Homemade Hammer

December 13, 2012

Most of my time between arriving at site and Christmas was spent being shown around by my counterpart, Gabriel, wandering around the town, exploiting the short mango season, exercising and cooking.

Gabriel took me to our school’s library. Our school is fortunate enough to have a library, a rare thing in Rwanda. However, it would be of little use to me. My school was focused on the sciences, and the few textbooks devoted to teaching English were for the lower level students. I would be teaching the highest two grades in secondary school. One of my biggest worries about teaching was that I had very little idea of what I would teach. Most volunteers teach the lower, “ordinary” level classes. They had a wealth of resources about what to teach as well as fleshed-out lesson plans. Our model school was conducted entirely in the lower level classes. I asked Gabriel about the curriculum that I would be teaching, and he fished out a little booklet from somewhere. I was shocked by how vague it was. It seemed to be basic guidelines, but it really said nothing. Under the section for “specific objectives” we have, “Recognize the meaning of words as quickly as possible, To show commend (sic) of an extensive scientific vocabulary, to study effectively and independently, to identify the main point or important information.” Even for what little information this gave, it meant nothing, as the expectations in the schools here seem to be grossly off-the-mark when it comes to the actual skill level of the students. I still had a few weeks before school started, so it would seem that I would have plenty of time to prepare. However, I did not want to start lesson planning until I had some sort of idea of the level of my students. I could go ahead and plan weeks of lessons, but I knew that I would need to completely re-work everything as soon as I got a chance to interact with my students.

Later that day, I went on a run. I passed by a tall, wiry man with too much energy. He suddenly joined me on the run and started yelling something that sounded like military chants. The guy pushed me to go a little farther than I was planning, but eventually I realized that he could probably run forever, so I turned back around. I wasn’t able to understand much of what his chants meant, but eventually I realized they were nonsense, and he was making them up based on what he saw around us. He was yelling about the cement factory, the children, the banana trees. “The President is great, he loves all the children,” was one that I specifically remember. I was happy to be around a Rwandan with a little more personality and liveliness than most, but then I started to wonder if he wasn’t an “umusazi”, a catch-all term for crazy people, or perhaps mentally disabled. This was confirmed when he got all the way to my house and demanded to come inside because he wanted something to eat. I felt bad, but I knew it was not a good idea. He started to get angry when I tried to say goodbye and leave him behind. One of the soldiers that lives next door to me came out and scolded him and sent him away. There is not much sympathy for the umusazi here, but I was a little relieved that he had dealt with this man for me.

That night I made my first attempt at making mango jam. I bought a couple kilos of sugar and a bunch of mangos. I can get mangos for cheap during the season. About 30 for a dollar, sometimes cheaper. I knew it would only last a few more weeks, though, and I needed to make as many things out of the mangos as I could. It took a lot of time, and I made a huge mess, but I eventually had a couple of big jars of jam, sealed properly and everything. It was far easier than I had expected, and when I saw that the seal had formed correctly on my old mayonnaise jar I felt a huge sense of accomplishment. Gabriel had been there, watching me make it. I don’t know what he thought of it. He didn’t express much, but I can only assume he thought it was weird. I’d never made jam before, and I never even ate much jam in America, but there I was, making and canning my own in Rwanda. I take my mangos seriously.

On the first market day since I was at site, I got up early and left before I had any visitors so I was sure to be on my own in the market. It is almost an hour walk away, but it is flat, for Rwanda, and beautiful. A huge stretch of the walk goes between expansive, Technicolor rice fields on the floor of the valley. I’ve said it before, I’m sure, but nothing puts me in a good mood like walking around a market in Africa. Sure, plenty of people were incessantly yelling, “chinoise!” or “mzungu!” at me, but usually I can ignore it. Some of the market women remembered me from when I had come with Jeff a couple months before. I bought a couple kilos of rice, a pineapple, plenty of mangos  and a big grass mat. As I walked through the town, after my shopping, the moto drivers started yelling to me, trying to get me to take their ride. One of the more obnoxious ones was yelling, “Nihow! Chinoise! Chinoise! Nihow!” followed by some mocking faux Chinese. I was trying to ignore them, but I lost it. I went up to him, and surprised him, first by speaking in Kinyarwanda, something the Chinese here cannot do, then by telling him off. After I was done yelling at him, there was a brief moment of silence, then all the other moto drivers erupted in laughter. I had humiliated the driver. As I walked off, I felt hugely victorious.

