Due to my sister’s impending arrival, I will not be blogging for a while, possibly not for the whole month of July as is my habit over the holidays. So I thought it best to satisfy the international insatiable appetite for news of my sojourns with a day in the life of moi, because seriously what could be more interesting?
I wake up in the morning at six without fail because my bed is in the back of the house. Also in the back of the house are the neighbors who wake up at six to fill up their jerry cans with water from the spicket because that is usually the only time it is running. My water bill is now over two hundred dollars and hasn’t been paid in months so that’s the story behind the lack of water and electricity but we’ll get to that later.
I get up with trepidation, in anticipation of what bug/rodent will avenge me on this particular morning. More often then not it’s just a cockroach, which seem to have been taking immense comfort from the coolness of my concrete floors lately. Then I make my tea, on the stove now, since my house-friend broke my beloved kettle and apparently thinks it’s the funniest thing in the world as she listed off all the broken things in my house and laughed hysterically. “Radiyo! Toilette! Kettle! Hahahaahah!” Yes Alodie positively hilarious. She is my 3rd best friend in Nyanza though and she buys me bananas and passion fruit that I eat for breakfast so naturally I forgive her.
Between eight and nine I head for school. Hands down this is my favorite part of the day. The cute little nursery school children that used to cautiously approach me and offer their hand now see me in the distance and start sprinting toward me with their arms spread wide and give me a huge hug and say “Good Morning teacha!” It’s the greatest way to start off the day. And where there used to be about five who did it now, if I time it right, there are at least twenty. My boys have caught on to the hugging thing also and think it’s obligatory so now even the older ones give me especially awkward hugs when I see them.
If I get to school too early or too late I have to walk the gauntlet. I try to time it so I arrive after the students are in class but if I don’t I have 700 eyes on me as I walk through the middle of the courtyard. I literally have nightmares about tripping on the gravel, but so far so good. I can only recognize about 50% of my students outside of class so I say hi to everyone just to be safe. I teach English and Computers. English goes well mostly because we sing and watch movies and have debates so I think it’s generally regarded as free time but so long as they’re speaking English I don’t care. Computers is an absolute nightmare. 50 students 5 computers and all of a sudden I’m not a secondary school teacher but a primary one. Jean de Dieu isn’t supposed to be in our group, or Bertrand won’t let me have a turn, or Marcelline always gets to go first! Lately I’ve been going with, if they have a computer problem ask me, a social problem talk to the chief of the class.
After teaching I go visit with Agnes, the secretary/my best Rwandan girlfriend, and check my e-mail which lately has been underwhelming at best (ahem). Then I either eat rice and beans for lunch with Yves and co or I go home and cook some variety of pasta. Lately I’ve been a big fan of tuna pasta salad, which I consider one of my specialties, although anyone else who has ever tried is completely disgusted with it, I like to think it’s a cultural thing.
In the afternoon, my poubelle boys come and we play soccer or when they are feeling especially adorable they start chanting, “kwiga!” which means learn in Kinyarwanda and we do English lessons. I just love them. I usually go back to school to do I.C.T after school since it’s hard to accomplish anything with only two hours per week. I come back home to make dinner and usually have some type of visitor. Generally it’s Yves or Adrien but my neighbors have really seemed to take a liking to our awkward visits where they come in, sit for five minutes unable to communicate anything, and then leave. Alodie also comes at night to clean, or bring me food and I got her an English-Kinyarwanda book which we read together and drink tea. She’s really great minus the clumsiness.
So now I’m sitting here writing this and Alodie has just left, Yves isn’t in town and Adrien is busy taking pictures, of goodness knows what and like clockwork the electricity goes out. For the past two weeks every night at 7:30 my stupid power has been cut and apparently it’s because the same company controls the power and the water and since my school has not been paying the water bill the company has been cutting my power. Which is just plain mean to do at night considering I am terrified of the dark or more specifically the creepy crawlies that lurk within it. It’s almost eight and now instead of marking exams which is what I really should be doing I’m heading to bed, because in the pitch black the only thing that gives me comfort is my mosquito net which is like my magical cape of protection.
I like to think that my life is not so mundane as to limit it to this brief summary. But on the whole this is my reality, with subtle day to day variances that might make me seem a little more interesting at least I like to think so.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Chubs
You know when you wake up in the morning and you think, “Man I feel chubby” or “Wow these jeans are fitting pretty loosely!” but it’s such a minor loss or gain that you assume no one else will notice let alone care? Turns out they do notice and in Rwanda in particular they definitely care. Never has my weight been so closely monitored, and oddly enough it comes at a time in my life when I could care less how much I do or don’t weigh. Yesterday I got, “Your waist is small size, you are hungry!” Today it was “Claire! Your booty is very big, you have eaten!” Booty I’m assuming is a legacy of Beyonce’s popularity. Sometimes it’s as blatant as “ You are fat!” exclaimed with immense pleasure as being fat in a hungry nation carries an entirely different connotation than it would at home. Other times it’s, “Claire you will die.” And me saying, “What? Why?” “You must eat or you will die.” I honestly cannot have gained or lost more than five pounds since my initial weight loss in Kabarore but the entire female staff at my school is paying the utmost attention to how tightly or loosely my clothes fit on any given day. While the focus seems to be especially on weight, it’s as if I have five mother hens all commenting on some aspect of my appearance, especially now that I have become closer with all of them. Mama Cyizere (my Rwandan mom) in particular loves to comment on my hair (too short. “You are a mzungu! You must grow your hair!) my clothes (not stylish. “OOOO is this the mzungu style? It’s not Rwandan, Rwandans don’t like it.”) my food (not great. “It’s ok because you are not Rwandan and Rwandan women must know how to cook.”) or even my glasses ( snobby. “ O you are rich! Only rich people wear glasses, you want everyone to know you are rich.”) Finally after I’d had about enough I said, You and Mama Shema always make comments about me, why? Don’t worry!” I said it in my most joking happy tone but still she looked shocked, “because we love you!” she replied. So there you have it, she really does treat me like daughter and takes very good care of me so I love her too.
The female staff at my school are all in the administration with the exception of one female religion teacher (another mother hen) which I think really sends the wrong message at a science school but hey who am I to judge? Speaking of judging I had an awkward encounter with my favorite Senior 4’s today when I was attempting to define the word empowerment. I tried to explain the word through the context of female empowerment and cited the example of only girls cleaning the classroom every night while the boys play sports. It drives me crazy. So I said, “Girls empower yourselves tell the boys to clean, why should you have to?” To which every single student, male and female, responded in unison, “It is our culture!” Alrighty then, I guess we’ll leave that one alone. It’s a strange paradox though considering Rwanda has the highest proportion of women in government of any democratic country in the world.
I got a taste of that very government when I went to Kigali to attempt to file for NGO status in Rwanda. Holy bureaucracy! Once I finally found the office (underground one floor and down a very long hall in a huge soviet style ministry building) I was greeted by two people sitting at card tables and on plastic chairs but with really nice flat screen computers. This seems to be a theme in Rwanda as Kagame has decided to model Rwanda after Singapore and attempt to be the I.C.T hub of Africa. Never mind that Singapore is surrounded by water and Rwanda is landlocked or that I spend most computer classes trying to get the students to understand that to open something on the desktop you double click not simply highlight and then sit waiting for it to open. Another example, my school received a reward of 40 brand-new computers from the ministry (not really sure what for) which have been sitting in a room since April because they don’t have the money to build the desks to put them on. Meanwhile, I’m struggling through I.C.T class with fifty students and five computers! So anyway I found the office and the man was very nice if not slightly confused about the incentives for actually acquiring NGO status. I went with my Articles of Incorporation and IRS forms to which he smirked and handed me a list 13 items long that was required. The list included such necessities as a detailed list of ever donor who is or who might ever provide funding, a signed memorandum of understanding between the Minister of Education and the fund, a letter of support from the District Mayor of Nyanza as well as the Governor of the Province. I smirked right back and inquired, “So why do I really need to register? Theoretically I could just pay the fees without the government knowing right?” He looked schocked. “We will punish you if you don’t!” “With taxes? Or fines?” “ No no you don’t have to pay taxes! But we want to recognize you for all the good you do for our country!” So jump through hoops and we will thank you. I walked out of the office with the list slightly more confused then I was at the beginning, but then I went for an amazing pizza and the trip to Kigali wasn’t all for nothing in the end!
It’s exam time again. I hate exams. There’s no bigger blow to the ego then when a student fails an exam. It really upsets me. I’ve been educated in a system that requires you to apply theories and concepts on exams not simply regurgitate them and I can’t seem to get that form of test-taking to translate. This term we’ve been discussing formatting in Word, which is mostly me teaching how to change a font and go from single to double-spaced. Instead of asking them to recount the steps necessary to make a word bold and italicized on the exam, I wrote a word out different ways and asked them to identify the word that actually was both. I seriously almost had a mutiny on my hands. They were beside themselves! I still can’t understand the difficulty but it culminated in me promising to only have that question count for half a point to get them to be quiet as I wasn’t sure if their griping in Kinyarwanda was just that or also them exchanging answers! As much as it sucks when a student fails the students who really apply themselves and want to do well make it all worth it. It’s so cute when they all run up to me afterwards asking for the answers and whoop if they got a particularly difficult question correct.
I feel a little condescending calling my students cute since I would estimate that about 30% of them are older than me. I’ve become a bit more of a disciplinarian this term. I get that some students are going to talk but the acoustics in the classroom are so bad that if a student is whispering in the back they may as well be chatting right next to me. I also invariably look at the wrong side of the room when a student asks me a question, which is apparently hilarious to the students. Also hilarious, my duck and cover position anytime one of the huge, (apparently harmless) wasps comes flying in but hey, that’s just self-preservation. The other day the computer lab was locked and my key wouldn’t work because another key was in the other side of the door so I started banging. All the students outside started tapping on the window saying, “Prof!” or “mzungu!” Which I think did more harm than good because the students inside were obviously doing something they were not supposed to be doing such as watching “Kobe’s 10 greatest plays” on YouTube which seems to be a favorite, but the computers are so miserably slow that it takes about 2 minutes to get any window that is open off the screen. So as predicted, about 2 minutes later, they finally opened the door. I was livid. It was a bunch of Senior 6’s (the oldest kids) and I started yelling at them. Two of them were Kurera so they booked it out of there hoping I wouldn’t recognize them but then the rest just stared at me as if my tirade was incredibly boring. So I was like alright you wanna do this? We can do this. Only actually saying that would have been completely lost on them. I said, “Get out your discipline cards!” An initial look of shock came over all of their faces followed by the most wounded puppy dog look I’ve ever seen. It was as if I had completely broken their hearts, so I started laughing, somewhat hysterically, because sometimes the relative absurdity of my life gets me in stitches and lapsed right back in to easy-going young teacher Claire and asked, “So what’s so exciting anyway?” To which a collective sigh of relief was breathed.
The female staff at my school are all in the administration with the exception of one female religion teacher (another mother hen) which I think really sends the wrong message at a science school but hey who am I to judge? Speaking of judging I had an awkward encounter with my favorite Senior 4’s today when I was attempting to define the word empowerment. I tried to explain the word through the context of female empowerment and cited the example of only girls cleaning the classroom every night while the boys play sports. It drives me crazy. So I said, “Girls empower yourselves tell the boys to clean, why should you have to?” To which every single student, male and female, responded in unison, “It is our culture!” Alrighty then, I guess we’ll leave that one alone. It’s a strange paradox though considering Rwanda has the highest proportion of women in government of any democratic country in the world.
I got a taste of that very government when I went to Kigali to attempt to file for NGO status in Rwanda. Holy bureaucracy! Once I finally found the office (underground one floor and down a very long hall in a huge soviet style ministry building) I was greeted by two people sitting at card tables and on plastic chairs but with really nice flat screen computers. This seems to be a theme in Rwanda as Kagame has decided to model Rwanda after Singapore and attempt to be the I.C.T hub of Africa. Never mind that Singapore is surrounded by water and Rwanda is landlocked or that I spend most computer classes trying to get the students to understand that to open something on the desktop you double click not simply highlight and then sit waiting for it to open. Another example, my school received a reward of 40 brand-new computers from the ministry (not really sure what for) which have been sitting in a room since April because they don’t have the money to build the desks to put them on. Meanwhile, I’m struggling through I.C.T class with fifty students and five computers! So anyway I found the office and the man was very nice if not slightly confused about the incentives for actually acquiring NGO status. I went with my Articles of Incorporation and IRS forms to which he smirked and handed me a list 13 items long that was required. The list included such necessities as a detailed list of ever donor who is or who might ever provide funding, a signed memorandum of understanding between the Minister of Education and the fund, a letter of support from the District Mayor of Nyanza as well as the Governor of the Province. I smirked right back and inquired, “So why do I really need to register? Theoretically I could just pay the fees without the government knowing right?” He looked schocked. “We will punish you if you don’t!” “With taxes? Or fines?” “ No no you don’t have to pay taxes! But we want to recognize you for all the good you do for our country!” So jump through hoops and we will thank you. I walked out of the office with the list slightly more confused then I was at the beginning, but then I went for an amazing pizza and the trip to Kigali wasn’t all for nothing in the end!
It’s exam time again. I hate exams. There’s no bigger blow to the ego then when a student fails an exam. It really upsets me. I’ve been educated in a system that requires you to apply theories and concepts on exams not simply regurgitate them and I can’t seem to get that form of test-taking to translate. This term we’ve been discussing formatting in Word, which is mostly me teaching how to change a font and go from single to double-spaced. Instead of asking them to recount the steps necessary to make a word bold and italicized on the exam, I wrote a word out different ways and asked them to identify the word that actually was both. I seriously almost had a mutiny on my hands. They were beside themselves! I still can’t understand the difficulty but it culminated in me promising to only have that question count for half a point to get them to be quiet as I wasn’t sure if their griping in Kinyarwanda was just that or also them exchanging answers! As much as it sucks when a student fails the students who really apply themselves and want to do well make it all worth it. It’s so cute when they all run up to me afterwards asking for the answers and whoop if they got a particularly difficult question correct.
I feel a little condescending calling my students cute since I would estimate that about 30% of them are older than me. I’ve become a bit more of a disciplinarian this term. I get that some students are going to talk but the acoustics in the classroom are so bad that if a student is whispering in the back they may as well be chatting right next to me. I also invariably look at the wrong side of the room when a student asks me a question, which is apparently hilarious to the students. Also hilarious, my duck and cover position anytime one of the huge, (apparently harmless) wasps comes flying in but hey, that’s just self-preservation. The other day the computer lab was locked and my key wouldn’t work because another key was in the other side of the door so I started banging. All the students outside started tapping on the window saying, “Prof!” or “mzungu!” Which I think did more harm than good because the students inside were obviously doing something they were not supposed to be doing such as watching “Kobe’s 10 greatest plays” on YouTube which seems to be a favorite, but the computers are so miserably slow that it takes about 2 minutes to get any window that is open off the screen. So as predicted, about 2 minutes later, they finally opened the door. I was livid. It was a bunch of Senior 6’s (the oldest kids) and I started yelling at them. Two of them were Kurera so they booked it out of there hoping I wouldn’t recognize them but then the rest just stared at me as if my tirade was incredibly boring. So I was like alright you wanna do this? We can do this. Only actually saying that would have been completely lost on them. I said, “Get out your discipline cards!” An initial look of shock came over all of their faces followed by the most wounded puppy dog look I’ve ever seen. It was as if I had completely broken their hearts, so I started laughing, somewhat hysterically, because sometimes the relative absurdity of my life gets me in stitches and lapsed right back in to easy-going young teacher Claire and asked, “So what’s so exciting anyway?” To which a collective sigh of relief was breathed.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Mugged: Revisited
Today I partook in what can only be described as the most pathetic encounter between man and the wild. The space between my bedroom window and the thick concrete wall that surrounds my house is about five feet. While the view of a laundry line, water spicket, and rock pile are simply breathtaking I rarely open the bedroom curtain to take it all in. Today though, I heard a ruckus and I opened my curtain. Seeing nothing I sort of spaced out (I know, so uncharacteristic of me) and sipped my cup of tea. All of a sudden at the bottom of my vision I saw a rat bounce across the concrete and before I could let out a yelp a much more terrifying creature entered the picture. In the little alley between my window and wall an absolutely humungous hawk swept down to grab the rat. Only, just my luck, it didn’t. My initial surprise was evident by the spilled tea down my clean white shirt but then I had the added bonus of witnessing the slightly pathetic scene in front of me. The hawk had gotten its wing caught in the laundry line and was now causing quite a stir, desperately trying to break free. It was like being at the nature museum in 5th grade only it was literally happening in my backyard. Once the hawk caught sight of me gawking in the window, the desperation turned to a sort of angry cry of deep despair. In height, the bird came to at least my waist so there was no way I was getting tangled up trying to help it break free, also there was a rat out there! The house boy who works at the house behind mine heard the commotion and I think thought I was on the verge of death because the cry was so humanlike. So in he burst through the small gate in the wall, literally right in to the hawk. I think the surprise shocked them both so much that the boy ducked and disappeared almost as quickly as the hawk broke free and flapped away. It was the strangest thing. It was over almost as suddenly as it started and all in the space of about a minute.
Thank god he broke free, because turns out Rwanda doesn’t have an animal control and I’m not really in the market for a pet hawk, although they, as well as the crows, commonly land on my tin roof and seem to have athletics competitions with one another which sound like the end of the world on my tin roof. Last night, there was an extreme thunderstorm and the combination of clapping thunder and the deluge of water falling from the sky rocked me awake at two in the morning and kept me up until four. Talk about the end of the world, those storms are by far the most intense I have ever experienced.
My main motivation for blogging today is to address my earlier blog post about being mugged. As Kurera is just starting up, my Mom thought that a blog about muggings in Rwanda probably wasn’t the best publicity. I argue the contrary. I think I have written before that I feel safer in Rwanda than I have ever felt alone in America. I think my shock at the situation should only exemplify the relative security I enjoy on a daily basis. Furthermore, what is a better advertisement for providing an education than experiencing the blatant repercussions of an uneducated youth? By providing fees for students who cannot afford secondary school you are providing a future, a realistic hope for financial and physical security that in a country so often associated with the terrible genocide that occurred only fifteen years ago, is a new and novel idea. That’s enough preaching for me, but please prove me right and don’t let my unfortunate experience deter you from investing in the future of a country with so much development potential. On that note I’ll have a new blog for Kurera up in the next couple of days so make sure you follow that one as well! I won’t be the only author so hopefully it will be updated more regularly than this one!
Thank god he broke free, because turns out Rwanda doesn’t have an animal control and I’m not really in the market for a pet hawk, although they, as well as the crows, commonly land on my tin roof and seem to have athletics competitions with one another which sound like the end of the world on my tin roof. Last night, there was an extreme thunderstorm and the combination of clapping thunder and the deluge of water falling from the sky rocked me awake at two in the morning and kept me up until four. Talk about the end of the world, those storms are by far the most intense I have ever experienced.
My main motivation for blogging today is to address my earlier blog post about being mugged. As Kurera is just starting up, my Mom thought that a blog about muggings in Rwanda probably wasn’t the best publicity. I argue the contrary. I think I have written before that I feel safer in Rwanda than I have ever felt alone in America. I think my shock at the situation should only exemplify the relative security I enjoy on a daily basis. Furthermore, what is a better advertisement for providing an education than experiencing the blatant repercussions of an uneducated youth? By providing fees for students who cannot afford secondary school you are providing a future, a realistic hope for financial and physical security that in a country so often associated with the terrible genocide that occurred only fifteen years ago, is a new and novel idea. That’s enough preaching for me, but please prove me right and don’t let my unfortunate experience deter you from investing in the future of a country with so much development potential. On that note I’ll have a new blog for Kurera up in the next couple of days so make sure you follow that one as well! I won’t be the only author so hopefully it will be updated more regularly than this one!
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Mugged.
I’m totally freaked out. I’m hoping blogging and telling the somewhat surreal story of tonight will calm my nerves and help me go to sleep. It had to happen sometime and tonight my utopian view of Rwanda came crashing down around me and has left me shaken not only with insecurity but the feeling of loss concerning my enchantment with everything Rwanda.
I’m staying in Kigali to meet with some people about Kurera to ask for some advice concerning accounting, taxes, and grant-writing. My field director and I decided we would meet for a curry at an Indian restaurant she had told me about to go over a grant I had been working on. After a good meal, we were walking back towards St. Paul’s, the hostel where I am staying, on an uncharacteristically desolate street. For anyone who knows Kigali I was right in front of Ice and Spice.
Jessi had a small purse she was holding in her left hand and I was holding my computer, which I had brought to show her the new temporary website as well as swap pictures with her. We were walking towards a group of guys about my age and I didn’t think anything of it until all of a sudden one of them sprinted towards us and grabbed Jessi’s wallet. Before I even knew what was happening she was off, chasing after him screaming and trying to get help. I was paralyzed. I’ve never felt so helpless/stupid/insecure/foreign in my entire life. I mean honestly, there I am standing on a dark street, alone, holding a laptop, right next to a group of men who presumably knew the man who Jessi was chasing, without the slightest clue what to do with myself. So naturally I started to laugh because it seems to be the only reaction I am capable of in stressful situations.
As my laughing began to border on hysteria a crowd formed around me looking very inquisitive at this strange mzungu standing in the middle of the street (I guess I subconsciously thought that was safer) holding a laptop and seemingly having a nervous breakdown. Jessi was out of sight, so then I began to panic about what would happen if she actually did catch the guy, I also didn’t know if she had turned or run straight because it all happened so fast and on dark streets. After a couple minutes I hailed a moto and asked him to wait with me because a friend of the group of people who were standing staring at me had stolen my friends wallet and I didn’t know what to do. He understood about a third of what I said but it was enough to get him to wait with me.
All of a sudden I got really angry. I love Rwanda. I love that I feel so safe in Rwanda and I really hated how unsafe I felt in that moment. I hated that one person or group of people could instantly make me feel so insecure. So I turned to them and I said, quite crossly, “You are bad for Rwanda! I feel safe here and now I’m not safe and that’s bad! You’re bad.” The moto driver kind of chuckled at me and I guess thought I could handle myself (don’t know what gave him that idea) and told me he was going to look for my friend. I stared after him quite dumbfounded and then rather sheepishly turned around to the group of people I had just told off (not that they understood) and smiled. I never saw the moto driver again but Jessi pulled up a minute or so later on a white horse of sorts. A very nice man named Jean-Baptiste had come to her rescue.
Jean-Baptiste took us to the police station where the police officer didn’t bother with a report and instead we all just stood listening to different men in uniform exclaim, ‘O Sorry!’ after the story was told to them. Afterwards he dropped me off here at St. Paul’s and I think in my panic I might have just offended a nun who was trying to give me my change from when I paid earlier but I gave her the third degree in my terrible French before I opened the door even a crack.
Update: This whole episode happened last Sunday night but I’ve been sick so I haven’t been to school/internet to post. My trip to Kigali only got more dramatic on Monday. I went to the Ministry of Education to meet with Jessi again an then was off to meet with the accountant. I stepped on to the moto a little off balance and at the same time the moto driver leaned to the right, which was the side I was getting on from. Of course it’s highly possible that my losing my balance led to me leaning heavily on his shoulder and thus causing the lean but I like the version where we share responsibility. Either way, my leg and his exhaust pipe met and I have the gaping wound to show for it. So that’s it, by my next blog I’ll be back to my positive I love Rwanda self.
I’m staying in Kigali to meet with some people about Kurera to ask for some advice concerning accounting, taxes, and grant-writing. My field director and I decided we would meet for a curry at an Indian restaurant she had told me about to go over a grant I had been working on. After a good meal, we were walking back towards St. Paul’s, the hostel where I am staying, on an uncharacteristically desolate street. For anyone who knows Kigali I was right in front of Ice and Spice.
Jessi had a small purse she was holding in her left hand and I was holding my computer, which I had brought to show her the new temporary website as well as swap pictures with her. We were walking towards a group of guys about my age and I didn’t think anything of it until all of a sudden one of them sprinted towards us and grabbed Jessi’s wallet. Before I even knew what was happening she was off, chasing after him screaming and trying to get help. I was paralyzed. I’ve never felt so helpless/stupid/insecure/foreign in my entire life. I mean honestly, there I am standing on a dark street, alone, holding a laptop, right next to a group of men who presumably knew the man who Jessi was chasing, without the slightest clue what to do with myself. So naturally I started to laugh because it seems to be the only reaction I am capable of in stressful situations.
As my laughing began to border on hysteria a crowd formed around me looking very inquisitive at this strange mzungu standing in the middle of the street (I guess I subconsciously thought that was safer) holding a laptop and seemingly having a nervous breakdown. Jessi was out of sight, so then I began to panic about what would happen if she actually did catch the guy, I also didn’t know if she had turned or run straight because it all happened so fast and on dark streets. After a couple minutes I hailed a moto and asked him to wait with me because a friend of the group of people who were standing staring at me had stolen my friends wallet and I didn’t know what to do. He understood about a third of what I said but it was enough to get him to wait with me.
All of a sudden I got really angry. I love Rwanda. I love that I feel so safe in Rwanda and I really hated how unsafe I felt in that moment. I hated that one person or group of people could instantly make me feel so insecure. So I turned to them and I said, quite crossly, “You are bad for Rwanda! I feel safe here and now I’m not safe and that’s bad! You’re bad.” The moto driver kind of chuckled at me and I guess thought I could handle myself (don’t know what gave him that idea) and told me he was going to look for my friend. I stared after him quite dumbfounded and then rather sheepishly turned around to the group of people I had just told off (not that they understood) and smiled. I never saw the moto driver again but Jessi pulled up a minute or so later on a white horse of sorts. A very nice man named Jean-Baptiste had come to her rescue.
Jean-Baptiste took us to the police station where the police officer didn’t bother with a report and instead we all just stood listening to different men in uniform exclaim, ‘O Sorry!’ after the story was told to them. Afterwards he dropped me off here at St. Paul’s and I think in my panic I might have just offended a nun who was trying to give me my change from when I paid earlier but I gave her the third degree in my terrible French before I opened the door even a crack.
Update: This whole episode happened last Sunday night but I’ve been sick so I haven’t been to school/internet to post. My trip to Kigali only got more dramatic on Monday. I went to the Ministry of Education to meet with Jessi again an then was off to meet with the accountant. I stepped on to the moto a little off balance and at the same time the moto driver leaned to the right, which was the side I was getting on from. Of course it’s highly possible that my losing my balance led to me leaning heavily on his shoulder and thus causing the lean but I like the version where we share responsibility. Either way, my leg and his exhaust pipe met and I have the gaping wound to show for it. So that’s it, by my next blog I’ll be back to my positive I love Rwanda self.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Don't Lose Your Keys in Africa
WOW! If I can offer one piece of advice for anyone traveling or living in Africa it would have to be DO NOT LOSE YOUR KEYS! I left my house 24 hours ago to post my last blog and have just now returned after the longest and most ridiculous process ever! It all started so innocently on what was turning out ot be a really great day. I was sitting at my school using the internet when Yves came home from teaching and invited me to a baby naming ceremony for one of his friends, who I knew, who had just become a father. Always up for an adventure I decided to join. First though, he, his two friends from university, and I all sat in his living room visiting. I remember looking down seeing my keys sitting right next to me and thinking to myself don’t forget those. Ah the voice of doom. Yves’ very nice friend, Claudine, had brought me sambusas and drinking yogurt from my favorite place so I sat happily munching while they chatted in Kinyarwanda. When it was time to leave I picked up my phone and laptop and we headed out the door. Not even two minutes walk from the house I realized I had left my keys but, not wanting to inconvenience anyone, I decided to just get them on my way back home.
The party turned out to be a pretty awkward mix of people staring at each other but most of all me, and discussing me in Kinyarwanda. Sometimes I want to scream, “Hello! I’ve been here four months I know how to say, “That white person speaks English and doesn’t know Kinyarwanda.” Anyway, frustrations aside, I did have to leave because I had also been invited to visit the school secretary with Mama and Papa Cyizere. They told me to be at their house at 4 and even though I do feel thoroughly at peace with African time they insisted that they were on a ‘mzungu program’ and I had to be on time. SO naturally they were not there at 4 so I decided to go back to the school to get my keys. My heart sank when I walked in the room and they were nowhere to be found. The housegirl claimed ignorance and Mama Cyizere came and said not to worry we would find them when we returned. So we went to the secretary, Agnes’, house who is married to the history teacher at my school. She’s one of my only Rwandan girlfriends and I love her. She’s not quiet and subdued like most Rwandan women I meet, she’s always giggling and joking with me. We drank a couple fantas and then it was time to return. Agnes held my hand the whole dark walk home because she was concerned I had mzungu eyes and would fall and hurt myself. Bless her.
We got back to the school/Yves’ house and of course the keys hadn’t magically appeared while we were gone. Mama and Papa started insisting I stay at their house but I hate not being in my own bed so I fought for a locksmith to come before I admitted defeat. I think they both wanted to kill me but being the wonderful people they are they called the “locksmith”. Imagine my surprise when my favorite alcoholic, octogenarian toilet repair man came stumbling down the path and then stood at attention to salute me before he lost his balance and crashed in to Papa Cyizere. He stank of Waragi(Ugandan Gin) but for some reason no one seemed to mind and thought he should change my lock in the dark regardless. He went to get his “tools” while we walked to my house. He showed up with two screwdrivers and a hammer and I knew we were really in for it. He proceeded to take off the door handle thaen bang on the lock like a crazy person with his hammer until it fell off. This was at 8, after his initial surprise that the door didn’t magically open after his bashing he fiddled around with a screwdriver doing the same thing again and again to the lock over the course of two hours! By the end of the ordeal we had an audience of over fifteen people. And by end, I mean by the time I conceded defeat, I never made it in the house. So a guard from my school had to come guard the house since the crashing had obviously alerted everyone in a five mile radius that I had lost my keys and security was compromised to say the least. I went back to Mama Cyziere’s thoroughly depressed by the whole situation. She seemed mildly offended that I didn’t want to take a bucket shower at her house at 11 pm but I was too exhausted and frustrated to explain. I crawled into bed fully clothed and of course I had to have been wearing my tight jeans that I NEVER wear on this particular day.
I woke up this morning to knocking on the bedroom door that Mama insisted I lock. She told me that the drunk repair man had sobered up and fixed my door in less than an hour and to go meet the guard at my house to get the key. I don’t think I’ve ever been so relieved, I couldn’t wait to get home. I put on my shoes and was out the door after thanking Mama and Papa profusely but quickly. I looked ROUGH! My hair was a mess, my eyes were all puffy and red and I was just generally discombobulated. Of course the first person I see is a student looking very suspiciously at me. I started laughing hysterically as I usually do in uncomfortable situations and I think he now thinks I am certifiably insane or a total party animal. Either one is slightly mortifying considering he is one my best and favorite students. I didn’t care though, the saga was about to be over! But no. I got to my house and there was no guard, just a locked door and of course at this point my phone was dead. After knocking on every window with the help of my poubelle boys I realized I would have to go back to school. I first attempted to knock on neighbors doors to ask for a charger but this turned out to be humiliating since I have the cheapest possible phone(my third since I’ve been here) because I have a habit of losing those as well and apparently no one else would be caught dead carrying one. So allll the way back to school I went.
I got to school on the verge of tears and Jean called the guard who told him he had brought the keys back to Mama Cyizere’s house. There is one road between my house and Mama Cyizere’s so he had to have passed me. I just about lost it. Happy Claire was gone, I said to Jean, “Are you kidding me? Did he get me confused with the other white girl in Nyanza? O wait! There isn’t one! What an idiot. And why was he in my house! My light was left on what was he doing in there! This is ridiculous.” Jean looked terrified. Mama Shema (Jean’s wife) came and calmed me down and then Tunda(Mama Cyizere’s brother) brought the keys. I couldn’t have been happier if someone handed me a million dollars. Finally! So off I went BACK to my house only this time I knew I would be able to get in. Of course just to add to the excitement a storm was looming. The kind of Rwandan storm that hangs in the air, threatening to unleash a serious deluge of water. Everyone around me started sprinting. This is a bad sign, if Rwandans are running you run, especially if you are being passed up by a man with no foot running on his crutch. I was still carrying my laptop from yesterday’s ill-fated blog post and I didn’t want my laptop to get wet. I thought I was running fast but I kept being passed by Rwandans looking at me as they sprinted past, smiling, and saying, “Mwaramutse!” or “Good Morning!” I have never laughed so hard, no matter how frustrating or difficult things seem to be here, something invariably happens to make me smile. There’s nothing like mass hysteria before a downpour to put a smile of your face. Now I’m back, 24 hours later, listening to the rain, with a warm cup of tea, thinking how happy my mom is going to be that I did three blogposts in two days.
The party turned out to be a pretty awkward mix of people staring at each other but most of all me, and discussing me in Kinyarwanda. Sometimes I want to scream, “Hello! I’ve been here four months I know how to say, “That white person speaks English and doesn’t know Kinyarwanda.” Anyway, frustrations aside, I did have to leave because I had also been invited to visit the school secretary with Mama and Papa Cyizere. They told me to be at their house at 4 and even though I do feel thoroughly at peace with African time they insisted that they were on a ‘mzungu program’ and I had to be on time. SO naturally they were not there at 4 so I decided to go back to the school to get my keys. My heart sank when I walked in the room and they were nowhere to be found. The housegirl claimed ignorance and Mama Cyizere came and said not to worry we would find them when we returned. So we went to the secretary, Agnes’, house who is married to the history teacher at my school. She’s one of my only Rwandan girlfriends and I love her. She’s not quiet and subdued like most Rwandan women I meet, she’s always giggling and joking with me. We drank a couple fantas and then it was time to return. Agnes held my hand the whole dark walk home because she was concerned I had mzungu eyes and would fall and hurt myself. Bless her.
We got back to the school/Yves’ house and of course the keys hadn’t magically appeared while we were gone. Mama and Papa started insisting I stay at their house but I hate not being in my own bed so I fought for a locksmith to come before I admitted defeat. I think they both wanted to kill me but being the wonderful people they are they called the “locksmith”. Imagine my surprise when my favorite alcoholic, octogenarian toilet repair man came stumbling down the path and then stood at attention to salute me before he lost his balance and crashed in to Papa Cyizere. He stank of Waragi(Ugandan Gin) but for some reason no one seemed to mind and thought he should change my lock in the dark regardless. He went to get his “tools” while we walked to my house. He showed up with two screwdrivers and a hammer and I knew we were really in for it. He proceeded to take off the door handle thaen bang on the lock like a crazy person with his hammer until it fell off. This was at 8, after his initial surprise that the door didn’t magically open after his bashing he fiddled around with a screwdriver doing the same thing again and again to the lock over the course of two hours! By the end of the ordeal we had an audience of over fifteen people. And by end, I mean by the time I conceded defeat, I never made it in the house. So a guard from my school had to come guard the house since the crashing had obviously alerted everyone in a five mile radius that I had lost my keys and security was compromised to say the least. I went back to Mama Cyziere’s thoroughly depressed by the whole situation. She seemed mildly offended that I didn’t want to take a bucket shower at her house at 11 pm but I was too exhausted and frustrated to explain. I crawled into bed fully clothed and of course I had to have been wearing my tight jeans that I NEVER wear on this particular day.
I woke up this morning to knocking on the bedroom door that Mama insisted I lock. She told me that the drunk repair man had sobered up and fixed my door in less than an hour and to go meet the guard at my house to get the key. I don’t think I’ve ever been so relieved, I couldn’t wait to get home. I put on my shoes and was out the door after thanking Mama and Papa profusely but quickly. I looked ROUGH! My hair was a mess, my eyes were all puffy and red and I was just generally discombobulated. Of course the first person I see is a student looking very suspiciously at me. I started laughing hysterically as I usually do in uncomfortable situations and I think he now thinks I am certifiably insane or a total party animal. Either one is slightly mortifying considering he is one my best and favorite students. I didn’t care though, the saga was about to be over! But no. I got to my house and there was no guard, just a locked door and of course at this point my phone was dead. After knocking on every window with the help of my poubelle boys I realized I would have to go back to school. I first attempted to knock on neighbors doors to ask for a charger but this turned out to be humiliating since I have the cheapest possible phone(my third since I’ve been here) because I have a habit of losing those as well and apparently no one else would be caught dead carrying one. So allll the way back to school I went.
I got to school on the verge of tears and Jean called the guard who told him he had brought the keys back to Mama Cyizere’s house. There is one road between my house and Mama Cyizere’s so he had to have passed me. I just about lost it. Happy Claire was gone, I said to Jean, “Are you kidding me? Did he get me confused with the other white girl in Nyanza? O wait! There isn’t one! What an idiot. And why was he in my house! My light was left on what was he doing in there! This is ridiculous.” Jean looked terrified. Mama Shema (Jean’s wife) came and calmed me down and then Tunda(Mama Cyizere’s brother) brought the keys. I couldn’t have been happier if someone handed me a million dollars. Finally! So off I went BACK to my house only this time I knew I would be able to get in. Of course just to add to the excitement a storm was looming. The kind of Rwandan storm that hangs in the air, threatening to unleash a serious deluge of water. Everyone around me started sprinting. This is a bad sign, if Rwandans are running you run, especially if you are being passed up by a man with no foot running on his crutch. I was still carrying my laptop from yesterday’s ill-fated blog post and I didn’t want my laptop to get wet. I thought I was running fast but I kept being passed by Rwandans looking at me as they sprinted past, smiling, and saying, “Mwaramutse!” or “Good Morning!” I have never laughed so hard, no matter how frustrating or difficult things seem to be here, something invariably happens to make me smile. There’s nothing like mass hysteria before a downpour to put a smile of your face. Now I’m back, 24 hours later, listening to the rain, with a warm cup of tea, thinking how happy my mom is going to be that I did three blogposts in two days.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Kurera (2 of 2)
I came to school after a long weekend of guacamole, quesadilla and general Cinco de Mayo merry-making to find about thirty percent of my students walking aimlessly around campus. Come to find out, they had not paid their school fees and as punishment they were not allowed in class. The cost of school grades 7-9 is $66 a term and for grades 10-12 is $80. I was outraged. Imagine being denied lessons because you are tardy with a payment. I really believe in education, and getting to secondary school in Rwanda is no easy feat. While elementary education in Rwanda is universal the students must pass difficult National exams in 6th, 9th, and 12th grade to move on to the next level of education with the competition getting fiercer at each level. I decided I could do something about the fees.
I called my mom and told her about the situation. I envisioned donations from a few friends to help the neediest of students. Apparently the response from her friends was overwhelmingly positive and we decided to start a non-profit. Actually she decided and I was over the moon! I was in the computer lab checking my e-mail the next day on the slow internet when a student, one of the ones walking around, came in and plead his case. He told me his father was killed in the genocide and his mother was very poor and he wanted to go to school so he could help her. Then his eyes welled up and he said he was going to be sent home if he did not pay his school fees is there any way I could help? He then went on to say that if I could not help him financially could I prepare lessons for him since he was not allowed to go to school that week. I was struck by the innocence of his proposition. Just then, and I’m not even saying this for dramatic emphasis, my e-mail popped up and there was a message in my inbox titled non-profit from my mom proposing the non-profit idea. Thus, Kurera fund was born. Kurera means to educate in Kinyarwanda and I thought it was a fitting name for what I want to accomplish. I hope to ensure the education of Rwandans by simply providing school fees. Hopefully, the idea will blossom and with grants I can stay here in Rwanda to see it grow nationwide. For now though I’m starting small. I’ll be setting up a website to connect sponsors with children who need sponsoring at my school in Nyanza.
I’m extremely excited about this new venture but I know I have a ton to learn and seeing as how everything is happening so fast it seems all my training will have to come on the job. Any knowledge or experience with non-profits is welcome and of course financial support once I get the site up and running would be the biggest vote of confidence anyone could give!
I called my mom and told her about the situation. I envisioned donations from a few friends to help the neediest of students. Apparently the response from her friends was overwhelmingly positive and we decided to start a non-profit. Actually she decided and I was over the moon! I was in the computer lab checking my e-mail the next day on the slow internet when a student, one of the ones walking around, came in and plead his case. He told me his father was killed in the genocide and his mother was very poor and he wanted to go to school so he could help her. Then his eyes welled up and he said he was going to be sent home if he did not pay his school fees is there any way I could help? He then went on to say that if I could not help him financially could I prepare lessons for him since he was not allowed to go to school that week. I was struck by the innocence of his proposition. Just then, and I’m not even saying this for dramatic emphasis, my e-mail popped up and there was a message in my inbox titled non-profit from my mom proposing the non-profit idea. Thus, Kurera fund was born. Kurera means to educate in Kinyarwanda and I thought it was a fitting name for what I want to accomplish. I hope to ensure the education of Rwandans by simply providing school fees. Hopefully, the idea will blossom and with grants I can stay here in Rwanda to see it grow nationwide. For now though I’m starting small. I’ll be setting up a website to connect sponsors with children who need sponsoring at my school in Nyanza.
I’m extremely excited about this new venture but I know I have a ton to learn and seeing as how everything is happening so fast it seems all my training will have to come on the job. Any knowledge or experience with non-profits is welcome and of course financial support once I get the site up and running would be the biggest vote of confidence anyone could give!
African time (1 of 2)
So much for keeping up to date! I’ve been a terrible blogger of late, mostly due to having too much going on, but also, and in some ways as an extension of, the daunting thought of getting my blog back up to speed. How do I even begin to summarize the month of April? The highlight was my mother’s arrival on the 1st. Together we traveled back to Nyanza where she got to meet many of my favorite students and teachers, then on to Kigali where we visited the always depressing but very informative Genocide Memorial Museum, and finally on to Musanze to see the gorillas.
We woke up very early to get to the meeting point for the gorillas by 6 am. I was both apprehensive and excited but most of all nervous that I would be the most out of shape in the group. Elizabeth’s family joined us and she and I had been joking for weeks that we would be gasping for air bringing up the rear. Turns out I’m not in as bad of shape as I thought. The hike was awesome, I felt so authentic literally bushwhacking through the jungle then again there were the random freak-outs after the guide yelled, “ANTS!” and we all started sprinting and at first not really understanding why. Turns out ants in the jungle are nasty little buggers and most of us had actual ants in our pants after the commotion. After about an hour and a half of trekking uphill we finally reached the gorillas. We went to see the Kwitonda family and it…was…AWESOME. Normally you are supposed to stay seven meters back from the gorillas but our family was in a grove of bamboo so the guides were cutting back branches and beckoning us closer and closer until all of a sudden we were just a few meters away from a huge silverback. They tell you before you get there not to point but of course I was beside myself with excitement and was totally that tourist pointing at him and then the rest of the family as we came across them. Elizabeth has a video of me whispering as we approached the gorillas, “this is the coolest thing I’ve ever done” which is absolutely hilarious. It was amazing though, and I didn’t expect to react so strongly since I’m not really an outdoorsy hiker type but it was the experience of a lifetime and I strongly recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity.
We left Musanze the next day back to Kigali. Our trip back was complicated due to the fact that we were traveling on the Genocide Memorial day. One thing that jumps out the most about Rwanda is the constant stream of people walking along the road. No matter how desolate a stretch of road may seem you cannot go more than a kilometer without seeing someone walking along. Not this day though. The town was deserted. We knew the busses were not going to run until the afternoon and so we went to an empty but open hotel to have a coffee. The radio broadcast of the ceremony at the stadium in Kigali was playing and we could hear the emotion in the speeches although we obviously could not understand them. All of a sudden we were struck by an American voice thick with emotion speaking to the stadium full of people. The man was a pastor who had been living in Kigali at the time of the genocide and he spoke of the men and women who stood at his gates protecting his family telling the killers of how their children played together. My mom and I, both being pretty emotional, were all welled up his speech was so heartfelt and full of a gratitude. After composing ourselves, we went to the bus station at the time we were told the busses would start running but of course the town was still completely dead. Definitely a case of Africa time but can you really berate tardiness on a day like that? My mom and I settled on a cab and paid the extra money quite happily, well she did anyway, it was a good situation to be in with my mom/money!
Naturally, I was very sad to see my mom go. Thank you to everyone who sent things, all the goodies and supplies are greatly appreciated although I’m not sure my mom appreciated transporting them since I heard about how heavy the bag was every single time we talked leading up to her arrival. I was so happy she got to see my life here. It’s simple and I love it that way. I’m writing this at my house alone on a Friday night and I can honestly say there is nowhere else I would rather be, which will come as a huge surprise to anyone who knew me when I lived in San Diego! Anyway, I had a little taste of the not so simple Kigali ex-pat life the night my mom left when I went with Elizabeth’s family to Heaven restaurant. Yves was visiting me in Kigali so he came along which had me viewing the whole ex-pat experience through a local’s eyes. None of the entrées were less than fifteen dollars and we each ordered an appetizer, main, dessert, and a couple cocktails. Yves looked beside himself when he saw the menu and apart from the waiters he was the only Rwandan in the place. The meal must have cost at least $250 which is equivalent to the GDP per capita in Rwanda so to say the least I felt pretty guilty about our indulgence and Yves’ perma-deer in the headlights expression didn’t help matters!
Our holiday over-indulgence didn’t stop there though. Elizabeth’s mother and brother left and then she, her father and I were off to Gisenyi on Lake Kivu. The guidebook describes Gisenyi as Costa del Kivu but we were there during rainy season and genocide memorial week so mostly we just thought Costa del depressing. The town was deserted and somewhat run-down but the lake is undeniably gorgeous and the hotel we stayed at had hot showers so I can’t complain too much.
We then went on a very eventful trip through the Nyungwe national forest. Which was more about our endless hunt for gas then the actual forest thus including somewhat humiliating forays into tea plantation worker housing and amusing enactments of the act of putting gas in to a car trying to get our point across. We ended up going village-to-village getting liters of gas at a time until we reached Cyangugu at the southern tip of Lake Kivu. Also our car finally succumbed to the endless potholes on the Nyungwe road so we had string holding up the running boards of the car, which was cause for endless amusement as well as work for enterprising villagers at every place we stopped. We had not planned on going all the way to Cyangugu but the quest for gas proved it necessary. Why we left Butare with an empty tank I will never understand but the eleven tedious hours in the car I will never forget.
