Settling into Routine

For the last few weeks, I’ve been settling into the school year and my new routine. My morning starts with watching the sun rise over the fields behind my house, listening to the birds wake up and start to sing, and tripping over the cat as he purrs and wraps himself around my legs when I go to let the chicken out. By 6am I am usually rushing eat my breakfast and finish heating my bathwater so I can start my walk to school. It takes me 15-20 minutes to walk to school, and I am always accompanied by at least a dozen primary students following close behind me, whispering about my hair and purple toenail polish. As of right now I teach anywhere from 25 to 40 periods, and am present at the school for about 35 hours each week. After a long day of teaching, I get home to cook dinner while the cat and chicken BOTH try to get on lap, and watch the sunset through the smoke from my imbabura. So that is what a typical day looks like for me while I am here, and you always have to throw in the occasional monsoon that floods my house and knocks down a tree, or the herds of small children who try to visit after school, just to mix things up a little bit. In other news, I’ve had my first real bout of home sickness while being really sick with some kind of mystery parasite wreaking havoc in my intestines. Still not sure what it is, but soon enough our wonderful PC doctors will figure it all out and I’ll be good as new! 

A few moments worth sharing:

So almost every day I end up arguing with the same two old men about why I don’t have a husband and children, don’t want a husband, and don’t need a husband. Naturally, they speak zero English so we struggle through in Kinyarwanda and they insist that I know French (because everyone must know French) so some French ends up getting mixed in there. This is every, single, day… A few weeks ago, one of the old men found me and showed me a picture of a random white woman and a Rwandan man. He then insisted that it was me in the picture. I repeatedly told him “no, that’s not me. Her hair is blonde and she has blue eyes”. He was NOT swayed by my arguments, so he went and got the other old man who wears a cheetah print safari hat and walks with a cane in one hand, 3 goats on leashes in the other. Now they are both looking at the picture, then looking at me, and back to the picture while quietly agreeing that it is in fact me in the picture. With the two men in agreement, I was unable to make them believe that it wasn’t me in the photo. At this point a crowd had gathered to watch me argue relentlessly with the old men. Eventually I gave up and had to continue to school.

I taught in secondary school for the first time last week, nothing serious, but we worked on introducing ourselves and talked about future career aspirations. The primary students have their 20 minute break while the secondary students are still in class.. Hopefully you can already see how this is a problem. So as I am trying to teach, all of my students from primary are running up to the classroom, hanging on the window bars, and even running into the classroom when I was writing on the blackboard. This results in me having to chase the children, big grins on their faces, while I am trying to teach and keep control of the class that I am actually in. As angry as the kiddos made me, they are too cute to stay mad at when they run up to you and ambush you with genuine hugs. 

So despite all of the sickness, house-flooding monsoons, and strange interactions, I can still say that I love my job and I am happy to be here. Knowing that my parents are coming to visit in July is also very helpful because I am getting excited about planning for their visit and what we will do together. With my new routine and all of the craziness that is my life, I know the next 21 months will fly by and I will wish they had gone by more slowly. It is time to de-stress and remind myself how beautiful this country is, and how truly lucky I am to be here. 

First Week of School

Picture this...
I'm walking to school, naturally with a group of about 20 curious nursery school students (4-5 years old), excited to start the day. The children hear a rooster; they all stop, stand on their toes, and crane their necks looking for the animal (kind of like when a colony of meerkats hear a noise). Then one starts saying "murumva inkoko?!?" (Did you hear the chicken?), and they all start giggling happily and imitating the sound of a rooster while skipping the rest of the way to school.

Every day, I wake up at 5am and go for a run to see the sunrise while my bath water heats up on the charcoal stove. After bathing and eating my breakfast, I start my daily walk to school with the 1500 or so primary school students who attend classes in the morning session. For the first few days, time was spent cleaning the classrooms, making the timetables, and taking care of last minute student registrations. On Wednesday, I co-taught a short lesson on introductions in a P4 class. On Friday, I co-taught with the same teacher in 3 sections of P6 (6 periods), then in the afternoon I solo taught another 6 periods of P6. We worked on phonics, the alphabet, and even played a few games. Each class has about 40-50 students now, but I was reassured that the class sizes will grow in the coming weeks as the harvest season comes to an end. Despite the large class sizes, the students were great! I'm super excited for my experience working with the primary school, and I'm anxious to start working on clubs with the teachers in the secondary school! I know this is a short post, but I'll write another in the next two weeks with more details.