About school

Early in the school year, I had held a class discussion to discuss themes the students might be interested in during the year. I explained that we could study English, while also learning about other things. Common answers included music (hip-hop and reggae), sports, poetry, politics (global, African and American), American history, debate, American slang and the illuminati.

I decided that one of my first units would deal with poetry and hip-hop. There was plenty of material there that I could use to teach about literary devices as well as grammar. Plus, they had asked for it. I started by teaching them Langston Hughes’ “A Dream Deferred”. I gave them the background of the poem and a little about Hughes. It turned out to be a very challenging lesson for them. Although it is not a complex poem, it is full of vocabulary that my students had never heard before. Syrupy sweet, raisin, fester, etc. Even more difficult, was getting them to understand not only the underlying meaning of the poem, but the idea of subtext. It was a little bit discouraging, but I knew it would not be easy. I felt like it was the first step on a path to teach the students to think critically.

My friend Enok visited that night. I made us some tea and we chatted for a while. He was wearing socks that had skull and crossbones on them. This led to a ten-minute-long explanation in French and Kinyarwanda about the significance of skull and crossbones and their association with pirates. It was a long and roundabout discussion that included a short history lesson and talk of modern pirate politics.

***

One Saturday, I walked to Bugarama, a small nearby town, to watch Ghana play in the Africa Cup of Nations. I had been hoping to get a ride, but after an hour of walking, no cars had passed, and I had gotten into Swahili vocabulary lesson with a group of proselytizing Jehova’s Witnesses. The girl that had spearheaded the short witness spiel and gave me some literature (in Kinyarwanda) probably realized she wasn’t going to convert me. So for the next hour of walking, she decided to teach me words in Kiswahili. It went from charming, to grueling, and then kind of fun again. She would just say the names of things around us in English, then tell me the words in Kiswahili. The words didn’t stick until the fourth or fifth times she went over them. My efforts were embarrassing, but she never judged me. She was surprisingly patient, but then again, that is a strong trait found in most people here.

I got to the bar to watch the game just in time. Ghana won, and afterward I ran to the bus stop, hoping to get the last bus back to my village. Before it arrived, though, there was a flatbed truck heading to the rice processing plant halfway to my village. I asked if they would give me a lift and they abided. They dropped me off near the plant. It was incredibly dark. I could barely see a thing. As I walked, I felt like I was alone on the road. However, there were quite a few people walking between villages. It was so dark that I could not tell they were there until we were passing each other. It was eerie, but fun.

***

It was Tuesday morning, a day when I don’t teach, and I got two phone calls from a number I did not recognize. I ignored them, as I had gotten a couple calls in the last week from people I did not know. Later in the day I got another couple calls from the same number and finally picked up. The man on the other end did not introduce himself. He simply asked why I wasn’t at the school to teach the Senior 4 classes. I was shocked. First of all, nobody had told me when the Senior 4 students were arriving at our school. Secondly, I was under the impression that I was not teaching that level, since it would put me over the amount of hours that the Peace Corps wanted me to teach every week. I had talked with some of the school staff about it, and thought everything was taken care of. I was never able to discuss it with the headmaster, though, since he had been absent all but a few days of the new school year.

The next day I went to discuss the matter with the headmaster. He gave me a similar tone as other administrators had, and I could not tell if they didn’t understand, or if they were trying to be sly. His response was basically that he understands that it was too many hours for me, but it is ok if I teach all the hours. No problem for him, so I am permitted to go ahead and do it. I was worried, but the headmaster told me that we would discuss it at the next teacher’s meeting. So, until then, I just continued to teach S4.

When the teacher’s meeting came, and we discussed it, it seemed that there was not much that could be done. There was only one other teacher that could teach English, and his schedule was full. Then suddenly one of the teachers figured out that the schedule was simply wrong. The S4 students had been scheduled with twice as many English classes as they were actually supposed to have. So in the end, I actually had exactly as many hours as I was allowed to have. I didn’t mind this outcome, but I was secretly hoping for few teaching hours. This was less out of laziness, and more out of my desire to work on secondary projects.

***

My poblano and santaka peppers did not appear to be sprouting, while my pepporoncini plant was starting to make some progress. So I planted a second round of my failing peppers in addition to jalapenos.

In other food news, I refried some leftover beans. Somehow, I had never tried this before in my life. It was delicious (obviously) and it will surely make regular appearances in my cooking.

***

Some of the girls in my “GLOW Club” (the after school club for girls) had said they wanted to include the boys in their club. I liked the idea of including boys in the club to promote cooperation in the fight for gender equality. I was also a little skeptical, though. It seemed that there obvious positive aspects of keeping the boys out. Most of all, the girls would be more likely to feel comfortable to express themselves without the boys around. There was the possibility of creating a “BE Club” (Boys Excelling), however, I was already running 3 clubs, and my after-school hours were full.

So, as an experiment, I let the boys come to the GLOW Club one week. I really felt that some of the boys were happy to be there and for the right reasons. I got the feeling from others, however, that they were there more because they didn’t have anywhere else to go at the time. Within an hour, one of the more vocal boys started asking why it was “GLOW Club” instead of “BGLOW Club”. I could tell that this dynamic would be difficult. I had some ideas for the future of the club, though, and we will see how they work.

***

One day I was sitting at the tea shop, having some tea, when a guy sitting near me asked me to pay for his tea. I felt offended. First of all, he had not greeted me in any way. He had heard me speaking Kinyarwanda, so he just went ahead and asked. This man did not look poor either, especially compared to the other customers. I was most hurt, though, because I felt that it was a sign that I was not integrating well. The last way I wanted people to look at me was as a rich guy who was only worth speaking with to get something. Perhaps he thought I was Chinese, but that also showed that I was not getting to know enough people.

The language was the hardest part about integrating. I tried not to rely on English or French, but my Kinyarwanda was still weak. I had not been as diligent in my studying of the language as I had meant to be. I finally went to the effort to find a Kinyarwanda tutor. One of my fellow teachers turned out to be interested in helping me out. He taught Kinyarwanda, English and French in our school, so he seemed like the best possibility. Although our first lesson was a little tedious in its elementary nature, I felt like this would be a big help in improving my language skills.

***

When I started to teach my Senior 4 class, my worries about being overloaded in my schedule immediately dissipated. The students seemed sharp and well-behaved. I looked forward to teaching them. They seemed to understand me well, or perhaps I had gotten better at speaking simply and slowly. I had them write about their long vacation to get an idea of where their English level was. One of the students wrote that during his vacation he went to America to visit Jeff (the previous volunteer) and Abraham Lincoln in California. It was one of the few examples of creative writing I had seen so far, and it gave me a lot of hope for the class.

***

During our teacher’s meeting, I learned that, for the second year in a row, our school was not up to code to house as many students as we had. While they had renovated the dormitory, the kitchen and cafeteria did not meet the standard set by the ministry of education. Therefore we were told that we could not accept Senior 1 and Senior 4 boarding students. Half of them, however, were already there, since the school was informed late. We were waiting to find out if the ministry would change its mind. One of the teachers hinted that if the school had been owned by a Catholic church they probably would have gotten away with it, since it is a much older institution in the country and they have a lot more connections and clout. While Protestants are quickly becoming the majority of the country, there are a huge variety of churches. My school is owned by the Methodist Church. Regardless of religious affiliation, I started to question the church’s priorities. I know that they had recently had a renovation, and it was easily the nicest church I had been to in Rwanda. Yet they still didn’t have the money to repair their kitchen or expand their cafeteria to hold all the students. Perhaps there is more to the story, but that is what I was seeing.

After the meeting, we all went to the local canteen. Teacher’s meetings traditionally include beer and Fanta, but it looked like we would be having that after the meeting in a social atmosphere. It was the first time I had a chance to get to know most of my fellow teachers. It was also the first time anybody had seen me have a beer. Only a third of the teachers were having beer, but those that were seemed happy to see me join them. The casual chatting and work-meeting atmosphere eventually faded into a night at the bar. Most of the teachers had left and I was sitting there with those that remained, who were sipping on beer after beer. They seemed so happy that I was joining them. They told me that the previous two volunteers only drank Fanta. That fact had made me nervous about coming out as a beer-drinker, but nobody seemed to mind as long as I told them I was Catholic. I don’t know why that is such a distinction here, when it does not seem very strong in America. I had never heard of someone refusing a drink on the grounds that they were “protestant”. Either way, I felt like I had a small break through that night.