Friday, November 21, 2014

More Travel

Leaving kenya tim and I travelled to Istanbul, Turkey.  

My thoughts on Istanbul:

I really like the city, at least the part we stayed in. We were probably a two minute walk away from the Blue Mosque and Hagai Sophia. We'd wake up in the morning and have breakfast on the enclosed rooftop of our hostel and watch ships sailing by. Pretty fantastic. The city is huge though, beautiful, but sprawling. I don't think I would like it as much if we weren't staying in such a central location. We took an hour and a half boat ride up the Bosphorous Strait and really never left the city. Highlights of that trip inlcude I have now been to ASIA! Nick, from My first year of JVC, met up with us which was awesome. On one day, the three of us just did a food tour of all the street food before heading over to the BLue Mosque to check out the inside and hear the evening call to prayer from the square out front. I would definitely go back to istanbul, but not at the "high" season, it was crowded enough in the winter.

Next up we caught a bus to Sofia, Bulgaria. It was surprisingly easy. So far the hardest part of the trip has been locating the front door of our hostels. In Istanbul we stayed at the generically named "Istanbul Hostel" which was located in the middle of the tourist district filled with hostels, it made asking for directions very challenging. 

Sofia was nice, but cold. Tim and I had to spray all our clothes and bags with raid and then wash them from Istanbul and so for the two days we were in Sofia we were walking around in, sleeping in, and filing our beds with wet clothes hoping to dry them with our body heat. We were not successful and it was just cold. The first day in Sofia we tried to go to the mountain in the city, we were marginally successful except that it took us nearly all morning to find the right tram. The second day we wandered around, watched a changing of the guards, checked out some fancy churches and in the evening we went to the ballet "Sleeping Beauty" at the National Opera House. It was legit. He ballet was really good. The best thing about Sofia was how affordable it was. Food was super cheap. We went to the archeology museum for $2 and second row at the ballet cost a little under $20. 

From Sofia, this morning we caught another bus to Belgrade. Aside from pushy older Serbian ladies who sat in our seats and wouldn't move the bus went smoothly. Tonight we are headed to dinner at a resteraunt that apparently has opera singers serenading you while you eat. A day in Belgrade tomorrow and then if we can, the overnight train to Budapest tomorrow morning where, to continue our pretentious culture trend, we have tickets to a concert of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra.

 The Hagai Sophia at night

 The blue mosque







Monday, November 10, 2014

Kenya

I am currently on Kenya. Tim and I just finished a 3 day safari in one of the national parks. It was wonderful. We got to see tons of animals! Nairobi, as a city, isn't my favorite place though. 

An annecdote from the trip: we were touring around with another van through the park and they got stuck trying to cross a mostly dried up creek bed. Everyone in their van got out to help push and all three of the guys from our van plus the driver got out to help too. I and another woman just hung around watching the spectacle of all these people trying to push the van out of the hole. After many attempts, and many good ideas on the part of Tim, our driver, and everyone else being ignored, the other driver final got the van unstuck to many cheers from the spectators. So, everyone loaded back into their vehicles and we proceed to drive 50 feet down the grass to look at 2 lionesses and 3 baby lion cubs hanging out. Yep, we had been standing around in the middle of the open making a bunch of noise unaware of the fact that we were 50ft from being lion lunch. 


Thursday, October 30, 2014

Wrapping up

Well... School has officially ended. Grades have been handed out to the kids. The teachers took a trip to Gisenyi in the north together to celebrate the year. We drove to the border with Goma, to see it, had lunch, at a hotel, went to another hotel right on lake Kivu to relax for a bit, and then drove back to the city. It was enjoyable. The whole area is incredibly scenic. It surprised me that in a country the size of tiny Rwanda, many of the teachers had never been to Gisenyi before, despite the fact that it is one of the biggest towns in the country and is only like 140km from Kigali. Rwandans just really don't travel like Americans do. 

In our free time, Tim and I are planning our journey home which will include a brief stop over in Kenya before moving on to Europe. We also have been spending a lot of time at the market trying to get last minute tailoring done. Today we are heading to another town on Lake Kivu to relax for a day and have a chance to close out our time in Rwanda together, a mini retreat of sorts. It means that by the time I return tomorrow I won't have been to school for 3 whole days in a row. A record time away from school for me practically. 

The S3s started their national exams today. Tim, myself, the other teachers, and the school are all wishing them luck. 

I've included a picture of some of the stuff I've had made here. It is incredible to me that people, so many of them, sew so well. I took a picture of 2 dresses I liked to a tailor and said "i want it to look like this, but I want the back to look like this" and they did it just by looking at a grainy picture I printed from the internet and my measurements... And it fit. 






Tuesday, September 23, 2014

South Africa (second post for September 23)

Working backwards from things most recently happening to things that happened a month ago, I did, for those who missed all the hints and references, go to South Africa in a week in August. I flew down from Rwanda to meet up with a friend of mine, Mareike, who had worked with me at L'Arche Mobile during JVC round 2. I flew in late on Friday night and got just a few hours of sleep before heading off at 5 in the morning to go on a safari in Kruger National Park. The safari lasted 4 days and (felt) super luxurious, even though it was one of the most affordable one's out there. They cooked for us, we had a morning wake up call, a campfire every night, no dishes, warm showers, and a lot of fun. For some strange reason, no one else signed up for the same four days as Mareike and I, so while the group before us was a random assortment of like 8 people and the one after a group of 7, Mareike and I had basically a private safari. We spent some time with the other groups around the campfire as they departed and arrived, but our day activities were solo. The first morning we were going to be in the park, it was pouring rain and so the guide, I since there was only two of us, invited us into the cab of the truck (rather than the open back) where it was nice and warm and dry. We spent the whole morning in there driving around the park and hearing lots of stories from the guide that we wouldn't have heard otherwise. After brunch we moved to the back of the truck for better viewing. That evening we had a night drive, then the next day back to Kruger (keeping nice and warm up front until the sun came out) for the whole day. We saw lots of rhinos, some lionesses, giraffes, elephants (even a baby one!), hippos, birds, vultures, warthogs, zebra (who always, no matter what, turned their back to you) and tons of other cool things including two crocodiles wrestling. After the safari we returned to Johanesburg for a night before heading to the mountains of South Africa, the Drakensburg. I can't say much to the benefit of Johanesburg, that might be because of the neighborhood we were staying in or maybe it was just the city, but it reminded me a lot of certain places of Mobile with the fast food resteraunts, everything kind of run down, half the shops boarded up, that sort of thing. However, walking around, we did come across a super cool used book store run by a little old man with a very thick accent who clearly spends all his time in and out of the shop reading the books there, so naturally I had to buy something from him. That was probably the highlight of Johanwsburg for me. Then off to the mountains. They were beautiful, but they reminded me less of the mountains at home and more of like Montana maybe or a little bit a eastern Washington too. They were mountains because everything else around them is flat so they stand out, but they themselves weren't particularly peeked like mountains.They just rise suddenly out of the ground these tall rocks with flat tops. We went on a hike one day, but it was super cold so it was hard to enjoy. We had to scramble up this ravine at one point to get to the top and on the way back we climbed down these chain ladders and I thought my hands were going to freeze off touching the cold metal. The best part was the people we met on the hike. We were accompanied by 2 Germans and a French man and that night we all ate dinner together at the hostel and had a great time laughing and chatting. The next day Mareike and I split up. She continued South while I headed back to the city to fly back to Rwanda. 

My impression of South Africa was that it reminded me of home. They had granola bars! I ate granola bars! And fast food pizza. They had huge gas stations with a convience store, large restrooms, and a fast food chain all servicing it. They had, in some places, treated water you could drink from a tap, big grocery stores (though they were more European than American), and lots of industrial farming. But at the same time, lots of what looked like squatter villages to me. According to my safari guide, the average income just isn't that high, and social services work strangely. Apparently everyone can qualify for government housing (and you can tell what it was, small square houses in a development that all look the same) but if you take the housing, you have to pay for ammenities like water and electricity. However, if you live in a hut you can get things like electricity for free. So you'd see lots of thatched roofs or shanties simply because people choose to live that way. The people were really nice though. Two of my highlights were petting a cheetah and almost being run trampled by a baby giraffe. The pictures are all on my camera though, so I can't post them until I get home.

Monday, September 22, 2014

Midterms

Well I promised to write again soon and never got around to, so.... my latest update. Last week was midterms. Everything at school was crazy. This term is two weeks shorter than the last two terms and so everything is being jammed super close together. Finals start in practically 3 weeks it feels like. In the midst of all that, the sports teams have been competing in an inter-school competition. The boys basketball team won their first game, but lost their second, the soccer team lost their first game, the girls basketball team lost their first game (but played with a lot of heart! I am super proud of them), and finally the girls volleyball team has reached the finals.... Thanks to the fact that the first and second team they were suppose to play both forfeited. St. Igantius, should probably stick to the academics for now. In other news, Tim made a piƱata for Spanish club (I helped with the decoration) and it was a lot of fun to watch the kids smash it to pieces. Though also bitter sweet because my (but lots and lots of Tim's) blood, sweat, and tears went I to creating that thing. 
We strung it on the basketball hoop and I blindfolded and spun the kids around while Tim worked the rope. When it finaly got knocked down, the kids dog-piled on top of one another trying to get at it. I am  thankful no one got hurt. In other news, Tim and I made Rwandan guacamole to go with dinner last night and we offered some to one of the kitchen workers, Baptiste. He was super skeptical of why we would ever mash our salad together and when we finally convinced him to try some, well... the look on his face was pretty priceless. It was pretty spicy because we put this Rwandan chilli called pili-pili in it and boy did it have some kick. More than that though, I don't think Baptiste had ever tasted cumin, which Tim had very liberally dumped into the guacomole.... Mostly life is just filled with school though. I spent the two weeks after my trip to South Africa trying to get caught up on school stuff because I had been gone for a week. Then I've been trying to catch up on my school work because of midterms. It is a never ending cycle. 

Monday, August 11, 2014

The Giver

As many of you know, I decided to have the kids in S2A read The Giver this past term. I'd like to shout out to Mrs. Bartlett of the St. Catherine's School library, Sherry from Seattle U, and my mom for helping make it possible. On a whim of mine, they hunted down 23 copies of the book and had them sent via Sue Jackles (also of SU -thanks for being the courier) to me. 

Not having ever taught a book before I didn't really know what I was doing, or what I was getting into. I love reading and remember being enthralled by The Giver when I first read it in middle school. My tackling of this project was solely based on my desire to pass a love for reading on to them. The textbooks the school has are awful, filled with moralizing tales of why it's important to study hard and be a good citizen. It leaves no room for creativity or imagination. They offer very little to enhance their minds or even capture their attention. I wanted to try a book, a real novel, one written especially for teens.

I am not sure how successful I was in the end. We took a term to read it. I had them read a few chapters each week and we had weekly discussions on the book, intermixed between grammar and vocabulary lectures so they wouldn't fall behind the national curriculum. 

A few of the kids finished the book in the first 3 days I gave it to them. One student in particular read it super fast. He proudly told me after a week that he was done, my response being "that's great, but we still have a lot of work to do with it." He is a student who was considered too "weak" last year to move on and is thus repeating this year. As the term progressed, he really stepped up his work and I realized that reading comprehension, summarizing, short answer thinking questions about the text were his thing. I was proud to see him go from the middle of his English class to the top, and while I don't necessarily think it had to do with English, I know the rest of his grades improved too. 

I enjoyed watching the kids struggle to think about the questions The Giver raises. Questions about utopia and dystopia. Questions about is having no pain worth the price of having no joy either? Questions related to the world in the book, that allowed us to reflect together upon our own world, it's similarities and differences. Questions about euthanasia and right and wrong. Questions about pain, suffering, and sacrifice. 

Some parts of the book I knew would be a struggle. For some the vocabulary of the book and the reading level itself were just too much. However, there were aspects of the book that challenged them In places I did not expect. One day about half way through the book I asked them how they pictured Jonas' world looking (Jonas being the protagonist). When I got a bunch of blank stares back, I asked if they could picture it at all. The response was "it is somehow difficult" (somehow being absolutely the favorite word of English speaking Rwandans). The first quarter of the book was mostly description and set up, though done subtly. I understood some that between the language of the text and subtulty of the description why there might be some confusion, but we had at that point talked for several weeks about the rules of the society, the lack of color, the "sameness" that existed in the world. I had, do have, such a vivid image in my mind of the world Lois Lowry describes that I didn't stop to think that perhaps the kids didn't or couldn't see it too. For many it was the first time they'd read anything remotely science fiction like, it wouldn't surprise me either if, for many, it was the longest book they'd ever read. They've had no practice and no reason to practice making the words come to life in their mind. They've not had to picture another world before, even when that world is based on our own. At Tim's suggestion I had them draw a scene to try to put them in the world. As the story progressed I could tell that they were still struggling based on the questions they asked: how can it be our world without color? How can you take the color out? How can you take away weather and hills? How come Father doesn't understand what he is doing? There remained a disconnect for many if them. For some however, it clicked. 

One student, the reader of the class who finished the book first in under 3 days, asked me when it was over if I could get him the other 3 books in the series. This is a common question I get from the few readers of the school whom I teach. When I told one boy who was reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for fun that it was 1 of 6 books he asked me if I could get them the other 5. What I mean though is that being asked for the sequel makes me think at least someone on the class got something out of it, even if it was the one student I knew going in who would appreciate it most anyway. 

Because St. Ignatius is a relatively progressive school we, once a year, have parent teacher conferences. It was a daunting experience for me because many of the parents don't speak English and so I am relying on gestures, pointing at grades, and the student themselves to translate for me. The best moment of the conferences was a conversation I had with one of the parents of S2A. Talking to the Mom of the boy who rocked at reading the book, I was excited to find a parent who understood what I was trying to do. I think she must be an educator, especially judging by the fact that she spoke English okay, and her general attitude toward us as teachers, but when I mentioned her son's improvement and said that what we were studying in English is legitimately his thing, the book came up. This mother expressed her appreciation for the fact we were reading a novel in class. She made it sound as if she herself had read the book (perhaps borrowing it from her son) and she heartily approved of the selection. She is one of my favorite parents, clearly very involved in her children's education. She thanked me for the questions I have asked the class and how I am trying to make them think critically, showing me she looks at their work. It was nice to be recognized by a parent for that.

Doing it over again, I would certainly change things. I don't think I did the book justice. I had to rush the  through the ending. I am not sure I allowed them to think enough on it. I am not sure what I was trying to do entirely translated. I am not sure I asked the right questions. I would do more with vocabulary and comprehension, I would do more with quizzes and summarizing. Next time, if there is one, I think I can do better. On the flip side though, reading a novel in class (they were shocked they got to keep the books for a full term and take them home to read!) was a first for all of them, so they are in no position to judge if I was successful or not....

Stay tuned for more on my 2 week end of term break in which Tim and I, to the absolute horror and confusion of ALL the Rwandans we know, spent 3 days trekking across part of the country aaaaaaaaaand sleeping in a tent (a truely appalling idea to every Rwandan we've talked to). It may or may not come before I leave for South Africa on Friday, but if it doesn't happen before I'll just have lots more stories to tell when I get back....

Sunday, July 27, 2014

A preview

Break has officially begun for Tim and I! We have finished 2/3 of the school year, with only 11 weeks (of teaching) to go. In celebration, and in part because our Jesuit friends are all on retreat for the next few days, Tim and I are traveling to Gisenyi in the north where we will start a 3 day mini camino. We are planning to spend the next 3 days walking roughly 90 kilometers to another town called Kibuye all along the coast of Lake Kivu. In preparation, we bought a tent and gum to pass out to children we might meet. It is currently the peak of the dry season, but it still poured rain last night which is only a little concerning. The tent we bought.... Well.... It was the best money could buy here on short notice, but I expect to get very wet in it if it pours rain one night. When I return to kigali in a week expect more updates about the trip, the end of the term, finishing up the giver, etc.!

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Construction... Rwanda style.

As the school year goes on, construction has begun on the piece of land behind the current two buildings of the school. They are building a new science lab, library, and computer lab for the students. Currently, there are no facilities to do science demonstations available to the students and it is hard to learn chemistry, biology, and physics without the ability to practice or apply your knowledge. Tim does a very good job holding physics labs and demonstrations in the classroom, but he faces many challenges in doing so (including a lack of materials). With classes like chemistry it is even harder. Without the proper tools and space it can be very dangerous to be mixing chemicals (that would be if we had any chemicals to mix in the first place). So I am excited that the school, in its quest to become a leading and transformative school in the area, is getting a science lab. 

The construction of said labs is a sience of its own though. Rwandan construction astounds me and occasionally terrifies me (in particular when electricity and they have exposed wires with current running through them left out in the wide open, or their welding, which is crazy). St. Ignatius is on a hill so the first task was to level the hill with a large backhoe and a steamroller. Then, they had to build support walls around where the foundation of the new building will be, that meant first digging a really big ditch... by hand. Everyday we'd arrive at school to see a swarm of day laborers working away on the land. After the ditch was dug, more day laborers were hired to build the retaining wall. All the work is done by hand. Dump trucks of rocks from a quary are brought in and dropped off. A group of laborers spend their days with mallets and hammers breaking the rocks into the right shape by hand.
The rock pile with workers chipping away.

They are then transported to the area of wall being laid by wheelbarrow or, for big rocks, on a wooden "wheelbarrow." By that I mean it is 2 pieces of longer wood laid parallel and nailed together by smaller pieces of wood laid across. They are loaded with rocks and 2 men then carry this contraption (one on each end) to the correct location. 
The wooden rock carrier.

While all this is going on, another crew is mixing cement with their one cement mixture for the whole operation. Then they shovel it into wheelbarrows which runners deliver to the people building the wall. The cement is used to hold the rocks together. First you build the outside of the wall with big rocks that have been chipped smooth, held together with the cement, then you pile smaller rocks behind them and build up. 
In this picture you can see the start of a retaining wall, the wheelbarrow for the cement, a jerry can for the cement, and the wooden rock carrier. 

The entire thing is measured, leveled, and made straight with string. There are usually at least 30-40 day laborers working a day in little groups. Once the rocks have been chipped and moved from the rock pile, other workers continue to chip at them at them to fit the needs of the wall at that location.
Some workers chipping away at rocks and then laying them down.

 
In these two photos you can see how they used wood to brace the end of the wall and the string used to make it level it. The face of the wall is smooth, but the rocks behind the wall are just piled on and somehow they fit. I have no idea how you get the face of be smooth to begin with though, I mean it's rock.
Another example of Rwandan construction.
The tools used in he work, again the string for leveling, they use trowels to spread the cement between the rock and metal discs to hold the cement when not in the wheelbarrow so they can go back for another load.
More workers.
These guys were muggin for the camera.
The work is very impressive, they way it is all done by hand, the tools they are limited to, and the fact that he final product turns out so well. And then..... There is this:
One of my favorite aspects of Rwandan construction is their use of shovels. They love their shovels. It is hard to see in is picture, but the workers behind the fence on the right are shoveling dirt from one pile to another pile a few feet away. Don't ask me why this first pile needed to move over a few feet, don't ask me why they did not use the machinery they have like a backhoe and dump truck to move it, but Rwandans really love taking large piles of dirt making 2 or 3 small piles, then going back to a big pile, at that point they may shovel it into a dump truck that will drive 10 feet away and dump it, so they can make 2 or 3 small piles from the big pile all over again.





Thursday, June 5, 2014

Oh lala

In Rwanda, French is heard as often, usually more so than English. While the government insists they are now an English speaking country, anyone above the age of 20 was educated under a French system, in French. Yesterday I had the pleasure of finally hearing a French phrase I had not expect to hear here, and hadn't heard yet. "Oh lala." Coming out of the mouth of a 20 year old male playing basketball, in Africa, was.... unexpected. So was the context however, as I stole the basketball away from, well, the oldest person playing in the game, who no one else would dare steal from because happens to be a priest... who is old. As the only girl in the game (me) and the oldest player (him), we were pretty well matched. The comments from the peanut gallery were just a perk. It is midterms this week and next at school. I gave 3 midterms today and now have a stack of 81 exams (including 240 short answer question -three per test) piled on my desk begging me to grade them. Stay tuned for another update soon (serious to all you non-belivers out there). I will post again next week when that pile becomes 81/81 graded and not the 0/81 it currently is. 

Saturday, May 17, 2014

S2A Class Work...

It has begun! We will see how it goes in the end. Fingers crossed the kids like the book choice I made. 

Sunday, May 11, 2014

A running coincidence.

Yesterday morning was one of the rare days in which I was actually able to pulled myself out of bed at the appropriate time to run in the morning rather than just sleeping through my alarm. I hit the streets for my usual 20 minute route at 7:15. Half way through my route, I passed another runner headed up the same hill as me. He asked if he could run with me and so we started chatting as we jogged along, even though I know my accent was hard for him and his English was good, but a little broken. I learned that he "used to be an athlete" and that now he coaches, I thought he said the 1800 which makes no sense, so I am guessing the 1600, at a sport club here in Kigali. He laughed when I asked if he was going to run the Kigali marathon next week and looked aghast saying "I'm a coach!" as if coaches are suppose to be retired from races. He asked if I was going to run it, and I said I was interested in doing the 5k fun run or the half, but it didn't know where to register. Enter chivalry. As we were running past the main entrance into the stadium, he offered to show me where the office of the Ministry of Sport and Culture is, because I can register there. So we ran in through the main gate, past a team of basketball players all sporting the same blue track suit with "Rwanada" emblazoned on the back, through a hallway and out onto the track inside the national stadium. Where he did not take me to the office, but instead we started running laps around the soccer field on the track in the presence of quite a few other runners. Some of people were clearly part professional or semi-professional clubs who meet on the weekends for practice, other people where there to just jog. My tour guide seemed to know many of the people there and was calling out greetings (or being called to) by all the other coaches. To be fair, he was running with a muzungo girl who seemed to be somewhat in shape (in comparison at least to other 2 muzungos at the track that morning), which probably got him more attention than he type ideally receives. I had no idea that the track at the stadium was open to the public (he had taken me there to show me I could on it) or really that a running community existed here, but I've finally found my people! Ever the coach, after jogging for 2 or 3 laps, my guide suggested we do a short work out. Yikes. I run for about 20 minutes a day here,which isn't much, and none of it is workout quality running, because I don't have the energy or daylight to run much more after a full day of teaching and I haven't done any sort of workout for about 6 months now. But I still found myself sprinting the straights and jogging the curves for a mile paced by this random guy. After the workout, naturally, we had to stretch which I've learned is always a production here. I have met 2 PE teachers and now a coach and they all seemed to learn how to stretch from the same person. For whatever reason, these guys all want to start stretching the head and neck after running or playing basketball with a further emphasis on stretching the arms and shoulders. What about the legs folks? Those things that propell you around the court or track? That's where I tend to focus my stretching energies, personally. Then he showed me the office I needed which turns out to be inside the stadium. In typical African fashion, the secretary who was on the phone, was forced off of it to greet me and even though I just wanted to know where the room was, a staff meeting was interrupted so that I could meet and get the business card of the National Technical Director of Athletics in Rwanda who personally gave me a map of the course even though I said I would be back on Monday to actually register because I didn't have any money with me. Then I had to head back home because what I had originally intended to be a 20 minute jog had turned into a 45 minute outing and I was late. The professional assessment of my random running buddy/impromptu coach: stick to the 5k next weekend, don't go for half. Something I already could've told him before my workout. I am not in good shape right now and I know it, though to be fair, the actually running part wasn't so bad, my breathing was just out of control which might have more to do with sprinting at 5000ft of altitude rather than being out of shape. He didn't know it, but I have been well trained in my past and know more about how to train myself and others than the average runner, but I was happy to be a trainee again. I was also happy because when I meet people I am always on the defensive here (more than at home) because I never know if they are simply being nice or if they want something from me (usually money). When he suggested we do a workout, the thought occurred to me that it is possible he might expect compensation from me for his expertise, but he never asked, it appears that he was just another kind running enthusiast who was helping a muzungo out. 

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Friday, April 18, 2014

The Feeling of Limbo

My visa to stay in Rwanda has been drama, and continues to be drama everyday. I am extraordinarily frustrated by everything: their lack if consideration, my inability to be able to finish the process, the feeling of being stuck, the anxiety it causes.

I am in limbo. 

The Directorate of Immigration has been holding my passport since March 20th, 30 days and counting, under the pretext of granting me a visa, a process that is suppose to take 3 days. Unfortunately the length of their decision making process has not been the only drama involved in this adventure which includes an initial flat out rejection of our paperwork (I am unqualified to teach here because I do not have a degree in education), the final acceptance of our paperwork, a delay in granting the visa (until we could turned in our education degrees - again - as if I can just pull one of those out of my back pocket), the approval of our visa, going into to the office to pick up an approved visa to hear "oh just kidding, we made a mistake, come back later," national holidays and the week of commemoration where things shut down, and an ignoring of our calls and emails as we attempt to get in touch with them to ask what is going on. Drama.

I don't know if they lost our passports and don't want to admit it. Or if they are annoyed that we are connected to Catholic priests and so they are dragging their feet (the Catholic Church having lost much of their credibility here for both participating in the genocide - some priests were responsible for turning their fleeing and afraid congregations over to the death squads instead of protecting them (though there are certainly martyrs, the Jesuits were some of the first attacked and killed here on the 2nd or 3rd day of violence) and at the same time because the Church literally abandoned the country. Many priests fled or if they were forgeign nationals were pulled out of Rwanda by their own governments leaving the carnage). Or maybe they are mad that we circumvented the usual process by going higher up, not taking no for an answer. Or maybe, and very likely, we are just the victims of larger political power plays that we do not understand. Rwanda needs less and less help from the outside these days. They have come incredibly far in the last 20 years to rebuild their country, not just as it was, but better than it was. The government is cracking down on granting visa to Westerners. It is becoming harder and harder for Muzungos (white people), which Tim and I certainly are, to get visas. 

