Trivia Night

I was in Kigali, the capital, for a few days last week to visit our Peace Corps doctors (nothing serious don’t worry) and ran into a few other PCVs who were in town for various reasons. We decided to go to a Sol e Luna a pizza place in town where they hold a trivia night in English every Monday night. Sol e Luna is one of my favorite spots in Kigali, it has good food , a great atmosphere, and well Pizza and we all know how iI feel a bout that. I can’t go to Sol e Luna often though, because its expensive and it honestly doesn’t feel like Rwanda, you get culture shock all over again just walking out its front gate. All that considered I guess I should have predicted what happened next. Who would be at an English language trivia night in a nice restaurant in Kigali but other expats? We walked in and found that the room was literally all white people, speaking English, This literally never happens to me, there are never this many white people in a room unless it’s a peace corps meeting and then I know them all. Our PCV team was honestly a bit baffled, I spent at least five minutes looking around feeling shocked and intimidated, listening to all wonderful accents of fluently spoken English; Irish, Canadian, Australian, really our American accent hardly compares. We ordered a round of beers and settled in, our goal was more to have fun than to actually win. That is, until, we learned that there was a prize for best name. We decided to make our name one of the impossibly long wordsin Kinyarwanda where one word is actually a sentence. We picked one that means, “no we are not lying/wrong.” We found this funny and appropriate, but also it was our little way of snubbing our noses at all the aid workers assembled who did not speak much Kinyarwanda and who got to live in Kigali. It was the perfect mixture of superiority and jealousy. Obviously, this plan back fired. The points were tallied, we came in second to last, and then the name prize. It went to a group named “How I Met Your Mother on the Rwandan Border.” The judges couldn’t even pronounce our name when they read it out loud, and when they came over to our table later and we explained it was Kinyarwanda they just looked confused. I guess it was just our little inside joke. Go team PCV. 

Mousepads

I was in my school’s computer lab today, teaching a fellow teacher how to make a graph on excel, when I looked down and noticed my mouse was gliding over a picture of pre-9/11 New York City skyline. It was a weird site. Like many Americans I expect, I always get a weird lurch in my stomach when I’m confronted with that imagine in an old movie or TV show and here it  was on a mouse pad in Rwanda. I didn’t really think about it,  a lot of things in Rwanda are old, they must just have come a long time ago. And then I realized that the school got the computers well after 9/11. The other teacher noticed me staring and looked down as well, “Its New York,” I said. “Yes, I know,” he responded clearly confused by my surprise, “they’re all New York.” He was right, instead of a mixture of different mouse pads, that could reasonably have been assembled hodge podge from markets, they were all identical, this same image. I finally had to explain why I was acting so weird, telling the man that these buildings no longer existed, “clearly you have heard of this” I said. He was shocked, yes they knew about 9/11, but he had never seen pictures this was the first time someone was telling him these were the towers from that story, this was where it had all taken place. “They don’t exist anymore then?” “No,”  I admitted, “they don’t, these pictures must be old” And then he told me they had a whole box of these mouse pads, they had gotten well before the computers, and showed me. Still about half full, the box holds 30 something extra pads, all the same. He wasn’t sure where they had come from originally, a market, an aid group, if they were free or paid for. But assumed that like superbowl t-shirts, these had been sent here in the aftermath of 9/11 and sold in markets brand new. For the first time it occurred to that souvenir shops would have had merchandise to unload of these images, that at some point it obviously became insensitive to keep them on the shelves. That factories in Asia had been making these souvenirs as the events unfolded that they no longer had anywhere to send.  I wondered if people had first run out to stock up on such things as mementos, but somehow I have a feeling they didn’t. Of all the ways to look at and think about that day, this wasn’t one that had crossed my mind before. I asked if I could keep one of the mouse pads, and it now hangs on my wall in my collage of things that remind  me of America.

Ariel

I had a moment the other day, that to this point, is my favorite Rwanda moment so far. I was walking through my village when I ran into a group of sisters I know who are roughly 8-12 years old. There are four of them. They had a small manilla envelope that I assume was given to them by an NGO because it contained pencils, pens, school books, and small pocket size children’s book. The kind where the pages are thickish cardboard. It was a Disney princess book and they were very excited to show it to me. They flipped through it until they found a page with a picture of Ariel (the little Mermaid) after she has become a woman and said “Micheline.” They were telling me it looked like me and pointing at the hair. Obviously this made me ecstatic and I explained that this was my favorite princess because when I was little I thought she looked like me. Since the newest princess was not featured in this book they decided they looked the most like Jasmine. After I went through telling them all the names, they asked me to read them the book. In typical African fashion, where things are just a little bit off of what they should be, the book was written in German. I mean come on? How is that supposed to help? Luckily I am a good American girl who knows all the Disney Princess’s stories. So we settled in to a bench and I spent a good hour telling them each story, pretending to be reading what was on the page. It was great. I also have most of the Disney movies on my computer so I told them they could come over one day and watch the movies these are based on.

Sidenote to this story: Ariel is everywhere this week. A student in my class has a comic book in French of the Little Mermaid today and I  took the opportunity to explain the whole story to my class. I take all of this as a good omen. 

More Packages

I got another round of packages these last few weeks and wanted to take the time again to say a big thank you!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU and in Kinyarwanda Murakoze Cyane Cyane Cyane Pe . The ‘pe’ at the end literally means forever so the sentence means thank you very very very much until eternity. They always make my day and my children enjoy all the fun when I get new supplies. And when I say make my day this is a huge under statement. The kindness people have shown during my time here in Rwanda is incredible and it warms my heart every time. Last time I went to the post office I had 2 boxes from  Travelers and the postmaster said, (in bad English) “someone likes you not a little.” I had to laugh but then admit he was correct. Its incredibly encouraging to know that people are supporting all of my efforts. And don’t you worry I am paying the love forward!  So far care packages have gone to use in the following ways:

-Bribing the post master with pretzels, jump ropes and balls for his kids instead of paying the traditional 600 rwf to collect my packages. We are also best friends now and I went to church with his family.

-Bribing my fellow teachers into giving me Friday off with some Hershey Kisses, without me having to actually sit through the 5 hour schedule meeting.

(Its funny that this worked because half of them actually hated the candy, turns out Rwandans aren’t big on chocolate and told me they tasted like cheese. Criminal)

-My students used the crayons to draw their “map of my community” assignment and then wrote out directions to different places.

(yes this assignment was really just an excuse to have them tell me where things are without me having to ask – sneaky.)

-The holiday Travelers’ bear became preposition bear and then I had to explain what a bear is to my students. Also they all really want it so it is currently the offered reward if anyone returns some solar batteries which were stolen from my yard.

- Also I don’t know if Chris West is a brand or a person( I assumed person) but their chocolates were amazing and I love them!

- My headmasters daughter, one of the only small children allowed inside my compound, and who visits me a lot received the stuffed dog and was ecstatic.

-The cat stuffed animal I kept, and I sleep with it, not embarrassed.

- All the friendship bracelet floss has been parceled out among volunteers so my children as well as kids from many villages I imagine, now have little bracelets.

-Magazines are being circulated among very grateful volunteers and my students today used ripped out advertisements to write me stories. The Barak Obama and Kate Middleton cut outs were especially well received. Also a become a Marine add has become the picture I show my villagers of my husband so they stop being pervy.

-One of my bare walls has finally been covered with a collage of American celebrities.

- A garden was planted.

And I refused to go to the market for a week (it’s a major headache) and got good and fattened back up eating only from care packages. So thank you all again!! I hope I am adequately conveying my gratitude. And I hope it brings you all the good Karma you deserve for keeping me in your thoughts!! J

Muzungu Paradox

I am sitting at a nicer tourist hotel about a half hour from my site, because it is my day off and I am using the internet and pretending I am not, in fact, in Rwanda. A car just pulled up and a white man got out, because I no longer have any social skills I just stared at him. He’s not attractive hes probably around 50 and has a beer belly, but I just stared. I suddenly had the urge to ask him about his feelings on the recent superbowl. Just when I was about to address him – based solely on the fact that we are both white and in Africa – he got a phonecall. And my heart sank as he answered it in German. German. The man spoke some English because obviously it is the language he works in, in this country, but he was not my countryman. And honestly, I’m embarrassed to admit, I was shocked to hear anything other than English come out of his mouth. Like in my increasingly socially challenged state I have forgotten that white people can be non-americans. Don’t laugh its true. I honestly assume they are all American. I am becoming just as bad as the locals, lumping us all in together. C’est la vie.

I have this reaction every time I see another white person though. In a grocery story in Butare last weekend I gave a complete stranger the biggest smile in the world because he was white. I almost hugged him. I think its because we, as PCVs, live away from other white people and because we are such a large organization of all ages it is highly possible that I would run into a colleague that I didn’t know was a colleague. Other PCVs have told me they have the same awkward impulse to address strangers based solely on their shared whiteness. Usually these other muzungus are tourists or other aid workers who are less excited to see us. Tourists are generally here with other people or are backpacking alone and thus planned to be alone, they are not looking for fellow westerners. Aid workers who do not work for Peace Corps usually see each other a lot more, if they do not actually live with one another.

I talked to a volunteer who had just returned from America recently and was grilling them on how overwhelming it must have been to go into a CVS or a grocery store and be bombarded with choices. Instead,they replied, that the most overwhelming thing had been all the white people. Walking into every place and seeing swarms of white people and knowing that you don’t know them. I  hadn’t even thought of that but now I laugh knowing exactly how that would feel. In Kigali I expect so I react exactly as you should to a stranger – meaning I don’t react. And when attending a Peace Corps function I know these people so I can also respond appropriately. But I think that maybe its part of the job that I will never get used to running into White people who I do not know when I’m not expecting it. I’m starting to have a little more sympathy for the children who cry out “muzungu” in surprise when they see me. Sometimes I am tempted to do the same.

Hershey Kisses

I’ve had a bit of trouble getting a long with the other teachers at my school. They aren’t sure what to do with me, and I guess if I’m being honest I’m not really sure what to do with them. There is only one female who is 50 years old and has no interest in being the maternal guide to the lost 22 year old American who was plopped in her lap this year and as a result I have been left to fend for myself a bit. The other counterpart my school assigned to me, because he speaks good English, quite frankly just creeps me out and I refuse to be around him alone which, as you can imagine, makes it difficult for him to be my guide to the community. Yet again, I am guideless. Also, I have had food posoining here enough times for my liking and as a result eat only food I cook myself unless I am absolutely forced not to, meaning I eat PBJs in my house for lunch instead of joining the other teachers. But in the past week things have finally started to progress. I went to a fellow teachers home. I helped another with his homework. I’ve been coordinating with the other English teacher on how to run the English club. So I decided to do something nice. When I got a package of chocolates I poured  a bag of Hershey kisses into a bowl and left them on the table in the staff room with a sign, “Chocolates from America . Help yourself. – Michele” I’m not sure why I included my name because clearly they came from me, but so be it. There were only two teachers in the room when I left the chocolates and I explained to them what they were. I had decided it would be too awkward to present them to a room full of people and then watch them react. The first three people to eat the candy hated them. Literally two of them walked outside and spit them out and told me, “these are very bad.” How awkward! I was tempted to take the candy back and hide in my house before the rest of the teachers could reject my gift. But the other English teacher, who was convinced that the chocolates tasted like cheese, was too amused by the whole thing and whenever a new staff member entered the room he insisted they take some. Luckily, I finally got some fans, to the dismay of the other English teacher who could only say, “really? You really like it?” Obviously this was shocking because there can never be more than one correct opinion in Rwanda. I breathed a sigh of relief as the consensus turned from negative to positive; more people liked the candy than didn’t and the female teacher brought some home to her kids who loved it. But I wasn’t sure that buying the hearts and minds of my colleagues with candy was really working. People smiled at me when the other teachers told them to take a candy that they were  from Michele, but no one thanked me or really said anything. Please and Thank you aren’t really popular phrases in Kinyarwanda, I actually haven’t even heard a good translation for please yet and I am usually the only person saying “Thank you” in the staffroom when the workers come in and pour our tea. (yes, someone pours my tea for me every day and it drives me nuts but that’s a whole different story). I decided not to be offended, it was a cultural difference, and I had chosen to give out presents I didn’t have to do it again. I went to teach my classes and at the end of the came back to collect my bowl. The kisses were gone – a final indication that they were a success - thank God. I walked back to my desk to hang up my jacket to find my note on my seat with “Thank you!!!” in English scrawled on it in several different handwritings. Just like I had been to uncomfortable to present the candy to them, they had been too uncomfortable to say anything to my face. People aren’t so different after all. Next week I’m going to try a bowl of cheez-its wish me luck! 

Hershey Kisses

I’ve had a bit of trouble getting a long with the other teachers at my school. They aren’t sure what to do with me, and I guess if I’m being honest I’m not really sure what to do with them. There is only one female who is 50 years old and has no interest in being the maternal guide to the lost 22 year old American who was plopped in her lap this year and as a result I have been left to fend for myself a bit. The other counterpart my school assigned to me, because he speaks good English, quite frankly just creeps me out and I refuse to be around him alone which, as you can imagine, makes it difficult for him to be my guide to the community. Yet again, I am guideless. Also, I have had food posoining here enough times for my liking and as a result eat only food I cook myself unless I am absolutely forced not to, meaning I eat PBJs in my house for lunch instead of joining the other teachers. But in the past week things have finally started to progress. I went to a fellow teachers home. I helped another with his homework. I’ve been coordinating with the other English teacher on how to run the English club. So I decided to do something nice. When I got a package of chocolates I poured  a bag of Hershey kisses into a bowl and left them on the table in the staff room with a sign, “Chocolates from America . Help yourself. – Michele” I’m not sure why I included my name because clearly they came from me, but so be it. There were only two teachers in the room when I left the chocolates and I explained to them what they were. I had decided it would be too awkward to present them to a room full of people and then watch them react. The first three people to eat the candy hated them. Literally two of them walked outside and spit them out and told me, “these are very bad.” How awkward! I was tempted to take the candy back and hide in my house before the rest of the teachers could reject my gift. But the other English teacher, who was convinced that the chocolates tasted like cheese, was too amused by the whole thing and whenever a new staff member entered the room he insisted they take some. Luckily, I finally got some fans, to the dismay of the other English teacher who could only say, “really? You really like it?” Obviously this was shocking because there can never be more than one correct opinion in Rwanda. I breathed a sigh of relief as the consensus turned from negative to positive; more people liked the candy than didn’t and the female teacher brought some home to her kids who loved it. But I wasn’t sure that buying the hearts and minds of my colleagues with candy was really working. People smiled at me when the other teachers told them to take a candy that they were  from Michele, but no one thanked me or really said anything. Please and Thank you aren’t really popular phrases in Kinyarwanda, I actually haven’t even heard a good translation for please yet and I am usually the only person saying “Thank you” in the staffroom when the workers come in and pour our tea. (yes, someone pours my tea for me every day and it drives me nuts but that’s a whole different story). I decided not to be offended, it was a cultural difference, and I had chosen to give out presents I didn’t have to do it again. I went to teach my classes and at the end of the came back to collect my bowl. The kisses were gone – a final indication that they were a success - thank God. I walked back to my desk to hang up my jacket to find my note on my seat with “Thank you!!!” in English scrawled on it in several different handwritings. Just like I had been to uncomfortable to present the candy to them, they had been too uncomfortable to say anything to my face. People aren’t so different after all. Next week I’m going to try a bowl of cheez-its wish me luck! 

Mastering the Moto

** This is a post I wrote for a women's travel blog on how to best take a moto but I thought I might as well put it here too **

One of the main forms of transportation in Rwanda is motorcycle taxi. In many places you can take a twegerane (small bus) most of the way to your destination only to find that to go any further you will need to either a. walk over an hour or b. take a motorcycle taxi. I, personally, have to take a motorcycle half an hour up, what Rwandans call a large hill and I refer to as a small mountain, to get to the village I live in from the main road. When I first arrived in Rwanda I had never been on a motorcycle before and was, as a consequence, terrified. My parents, who both work in insurance, were all too familiar with the dangers of motorcycles and all to eager to pass their fears on to me. Certain obstacles just need to be conquered in this job though, I wasn’t about to trek over 2 hours every time I needed to leave my village. So I have mastered the moto and honestly I can say now that I love them! Here are a few pointers on riding them, selecting a good one, and general safety for all those motorcycle novices who may find themselves in the land of a thousand hills in need of a lift.

1.     Take only licensed moto taxis. Many people have their own bikes and will offer you a lift for cash. You can tell the official taxis because the driver will be wearing a vest over their clothing saying the city name on the back and usually either MTN or TIGO, the two cell phone providers, on the front.

2.     Use the helmet. You will see Rwandans ignoring this but I would advise always taking the helmet the motari (driver) offers; the roads can be bumpy and legally you can get fined for riding without one.

3.     Hold on. There is a small metal bar behind the seat where most people can comfortably lean back and hold onto. You will see that Rwandans don’t hold on to anything but that still scares me. Also, personal space is a non-issue in Rwandan culture, if you feel safer holding onto the driver they will have no problem with it.

4.     Don’t worry about how close you are to the driver. Again, personal space doesn’t exist here. As a Westerner your natural reaction will be to keep your distance and try to avoid sliding forward into the driver (there is nothing separating the two seats) and I would advise you ignore that desire. Firstly, you will not be able to prevent yourself sliding into the driver, they don’t call Rwanda “the land of a thousand hills,” for nothing. Secondly, it will tire you out and long trips can be quite an ab workout already. Lastly, the driver will think the effort you are putting into avoiding contact is weirder than the actual contact. It’s awkward, believe me I know, but embrace it, will make moto travel so much easier.

5.     Don’t feel bad asking to stop. I still do this all the time to adjust my pack or take a breath or because my thighs are cramping just tap the driver on his shoulder and ask to stop. Most of the time they will know the word in English but in Kinyarwanda you say, “ Hagaruka.”

Picking a Driver:

There’s not really a science to picking a driver but I stick to these basics when I’m away from my home and need to rely on someone I don’t know.

1.     Price. Try and ask a local first how much the ride should cost, I always go with the guy quoting me closest to the accurate price and not trying to rip me off for being white.

2.     Gas. Take a peak at the gas tank meter. Stopping at gas stations, or as I’ve experienced, bars along the way where there’s a jerry can full of petrol, is awkward and unnecessary. So a full tank is a plus.

3.     English. Things can happen along the way while you’re traveling. I speak the local language well, but in an unfamiliar place I am always biased towards the drivers who speak some English.

4.     Quality of the equipment. It might not be a fair measure but I always look to see if the visor on the helmet or the rear-view mirrors is cracked or damaged, an indication that the bike has already been in an accident regardless of how long ago.

5.     Size of the driver. I always feel safer with a man who is larger than me at the wheel because I know that if I shift my body at the wrong moment his weight still cancels out mine. This logic can go the opposite way too, however, if you really want to avoid contact or you have a lot of luggage pick a small driver.

Finally, I suggest you throw in your headphones to your favorite music put on your helmet and enjoy the ride. Once you get the hang of them the motorcycle taxis are a  really easy way to get around. Best of all, the views are often breathtaking.

Safe Travels! 

Teaching with No Resources

Teaching with no resources is hard. Teaching is hard. These may seem like obvious statements but you’d be surprised how they sneak up on you. The lack of resources isn’t hard in just the ways you would think its hard either. Sure, its difficult to come up with lesson plans. I have three English textbooks at my disposal and honestly sometimes I can’t find the answers I need in them so I wing it. I also don’t have regular accessto the internet which means that I can’ t just “google it” when I don’t know something. Do you know how much I miss google?! I miss it the way I imagine amputees miss their severed limbs – a phantom pain – I forget I no longer have that tool at my disposal and wonder how anyone ever got information before the google age. Libraries you say? You would think, but no, the three English text books I have are from the library and they are the extent of the documents in it that could help me. But the lack of resources is hard in other ways as well. My student don’t have text books, which means that every grammar chart and test and exercise has to be written out on the board by hand. Every class is 50 minutes long I have to say, all told, I spent 25 of those at least just writing. I cover the board left to right and then erase it and start again. There are never any days where I can hand out a worksheet and sit down while they fill it out. I have to first invent the worksheet, then write it on the board, then wait for them to copy it, complete it and correct it. Lack of resources is an arm work out. It is, like everything else in this job, a test of my patience, as I write the same thing three times a day. Sometimes, by my last class I am scrawling out an explanation of the Past Progressive for the third time wishing I could skip some of it, but knowing it has to be identical, I think this must be a special level of hell. A Dante style doomed eternity, but for who? What particular sin wold be punished this way? I decide this is what happens to all those people who disrespected their teachers or slept during class. But that wasn’t me, so maybe eternity – not unlike life – is unfair. I think, sometimes, the hardest thing about having no resources is explaining new terms. Words pop up all the time in readings (from the Rwandan ministry text books mind you) that the children have literally no concept of, and I have a very hard time explaining. Examples include: horses, chimneys, bears, skyscrapers, etc. How would you explain a horse to someone who has never seen one? I tried to draw it but it looked like a goatcowpig and the students were lost. I tried to explain that people ride them, but these kids don’t have access to movies or TV so the odds that one of the few times they’ve seen a TV someone was riding a horse are slim.  I don’t have any photos of horses in my house and so I eventually just had to give up and say it is an animal in America. The moral of my story, if there is one, is that teaching has become a full cardio workout (I’m not saying its not in America – I don’t know maybe it is) I stand and write the whole time and jump around like an idiot trying to make myself understood. By the time I get back to my house every night, I usually need to do an hour of yoga just to get loosened back up. I know this sounds like a lot of complaining, probably because mostly it is, but also I do truly enjoy it. I guess I should see it as a bonus that my job is toning my arms and legs while I work. 

Super Bowl

Even from my perch several thousand miles from home I am keenly aware that a great American tradition has passed this week; the Superbowl. The ultimate American day full of fatty foods, extreme consumerism, 3 million dollar advertisements and of course football. I had forgotten all about the superbowl (I haven’t seen or heard about football the whole time I’ve been here, unless of course you mean soccer) until a week or so ago I saw Facebook explode with the information that the Giants would be playing the Patriots this year. Being from Connecticut, I could only imagine how my fair state was reacting to the news. Without a team of our own people tend to latch on to any one of the many teams from the area when it comes to sports; New York, Boston. New Jersey.  The whole thing got me reminiscing about chicken wings, pizza, beer and watching the game mostly for the commercials. Last year, my roommates and I watched it on our comically small TV and attempted to order a Papa Johns pizza which literally never came and the phone lines were too busy to ever get through to complain. Ah America, how I miss you. (We got a free pizza the next day so it all worked out).

Despite my physical removal from it the Superbowl touches my life here in it’s own way. In what can either be seen as a great display of capitalist ingenuity or first world waste, after the two teams who will be playing in the Superbowl are announced T-shirts are printed for either possible outcome. So before the game is even played millions of shirts are printed declaring both the Giants and the Patriots as the champions of this year’s football season. Both are possibly true until the game is played and the outcome is decided., but then what?  What do you do with the shirts that are inevitably proven false? What do they do now, with the Patriots shirts? They send them to Africa of course where they flood the markets and are sold for 200 Rwf ( 20 cents ) and people with no idea what they mean parade around in them excited to have purchased a brand new shirt from America. As a result of this my whole village seems to think they are Colts fans due to their Superbowl win last year. I don’t have the heart to tell them the Colts lost, and American football is not the game they are thinking of.

            The whole thing makes me think of the multiple universe theory that when you make a big decision the universe splits and each outcome plays out in its own universe. Both are true.  And maybe in this case it is. In some reality out there the Patriots won this years Superbowl, and that universe is rural Africa. And when this years Tshirts arrive, I will wear mine with pride. 

