Memorial Week in Rwanda

We're at the end of our 2 weeks of spring break. I wanted to go traveling, but from April 7th to the 13th we also had the National Week of Mourning for the 1994 genocide and I wanted to be in my village with them to experience it and support them. So some of the other PCVs went to Ethiopia, Kampala (Uganda), or others' villages, but I enjoyed just being in the village with my local friends.


Every day for a week people could only work in the mornings, each afternoon people would group together according to oumoudougoudou (say it: oo-moo-DO-goo-do, all the same "ooo" vowel sound, it means neighborhood) and local officials (like my host mom, the district secretary!) would read things from the government that prevent, fight against, and deal with genocide and its lasting effects. This year's theme was fighting against trauma, which they say 2/3 of the population suffers from.

I was told by my neighbor that our village is a Hutu majority (not the group targeted in the genocide) and they were almost all in refugee camps abroad during the majority of the war so very few people were killed from our village. This means there were no traumatic outbursts from people during the memorial week, unlike the majority of the country where people would randomly start screaming, crying, throwing themselves down, and remembering the horrors they went through. There are a few of my friends in the village NOT from Bungwe, but married local men or moved here for work; these women are the ones that HAVE suffered and some of them told me their story. Wow. I don't know how they have found the strength to continue, but somehow they do, and they're even doing really well. For this I really admire the strides this country and these poeple take to rebuild themselves and find new meaning in life. It's obviously really hard still, but they put a great smile on thier faces and continue on so well!




Since I hate being alone all the time and once the sun goes down (at like 6:30pm) I'm all alone in my little house, I spent the night at my friends house (a local house for the un-wed female workers far from home, like a boarding house for professional women) each night to hang out, cook, eat, and be with them. It was really fun to live with locals again! Then every afternoon I went to the oumoudougoudou discussions with a few of the other women in my neighborhood. During the day it was so weird to walk around our usually vibrant village and find it totally empty, like a ghost town. Maybe one or two little kids playing in the road, or a man carrying wood on his head, but basically barren.

So after the Memorial Week I hopped on a litte motorcycle--the only way down the mountain-- (as pictured here) and came to the capital city of Kigali:


no more locally farmed beans, potatoes, or carrots; no more papaya from my front yard for breakfast, no more milk and tea from our little restaurant (as seen here!) for snack. We have wireless internet at this little Americanesque cafe where we can order hamburgers, fries, cookie dough ice cream, pizza and beers! Have a happy day!

First Day

This is from a letter:
The first day of school I got up at 7am, got ready, and at 7:45 I asked my host mom if she was ready: school starts at 8am! But, she was gone! Did she go that early to school? Without me?!! So I ask my host dad and he says she left, but we don’t have work until 9am: it’s the first day of school after all, so everyone goes in late. Ok. So I wait. At 8am my mom calls me, saying let’s go. We get there, she goes to her office since she’s the secretary, and I’m lost. I don’t have a schedule, I don’t know where the classrooms are, I’m ready to teach, and have NO IDEA what’s going on. I tell this to my host mom and the Counselor/ vice principal, saying they have to tell me exactly what I have to do because the first day of school in America is (already) really different. The VP says I have to prepare lessons and teach. HAHA.
I’m sitting in the staff lounge when the other English teacher comes in so I tell her I’m lost. She explains to me the big chart on the wall: my classes! I’m supposed to teach 15 hours a week, with Mondays off—according to our contract and the principal. But I’m only teaching 6 hours! I ask her what we’re doing today, she says we look at the curriculum for our classes, make a syllabus, and prepare our lessons. But I did that 2 weeks ago! And the classrooms, they have no labels! WHERE do I teach?! She says she’ll show me.
Finally, ready to admit defeat for the day, I just ask, “Will I teach today?” She says, “No.” students are either at the bank paying school fees, cleaning out the classrooms and dorms, or still making their way here. Teachers are getting their class schedules, looking at the national requirements and preparing their lessons. I’m confused. It’s the FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL! I’ll just call it the first day of PLANNING school. I was so ready to teach!
It only took us 2 weeks to get into the swing of things! School “started” February 2nd, and by Feb 16th we had a schedule. February 24 we had a final schedule.
So, kids stay in THEIR classrooms, teachers rotate to them on the bell (an old tire rim and a rock) every 50 minutes with no passing period. Just go and show up. If you find another teacher in the classroom still, it is proper etiquette to just wait until they finish. You never kick out another teacher! Oh, and if it’s raining we don’t teach! This morning it was raining before school started and I was worried that I’d be late to school. I got there at 8:10 with another teacher, only 10 minutes after classes start…. We were the first ones there. If its raining, teachers don’t come! They say they can’t teach over the noise of the rain on the tin roofs! I just gave my students an essay so they don’t have to hear me, just sit and write.
If I’m not being the “strange/cool/funny muzungu English teacher” in front of my 40+ students (in one class) then I’m in the teacher’s lounge: all 22 of us teachers share one room 6 yards by 8 yards, 5 tables, 4 benches, and cubby boxes for each one of us. We can plug in our phones to the one power strip, type (not print or surf the web) on our 1980’s reject computer-donation from Germany (I just deleted some company’s back up files—all in German) We usually listen to 1. Religious songs in Kinyarwanda cheesey videos, or 2. Pop songs in Kinyarwanda with sexy videos. Usually the SAME song will play for like 20-30 minutes. Daily. The SAME one! (I thank God I don’t understand Kinyarwanda that well). This is our only teacher space, so we sit, prepare, talk, eat lunch, grade, EVERYTHING in this room. We get teacher lunch every day but it costs 1,500F, about $3 a month.
We also have to wear white lab coats to teach in. And bring our own chalk. If I have to erase anything on the board, one of the kids hops up, gets the eraser from me and erases for me! Kids usually have one text book per class, one is in charge of it, writes the assigned pages on the board, and the others will copy down what s/he writes into their notebooks. They just copy text books into their notes! That’s all they can do! Kids are also in charge of their own cleaning: sweeping classrooms, cleaning bathrooms, maintaining the grounds, cleaning everything. Usually the poor kids that can’t afford school fees work off their debt. So Wednesday afternoons we have off: I find many kids digging, planting flowers, sweeping, etc. They all have a job, including one lucky kid that gets to ring the bell each day…aka hit a big rock against a tire rim in the middle of the school yard every 50 minutes to mark the beginning and end of each class.
I love it!

