When I was preparing to go into Peace Corps|Madagascar, I read a lot of PC blogs from a lot of countries and I found that there are a plethora of “Day in the Life of a PCV” posts out there. At first, I read them with fascination, completely hooked on every activity.
Example:
5:30am – Wake up.
My thoughts: Wow! They get up so early! They must be so productive! I’d also like to point out that this was my usual bedtime for non-working days in the US. I am the epitome of a night owl.
6:00am – Start cooking breakfast.
My thoughts: Wow! I wonder what they’re eating? How do they cook? How long does it take? I’ve never really been one to eat breakfast… mostly because that’s my bedtime.
7:00am – Fetch water.
My thoughts: Wow! Fetching water! Just like Little House on the Prairie!
I know. I am a Peace Corps nerd.
Truth be told, my day-to-day life in the Peace Corps is, not unsurprisingly, much like day-to-day life in America. We get up, we do what it takes to eat, and clean up. We work, we sweat, we come home, we bathe, eat again, and we relax. We have days off, we travel, we come home and panic about how much work we have to catch up on. See? Just like at home.
Well, almost. Peace Corps life, while much like life at home in some ways, also has its dramatic differences. I think a lot of people really wonder: just what are you doing over there aside from your assigned job? Today, instead of the hour-by-hour breakdown of my daily routine, I want to give you a glimpse of what fills my days.
I’ve never been one for routine, but in rural Rwanda it’s all about the routine. Here, I rarely use an alarm clock. Instead, the roosters go off around 4:30am, and continue pretty steadily and increasing incremental volume until around 5:30am when I am awake and just procrastinating getting out of bed. I usually get up around 7 or so depsite the roosters cockle-doodle-ing for hours[In Ecuador, it was the monkeys howling, here roosters. At least the monkeys are cute. I threaten the roosters with my soup pot]
First order of the day: eating. Like many volunteers, I try to organize meals around what will involve the least amount of dish washing and water consumption. For me, this is generally a piece of bread and a fruit, usually a banana or sometimes an apple. I don’t drink coffee or tea so it’s usually just 500ml of water to go with it. On the mornings when I have a wild hair to do something crazy and have extra time or Saturday or Sunday, I may whip up a batch of pancakes complete with hot chocolate. [<—–This does not happen often].
After eating, it’s usually time to haul water. I use about 80-90 liters of water a week, all of which must be hauled by hand or head from about 150m away. I usually haul water 2x/week. 50L at a time. [of course during the frequent water shortages, this chore become infinitely easier as there is no water to haul] Then, I have to treat and filter my drinking water. Next, I may glance around and find dead insects or any number of other deceased night invaders. Sometimes I find a dead mouse head if SadieMae [the friendly compound cat] has been a good cat instead of a lazy cat.
Finally, it’s time to dress myself for work and head out to the clinic. Or maybe someone has given birth overnight and I’m doing baby measurements. Or maybe I’m going to the market to buy some vegetables. Maybe I have a meeting, and everyone is likely to be two hours late. Either way, these work related activities can take up a good chunk of the day, and as a rule it’s always longer than I expected it to take.
By mid-afternoon, if it’s not raining, the sun is hot and it’s time to ‘rest’ or in my case get some chores done and cook my big meal of the day. This means dishes, laundry if I’m getting desperate for underwear, taking a bath if I’m feeling extra ambitious, and hauling the water to go with those activities. Laundry must be hung to dry, and it can take a few hours to hand scrub sweat stains out of T-shirt sleeves.
As the sun creeps lower in the sky, I might fire up my the stove. I’m still wary of cooking with gas. I have a somewhat not-so-irrational fear of blowing myself up. Then, cooking. I never know what I want so often I boil water and cook vegetables or something easy. Finally, just as the mosquitoes are coming out, I’m headed under the bed net. I use this time to edit pictures, blog, write letters,talk to my US peeps, or read. Sometimes I read for fun; other times I’ve got my nose stuck in medical books. I’m usually in bed no later than 9pm, but often don’t actually try for sleep until 11p or 12a. (Once a night owl, always a night owl).
So there’s a day in the life of a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Rwanda. And this is just a village day. Conference days are really different.[Breakfast at the ungodly hour of 7a; meetings all day] Travel days are different in that they involve a whole lot more sitting and gnashing of teeth [get to bus station, buy ticket, wait for bus, sit on bus, arrive to Kigali. change buses,ect] . Each of us do the same chores and daily routine activities that we did back in America, but here, these things can take half the day instead of a few minutes. Take laundry for example: instead of wadding up my dirty clothes, tossing them in the machine, pouring in soap, and walking away and doing something else for a bit, laundry here can take hours. I have to first haul the water, get the clothes soaked and soaped, scrub until my knuckles are raw, do a whole rinse cycle in a different bucket, then wring everything and hang it to dry. While you learn little tricks to cut down on the time consuming nature of these activities [like soaking your clothes in a bucket of water and soap overnight], maintaining ourselves at our sites takes a lot of our time and energy.
Work, which can vary with the day of the week, takes up the other large bulk of our time. Babies come when they want whether a meeting is scheduled or not. Screenings can take all day. For example, if a mom/baby doesn’t show up to a scheduled meeting, we have to chase them down. Is the baby OK? Are they eating? Is mom OK? If it rains or there’s a funeral, your whole daily plan might fly out the window and you have to start rescheduling things all over again.
Day to day life here is full of little joys, little disappointments, and lots of the regular things we did back home, but now we do them Africa-style. In Peace Corps, no one day is quite like the next, and if you ask me, that’s the best kind of daily routine.
