A lot has happened in the last couple of days. Thursday I spent a day at the main ARC office in Kigali. Since I didn't really have any work to do, Sarah, the senior program coordinator, asked me to review a survey that ARC had done with the Congolese refugees in their three camps in Rwanda. They surveyed a little over 1000 randomly selected refugees and asked them about their intent to return to the Congo using yes/no and multiple select questions. The numbers were already calculated, they just asked me to interpret the data. Given that I've never really worked with refugees before, it was interesting for me because I was able to get a better understanding of the situation of the people I'll be working with.
I won't get into too many details, but only about 1/3 of the refugees surveyed said that they would want to go back to where they came from in the Congo. Almost half of them were unsure of what they wanted to do and the others either wanted to go somewhere else or stay in Rwanda. Most of them had been displaced for over 10 years. From what they responded, the reason they hadn't yet returned to the Congo, didn't want to go back, or weren't sure about going back is that they were uncertain if it was safe for them and their families to return- about half of them feared physical violence, and 1/5- mostly women- feared sexual violence. They also had concerns about access to basic resources such as food, water, and land.
On Friday there was an "expat" meeting for ARC staff including the country director, program coordinator, the directors of the three camps, the logistics director, the gender based violence (GBV) coordinator and myself. Listening to the meeting, I was able to appreciate all it takes to run three camps for 50,000 refugees. They have to take care of everything from providing water to food to latrines to health services to some refugee causing trouble in a couple of the camps to vehicles for transport of people and supplies, the list goes on and on. I also presented the results from the intent to return survey during the meeting. I was a little nervous, but I think it was good for me to be able to jump right in.
After the meeting, I left for Byumba (the site I'll be living and working) with Maclean. Maclean is camp director of Gihembe, the camp I'll mostly be working in. Her family is from southern Uganda so although she's only been here for nine months herself, she knows the local language and is right at home in Rwanda. We stopped at a supermarket in Kigali on the way to Byumba. I'm going to be living with Maclean and she has a cook that goes and buys groceries and does the cooking and cleaning but she's off on weekends so we bought a couple of things to get through the weekend. I bought Coke zero (obviously), pasta, tomato paste, apples, pesto, milk, and cereal. They didn't have tomato sauce other than ketchup which actually was labeled tomato sauce. I haven't tried to cook anything yet. I guess there's always cereal.
So now I'm in Byumba. Maclean is taking a class on the weekends that is three hours away so she left this morning and won't be back until Sunday night. I was initially a bit nervous about spending my first weekend in Byumba alone, but I'm feeling better about it now. Besides, I'm not really alone- I have Francois the house guard and Maclean told me her friend is going to come by later to see me later. Poor Francois probably thinks I'm the craziest white girl ever. I've been running around the yard trying to catch a good look at the little lizards that are scampering around. He speaks French and Kinyarwanda so I'm not even able to explain myself, although I've tried. I haven't ventured outside of the house gates yet. Hopefully I'll do that with Maclean's friend later.

This is the view from our house in Byumba. That's Francois' 

leg on the far left.