Term 1 done! The first term has just ended, and teachers are
busy correcting the thousands of exams that were completed last week. My school
has announced that for the second term our six brand new classrooms will be up
and running to help with the overcrowding in our current classes.
Unfortunately, we will not be hiring new teachers to help pick up the
additional hours until next year, meaning my already overworked colleagues will
have to make a NEW timetable (it took us two weeks to get the first one
finished..) and teach more hours. Komera!
Here is a short summary of the things that I have gotten up
and running, not all that smoothly I must say, but they are a work in progress.
1. CLUBS! I have one
functioning club at my school with 31 secondary students, but I’ve been told we
need to organize 4 more clubs for next term. At the other secondary level day
school in my sector, I’ve been working with my wonderful neighbor to organize
English Club for about 150 students. I’ve only met with each club once or twice
at this point, but come second term we will hit the ground running!
2. Weekly Teacher Trainings (they are much more fun than one
would think)! Again, we’ve only successfully had one training so far, but we
will be meeting almost every Friday for the rest of the academic year. Every
week I work with the teachers at my school on three skills: one non-violent classroom
management strategy, one student grouping activity, and one type of teaching
aid that can be created with low-cost materials and used for any class.
3. Health Center English Classes! Every Thursday, I spend
the afternoon teaching English to the staff at the local health center. I have
three separate classes that meet every week, and we focus on speaking and
listening skills as we develop our vocabularies! I have a great group of about
20 participants who are always excited and eager to learn.
4. Permagardening! We have had all of our meetings, now I
just need to submit my grant, and we will be able to begin our sector-wide
permagarden trainings sometime in May!
5. PENPALS! In the last two weeks of the term, I taught my
S1 students how to write letters (epic fail) so that we could send out our first
letters before the end of the term. We will be communicating with students in
the seventh grade from a small town in Massachusetts to facilitate a cultural
exchange between the two groups of students, while providing my students an
opportunity to practice their reading and writing skills.
In other news, the parasitic mystery has been solved! I was
diagnosed with schistosomiasis, and yes, it is in fact a snail parasite. I’m
only the second volunteer to be diagnosed with it in the last 8 years, so
luckily it’s not all that common. Unfortunately, the treatment really sucks and
made me super sick for about a week. Good news is now I am parasite free and
good to go! However, while I was gone some local children accidentally killed
my kitty, thinking he was a local cat. With some investigating, we found out
who did it (none of the kiddos who are frequent flyers to my compound) and they
apologized for what happened. In fact, I’ve gotten apologies on their behalf
from almost everyone in my community and the moto drivers. After discussing
with my neighbor, we both decided that it is not a good idea for me to get
another kitty, as most of the cats around here are wild and they kill chickens,
so in turn people tend to kill cats assuming they are all wild. An unfortunate and
sad truth in this reality. However, we did decide that it is a good idea for me
to get a dog for several reasons: 1) I like dogs, 2) I live alone and there
are no police in our sector (my
neighbors are more concerned about this than I am), and 3) even though they don’t
like them, people are less likely to harm a dog because “to kill a dog is an
act of aggression against the owner” according to my neighbors. So, I’m
adopting a young dog from WAG, a dog rescue in Kigali, and will bring her home
in April :) I know some people have been concerned about this decision, but
believe me I would not get a dog if I did not feel 100% secure in doing so. We
will be having community sensitization meetings and discussing cultural
differences as related to animal treatment, and hopefully bringing about a
behavior change in how children and adults treat domestic animals. In addition,
my pup won’t be wandering about the village (like the cat did) because I’ve patched
up all of the big holes in my fence.
Also… CHICKENS! Yes, I finally have a total of three
chickens and two possibly fertile eggs. I have my big momma chicken, and two
young adolescent hens who still try to sleep underneath her at night (they are
each about half of her) which looks quite awkward.
Well, that’s it for now. I have my IST this week, then a
trip to Gisenyi to relax with some friends for my birthday, then back to the
village to prepare for my new baby and the genocide commemoration week. Next
post will most likely happen after commemoration ends on April 14.