My two-week holiday came to an end with a mid-service in Kibuye for the program I am here with. Kibuye, in the center of the lake, is beautiful and was by far my favorite of all the lake side towns I visited in my Tour du Rwanda. Seeing all the other volunteers made me realize how happy I really am here. Everyone had so many complaints about their schools and living situations which is really just so boring to listen to especially when surrounded by gorgeous scenery in perfect weather. I imagine most of my contentment comes from having previously been in such a bad situation. I know how bad it can be so the lack of communication and disorganization is relatively inconsequential. Although, I did just find out that my English classes are not counted on the student’s report card. Which wouldn’t bother me had I not spent HOURS marking 300 exams and then painstakingly recording all their grades in a timely manner for the reporting period. I think the entire exam experience has proven that exams and I are just not meant to be. I will not be partaking in the exam hullabaloo this term and my sister’s arrival right in the middle of them will make the perfect excuse.
So now I’m back. When my mother was here she opened the door to three little boys while I was out running an errand. Those three little boys (the poubelle boys) have now turned into twenty and seeing as how my porch is a flat surface (that whole land of a thousand hills thing is true) they play very lively games of soccer on it almost every day. Little Emmanuel is by far my favorite and I just found out that he and his two brothers and mother are homeless. They sleep on a mattress behind my house. All the boys dress in rags and their ball is a scraps of plastic wrapped in string. They are so much fun and I love playing with them and teaching them English which has actually proved very helpful in improving my Kinyarwanda. Anyway, if anyone has old clothes for boys aged about 4-12 and want to send them my sister is coming in July and they would be greatly appreciated.
I was greeted by my Rwandan mother Mama Cyizere (chizAray) and father Papa Cyizere when I returned to school. She is the school accountant and he is a scientist at the instititute of agriculture in the north but he returns home every weekend. They invited me to come eat with them and asked me what day I would like to come for dinner. We settled on that Saturday which I had no idea was the Genocide Memorial Day for Nyanza. I arrived to their house on time, of course, and they arrived thirty minutes later in purple bandanas. Yves had told them I like Amstel, based purely on the fact that I had one on my birthday two months before but nevertheless the rumor around town is that I can’t get enough of the beer. So of course they had bought me FIVE! I have had about five drinks in total since I arrived in Rwanda four months ago so the task of drinking them was extremely daunting. I think I was on my second by the time the issue of the nature of the day came up and my alarming cultural faux pas was almost too much to bear. So THAT’S why everything was closed today I thought. Then I remembered when Mama Cyizere told me she had lost her entire family in the genocide in Nyanza fifteen years earlier and I just wanted to curl up in to a ball at the awkwardness of it all. It was 7:30, I still hadn’t eaten and there were still three beers lined up waiting to be drunk. I began to panic about whether or not I should stay for dinner. My cultural alarm bells were ringing but I couldn’t decide if it was just the alcohol talking. I decided to open another beer and grin and bear the rest of the evening, which after confirmation with Yves turned out to be what was expected of me. Needless to say, the walk home is a pretty fuzzy memory!
Papa Cyizere was very angry with Mama Cyizere for not having told me about the genocide memorial day so she is now my official informant at the school. Last Friday was Rwandan Labor Day, which is taken very seriously here. Not really having any idea what to expect, I was told to arrive at the school at 8am. Not wanting to be left behind I arrived at 7:50 and I think I have finally learned the African time lesson. No one else arrived until 9:30. The headmaster wasn’t even awake when I got here! (He lives at the school) When we finally got to the stadium it was 10:30 and the parade, which was supposed to begin at 10, wasn’t even close to beginning. At 11:30 we finally started marching. And by marching I mean marching army style. So embarrassing. I guess when everyone is doing it, it’s not so bad but I did have the added bonus of being the only white person there. As usual I was quite the spectacle but it was a great experience if only for the blog-worthiness of it all! The entire town was there and after the march around the stadium the organizer grabbed my arm and brought me straight to the governor’s tent to sit on the chairs. I’m not one to pass up a seat especially with the prospect of listening to three hours of Kinyarwanda speeches looming!
I’m finally back to my routine and the students seem to have readjusted to my accent so we are all getting along swimmingly. I have begun a new project that I think is worthy of its own blog post but I am beginning this term with a newly defined sense of purpose which leaves me very excited!
We woke up very early to get to the meeting point for the gorillas by 6 am. I was both apprehensive and excited but most of all nervous that I would be the most out of shape in the group. Elizabeth’s family joined us and she and I had been joking for weeks that we would be gasping for air bringing up the rear. Turns out I’m not in as bad of shape as I thought. The hike was awesome, I felt so authentic literally bushwhacking through the jungle then again there were the random freak-outs after the guide yelled, “ANTS!” and we all started sprinting and at first not really understanding why. Turns out ants in the jungle are nasty little buggers and most of us had actual ants in our pants after the commotion. After about an hour and a half of trekking uphill we finally reached the gorillas. We went to see the Kwitonda family and it…was…AWESOME. Normally you are supposed to stay seven meters back from the gorillas but our family was in a grove of bamboo so the guides were cutting back branches and beckoning us closer and closer until all of a sudden we were just a few meters away from a huge silverback. They tell you before you get there not to point but of course I was beside myself with excitement and was totally that tourist pointing at him and then the rest of the family as we came across them. Elizabeth has a video of me whispering as we approached the gorillas, “this is the coolest thing I’ve ever done” which is absolutely hilarious. It was amazing though, and I didn’t expect to react so strongly since I’m not really an outdoorsy hiker type but it was the experience of a lifetime and I strongly recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity.
We left Musanze the next day back to Kigali. Our trip back was complicated due to the fact that we were traveling on the Genocide Memorial day. One thing that jumps out the most about Rwanda is the constant stream of people walking along the road. No matter how desolate a stretch of road may seem you cannot go more than a kilometer without seeing someone walking along. Not this day though. The town was deserted. We knew the busses were not going to run until the afternoon and so we went to an empty but open hotel to have a coffee. The radio broadcast of the ceremony at the stadium in Kigali was playing and we could hear the emotion in the speeches although we obviously could not understand them. All of a sudden we were struck by an American voice thick with emotion speaking to the stadium full of people. The man was a pastor who had been living in Kigali at the time of the genocide and he spoke of the men and women who stood at his gates protecting his family telling the killers of how their children played together. My mom and I, both being pretty emotional, were all welled up his speech was so heartfelt and full of a gratitude. After composing ourselves, we went to the bus station at the time we were told the busses would start running but of course the town was still completely dead. Definitely a case of Africa time but can you really berate tardiness on a day like that? My mom and I settled on a cab and paid the extra money quite happily, well she did anyway, it was a good situation to be in with my mom/money!
Naturally, I was very sad to see my mom go. Thank you to everyone who sent things, all the goodies and supplies are greatly appreciated although I’m not sure my mom appreciated transporting them since I heard about how heavy the bag was every single time we talked leading up to her arrival. I was so happy she got to see my life here. It’s simple and I love it that way. I’m writing this at my house alone on a Friday night and I can honestly say there is nowhere else I would rather be, which will come as a huge surprise to anyone who knew me when I lived in San Diego! Anyway, I had a little taste of the not so simple Kigali ex-pat life the night my mom left when I went with Elizabeth’s family to Heaven restaurant. Yves was visiting me in Kigali so he came along which had me viewing the whole ex-pat experience through a local’s eyes. None of the entrées were less than fifteen dollars and we each ordered an appetizer, main, dessert, and a couple cocktails. Yves looked beside himself when he saw the menu and apart from the waiters he was the only Rwandan in the place. The meal must have cost at least $250 which is equivalent to the GDP per capita in Rwanda so to say the least I felt pretty guilty about our indulgence and Yves’ perma-deer in the headlights expression didn’t help matters!
Our holiday over-indulgence didn’t stop there though. Elizabeth’s mother and brother left and then she, her father and I were off to Gisenyi on Lake Kivu. The guidebook describes Gisenyi as Costa del Kivu but we were there during rainy season and genocide memorial week so mostly we just thought Costa del depressing. The town was deserted and somewhat run-down but the lake is undeniably gorgeous and the hotel we stayed at had hot showers so I can’t complain too much.
We then went on a very eventful trip through the Nyungwe national forest. Which was more about our endless hunt for gas then the actual forest thus including somewhat humiliating forays into tea plantation worker housing and amusing enactments of the act of putting gas in to a car trying to get our point across. We ended up going village-to-village getting liters of gas at a time until we reached Cyangugu at the southern tip of Lake Kivu. Also our car finally succumbed to the endless potholes on the Nyungwe road so we had string holding up the running boards of the car, which was cause for endless amusement as well as work for enterprising villagers at every place we stopped. We had not planned on going all the way to Cyangugu but the quest for gas proved it necessary. Why we left Butare with an empty tank I will never understand but the eleven tedious hours in the car I will never forget.
My two-week holiday came to an end with a mid-service in Kibuye for the program I am here with. Kibuye, in the center of the lake, is beautiful and was by far my favorite of all the lake side towns I visited in my Tour du Rwanda. Seeing all the other volunteers made me realize how happy I really am here. Everyone had so many complaints about their schools and living situations which is really just so boring to listen to especially when surrounded by gorgeous scenery in perfect weather. I imagine most of my contentment comes from having previously been in such a bad situation. I know how bad it can be so the lack of communication and disorganization is relatively inconsequential. Although, I did just find out that my English classes are not counted on the student’s report card. Which wouldn’t bother me had I not spent HOURS marking 300 exams and then painstakingly recording all their grades in a timely manner for the reporting period. I think the entire exam experience has proven that exams and I are just not meant to be. I will not be partaking in the exam hullabaloo this term and my sister’s arrival right in the middle of them will make the perfect excuse.
So now I’m back. When my mother was here she opened the door to three little boys while I was out running an errand. Those three little boys (the poubelle boys) have now turned into twenty and seeing as how my porch is a flat surface (that whole land of a thousand hills thing is true) they play very lively games of soccer on it almost every day. Little Emmanuel is by far my favorite and I just found out that he and his two brothers and mother are homeless. They sleep on a mattress behind my house. All the boys dress in rags and their ball is a scraps of plastic wrapped in string. They are so much fun and I love playing with them and teaching them English which has actually proved very helpful in improving my Kinyarwanda. Anyway, if anyone has old clothes for boys aged about 4-12 and want to send them my sister is coming in July and they would be greatly appreciated.
I was greeted by my Rwandan mother Mama Cyizere (chizAray) and father Papa Cyizere when I returned to school. She is the school accountant and he is a scientist at the instititute of agriculture in the north but he returns home every weekend. They invited me to come eat with them and asked me what day I would like to come for dinner. We settled on that Saturday which I had no idea was the Genocide Memorial Day for Nyanza. I arrived to their house on time, of course, and they arrived thirty minutes later in purple bandanas. Yves had told them I like Amstel, based purely on the fact that I had one on my birthday two months before but nevertheless the rumor around town is that I can’t get enough of the beer. So of course they had bought me FIVE! I have had about five drinks in total since I arrived in Rwanda four months ago so the task of drinking them was extremely daunting. I think I was on my second by the time the issue of the nature of the day came up and my alarming cultural faux pas was almost too much to bear. So THAT’S why everything was closed today I thought. Then I remembered when Mama Cyizere told me she had lost her entire family in the genocide in Nyanza fifteen years earlier and I just wanted to curl up in to a ball at the awkwardness of it all. It was 7:30, I still hadn’t eaten and there were still three beers lined up waiting to be drunk. I began to panic about whether or not I should stay for dinner. My cultural alarm bells were ringing but I couldn’t decide if it was just the alcohol talking. I decided to open another beer and grin and bear the rest of the evening, which after confirmation with Yves turned out to be what was expected of me. Needless to say, the walk home is a pretty fuzzy memory!
Papa Cyizere was very angry with Mama Cyizere for not having told me about the genocide memorial day so she is now my official informant at the school. Last Friday was Rwandan Labor Day, which is taken very seriously here. Not really having any idea what to expect, I was told to arrive at the school at 8am. Not wanting to be left behind I arrived at 7:50 and I think I have finally learned the African time lesson. No one else arrived until 9:30. The headmaster wasn’t even awake when I got here! (He lives at the school) When we finally got to the stadium it was 10:30 and the parade, which was supposed to begin at 10, wasn’t even close to beginning. At 11:30 we finally started marching. And by marching I mean marching army style. So embarrassing. I guess when everyone is doing it, it’s not so bad but I did have the added bonus of being the only white person there. As usual I was quite the spectacle but it was a great experience if only for the blog-worthiness of it all! The entire town was there and after the march around the stadium the organizer grabbed my arm and brought me straight to the governor’s tent to sit on the chairs. I’m not one to pass up a seat especially with the prospect of listening to three hours of Kinyarwanda speeches looming!
I’m finally back to my routine and the students seem to have readjusted to my accent so we are all getting along swimmingly. I have begun a new project that I think is worthy of its own blog post but I am beginning this term with a newly defined sense of purpose which leaves me very excited!
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Exams
I can attest to the fact that no matter how much you may have hated exams as a student, they are a thousand times worse as a teacher. Especially in Africa. Apparently no one realized I had never taken, let alone given an exam in Rwanda so I have spent the last few days making a complete fool out of myself in front of the whole school. First mistake, I made a study guide, which the students thought was hilarious as did all the other teachers. On the study guide I wrote that all students had to bring their exercise books for me to mark, which backfired considering the students, are mixed according to student number not grade and bringing your exercise books to an exam is a serious offense. That was a fun one to explain to the Prefect of Discipline when he had a line a mile long outside of his office. I’ve also let exams run an hour too long or finished them an hour too early, made comments about the secretaries math skills when I thought I was short one exam for each grade only to realize that the paper folded around the exams was the missing link, tried to be authoritative (even though the students are totally on to me) and in the process SLAMMED in to a desk so hard that I bent over in pain and now I have a huge welt on my knee. Sitting in a classroom for three hours at a time staring at students write is like torture so I bring my iPod also I’m still really sick so I’ve been going to school in my sweats. Both things that I’m pretty sure are causing quite a scandal in the staff room. O well.
Fun teacher Claire really doesn’t translate well in this context and so I cannot wait for exam time to be over. And then there’s marking. O lord I hate marking. I was a genius and assigned a composition portion on the exam which is brutal to grade. An excerpt, “When we gone to visity my boyfriend in the way met a coach very longer than a taxis in the coach saw a beautiful girl had a small luggage.” How do you mark that? I don’t want to be discouraging but it’s just wrong on so many levels. So I get to come home every night to that 450 times over. Basically I hate exams but when it’s all over my Mummy is going to be here and we’re going to see the gorillas!
I’m really looking forward to her visit but even before that we are having a big party in Butare for Shira’s birthday and my German and Dutch friends going away party. So that’s getting me through the days. Last Friday, when I was really too sick to have been doing anything, I went with Elizabeth, Yves and Adrien to a Music Awards Ceremony. It was at the auditorium at the National University, which can comfortably accommodate around 300 people but there were over a thousand in attendance. People were climbing up the walls, literally, standing on the armrests, hanging over the balconies, and it was basically just mass chaos and SO HOT. I really enjoyed it though. My friend Ali is like the Rwandan equivalent of Ryan Seacrest so we were right in the front and I got to see my favorite Rwandan singer Kitoko perform my favorite song which was sooooo exciting, Yves and Adrien were jumping up and down in excitement for me which was sweet. I’ll post pictures, the “celebrity” fashion here is pretty hilarious.
I’m also working on pictures of my locale and school. Taking pics of my walk to school is proving to be difficult though since Rwandans are so sensitive to having their picture taken. Someone told me it is because they do not want to be put on a poster of some NGO in the west and then never receive any of the funds their image generates. I think that’s a stretch but nonetheless it is common to be asked for 100 francs if you get someone in your frame. No problem taking pictures of my fave neighborhood kids though, who, by the way, are completely obsessed with my garbage. I have created a monster. Every time I walk by its, “Poubelle? Poubelle?” I’m afraid they probably asked someone for the word for garbage in French because that is literally the only non-Kinyarwanda word they know which is mortifying.
I’ve had some major living alone follies lately. I’m getting used to living alone but I am still deathly afraid of the dark and since the electricity really only works when it feels like it I always have a flashlight with me. Last night I was walking through my really long really dark hallway on my way to bed. I was holding my ipod and flashlight in the same hand and the tangled mass of my headphones fell in front of the light projecting a horrific figure on my wall. In my rational mind I knew what it was but in my living alone scared of the dark mind it could have been any number of creepy crawly things so I screamed. I screamed so loud that moments later I got an urgent call from my very sweet neighbor who doesn’t speak a word of English but still comes over to visit and we just stare at each other very awkwardly. Anyway, I think I convinced her that I was alright because she didn’t come over but I’m sure she thinks I’m a total head case. Also having to do with intermittent electricity, I was unplugging my phone charger yesterday quite clumsily, my usual mode of operation, when the electricity all of asudden turned back on. I have never electrocuted myself before, surprisingly enough, but it really hurts! The jolt literally knocked me off my feet so not only is my right pointer finger still numb I also have a bruise on my hip.
Fun teacher Claire really doesn’t translate well in this context and so I cannot wait for exam time to be over. And then there’s marking. O lord I hate marking. I was a genius and assigned a composition portion on the exam which is brutal to grade. An excerpt, “When we gone to visity my boyfriend in the way met a coach very longer than a taxis in the coach saw a beautiful girl had a small luggage.” How do you mark that? I don’t want to be discouraging but it’s just wrong on so many levels. So I get to come home every night to that 450 times over. Basically I hate exams but when it’s all over my Mummy is going to be here and we’re going to see the gorillas!
I’m really looking forward to her visit but even before that we are having a big party in Butare for Shira’s birthday and my German and Dutch friends going away party. So that’s getting me through the days. Last Friday, when I was really too sick to have been doing anything, I went with Elizabeth, Yves and Adrien to a Music Awards Ceremony. It was at the auditorium at the National University, which can comfortably accommodate around 300 people but there were over a thousand in attendance. People were climbing up the walls, literally, standing on the armrests, hanging over the balconies, and it was basically just mass chaos and SO HOT. I really enjoyed it though. My friend Ali is like the Rwandan equivalent of Ryan Seacrest so we were right in the front and I got to see my favorite Rwandan singer Kitoko perform my favorite song which was sooooo exciting, Yves and Adrien were jumping up and down in excitement for me which was sweet. I’ll post pictures, the “celebrity” fashion here is pretty hilarious.
I’m also working on pictures of my locale and school. Taking pics of my walk to school is proving to be difficult though since Rwandans are so sensitive to having their picture taken. Someone told me it is because they do not want to be put on a poster of some NGO in the west and then never receive any of the funds their image generates. I think that’s a stretch but nonetheless it is common to be asked for 100 francs if you get someone in your frame. No problem taking pictures of my fave neighborhood kids though, who, by the way, are completely obsessed with my garbage. I have created a monster. Every time I walk by its, “Poubelle? Poubelle?” I’m afraid they probably asked someone for the word for garbage in French because that is literally the only non-Kinyarwanda word they know which is mortifying.
I’ve had some major living alone follies lately. I’m getting used to living alone but I am still deathly afraid of the dark and since the electricity really only works when it feels like it I always have a flashlight with me. Last night I was walking through my really long really dark hallway on my way to bed. I was holding my ipod and flashlight in the same hand and the tangled mass of my headphones fell in front of the light projecting a horrific figure on my wall. In my rational mind I knew what it was but in my living alone scared of the dark mind it could have been any number of creepy crawly things so I screamed. I screamed so loud that moments later I got an urgent call from my very sweet neighbor who doesn’t speak a word of English but still comes over to visit and we just stare at each other very awkwardly. Anyway, I think I convinced her that I was alright because she didn’t come over but I’m sure she thinks I’m a total head case. Also having to do with intermittent electricity, I was unplugging my phone charger yesterday quite clumsily, my usual mode of operation, when the electricity all of asudden turned back on. I have never electrocuted myself before, surprisingly enough, but it really hurts! The jolt literally knocked me off my feet so not only is my right pointer finger still numb I also have a bruise on my hip.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Fingers crossed!
As if I am not already enough of a spectacle I now have the added bonus of having the worst Laryngitis ever known to man. I can barely even whisper. Naturally I want to curl up in a ball and sleep and drink water until my voice comes back but I can’t because it’s exam time. So I’ve been struggling through review sessions, which I’m really not sure of the benefit of due to my incomprehensibility, but I feel obligated anyways. Big momma (the school bursar) keeps insisting that I need to eat a mixture of raw eggs and lime-juice and I’ll be fine but I think I would rather be sick then ever taste that concoction, much less suffer the stomach consequences of the raw eggs! So now when I walk past all the primary school children and they say ‘Bonjour!’ or ‘Good Morning!’ I croak back some unintelligible word and they fall apart in hysterics and so they start again and on and on until my dignity sinks to levels I never knew possible at the hands of seven year olds. No not really I love those little rascals.
One thing that I think is so weird with this voice issue is everyone whispers now when they talk to me. A new teacher, who I think is pretty creepy, came up to me in the staff room and whispered, “Is your director single?” I answered, “Are you sick as well?” and he whispered back, “No. So is she?” I signaled back that I couldn’t hear him very theatrically and then walked away. I thought he was just being the weirdo that I already think him to be and then I started talking to other people and realizing they were all speaking so softly. I guess it’s kind of sweet in a way.
The director who the teacher was referring to is my director from WorldTeach who came to do a site visit for a couple days. Another awkward encounter in the staff room, one of the younger teachers marched right up to her and exclaimed, “O! Claire’s mother! You are welcome. You are just as beautiful as the pictures!” Jessi is barely thirty and doesn’t look a thing like my mother. Naturally I was mortified and signaled wildly behind her to shut up but he just kept going. She seemed to take it in stride but it made for quite an awkward couple of minutes.
I think the reason I’m so sick is because of my adventures with Jessi on her visit. Nyanza was home to the kings of Rwanda before Rwanda won it’s independence in ’62???? I should know that. Anyway, we went to see the King’s Palace which is really a very interesting reconstruction of the royal huts they lived in up to the early 1900’s. Rwanda really got the shaft with that whole Scramble for Africa, it used to be much bigger. Was that last comment in bad taste? Yves, who was born in Congo, loves to emphasize that he is actually Rwandan but the white people messed up the borders. So it was a nice, enlightening trip but for some reason we hopped on motos to go home without a second thought to the very dark clouds on the horizon. The weather, as I have mentioned, moves SO fast. I got dressed that morning in a tank top and left the umbrella and rain jacket that I always have with me at school in my haste to meet Jessi at the bus. Almost immediately after we got on the motos it started to rain. Not rain like I used to think of it, but the aggressive wall of water that seems to now thrash Nyanza everyday around three in the afternoon. It hurts really badly. I was literally buckled over with my helmet buried in to the back on the driver, praying that he wasn’t doing the same thing. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see the Rwandans packed under the awnings of businesses pointing and laughing, also buckled over but for a different reason. When we finally got back we were soaked to the bone and so frazzled that we both darted down the hill to my house with our helmets still on. We couldn’t hear the drivers screaming at us over the pounding rain so when we reached my porch they were right behind us screaming at us for trying to steal their helmets. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time, well actually not since I went swimming in that puddle on my way to visit Elizabeth. So ya, now I have laryngitis and I’m thinking that’s probably why.
Fingers crossed it’s not Malaria or Typhoid!
One thing that I think is so weird with this voice issue is everyone whispers now when they talk to me. A new teacher, who I think is pretty creepy, came up to me in the staff room and whispered, “Is your director single?” I answered, “Are you sick as well?” and he whispered back, “No. So is she?” I signaled back that I couldn’t hear him very theatrically and then walked away. I thought he was just being the weirdo that I already think him to be and then I started talking to other people and realizing they were all speaking so softly. I guess it’s kind of sweet in a way.
The director who the teacher was referring to is my director from WorldTeach who came to do a site visit for a couple days. Another awkward encounter in the staff room, one of the younger teachers marched right up to her and exclaimed, “O! Claire’s mother! You are welcome. You are just as beautiful as the pictures!” Jessi is barely thirty and doesn’t look a thing like my mother. Naturally I was mortified and signaled wildly behind her to shut up but he just kept going. She seemed to take it in stride but it made for quite an awkward couple of minutes.
I think the reason I’m so sick is because of my adventures with Jessi on her visit. Nyanza was home to the kings of Rwanda before Rwanda won it’s independence in ’62???? I should know that. Anyway, we went to see the King’s Palace which is really a very interesting reconstruction of the royal huts they lived in up to the early 1900’s. Rwanda really got the shaft with that whole Scramble for Africa, it used to be much bigger. Was that last comment in bad taste? Yves, who was born in Congo, loves to emphasize that he is actually Rwandan but the white people messed up the borders. So it was a nice, enlightening trip but for some reason we hopped on motos to go home without a second thought to the very dark clouds on the horizon. The weather, as I have mentioned, moves SO fast. I got dressed that morning in a tank top and left the umbrella and rain jacket that I always have with me at school in my haste to meet Jessi at the bus. Almost immediately after we got on the motos it started to rain. Not rain like I used to think of it, but the aggressive wall of water that seems to now thrash Nyanza everyday around three in the afternoon. It hurts really badly. I was literally buckled over with my helmet buried in to the back on the driver, praying that he wasn’t doing the same thing. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see the Rwandans packed under the awnings of businesses pointing and laughing, also buckled over but for a different reason. When we finally got back we were soaked to the bone and so frazzled that we both darted down the hill to my house with our helmets still on. We couldn’t hear the drivers screaming at us over the pounding rain so when we reached my porch they were right behind us screaming at us for trying to steal their helmets. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time, well actually not since I went swimming in that puddle on my way to visit Elizabeth. So ya, now I have laryngitis and I’m thinking that’s probably why.
Fingers crossed it’s not Malaria or Typhoid!
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Small World
It is a small world after all. While on an impromptu trip to Kigali I figured out just how small. My cravings have moved east to Indian food and so Elizabeth and I went to the capital for a curry dinner. We decided to stay at the same place we had stayed for orientation but upon arrival the nuns who run the hostel were nowhere to be found. While we were waiting a group of Peace Corps volunteers arrived who also needed to get in to the office. As we stood around chatting I was struck by the realization that I knew one of the girls. I turned to her and said, “Did you do Semester at Sea?” and she said, “Ohmigod we went to that beach in Brazil together!” SO WEIRD. Here we are, literally on the other side of the world, and we run back in to one another. She also went to university with a girl I used to row with in high school and is good friends with a friend of mine from Prague. All this we ascertained while on the ship and even then we thought it was weird and small worldish but this was just creepy. Also really cool at the same time. We had a class together on the ship which was by far my favorite class I ever took in college. It was Third World Development and I guess my current situation illustrates just how big an effect it had on me! Anyway, it was really great to see her, we decided we were just destined to have weird parallel lives so we may as well be better friends.
I have been cooking some impressive meals if I do say so myself. All from scratch and all organic. On Friday I made really good pasta sauce, tonight I made Chicken noodle soup sans chicken and on Thursday I made curried rice risotto with tomato, onion and garlic all without a cookbook. Considering my diet in San Diego consisted mostly of restaurant food, mac and cheese, and cookie dough (my roommates can attest to this) I’m pretty proud. So I’ve been doing pretty well with the cooking, but Elizabeth says job creation is important, or at least that’s how I justify it, so now I have a girl who comes on Saturdays and Sundays to help me clean and do laundry and whatnot. Instead of calling her my housegirl I call her my housefriend since she is the same age as me and lives alone as well which is apparently really unusual. I tried to explain this to her but she doesn’t speak a word of English and my Kinyarwanda is about as terrible as my French so when she comes to visit we basically talk to each other exclusively in a language the other does not understand and then burst out laughing. It’s fun for the first couple minutes. I am so happy with the job she does. She even cleans my shoes! The Rwandese foot/shoe obsession is a little weird to me but hey I can’t complain about clean shoes. The only problem is she is stealing my condensed milk. Here, condensed milk is called Nido and oddly enough I love it. Also it’s a status symbol to drink it which is opposite from the ‘west’ but this ties in to the fact that its pretty expensive relatively. I’m not sure if she sees it as a perk of working for the local Mzungu or what but my big tin of Nido I bought a week ago is almost gone! I think I will have to lock it away next time. I’m locking away condensed milk from my ‘housefriend’. Sometimes when I read back my blog I think my life is really weird.
I was talking to my favorite little sister in the world (shout out!) last night and for some reason I got to thinking about how strange my life really is. According to my friend Dan all good writers are self-absorbed tools so I’m going to test it out. Unless the whole starting a blog thing…..? Anyway, I am constantly walking here. Whether it be to school or to the bus or to the store or what have you. And it’s a weird thing this whole white skin deal. If not for the constant “mzungu” or “seestah” I really sometimes get in a zone where I forget how much I stick out. Every once in a while I see another American, there are a zillion of them in Butare, and I think wow I stick out as much as that person. It’s a very weird and out of body thing. I’m not naïve enough to say that skin color does not matter in America but obviously the degree to which one sticks out is significantly less since we are one big happy melting pot. SO it is really strange to be living in a town and constantly be a spectacle solely based on the color of my skin. Yes I officially feel like a tool I don’t think I’ll be doing much more of this self-indulgent stuff.
Speaking of self-indulgent I have a new one for the therapy couch, I tried to take my Senior 1’s to the computer lab on Friday as promised but the other teacher took the lab before I could find a key! I was livid. He then proceeded to tell me, in French, that I didn’t have class that hour because he had erased it off their schedule on the blackboard. After all that threatening in the class before and then I couldn’t even follow through! It all felt a little too Kabarore for me so my turrets took over and I started berating him in very rapid English and then stormed off to a thunderous applause from his class of Senior 3’s. I’m not sure they would be applauding if they had any idea what I said but I find this method to be very therapeutic if not slightly psychotic. I also have given a lecture on karma to one of my neighbors who yells at me in Kinyarwanda literally every time I walk by and then laughs hysterically. I let him know how beautiful the furniture he makes is and how I would never buy a piece of it and there must be a reason why no one else buys it either. Is it bad if my coping mechanism is the exact same as the reason I have to cope in the first place?
One last note: Yes Kate, rapport! That’s the one☺
O and P.S.S My bff little sis got in to TWO UNIVERSITIES! I’m so happy. Is that enough of a shout out to get you to read my blog now you little brat/cuuuuute?
