Learning to Live in the Moment

Many people who know me, know that I have a bit of an issue with living in (and enjoying) the moment.  I tend to dream about the future and what I want to accomplish, rather than focusing on the present and what I currently have my hands tied up with.  Here I am, doing this wonderfully amazing thing in Rwanda, dedicating two years of my life to something bigger than myself, and all I seem to think about all day every day is what I will do once I return to the states.

I read a passage in my Daily Word that touched on living in the moment and being grateful for what you currently have and the things you have been blessed to be able to do NOW.  With the emotional rollercoaster ride that serving in another country is, I find myself rushing through each day so I can get on to the next day...month...and year...and then finally, on to the close of my service.  Here is where I need to sit back, relax, and take a breather.  Rwanda is a beautiful country.  I am doing a beautiful work.  I am surrounded by a beautiful people.  And I am being blessed in the most beautiful of ways.  Every week (or whenever I feel like I'm thinking too much about life in the states), those are the things that I remind myself of.  With the time difference and cost of making phone calls to mommy, I'm not always able to call when I need a mental boost or some kind words to push me through a tough day.  So I sit myself down, tell myself that I can do this, and list out in my head all of the ways in which I am lucky and blessed beyond measure to be living this dream that I am fortunate enough to wake up to every day. 

Below is what I read that inspired this post and reminded me to live for today. I'll worry about living in tomorrow when tomorrow comes (:

Zanzibar, Tanzania Pt II

Nurses to the Rescue!!

Now about those nurses.  Lucky for us, there just happened to be two of them (one from Australia and the other from London) staying in the same resort as us.  And boy did they come in handy!  As you read in the last post, they helped to tidy up my sisters foot with some of their supplies, but that's not all.  One of my friends got terribly sick on the second day of the trip and was practically bed ridden for the rest of our time in Tanzania.  Poor thing.  It started with a sore throat, then a cough, then a terrible fever, then the runs, then a terribly achy and sore body.  We had no idea what was wrong and we couldn't get reception on our phones to call the Peace Corps doctors.  Lucky for us, the nurses came to her rescue; as did a doctor (the resort owner had one of his Tanzanian friend doctor's come to take a look).  With still no diagnosis, the nurses gave us something to stop the diarrhea and vomiting, and some aspirin to bring the fever down.  For two days, my friend progressively got worse and then on the third day began to feel a little bit better.

By the time New Year's Eve rolled around, I began to feel a little under the weather, but tried to push it out of my mind.  I thought I was just being silly, assuming that whatever my friend had, had moved on to me.  Regardless of my "feeling under the weather," we all (minus my sick friend) decided to go into Stone Town to explore a bit and find something fun to do for New Year's Eve.    And here is where it all began...

Zanzibar, Tanzania Pt I

Part two of our Tanzania vacation took place on the brilliant little island of Zanzibar.  After spending about 5 days there, me, my sister, and my friends decided that if Disney has ever done anything right, they definitely hit the nail on the head when they made The Lion King.  I always thought the "Pride Lands" was a made up place, but after visiting Tanzania, I have seen that it is definitely real.  A lot of the little phrases in the movie actually came from a real language too!! Swahili!  Hakuna matata, which seems to be a favorite phrase of the people there, really does mean no worries (or no problem).  I also learned that rafiki (the little monkey from the Lion King) means friend, and simba means lion.  Disney really seems to have done their research for this childhood favorite.  I have always been a fan of Beauty and the Beast (I just love a good love story and that movie just about trumps all), but I think the Lion King has moved its way right up to the top of my list of favorites!

Anyways, off of my Lion King tangent, here are the highlights of the trip:

The Villages

Homes and Unfinished Buildings

It was quite interesting comparing the villages in Rwanda to the villages in Tanzania; the lives of the people just seem so different.  Of course Zanzibar is a bit more touristy so I'm sure that plays a role in the differences, but living so close to the water makes a world of a difference too.  The houses in Rwanda are built with mud bricks covered in a cement-like material.  The houses in Tanzania, were made of

Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

Finally I get to the post about my vacation in Tanzibar!!! Yayy!!!  Okay so Tanzibar isn't really a place.  It's actually Tanzania (the country) and Zanzibar (the island just off of Tanzania), but just for fun and the sake of not having to type out both locations a million times throughout this post, we're going to go ahead and refer to my vacation hotspot as Tanzibar (:

