A Reflection on Site Placement

“Leah Norman… North! Oh, sorry, I mean East”, my Program Manager faltered as I dashed forward. “Good, Narnia”, I muttered as I pinned a smiling photo of myself to an enlarged map of Rwanda. Luckily, Narnia is not a commonly known place in Rwanda and my Program Manager didn’t understand my sarcastic quip. I rejoined my cohort as the next name was called, gazing at the mass of photos on the exact opposite side of the country from my now ironically cheery face.

It was site announcement day for Peace Corps Rwanda Health 9. For weeks, the large, green block on our schedule had been causing long, generally pointless conversations about where we would prefer to live the next two years. Some decided they’d prefer the North, where the rainy climate breeds delicious fruits all year round and there are massive volcanoes to climb while others decided that the Southwest, close to Lake Kivu and dense forests, suited their preferences. There had been rumors most of us would head to the South, where we’d find the comforts of other volunteers nearby, beautiful mountains and a regional town that offered Chinese food and a coffee shop. Almost unanimously though, no one wanted to be placed in the East: it was supposedly flat like the savannah’s of Tanzania, hotter than the rest of the country and since we lived in the East for three months for our training, most of us were eager to experience a different part of the country, including myself: while I didn’t have a total preference for regional area, I was reluctant to be placed in the East.

But here I found myself on site placement day. Placed in the Northeast of Rwanda about 30 kilometers from the Uganda border and even closer to that of Tanzania with a majority of my closest friends all placed in the South, my heart felt broken. My main comfort in the moments that followed this game-changing news is that a friend of mine, Sam, was assigned to the same district as I. As she placed her pin into the corkboard, I found myself shouting her name, “Sam…. Sam…. Sam!!”. Which translated loosely to “Sam, we’re in the place no one wants to go, far away from our friends, but we’re together”.

In the weeks that followed, I slowly came to terms with my placement. And with our busy schedule, I didn’t have much time to fret over where I’d be living: there was Kinyarwanda to speak, gardening to do and development theory to learn. Plus, our supervisor workshop and site visit were coming, where we’d meet our bosses for the next two years and travel to our site where we would stay for a short week.

As the conference came to a close, we bid are friends goodbye for the first time as we boarded various forms of public transportation to travel to site. I, unknown to me, was not the only visitor to my District that day: the unbelievably popular President of Rwanda scheduled a campaign stop that coincided with my arrival meaning almost every person in a 30 kilometer radius had left to hear him speak. This made my arrival into village at best, underwhelming and at worst, terrifying - there weren’t any people, what was I going to do the next two years?

As this question swirled around my mind, I pulled up to my future-colleague’s house where I would be staying for the week. A woman that appeared to be in her late-thirties came dashing out of the house with a wide smile on her face. “Karibu, karibu”, she assured me, “welcome”. And welcome I was. In the days that followed, I met the members of my health center staff, observed vaccination day and helped hand out milk to mother’s with malnourished children. I attended our daily 7am staff meeting that is followed by tea, donuts and raucous laughter. These meetings reassured my placement; while I couldn’t currently understand what was being said, I imagined myself in 2 years laughing along with the staff in Kinyarwanda. “I think I’m going to like it here”, I thought to myself.

As fate would have it, laughing along with my coworkers took all of 2 days, quite short of my 2 year expectation. Granted, I don’t understand most of what is happening but a mistake in pronouncing a coworker’s name the first week here has led to a new nickname for him and an inside joke for us all. My colleagues are gregarious, kind and encouraging as I continue to develop my understanding of Kinyarwanda and my newfound home. One of the nurses, Flora, has become my adoptive Rwandan mother. She laughs as I dance in public to Rwandan pop songs and expects me to visit every night so we can share tea and stories. In addition to the staff, I’ve felt extremely welcomed by my community. Community members laugh when I respond to their calls of “muzungu, muzungu” with “I am not a muzungu, I am a Rwandan and my name is Leah” in Kinyarwanda. Now, whenever I walk to my nightly market, I hear “Leah, Leah” being shouted from children and friends alike. While the community and staff has made me fall in love with my site, the East isn’t nearly as dry and desolate as I had thought. I’m surrounded by rolling hills with views of Akagera National Park where lions, zebras and giraffes roam free. My sunset runs have taken me to views that take my breath away, metaphorically and physically - whoever said the East was flat was lying. While it isn’t the Rwanda I had pictured in my head, it’s the Rwanda I know as home.

Recently, Sam and I were reminiscing on site placement day and agreed if a spot opened up in the South near all our friends or the North by the volcanoes, we would never want to leave our respective sites. When I first muttered my comment about being placed in Narnia, it was meant bitterly. But maybe I knew it was a good thing all along; Narnia is a beautiful and magical place with caring people to match and I’ve found the same in my new home.