'Fat' as a Compliment

Had a lovely evening last night. I'd just cracked open a very respectable bottle of homemade apricot wine when Gareth invited me down the pub. Monday nights are Folk Night at YMD and it's about a ten minute walk from my place.

We sat and listened to the music and chatted. Afterwards he came back to help polish off that bottle of wine (and sample a parsnip and ginger one!). It was quite good stuff - 'giggle juice'. Time flew past actually, and he trundled off about 2am!

Today I’ve been checking my mail and had some replies on the Facebook VSO Rwanda forum. Here's some of the advice I’ve been given so far :op

Being a single female in Rwanda... Hmmm.

1. You will get about a million marriage proposals
2. You will get called "fat" as a compliment (whether you are or not) and will have to learn to live with it
3. You will be asked why you have no husband or children
4. You will have a great time despite all this!

and:

a) 50% of vols come back with a husband
b) 90% of vols come back fatter due to the huge quantities of melange being eaten daily

I found this quite entertaining as I’d be getting fatter but still considered beautiful lol fantastic. I've also been warned by a returned volunteer that:

The people are very nice, friendly and helpful. You cannot get lost anywhere because you will find people around who will show you the way. On the other hand seeing white people is still a novelty and children like to follow white people around and generally everybody will call you 'muzungu'. Everybody, everywhere and always! One must be prepared for that. After a tiring day when you just want to pop out to the shop and you just wish you were invisible, it is rather stressful to be shouted at and called muzungu.

This was also in the VSO briefing.

Still sounds pretty good, though. Lots of really positive experiences coming back. Fingers crossed for 26th.