End of Term Pt.3

Rwanda never fails to surprise me. Case in point: After the morning exams earlier in the week, two of my best students came to me all serious-like as I was standing out in the hallway. Together they said, rather breathlessly, “Teacher, you must come to the S2 room. It is very important. We have big problems only you can help.” I said, “What’s the matter?” “No” they said, “You must come at 5pm today after last exams of day”. “Umm…okay” I replied. All I day I wondered what could have been the matter…what could they possibly want with me later in the day that I couldn’t have taken care of earlier? At 5pm I went to the S2 room. I heard the squeaking of desks being moved and shuffling and whispering. I hoped they weren’t doing anything against the rules that I would have to witness. I didn’t need any kind of trouble, not at the end of the term anyway. When the door was opened I was greeted by my students with a HUGE amount of confetti cut into tiny pieces of old school papers and raucous cheering. They presented me with a bouquet of tropical flowers-gorgeous Irises, Lilies, Roses, and Wildflowers. The Chef de Classe gave me a gift bag full of Rwandan earrings, headbands, and bracelets in my favorite colors that they had(I thought) innocuously quizzed me about earlier that term. I also received 50 handmade cards which I read later that evening and choked up more than once from the dear sentiments they contained. My arms were full and all I needed was a tiara and long gloves to feel any more like the pageant princess they were treating me like. They even elected a student to come and brush the excess confetti out of my hair and clothes. What followed  after was the stuff of memories: A full Rwandan style 30 minute review full of prayers, songs, dances, and speech-making in my honor. The nuns had made me a cake(a pound cake!) and my fellow teachers bought me beer. And of course, I cried, confusing everyone until I said, “Its ok. I am very, very happy!” They asked me to make a speech. I complied with some words about what wonderful students they were, how kind and thoughtful, how surprised I was and how very , very, touched. I couldn’t think of how to say it in English so they would understand my meaning so I touched my heart and my head and said, “This year, my body is so far from home on my birthday, but you have helped to make me feel at home here and here in Rwanda.” Then everybody clapped and sang Happy Birthday in French, English, and Kinyarwanda. After all we had been through with the cheating, and the punishment, and the quizzes where they had done poorly…the days I had despaired of how much I felt they didn’t respect me let alone actually like me. I couldn’t believe it. Only Sally Field could have voiced my feelings, “They like me! They really like me!”

Grading (or “Marking’ as it’s called in the big ‘R”) is not finished until your final grades are submitted to the Head /Class Teacher. So even if exams are over, your job is not done as a teacher. The administration still needs the final grades recorded for posterity and the Secretary needs them so she can prepare the final reports for the students before they go home for the long holiday.The Head Teacher is assigned based on some criteria I am not privy to. I can only imagine that one being selected for the title is the result of being able to provide a consistent supply of Fanta to the person who picks you for the role. No, really, I’m sure it’s nothing like that. Every grade has a Head Teacher. You(meaning me) not being the Class teacher have to track down the Class teacher and submit your final grades to him/her before all the grades can be tabulated and the students can be given the results. Now, if computers were in regular use in Rwanda, this would only be a matter of an Excel spreadsheet . Rwanda has not reached that stage yet. So all the marks have to be entered in giant ledgers devoted to each class…by hand. Each Head teacher has a ledger the size of the phone book for a small town. You have to get that ledger and laboriously copy your student’s marks into the ledger in the appropriate column/space for that student. It’s not hard, it’s just time-consuming. I schlep all my paperwork to the Living Room, then I have to go around the room looking for the ledgers, “Has anyone seen the book for S2? Anyone?”, “What about S5 MPG?” “No one’s seen it? No one knows where it is?”, “Oh, it’s in the office? Oh thanks…no I’ll go and get it.”,”Thanks”. The Living Room was pretty full of teachers all scrambling to find the books. The sooner the final marks are entered, the sooner they can go home. So two days before the end of the term, that’s where I was.

The atmosphere was the tiniest bit convivial but more determined than anything else. Sort of a “race to the finish line” vibe mixed with impatience and sheer exhaustion. As I entered my student’s marks in the ledgers, several teacher’s stopped to watch me. I have no idea if they were checking up on me or just blatantly curious about my student’s grades. One of them remarked, ‘I see you have no red marks. May I ask why you have failed no students?” A red mark/grade in the ledger means the student has failed the course . I answered him, still entering marks and not looking up, “Because none of my student’s failed.” He was incredulous. ‘No students have failed? Impossible!” I was getting annoyed with this culture of teachers seeming to enjoy coming down on their students instead of encouraging them to succeed, “Because none of my students did poorly enough to fail, that’s why!”, I semi-snapped.  He still looked confused. “Some of my students did very poorly. They almost failed. But they didn’t. They tried very hard. I reward good effort. Most of them did very well. None of them did so terribly that I would fail them. If they try, if they really try, I think they deserve to pass.”  He walked away ruminating on that fact. I finished entering my marks and handed them off to the appropriate teachers. I knew that later in the day the School secretary and they would have the arduous task of doing the final transfer onto the student’s individual reports. I was lucky. Now that I was finished for the day, all I had to do was a whole lot of nothing.

The next day, after all marks were turned in we were summoned to a meeting to review the term. The meeting had been announced two days before with an ‘Itangazo”(Announcement) put on the board in the Living Room: Meeting 10am tomorrow(the date). No disorder will be tolerated! I wondered what they could have meant by disorder..did they think we were planning to riot? I mentally shrugged. When the day of the meeting rolled round..well..the good news was: there was Fanta. The bad news was: The meeting, which was supposed to start at 10am, ended up starting at 11am. I had purposefully started my laundry early and then after finishing washing the clothes, not continued with soaking and scrubbing the sheets and blankets because I wanted to be sure to be on time for the meeting. Since everything I wash is by hand, that missed window where I could have finished washing the bedclothes and then hung them up in the strong African mid-morning sun to dry…it ticked me off a little. The meeting began with a prayer. Our Headmistress was in France for a conference so another Sister filled in for her and sat beside the Prefet des Etudes  and the Prefets des Discipline. We went over the health and discipline issues for the term and discussed what elements of behavior the students needed to work on for the future. The students good points included: Esprit de Corps, Diligence in Studies, and Good Organization skills. The bad points were: “Sheep-like” behavior, Lack of Punctuality, and a Propensity to be absent at evening prayers. We talked about student health next. There had been an outbreak of Conjunctivitis in the Rwandan school system a couple of months ago and several students had been caught “faking’ illness in order to get out of class, be sent to the Health Center (woo! Field Trip) or even home to their parents. We also discussed how to be more encouraging as teachers towards our students and how to be more social with each other. Having spoken with my administration in casual conversation, they had let on that integrating non-Rwandan teachers in the Rwandan school community was a perennial issue. Rwandan teachers are apparently known to be not exactly friendly and more than a little xenophobic with foreign teachers who come to work with them. I can’t pretend I haven’t heard this same observations from fellow PCV’s.  To wrap up the meeting the Prefets reminded everyone of when the third term would begin and wished everyone a safe and happy vacation. Those who taught S3 and S6 were instructed to report to the secretary’s office for further information regarding preparing their classes for the National Exams to be held in November. And then it was done.  Second term was really finished. The Secretary would compile the final grades for the students along with the Head teachers. The final grades would be posted in the homerooms and the student’s would see their fortunes ebb or flow with the numbers on the paper and the color ink used when writing it out. The students would go home for the long holiday the next day. The teachers soon after.The school would be empty for six weeks except for the Sisters, the Abakozi working on repairs and cleaning, and a few staff like the Secretary who lives there full-time, the Minnesotan, and (theoretically at least)me.

End of Term Pt.2

Finishing up with grading is quite the accomplishment. I would have felt like celebrating with a hot toddy(my usual relaxing drink of choice here in Rwanda when I’m at home) but I realized just before I started marking in the Master Gradebooks that I was missing something. Well, five something’s to be exact. Five grades. Five students from amongst my classes had no final exams. None. Looking at my grade lists…they had no grades of any kind. Strange. How was this possible? There were two options as I saw it here for this anomaly to have occurred. One option was that these five students didn’t exist, had gotten ill before starting the term, or had elected not to come to this school after all. Which would explain why I didn’t remember any of them being in my classes.  Then again, it’s easy to forget five students when you teach 400 total. The second option: Out of 400 students, I had somehow lost all of these student’s grades. All of their quizzes, homeworks, and their final exams. Was this probable? No. Was it possible? In Rwanda, you learn that anything, no matter how crazy it may seem to you, is possible. I went back to my house and frantically searched through all of my paperwork. How could I have mislaid all of their work? Did I have it and just somehow failed to enter it? I went through every folder, every notebook searching for papers that may have slipped through the stacks I kept on my desk and on my bookshelf. Where were their bloody grades? I started to freak out. Then I remembered that the “Prefets de Discipline” would have all the attendance records and master class lists in her office. I ran up the hill hoping and praying that she would be there to tell me I wasn’t crazy and these five students were never actually in my classes, explaining why I had no grades for them. She was there and she confirmed that option one was the right one. I wasn’t the worst teacher in the world. These five had never actually matriculated. Big sigh of relief. If she had told me differently I think I may have committed a criminal action. Good thing it hadn’t come to that.