I have been cooking some impressive meals if I do say so myself. All from scratch and all organic. On Friday I made really good pasta sauce, tonight I made Chicken noodle soup sans chicken and on Thursday I made curried rice risotto with tomato, onion and garlic all without a cookbook. Considering my diet in San Diego consisted mostly of restaurant food, mac and cheese, and cookie dough (my roommates can attest to this) I’m pretty proud. So I’ve been doing pretty well with the cooking, but Elizabeth says job creation is important, or at least that’s how I justify it, so now I have a girl who comes on Saturdays and Sundays to help me clean and do laundry and whatnot. Instead of calling her my housegirl I call her my housefriend since she is the same age as me and lives alone as well which is apparently really unusual. I tried to explain this to her but she doesn’t speak a word of English and my Kinyarwanda is about as terrible as my French so when she comes to visit we basically talk to each other exclusively in a language the other does not understand and then burst out laughing. It’s fun for the first couple minutes. I am so happy with the job she does. She even cleans my shoes! The Rwandese foot/shoe obsession is a little weird to me but hey I can’t complain about clean shoes. The only problem is she is stealing my condensed milk. Here, condensed milk is called Nido and oddly enough I love it. Also it’s a status symbol to drink it which is opposite from the ‘west’ but this ties in to the fact that its pretty expensive relatively. I’m not sure if she sees it as a perk of working for the local Mzungu or what but my big tin of Nido I bought a week ago is almost gone! I think I will have to lock it away next time. I’m locking away condensed milk from my ‘housefriend’. Sometimes when I read back my blog I think my life is really weird.
I was talking to my favorite little sister in the world (shout out!) last night and for some reason I got to thinking about how strange my life really is. According to my friend Dan all good writers are self-absorbed tools so I’m going to test it out. Unless the whole starting a blog thing…..? Anyway, I am constantly walking here. Whether it be to school or to the bus or to the store or what have you. And it’s a weird thing this whole white skin deal. If not for the constant “mzungu” or “seestah” I really sometimes get in a zone where I forget how much I stick out. Every once in a while I see another American, there are a zillion of them in Butare, and I think wow I stick out as much as that person. It’s a very weird and out of body thing. I’m not naïve enough to say that skin color does not matter in America but obviously the degree to which one sticks out is significantly less since we are one big happy melting pot. SO it is really strange to be living in a town and constantly be a spectacle solely based on the color of my skin. Yes I officially feel like a tool I don’t think I’ll be doing much more of this self-indulgent stuff.
Speaking of self-indulgent I have a new one for the therapy couch, I tried to take my Senior 1’s to the computer lab on Friday as promised but the other teacher took the lab before I could find a key! I was livid. He then proceeded to tell me, in French, that I didn’t have class that hour because he had erased it off their schedule on the blackboard. After all that threatening in the class before and then I couldn’t even follow through! It all felt a little too Kabarore for me so my turrets took over and I started berating him in very rapid English and then stormed off to a thunderous applause from his class of Senior 3’s. I’m not sure they would be applauding if they had any idea what I said but I find this method to be very therapeutic if not slightly psychotic. I also have given a lecture on karma to one of my neighbors who yells at me in Kinyarwanda literally every time I walk by and then laughs hysterically. I let him know how beautiful the furniture he makes is and how I would never buy a piece of it and there must be a reason why no one else buys it either. Is it bad if my coping mechanism is the exact same as the reason I have to cope in the first place?
One last note: Yes Kate, rapport! That’s the one☺
O and P.S.S My bff little sis got in to TWO UNIVERSITIES! I’m so happy. Is that enough of a shout out to get you to read my blog now you little brat/cuuuuute?
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Larium Sucks.
There’s nothing better than waking up in the morning to, first, a HUGE cockroach caught by my quasi cockroach trap which is really just the bucket of water necessitated by my leaking sink and then, second, reaching for my toothpaste and instead grabbing the head of a lizard. I’m a little shaken to say the least! O well I still love Nyanza (minus the cockroaches, the lizards I can deal with). The cast of characters I have come to know are very entertaining and on the whole everyone is very welcoming. My favorite is the little primary school kid with no teeth who comes up to me whenever he sees me and very earnestly says, “Good morning Care! Howayu? I’m fine sanks!” I love that little guy. Also, the bursar’s son Bruno who knows every single dance move from his bootlegged music video CD and performs very confidently (he’s five) but whenever he sees me can barely make eye-contact he’s so shy but smiles proudly at his friends when I give him a big hug.
I’ve also had the pleasure? of meeting a man I’ve coined Malaria man. Apparently the government has given up on mosquito nets since people are resistant to using them and has now decided to spray for mosquitoes. The spray is so toxic that you have to bring your mattress outside while they spray and stay outside for four hours. Personally, I am not at all resistant to using my mosquito net, even if it does make for a very awkward foray into bed at night as I attempt not to disrupt the perfectly taut tucking. Also I’m taking Larium, which is punishment enough without the added toxic chemicals so I really don’t want them to spray. But Malaria man’s resolve is unwavering. He’s everywhere! And always full of excuses. First they were supposed to come on Thursday and came instead on Wednesday when I have school and then we decided they would come on Saturday morning. So I dutifully woke up at seven put everything of value in my wardrobe because it locks and then sat and waited. Finally at two I gave up and went to the market. Of course as I’m walking to the market I see all the sprayers, masks and all (very similar to ghost busters) lying under a tree barely conscious. Malaria man comes running toward me and asks why I wasn’t there they came to knock twice. I started laughing and told him he was lying, I sat in front of the door all morning. So then he was going to come Sunday night, but it rained, so naturally why would he keep an appointment? Whatever. I haven’t heard from him for a while so that’s encouraging at least his stalking isn’t vicious.
What are vicious though are my crazy Larium nightmares. Larium is a weekly malaria medication that, in theory, taking is a no brainer. But then there are the dreams. O man the dreams. Last night I dreamt that every friend I have ever had in the world came to Nyanza to visit the King’s palace and I saw them walk past my house and I kept yelling and no one would answer and then everyone started to run away! And it just kept happening all night long and it is way more vivid than any dream I have ever had. I woke up drenched in sweat multiple times, but my mind just wouldn’t let go of the image. So my recommendation to anyone considering taking malaria meds is go for doxy or malarone. Larium sucks.
Another side effect of Larium is balance issues. Or at least that’s my excuse. This weekend Yves, Adrian and I went to visit Elizabeth in Save which is very near Butare. Usually, I am the only Mzungu in Nyanza but this time there was another girl trying to figure out how to get to Butare. I giggled along with Yves and Adrian as she tried to figure out which bus to get on but play it cool at the same time. I sat between my two buddies feeling very smug and well adjusted. When we arrived in Save I went on to show just how well adjusted I really am. I got off the bus and began to walk down the dirt path but it had just rained (big surprise) and there were many puddles to avoid. Literally the first puddle we got to, which was more like a pond, I lost my footing on the walk around and slid fully in to the puddle. Totally immersed. And then Yves tried to help me but the bottom of the puddle/pond was so slippery that I could not find my footing. It was awful. And to add to all that I had the audience of the entire minibus, all the bike taxi men who give rides into town, and about twenty townspeople. All of which simultaneously started to scream Mzungu as if that would help. When I finally found my footing the three of us were in fits of laughter for about an hour and now everytime I walk around a puddle they make some joke about being careful. As most of you know I am normally the picture of grace, so, again, larium sucks!
Luckily Larium has not affected my teaching. However, with my 7th graders my accent definitely has. I was painstakingly drawing all the elements of the desktop on the chalkboard in ICT and a group of six students in the back would not stop talking. I mostly teach 10th, 11th, and 12th graders who are more or less my age so we always have fun and respect each other. Teaching 7th graders is like babysitting, or I guess most of them are around 16 or 17 so I guess it’s like actually teaching high school, but I do not have as strong a repoire with them since I only teach them two hours a week. So anyway I told the students if they did not keep quiet they would not be allowed in the computer lab on Friday because going to the lab is mass chaos when the students are on their best behavior so I try to keep the bad ones in check by being strict during theory. The students looked at me smiled and then went right back to talking. I was livid. I went to the back and said listen I expect your respect but if you want you can go see the discipline master. They just kept smiling. So I said do you understand? And they said yes teacher! And I said so do you want to go to the lab? Yes teacher! So will you stop talking? Yes teacher! Or should I send you to the prefect? Yes teacher! You want to go see the headmaster? Yes teacher! Huge smiles on their faces and all. I looked around and said, “alright. Raise your hand if you understand anything I am saying.” No joke, five kids out of SEVENTY raised their hands. I told one of those students to translate for me and the students looked absolutely terrified and started saying sorry teacher! Please teacher! Sorry! They are just so gosh darn cute that I let it go and then I proceeded to explain turning on the computer eight different times in eight different ways/banging my head against the wall.
I’ve also had the pleasure? of meeting a man I’ve coined Malaria man. Apparently the government has given up on mosquito nets since people are resistant to using them and has now decided to spray for mosquitoes. The spray is so toxic that you have to bring your mattress outside while they spray and stay outside for four hours. Personally, I am not at all resistant to using my mosquito net, even if it does make for a very awkward foray into bed at night as I attempt not to disrupt the perfectly taut tucking. Also I’m taking Larium, which is punishment enough without the added toxic chemicals so I really don’t want them to spray. But Malaria man’s resolve is unwavering. He’s everywhere! And always full of excuses. First they were supposed to come on Thursday and came instead on Wednesday when I have school and then we decided they would come on Saturday morning. So I dutifully woke up at seven put everything of value in my wardrobe because it locks and then sat and waited. Finally at two I gave up and went to the market. Of course as I’m walking to the market I see all the sprayers, masks and all (very similar to ghost busters) lying under a tree barely conscious. Malaria man comes running toward me and asks why I wasn’t there they came to knock twice. I started laughing and told him he was lying, I sat in front of the door all morning. So then he was going to come Sunday night, but it rained, so naturally why would he keep an appointment? Whatever. I haven’t heard from him for a while so that’s encouraging at least his stalking isn’t vicious.
What are vicious though are my crazy Larium nightmares. Larium is a weekly malaria medication that, in theory, taking is a no brainer. But then there are the dreams. O man the dreams. Last night I dreamt that every friend I have ever had in the world came to Nyanza to visit the King’s palace and I saw them walk past my house and I kept yelling and no one would answer and then everyone started to run away! And it just kept happening all night long and it is way more vivid than any dream I have ever had. I woke up drenched in sweat multiple times, but my mind just wouldn’t let go of the image. So my recommendation to anyone considering taking malaria meds is go for doxy or malarone. Larium sucks.
Another side effect of Larium is balance issues. Or at least that’s my excuse. This weekend Yves, Adrian and I went to visit Elizabeth in Save which is very near Butare. Usually, I am the only Mzungu in Nyanza but this time there was another girl trying to figure out how to get to Butare. I giggled along with Yves and Adrian as she tried to figure out which bus to get on but play it cool at the same time. I sat between my two buddies feeling very smug and well adjusted. When we arrived in Save I went on to show just how well adjusted I really am. I got off the bus and began to walk down the dirt path but it had just rained (big surprise) and there were many puddles to avoid. Literally the first puddle we got to, which was more like a pond, I lost my footing on the walk around and slid fully in to the puddle. Totally immersed. And then Yves tried to help me but the bottom of the puddle/pond was so slippery that I could not find my footing. It was awful. And to add to all that I had the audience of the entire minibus, all the bike taxi men who give rides into town, and about twenty townspeople. All of which simultaneously started to scream Mzungu as if that would help. When I finally found my footing the three of us were in fits of laughter for about an hour and now everytime I walk around a puddle they make some joke about being careful. As most of you know I am normally the picture of grace, so, again, larium sucks!
Luckily Larium has not affected my teaching. However, with my 7th graders my accent definitely has. I was painstakingly drawing all the elements of the desktop on the chalkboard in ICT and a group of six students in the back would not stop talking. I mostly teach 10th, 11th, and 12th graders who are more or less my age so we always have fun and respect each other. Teaching 7th graders is like babysitting, or I guess most of them are around 16 or 17 so I guess it’s like actually teaching high school, but I do not have as strong a repoire with them since I only teach them two hours a week. So anyway I told the students if they did not keep quiet they would not be allowed in the computer lab on Friday because going to the lab is mass chaos when the students are on their best behavior so I try to keep the bad ones in check by being strict during theory. The students looked at me smiled and then went right back to talking. I was livid. I went to the back and said listen I expect your respect but if you want you can go see the discipline master. They just kept smiling. So I said do you understand? And they said yes teacher! And I said so do you want to go to the lab? Yes teacher! So will you stop talking? Yes teacher! Or should I send you to the prefect? Yes teacher! You want to go see the headmaster? Yes teacher! Huge smiles on their faces and all. I looked around and said, “alright. Raise your hand if you understand anything I am saying.” No joke, five kids out of SEVENTY raised their hands. I told one of those students to translate for me and the students looked absolutely terrified and started saying sorry teacher! Please teacher! Sorry! They are just so gosh darn cute that I let it go and then I proceeded to explain turning on the computer eight different times in eight different ways/banging my head against the wall.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Dirt!
Where I once used to dread returning home, I was very happy to return to Nyanza after a weekend in Kigali. Orientation took place in Kigali and those first few weeks I was so happy with the price of anything. I thought it was so cheap, now I am scandalized by the prices in the capital. I almost went in to debt in just three days! Which isn’t hard when you are only making two hundred dollars a month and the ministry, which is paying half of that, just hasn’t really gotten around to making the payment yet! So anyway, I gave in to my Spaghetti Bolognese craving and ate so much over two days that I think I gained about ten pounds. Not a problem though considering my eating problems in Kabarore had me looking pretty gaunt. Also my hair isn’t falling out in clumps anymore and I don’t sleep all day. Basically I am coming back to life. Man I sound like a wreck, I’m really doing great I promise.
It seems like every person has a different explanation for whether or not it is the rainy season yet. I have come to the conclusion though, that the seasons are definitely changing. On Sunday, when I was heading back home, it literally poured. Not poured in the sense we think of where it just rains hard, but the sky actually opens and a wall of water falls from it for about an hour. It’s the most intense rain I have ever experienced and it makes things REALLY difficult on dirt roads. I had to walk about half a mile on a dirt road in my Rainbows (flip flops) and it took me close to an hour. Every step was such an effort and by the time I reached the pavement my feet were completely covered in dirt. For being a very moist and dirt centered country Rwandese are so conscious of the presence of it. Everyone just stared at my feet for the next two hours but I really didn’t have any way of washing them, so when I got to Nyanza the first thing Yves and Adrien said to me was, “oh! My god. What is this? Why do you walk around like this? You are very dirty. My god.” I responded, “Alright. Good to see you guys too.”
There is a lot of dirt in Rwanda but Rwanda is not at all dirty. I would argue that there is much less trash on the streets than even the most developed countries. And not because there are crazy fines for littering, Rwandese just take a lot of pride in their country. While this is really great, it makes disposing of garbage extremely puzzling. Obviously there is no garbage service and in Kabarore I used to give my garbage to the houseboy to burn but here I am going sans houseboy. So what am I supposed to do with it? Everyone else’s just seems to disappear. So I brought my bag of garbage to school and the bursar looked pretty offended and refused to take it. Ugh awkward! She told me it would be better to just give it to a boy and tell him ingarani which is Kinyarwanda for garbage and give him fifty francs. I was all prepared to do this, and praying I would ask someone’s houseboy and not totally offend someone. How am I supposed to know who’s who? The street children who loiter near my house happened to be around when I returned home and I tentatively said inngaaaaraaani? To this, they literally rushed me grabbing the bag and sprinting away. I’m not really sure where they went or what they did with it and I didn’t even get the chance to pay them. Now they sit outside of my house yelling ingarani which is getting old but they are such cute little kids I can’t shoo them away.