School Adjustments

Today, I learned from a text message at 5am that there was a staff meeting at 9am. Since it is Friday, a teaching day, I was confused but apparently meetings are never held after school or on weekends so this would just have to cut into classtime. The meeting, per usual, started closer to 9:40 and all of the teachers were present by 10. Senior 4 students (9th graders) begin school next week because their grades have just come out from their Senior 3 national exams. Schools in Rwanda take on a specialization after S3 which they call a concentration, and you qualify for different concentrations based on your test scores, for example if you do poorly in English, you cannot go on to any concentration based on English. All the concentrations have 3 main classes so my school has two concentration options "MEG - Math Economics and Geography" and "MEC - Math Economics and Computer science" the hours of your supplementary classes are determined by your concentration as well, so these kids will get 2 hours a week of English but 4 hours a week of Entrepreneurship. Its actually a good system as these are then the majors that many students follow through University. Anyways, my school is just getting s4 for the first time and didn't even know which concentrations we would offer until this week, so we need a staff meeting to decide who was teaching what and then to make a new teaching schedule. After a 5 hour meeting, YES FIVE, in a language that i do not understand when you speak it that quickly I thought we were finally done when the English teacher came over to translate and told me that we needed to make a new schedule and would start another meeting in 2 hours after everyone went to the market. In 5 hours the only thing they decided was that we needed another meeting, i mean honestly thats insane. I didn't get any news hours from the switch and would be perfectly happy with my schedule staying the same if possible and also I was not ready for another 5 hour meeting especially because I can barely advocate for myself anyway. Last time we did I timetable I sat there dumbfounded. The other English teacher told me i didn't have to come to the meeting, he would make sure I got Fridays off. Obviously I was skeptical but honestly I didn't care what my day off is if it meant I didn't have to come. To be on the safe side I came back to the teacher's lounge shortly before the second meeting (which all the teachers werent at anyways) and dropped off a big bag of hershey kisses for everyone, "Treats from America! Take some home to your kids too!" and reminded everyone that I want Fridays off. I might be becoming a Rwandan after all! And Thanks Aunt Jeannie your care package just helped me with my first ever bribe!!!

National Heroes Day

Today is National Heroes Day in Rwanda which, as far as I can tell is a day to commemorate National Heroes. It sounds simple, but of course its not. The subtext of the day is that although heroes come from all kinds of situations the majority of today’s celebration is genocide related. In typical Rwandan fashion there also seems to be a hierarchy of heroes, and I’ve been told there are three levels. Since all of this conversation was carried out in Kinyarwanda, the only thing I am certain of is that you must be deceased to obtain the highest level of hero; presumably dying in your act of heroism but don’t quote me on it. Of the several definitions I’ve gotten about what we are supposed to be celebrating today the ones that come up most frequently are:

1.    The actions of those heroes who refused to participate or tried to stop the genocide and the soldiers of the liberation army

2.     All people who have ever done something heroic, but also 1994 you know? (this typical Rwandan “you know” always leads back to 1994).

The one story though, that also keeps being repeated, that I was initial under the impression was the whole reason for this holiday is about some school children in Nyange. Several years after the genocide ended but violence was still rampant, especially in the Lake Kivu region where this school was located, genocidaires arrived at a secondary school and asked a group of S5 and S6 students (11^th and 12^th grade) to separate into ethnic groups. This was not uncommon in that part of the country at the time and every one knew what would happen next if they complied. So, they didn’t. Sadly, that simply means they all died together, but it was an incredible act of solidarity that marked a turning point in the country and from what I understand led to several “copy cat” incidents around the region. This is the main sacrifice remembered today, and it’s a worthy one, but I can’t help but think of the rendition of it I read in a book on the country. In Philip Gourevitch’s book he thinks about it this way:

            “ Rwandans have no need – no room in their corpse-crowded imaginations – for more martyrs. None of us does. But mightn’t we all take some courage from the example of those brave Hutu girls who could’ve chosen to live, but chose instead to call themselves Rwandans?”

Today is a day, in my mind, about Rwanda trying to cling to the notion that not everyone is guilty. And truthfully, they are not, they cannot be, but the mood is not the celebratory somber one of Veteran’s day (the American holiday they keep comparing this to) because everyone was in this war, and only some are heroes. But there are fanta and speeches and I’ve been told there would be dancing but so far have seen none of it. Maybe the holiday is different outside of a campus of pre-teens but since my life is a campus of prê-teens this is how I experience it.