Anyway, after it was all said and done I was happy my students had succeeded so well. The exams had not been easy. Examples of questions I had put on the exam for my sophomore level English class were…

1. Enathe’s friend Miriam has started drinking alcohol. Miriam wants Enathe to meet her tonight to drink some urgwagua(Banana beer) with her. Priscille thinks that it is a bad idea for Enathe to go drink and she tries to pressure both Enathe and Miriam not to drink alcohol.
2. Jean Claude needs money and he knows a man in town who grows ganga (urumogi). He’s not going to smoke the urumogi because he knows it’s bad. He only wants to sell to other students in order to make money. He asks his friends Martin and Gaston for advice. Martin thinks it’s a bad idea, but Gaston thinks it’s ok to sell if Jean doesn’t use it himself.
3. Francine has a boyfriend who wants her to quit school with him so that they can get married. She asks her two friends, Jackie and Eugenie, for advice. Jackie tells her that she should leave school and get married so she can start having children, but Eugenie thinks it’s a bad idea.

 

The exam parameters were that the students had to comment on the problem while using all the grammar they had learned from the term plus proper paragraph structure, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc. Each solution had to be a single paragraph of five sentences each: 1 Topic Sentence, 3 Supporting Sentences, and 1 Concluding Sentence. I listed the grammar just to help them out a little. Stuff like Definite and Indefinite Pronouns, Modal verbs, Countable and Uncountable Nouns, Non Count Nouns, Reflexive Pronouns, and Articles. Grammar-wise most of the students did very well. The again, their observations on the problems they were presented with were…interesting. Here are student’s solutions to their exam questions (various students’):

1. Drinking alcohol is bad. (Topic Sentence) Alcohol can make a girl to be stupid. (Supporting Sentence) It can make her to be indaya (a  whore). (Supporting Sentence) She can make her parent’s sad because she cannot get a husband. (Supporting Sentence)  To drink alcohol is a very bad thing. (Concluding Sentence)

 

1. Ganja is a bad thing. (Topic Sentence) It can make you crazy. (Supporting Sentence)  It can make you kill people and to be a thief. (Supporting Sentence)   If you sell it, the police will beat you and you go to prison. (Supporting Sentence) Friends who drink ganja (they ‘drink’ tobacco/marijuana in Rwanda), they are not friends. (Concluding Sentence)

 

1. In this, it is my belief that to get married and leave school is no problem (Topic Sentence) It is a good thing to be married. (Supporting Sentence)School is not necessary if you have a husband.(Supporting Sentence) You can begin to have children which is good.(Supporting Sentence) I think this is not a problem to leave school to be married.(Concluding Sentence)

 

I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed, amused, or to just pee my pants with laughter while reading some of these exams. I was judging their grammar and their critical thinking skills but I was completely blown away by the cultural differences and perspectives encapsulated by their answers.

The Creative Performance classes were the classes in which I had had the most trouble with cheaters. Earlier in the term I had led them through an Art unit based on the “Fruits of the Spirit” in the Bible.It’s a Catholic school after all. Kindness, Gentleness, Trustfulness, Patience, Self-Control, Joy, and Goodness. So for their exam ( a one hour class, it wasn’t supposed to be long or difficult), I made them answer the following question:

Part 1: List all the ‘Fruits of the Spirit”. Write a detailed definition of each one.

Part 2; In a 5 paragraph essay, tell me how cheating is wrong and how if we believe in the “Fruits of the Spirit” we can use them so that we do not cheat.

Their answers were pretty wild. Most of them got the fact that cheating is its own punishment. They remarked on their papers that if you cheat you are only cheating yourself, you are disrespecting your teacher, and setting yourself up for failure on the National Exams(when cheating isn’t an option). But some of them had the absolute strangest answers. And again, it was a real reflection on the ideas in Rwanda regarding God and religion and reward and punishment. A little like “Deadliest Warrior: Puritan vs. inquisitor”.

• “To cheat means you are subject of Satan”
• “To cheat make our teacher cry and we go to Hell.”
• “You cheat and Jesus not like you.”
• “You cheat you are a stupid and your parent’s beat you.”
• “We cheat and the parents lose hope for us as children.”

My English language Conversation Skills classes got off the easiest-no cheating in those classes as far as I could tell. We had studied education in Rwanda as the Unit for the Term. And since they were upper level students I knew they could handle a more critical-thinking geared exam. Their exam was:

Part 1 Instructions: Define the following terms

Rate-

Adoption-

Gender Equality-

Volunteer-

Socioeconomic-

Integration-

Majority-

Minority-

Poverty-

Discrimination-

Part 2 Instructions: Read the following paragraph and write a 5 paragraph essay in which you address the issue. Remember to use proper paragraph structure, grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and capitalization. This is not a list. I want to know your thoughts. Be creative!

Imagine you are the Minister of Education. You have been given the job because you have many good ideas regarding education. You are responsible for helping to make Rwanda’s educational system better. You will be the Minister of Education for seven years . You will have unlimited resources to do your work.  If you were the Minister of Education what changes would you make in Rwanda today? How would you make these changes work? Who or what might you need to help you to make these changes? How would you convince them to help you? What are the biggest problems with the educational system in Rwanda? Are there problems that are impossible to fix? Why?

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Now that the exams were over, all that was left was a few meetings and the entering of marks in the large ledgers for the final assessment of student’s. The term would be over for six weeks. First I would go to Kigali to reconnect with some fellow volunteers, maybe I would visit my host family in Kamonyi.  Then there would be Prague and Matt and vacation. After that I would help to lead a two week Peace Corps camp for Rwandan youth. I couldn’t wait.

The End of the Term Pt. 1

 

The students finished their exams at the beginning of this past week. Their last exams were computer practicums given by The Minnesotan and an assistant ICT teacher. I don’t envy that job. With only a dozen computers, most of which I think I learned how to use a computer on in the 1990’s-I’m sure it was interesting. It’s like a time warp every time I step into the computer lab. But, I teach English, not ICT, so I was finished giving my exams and now had to begin the laborious process of grading them. Grading exams in Rwanda is interesting. It’s mostly all done by hand using pen, paper, and calculators. It’s slow, it’s time consuming, and it’s a good way to lose your eyesight. It’s also a great way to end up either hopelessly confused or in a mental institution. You have to grade all your exams, then come up with point values and total those for each student. Then you have to total the marks for the entire term. Then you combine them with the marks from the exam and shoot yourself in the face. That last part is not really part of the process, just more of how you feel once you’ve realized halfway down the column that you’ve fed Benilde Iradukunda’s mark into the calculation for Josette Iradakunda’s mark.  I don’t even know what I’m typing right now as I type this. I’ve already confused myself in this short paragraph. I teach eight classes with fifty students each.  That’s 400 students I have to do this song and dance for. 400 students I have to, by hand mind you, do calculations for. Me, the girl who’s teacher told her the only reason he didn’t fail her in her AP Economics class was because she asked “insightful questions”. Thanks Mr. Bayer. Grading week is terrible for me. It must be punishment for something bad I did in a former life. Probably this one. All I know is I would rather volunteer to give blood and have a series of rabies shots in my stomach than mark grades for the term. As if that were an option. But if it meant someone else would do my grading for the term…I would take it, I swear.

When Matt was here in March I was in the midst of grading my first term exams. Matt is a math whiz and he took pity on my math impaired self. He watched me attempt to slash my way through the prickly forest of fractions and totals for a bit before charging in on his steed and saving me from my own hopelessness. In other words, he wrote me a formula to use to help me grade quicker and more effectively. Oh, and he also helped me grade my exams so we could leave a day early to do more sightseeing. But that’s beside the point. I am a visual learner and Matt took that literally. One day after trying to explain the grading process to me and seeing he was getting nowhere he tried a different tack. In my little notebook/planner, in Matt’s tiny serial-killer like handwriting is the formula that I thought was the remedy for my headache. The formula goes something like this:

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Three columns:

1. Student total-Grades for any quizzes, homework, participation, notebooks, etc. aggregated into one number. (see below)
2. Exam- Exam grade, refactored into the scale for this class (see below)
3. Total- The sum of the other two columns( i.e 6-out of 10) + 9 (out of 10)=15(out of 20)

 How to determine the column totals (scales):

The first two columns are graded out of 10x number of hours. i.e if you see these students 4 hours a week, the student total and the exam columns will each be graded out of 40.

