Home Away From Home

So a few weeks ago, I was dropped off at my site where I will be living for the next two years, and let me tell you, words cannot describe how utterly beautiful my village is. From the views to the individuals who I now call my friends and neighbors, Gahengeri is certainly a site to see. In the morning I wake up to the cows mooing and the sounds of children playing, and throughout the day I enjoy listening to birds and the music being played by my neighbors while they do their daily chores. On a clear day I can wake up to watch the sunrise, see the volcanoes far off in the North, and see the sunset while cooking dinner on my imbambura.
When I tell Rwandan friends in Kigali or elsewhere that I am living in Gahengeri, they ask "how can you live in such a place?" The truth is, I am so happy to be living in a rural area with my small, tightly knit community. Life is simple in my village, we have a small nightly market where you can buy peanut flour and fresh produce, and a bigger market that pops up twice a week in a field next to my school. People spend their days tending to small farms and gardens, washing clothes, cooking on the charcoal stoves, and visiting with neighbors. We don't have most modern amenities (toilets, running water, television, etc.), but people seem to be happy. Myself included. When I visit friends who live in towns or the city, I am reminded of what I am lacking, but more importantly I realize how lucky I am to have all that I do. The air is clean and crisp, the produce is cheap and fresh every day, and everyone in my community knows who I am and why I'm here. I may go days without speaking English to anyone in my village, but somehow we manage to have meaningful interactions despite the language barrier.
With all of that being said, there are still plenty of challenges to living in a rural area. For example, I've been lucky enough to be invited to work with the community outreach coordinator at my health center, and as a result I get to see aspects of living in rural Rwanda that many people can't imagine. We go to visit malnourished families to discuss growing and cooking more nutritious foods. We see children and mothers with distended stomachs and atrophied muscles. We see the skin diseases caused by lack of access to clean water. A Rwandan friend of mine recently said, "living there, you get to see it. What you read in books, you are now living it and seeing the challenges that people face. It is such a good experience to have". She couldn't have said it any better, and I am so grateful to be given this awesome experience. Similar to what I saw in South Africa, I am continuing to learn that financial poverty is not an all encompassing poverty. Even though the majority of people I live with would be considered to be Class 1 (Rwandan socioeconomic classifications), with virtually no source of income within the family, they are the most vibrant, resilient, and truly amazing people that I've ever met.
Being a new PCV, every once in a while I have the thought of "Holy crap what the hell am I doing here", but those are few and far between. Have you ever had a moment where you feel completely comfortable with every aspect of your life, and you think "this is where I belong" or "this is why I'm here"? These moments can be brought on by the smallest things, like a friend remembering that you've been looking for eggs so they find them and bring some to your house, or when the hoards of small children start calling you by your name and not "umuzungu", or even just being on the back of a Moto going to a remote village and seeing the beauty in your surroundings. These moments, for me, are what make it all worthwhile.

Model School and Thanksgiving

Two weeks later, I can officially say that Model School is over. For those of you that aren’t aware, model school is like the Peace Corps Rwanda version of student teaching. For two weeks, we work in the classrooms with students (some with Rwandan teachers, some without) and practice our “special English” and various teaching strategies. We were placed into groups of 3-4 people, and each assigned a class to start with. Over the course of the two weeks, the groups rotate so that everyone has a chance to teach students of different grades and various levels of English proficiency.

As many of you know, I will be working with 9 other people in my cohort to help develop the primary education pilot program that we are participating in. What this translates to is a lot of confusion, frustration, last minute changes to the schedule, and a ton of opportunity to work with PC staff to develop a new program. My group began teaching in what was supposed to be a Primary 5 (about 5^th grade) classroom, and turned out to be a class of students ranging from Primary 2 to Primary 6 because they were on holiday and ended up being difficult to sort into the appropriate grade ranges… 

On the first day, we began with about 56 students. We realized how great the language barrier was, watched our lesson plans go down the drain, and began to rethink everythinggggg that we had planned previously. We were also lucky enough to be working with a Rwandan teacher who was able to help us with translation of instructions, but also showed us the source of many of the problems that we see with students learning English in Rwanda… The majority of those who are current teachers (especially in the primary schools) were educated under a Francophone system, and are as a result struggling with the national switch to English as the median of instruction in schools. On this first day, we asked our cooperating teacher to model a lesson using question words so that we could see how she teaches. During this lesson, she used the example: “Why DO you late?” At first, I thought this said “why do you hate?” because he was writing in cursive. However, I was being too optimistic in that situation and later realized she genuinely thought that was how the question was supposed to be phrased… Although this first day was definitely an eye-opener and gave me a small glimpse into what my next two years of work were going to look like, the rest of the week did go much more smoothly. By the end of this week, I had taught anywhere from 56-90 students each day (yes. 90. the class size kept growing…), taught while having food poisoning, and learned to teach almost entirely in Kinyarwanda with English translation as well. 

