I hope everyone is well in the lovely London town (well, as lovely as it can get) and that your lives are filled with adventure, joy and growth. Rwanda, as per usual, is phenomenal and I am loving life for the most part. The sun seems to have disappeared for a little and I fear that my tan is abandoning me. Drat. My tanning competitions with two of my friends seem to be a bad idea right about now...
I
want to share with you all the biggest change I have seen in myself so far –
living simply. Coming to Rwanda I didn’t
fully realize all that I was leaving behind.
I left behind my house, my bathroom, my clothes, a proper shower,
familiar food, computer, blackberry, my job, car, etc. My morning routine goes as follows: wake up
at 5am, get ready for school, eat breakfast (bread, butter, bananas), head out
the door by 6am, walk to school, arrive at 6:30am, work until 5pm, walk home,
get there at 5:30, try and go for a run, bathe, eat dinner, bedtime between
8-9pm.
Waking up at 5am: this took a very long time to get used to. The biggest challenge was getting over the
psychological part. If you tell yourself
you’re waking up that early, you WILL be tired.
However, if you tell yourself you’re getting 8-9 hours of sleep, you’ll
be fine. I actually really enjoy waking
up at this time. It’s still dark, but by
the time I am ready to brush my teeth outside, the volcanoes start to lighten
up and the birds aren’t quite as annoying.
Get
ready for school: I LOVE brushing my teeth/washing my face outside. This is one of my top five things I am going
to miss the most. It’s freeing! Not
having a ceiling and walls containing me and making me feel crowded is such a
liberating emotion. It’s
magnificent. No sink, no toilet. I get a hole in the ground with mosquitoes
and salamanders to keep me company.
Eating breakfast: I’ve learned to enjoy bread and butter…however my hips are
disagreeing with me on this one.
Walk
to school: I do not miss my car. My walk
is one of the most enjoyable times of the day.
I love watching the Rwandans start their day, smelling the morning dew,
watching the sun coming over the volcanoes, greeting people in their native
tongue. It’s peaceful. My mind wanders
from thing to thing but never really seems to focus on anything in
particular. That’s what I love. Sometimes I have so much on my mind that I
need an escape from it all – walking gives me this escape, which is odd because
most people walk so they can clear their heads.
Whereas for me, walking and running allows me to not think about what’s
going on and gives me a break from the real world. Although it takes a while to go anywhere from
where I live, I love the fact that I really have no hurry to get to where I
need to be. The street children always
run towards me with open arms, rubbing their snotty faces on my skirt, and
loving me just because I’m white. I will
miss this.
School: my routine varies daily so it’s not everyday that I have this
ridiculous schedule, but it’s a long day nonetheless. Teaching computers has been
a hassle since I did not know I was teaching that before I left. We’ve learned to deal with it and realized
that if we didn’t teach them computers, nobody would. They have blackboards that are never fully clean,
I have to yell loud enough for them to hear me, we don’t have
projectors/computers to even teach them computers and the language barrier can
be a real problem. However, these
children want to learn and they don’t care how simply they need to do it.
Running: no tredmills, no equipment, no weights, etc. I have an open road with hills as my scenery
and volcanoes as my goal. I don’t get
privacy as I do my various exercises in the house and am often accompanied by
the children mimicking me on the floor (stretching, abs, etc). I’m going to
miss my running route and the friendly faces I see along the way. It’s no gym; it’s better. I have nobody to compare myself to as I’m
running and no worries as to if people are judging me while I am
exercising. It’s so simple. It’s so perfect.
Bath: This has been a hard thing to get used to. However, I’ve learned to deal with it and
often look forward to taking my bath.
Picture an outhouse. Take out the
toilet. Just the room. Picture a basin filled with cold water. That’s what I have. I fill up my basin from the pump, lug it over
to the bathing room, have my shampoo/body wash beside the basin and start my ‘shower’. The second the water leaves my cup and hits
my head, my heart skips many beats due to the freezing ice water. However, it’s only made me become faster and
more efficient, as well as realize how amazingly blessed I am to have a shower
with hot water coming out of it.
Dinner: On average, we eat around 7pm.
Lately though, we have been eating anywhere between 7 and 9pm. This was extremely hard to get used to as I
would starve in between lunch and dinner (a minimum 7h gap). It’s also extremely hard, and unhealthy, to
go to sleep on a full stomach. But, they
eat at that time so I have learned to eat at that time. I will definitely not bring this habit home
with me, but will learn to cope with it while I am here.
Bedtime: I love sleep. My bed is
comfortable. My room is small and cozy.
I look forward to my journaling time and listening to my music/a podcast. For the most part I can pass out pretty
quickly and heavily.
I don’t have access to the internet whenever I want, I don’t have constant
electricity, I do not have hot water, a bathroom, a car, a job, my whole
wardrobe, clean clothes, a gym, North American food, etc. I have a life that has been made simple. I have a heart that is being molded for the
better and into a more simple shape. I
pray that my heart will stay this way as I return to Canada and that this new
simple life will only make me a better person.
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