Everyday when I walk to school I have to walk past two primary schools. Sometimes I love this and sometimes I hate it. Invariably the first kid who sees me starts yelling Mzungu and then all the other students stop what they are doing and start yelling Good Morning! It doesn’t matter what time of day it is they always say Good Morning, so does everyone so I am trying to introduce the idea of Good Afternoon and Good Evening to the population of Nyanza! Anyway, sometimes the kids are really cute and just want hugs but other times there is some little brat who starts the whole “give me your money!” (Did I mention there is no word for please in Kinyarwanda) and to this all the other otherwise adorable kids start chanting with him. Before you think I am too harsh it is important to note that even though school is free for the first nine years, the poorest families keep their children home to help around the house. Begging is definitely learned and I would love to know who taught them “give me your money” when they can barely say “What is your name?”. Anyway the other day I was fed up and I turned around and said to about fifty ten year-olds OYA! Which means no. They all stood in shock for a second and then turned and ran in the other direction. I don’t think those kids say Good morning to me anymore!
The students at my school are great. I really love my English classes and I’m warming up to the Computer courses although teaching ICT on a chalkboard presents a range of problems, also going to the computer lab with eight working computers and 55 students eager to look up Akon on the internet gets really out of hand. I’m working on it though. Also, trying to teach creativity in English is humorous at best. I taught a lesson on Comparative and Superlative adjectives and then asked the students to write a story incorporating two of each and five of the vocabulary words for the week. When talking about the story I said they could write about anything, a window through which they can see the future, their pet elephant with eight legs, or their trip to Uganda. Anything! When I graded the stories I got a few stories about the window, a few more about the elephant, and then the rest about their trip to Uganda. O well better luck next time. One student in particular was very interested in reading his story aloud. Today, when I allowed this he began to read a completely different story then the one I had graded. He began, “ I want to tell a story about the most beautiful teacher that ever lived from America. She is teaching me American English and I like the way she moves.” I was mortified. I interrupted him midsentence and said Thank you have a seat and then we had a little discussion after class.
Alright I’m all anecdoted out. I had a great birthday. Thank you to everyone who sent me cards, Shira brought them to me when we celebrated in Butare on the weekend. Also, if anyone sent me packages to Matimba, don’t worry Shira is stranded there so she can get them for me. When you eat really good food think of me!
It seems like every person has a different explanation for whether or not it is the rainy season yet. I have come to the conclusion though, that the seasons are definitely changing. On Sunday, when I was heading back home, it literally poured. Not poured in the sense we think of where it just rains hard, but the sky actually opens and a wall of water falls from it for about an hour. It’s the most intense rain I have ever experienced and it makes things REALLY difficult on dirt roads. I had to walk about half a mile on a dirt road in my Rainbows (flip flops) and it took me close to an hour. Every step was such an effort and by the time I reached the pavement my feet were completely covered in dirt. For being a very moist and dirt centered country Rwandese are so conscious of the presence of it. Everyone just stared at my feet for the next two hours but I really didn’t have any way of washing them, so when I got to Nyanza the first thing Yves and Adrien said to me was, “oh! My god. What is this? Why do you walk around like this? You are very dirty. My god.” I responded, “Alright. Good to see you guys too.”
There is a lot of dirt in Rwanda but Rwanda is not at all dirty. I would argue that there is much less trash on the streets than even the most developed countries. And not because there are crazy fines for littering, Rwandese just take a lot of pride in their country. While this is really great, it makes disposing of garbage extremely puzzling. Obviously there is no garbage service and in Kabarore I used to give my garbage to the houseboy to burn but here I am going sans houseboy. So what am I supposed to do with it? Everyone else’s just seems to disappear. So I brought my bag of garbage to school and the bursar looked pretty offended and refused to take it. Ugh awkward! She told me it would be better to just give it to a boy and tell him ingarani which is Kinyarwanda for garbage and give him fifty francs. I was all prepared to do this, and praying I would ask someone’s houseboy and not totally offend someone. How am I supposed to know who’s who? The street children who loiter near my house happened to be around when I returned home and I tentatively said inngaaaaraaani? To this, they literally rushed me grabbing the bag and sprinting away. I’m not really sure where they went or what they did with it and I didn’t even get the chance to pay them. Now they sit outside of my house yelling ingarani which is getting old but they are such cute little kids I can’t shoo them away.
Everyday when I walk to school I have to walk past two primary schools. Sometimes I love this and sometimes I hate it. Invariably the first kid who sees me starts yelling Mzungu and then all the other students stop what they are doing and start yelling Good Morning! It doesn’t matter what time of day it is they always say Good Morning, so does everyone so I am trying to introduce the idea of Good Afternoon and Good Evening to the population of Nyanza! Anyway, sometimes the kids are really cute and just want hugs but other times there is some little brat who starts the whole “give me your money!” (Did I mention there is no word for please in Kinyarwanda) and to this all the other otherwise adorable kids start chanting with him. Before you think I am too harsh it is important to note that even though school is free for the first nine years, the poorest families keep their children home to help around the house. Begging is definitely learned and I would love to know who taught them “give me your money” when they can barely say “What is your name?”. Anyway the other day I was fed up and I turned around and said to about fifty ten year-olds OYA! Which means no. They all stood in shock for a second and then turned and ran in the other direction. I don’t think those kids say Good morning to me anymore!
The students at my school are great. I really love my English classes and I’m warming up to the Computer courses although teaching ICT on a chalkboard presents a range of problems, also going to the computer lab with eight working computers and 55 students eager to look up Akon on the internet gets really out of hand. I’m working on it though. Also, trying to teach creativity in English is humorous at best. I taught a lesson on Comparative and Superlative adjectives and then asked the students to write a story incorporating two of each and five of the vocabulary words for the week. When talking about the story I said they could write about anything, a window through which they can see the future, their pet elephant with eight legs, or their trip to Uganda. Anything! When I graded the stories I got a few stories about the window, a few more about the elephant, and then the rest about their trip to Uganda. O well better luck next time. One student in particular was very interested in reading his story aloud. Today, when I allowed this he began to read a completely different story then the one I had graded. He began, “ I want to tell a story about the most beautiful teacher that ever lived from America. She is teaching me American English and I like the way she moves.” I was mortified. I interrupted him midsentence and said Thank you have a seat and then we had a little discussion after class.
Alright I’m all anecdoted out. I had a great birthday. Thank you to everyone who sent me cards, Shira brought them to me when we celebrated in Butare on the weekend. Also, if anyone sent me packages to Matimba, don’t worry Shira is stranded there so she can get them for me. When you eat really good food think of me!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Surprise!
Surprise! I’ve moved. I’m sure, as far as family goes, the cats out of the bag and I apologize for not updating sooner but I actually have a life now with an actual workload and reponsibilities! Basically I felt like I was wasting my time in my previous situation. I put up a good front but the reality of the situation was really weighing on me. When I finally made the decision to leave my hours had dwindled to only six per week (mostly due to the over-zealous geography teacher who saw no problem crossing out history and writing in geography on the timetable). Also, the headmaster is still in the hospital which is just awful but without him none of our many issues could be addressed such as the fact that I was keeping my clothes on the floor because we never got shelves, we had to pay for public transportation very often because the driver rarely showed up and school was thirty minutes away, we were taking showers at the foot of our beds because there were no facilities, and the school had essentially gone to hell in the headmasters absence. The headmasters situation is looking very bleak. His entire leg has now been cut off. Apparently he is diabetic and did not really understand the gravity of the situation when he stepped on the nail and thus gangrene set in very rapidly. They are still waiting to see if they caught it before it proceeded beyond his leg because if that’s the case there will be nothing they can do. Which is absolutely terrible and you can imagine my embarrassment at leaving in the middle of all that. Oh well, a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do.
So here I am. I have moved to Nyanza, which is about an hour and a half south of Kigali and forty minutes north of Butare. I could not be happier. Everything is great here. I’m teaching at Ecole des Sciences de Louis de Montfort de Nyanza. (Not sure if all those de’s are correct!) My headmaster is honestly the nicest man, although his English is touch and go so who knows how he talks about me in Kinyarwanda. I am teaching English to the Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors as well as Computers to Seventh graders and Sophomores. I have a healthy twenty hours, plus, on Wednesdays, I am teaching a two hour class for the teachers, more on that later.
The students also have very high expectations for the English club I will be starting which is causing me quite a lot of anxiety. One student came up to me and told me if the English club was open to all students then all of them would show up so he “took the liberty” of going to each form and having the chief of the class appoint five students who are allowed to attend. What on earth am I going to teach to someone who says “took the liberty”. Granted his pronunciation was more like liebeartay but either way. Also, the other English teacher at the school has kindly informed me that I really need not bother teaching phonetics or pronunciation since I have an American accent and here they are learning British English. I in turn kindly informed him that my family lives in England and I’m afraid the accent he’s teaching is not British but rather African English. Jerk! I feel like I am constantly defending my accent when it comes to any sort of academia, I can not even count now how many times I have given the “every accent is legitimate” speech.
Since the Senior 5’s and 6’s are still on the French system and will take their exams in French we spend most of our time listening to music, and discussing culture and current events which I absolutely love. They all just about fell out of their chairs when they asked about my rings and I told them the reason my Irish Clauddaugh ring was on upside down was because my heart was open. I’ve figured out that in Rwanda the life expectancy is 45 thus I am middle-aged so it’s cause for great concern that I’m not married or at least about to be. So I rescinded my statement and now the prevailing belief at the school is that my fiancée and I will be married as soon as I return home in December. I’m thinking it is for this reason that my headmaster asked me, with an all-knowing smile, how the visit with my fiancée went after my German friend came to visit me from Butare. Again with the awkwardness!
The Senior 4’s are the first who will take their exams in English since Rwanda made the switch. Kagame is REALLY mad at the French, look up Rose Kibuye if you’re interested. So we do more Grammar and whatnot. All of my classes have at least fifty students so I am kicking myself for thinking it was a great idea to do Vocabulary quizzes once a week. Now I understand what my teachers were talking about when they said they had too much grading to do! 300 Vocab quizzes in that little incomprehensible squiggle is a lot, plus they don’t really do class lists so I just sent around a sign in sheet making the recording of the marking almost as difficult as the original task. So I’ll be looking in to revamping that system.
It has been a little hard to adjust to living alone. Being very afraid of the dark really hasn’t helped matters! The thing I miss most is free-flowing conversation. When I was living in the East most of the population were returned refugees from Uganda so English was the predominant second language. So not only did I have Shira to talk to, but also any public interaction was easy. Here I am teaching at a francophone school and since my French is quite poor I have been speaking a combo Frenglish language, but mostly repeating myself at least three times in three different ways in order to communicate. Thank goodness they are obliged to learn English or I would feel like a right idiot. This holds true any time I go to the market or store.
Although I have been going to the market with my friend Yves who is in his last year at the National University doing Physics but also teaches Computers in Nyanza. His uncle is my headmaster. All of the courses have already switched to English at the University so he and his friend Adrian are my English-speaking buddies. They make me so jealous because, in Yves case, he was born in Congo(his parents were refugees from the 59 genocide) in a Swahili speaking area, went to school in French, moved here when he was 12 so he speaks Kinyarwanda and now is almost fluent in English. So their combo language is WAY cooler than mine because they speak a mixture of all four languages.
I asked Yves and Adrian what I should teach the teachers because it is difficult to pinpoint what is difficult about English when you speak it natively and they told me to ask the teachers. So at our staff meeting yesterday, which started an hour and a half late, coughsoannoyingscough, I broached the subject. To this the headmaster left the room because he had to go to the district and everyone just stared at me. Essentially the headmaster left me in charge of the meeting which was beyond uncomfortable. Every time I asked a question everyone just stared at me. Even my Senior 1’s who are absolutely terrified of me talk more than they were! So finally, after about 20 minutes of extreme awkwardness, I said look I’ve never been to a staff meeting in Rwanda so I’m not really sure how I ended up running one so if someone wants to help me out that would be awesome. Finally someone said we should go home and I was like great ya let’s do that! So we will see how the actual teaching goes once we begin next Wednesday, ugh the thought of two hours of that silence makes me cringe! It’s so funny too because the teachers are SO friendly and talkative during break but apparently in scholarly settings they resent being anything but the facilitator.
Ok and finally about the accommodation. I live in a palace. I have a big sitting room with FOUR couches. Couches! Sometimes I sit on them just for the sake of it. Also a kitchen table with four really nice chairs. To the right of the sitting room is a small bedroom that I closed off. Then to the left is another random room with the kitchen to the left and hallway to the right. By kitchen I mean a room that I decided I would cook in and put my ELECTRIC stove in. This really is so luxurious. Then there is a bathroom with running water! Although the pipes seem to only work between three and six in the morning, also the sink leaks constantly and the repair man is a VERY old VERY drunk man who always insists he will only take ten minutes and I end up kicking him out after three hours. No big deal though brushing my teeth over a sink is so refreshing. So then continuing down the hallway we have another bedroom, then the room I chose for myself then at the end of the hall a door that I have closed off with two big bedrooms. So basically if anyone wants to come visit, I have PLENTY of room.
Added note from Mom. Claire says this is just the beginning of blogs from Nyanaza-much more to come!
So here I am. I have moved to Nyanza, which is about an hour and a half south of Kigali and forty minutes north of Butare. I could not be happier. Everything is great here. I’m teaching at Ecole des Sciences de Louis de Montfort de Nyanza. (Not sure if all those de’s are correct!) My headmaster is honestly the nicest man, although his English is touch and go so who knows how he talks about me in Kinyarwanda. I am teaching English to the Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors as well as Computers to Seventh graders and Sophomores. I have a healthy twenty hours, plus, on Wednesdays, I am teaching a two hour class for the teachers, more on that later.
The students also have very high expectations for the English club I will be starting which is causing me quite a lot of anxiety. One student came up to me and told me if the English club was open to all students then all of them would show up so he “took the liberty” of going to each form and having the chief of the class appoint five students who are allowed to attend. What on earth am I going to teach to someone who says “took the liberty”. Granted his pronunciation was more like liebeartay but either way. Also, the other English teacher at the school has kindly informed me that I really need not bother teaching phonetics or pronunciation since I have an American accent and here they are learning British English. I in turn kindly informed him that my family lives in England and I’m afraid the accent he’s teaching is not British but rather African English. Jerk! I feel like I am constantly defending my accent when it comes to any sort of academia, I can not even count now how many times I have given the “every accent is legitimate” speech.
Since the Senior 5’s and 6’s are still on the French system and will take their exams in French we spend most of our time listening to music, and discussing culture and current events which I absolutely love. They all just about fell out of their chairs when they asked about my rings and I told them the reason my Irish Clauddaugh ring was on upside down was because my heart was open. I’ve figured out that in Rwanda the life expectancy is 45 thus I am middle-aged so it’s cause for great concern that I’m not married or at least about to be. So I rescinded my statement and now the prevailing belief at the school is that my fiancée and I will be married as soon as I return home in December. I’m thinking it is for this reason that my headmaster asked me, with an all-knowing smile, how the visit with my fiancée went after my German friend came to visit me from Butare. Again with the awkwardness!
The Senior 4’s are the first who will take their exams in English since Rwanda made the switch. Kagame is REALLY mad at the French, look up Rose Kibuye if you’re interested. So we do more Grammar and whatnot. All of my classes have at least fifty students so I am kicking myself for thinking it was a great idea to do Vocabulary quizzes once a week. Now I understand what my teachers were talking about when they said they had too much grading to do! 300 Vocab quizzes in that little incomprehensible squiggle is a lot, plus they don’t really do class lists so I just sent around a sign in sheet making the recording of the marking almost as difficult as the original task. So I’ll be looking in to revamping that system.
