The Truth About Communication In Peace Corps Rwanda

When I joined the Peace Corps they gave me a long letter to give to our family explaining that will have very limited communication for the next 2 years and to not worry if they did not hear from me for several weeks after arriving in Rwanda. I am here to say this simply isn’t true.

Welcome to the 21st Century!

When arriving in Rwanda, I expected to have limited communication, but truthfully we were all able to talk to our families the first night. Thank you WiFi! While we had WiFi for the first couple nights in Kigali, the first time we had no communication was the first night at our host families, but the next day we all set up our phones.

Sadly, some people had to go without a phone for several more days, due to issues setting up their phone. IT MUST BE UNLOCKED BY YOUR SERVICE PROVIDER BEFORE YOU COME!

But I was lucky and my phone worked perfectly!

Learning how the phone system works here was a different story. It was difficult, especially since most Rwandans don’t understand that the system is completely different from what we know and so we have no frame of reference for this new system.

Everything in Rwanda is prepaid, and so is the phone system, so you have to put money into your account and then type in codes and pin numbers to buy data packages to be able to use most of the things on your phone. Compared to the United States this is relatively inexpensive. I spend, at most, $20 a month on data, and this includes me crazy amounts of data by streaming Netflix and Youtube on my phone.

Truthfully I expected to barely be on my phone when I came to this country and found that the opposite was true. Since I have a lot more down time and fewer things to occupy this time I found myself on my phone almost constantly. This truly became a problem for me. I was downloading new games to occupy my many hours and spending so much time on social media I began having severe FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). This became extremely hard, especially as I saw my closest friends hang out together and taking trips together and I wasn’t there. So, I added parental controls to my phone with some password I can’t remember. This limits my social media and game time to 2 hours a day. I will shamefully say I easily go through this time before 12 o’clock most days. Many volunteers have talked about experiencing the same addiction to social media as me and some have completely deleted the apps from their phones.

I don’t think I have ever been this connected to my phone before. I use it to hotspot to my computer to post blogs and to read so many books. I look up recipes and stream music on my runs, and I even send letters and postcards home to my parents and grandparents using an app.

To say the least, that letter was wrong and I have never been so connected in my life. Anywhere I go in Rwanda my phone seems to work, sometimes even better than it would in the United States. My phone even worked in the middle of the Nyungwe Forest during my birthday weekend and my parents get annoyed when I FaceTime them multiple times in a week. That being said its not always easy to find a time when everyones awake at the same time, but luckily texts and pictures can be responded to whenever.