Most of the trip was spent relaxing on a small beach resort with three of my Peace Corps friends and my big sister.  It was absolutely, positively, breath-takingly BEAUTIFUL!!!  The water, the people, the village...all so beautiful.  The beach that we stayed on turned out to be a very intimate and culturally rich part of the island, which myself and the other volunteers preferred to the wild and crazy, party side of the island.  We were able to get a vacation and a cultural experience all wrapped in one and we enjoyed every minute of it!  When we got bored with the beach (which failed to happen at all) or just wanted to see what else Tanzibar had to offer, we wandered off through the nearby villages, played with the children, and visited small boutiques to test out the cultural snacks that are Tanzibar specific.  (Lucky for me, my PC bff likes to eat just as much as I do, so whenever we're together, we tend to spend a bulky part of our days trying out strange, new treats).

A lot happened on our trip, but this post highlights some of my favorite moments.  Ready, set, here we go!!

Tanzania Airport and Hotel

When my sister and I arrived at the airport in Kigali, we just happened to run into a woman who we met that morning at our hostel.  She stopped to say hello to us and after a few minutes of conversation we discovered that we just so happened to be on the same exact flight to the same exact place...Tanzibar!!  Long story short, we and Nancy (our new Ugandan friend) exchanged numbers and

Sister Masters Rwanda

Roach Infested Bus

In just one short week, my sister and I took more busses than I'm sure she has taken in the last year.  One of which was infested by, yep you guessed it, ROACHES!  This is the very last thing we needed as I am slowly getting over a terrible phobia of bugs and my sis is just as bad as I used to be.  Here we were on this 3 hour bus ride, with several HUGE bags full of candy and snacks that I'm sure the little roaches were having a celebration over.  Lucky for us, nothing jumped out of the bags when we made it to our final destination, but the ride certainly wasn't the most pleasant of bus rides.  And to add icing to the cake, just before the bus took off, a little roach crawled up onto the window directly to my left.  There just happened to be a man standing there trying to sell a pair of shoes to me and my sis.  I took his standing there with the shoes as a sign--I was supposed to take one of the shoes from him to get rid of the roach.  And so I did!  I quickly snatched a shoe and rubbed it across the window, attempting to fling the roach outside.  Instead of going flying, the roach ended up smushing between the window and the shoe.  The man looked at me like, Give me money for the shoe!  And I looked right back at him like, I am NOT paying for this!  Lucky for me (again) there was another man walking by selling newspapers.  He took note of my little dilemma and handed me a newspaper to wipe off the shoe (thank you God).  So I wiped off the shoe and handed it back to the shoe man.  He gave me an I'm-not-happy-about-this look and slowly walked away.    

Sister's Rwandan Name 

One of the two days that my sister was in the village, we hung out at my job for a bit.  While we were in the office watching music videos with one of my coworkers, we ended up talking about Rwandan names and my sister said that she wanted one.  My coworker immediately responded, "Mbabazi."  My sister lit up and asked, "What does it mean?"  I had no idea what it meant, but I do know of a girl who owns the village bar and her name is Mbabazi.  So immediately after she asked her question, I asked my own, "Like the girl at the bar?"  My coworker laughed hysterically at my question and responded, "NO! Not like her! hahaha!"  I asked why he was laughing and he said to me,

The Village Experience (with Sister)

Here are more stories from our fun in the Rwanda sun! Enjoy (:

Fetching Water

I must say, my sis did pretty darn good at adapting to village life in just two short days.  She's certainly no veteran (like me), but she did great!!  Of course the critters took their toll on her, but she was a natural (almost) at bucket bathing and using the latrine.  She even managed to fetch her own water! Usually, one of the health center workers helps me fetch water since the jerry cans are so heavy, but this time they decided to just watch and laugh...and I must admit, I laughed too!  My sister is the "stronger" one out of the two of us (seeing how she works out on a regular basis and I NEVER do) so I expected her to be able to fetch water like she's been doing it every day all her life.  I couldn't have been more wrong!  Here I am with a small jerry can in my left hand and a large one in my right, walking along to the house without a hitch...and then there was my sister...several feet behind me, holding ONE jerry can with TWO hands, hobbling along with water all over her skirt!  We couldn't stop laughing the entire time, which wasn't helping at all, because with every burst of giggles, she ended up with more and more water on her and less in the jerry can.  The entire time, my coworkers were watching in the distance, laughing almost as hard as we were.  That's alright though; in the end, we did it!  Even if the jerry can wasn't full when we made it back to the house (:

Gifts

Good Times with Big Sis

I was lucky enough to NOT have to spend my first set of holidays as a Peace Corps Volunteer alone!  Yayy mee!!  My big sis spent a nice chunk of her hard-earned teacher money to make sure her favorite big head didn't have to cry herself to sleep on those days when most families are all together surrounded by love, opening gifts on Christmas and counting down as they ring in the new year.  We had a BLAST!!  I miss her so much already, but we have some great memories that I'm sure will hold me over until she returns next Christmas!  Yep...there will be a part two to the Keza and Mbabazi Chronicles!!  Yayy again!! Read about our adventures below:

First Night in Rwanda and Already She's Ignorant

On Christmas Eve I waited and waited, and waited some more, for my sister to get through customs at the airport and when I finally saw her walk through the airport doors I didn't know what to do.  I thought to myself, She's here! My sister is really here!!  After we hugged and expressed every joyful emotion just short of tears, we made our way to our taxi that waited not one...not two...but THREE hours for my sister to make her way through the loooong customs line.  Long story short, the driver drove us to a hostel near the city center and we decided to stay up late so we could catch up...that is, until the man in the next room shouted through the door, "We are trying to sleep!  You are ignorant!...Will you please open the door?"

Here we were, just minding our business and having a few quiet laughs over a few stories and good times that we've each had during our time apart.  About 10  minutes into our conversation, we hear a light tapping on the wall.  Not sure if it was geared toward us, we looked at each other, shrugged it off, and kept right on chatting.  And then there it was again, "BANG BANG BANG!"  (Okay this time we definitely knew it was for us).  We decided to consider the rude bangs on the wall and took our semi-quiet chatter down to a very-quiet whisper.  At this point, we were literally speaking as if we were telling secrets in church during the benediction.  We carried on talking this way for about 10 more minutes and then we heard a door open...then a knock at our door...and then an angry male voice, "Will you please stop talking?  We are trying to sleep here."  My sis, who isn't one to take any crap responded, "We are whispering. We aren't even talking loud."  The man then retreated back to his room and shut the door.  Less than 5 minutes later, a door opened again and, "BANG BANG BANG!" went our door.  "We are not talking loud!" said my sister, with a slight attitude finding its way into her voice.  The man then responded, no shouted, "We are trying to sleep!  You are very ignorant!"  After about a 10 second silence, the man said very kindly (strangely nice considering the way he just yelled at us)  "Will you please open the door?"  Uhmmm...no!  I'm sure my sister and I both thought to ourselves.  You were just yelling at us at the top of your lungs and now you ask us ever so kindly, as if you are a boy scout selling cookies, if we can open the door?  At this point, my sister and I gave up on our failed attempts to whisper and decided to call it a night.  Half of me was afraid that this man was going to try to bust through our door so when my sis agreed that we should just go to sleep, I breathed a sigh of relief and closed my eyes.  All of the fun would just have to wait until tomorrow.

Christmas Day!!

Feeling the Love

I'm quite late with this, but HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! I was lucky enough to be able to bring in the New Year with my big sis and we had a blast together!! (More on that later).  I just want to thank everyone for the Christmas and New Year packages that were sent and for thinking of me during this holiday season.  It was tough being away from mommy and daddy, but the goodies in the packages definitely made things more bearable (:

I am feeling the love from everyone back home, including friends, family, colleagues, Sorors...the list goes on.  In case I don't say it enough, THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!  I have more snacks and necessities than I know what to do with!  I think I might actually have enough necessities to last me the rest of my two-year tour! (Okay not really, but I do have a lot).  If you're planning on sending anything any time soon, you can feel free to leave out deodorant, lotion, bar soap, dental floss, and hand sanitizer.  I honestly have so much right now that I think I'll have to pass some along to my fellow volunteers...I'm totally out of storage space in my itty bitty house!

Thank you again for your love, support, and encouragement!  It is honestly what gets me through each day.

Love and Peace Corps,

Dametreea

PS

I'm also feeling the love on Spam lol feel free to leave that out of future packages as well...I have more than I know what to do with (: