The Occasional Odd Moment of Grace

We apologize for the unusally long time between posts but we went on adventure this weekend (we have an adventure in the works for next week too, and we'll let you know if it works out - as a nice young traveler we met this weekend told us, "This is Africa. It's better not to make any plans.") and we're trying to do a really special update about it. IT WOULD INVOLVE PICTURES, if it works, which many people have been asking about. We appreciate all your patience on that front, as every update of any kind from here must be forcibly wrenched from the unwilling, rusty jaws of Rwanda's excuse for a technological infrastructure. Perhaps some of you remember dial-up. Think back to the 90's. Now imagine that instead of owning the incredibly slow computer you were working on, you paid by the minute for the privilege of using it, and answering 6 emails or doing the simplest of updates took, at minimum, 2 hours.

Still, there's something friendly and comfortable about internet cafes, and I will be a little sad when the rest of the world goes the way of the US and gets rid of them in favor of home computers. Internet cafes are a lot like payphones, actually.

We've each had an opportunity to teach for a few days at this point, and I have never felt more empathy for those who take on this task as a career. I can't imagine anything more difficult and consuming on a daily basis, except, perhaps, being a nurse. At the same time, I've never felt less sympathy for the complaints I've heard about teaching in the states. Oh, so you had a classroom of 24 students? Why, do did I, and they ranged in age from 4 to 16. Your students had all different skill levels, you say? How funny! My 16 yr olds could speak conversational English while one of my 9 yr olds was nearly fluent. I had a 5 yr old doing long division and a 12 yr old doing subtraction. In addition to this, my students and I do not speak the same language, making it difficult for me to ask the proper questions in order to determine WHY my 7 yr old girl has wandered away from the classroom and is staring at her reflection in a car, WHILE DANCING. I also need to learn how to say, "Please stop touching one another inappropriately" in Kinyarwandan. Also "Please stop hitting." Also "Please line up," "Stop", "Please speak louder", "Please be quieter", and "Please stop smearing one another with the glue stick I have already confiscated twice."

RA1: Get over it, they're just kids.
RA2: I will NOT, and you can't make me.

In all seriousness, the kids are mostly adorable, and we are frequently able to split up the classes into more experienced and less experienced students. We can run for a translator if we need one, and sometimes we can actually get one for the entire class. Bless RA1, she has them doing worksheets and projects, and they adore her. Starting next week, we should actually have an idea of what students will be showing up every day, which will both be phenomenal and allow for some continuity in our lesson plans. Right now everyone sort of shows up hodge-podge, and yesterday Claire had to remove to children who it turns out don't even ATTEND our little one-room classroom and try to determine who they belonged to and how they'd gotten there.

Working with the women is, as ever, amazing beyond words. English lessons are the best part. The women really want to learn and they get excited to improve our Kinyarwandan. We worked very specifically on buying and selling today, appropriately (RA1's brilliant idea). We did basket-weaving afterwards and one of the women brought her 2 yr old daughter, Carina, who was beautiful, bright and reminded me very much of my friend's daughter who is the same age. But that poor Mama looked tired beyond words, so RA1 took Carina for a little walk and made funny faces at her, which was just enough to keep her distracted for a little while. She's at the age where all she wants to do is cling to her mother, and I don't think the woman is getting any sleep.

I also had to have a somewhat uncomfortable talk with a woman today who does manicures and pedicures and wants to have people staying at our guest house book appointments with her. There are some very small changes she's going to have to make in order to meet western sanitary standards, and we can't advocate for her comfortable unless she does. She was very kind and receptive, but it's still incredibly awkward to tell a grown woman how to make changes to her business, a business I have never personally been involved in.

Some aspects of the project are going incredibly well, others are going to need to be worked through slowly. But that's exactly why we gave ourselves 3 months here; when I think of how much we've done in only 2 weeks I'm astonished.