During the second week, we switched classes and moved to what was supposed to be Primary 4 students. Once again, they were tiny little peanuts and most of them were under the age of nine. This class was also much more rowdy, and had an average of 90+ students each day. On Tuesday, there was a ton of confusion and after many changes, we ended up having to move to a different school to complete our model school. Due to this mess, we only taught Monday, Wednesday, and Friday during the second week. At the new school, we worked with a Primary 6 class of about 45-50 students and were able to accomplish so much more. Although we were in the same town, only about 50 minutes walking distance apart from each other, the level of English at this school was noticeably different. On the last day, we were able to have a field day with the students and organized various different activities and games for them. 

All in all, model school was a hectic, but good, experience. When I go to the market now, my students come running up to me yelling “teacher Kelly, teacher Kelly! How are you?” :) 

Todayyyyy we celebrated Thanksgiving! I know it’s a few days early, but it was the only time that we had available because next week is our final week in training! For the past 24 hours, we had a dedicated group of people (myself not included) who spent the entire night at the Peace Corps office slaughtering, cleaning, and cooking turkeys so that we could prepare the rest of the dishes today. With most of the group having less than 3 hours of sleep, there was a lot of coffee and a surprising amount of cooperation. For the first time since we arrived in country, I really felt like we were a cohesive group and were starting to become this “Peace Corps family” that everyone keeps telling us about. It was by far one of the best days that I’ve had so far in Rwanda, and I’m happy to be here with such a great group of volunteers and PC staff. Oh, and I found out today that they have completed a pipeline that brings water to my village! So instead of the hour walk down the mountain and hour walk back up to get my water, I now only have to walk for about 10-15 minutes to fill up my jerry cans :) 

Here are some photos from the last few weeks:

 

Some Troubling Thoughts

So I know I promised an update on my first week of model school, but I have decided to post about model school next week after I finish week two because I have had a few things come up that I think are more important to discuss. Before I start, I want to preface this post and say that I am in no way comparing the suffering of different peoples around the world, I am simply trying to express my thoughts on a few matters that keep reappearing in conversation.

In Rwanda, one of the first questions a person usually asks you is “what is your religion” and this is an honest question as religion is huge here in Rwanda. Today, a friend of my host mom asked me this question and I explained that I am Catholic like my family, however I do not practice regularly (I always get a funny look with this response but it is generally accepted without too much question). The man followed up my response by telling me that he was happy I am Christian because believing in Jesus is what matters most. I proceeded to explain that I respect the beliefs of every religion regardless of how different they might be from my own and I used the example of Muslim, stating that the beliefs of that religion may be different than those of Catholicism but that does not mean it is a bad religion. He continued to try to persuade me to think otherwise by claiming that most Muslims are terrorists. Pause. This statement alone is something that has always drove me crazy, to say that any one religion is exclusively terrorists and others do not have extremist factions is absurd. So after a deep breath, I calmly explained that there are plenty of terrorist groups and extremists who have a basis in Christianity and how that does not mean that ALL Christians are terrorists and that the same train of thought applies to almost all religions. Yes religions are different and sometimes we disagree on our beliefs, but it is not fair for any human being to say that another is bad strictly because of religion, race, political beliefs, sexual orientation, etc. Who are we to judge one another?

This brings me into another topic.. I am so sorry for the families and friends of those who have lost their lives in the senseless attacks that happened recently in Paris. I am deeply empathetic for your loss. However, it bothers me to see how billions of people around the world can come together to mourn the losses of those from a privileged country in the so-called western world literally overnight,  but close to no one is even discussing the atrocities that are occurring throughout the rest of the world in the so-called “underdeveloped third world” countries. Burundi is a tiny country to the south of Rwanda that has been in turmoil since April when their president decided to run for an extremely controversial third term in office despite the fact that the people he is supposed to represent and protect adamantly protested his decision. Did you know that since April over 240 people have been killed in political violence in this small country? Did you know that more than 230,000 people have fled the violence in Burundi since April? Or that the government in Burundi is using the same language that was used prior to the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda to describe their plan to stop their political opponents? When the international community stood by and watched the genocide progress in Rwanda, they waited until the RPF stopped it, then proceeded to apologize for their poor decisions to pull out peacekeeping forces and say “never again”. This term is frequently used when discussing mass atrocity and genocide; we say “never again” will we refuse to stop such horror when we have the capacity to do so. In 1994 the international community made the wrong decision, and now, here, in 2015 just 21 short years later, they are about to make the same mistake. Burundi is teetering on the edge of mass violence against civilians, more so than is already occurring, but we are only standing with France? 

