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,