Our school is on one of the thousand Rwandan hills, but lovely!















]

All 20 of us teacher share this "teachers' lounge": we keep our books, papers, and supplies in the cupboards on the left. This is our only space so we share benches and tables to plan lessons, grade papers, eat our meals, EVERYTHING. See the white lab coats we have to wear?!


This is our 80's reject computer in our lounge. I just deleted some back-up files for some German company to try to clear up the mess. We have no internet and no printer (not that they know how to use either one...) so we use it to watch music videos (over and over and over again...they put it on repeat for like an hour at a time!): usually a religious one with cheesy effects or a pop video with a woman in a leotard, shaking around, trying to be sexy, and singing "oh, la, la! ma cherie!"




Our school has pigs! Just next to the 4th year students' classrooms. There are apparently some cows and fields the next hill over.






March 8th was International Woman's Day! All of the student clubs (and there are MANY) prepared something, so these are girls doing traditional Rwandan dances. Their arms are up to represent the cow--Rwandan (and it seems African) symbol of wealth.

This is my neighbor's house, one of the best made homes in the area: rocks, read bricks, roofing tiles! A veritable palace!









Typical Rwandan hills. You can see the early morning fog, all the little houses made of mud bricks, and banana trees.









This is my kitchen: home made mud bricks, eucalyptus branches for the frame, and zinc roofing.









Inside our very typical kitchen: we have 2 cement based stoves used for cooking with fire wood, 2 portable metal stoves for cooking with charcoal, our fire wood in the corner, and a bench for sitting on. Since everyone stays in their homes at night, I spend most of my evenings (after 6:30 pm when it gets dark) in the kitchen with my host mom peeling, chopping, cutting, washing, stoking the fire, talking and laughing. I love it!









My friend's host mom and I are eating the food of our labor: ubugali (say it: oo0boo-garr-ee), a totally Rwandan dish made of flour and water, traditionally eaten with your finger. You dip a bit in a tomato-meat sauce and enjoy! Most westerners don't really like it, but I absolutely LOVE it. Maybe because it reminds me Mauritania (eating with the hands) AND Latin America (like masa or tortillas!)

I want to start a library in Apapeduc High School where I'll be teaching English for the next year.

I am still a Peace Corps Volunteer, but I've relocated from Mauritania to Rwanda, East Africa to teach English. The national government has recently changed the national language of instruction from French to English and you can imagine the chaos that has ensued (imagine the USA decided one year to change all schools from English to Chinese, it'd be crazy!)

Following the 1992-1994 Civil War that culminated in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi minority, the current Rwandan Government has made ambitious goals in order to modernize, stabilize, create lasting peace, and promote reconciliation within the country. “Vision 2020” includes environmental, hygienic, and educational reforms, including changing the national language of instruction from French to English last year, obligating untrained professors to teach un-exposed students in a language no one knows. Which is where I come in: I am teaching English in Bungwe (say it: BOON-gway), a small hubbub community in the mountains of northern Rwanda.

In my quest to promote English education, a love of reading, exposure to new ideas, and an appreciation of global affairs, I realize I cannot do this alone. Though locals and my fellow teachers support my ideas and are beyond grateful for the giving of my time and skills, they are limited by illiteracy, lack of electricity, means and funds. Parents themselves show intense interest in their children’s education as every Saturday finds them voluntarily carrying bags of sand and rocks—on their heads—from the quarry to the site of new classrooms being built. With the guidance of paid engineers, the community is literally building their classrooms. The government gives some monetary assistance, parents build schools with their own hands, I am offering my skills, and students are willing and (so) excited to learn. But it's not enough.

If you feel that you would like to be part of our team effort to educate, facilitate peace, and promote understanding, do not (yet) give us your money... we need books! The “old school” ink and paper has yet to infiltrate rural Rwanda, has not yet blessed a population with the wealth of knowledge held within. Bungwe has an elementary school and two secondary schools (high schools) serving thousands of students and locals, yet has no library, no books (besides sub-par text books in French). Literally any book in English will contribute to Rwanda’s goal of learning this international language, and my hopes of a profound appreciation of learning.

Thank you for considering Bungwe, the development of young minds, the hope and future of a recovering country.

Feel free to look at my blog: bololam.blogspot.com
or call/skype me: 00 250 78 597-9354
(be patient, the network is horrible!)

Sending with a flat-rate box (available at the post office) is cheapest:
Michele Hernandez, PCV
Apapeduc Secondary School
P.O. Box 72
Byumba, Rwanda
East Africa

Include a list of costs and it can be tax deductable!