My front door has a glass window, and if you look through it, you can see my bathroom door. One day when I was in the bathroom, I heard the neighborhood kids arrived, banging on the doors and windows. I decided to pretend that I was not home. I figured  I could wait them out. If I walked out of the bathroom, they would know I was home, and they would continue to hound me for at least an hour. I underestimated them, and they outlasted me. I walked out, and decided to try to hang out with them outside, in front of my house. As soon as I open the door, the kids start to pour in though. I had to corral them, and push them back onto my porch. I turned on some music, because they like to dance. There are a set of twins, both named Fred, who are two years old. They are named after RPF war hero Fred Rwigiyema (sp?), who had initially led the fight to stop the 1994 genocide, before he was killed. The Freds do not really look alike, mostly because one of them looks extremely malnourished. He can barely walk upright. With every step, he wobbles back and forth, almost falling down. Well, as I was hanging out with this gaggle of kids on my porch, I took a step backward, and knocked over the frail little Fred and he hit his head on the porch. I felt so bad, but he had his revenge before he even started crying. As I leaned down to pick him up, I saw that as he had fallen over my bare foot and covered it in the poop that he apparently was smothered in underneath the dress that he wears. It was quite the bonk, but he was ok after a few minutes of sobbing. We had not gotten off to a good start. In the middle of all of this a girl, who might have been eight, asked me to give her some food. I told her I didn’t have any food to give. Just then, Gabriel arrived, saying we were going somewhere. I went inside to wash off my foot, and change into nicer clothes. When I came out, the girl that had asked me for food told me my shirt was dirty and I needed to change it. I felt like only in Rwanda could I be begged from a person one minute, then told by the same person that I was dirty the next minute. So, grumblingly I went to go change shirts.

I bought a homemade hammer with a rebar handle at the market, which finally enabled me to hang my mosquito net. It looked like this would be the first time in my life when I would actually use my mosquito net on a regular basis. I hate using them, but the mosquitoes in my house are bad enough, and I don’t have a fan that blows them away from me.

One of the negative sides of having such a hot site, is that my food goes bad a lot quicker. I had made a big batch of mango curry, and it went bad in less than 48 hours. I knew that if I was in one of the high elevation sites, I would be able to cook less often and in bigger batches. One of the dishes I made a lot at the beginning was phad thai. I had found a jar of phad thai paste in a free box in the Peace Corps house in Kigali. I had also bought  a few packs of ramen in Kigali. With an egg, some garlic, maybe even a little bit of mango, it was  a good, simple dish, that I would never be able to make after my paste and noodles ran out.

One day, I ran into Mama Jeanette, the matriarch of a family that Jeff had been very close with. I was so happy to see her. She was a very sweet woman. She told me that her son, Enok, who I had met, was sick with malaria. I gave her my number and said I would visit the next day. I got the call the next morning, far earlier than I had expected. I was in the middle of doing some yoga, but I had to abandon it. I walked to the health center and found Mama Jeanette. We walked into the room where Enok, who is about my age, was staying. He was actually recovering quickly, and was about to check out. Mama Jeanette served us some tea and bread. In the time that I was there he actually received a few more visitors, who brought gifts. I realized that visiting people in hospitals must be an important thing here, and I felt bad for not bringing a gift. Come to think of it, it is probably about the same in America. However, I haven’t visited anyone in a hospital since I was a child, so I have never really thought much of that etiquette.

Afterward, they invited me back to their place for lunch. I was surprised to find their home looking much different than I had remembered it. This was because they were in the process of constructing a new, brick house, next to their old mud and stick house. Enok said that he was paying for the construction, but the money was coming slowly. Right now it was at a standstill. The bricks were about four feet high so far. We went into Enok’s dank, mud-floored room and sat on his bed, as Mama Jeanette prepared lunch. We chatted in a mixture of French and Kinyarwanda. Just after our lunch of rice, boiled plantains, beans and tripe was served, a nasty storm came. Some of the lightning strikes were so close they didn’t leave time between their flash and the thunder. Enok struggled to deal with the many leaks in the corrugated tin roof. He tried to plug some, and moved his clothes from underneath others. I was happy that they were building a new house. They deserved something better. I was surprised to learn that Mama Jeanette had ten kids. That would make her, approximately, a lot older than I would have expected. She does not seem old. She has a vitality about her. The only time I see her age show, is when she puts on reading glasses to use her cell phone. I like her because she gets, and laughs, at my jokes. Most Rwandans seem too literal, and don’t get my sense of humor. For example, I responded to their goats’ bleating, with bleats of my own. I explained that while I don’t speak Kinyarwanda very well, I’m actually fluent in goat. I proceeded to translate to them what the goat was saying. They all thought it was hilarious, but I felt that most Rwandans would have responded with, “but goats don’t talk. How can you speak goat?” Or maybe they would have just thought I was lame, or crazy.

Later that day I went down to Bugarama, a small town about 12 km from my site to meet up with a fellow volunteer. She had walked from her site with some friends, who were heading back home. We had not met before, so we hung out for a bit over a beer. It was the middle of the afternoon, but there was a guy dancing in the bar alone. He was wearing a Mickey Mouse baseball cap, rubber galoshes and was eating a cob of grilled corn. He was not holding back his dancing either. This served as our entertainment for about half an hour. It restored a little bit of my faith in Rwandans’ ability to let loose and have a good time.