Tropical Paradise

I am living in a tropical paradise!! Again, I repeat… I. Am. Living. In. Tropical. Paradise!!

This is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, by far. The sun shines, everything is green (greener then BC at it’s best) and there are hills everywhere! Mountains almost to even my criteria (although maybe Quebec has lowered my standards, who knows?). I really feel like I am somehow landed in the middle of paradise. There are beautiful flowers, and trees everywhere. It’s unbelievable.

I spent all of yesterday sleeping, so I don’t have much to report except that I started looking through project documents today and boy oh boy am I excited! Unfortunately I made the last minute decision to not bring my very broken laptop that works at times (deciding it was not worth carrying around) and found out today that had I brought it I would have been entitled to free wireless around the university campus. Oh the small regrets.

I guess that is the biggest and perhaps hardest difference for me. Here I am among academics, working for a club that is run exclusively by medical university students. So you can imagine the difference from going from Uganda working in rural never seen a white person before to Rwanda academic speaking French and English whilst debating politics and having incomprehensible medical conversations. The thing is that RVCP has a huge international base. I am living with other international participants (two Germans at the moment, one also named Alexandra) and it’s great. But it’s still very different.

For now I have to admit that as I doze off to sleep my mind is certainly still yearning for Uganda and the fun of being completely culturally outcast and trying to adapt. This city, Butare, is such a tourist attraction and university city (as well as high class hospitals) that you can imagine how different the feel is. The computers people are using are nicer then the computers we have at McGill, if you can believe it. And many students have laptops… I guess this was just very unexpected. I’m sure I’ll get used to this different environment in due course and love it for all it’s worth – but for now my dreams still lie with the rural village, the latrines, the lack of running water…

That being said I will be going to the project site where the women are working very soon! And I am very excited about this. The project sounds great, I have seen some more pictures, and I’m sure everything is going to be phenomenal. There are some money issues to sort out, but when are there not? The most important thing is that the money come in by the end of May since if we get the hives after that this means that we will miss the bee keeping season! Eep!

In all I am really loving it here. I miss Montreal in a way I never thought I would – it’s hard to leave behind a city and people you are just newly starting to fall in love with. But everything will be there when I come back. Rwanda is quite different to Uganda, but I am learning to soak up the differences, and appreciate them as they come. The job I’m set out to do, and the project itself is so vastly different from the one I did last year the I am excited to take advantage of the moment. Besides, who can give up such a wonderful tropical paradise?