Back to my conversation with the man I met today.. When I stated that there are extremist groups with bases in Christianity, he was shocked and I had to explain a short history of racism in the United States and what is STILL currently a very big problem. My Peace Corps group left the U.S. at a very volatile time, after a summer of peaceful protests, violent protests, and senseless acts of hate against minority communities throughout our country. And the tension continues to escalate. A few days ago I was reading some articles posted by friends on Facebook about the death threats being made to African American students at their universities, and today I read an article about a student at UCONN who was told he is to blame for the attacks in Paris, strictly because of his name. Being in Rwanda, we often have to explain that our own country still has soooo many problems with inequality and racism. When you tell people that poverty and homelessness are massive issues in the United States, they are shocked and sometimes they will tell you that you are lying to them. When you say that racism and discrimination against certain religions are currently affecting the daily lives of many Americans, they laugh and say “Is it so?” 

Our country is not perfect; we are not even remotely close to perfect. In my opinion, if we want to create a better world, we need to first accept the imperfections and differences within ourselves and within humanity as a whole. If we as individuals can do this, then, and only then, can we as individuals work to create a more cooperative and more peaceful world. We can’t say we want change and do nothing about it, we must actively become agents of positive change. So with that I apologize for the long rant, but I had to post something in regards to my thoughts about recent situations that have arose. Here is a great quote from Nelson Mandela, and a short video that a friend of mine found and posted on Facebook.

“It is in your hands to create a better world for all who live in it.” –Nelson Mandela

Twenty-six Days

So after some pestering from my mother, I was finally guilted into writing another blog post. Not much has happened in the last few weeks, so I haven’t exactly had the highest motivation level to piece together another post… Regardless, here it is!

Here are a few short highlights before I get into the bulk of the post: 

1.      1. I got to visit my friends Betty and Joseph and their adorable children! Joey was only about a month old the last time I saw her, and now she is approaching 1 year and holding herself up on furniture. Its crazy how much she has grown. I also got to see her sister Johanna and her brother Josh who are 5 and 7 now (I think..), and those little munchkins have grown soooo much!

2.      2. I had a picnic with a few of my friends in my training group, we made guacamole, got a cake from an American bakery, found some peanut butter to put on our chapatti, and ate some delicious fresh fruit! We were supposed to go to a beautiful spot on the hillside, but once again the rainy season deterred us from going anywhere.

3.      3. Oh, and it hailed here.. 

In the last couple of weeks there was a strong possibility that I was going to receive a site change, but after some hard work on the part of PC Rwanda staff and a lot of me telling them I didn’t want a site change things have finally been sorted out. I am still going to be living in the same village, just in a different house! This new house is supposedly bigger than my last house (I didn’t know that was even possible), and it is in its own compound. Guess who’s getting chickens and a dog :)

 

Another recent update; in only 26 short days I will be moving to my site in Gahengeri where I will live and work for the next two years! To say I am excited is a drastic understatement, I am so ready to be at site and start working with my community. Earlier this week we were informed that our Swear-in Ceremony will take place on December 1^st instead of December 4^th, and as a result we only have about 3 weeks left of training in Rwamagana. So over the next three weeks, I will be spending two weeks in Model School where I will be teaching some Primary 4 & 5 students as kind of a student teaching program. Today I visited the school (it’s about a 25 minute walk), and decided to do a mini unit on storytelling with my classes. Next week I will have pictures and a reflection on my first week of “teaching”. In addition to Model School, I will have my final LPI (language proficiency exam) and we will host a party for our host families to thank them for taking care of us over the past twelve, brutally long, weeks. AND of course, all of the trainees in my group will be learning/ performing not one, but TWO traditional Rwandan dances for our families and friends. Although dancing is definitely not my thing, and difficult to do with my lack of shoulder stability, it will be good to show our families that we really do want to be a part of the culture (even if it means dancing like uncoordinated fools). Don’t worry, I’m sure most people will record it and proof of this will find its way onto my blog at some point!