MURAHO! So, anyone who visits my page often has probably noticed
that I have fallen off the face of the blogging earth… but I’m back, with many
stories of a busy first term, a fun vacation, and the start of a new term!
My very first trimester as a real-life teacher was
definitely a learning experience. In
general, it went very well. I got much
more comfortable with my eight classes and had a lot of fun with them. We has some memorable lessons, including
teaching my fifth-year students “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton during our
fact and opinion unit, which happened to fall around Valentine’s Day. The girls absolutely loved it and continue to
request it any time we have a few extra minutes in class. Also, in my sixth year classes we spent a
couple weeks reading news articles about the upcoming Olympics, so I divided
them into teams and they had to choose a country to represent for “Class
Olympics”. Every reading exercise and
activity then became a competition, either to be the quickest team finished or
the team with the highest marks. At the
end of the unit, we had a ceremony to award the gold, silver and bronze medals,
which I made out of paper, as well as some candy and extra credit for the
exam. I think the girls really enjoyed
it, especially considering that I still spot a student wearing her medal from
time to time around the school campus.
There were of course, a few challenges to my first trimester
as well. For example, I found that
procrastination can be a bit more of an issue when it comes to grading three
hundred papers rather than writing just one.
Hopefully I learned my lesson and will do a better job this term! Another thing I realized is that in Rwanda
you can’t expect the authorities to just tell you everything that your job
entails, or much of anything for that matter.
I am referring to the fact that with about five days left before the end
of the term, the head teacher asked me where all my homework was, and when I
told her that I had returned it to the students after recording the marks, she informed
me that I was supposed to have re-collected all of it, organized it and brought
it to her. So, I had to scramble around
to all my classes, interrupt the students who were studying hard for exams, and
ask them to dig through all their notebooks to find every piece of homework I
had handed back to them throughout the term.
Needless to say, I was not able to recover all of it, but I did my
best. Then, two days before vacation,
when I had all my grades totaled and ready to hand in, I was asked if I had
collected all of the students’ discipline cards and subtracted points from
their English grades for every instance when they had gotten in trouble for
speaking Kinyarwanda instead of English at school. So again, I rushed around to all my classes
to take their discipline cards and then set to work changing all three hundred
of the final grades. All of this on
top of the exam-grading made my last week a bit rough.
Apart from teaching, life in Shangi during the first term
was great too. After our teachers vs.
community leaders volleyball game, the executive secretary decided that he
wanted to make sector volleyball and basketball teams to travel around and play
against teams from other sectors. So I
was recruited to the SHANGI ONE TEAM basketball squad. It has been a great way to get to know some
people from the community, because it consists of teachers from several
schools, sector leaders, priests, and other sports enthusiasts. Any time I see any of them around the
village, they greet me by shouting “ONE TEAM”.
We had two official games last term and it sounds like we have another
coming up sometime this month (although you never can tell how set in stone
things are in Rwanda), so I’m looking forward to that.
I have also gotten a lot of enjoyment out of hiking around beautiful
Shangi. When I first told some of the
teachers that I was interested in walking down to the lake, six of them
volunteered to accompany me, so we had a wonderful afternoon hiking to Kivu, a
little over an hour-long journey. At the
lake, we met an awesome old German man who has lived for years and years on
what used to be a German base camp. He
hires Rwandan kids to help him care for the land and to give tours when
visitors come, and he seems to just love his lakeside life in Rwanda.
Aside from that afternoon excursion, my relationship with
the other teachers at my school has continued to grow and has been an awesome support
for me here. Many of them will drop in
for tea or just to chat at my house. Also,
the English conversation group has really picked up. Over half of the teachers have come at least
once, and there are six who have come just about every single week. Tuesday nights are often the highlight of my
week because the conversations are so great.
We listen to a news story and then discuss it, and I learn so much from
just sitting back and listening to them debate on different topics, because
they are all so intelligent and well-informed.
And they truly value my opinions too, which is a nice feeling!
I began to do English lessons for the nuns who were
interested as well. They are at a more
beginner level, which is what I was more accustomed to teaching before coming
to Rwanda, so it feels good to be back in my comfort zone, with basic grammar
and vocabulary contexts, even just for one hour a week. I love having the nuns as a sort of family
for me in Shangi. They are so happy any
time I show up to share a meal with them or just come by to say hello. They are also good resources to have to
continue practicing and learning more Kinyarwanda.
After the first term, there were three weeks of
vacation. I spent the first couple weeks
hanging around Shangi and going into Kamembe, the nearest city, a couple times
to visit friends and other Peace Corps volunteers there. It was a relaxing couple of weeks. I spent a lot of time with a couple of
families from the community, did a lot of hiking and got some lesson planning
done. Two other volunteers, Tim and
Meredith, also came to visit my site, which was fun! After Meredith’s visit, we went together to
visit our host families in Kamonyi. It
was really good to see my family! The
girls were all home from school so I got to catch up with them and we had fun
remembering all of our fun times together during training.
After the trip to Kamonyi, I spent a wonderful day eating
burgers and pizza in Kigali before heading to Kibuye for Peace Corps In-Service
Training for one week. It was the first time
I saw most of the people from my training group since Pre-Service training, so
it was great to hear how things were going for all of them. Also, Kibuye is a gorgeous place and our
hotel was right on the lake, which could only have been better if the water of
Kivu was not shisto-infected, causing Peace Corps to ban us from swimming. I got a lot of good information to take back
to site with me at the training, but being stuck in morning to evening meetings
again was a bit torturous. I also found myself
really missing Shangi since I had been gone for almost two weeks.
Getting back to Shangi felt so good—it really felt like I
was coming home. All of the teachers had
returned from the vacation and it was wonderful to see them again. I returned right before the official genocide
memorial day for Shangi, so I spent my first couple days back in mass and
meetings to commemorate all those who were killed in our area. It was a difficult time, but it was very
moving to see how much Rwandans have come together and how strong they are, and
I felt very privileged to be a part of their memorial.
For my first week back in classes, I decided to ease back
into things and to have some fun with my students so I taught them the song “Lean
on Me” which was another hit! My
students love talking about their friends so I knew they would like to learn
some terminology we use for friendship in the US, and they certainly did. I explained all the lyrics to them and by the
end of the class they were all singing loudly and having a blast. It was awesome!
We also have big things happening for the GLOW (Girls
Leading Our World) Club. A couple of the
other Peace Corps volunteers in our region and I are organizing an official
camp for them to attend during the break after the second trimester. This will be a great way to motivate the clubs
to get more involved in their communities and to motivate the girls to take on
leadership opportunities. I announced
the news to my girls and they are super excited. We are also starting to write a skit about
HIV/AIDS prevention to present at the school and hopefully to the community as
well.
I think my last story to share is about the events of last
weekend. There is a hugely popular singing
competition in Rwanda called Primus Guma Guma Superstar, which consists of all
of the biggest singers and musical groups of the country. People vote for their favorites until it is
narrowed down to the top ten, who then tour the country together until the
winner is chosen and gets to perform and record a song with Jason Derulo. Well, I was determined to stay at my site for
a while since I was away for so long, but all that went out the window when one
of my friends in Kamembe called to tell me that Primus Guma Guma Superstar was
in town! Now I have been keeping very
up-to-date with the competition so that I have a go-to conversation topic with
young Rwandans, plus I really enjoy Kinyarwanda music, so there was no way I
could pass up seeing it live! So I
dropped everything and headed in to Kamembe on Saturday and had a ton of fun
singing (the like one line I actually understand of each song) and dancing with
the huge crowd of Rwandans at the bus station, where the concert was held.
Afterward everyone headed to one of the hotels in town where the dancing
continued well into the night. It was a
blast!
So in conclusion, life is good! I never imagined that I could be this happy
in my Peace Corps service, but I have truly been blessed with amazing people
supporting me, both in Rwanda and from afar!
