Newness

I woke up at about 7:20 this morning.  I had a very nice cold shower.  There is a showerhead on the wall with a patch of tile underneath and a drain, and a squeegee to direct the water to the drain at the end of the shower.  The water has an odd flatness, a little like hard water, but without the sliminess; anyway, the soap and even toothpaste barely seem to lather. 

I walked to the dining room where I had a little coffee and some tea with my breakfast: fresh mango and pineapple, Laura’s wheat bread from Kigali, and edam cheese, which we had commonly in New Zealand but I have never seen in the U.S.  Sister finally came to collect me at 8:30 or 9, and I went to her office shortly thereafter.  She gave me a tour of the school buildings, the classrooms, dorms, dining hall (for students), bath facility.  I spent much of the day in the staff room, where all the teachers sat at different times, nearly all of them for tea at 10:30 and for lunch at 12:30, both served to us buffet style.  They sat at long wooden desks like the one in my room, sifting through papers or notebooks or looking at things on the computer.

I spoke at length with Bienvenu, the young man who works the library.  He has been on the faculty at Maranyundo since it opened in 2008.  First he showed me all the books.  It’s a small library, and many of the books are texts for chemistry, physics, biology, languages, but there is also a fiction section, mostly written in English.  I learned that since last year, the national curriculum in Rwanda requires the majority of instruction to be in English, something Laura and I talked about at length.  She would like to see the students learn in Kinyarwanda more because their level of comprehension is much higher, but Teacher Valens thinks that the more Kinyarwanda is spoken, the less the students listen to the English.  Laura has struggled with her students’ level of interest in English; she sees that some of the older students have already chosen their academic track, which occurs in Senior 4 (10th grade), and if they chose math/science, they have lost interest in languages. 

Bienvenu and I also shared newspaper headlines online.  The Rwandan ambassador to France will now represent in Portugal as well; a major genocide perpetrator has had her sentence extended; Human Rights Watch has apologized to Rwanda for claiming that the Gacaca is an unfair system.  I was struck seeing that even 17 years after the genocide, so many headlines surround it.

I joined Laura for her two classes today, one with Senior 1s (equivalent to 7^th grade) and one a small tutoring group technically after school, but when the students board, you have a captive audience and it’s always school!  The first group, a class of about 30, opened class by asking me a few questions.  The girls, as I pass them outside, have mostly eyed me curiously but shyly gone on their way.  When I say “muraho,” they respond somewhat quietly.  I enjoyed spending the class with them, learning a few names.  I also floated as they worked on a comprehension group activity writing topic sentences and sorting sentences into relevant and irrelevant given the topic.  As promised, the girls are well behaved and well-mannered.  We had only 4 girls in the afternoon session.  Their work on reported speech and direct speech was tedious, but they were industrious.  I enjoyed sharing with them maps of places we are from.

Tonight Laura, Provi and I made plans to meet two Peace Corps Volunteers Laura knows in Nyamata.  Sehaya and Jeremy teach an English class at the coed Nyamata High School, but they also do health work.  They have both been in Kigali for over a year.  We met in a sort of gazebo made of natural materials at a restaurant.  I had my first Primus, a local lager which is mild-tasting and cost me less than a dollar for about a liter.  Unlike American lagers, it tastes as good halfway through as it does in the first sip.  I ordered the especial, which was a sort of omelet with onions, sausage-like goat meat, and potatoes.  We talked about things like Washington D.C. and the Peace Corps setup and Rwandan food.  Providence speaks conversational English, but this conversation was mostly too fast for her.  I slowed down a few times to explain what we were talking about.  In a funny moment, Sehaya claimed that Jeremy’s Kinyarwanda was amazing, but when he subsequently tested it on Providence, she corrected him right away on something. 

We walked back from town in the dark, and I had a joyful reunion with the Southern Cross, the constellation I have not seen since New Zealand.  Intercepting Sande Robert (Rwandans have a Rwandan name, then a Christian name, usually both given names, not family names) we all walked back together.  I will observe some of his computer classes tomorrow.