            As far as the celebrating goes, I had been told in advance that the holiday was marked 1. By farming 2. By dancing 3. By speeches. Since I had no idea which on it was I was unsure how to dress and decided finally on jeans and a nice top. When I went to the staff room I was told the teachers were not coming in today they had a party at the government office – which clearly I was not invited to – no surprise and the only staff on campus were the disciplinarians to make sure the students went to their ceremony later. When I tried to go to the student ceremony I was told I should not because I am not Rwandan and not a student. Aka I was not invited to either. Finally, I got all “I came to this country to be included” defiant and walked over to the student ceremony anyways , naturally it was a lot boring speeches and I set the alarm on my phone so it would go off and I could pretend it was a phonecall and left. Now I’m sitting in my house writing this wondering exactly what is happening. It sounds like the students have returned from their ceremony so I might go play with them in a bit. Wouldn’t everything be so much easier if the other teachers simply told me what they expected from me?? I operate in this other realm where no one checks my lesson plans, or tells me things, and I don’t have to go to ceremonies. I guess its good and bad. Happy Heroes day. Whatever that means. 

Family

I taught terms describing the family today, as a vehicle to teach possessive adjectives. I knew it was a risky subject in Rwanda, but also that I had to broach it eventually. It’s in the curriculum and it was part of a greater assignment I’m teaching on describing yourself. Many volunteers had taught it model school without any problems and I knew if I handled it tactfully the whole thing would go smoothly. Instead of having the children give their own examples, which I knew could be problematic, I decided to use my family for the entirety of the lesson. I drew out a family tree on the board in the beginning of class and labeled everyone on it; adding a few details like age and occupation to facilitate better sentences. We did exercises where they learned vocab regarding family relationships and used possessives to write sentences like “Michele’s grandmother’s name is Mary and she is retired.” There was a whole fake family for them to work off of, there were pictures to describe and details and I thought I had covered every angle to avoid the one thing you are always avoiding in Rwanda. At one point they wrote their own sentences using possessives during which I got roughly 40 variations of, “My [relative]’s name is…” Which turned out fine, except that I was writing the answers on the board and not only could I not spell any of the names, but I couldn’t say them either. This just led to general hilarity culminating in the moment when I misspelled the Rwandan president’s name. My system broke down around the end, when we were writing sentences like, “there are four uncles,” and one of my best students asked a question that seemed to silence everyone. “They are all alive? So many in your family? It is not that way in Rwanda.” This must have been building for a while and for a second I honestly had no idea what to say. All the people in my chart weren’t alive, but they had probably never seen this type of family tree before and wouldn’t have known that you count everyone, that you could go back as far as you liked making a chart like this. And even the deceased had occupations and ages listed, I was for whatever reasons of my own, acting like they were alive. I hadn’t included any indication of who was deceased, it didn’t seem necessary, although I had been painfully aware of these facts as I assembled my graphic. I took a deep breath and came back to the moment, I needed to answer, and on my second day I felt like this answer meant something for my time here.

“ No,” I finally said, “ they are not all alive, but in a chart like this you count everyone. Americans like to trace their histories back much farther than this.” I could see this wasn’t quite enough, my large family tree had clearly upset this girl, (although it did appear my tact had been enough for everyone else in the room).  Remember here that the oldest student  I teach is 14 and the oldest student in the school is 17 and that’s a lone female whose study was interrupted. These children were born in the after of Rwanda’s history, I am not calling back to mind Post Traumatic Stress – like memories for them. And although the tragedy didn’t simply end one day in 1994 they are all still too young to remember the worst of that. This is a different pain, of knowing that it is not this way things are everywhere, that I had been trying to avoid. She was still looking at me, so I took my chalk and shading in the triangles and circles of the deceased adding years underneath. This had an effect, the classic Rwandan, “eh baba we (oh goodness)” went through the room as they noticed the similarity in three of the dates. The girl’s face softened, almost as if to acknowledge that people outside of Rwanda know hardship too, that I wasn’t so foreign after all. “Life is hard all over,” I said “Death is universal.” It was the perfect thing to say, I was so proud of myself, until a few students said they were sorry and I replied, “Nta Kibazo (no worries)” and they broke into laughter as they do every time I speak Kinyarwanda. But maybe that was better, we were all laughing, and we were connecting, and the rest of the family lesson went off without a hitch.