Good Afternoon Teacher!

“Good Afternoon Teacher, how are you?”  Oh, to be a teacher in a Rwanda.  



Nyamata South



Today I made it out of my town and got to go, as my boss says, into the heart of the country.  It was fascinating and I feel like the driving part ended well as I still managed to keep all my teeth in my head after the driver decided to take the shortcut (read, “goat path”) back to Nyamata.  Up until today I had only been in Kigali, the capital city, and Nyamata, my home base.  Nyamata is a town which reminds me a dusty Western frontier town or one of those crossroads towns that just exists and you pass through and quickly forgotten you have.  Although I am sure I am being just a tad hard on Nyamata, it just seems to be one of those towns that charm, beauty, or quaintness forgot.  It does, however, promise to be an up and coming town as the airport is slated to be built down this way in the near future, and more importantly the people are extremely friendly, kind, and helpful.

Anyway, back to the point.  The point being that I have been here for over two weeks to work with schools and hadn’t actually gotten to any schools I would be working with yet.  I did visit a very lovely private school in Kigali where I was blown away by the level of academics the students were doing.  Very impressive.  However, this was my first venture out into the Bugesera School District and really my first adventure off the main roads.  As could be expected it was a feast for the eyes, with so much to take in. The vegetation, the variety of homes, the myriad of activates people were up to, and the hundreds of bicycles plying up and down the roads that the driver was continually swerving to avoid.  Bikes definitely outnumber cars here.  I will be sure to write more about all of this in the future and hopefully get some nice photos of the countryside, but for now I’ll stick with visiting this first school.



First, I should say that I was not there on any official business, but rather along for the ride.  Bugesera District has a lot of schools and a lot of teachers, and I will only be working with a handful of them trying to create model schools in order to, hopefully, build sustainability throughout the district; CUSO-VSO volunteer or no CUSO-VSO volunteer.  Therefore, I was not expected.  It seems, perhaps, I was the first non-Rwandan visitor they had ever had-perhaps, as there are a lot of NGOs in these here parts.  However, I think it would be a safe bet to say that they do not get a lot of visitors period as remote does not begin to explain where this school is.  At one point my boss asked me what I would do if I was left at the side of the road, “Could you find your way?”  And while lots of girl scout thoughts ran through my head about climbing the nearest peak, etc, I got his point about “being out there.” 

Pulling into the school yard I was impressed by the tidy grounds, neat basic brick buildings, and the smartly dressed teachers who stepped out of their rooms to see who had arrived.   I was equally amused by the 50 or so students that first ran directly at the truck when we pulled in and then with one word from their teacher even more swiftly in the opposite direction.  All barefoot, girls in simple blue uniforms, and boys in gold.  



Now here is the amazing part.  Evidently, because I was such a rarity, the teachers all came out to have a short chat with their visitor while 40 to 50 students in each class sat quietly waiting.  No raucousness, no misbehaviors, just patient waiting with necks craned to best see out the window.  Several of the teachers spent a good 20 to 30 minutes talking to me and still the students waited.  The teachers were quite pleased to see me, they said, and extremely honored to have a visiting teacher from America.  Ah, the undo kudos, eh?  I was equally ego boosted, through no merit of my own other than being an American, an adult, or maybe just showing up, when after being greeted beautifully and respectfully in each classroom they would cheer and clap for me after my short visit.  I guess I can now finally stop feeling badly that I never learned to play guitar.  Did I really start bowing my way out of the classrooms?  Hard to tell.

I did not have my camera with me for this first school visit, but I do have a few photos of Nyamata.



Nyamata West





Nyamata Central



Moving to Nyamata

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Here is my house.  It is a huge!  When I arrived I had to take a moment to realize that I would be living alone in a seven room home, with eight pieces of furniture (and glad to have them) along with one mosquito net, one water filter, and one hotplate in the middle of a Rwandan village by myself.  Even I am not shaking a stick at that.

Upon arrival with my manager we discovered that the keys we had been given did not fit the lock on the gate and after several calls to the landlord one of the tallest and thinnest men I have ever seen came ambling down the street with a large smile on his face and  key in hand.  This was Oswalimu, one of my neighbors, who seems to act as some sort of broker for the landlord and is called in to handle just such situations.  Unfortunately, Owalimu’s smile did not last long as this was not the key.  Now because I do not speak or, at this point, understand much Kinyarwanda I was unsure of what the next steps would be, what the ensuing conversations were about, or who they were continually calling. 

My Steet

What I did know, however, was that we were quickly becoming more and more of an attraction and I was definitely not making a quiet entrance into the neighborhood as many of the local school children came by to introduce themselves, people stopped on bikes to take a gander, and a small crowd was forming across the lane at the local hole in the wall sundries shop.  While we waited I peeked over the cement block wall that surrounds the house to check out my new home and was incredibly pleased by the looks of it.  I was especially excited to see that there was a plumera tree in the yard, my absolute favorite, and banana trees as some backyard neighbors.  I also took in the fact that there was a water spicket in the yard, as well as an electric line running to the house.  Sweet. 

Light was beginning to fade as a very unobtrusive young man made his way down the street and as he neared us was roundly chided for not having a cell phone or at least for not having it on (again I am guessing as surrounded by much Kinyarwanda was the word “phone”).  It turns out this is Theogene, the current guard for the house who indeed has all the right keys to open the gate and let us into this huge house.  Luckily for me my manager was on the ball and quickly sent Theogene to buy some electrical credit for me. Where he did this I have no idea, but know for 1,000 Rwandan Francs I will have the pleasure of electricity for the next two weeks. 

Perhaps even more luckily the driver who had come with my manager to pick me up knew one of my neighbors and was chatting with her as we waited for the right key.  This neighbor is a young lady of about 20, lives two doors down, goes to university in Uganda on the weekends, has an internship with an HIV-AIDS organization, and speaks excellent English.  The lucky part is that while my manager had to leave she volunteered to stay and help me with translation as Theogene and Oswalimu put my bed together, moved the few pieces of furniture, explored which of the sixty keys fit which doors, showed me how the water worked, and cleaned out a room that had flooded.  She also helped me negotiate the terms of Theogene’s employment as my guard (something very common here-see picture), and agreed to come meet me the next day to take me to the market to buy some curtains.  I could not have done it with out her and was thrilled to have met such a lovely neighbor so soon.

I was also glad that she had assured me the neighborhood was quite safe as there is a police barracks nearby.  Mostly I am glad she told me this or I may have been a bit more concerned by the 5:00 shouting and running about that I could then attribute to police conditioning, rather than something unknown.

While it is a bit daunting to have such a large house that, as it turns out, I share with some monster spiders, one cockroach, and loads of lovely geckos, I am most thankful it is such a nice house, has electricity, water, and a plumera tree.

Football, Food, and Dancing

Rwanda was in the finals for the African Under-17 football championship and the city of Kigali was extremely excited about this event and the fact that they would be hosting the final in the local stadium.  While I was not able to go, my colleagues Mark and Bert were able to go and have shared these photos with me.  I did have a chance to watch part of the game on television with some of the local folks and also could most definitely hear the excitement booming out live from the stadium.  It was all very exciting as this was the first time Rwanda had been in a final and with only ten minutes left it was looking good with a 1-1 tie.  Unfortunately Burkina Faso was able to score a second time to win the championship, greatly disappointing the local crowd.

On the same day of the football championship I was invited to attend a dinner put on by VSO Rwanda.  During which we were lucky enough to have a local dance and singing troupe there to entertain us.  Because I had not brought my camera to this event I did not get any photos.  However, another colleague of mine, Steven, has kindly lent me a few of those photos to share. 

Kigali

Rwanda is a beautiful country with an overwhelming sense of greenness.  However, thus far I have spent my time in the capital city, Kigali.  Kigali is a city of nearly 900,000 people, which is hard to believe as it seems more like a large village rather than a city of nearly one million.  It is a city spread out over a series of hills with lovely, lush tropical foliage growing from red soil.  Kigali is a clean city.  In fact it is a really clean city with obvious effort and planning going into the design and upkeep.  It is also a city with a quiet, mellow bustle.   A bustle that seems to say, “There is time enough.”  

Kigali is also a city whose traffic is dominated by motorcycle taxis. When I was offered this placement in Rwanda from CUSO-VSO I had to decide whether or not I was comfortable riding on a motorcycle as that is one of the main modes of transportation in Rwanda.  I assured the CUSO-VSO office that I was comfortable with this form of transportation, while in reality it was the only thing that I was not looking forward to.  However, I am happy to report that with less than 24 hours under my belt I had taken not just one, but two “moto” rides and am ready for more as it is straight out fun.  We will see if I continue to think this as I use them daily over rough roads to visit schools that are sometimes one to two hours away. 

This Blog

The Neighborhood

Greetings from Rwanda!  I have been here for a week, but have been unable to find the time or the internet connection to post anything since I left Montana.   To be quite honest I am not sure what form this blog will take, but I do hope that it will be of some interest.  I do not intend this blog to be about me and my time in Rwanda, but rather about Rwanda, and to some extent the work I am doing here.  I might not be taking the time to maintain this blog at all except that my experience in Hebron reminded me of the importance of sharing one's first hand experience and learning about places we are lucky enough to travel to.  I certainly feel more than lucky that I was able to spend time in Hebron, to have met the quality of people that I did, to have had the experiences that I had, and to have friends and family that were interested to know about my time there.  Therefore, this is an experiment, and any comments, questions, or encouragements are most welcome.

Thursday I leave for Rwanda

Thursday I leave for Rwanda.  Today I gave a talk to group of high school students about power and privilege, went skiing, and tried to tie up some lose ends in the below zero temperatures.  It is not only the below zero temperatures that have me excited for my departure to Rwanda, it is also the knowledge of how much more I will gain from this trip than I can hope to give as a volunteer.  I look forward to this gained knowledge.