To convert the scales for the class:

If grades aren’t already on this scale, they will need to be converted by multiplication, i.e if your scale is out of 40 (a  4 hour class), and your exams were out of 20, just multiply the scores by 2-because 20×2=40. So a 16/20 is equivalent to a 32/40. (16×2=32)

Another example: If your non-exam grades sum to 90, to convert them to a scale of 40 you will need to multiply them by 40/90 or 4/9. So a 75/90 is equivalent to a 33/40. (75 x 4/9=33 1/3, then round) Obviously,if your totals are not as clean as the first example, you’ll want to use a calculator.

Full example:

A 1 hour a week class, with non-exam grades totaling out of a possible 25, and an exam that was out of 20.

H             P             Q             Q             E

Carine    10          5              5              5              15

Diane    6             5              4              4              20

 

H=Homework

P=Participation

Q=Quiz

E= Exam

For Carine, column 1(student total) needs to be converted from 20/25 (10+5+5+5) to a 10 point scale (since it’s a 1 hour class). That’s easy-she got perfect marks, so she gets 10/10. However, her exam was 15/20. For column 2(exam) multiply 15 by 10/20 to convert from a 20 point to a 10 point scale.(See the pattern?) 15 x ½ =7.5, which you can then round up to 8. For Diane, her scores were 6+5+4+4=19/25, and 20/20 on the exam.

Column 1: 19×10/25= 7.6(use a calculator and round up to 8)

Column 2: Easy-20/20 becomes 10/10

Column 3: Will be out of 20 (10+10)

Carine gets 10+8=18/20

Diane gets 8+10= 18/20

So…maybe you can see where I’m going with this. I look at the formula and it seems very easy. Very self- evident. For those among you who are appropriately left-brained or math-inclined, no doubt you are shaking your head in disbelief at the extremely simple method one must use to complete this grading. Then it may come as an affront to your sensibilities for me to announce to you, and the world, that in spite of Matt’s sweet attempt to spell everything out for me and thus make my hell week less hellish, he succeeded at only one thing. He made me more confused. It’s my own fault. I should have paid more attention in every math class from middle school up. This, no doubt, is the supreme root of all of my numerical difficulties(no pun intended). It had to have been middle school when my “math-stupids” started because that’s when the concepts and formulas start to get fuzzy. I can do the figures in a  5^th grade notebook, easy-peasy. Once it gets to 6^th grade, I’m out. Tutoring my niece past the 5^th grade already fills me with impending dread. I’m not sure how this happened but I have effectively drawn a blank on every Math class I have ever taken past middle school. I vaguely remember having less trouble in Geometry than in Algebra class. I don’t know how I managed to graduate high school. I guess when you get A’s in everything else they just do a combination grandfathering/social promotion do-jobby and give you the diploma. Thank you American Public School system. In all fairness, it’s not like me having a ten year old’s knowledge of Math impeded my education any. I have a Bachelor’s from one of the best university’s in the country and a Master’s from a pretty darn good one too. Sadly, neither of these degrees required me to improve on my math skills and so it is thus that I sit here today, in Rwanda, staring quizzicly at Matt’s formula. I think I stared at it for an hour waiting for a voice to come out of the paper and explain it better or for Matt to suddenly materialize Star Trek style by my side. Eventually I figured it out and was able to zip through my eight classes in about as many hours. In my little house, with my tiny grocery store aide calculator and a few cups of Nescafe I was able to complete the job. I was delighted to discover that not a one of my students had failed my class this term. Some came close but none of them failed. In the waning light of the Rwandan sun I felt like Prefontaine as I slurped black gold and finished the last of the marks, not a red one (meaning failure) among them. I gathered everything together the next morning and walked all my paperwork to the Teacher’s Lounge where I spent the next hours chasing down the “Master Gradebooks” held by the class teachers so I could enter the grades into them. Yay me. But more than me, yay Matt. Even from 6,000 miles and an ocean away, he is being a true partner as always.

Alone Again, Naturally

In class a few weeks ago, I was explaining the concept of ‘homesickness” to one of the Sisters; “It means, when you are feeling pain in your heart because you are far away from your home and family and the things you know.” I had to leave the room because I had started to cry. Because I was homesick. Moreover, I was heartsick. I missed my family and I missed Matt. I knew I would see my family in December and I would see Matt at the end of July so its’ not like this was a logical reaction at all. When you think about it, it’s not like I am doing life without parole in some Federal prison. I am not a North Korean refugee who can never go home again. I am not a member of the U.S military who would have to break his own arm in order to be considered eligible to go home before his mission was up. I’m in the Peace Corps and I can go home whenever I want. I am a volunteer. In some ways though, the fact that I am here ‘at-will’ everyday makes it harder to think about leaving before the end of my 27 months. I was chatting with a fellow PCV about our time here and she said, ‘You know, sometimes I have to remind myself that I chose this.” I laughed. Every one of us can “unchoose this” at any time.

The school secretary, later in the day, noticed I was troubled and she told me a little bit about her life post-war in 1994. How she and her family fled to Congo and lived there as refugees for three years. How hard it was for them, scraping a living, always feeling like outsiders, so far away from everyone and everything they knew. “You know Rwandan culture and Congolese culture, very different.” She told me in English that she was so homesick living there in a foreign land that she felt “every day very heavy, like my heart, it is broken.” At that time they did not know if it would be possible for them ever to return to Rwanda or if they might be forced to live the rest of their lives in Congo, permanent refugees. The school secretary locked the office door when I started to cry-public tears are a “no-no” in Rwanda. She patted my cheek and said she understood, “You live in Rwanda, you are not Rwandan. You must try to be Rwandan. You cannot. You are very good. I see you try very hard, Rwandan culture. You come here in Rwanda, you very polite to our culture. It’s good. But you are American. This is true. You cannot be Rwandan. It is not possible, me I think.”  I answered that it was true. I tried so hard to be Rwandan or at least to be an American living successfully in Rwanda…but I was afraid I was not very good at it. On the outside I had no problems, but on the inside, I found myself these days more and more confused by the culture I was living in. I understood the surface elements of Rwandan culture but none of the secret signs, none of the handshakes. The nuanced glances, the obvious passwords, they all eluded me.  Maybe I am too American. Is there such a thing?

My site here in Rwanda is very isolated. There is no village nearby. My community is my school. The Sisters live up at the convent and the teachers all leave for their weekends home with the family. The Minnesotan is nice but very introverted and not inclined to be social.I am alone very often and since I am on site-restriction I cannot leave. My Meyer’s-Briggs personality type is ENFJ. I am a naturally extroverted personality who thrives in social situations and gets energy from good relationships with family and friends. I also appreciate out in the open behavior between people. These are good traits to have if you’re surrounded by family and friends and people that don’t mind a little friendly confrontation on occasion. But this personality type can fall to depression when isolated or in dealing with people who are more distant or indirect, less confrontational, as in Rwanda. Culturally, I keep trying to ‘go with it” but sometimes I don’t know which end is up.

More and more I find myself thinking about my family back home when I should be doing other things. I’m having problems focusing on my work. I‘ve spent entire days in my pajamas, eating, and watching television. I know it’s not good but there is only so much effort I can make these days to integrate. There is no one to integrate with here. The time here is passing quickly but is that a good thing? Time is so precious. Should I be thinking about time passing? I don’t think so. It seems wrong to not enjoy your life while you live it, every minute if you are lucky enough. What if you died tomorrow? Wouldn’t you want all of this time back? I would. I think I should be enjoying this experience, every day of it. But I’m not. I’m lonely. I’m restless. And I don’t know how to be un-lonely and un-restless. Not here in Rwanda. None of the usual tools are present. I don’t know how to get myself out of this headspace. I want to. I just keep feeling like I have a shovel, a wrench, and a plumber’s snake in front of me when what I need is a toaster, a flatiron, and an Ipod. I’ve tried deep breathing, yoga, and more sleep. I’ve tried cutting out caffeine, eating less, and communicating more. I don’t know what to do.

Also, I miss Matt terribly. And I know he misses me. Matt and I have a bit of a running joke involving sappy easy listening songs. Listening to them here in Rwanda without Matt makes me sad because he’s not here to share the joke. And I am not there to share any that he might be listening to at home. In our phone conversations lately things can be strained, sometimes even tense. We’ve even had a few fights. And Matt and I never argue.  There’s something wrong between us…it’s like we are coming apart a little, just unraveling a bit. And I don’t like it and I know Matt doesn’t know what to do to stop it. I know there are things he’s not telling me. About himself, about his life at home without me. Things he doesn’t want to tell me because he wants to be strong. He wants me to respect him and to think he’s a man who can handle this separation. Someone who’s “got it together”. I can sense it in our conversations, that something is off as of late. It’s compounded by the fact that I can’t look at him. I can’t see his face or read his body language. I can only use his voice, his inflection, his tone, to judge what it is he isn’t saying in everything he is. When we made this agreement, the one where I would join Peace Corps and he would stay home and we would do everything we could to keep this thing going…we made it together. We both had to accept the parameters of what decision we were choosing to make. The only other choice was to break up and think that maybe when I got done with Peace Corps, we might find each other again if it was meant to be. I think that option is crap. I thought that it was crap then and I still think its crap. It’s fatalistic and more than a little foolish. If you have a good thing…if you have a great thing…why would you want to leave it to chance? Why would you let the changing tides of life sweep you away from each other? It’s nonsensical to think it wouldn’t. Life is a series of choices we all make. If Matt and I had taken the other option, the one in which we decided that if it was meant to be, it would find a way…we probably would never have gotten back together after Peace Corps. Life would have thrown Matt a job in San Francisco and me one in Washington D.C. We would have thought about each other from time to time, wondered what might have been had I not joined the Peace Corps. But that probably would have been it. Real life isn’t like that, it’s not like a movie. Sure , there are instances of Serendipity, but there the exception, not the rule.You have to fight for the things you want. For the people you love. Hollywood has convinced people that Love is this force that sweeps people away or makes them suffer for years before relief comes and all their dreams come true. But that’s not true. Love is something you do. It’s something you can choose to work at. That idea that you can’t choose who you fall in love with…it may be true. But that’s not good enough for me. And it’s not good enough for Matt. Because it doesn’t allow for the rest of the story. Maybe you can’t choose who you fall in love with, but maybe you can choose who you stay in love with…if you choose each other. You have to be willing to do the work if you want to have something worth having. Matt was willing to do the work, as was I, when I left in September of last year. When we see each other in Prague, I’ll finally be able to read all of him and know what it is that’s changed between us, if anything.

I wish I could figure out what’s wrong with me, with us. If I knew, maybe I could fix it.

Cheating

Cheating is a big problem in the Rwandan school system. Cheating is a problem the world over. As a teacher I have encountered so many different forms of cheating it would make your head spin. Some of them are clever…almost impressive. If I wasn’t responsible for their grades and a discipline code I would want to laugh or congratulate them. It’s always heartening to assess how dumb some of my students think I am and what lengths they will go to to cheat. I have seen students write answers in desks, forearms, upper thighs, the tops of their shoes, under the bills of their baseball caps, in the sleeves of their coats or sweaters, in a makeup compact, sitting on the top of an open bag or purse sitting on the side of their desk.  And then of course there are the plain old, less clever methods of cheating. Leaning over your neighbor to the side’s work, stealing glances at classmates’ answers as you walk to the garbage can on the other side of the room or when you’ve been granted permission to use the bathroom, and looking over your neighbor’s shoulder who sits in front of you. I hadn’t encountered much of any of that here at my school in Rwanda…or so I thought.

Last term I gave an assignment to my class. We had been discussing poetry and as part of the unit I asked them to write a poem on a topic of their choice. I gave them many examples and gave them parameters for the poem I wanted them to write. They had one week to complete said poem and then I would collect them and grade them as their “quiz” for the end of the unit. One week later as assigned I got back fifty poems. A cursory glance through them revealed the topics they had chosen. A good amount of them were about the student’s mothers, father’s, school, or siblings. A few were about Rwanda, a few were about mango trees and a few others were about village life. Now, ordinarily this would have been delightful to grade. I love poetry and reading poems makes me happy. Reading original poems can be a great way to have more insight into a person’s character and what’s important to them. So I was looking forward to getting to know my student’s better through the expression of their creative sides in this assignment. Unfortunately, it became clearer and clearer the more I read that the “original poems” I had thought I was reading were far from original. My students, it was evident, had deliberately taken the easy way out and had gone to the library and copied various works from the English language poetry books available. I was crestfallen. And what made me even sadder was the knowledge that had I not loved poetry and gone myself to the library earlier in the academic year to read some of that English language poetry, I would never have known this wasn’t the work of my students. Okay, I might’ve known. Some of the grammar was a little flowery for their level, that should have clued me in. I wasn’t angry, I was disappointed. I felt like all that work, all that trust and respect I had built up over the weeks was lost. Like it had all been for nothing. It made me wonder what else my student’s had cheated on and whether or not they took me seriously as a teacher. After all, how much could my students’ respect me if they thought I was so clueless that this ploy would have a shot at working?

The next day I had English grammar I went in to class purposefully scowling. Normally I am happy and cheerful so the student’s noticed a change in me right away. I started with “I am very unhappy with S2 today!” Of course they wanted to know why. I told them that I had discovered their ruse. At first they laughed nervously. When I asked them why they were laughing they said something like, “It’s not a big deal. Everyone cheats sometimes.” I told them that it was most definitely a “big deal” and I wouldn’t stand for cheating, especially unrepentant, blatant cheating, in my class. Next they tried to deny it, saying that they had indeed written the poems themselves adding lying to the cheating. Then when I threw up examples on the board of paper’s that were too much alike to each other-with not so cleverly replaced words seeming to differentiate a poem about a “sister” versus a “mother”, vocabulary they didn’t know and  other such grammar devices- they started to crack a little. The coup de gras was when I started to lecture them about respect and trust and how I felt like they thought I was unintelligent because I would never find out about their deception. Unwillingly, I started to tear up. Finally, one tear slipped down my face and I said, “If you are going to be so disrespectful, I will go back to America!”. That was what did it. Half the students put their heads down in their arms and cried, shocked and dismayed that they had done something to make their teacher cry. In Rwanda, crying in public is just NOT the thing. The other half of the class immediately started to turn on each other, yelling and saying accusatory things in KInyarwanda . I would later find out that there had been several students who had convinced the rest of the class to find the poetry books in the library and copy them thereby saving everyone from weekend homework. Some of the girls said in English words to the effect of “See! You made kind teacher Noceda cry! Now she will go back to America!” chastising the ringleaders for their deception and also each other for listening to them. Some of the girls’ English was so poor they had a really hard time following the comments made in English-which believe it or not, were most of them-anything that works, I say. I left them to their argument and told them they could spend the remainder of the period thinking about what they had done and how offensive I found it. I told them I would speak with the Prefets de Discipline and they would receive a punishment AND I would deduct points from their “conduct books”. Gasps all around. Ms. Noceda was busting out some serious shit, mhhmmm. I went to sit in the Teacher’s Lounge  to compose myself and do a crossword puzzle before my next class.

Later in the day after lunch there was a knock on the door of the Teacher’s Lounge. I was nearest to the door so I opened it. Outside were some of the best English students. They had brought me a homemade card that said in pretty flowery language, “We are sorry, we will not do it again.” I appreciated their contrition and thanked them. After they left I went to the Prefet’s office and explained my situation. At first she didn’t take me seriously saying what the student’s said, “Everyone cheats sometimes”. I pressed her on the issue, stating that in America, in my culture, cheating in the schools is unacceptable. Finally, wearily, she said, “Well, what do you have in mind?” I said, “I want them punished.” She said, “How?” I said, “What do you usually do with them?” The Prefet said, “Well, they can sweep or wash the school grounds…or they can carry firewood from one place to the other.” Bam! I voted for the firewood punishment. I had seen those logs and they were big and gross to carry. That should do it. So S2 carried logs for three hours in the hot sun. They didn’t speak to me afterwards for a week. I think they thought I wouldn’t go through with it. Plus I took their “conduct books” and deducted five points from each student for cheating. My fellow teachers applauded my actions saying that “Now they know you are serious teacher, yes!” it should have made me feel better but it didn’t. I didn’t want to think of my class as a class of cheaters. Now I would always wonder.

