Rwanda as Boyfriend

I’ve said it many times here, “I feel like I’m in an abusive relationship  with Rwanda.” Not to make light of domestic violence or bad relationships but it’s the best analogy I can come up with for how I feel about this country. There are those nights where I sit up crying swearing that tomorrow I will leave, tomorrow I will get out of this place that doesn’t appreciate me or allow me to be who I am.  I will pack my bags and be on the first bus out. But I wake up and think, maybe I should make this work, it would be a hassle to leave. All my stuff is here. I don’t have any other plans. Sometimes my reasons to stay are as simple as that I still have a graded test for my kids I haven’t returned yet. These thoughts always calm me into staying one more day, or week, or at least until I’m calm enough to remember what I like about here. I’m reminded, comically, of the Dane Cook joke where he says, “you ladies make up the craziest reasons to stay, ‘but my CDs are in his truck. I can’t just walk away from 40 or 50 CDs. I’ll just suffer through 5 more years of abuse.” But on a more serious note it feels like I stay for the moments when Rwanda is good to me. It’s less that I’m in denial than that I know those highs are out there, and I wait around for them. Its like I accept as a given that Mondays are going to be inherently awful because I teach 8 periods straight and then have to venture into the market where I will be groped and stared at and harassed and the whole village will be wasted. But I know that when I leave the market I can stop and see my favorite band of little girls at their house which almost, but not quite makes up for it. I accept certain things as a part  of my job that will just be miserable, theres no real way to change that. The staff meetings that carry on for hours while I doodle in my notebook. Any and all bus rides. Church. But then there will be days when Rwanda comes home with flowers and says it will love me forever. When my kids finally understand something, or my neighbors bring me bananas or my villagers correct outsiders, “that’s not a muzungu that’s Michele.” So Rwanda and I trudge forward. Maybe we’ll consider couples counseling. 

Finals Week

The term is almost finished here, and thus we have begun finals and preparation for finals. Turns out that because students have  a habit of showing up so late into the year that Rwandan teachers usually only give one quiz and one final in the term and that quiz happens the week before finals. I had already given my quizzes when I learned this but the head of studies required me to give another one because I had new students – which is fair – but this was communicated to be so late that I didn’t have time to tell my students making it a pop quiz. I didn’t think that was fair so I decided to include a “BIR and no one tells Michele anything curve” into the quiz, the students got 5 out of 25 points just for turning the quiz in and I tried to make it easy, but they were understandably upset with me for springing a quiz on them. Already feeling badly about that I went home to write the final and decided to use examples very similar to the ones I’d given all term, I’m not going to be one of those teachers who tricks them, but with a few new applied reasoning examples so that only the kids who really understand can get 100. When I turned in my exam to the secretary to type up for me – like I’d been told to do by the biology teacher – she was very confused and surprised. Her English isn’t very good so she walked me into the headmasters office so he could explain, “we don’t need an exam from you, there is a sector wide English exam based on the sector cirriculum you’ve been teaching from. Didn’t Pierre (the other English teacher) tell you that?” I was stunned, no the other teacher had not told me this, and I had never seen a sector wide cirriculum, meaning I was not teaching from it. After a long argument it was determined that even though this system was voluntarily created the school did not want to veer from it and thus my kids would have to take a test I hadn’t prepared them for. I had to talk to the other teacher to see what they would be tested on and review this cirriculum that I should have been teaching. He was in class for another two hours and I was on the verge of tears so I stormed off campus deciding that now was a good time to buy some toilet paper. I tore out of Ngara frustrated and exhausted, a whole semesters work for nothing. I had set my kids up to fail and I couldn’t get anyone else to care. When I reached the village I ran into my favorite kids jumping rope with banana leaves they’d tied together so I pulled a bright yellow jump rope out of my bag and was instantly a hero, it made me feel a little bit better, maybe I couldn’t teach English but this I could do. The stereotypical muzungu  I could give out toys. I must have still looked upset because my favorite market mama came out of her house and said essentially, “your face  looks like stone, is it men or money?” I laughed and told her men, in some way it was, this was happening on some level because I am a young white women and if you’re being optimistic I intimidate my counterpart and if you’re being cynical he wants me to fail. Honestly, they’re probably both a little true. She brought my onto her porch and handed me a cup of tea and in an odd combination of French, English and Kinyarwanda I tried to tell her what was wrong, but she mainly speaks Swahili so we were really just talking at each other. She thought I was talking about my ficticious husband and so when I finished she told me, “yes my man is the same, he thinks he is the master but he is not we are yes?” And somehow we are having the same stereotypical conversation that women have all over the world, men think they are in charge but they are not. I hate this conversation but it was oddly comforting here, we were laughing and connecting, in 4 languages. From different economic backgrounds, countries, ages but this we could agree on, being a woman in Rwanda is difficult.

            Finally I headed back to the school and let the kids keep the jump rope if they promised to leave it at the shop so they could all use it. My counterpart was unmoved by my arguments and unapologetic about failing to inform me of the program. I just kept telling him it was unfair to test my kids on something I hadn’t taught, that it wasn’t their fault, which he grudgingly agreed to. But he maintained that the test was mainly review and they would pass based on what he taught them from last year, well except for the low class, they will all fail but what can you do? Just like that he wrote off 40 students as helpless. I was furious, and just kept telling him they would pass my test, I had prepped them for it and this was insane. But if there’s anything constant about Rwanda its hierarchy and rules, the schedule was agreed to and can’t be changed. The headmaster doesn’t want to lose face, the English teacher won’t admit he never told me and despite me taking full blame for the error there is nothing that can be done. The kids will fail – c’est la vie.

            Needless to say the whole thing has sent me into a bit of a tailspin. My kids are angry at me and afraid they won’t pass so I cancelled my weekend plans to stay here and teach extra classes on what the test is on – even though no one has a copy of it to show me – but the kids have 15 final exams to take so they have to study for other things as well. Its just frustrating to see how badly I’ve failed them. I came here to help and instead they will be measurably worse off for having had me as a teacher when this term ends. A Rwandan teacher would have been aware of the system (note: this is not a nationwide system but is unique to my area and is the first time my area is doing it) because they would have understood the staff meeting in the first place instead of having to rely on a translator who for whatever reason decided not to translate fully. But instead they had me, who made a cirriculum focused this semester on writing when the test they will take is focused on reading comprehension. So I’m throwing up my hail Mary pass, extra English lessons and fudging their classroom grades so that if they do pass the final they should pass the class. I don’t know if that’s fair but I just can’t let them all fail. And all the other teachers at my school are watching me run around like a chicken with its head cut off confused over why I care so much. Like every day in Rwanda I feel like I’ve taken one step forward and three steps back. I miss living in a world where I don’t feel like I’m banging my head against the wall every day. I’m tired. 

Banana Bread

Today was my first adventure with the Peace Corps oven, and it went awesome! Who knew you could back bread in with only three pots. I felt like such a McGyver. For things needing baking you take one large pot, balance it on top of the your stove. Next, you layer either sand or water on the bottom along with some small cans – I use the tomato paste cans you can buy in all the market boutiques - with both the bottom and the top cut off, this stops the pot from getting too hot and burning out. On top of the cans you balance your smaller pot or a  flat surface depending on what you are baking. Then place a second large pot upside down on top of the bottom pot to create a cylinder. Its crazy the things that people can figure out, this is just not how my mind works so I am in awe of it. And today I made a delicious banana bread from some fresh bananas my neighbor brought my over from her tree. How weird is that sentence? She was skeptical when I brought back her bananas a few hours later as a slice of bread but ultimately, after her kids became the tasters because they are more trusting of me, she agreed that it was good. Next up pumpkin bread with the white pumpkins they have around here – or so I’ve been told you could use green papayas, I’ll let you know how it goes. 

Banana Bread

Today was my first adventure with the Peace Corps oven, and it went awesome! Who knew you could back bread in with only three pots. I felt like such a McGyver. For things needing baking you take one large pot, balance it on top of the your stove. Next, you layer either sand or water on the bottom along with some small cans – I use the tomato paste cans you can buy in all the market boutiques - with both the bottom and the top cut off, this stops the pot from getting too hot and burning out. On top of the cans you balance your smaller pot or a  flat surface depending on what you are baking. Then place a second large pot upside down on top of the bottom pot to create a cylinder. Its crazy the things that people can figure out, this is just not how my mind works so I am in awe of it. And today I made a delicious banana bread from some fresh bananas my neighbor brought my over from her tree. How weird is that sentence? She was skeptical when I brought back her bananas a few hours later as a slice of bread but ultimately, after her kids became the tasters because they are more trusting of me, she agreed that it was good. Next up pumpkin bread with the white pumpkins they have around here – or so I’ve been told you could use green papayas, I’ll let you know how it goes. 

My Stragglers

I dislike my fellow English teacher, that might be an understatement, in all honesty I think he’s a tool. If he lived in America he’d be that annoying young stock broker whose not that good at his job but thinks he’s the shit anyways. If he was even younger he’d be that guy in 7^th grade who flicks your bra strap. Needless to say he bugs me, he gets under my skin, and honestly his English isn’t great. The one area where I have to give him credit is that my students English skills are pretty good. There are three sections of S2 at my school, A B and C, they are divided up so that A and B are students returning to our school from last year and C is all the new students we received this year. This means, theoretically, that their levels of language skills should vary right? They do not. They are exceptionally low. Even my highest skilled students in that class fall short of the average in my other classes. Lessons that take me an hour to cover in A and B can take up to 3 hours in C. Critical thinking skills are lower, discipline is worse and sadly its my biggest class. The students do about as well on the quizzes but that’s because I make many of the questions straight from class examples. I design m y quizzes so that if you took and learned the notes you should get a 60, if you can think critically and apply the material you should get an 80, and if you’re really good you can get 100. (Passing in Rwanda is a 50). No one in my C class gets 100 and a startling number don’t get the 60 that I have, quite frankly, gifted to them. I think the gap as become the most glaring this week as I moved into my final section for the semester, “modal verbs” (these could would should may/might etc) granted they are difficult which is why I plan to take a full 3 weeks with them before the quiz and then reviewing for final exams. In my last period this week C was learning “should” doing the same exercise I had already successfully done twice and they just couldn’t get it. After 2 hours of explanations and explanations I even translated the whole thing into Kinyarwanda, only 3 out of 44 students were getting it. The exercise was things like, “John’s pants are dirty. Tell him what he should do.” And over and over again I got, “John pants should dirty.” Thinking that I had wanted them to convert the sentence and not that I was asking them to apply critical thinking skills. We’re going to have to hit “should” again on Monday but I’m not sure there’s any new way for me to explain it. To remedy this situation I think that next semester I’m going to make my students dedicate one notebook to all the exercises and homeworks for my class so that I can collect it periodically and correct them each individually. Having 140 students I don’t get a lot of 1 on 1 time with them, and some of them don’t understand my oral explanations of corrections so I’m hoping that this way they can at least see the corrections and begin to understand. Also, maybe this will begin to close the gap between my classes. This will be a big undertaking in several ways, first I will need to actually do all those corrections, but honestly I have the time, and it seems on par with how much an American teacher would be correcting. Secondly, this isn’t the type of project that Peace Corps typically funds – as it is simply providing a resource – my school doesn’t have the budget, and I don’t feel comfortably asking my students families to pay the extra money because I know their school fees are already high. This will have to be a gift from me to my students, which I am fine with, especially because I think it will help them. At 50 cents (usd) a notebook I can swing it especially with time to save until next semester, the real problem is opening the pandora’s box of me paying for things for my school. Maybe I’ll fib about where the notebooks came from. So I guess my point is, despite his toolishness – my fellow English teacher did a good job preparing his students from last year as evidenced by their comparison to newcomers but now I’m left with the daunting task of trying to close that gap. When I ask my fellow teachers what they do with S2C, because they are behind in all their classes, they tell me they treat them exactly the same and S2C just fails the tests. This is discouraging but hopefully if I improve their English they will follow their other classes better too.

Finally if any teachers reading this have any suggestions, please let me know. I am open to trying anything.  

Tourism in Kibuye

This weekend I spent an uncharacteristically touristy 48 hours in Kibuye, on lake Kivu. A group of PCVs went out there to see eachother and get away from our sites. We stayed at a quaint little hotel called the Home St. Jean which has some of the best pizza I’ve had in Rwanda – despite the fact that its made on a tortilla instead of a crust – at a reasonable price. The rooms were reasonable too, especially since we shared beds and slept 4 people to each two person room. We spent most of the first afternoon catching up and drinking beers at the hotel before heading to another hotel where there is actually a dance club! It was great, especially because we were pretty much the only people there.  We spent the night dancing and imitating my favorite Rwandan phenomenon of people (mainly men) dancing very intensely with their own reactions in the mirror. Early the next morning we dragged our hungover butts out of bed for some coffee and some tourist attractions. We decided to go for a quick swim and then found a boat that would take us around the lake to a few islands. The boat ride was awesome, we grabbed some beers and set sail for Napolean Island in the center of Lake Kivu. When we got there the guide told us we were climbing to the top it. Now, none of us had been aware of this and not only were we in the wrong clothes and shoes, but we were still hungover and had just drank more beer. Also, Rwanda is full of what I still maintain are small mountains, and this island was no exception it was just one big hill. After a very swift and scary 20 minute climb we reached the top where our guide started to clap his hands and literally hundreds of bats flew out of a tree and started to swoop around us and the island. Apparently that was the tourist attraction of this place. We took a few pictures and then headed down the other side of the mountain which was supposed to be better but at one point was literally just a slippery strip on the side of a mountain where I was fully convinced I was going to fall off. Like fully. Thank god the girl behind me coming down was a little calmer and kept asking me questions about random things, I didn’t even get it until we were safely on the boat, but she was distracting me and luckily it worked. Finally, safely back on the boat we headed over to the Moria Hills hotel – a much nicer hotel than where we were staying – and ordered a good Western dinner. That night we went out dancing again. The whole thing was without a doubt my favorite weekend in Rwanda and I came back to my site happy and relaxed.