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.
Good morning, how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because through them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately, it is impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are very small countries with very few population, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this, I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Rwanda? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Rwanda in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
28902 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally, I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez