Mazungu

so here is how my days go, i wake up at 730 because my load but totally nice and geeky roomie, Taylor, is making coffee with our ghetto rigged coffee maker. i get up about 30 minutes later, get dressed and go into the kitchen where there is either water on the floor, ants in the sink, or some stranger outside my window doing laundry. no naked time in this house! the coffee is like gasoline here, just how you like it, and so i drink some with whole milk and real sugar and immediately have to poop. i'm just finishing rotations so i go to one of the 5 buildings here and shadow someone who generally smells like africa and speaks only french and kenyarwanda. i've been speaking a lot of french. we stop at 1030 for tea time, about 1/5 black tea and 4/5 unpasteurized cow's milk. literally, if you listen closely, its still mooing. oh, and about a pound of sugar. its so rich, i have to water it down half and half and its still what i would imagine breast feeding to be like. but its custom here so you shut up and do it. they start at 8 here but i usually roll in closer to nine. the sleep here is better than i have had in a long time. windows open on a little foam cot but its peaceful and uncorrupted. the thing happened where with all of the people i interact with all day, my problems are insignificant. its kind of like meetings but much more rich and cultural. (no i'm getting choked up thinking about how i miss home). the super fun part about being in africa is that you don't have to care about what you look like. i wear the same clothes 4 days in a row, don't wear make up, pile my hair on top of my head, and nobody cares. anyways, i was at first eat the prepared lunch which is 500 rwandan francs (a little less than 1 dollar). lunch is a mountain of red beans, rice, plantains, potatoes, etc. not a fresh veggie in sight. that lasted about two days where i would eat and then go take a 4 hr nap right after. so now we cook. we= me and lakshmy (pronounced lack-shmeee) who is indian but she's from portland. the lab facilities are awesome and the only problem i've encountered with my project so far is that some of the ingredients did not arrive in Rwanda refrigerated so some of my enzymes and primers died. the afternoons of work are slower because most of the patients are seen by 130 and the testing and couseling ends by 2. so its a lot of internet and computer work. all of the local staff stop at 3 because they have english lesson every day. thats when we usually go watch an episode of SVU on DVD or take a nap. then we walk down into the local houses (basically they are slums like you see in the movies) and we buy veggies to make dinner. we have tomatoes, avacados, potoatoes, little green eggplants, onions, and kasava root. no lettuce, no brocoli, no squash, no zuchini. Lakshmy and another intern, Ajunta, have made some amazing curries. we make eggs a lot (the only safe form of protein that we can get our hands on). Just learned how to make french crepes from beata. It gets dark promptly at 6 and we make dinner for about seven. Frequently we all eat together. Then later we watch a DVD or walk over to the club Republika or the American Club (we are going tonight). Rwandans don't really go out after dark so most people we run into out to dinner or at a bar are Expats or business men coming through. The president, Paul Kagame was around the corner from our house the other night. Its was pretty exciting. He is very loved and respected in the community. I am learning a lot of Kenyarwanda from the nurses, lab techs, and little 5 yr old children who chase us everywhere. They call us Mazungu which means wanderer. I don't think i wander but thats just what they call foreigners. The only thing these kids know how to say in english is 'hello' and 'give me your money'. Besides that, they are perfectly nice and get a big smile on their face when we say hello back.