I don’t know why cheating seems to be so acceptable in Rwanda. Rwandan colleagues seem to just shrug it off, like it’s to be expected. It seems like as long as students turn in work, any work, no matter if it’s theirs or not, it will be accepted and graded without a need for justification. I have heard many other PCV’s encounter the same problems. Even at the university level cheating seems ubiquitous. I know it’s not just my student’s.  I cheated when I was in school, sure. Everyone cheats at some point. But a whole culture of cheating…what does that say about Rwanda? And if I was a citizen in a developing country and my only chance at getting ahead demanded that I do whatever it took…even cheated on everything from 6^th grade up…would I do it? I am lucky to have lived my life in a place where that has not been necessary. The way I was brought up, original work and innovation were valued even above all other things. Doing something “myself” was the highest praise my parents could give me. A science experiment, a story, an art project…if it was copied, it was a failure. If it was my own, I was congratulated. What is it about the culture here that makes this seem okay? Are people so desperate to get ahead that they sublimate their pride in their own original work? Do the ends in Rwanda always somehow justify the means? I don’t know.

Exam Time

It’s exam time again at my school. This time, unlike last time, I was prepared for it. I remembered to ask ahead of time when my exams were due and turned them in finished and on time for review. I remembered to check the chalkboard in the Teacher’s Lounge (Living Room) for the posted schedule of when each exam would be held and where. I remembered to check the chalkboard again days later to see when the “proctor/supervising” schedule would come out signaling the days I was expected to facilitate the exam process.  I even remembered to change around the wording of my Creative Performance exam so that the administration wouldn’t hassle me again like they did last term over the supposed ‘wrongness” of me giving all three classes the “same exam”. Check, check, check, and check! I was a pro! The exams would be held, as they always were in either  the S1 Homeroom, the Refectory, or the Studies Room. My exams would be given every other day and I would be expected to proctor only my E.L.C.S and English Grammar classes. My Creative Performance classes would be supervised by other teachers. Which is why I was super glad I had made the Creative Performance exam as easy as I did.  The last thing I needed was for my fifty Creative Performance students to get a shrug or a bad explanation from another teacher when they asked a clarifying question. It was bad enough that when I glanced at some of the other exams I noticed grammar and spelling mistakes abounded. Too late to fix that.

I had it easier than most teachers since I taught English and not Math or a Science. There were no formulas or graphs or charts or complicated problems to meticulously check and recheck. My English exams were long on Critical Thinking Skills and short on bullshit fill-in-the-blank this term.  I knew my students knew the material. They knew it backwards and forwards and in their sleep. They could recite any grammar rule I could possibly ask them. The problem was the application. They struggled to apply what they had learned into either spoken or written English. So, they really only “half-knew” the material in my estimation. On this English grammar exam I was determined to test them fairly yet show them that application was key to understanding and processing a language successfully. This term, unlike last term, the questions would all be Critical Thinking questions. They would all involve having to read, understand, process, and apply the English language. It was going to be difficult and it was going to require them to study harder than they normally did and in a different way than they normally did. I’m not an ogre, I did give them a “heads-up” in the Revision period before the exam.  I told them what they should expect on the Final Exam. I listed all the grammar we had learned this past term and told them they would have to know all of it and also know how to use it in writing cohesive and correct paragraphs. I wonder how many of them thought I was just trying to scare them.

Exam day came and when I walked into the Secretary’s office I was met by my fellow proctor’s for the exam, two teachers I liked very much. They were reading my S2 English Grammar Exam to themselves and commenting out loud. One of them turned to me and said, “I do not understand. How does a student complete this exam?” So I explained it to him. There were ten “situations” on the exam paper. Each “situation” was a problem the student might encounter in her daily life. The student must write a full paragraph offering a 1 paragraph (5 sentences) solution to the problem using all the listed grammar terms they could plus proper paragraph format, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.  The more grammar terms they used the higher their score. The less terms they used or the less they paid attention to proper paragraph format, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, the lower their mark. He nodded approvingly. The other teacher smiled gleefully and said, “This will be very, very, difficult for the students. I think most of them will not succeed!” I said, “Um…I was hoping most of them would, actually.”  The school secretary said to them, “Josephine wants her student’s success!” and smiled at me. We took the exam papers and the “draft” and “loose leaf” blank papers that the students would use for their work and walked to the Refectory. I passed out my own exams to my own class. The looks on their faces when they turned over the exam paper and began were priceless. Not exactly shock, not dismay,…more like incredulousness. The exam was not what they expected in spite of what I had thought I had prepared them for. They apparently thought I had been joking when I told them there would be no matching, no fill-in-the-blank, no rearrange-the -sentence. I didn’t feel bad. Not one bit. I knew what my students could do, even if they didn’t. They had three hours to show me their stuff. And it would require the whole three hours.

At 2pm the head Proctor announced “Begin” and three classes of a combined total of over 150 students in Geography, Entrepreneurship, and English Grammar all simultaneously hunched over and began. As they scribbled, I watched them work. A lot of pen cap chewing, staring off into space, rubbing of eyes and temples. I remembered my own days as a student and making those very same body movements. My job was to hand out extra paper to those who required it and to answer questions as they came up. The students would quietly raise a pointed finger from the elbow up and I would walk over, “Yes?”. They would either say, “Paper”, “Draft”, or “Question”. Much more regimented than the U.S’s test taking procedure it seemed to me. My exam required a lot of paper, more than they were used to using. I had thought of this and handed each of my students extra paper when they received their exam at the outset of the period. Birds flew in and out of the Refectory, some perched on the bars that guarded the outside facing windows and sang loudly.  My fellow proctor’s and I walked slowly up and down between the seated students at their blue lunch tables. No cheating here, not today. I answered few questions, which I counted a success. It meant my vocabulary choices had been appropriate and my structure was easily understandable. Other students from other levels who were in the Refectory taking the “Entrepreneurship” and “Geography” exams got up and left. I got called away for an important phone call. My students wrote on. I walked around and checked their progress to make sure they would indeed finish in the allotted time. So far, the pacing was an affirmation of what I had come up with. Some of the students who finished too early-before the Head Proctor deemed it acceptable to hand in- went to sleep on the table, head in folded arms. But most of the students  kept writing, filling page after page, taking it seriously as far as I could tell. That made me happy. The last student in S2 handed in her work at exactly 16:54 (4:54pm)…six minutes to spare and nobody in tears.

I took a quick look over what had been turned in before I opened my bag to place them inside my red plastic folder. Some errors but it looked like S2 did a fine job. I would spend most of Monday grading their work and after that quick glance I was looking forward to it. I could have done a lot of “fill in the blank” etc. It would have been faster and easier to grade. Learning a fourth language is no easy task. My students tried hard and wanted to learn. Their confidence wasn’t always the highest when it came to exercising their language skills. They were more likely to hide behind their notebooks and wait for other’s to make mistakes rather than go out on a limb on the off chance they might be correct. I understood but didn’t want to encourage that behavior. English was the future of Rwanda. My students knew that and tried hard to incorporate it into their already packed days of studying everything from their native language to Physics. I was confident that they knew the material. They just needed an opportunity to exercise that knowledge. Their success wouldn’t surprise me. I knew what they were capable of. I just wanted to see if they knew.

My Birthday Party Pt. 2

By that time it had been hours since we left the school and I was hot, thirsty, and hungry for lunch. The Minnesotan surprised us by taking out sugar rolls he had bought on impulse at the bakery earlier in the day. I treated everyone in the car to cans of Sprite I had found chilling in the grocery refrigerator. They were ice cold and delicious-a pleasant change from the usual unrefrigerated soft drinks I had come to tolerate in Rwanda. On the ride back we had to make a quick stop at one of the many bars that sell crates of Fanta and beer. Sister-who had lived for years in Europe and Tanzania and Kenya- made the dry observation as she got out of the taxi to search for the owner, “In other countries they can’t wait to greet the customer. In Rwanda you need to search for the owner.” Owner located, I paid for the two crates of beverages(1 mixed Fanta and 1 Mutzig Pilsner) and a small boy loaded them into the trunk for us. We got back to the school in the mid-afternoon and unloaded our bags and crates from the back of the taxi. The Minnesotan and I were delighted when Sister invited us in to the convent to have lunch.

The next day was the day of the party. I got up early and finished my weekly chores by 10am. I put on some comfortable clothes and walked up to the convent where I greeted the cook, the cook’s assistant, and one of the Sisters who was especially curious about American food and had offered to help with the preparations. The cook and his assistant went to work washing and shredding veggies for the salad. They also started roasting the sausages and would later start in on the pasta. Sister and I sliced, diced, scooped, cut, and chopped pineapple, mango, papaya, prune de japon, sundried tomatoes, and pickles. We made dressing and crushed the ginger cookies for the dessert. I also prepared a dish of grilled onions for the Minnesotan since it was also his birthday month and he had mentioned how much he enjoyed grilled onions on his hot dogs. I had never cut up a papaya before and Sister helped me to learn. We tried to put on the radio but the reception was iffy so instead Sister received an impromptu English lesson on the subject of cooking. I had forgotten how much I missed cooking and preparing meals with others. It made me miss my family all the more as I shared with the Sister and the cooks, the social aspect of the centuries old practice of feeding others. The cook and his assistant spoke no French or English so it was a Marx brothers’ routine to try and tell them step by step what I needed them to do. The salad prep was nothing for them as Rwandans, though they don’t eat salad often, know what it is and how to prepare it. I needed a can opener and a veggie peeler..they had none. The cook used a dull knife to do both jobs. I watched anxiously, hoping he wouldn’t cut himself in the process. The sausages and the “chips” were simply to be roasted and fried respectively. But the pasta was an issue as I had to be extra vigilant that the cook knew  when to stop the cooking process and how to rinse the noodles-Rwandans tend to overcook their pasta when they have it at all which is almost never since here it is a luxury item.

In fact, a lot of what I bought was under the heading of “luxury items”. I hadn’t planned it that way but in Rwanda prices and availability are many times the reverse of what they are in America. Apples are expensive, pineapples are not. Meat, pasta, canned anything, bread, and cheese are expensive while fresh organic vegetables are almost free they are so cheap. Spices are expensive, organic milk is not. I wanted to make fusilli pasta salad with corn, sundried tomatoes and tuna. I wanted to make a layered fruit salad with ginger cookies, yogurt, and cinnamon. I wanted to make hot dogs with all the trimmings and a salad. Okay, so the salad was cheap…but the dressing made of red wine vinegar and mayonnaise was not. Today I was a big spender by Rwandan standards. It’s hard to wrap your head around. The Minnesotan and another Sister came in around noon to help with the last minute table setting and the dishwashing of the numerous bowls, pots, and cutlery we had used in our prep. At 1245pm the table was laid Rwandan style with everything that was to be served divided into two large platters each and put on opposite and symmetrical ends of a long table. There were plates, glasses, cutlery, napkins, and toothpicks on the sideboard. I had put all the condiments in the middle of the table and the crates of drinks on the floor near the sideboard with two beverage openers close by. There were chairs and stools set up around the long table for people to sit on with their bowls of food being placed on their laps and their drinks that would be set under their chairs. I had even remembered the cook and his assistant’s lunch and placed full bowls and a beer each in the cabinet in the kitchen for them in thanks for all their help. I wasn’t sure what they would think of this American food…it was sort of like a church picnic held indoors. But it was the best I could do with what I had. We would see.

The guest, who were told to come at 1pm, arrived predictably at 130.They stood around at first, eyeing the laden table, very nervous looking and unsure of what to do with themselves. I had to play the hostess and greet each of them in turn and thank them for coming. It was awkward. Everyone just stood there. Finally, my Headmistress saved me by stepping in and in the Rwandan fashion, making a short speech about why we were here in this room and how they wished me a very happy birthday. I thanked her, everyone clapped. And then in turn, everyone went around and made a short speech about the same thing. It wasn’t exactly in keeping with my vision for the lunch but it made everyone more relaxed so I just went with it. And then one of the Sisters bade me explain and point out all the different dishes to the assembly. Some of it was hard to explain…some of it was easy. Everyone looked worried when I showed them the pickles and told them there was cinnamon in the dessert. Rwandans are known for their reticence to try anything that has a fuller or sharper flavor. Everyone looked surprised when I demonstrated slicing open the bread roll and putting the sausage inside and then adding condiments. The pasta salad got appreciative murmurs from everyone and of course the presence of beer was very much applauded. At Sister’s urging, the meal progressed. Everything except the pickles was a big hit. People went up for seconds and thirds. In my opinion, everything was delicious and had turned out very well indeed. One of my colleagues said to me, “When you said you were making American food, I thought you would have to order it from America. To see you have cooked it is amazing! I did not know Americans could make food!’ A second colleague came out with, “In our culture we do not say the food is good because if you do it is like saying your host has not given you enough and should give you more. But I will be American for one moment and say it to you. The food is very good!” Another said, “In our culture it is not usual to compliment a woman on her cooking. We compliment her husband on his choice of a fine wife. You have no husband so I will say congratulations to Matthew. He has chosen well for his fiancée.” Still another came up to me with the statement, “I thought all Americans ate in restaurants but you have shown me they can have true hospitality, just like in Rwanda. Thank you for sharing this with us so we understand.”  I was bewildered but very, very, happy.

At the end of the lunch, when everyone had left expressing fullness and thanking me profusely , I stayed to help the Sisters clean up. There were leftovers and I took some home at the Sisters urging to enjoy later that day.  I was glad I had had this party. It had been a success. I had shared my culture with my colleagues and they had responded well. I had thought it would cheer me up and for the couple of days it had done so. But I can’t lie when I say it made me miss my family even more than I had previously. There are things we do with our families that are rituals unto themselves. They give us comfort and make us stronger…like that Greek giant Antaeus who became stronger every time he touched the ground. Preparing and sharing food is one of my family’s rituals. Doing it without them…well, later that evening I felt somewhat flat.  It just wasn’t the same. As well orchestrated as my birthday party had been…it was missing something essential.

My Birthday Party Pt. 1

I had been feeling ‘down” for a while and coupled with some stomach distress, I knew that I hadn’t really been my best self for a few weeks. I was still teaching and running clubs of course, but I was tired all the time and cranky and I couldn’t think of a way to pull myself out of the funk I’d been in. I spoke with the PCMO and he counseled me to try to figure my way out of it. So I thought about things I could do that might raise my mood level. What made me happy? Or more precisely, what made me happy and was feasible to do in Rwanda?  Well, going to music clubs or restaurants was out. So was spending time with my family and close friends. Matt wasn’t here. Taking my dog to the dog park was out. I had already cleaned my house, organized my paperwork, researched things I could do for my school, and written more than a few blog entries. A hot bath was surely not going to happen. Neither was a glass of good wine. There wasn’t a beauty parlor within a 100 mile radius that I trusted enough to give me a going-over. And then it came to me…I could throw a party. Or a dinner.  I loved doing that back in the States. I loved the whole ritual of planning and inviting and shopping and preparing. Picking music and the right wines and setting up seating arrangements. Of course a dinner party in Rwanda wouldn’t be exactly the same. But I meant to try. My birthday was coming up shortly. I decided, with the Sister’s and the Minnesotan’s help, that I would have a dinner party to celebrate my birthday.

The first thing I had to do was obtain permission. This was easier said than done. I wanted to have the party on a Friday and I wanted to serve American food.  I also wanted to have the party during the term time but before exam time so there wouldn’t be any pressure on anyone. For a few weeks I went back and forth with my Headmistress over when and what and who. I couldn’t tell if she was evading my direct questions because of culture or if this was her Rwandan way of telling me I couldn’t have the party. So this went on for awhile until on a Wednesday, a week after I had given up on the idea, not having gotten a straight answer. I walked past my headmistress who stopped me and said, “Josephine, when is the party? This Friday?” I stopped short, mildly confused. She reiterated her question and I sputtered, “You want to have the party? But I thought…when? Um..” Ten minutes later we had clarified our position and I managed to work out with another Sister the use of the Sister’s truck to go to Musanze to buy the materials.  I had managed to save loads of money over the past few months since I had little to nothing to spend my money on at my remote location. So, I figured, why not have some fun?  Life is short and it would be a treat for me to share “American food” with my colleagues and see their reactions.

I talked with the cook and got him to agree to make me two pots of “chips” for Friday lunch and to help with the other preparations. It had to be a lunch because most of the teachers went home after classes for the weekend. I put a notice up on the blackboard in the “Living Room” inviting all of the staff to attend.  I had made up a preliminary menu with the food it would be possible to get in the market or the “Muzungu” grocery in mind: pasta salad, a layered fruit and cookie dessert, Hot Dogs, a green salad with dressing, and of course, beer and Fanta.  All of these things could be purchased in Musanze except the hot dogs. Sausages really, they were smoked large-ish links that were very popular but also very expensive in Rwanda. The best quality ones could be bought in the capitol at a “German Butchery”. Each sausage-about the size of a bratwurst-cost about 65  American cents. It seemed very little to me but to Rwandans it was quite the luxury. As luck would have it, one of the Sisters was going to Kigali that Thursday and I was able to give her money to buy 40 sausages when she was in the capitol. The Sisters protested, “No, no…this is too much, too expensive” and said that the teachers would be happy to have only one apiece rather than the two I planned for them to enjoy. I insisted. A party is a failure in my mind if people go away not having eaten and drunk their fill of the best that I can provide. I would rather not host a party at all than to serve substandard fare or too little of it. Then there was the matter of everything else.

