In the past few months, things have been crazy busy! I’m now
teaching/ doing teacher training in 5 different schools within my sector,
teaching English at the health center, and organizing various different
secondary projects. A lot has happened so I’m going to try my best to keep this
post organized and less all-over-the-place.
So let’s start with school updates! As I said before I am
now working in 5 schools within my sector, the farthest being a 20 minute moto
into one of the valleys, and all others being within an hour walk from my
house. For term 2, my English Girls & Boys Club has been meeting every week
so far and the students are really starting to come out of their shells. When
we started a few months ago, my students were so afraid of speaking that our
club was mostly silent. Now, they organize their own meetings (in addition to
our club time), prepare things to share with other students, and love to speak
and ask questions. I saw them meeting on their own for the first time last
week, and was so excited I almost cried. Naturally I was jumping up and down,
clapping, and smiling up a storm, and the students said “teacher, what is
wrong?” When I told them I was so happy and proud of them they all giggled and
looked at me like I was crazy. I’m fine with it :) I think part of this change
is because 10 of my students join the APPEGA Boarding School English Club every
Monday (I go with them twice a month) to practice their English skills.
Regardless of what is causing this confidence, I couldn’t be happier. My
students are speaking and listening, and they no longer fear using English with
their peers. The little moments like this make every other struggle completely
worth it.
In addition to taking some huge steps forward with my
students, I have also started working with teachers at my school to decide upon
a secondary project for the school. Although it is stressful as all hell, the
teachers just look at me and say “please be patient with us, we know you are
using much power”. After a week of voting mayhem, and disputes between teachers
and administration, we finally counted the ballots and the teachers have
decided that they would like to create a sustainable animal husbandry project
to benefit students and teachers. We’re still in the initial planning stages
and just trying to figure out exactly what this project will look like, but for
the first time I am really seeing them come together as a staff. The goals for
our project will be to increase education about animal husbandry within the
students, teachers, and greater community, to provide malnourished students
with resources to begin their own animal husbandry projects at home, to gain
income for the school which can be used to fund other projects, and to increase
the sense of community well being among school staff members. It’s a big
project, and I’m a little nervous about it, but here’s to hoping for the best!
Now, onto teacher training! So as of right now, I am doing
teacher training sessions in 3 schools, with two sessions per month at each
school. We are focusing on student-centered learning activities, creating
teaching resources from locally-available materials, as well as discussing
positive classroom management techniques. In July, we’ll be starting the Sector-wide
Teacher Training Sessions with the help of my first Peace Corps Grant! We’ll
have the first 2 of 5 trainings, and will be meeting with all School Based
Mentors (SBMs) and English Teachers to discuss new methodology, the new
curriculum, classroom management, and even phonics. If this whole training
series is successful, we will open up the trainings to be available to other subject
teachers next year!
Last thing, I promise! We are also in the process of gathering
necessary information to submit a grant for a Permagarden Training that would
provide all community health workers in my sector with training on creating
climate resistant permagardens to help fight malnutrition in our area. Everyone
is super excited, which gives me hope that the trainings will go well and these
practices will be implemented. As much as I love working with my health center,
I am very excited for them to be getting their very own Peace Corps Volunteer
in the beginning of August! I know it will reduce the amount of work that I do
with them, but I’m hoping for a great volunteer who is as motivated as they are
to improve the health among our communities. If that means I am a little less
busy, I’m OK with it :)
Just kidding… We also had an inauguration ceremony for our
new classrooms which led to free lunch with the mayor of my district, free transport
to Kigali, and the worst sunburn I’ve had since 7th grade… AND I attended
my first traditional Rwandan wedding for my neighbor Ben’s sister. The ceremony
was beautiful and it was so cool to see how these weddings happen. We started
the day at 8:30 am after ZERO sleep, attended the traditional ceremony, missed
the religious ceremony because we had a small car accident (don’t worry, just a
small fender bender), went to the reception, then had the final ceremony where
we left the bride in her new home with her new husband. By the time we got home
it was after midnight. Even though we were all exhausted, I was super sick, and
the car had a few bumps and bruises, the wedding was awesome and I’m so happy
that I was invited to participate in all of the ceremonies!
Well, that’s it for now! Enjoy some pictures and I promise I’ll
be better about posting again in the next couple of weeks!
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
Calle Valencia, 39
28903 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