope) random children ran toward us with open arms for a big hug. Needless to say, a great way to start the morning. When we get onto the main road there are people walking to work, walking to market, and walking to many other places (we're not sure where, but they always seem to have somewhere to go), there are moto's and cars whizzing by, and the sun is usually just starting to feel hot on our skin. As a side note, being Westerners, who always seem to try to cram as many 'productive' things into the day as possible, we usually walk as fast as we can to get from place to place. Well after trying this strategy on our first day at work, we arrived to work puffed and hot, and no one even cared that we were early. So, we've been trying to remind ourselves to take an African pace to life, slow down a little and not rush the moment. After all, being 30 minutes late here is just as good as on time. 1 hour late, and your a little late. And when things get put off until the next day, no worries, why hurry? Ok, so back to our walk to work...as we approach the second rotary and section of shops close to work, we see our first set of armed guards in front of some of the shops and around the construction on the rotary. Not only are these security/government/police officials armed with rifles, but their fingers are actually on the trigger the entire time they are standing guard. This was only slightly scary the first time we saw it, but our volunteer coordinator assured us that she's never seen them actually use the guns, unless they needed to. After passing through the last section of shops and construction, we are almost at work. I will leave the actual work discussion for Amy's blog, as our daily activities are clearly way more than just work.
After work, we may stop by the internet cafe, a 5 minute walk from work. Regularly the connection is bad, or the power may go out, which can be a bit frustrating when our only means of communication is by email, but nevertheless, we try to roll with the punches. We may also stop by a small convenience store to pick up some cookies, snacks, or other treats to break up the rice and beans diet, or may buy some mango's from a woman carrying them on her head. There's definitely a rush hour when we head home as well, people all heading home after work, or heading home after searching for work all day. After our walk home (sometimes we opt for a moto if we're tired), we usually unwind with the other volunteers and tell each other about our days at work. For dinner we usually have rice or spaghetti, potatoes, some sort of vegetable with sauce on it, and small pieces of meat...sometimes fish which is great, other times beef that tastes like it's been cooked for 3 hours too long...but I usually try to force it down, at least for the protein. All 9 of us eat together at a big table each week night, which has a really nice, family meal feeling about it. After dinner we may read for a while, shower to get the layers of dust and sweat off, tell stories, or give each other backrubs (very happy about this recent trend!). Anywhere between 10-11pm we usually head to bed, I put my earplugs in, and Amy and I both climb back under our mosquito nets, and sometimes fall asleep on top of our blankets for another balmy African sleep.