Thursday morning one of the Sisters and I set off down the mountain to Musanze town to spend a few hours selecting the ingredients for the rest of the dishes. I had to ride in the back of the truck as there was room for only two in the cab. Luckily I had a traveling companion so I didn’t feel so conspicuous. One of the teachers had taken ill earlier in the day and he needed to go into the city for medical treatment so he and I stood in the back of the truck, holding the rail affixed right behind the cab section at waist level. As we drove down the mountain children and old people waved to us calling, “Muzungu! Muzungu!” and I found myself feeling as if I was on a parade float. I waved from the elbow like Princess Diana and imagined myself queen of the 26^th street parade in Chicago. At the “Muzungu” grocery I bought Dijon mustard, Heinz ketchup, pickles (to be made into ersatz relish), ginger cookies, corkscrew pasta, sundried tomatoes, red wine vinegar and citrus mayonnaise to make the salad dressing. I was in and out of the “Muzungu” grocery in less than 30 minutes. Sister remarked at my speediness. I didn’t think much of it at the time. We couldn’t possibly cart all that stuff with us to the market so we left it behind the counter. Nohele the owner promised to watch over it for us until we returned.

We made a quick stop at the bakery and bought 40 rolls to serve as hot dog buns. Then we went to the market to do battle with the “abacuruzi” over the fruits and veggies. I was so glad to have the Sister there to do the bargaining but I will say that it took her twice as long to buy what we needed then it would have taken me. The purchasing of fruit and vegetables at the market for a Rwandan is a social exercise and they make the most of it. Back and forth, back and forth, crisscrossing the market from one end to the other to find the best, the biggest, the freshest. I usually just go to whoever doesn’t try to rip me off. But I was with a Rwandan and so I followed her lead, my role being “pack mule” and “banker”. We had to squeeze this seller’s fruit, thump that seller’s fruit. Sister held up two different papayas for inspection, compared and contrasted mangos(they looked the same to me) and made the seller’s of “Prune de Japon”-my favorite fruit-open one of them in front of her and eat it herself to prove it wasn’t past it’s prime. I was awestruck. Even my host family mother in Kamonyi hadn’t been this hard core. Sister bargained over carrots, cabbage, onions, and tomatoes. Everyone seemed to be having a grand old time and I enjoyed watching the show. It’s fun to be a casual observer of people interacting within the comfortability of their own culture. I would live in Rwanda for decades before I could even begin to appreciate the subtle nuances of the transactions. Sister had taken three times as long in the market than I took at the “Muzungu” grocery but it was obvious that our different cultures were responsible for this great difference in approach. About three quarters of the way through the process, The Minnesotan-who had come in with us to do some banking-joined us and he graciously took half my load on. Sister called a taxi (the truck had been called away on a nun-related emergency)to meet us at the “Muzungu” grocery where we picked our stuff up from behind the counter and thankfully, backs and arms aching, sank into the back seat.

Teacher’s Lounge

There is a “Teacher’s Lounge” at my school. It’s called the “Living Room” for some reason…maybe a translation from the French “Salon”? It has some long tables, a hand washing station, a bunch of cubbies in the corner to store your stuff, an old computer, and a blackboard in it. I was very happy to see this when I first went on my ‘Site Visit”.  A Teacher’s Lounge is essential, in my opinion. Having a place to socialize in between classes or during free periods is good for morale. In the past I have enjoyed the space afforded to me to have the opportunity to make some phone calls, kick back, read the paper, or enjoy my lunch. Of course, some teachers will tell you that they avoid the Teacher’s Lounge like the plague, if only because it can be a negative space. Burned out teachers have a penchant for spending every free moment in that room, smoking (when it’s allowed) drinking coffee, and complaining about how the profession has changed since they started teaching pre-1964. But generally, the Teacher’s Lounge is a comfortable island in the sea of adolescent sweat the average Secondar y School teacher must traverse Monday through Friday. So yeah, I was delighted that one existed at my school.  The Teacher’s Lounge has become the place where I do much the same things I would do at home in the U.S- I use my laptop to plan lessons, I check out any notices that have been put up by the administration, I charge my phone, I text colleagues, I eat lunch, and I do general student-related paperwork.  You can use the teeny bits of colored chalk in the blackboard rail to leave messages for staff and there is various religious imagery on the walls because, hey, this is a religious school. I especially like the poster of the Last Supper that hangs on the far wall by the school banner. Jesus looks a little disco in that one. There are some small differences though that remind me while I am in the Teacher’s Lounge that I am in Rwanda and not, in reality, in the U.S.

For one, there are a lot of insects in the ‘Living Room”. Flies,spiders,  big hairy caterpillars, ants, gnats, the occasional flying beetle, and the ubiquitous “amavubi”…the wasps of Rwanda. The wasps in Rwanda that I have encountered on a daily basis are the honeycomb-nest building kind. No idea what their scientific name is. But they like to pick a spot on a wall or a ceiling and spin their nest out of their wasp spit and whatever else kind of material they need to get the job done. The result is a small hanging honeycomb looking thing. Now, in the U.S I hate wasps with a holy passion that knows no name. I have been stung by wasps in the past and not being a fan of exploding pain, I try to avoid them at all costs.  Living in Rwanda for the past year, I have come to terms with the fact that here they are everywhere and there is no escaping them , ergo, we must learn to live together in peace and harmony. But they are still gross. The ‘Living Room” is covered with wasp nests. The ceiling, I mean. Tons of them…I think at the last meeting I counted over 25 nests in various stages of construction. It’s nasty but there’s nothing you can do about it. If the windows are open(and if it’s daylight in Rwanda, the windows-if they have bars- are always open), the wasps will come in and start construction. The other creatures are usually to be found on the tables, the chairs, or the floors and most of the time a quick swipe with your hand will clear them from sight. But it’s still gross. The spiders come out mostly at night so we don’t encounter them as much but we know they are there because their webs are strung from corner to corner like some 1980’s swag-crazy Manhattan designer’s fantasy.

In the Teacher’s Lounge we also have our staff meetings. Rwandans have made the art of having a meeting into a fine applied science that we can only hope never invades the minds of educators in the U.S. Normally they last hours and points are brought up and gone over repeatedly until everyone has had a chance to speak or until everyone is half-cracked from low blood sugar, an expanding bladder, and general malaise. I am very lucky in that “Respecting Time” is weighed very heavily at my school. Our meetings generally start within 30 minutes of when they are supposed to and end well under 4 hours. I know other PCV’s who are not so lucky. The meetings we have are generally about discipline, scheduling, programs, festivals, new developments, or exams. Most of what they are saying is in Kinyarwanda and French. I can follow along for a good portion of it. I can get the gist of what the subject is. If they remember, the seat a teacher or a Sister who is especially good at English next to me to translate. This helps but usually I only get then half of what’s being said as the translator gets to decide what’s pertinent enough to communicate. So I spend a lot of the meeting daydreaming with my eyes open. I have perfected the art of quickly assessing the topic, forming an intelligent question in my mind should I be called on, and then spending the rest of the topical discussion counting how many of my fellow teachers are wearing white socks with black shoes. Once again, everyone gets to speak, to go on ad nauseum about their views on the topic even if no one cares. Sometimes there is a Powerpoint presentation to remind everyone, I think, that we are not such a poverty-stricken school  as to not to be able to afford a projector. Everyone is expected to take notes. Occasionally I scribble something in my notebook or change my posture to make it look like I’m following the conversation closely. It’s a skill. I would say that most of the time it’s foolproof. The trick is to always have that question ready so that if you do get called on out of, oh say, your daydream where someone reads your blog and offers you a six figure book contract…one which then leads to appearances on daytime TV and book signings…which then leads to another book contract which leads to a movie option starring Janeane  Garofalo as yourself which leads…You can quickly snap back into the meeting and say something like, “Oh..yes. The  point  (fill in the name of the last person you heard talking)made is more than valid. I think (insert subject) should be looked at more closely, definitely.” And your safe and you look smart, like you were paying attention the whole time. There is no coffee, no tea, no donuts, no coffeecake. Nothing to eat or drink at all…for hours…it’s very sad. Not at all like the U.S where the coffeepot never stopped dripping and a good amount of my calories came from Ms. Lynn’s cupcakes brought in to celebrate whatever Federal holiday was that week. Rwandan meetings can go on and on with indirectness, passive aggressiveness, and circular argument that can be truly mind-blowing in its inexhaustibility.

