Market Day in Rulenge!

We’ve really begun to settle in to life in Muyenzi these past few weeks. Meaning, little access to internet, and hence the lack of posts recently…but stay tuned for more regular updates this week!! The newness of our home has faded and the reality of our life here has begun to set in. A few weekends ago, we decided to stay in Muyenzi for the weekend rather than travel to Ngara so that Sue (one of the Ngara volunteers, from England) could visit us at our home instaed! So we walked to the market in Rulenge for our weekly shopping.  We met up with Sue and walked back to our house together. And let me tell you, I have a whole new appreciation for the students who walk from Rulenge to school in Muyenzi everyday. It takes over an hour both ways on the only gravel road in the area, and we were carrying our weeks worth of groceries, it was hot, and there were mountains to climb…I was so excited to be home after that morning! In case you’re interested in our weekly shopping list, our purchases that weekend totaled $10USD and included:

7lbs of tomatoes

10 carrots

4 green peppers

1 cabbage

5 eggplant

6 cucumbers

5 onions

4 avocado

2 rolls of toilet paper

2 boxes of matches

3 packages of biscuits (perfect snack with peanut butter! and 3 packages lasts us two weeks)

2 small packages of laundry detergent

We had enough rice, flour, sugar, pasta, potatoes, sunflower oil, peanut butter and kerosene left over from the week before. While we aren’t up on American prices recently, we figure this would be at least 4 times as expensive if shopping in the US…

As you might have noticed, our diet is quite limited.  We do make some good varieties on our trusty charcoal jiko with what we can find though! Here’s our weekly meal schedule with the occasional variation: (Sunday) Eggplant stewed with carrots, tomatoes, onions, garlic and ginger served with chapatti; (Monday) rice with stewed carrots, green peppers, and onions; (Tuesday) pasta with fresh tomato sauce; (Wednesday) rice with boiled cabbage; (Thursday) leftover rice with guacamole; (Friday) mashed potatoes; one week we were lucky enough to have enough eggs to make omelets…literally the best day ever. Sometimes we make cream of chicken soup from a packet, which is a nice little change of pace. Occasionally, we can get a freshly picked pineapple from the Muyenzi town center, and we usually manage to find a few eggs each week. Bananas, even though we live amid thousands of banana trees, are hard to come by. The bananas grown here are cooking bananas, usually stewed with tomatoes or served fried. I’m not a huge fan of them, so if I can avoid them, I do…although a giant bunch of these bananas costs about 10,000Tsh for 50 or so bananas ($6.50USD). We much prefer eating the sweet bananas (which are 4 for 100Tsh…literally pennies each), but we can only find them when we go to Ngara town. We take what we can get.

Every morning at school, I have chai break with one other teacher, which is a nice morning meal. Usually we have chai, made hot from fresh milk, with mandazi (fried dough). Some days we switch it up and have rice, bananas, potatoes or groundnuts.  At home, we also have fresh milk delivered daily that we boil in the evenings for chai. I’ve tried to explain the concept of drinking cold milk in America, but that’s just craziness. Although some days I miss a cold glass of milk, I do love the chai! Perhaps when I get back, I will have my own cow so I can have fresh milk everyday for my hot chai! But really…

Check back this week for more updates!! I promise to be more in touch in the coming weeks, including tales of our weekend adventure in Kigali, Rwanda, and our use of the phrase "This is my mental breakdown"...:)