It has been a little hard to adjust to living alone. Being very afraid of the dark really hasn’t helped matters! The thing I miss most is free-flowing conversation. When I was living in the East most of the population were returned refugees from Uganda so English was the predominant second language. So not only did I have Shira to talk to, but also any public interaction was easy. Here I am teaching at a francophone school and since my French is quite poor I have been speaking a combo Frenglish language, but mostly repeating myself at least three times in three different ways in order to communicate. Thank goodness they are obliged to learn English or I would feel like a right idiot. This holds true any time I go to the market or store.
Although I have been going to the market with my friend Yves who is in his last year at the National University doing Physics but also teaches Computers in Nyanza. His uncle is my headmaster. All of the courses have already switched to English at the University so he and his friend Adrian are my English-speaking buddies. They make me so jealous because, in Yves case, he was born in Congo(his parents were refugees from the 59 genocide) in a Swahili speaking area, went to school in French, moved here when he was 12 so he speaks Kinyarwanda and now is almost fluent in English. So their combo language is WAY cooler than mine because they speak a mixture of all four languages.
I asked Yves and Adrian what I should teach the teachers because it is difficult to pinpoint what is difficult about English when you speak it natively and they told me to ask the teachers. So at our staff meeting yesterday, which started an hour and a half late, coughsoannoyingscough, I broached the subject. To this the headmaster left the room because he had to go to the district and everyone just stared at me. Essentially the headmaster left me in charge of the meeting which was beyond uncomfortable. Every time I asked a question everyone just stared at me. Even my Senior 1’s who are absolutely terrified of me talk more than they were! So finally, after about 20 minutes of extreme awkwardness, I said look I’ve never been to a staff meeting in Rwanda so I’m not really sure how I ended up running one so if someone wants to help me out that would be awesome. Finally someone said we should go home and I was like great ya let’s do that! So we will see how the actual teaching goes once we begin next Wednesday, ugh the thought of two hours of that silence makes me cringe! It’s so funny too because the teachers are SO friendly and talkative during break but apparently in scholarly settings they resent being anything but the facilitator.
Ok and finally about the accommodation. I live in a palace. I have a big sitting room with FOUR couches. Couches! Sometimes I sit on them just for the sake of it. Also a kitchen table with four really nice chairs. To the right of the sitting room is a small bedroom that I closed off. Then to the left is another random room with the kitchen to the left and hallway to the right. By kitchen I mean a room that I decided I would cook in and put my ELECTRIC stove in. This really is so luxurious. Then there is a bathroom with running water! Although the pipes seem to only work between three and six in the morning, also the sink leaks constantly and the repair man is a VERY old VERY drunk man who always insists he will only take ten minutes and I end up kicking him out after three hours. No big deal though brushing my teeth over a sink is so refreshing. So then continuing down the hallway we have another bedroom, then the room I chose for myself then at the end of the hall a door that I have closed off with two big bedrooms. So basically if anyone wants to come visit, I have PLENTY of room.
Added note from Mom. Claire says this is just the beginning of blogs from Nyanaza-much more to come!
Friday, February 6, 2009
Amputation
After a great weekend in Butare, Shira and I were reminded of how much we love it down there and looked to our return here with a sense of dread. Ugh, the campsite, we thought. In Butare our friends have showers and toilets! Such luxury. A few notes on my time in Butare:
-Children in Rwanda seem to have a universal love of adrenaline. My anxiety levels were at an all time high all the way to Butare (five hours) because the local children think it is absolutely hilarious to stand in front of the bus as it literally careens towards them upwards of 80 mph until the last possible second. So I end up being the strange mzungu in the front of the bus letting out little yelps at every close call.
-Rwandese HATE the rain. It rains all the time and still wherever I am turns in to a ghost town at the slightest drop of moisture. Shira and I were trying to get a bus in Kigali on the way home and literally could not get to the ticketing agents since the bus terminals were full from people ‘escaping’ the drizzle. So instead it was a little like being in a zoo. They stared at the stupid mzungus in the rain and we stared back with a combination of frustration, confusion, and desperation.
-Umuganda is no joke. On the last Saturday of every month Rwanda screeches to a halt. Umuganda is a governmental policy whereby everyone must do public works. Although it was in place pre-1994, I gather that the government ramped it up in more recent years as a solidarity effort. I was staying with Elizabeth in Save, about twenty minutes outside of Butare and when we tried to go in on a mini-bus on Saturday we waited about an hour before we finally caved and paid for a moto.
Alas, we have returned to Kabarore, where the school situation has gone from bad to worse. I was concerned about the amount of hours I am teaching as well as the actual need for a history teacher since there is a geography teacher who would have covered history as well had I not shown up. So my field director called my headmaster to discuss this and told me he was sick in the hospital in Kigali. When we went to the Chicken dinner he had been complaining about his foot. He had stepped on a nail the day before. Well when we got to school our favorite teacher Alex was very upset. The headmaster was going to have his leg amputated! We’re still not clear if it has actually happened or not but the situation seems very dire.
So there we are no headmaster and we asked about the Director of Studies and found out he had disappeared, no one knew where he was. Great. So then, I went to teach the Senior 5’s history and about 150 students greeted me. Without any chain of command to speak of, all the Senior 4’s had started to arrive and since there are only two dormitories they had changed one of the three classrooms in to a dormitory thus all the students crammed in to two classrooms. I didn’t teach that day. The Director of Studies has since decided to grace us with his presence and we are now renting classrooms from a local primary school that is a thirty-minute walk up and down a huge hill.
So we’ll see how that all shapes up. Although, we went to the primary school and little kids are just so gosh darn cute so I can’t really complain. I got out of the car and all the kids sprinted towards me and then stopped about two feet away and stared. That whole zoo thing again. One cautiously approached me and I gave her a hug and that was the opening of Pandora’s box. Everyone wanted a hug, until the very mean school prefects came around with their sticks and started hitting the kids and yelling at them to leave us alone. I forgot all cultural sensitivity and started wondering to Shira in a very loud voice why they were doing that and commenting that they shouldn’t be so mean. All to no avail since I don’t think they spoke a word of English. Have I mentioned how rural we are? This school is about five times more rural then the town we live in! Basically the more rural, the less second language whether it be English in the North of French in the South.
I forgot to mention how good I am doing with all the cows. Those who know me well know I have a completely irrational fear of cows. Funny I know but I have been in very close range with them pretty much every day and I’m getting used to it. And these aren’t those nice looking cows, they have HUGE horns so I’m very proud of myself. Furthermore, I have a collection of pet goats. They commonly meander in to the classroom which I think is hilarious and in turn my students think its hilarious that I even react at all.
Remember the houseboy Kado? That definitely was not his name. Amos has procured a new houseboy (who doesn’t cook plantains for every meal! It’s the little things.) and when he called him over to introduce him he yelled Kado and Shira and I, being the two most naïve people on the planet, went ohmigosh that’s so funny! They have the same name! Amos just looked at us and said, quite unenthused, no, Kado means young boy in Swahili. Riiiight, and then he didn’t even know the kids name! So I guess to Amos they pretty much do have the same name. Just another one of those cultural things to be sensitive about…
So that’s about it. Send positive energy to our headmaster. I have been paying very close to where I walk since the consequences for stepping on sharp objects seems to be so severe!
-Children in Rwanda seem to have a universal love of adrenaline. My anxiety levels were at an all time high all the way to Butare (five hours) because the local children think it is absolutely hilarious to stand in front of the bus as it literally careens towards them upwards of 80 mph until the last possible second. So I end up being the strange mzungu in the front of the bus letting out little yelps at every close call.
-Rwandese HATE the rain. It rains all the time and still wherever I am turns in to a ghost town at the slightest drop of moisture. Shira and I were trying to get a bus in Kigali on the way home and literally could not get to the ticketing agents since the bus terminals were full from people ‘escaping’ the drizzle. So instead it was a little like being in a zoo. They stared at the stupid mzungus in the rain and we stared back with a combination of frustration, confusion, and desperation.
-Umuganda is no joke. On the last Saturday of every month Rwanda screeches to a halt. Umuganda is a governmental policy whereby everyone must do public works. Although it was in place pre-1994, I gather that the government ramped it up in more recent years as a solidarity effort. I was staying with Elizabeth in Save, about twenty minutes outside of Butare and when we tried to go in on a mini-bus on Saturday we waited about an hour before we finally caved and paid for a moto.
Alas, we have returned to Kabarore, where the school situation has gone from bad to worse. I was concerned about the amount of hours I am teaching as well as the actual need for a history teacher since there is a geography teacher who would have covered history as well had I not shown up. So my field director called my headmaster to discuss this and told me he was sick in the hospital in Kigali. When we went to the Chicken dinner he had been complaining about his foot. He had stepped on a nail the day before. Well when we got to school our favorite teacher Alex was very upset. The headmaster was going to have his leg amputated! We’re still not clear if it has actually happened or not but the situation seems very dire.
So there we are no headmaster and we asked about the Director of Studies and found out he had disappeared, no one knew where he was. Great. So then, I went to teach the Senior 5’s history and about 150 students greeted me. Without any chain of command to speak of, all the Senior 4’s had started to arrive and since there are only two dormitories they had changed one of the three classrooms in to a dormitory thus all the students crammed in to two classrooms. I didn’t teach that day. The Director of Studies has since decided to grace us with his presence and we are now renting classrooms from a local primary school that is a thirty-minute walk up and down a huge hill.
So we’ll see how that all shapes up. Although, we went to the primary school and little kids are just so gosh darn cute so I can’t really complain. I got out of the car and all the kids sprinted towards me and then stopped about two feet away and stared. That whole zoo thing again. One cautiously approached me and I gave her a hug and that was the opening of Pandora’s box. Everyone wanted a hug, until the very mean school prefects came around with their sticks and started hitting the kids and yelling at them to leave us alone. I forgot all cultural sensitivity and started wondering to Shira in a very loud voice why they were doing that and commenting that they shouldn’t be so mean. All to no avail since I don’t think they spoke a word of English. Have I mentioned how rural we are? This school is about five times more rural then the town we live in! Basically the more rural, the less second language whether it be English in the North of French in the South.
I forgot to mention how good I am doing with all the cows. Those who know me well know I have a completely irrational fear of cows. Funny I know but I have been in very close range with them pretty much every day and I’m getting used to it. And these aren’t those nice looking cows, they have HUGE horns so I’m very proud of myself. Furthermore, I have a collection of pet goats. They commonly meander in to the classroom which I think is hilarious and in turn my students think its hilarious that I even react at all.
Remember the houseboy Kado? That definitely was not his name. Amos has procured a new houseboy (who doesn’t cook plantains for every meal! It’s the little things.) and when he called him over to introduce him he yelled Kado and Shira and I, being the two most naïve people on the planet, went ohmigosh that’s so funny! They have the same name! Amos just looked at us and said, quite unenthused, no, Kado means young boy in Swahili. Riiiight, and then he didn’t even know the kids name! So I guess to Amos they pretty much do have the same name. Just another one of those cultural things to be sensitive about…
So that’s about it. Send positive energy to our headmaster. I have been paying very close to where I walk since the consequences for stepping on sharp objects seems to be so severe!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Answers for grandpa!
So after I posted my last blog Shira and I went home to get some dinner from Kado and he wasn't there. He quit! Before Amos could fire him! and he took ALL my stuff!!!.....just kidding but you totally believed me didn't you? Well he did quit but he didn't steal anything just that hat, but I want him to have it. So we went to dinner at Bismillah which is where I get my Chapati every morning which is like a torilla with a little more fluffiness to it. The croissant equivalent of a bagel, kind of. Anyway, in response to your questions Grandpa and Shirley I was served a plate of Mutoki(plantains), white rice, plain spaghetti, and french fries. A gourmet selection of starch! And this is what we get for every meal. I'm starting to regard the food situation as a form of torture. My stomach will no longer accept plantains, instant gag reflex I'm not even kidding. At school we get beans and maize bread which started out alright until I bit into pebbles three times in a row one day! So I am slowly trying to work back up to stomaching the food at school. Basically the food situation is poor, and I have been having intense Spaghetti bolognese cravings for some reason so Shira and I might go in to Kigali next weekend just to get some variety. And before anyone asks they do not have ground beef here so I can not make it myself. Currently the Rwandan government has decreed that all poorly built buildings must be torn down so in terms of the landscape I see there are a lot of torn down buildings that have not yet been rebuilt. Also the 'downtown' area is almost impossible to walk through because the ground is covered with building material but there is barely any building going on. If you want to find me on a map I am about an hour north of Kayonza on the road heading north to the Kagitumba border crossing with Uganda. The town is called Kabarore. We are very near Akagera National Park so the terrain is more resembling plains you would see on safari as opposed to the lush green vegetation around Kigali and south towards Butare. It is still very green here though and even though it is dry season it usually rains in the afternoon, which has swollen the wooden latrine door so thick that now it doesn't close. Very concerning. Many people here blame the rain during the dry season on the tree planting. The Clinton foundation pays for every tree you plant so many people have planted thick forests around their homes. I'm not really sure about the science behind that reasoning but its seems to be the predominant theory. Nature plays a much bigger part in everyone's life here. Instead of just taking medicine for a cold everyone told me that my flu was due to the rain and cold weather and that I needed to rest and stay warm. Same thing my mom would have said, but interesting how much more prevalent the weather is in everyday life. Also, when the sky is gray I will often say O I think it is going to rain and then without fail a Rwandan will say No not yet, probably not for about thirty minutes and will only last a few minutes. Or some variation of that, and also without fail it is always exactly correct. My teaching situation has changed YET AGAIN. So now I will be teaching history and helping Shira with English since they scheduled 320 Senior 4's all at the same time. Needless to say the Director of Studies is not the brightest bulb. Also we thought the Senior 4's would not get here until we moved to the new school but apparently they are all coming on Tuesday which is troubling considering we have three classrooms for over five hundred students and only two dormitories. Again, the planning skills are exemplary. So stay tuned to see how that works out! Last night our headmaster found out that our house boy had quit and offered to take us out to dinner. As we walked in to the restaurant and through to the garden in the back he picked out two chickens to roast and then sitting sipping our Fantas we heard them being killed. So appetizing. Thankfully it was pitch black by the time the chicken came to the table so I just felt around with my fingers and prayed I wasn't eating the head. Regardless, it was SO great to eat some protein. I literally dream of chicken but it is three times the price of beef here and the beef has to be cooked super well otherwise there is strong likelihood of worms so its just not that great to eat at all. Ok I think that's it. Still doing great and loving it here. I found out there is oxfam and care international in the nearby bigger town so I'm going to see about volunteering with all my free time. For anyone who offered charitable donations(in the form of entertainment) my address is TTC Matimba c/o Claire O'Connor P/O box 150 Nyagatare, Rwanda. And yes I believe it is very safe just as basically everything is here. O yes, the DRC situation. Really not a situation at all in respect to how it affects me. I am on the other side of the country even though it is only about 100 km across. No one is talking about it or up in arms or anything so I'm not that worried. Also something to note, most of the people who live where I live are returned refugees from the 1959 genocide. So they were mostly born in Uganda and didn't come back until after 1994 when the government campaigned for all Rwandans to return. Therefore, I am not sure there is as strong a divide, however any mention of either party to the genocide is VERY taboo. So that really is it, miss you all.
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