This model of a meeting is in great contrast to our Regional PC meetings, held about once every two months in Musanze. The meeting starts generally on time, at a restaurant or a bar of our choosing. Everyone orders food and drinks and shares teaching tips and “Tales from the Front”. We swap books, media, and various other items(condiments, moneys owed, things to borrow or lend etc.)The meeting is called to order and the moderator goes through each item in a timely and orderly fashion. No one cares if you take notes. No one cares if you leave to go to the bathroom. No one cares if you are on your third beer in 30 minutes. Everyone orders another round of drinks and more food. PCV’s chip in and ask questions when it’s necessary and once regular business is taken care of, the floor is opened for topics not on the docket. Another 30 minutes and the meeting is over… 2 hours tops. Everyone is in a good mood and nobody wants to kill and /or eat anyone. I know it’s not done to say that elements from one culture are superior to another culture…but in this specific area I would say I definitely prefer to American meeting model to the Rwandan. But in the spirit of Peace Corps’ goal of me being the conduit through which American culture is shared with Rwanda, maybe I can lobby for tea in the staff room. Amandazi may be asking too much, though, we’ll see.

What I’m reading and watching these days

Before joining Peace Corps  I had done a good amount of research into what the day-to-day life of a PCV would be like. One of the most oft cited observations was that, as a PCV, you would have a lot of free time. As a PCV, even though it is technically a 24/7 type of position, you are, in the Ed program at least, supposed to teach only part of that time. Your teaching requirements must be a minimum of 15 hours per week and not exceed 20 hours per week of official classroom time.  However, like in any job, there’s a lot of wiggle room in that.   Some teachers teach more than 20 hours per week in various capacities(myself being included in that) and some teach less but supplement their education role by providing instruction to their communities  in other areas(beekeeping, farming technique, yoga, bicycle repair classes, etc.). However many hours you devote to communicating knowledge is between you and your supervisor at your school, for the most part. But Peace Corps does have the rule about those minimums and maximums in the classroom. This rule is established for a few reasons. One, so you don’t end up taking essential hours from a HCN teacher (host country national). Two, so you don’t get overwhelmed and/or burned out. And three, to allow you time to take on secondary projects, improve your language skills, and integrate better into the culture. Honestly though, there’s only so much integrating you can do before you are just plain exhausted. So what do you do with the remainder of your day? I do a lot of reading during the early morning hours on the weekends when I’m not teaching or in the afternoons when there is a break after the lunch hour (for digestion of course). And if I’m being up front, I do a lot of television watching once the sun goes down.

Since joining Peace Corps, I have availed myself of the “Cas” bookcases every time I am in Kigali since there a few Western-style bookstores in the country. I also share books with other PCV’s in my region. When Matt came he brought me a few and I have a few that I brought with me from the U.S last year. I am a voracious reader and have been since the age of three. I can go through a book the size of a paperback Stephen King in a week…less if it’s a full weekend and I have nothing better to do. I once read the entire unauthorized biography of Marilyn Monroe-1200 pages- on a delayed transatlantic flight. When going on long trips I have been known to get panicky when I have no reading material on hand. And it has to be a book. I zip through magazines in under 30 minutes usually-unless it’s something big like Vanity Fair or dense like The Atlantic-that takes me an hour. I have dropped over fifteen dollars for a softcover Danielle Steel novel  in the LAX gift shop before takeoff because it was either that or take the flight from L.A to Chicago with no other printed material than the Skymall catalog. I had never read a Danielle Steel novel in my life before but it was either that or a Dean Koontz and I hate horror. I had just finished the Danielle Steel as we taxied into the terminal at O’Hare. It wasn’t too bad.  I will read almost anything but my favorites are: Classics, Mysteries, and any kind of biography. I go through phases at the library where I will spend months reading about one particular topic or era in history or movement. Last year I used the Chicago Public library retrieval system to order books pertaining to the British Georgian aristocracy from all over Chicagoland.

Since coming to Rwanda I have read:

• Oliver Twist
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Madame Bovary
• Grapes of Wrath
• American Psycho
• The Game of Thrones Trilogy
• The Stieg Laarson Trilogy
• The Electric Kool-Aid Acid test
• Out of Africa
• A biography of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas
• The Charterhouse of Parma
• The Red and the Black
• Arabian nights
• The Short Stories of Mark Twain
• My Friend Leonard
• Running with Scissors
• The Great Train Robbery
• Murder by Numbers
• The Second Sex
• Western philosophy; The complete collection
• The Greatest American Short Stories from 1880-1945
• The Little Prince
• Moby Dick
• Billy Budd
• Les Miserables
• The Mayor of Casterbridge
• The Short Stories of Eudora Welty
• Delta Wedding
• Seven Years in Tibet
• The Time Traveler’s Wife
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
• The Audacity of Hope
• Dreams of My Father
• A collection of P.G Wodehouse stories
• A biography of Thelonius Monk
• Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead
• Catalina
• The Food of the Gods
• The Oxford Book of English Verse
• The Struggle for Africa
• Bleak House

 

And others which I have forgotten. It averages to about a book and a half a week, or so. My favorite thing to do on the weekends is to wake up relatively early, wash my face, brush my teeth, make a hot beverage, and snuggle down into my bed with a book. I usually open all the windows in my house, pull the curtains just enough so that the light comes in fully but I still have my privacy and pushing my mosquito net aside, I can spend a couple of hours immersed in a world different than the one I am spending the rest of my days in. When I go into Musanze for my supplies I bring a book with me always. One of the waitresses at the hotel where I go for breakfast-they have the most delicious butter croissants-asked me one day, “Why do you always have a book?” I answered, ‘Because I like to read.” She waited a bit and then inquired, “Why?”. I told her, “It’s a part of my culture. We like to read.” She looked at me amused and said, “It is not a part of ours.” And walked away.  I love Rwanda but reading offers me a rest from the 24/7 life I am living here. With a book I can follow Oliver down the backstreets of Victorian London. I can stand on the deck of a ship feeling the salt spray as it chases the great white whale. I can ride in a convertible with a drugged out Hunter S. Thompson. I can sit in the dark and smoky back of a club in 1940’s New York listening to the music of one of my favorite jazz players, feeling that crazy hallmark sound.

Television is another way to spend my time. I only watch in the evenings as there’s not much else to do after the sun goes down and reading in the weak light of the bulb in my house makes my eyes hurt. My laptop has a disk drive but I watch most of my media via downloading from another PCV’s external when I see them about once a month. It’s perfectly acceptable in PCV culture to plop your butt down in a chair and say, ‘Hey guys…who has Season 2 of the Big Bang Theory” as a conversation opener. Since September of 2011 I have watched/rewatched the complete(or whatever’s been made of) seasons of:

• Will and Grace
• Modern Family
• Big Bang Theory
• The Wire
• The Office
• Boardwalk Empire
• Dexter
• House
• Planet Earth
• The West Wing
• Frasier
• Friends
• The Sopranos
• The Tudors
• Scrubs
• Sex and the City
• The X-Files
• Mad Men
• 30 Rock

And others I cannot recall. Also tons of movies.  Many of which I had missed the first time around or classics I had heard of but never seen.  “Last King of Scotland”…that was a great one. “Gorillas in the Mist”…not so great. I just finally watched “Slumdog Millionaire” after shamelessly lying about having seen it two years ago when everyone else saw it.  I had meant to see it but I was so busy at the time that by the time I had a free evening it had left the good movie theatre. I liked it. Also, when I left Chicago I had brought with me, on my person, a CD wallet containing a mix of DVD’s and Cd’s for my antediluvian but trusty laptop. Matt brought another wallet when he came in March and we switched them. He will do that again for me when we meet up in Prague. There are some classic films I cannot do without and like to rewatch for comfort,: “Brief Encounter”, “Adam’s Rib”, and “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Some old favorites from college days: “Bridget Jones Diary” and “Clerks”.  When I am due for a media re-up I can tide myself over for a few days with these favorite titles.  That’s one thing I really miss about the U.S though, movies. I miss going to movies. I used to love to go to one of the indie cinemas on my day off and watch whatever was playing that piqued my interest. I used to buy a cup of coffee from the concession and sneak a cupcake from my local bakery in inside my purse. The creaky seats and the organ announcing the previews, the warning to watch out for thieves as you enjoy the show, the ritual of buying your ticket.  A weekend matinee at one of Chicago’s grand old theatres…one of the great joys of my life.

I love being able to have the luxury to spend my evening hours online when the connection’s good or watching a sitcom…but I miss the movies.  And I miss bookstores. I miss browsing through dusty shelves , pulling down volume after volume and paging lightly through them. Nothing like a bookstore to send you back in time while your standing amidst the shelves. I miss media in the environment I embrace it best. ..back home. In the U.S…bookstores and ancient cinemas. Yes..yes I do.