Home Away From Home

So a few weeks ago, I was dropped off at my site where I will be living for the next two years, and let me tell you, words cannot describe how utterly beautiful my village is. From the views to the individuals who I now call my friends and neighbors, Gahengeri is certainly a site to see. In the morning I wake up to the cows mooing and the sounds of children playing, and throughout the day I enjoy listening to birds and the music being played by my neighbors while they do their daily chores. On a clear day I can wake up to watch the sunrise, see the volcanoes far off in the North, and see the sunset while cooking dinner on my imbambura.
When I tell Rwandan friends in Kigali or elsewhere that I am living in Gahengeri, they ask "how can you live in such a place?" The truth is, I am so happy to be living in a rural area with my small, tightly knit community. Life is simple in my village, we have a small nightly market where you can buy peanut flour and fresh produce, and a bigger market that pops up twice a week in a field next to my school. People spend their days tending to small farms and gardens, washing clothes, cooking on the charcoal stoves, and visiting with neighbors. We don't have most modern amenities (toilets, running water, television, etc.), but people seem to be happy. Myself included. When I visit friends who live in towns or the city, I am reminded of what I am lacking, but more importantly I realize how lucky I am to have all that I do. The air is clean and crisp, the produce is cheap and fresh every day, and everyone in my community knows who I am and why I'm here. I may go days without speaking English to anyone in my village, but somehow we manage to have meaningful interactions despite the language barrier.
With all of that being said, there are still plenty of challenges to living in a rural area. For example, I've been lucky enough to be invited to work with the community outreach coordinator at my health center, and as a result I get to see aspects of living in rural Rwanda that many people can't imagine. We go to visit malnourished families to discuss growing and cooking more nutritious foods. We see children and mothers with distended stomachs and atrophied muscles. We see the skin diseases caused by lack of access to clean water. A Rwandan friend of mine recently said, "living there, you get to see it. What you read in books, you are now living it and seeing the challenges that people face. It is such a good experience to have". She couldn't have said it any better, and I am so grateful to be given this awesome experience. Similar to what I saw in South Africa, I am continuing to learn that financial poverty is not an all encompassing poverty. Even though the majority of people I live with would be considered to be Class 1 (Rwandan socioeconomic classifications), with virtually no source of income within the family, they are the most vibrant, resilient, and truly amazing people that I've ever met.
Being a new PCV, every once in a while I have the thought of "Holy crap what the hell am I doing here", but those are few and far between. Have you ever had a moment where you feel completely comfortable with every aspect of your life, and you think "this is where I belong" or "this is why I'm here"? These moments can be brought on by the smallest things, like a friend remembering that you've been looking for eggs so they find them and bring some to your house, or when the hoards of small children start calling you by your name and not "umuzungu", or even just being on the back of a Moto going to a remote village and seeing the beauty in your surroundings. These moments, for me, are what make it all worthwhile.