Advice

I met two sweet women at Mercy House earlier this week. (Thanks again for the Riesins. They were tasty.) The women were visiting from the states and one of them is sending 2 young ladies about my age to work in Rwanda for the summer. She asked if I could write something up for them so they may better know what to expect. Heavens yes! I wish someone had been able to sit down with us and give us the same.

So ladies, here it is, a top ten list

1. Rwanda is beautiful, you'll be amazed.

2. Cooking mixes - alfredo sauce, muffins, chinese stir fry. I wasn't big on these in the states, but they can take a simple meal of noodles and kick it up quite a few notches. This is presuming you will have a kitchen. Know that no meal is quick to make unless its peeling an avocado; but you get used to it.

3. Milton Sterilizing Fluid - (buy this in Kigali) It's available for like $5 USD and one bottle will last you your entire stay. It's intended purpose is to sterilize baby bottles, but it is the best stuff for making all your tasty market purchases safe to eat raw. (I even use it to clean veggies I know I'm going to cook and on egg shells just to prevent cross contamination). The bottle gives clear directions how to use it - you can even sterilize drinking water with it.

4. The word mzungu means foreigner. Get used to it, you'll hear it so much you'll wonder if people think it's your name.

5. Bring sunblock and some kind of facial cleanser. The roads are dusty and it feels good to have a clean face. I would also bring other toiletries you "can't live without" and a fragrant body wash. When your day has been hard, its nice to come home and have a way to smell girly. All these you can buy here, it's just more expensive. Shampoo/conditioner, bring enough to last through your stay. You won't be able to find the kind you like here and if you do it will be $8-10 USD.

6. Living in Kigali, I feel very safe. We've had some friends who've been pick-pocketed but who've also made themselves easy targets. I don't walk around by myself after dark, but I have several girlfriends that do, and they've not had problems. Just follow the normal traveling abroad safety rules.

7. Start thinking of ways to get involved in your communities before you get on the plane; whether it's at church, an orphanage, teaching english, etc. This way you'll make the most of your time here and hit the ground running.

8. If you say anything about feeling bad in front of a Rwandan, they will most likely say, "I felt like that once, or so-in-so felt like that once, and they had malaria. I don't know why; but don't worry. Personally, I think it would be rare for you to get malaria here, especially in Kigali. Most say Kigali's altitude is too high for malaria carrying mosquitoes to live. Sleep under the mosquito nets (malaria carrying mosquitoes are active in the wee hours of the morning) and use repellent if you find yourself getting bit often.

9. If you are an active person, bring exercise equipment that's lightweight and easy to pack, although you'll probably be doing a lot of de facto walking anyway. Rob loves having some Frisbees around and I deflated my giant exercise ball and love having it here! And when you go home, you can give these things away and with all the extra room from your used up toiletries you'll have a lot of space to bring things back home to friends and family.

10. Even though English has now replaced French as an official language, brushing up on your French can still help get you out of a pinch. There are also several online resources for Kinyarwanda. Good luck finding a print edition in a bookshop, though.

If you want another way to talk to family and friends besides skype (which hasn't been working all that great recently) you may want to pick up a magic jack before you leave. I think they're about $40 in the states. Supposedly you plug one end into your computer and the other into a landline phone and you have a free connection to the states, U.S. phone number included. (Your first year of service is included in the initial price.) My dad sent us one for Christmas, but we shorted out the phone by plugging it into an outlet here. Oops. We're currently looking for a phone, so I won't know if it works for a few more days (week probably).

You can pick up universal adapters in town for about 2 bucks, but you may just want to bring one or two of those along with you.

I guess that turned out to be more than 10. Leave a note in the comments section if you have some questions. The entire blog is full of real world case studies about our life here; I started it just weeks before we arrived in Kigali. So it's a good resource. Also, Rob's blog is linked from mine under the title, blogs I like in the right hand column .