Being someone who likes following rules it makes me uncomfortable to be in a foreign country and not have a passport on me, to not have proper documentation, to not be able to prove that it is okay for me to be here. I have nothing beyond a copy of my passport and my driver's license. My entry visa has expired during this process. 

I feel trapped. 

I cannot leave this country whether I want to or not.

It is hard to leave the city even in the off chance that "today is the day!" It is hard to leave the city because 2-3 hours in every direction is a border into another country and it is just not a good idea to be near a border without a passport. It is hard to leave the city because ID is required everywhere. Going to the library here in the city I had to give up my driver's liscense just to get in ( and it would've been my passport if I had had it). To get a SIM card for my phone I had to show my passport. If you leave center where I stay after 7:30pm, you have to check out, and they ask for your passport number. 

I waver daily between my (ever-decreasing,as his process continues) desire to stay and my desire to go home. If I have to leave then I would like to move on with my life and make new plans, but I have planned to stay, to finish out the school year, to see my commitment through. If they don't want me here than I will leave, but oh wait I can't. I am physically stuck within the borders of this small country until I get my passport back.

It is break right now, 3 weeks off school. I planned to travel the country. I wanted to see things. It is the longest break we have, we have a shorter 2 week break in the summer and that is it. We arrived a week before school started and jumped right in, there was no time to explore, to adjust, no acclimation period.  After 13 weeks of working and working, teaching and learning, exhaustion and constantly saying to myself and others "I am going over break when I have time. I will see it over break, when I finally have time." It is break now, but all those plans have fallen through without the paperwork. Our closest friends are the priests here who really do look out for us. They encourage us to explore and offer transportation, company, or their connections when possible, which has been very generous of them. They have no obligation to invest themselves in us, but even their generosity falters with our lack of paperwork. One of the priests was going to take Tim and I to the SW corner of the country for Easter, near the Burundi and DRC borders. The night before we were leaving, the trip was cancelled. They were not, in the end, comfortable taking us without paperwork, especially not so close to the borders, and so we are stuck yet again now with no Easter plans. I certainly don't blame the priests and I understand their reluctance, in fact I am fairly certain they are as disappointed about not going as we are. 

I feel held back.

I am in limbo.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Dignity?

I was spat on today. It does not feel good to be spat on. It is really realy demeaning actually. We were walking back from somewhere and Tim was about 150 feet ahead of me. I could see a guy, teens? 20s? talking to him up ahead. The guy had grabbed Tim's arm.  You could tell just by watching the interaction that the guy was asking for money. Tim shook him off and crossed the street. I followed behind. As I got close to the intersection, I saw the guy walking my way and assumed I would get the same treatment, but instead he didn't say anything. He spat all over me. It got in my hair and on my skin and on my clothes. I didn't do anything. I didn't even say anything. What can you say when one single action takes away something so central to you? I am not sure what I would call it.... human dignity? Self worth? Ego? I just know it is something powerful, something that is both important and central to me as a person. It is hard to blame the guy really. There is no way he saw me as a person, he didn't even really look at me, let alone speak to me, he just saw my whiteness, my perceived wealth, and quite possibly (given it is the week of genocide remembrance and colonialists/the "West" got more than their fair share of the blame) he looked at me and saw remnants of the system that tore this continent, this country, and these people in particular apart. I can rationalize for him though, I can try to put myself in his shoes and accept? or forgive? his actions. Do his actions even call for forgiveness or just forgetfulness? I can put words in his mouth when I don't think he can do the same for me. I think he thought:

"I am just another white person, another person to say no. I might be connected to that last white guy who had just rejected his plea. I have money but am unwilling to share it. I am here in Rwanda to either fix things (which aren't broken, why do these white people insist in "helping"? Why is our country a charity case? Why does their self worth come at the expense our dignity?) or because I have wealth. If I am here to "help," then why don't I help him? He needs it much as the next person, he needs it as much as any project. If I am here because I have wealth, why not share it?"

I don't know how many people he asked. I don't know  how many blacks and whites, and reds, oranges, blues and purples before us said no, before he was so fed up he took it out on me. Clearly, Tim was, as the expression goes, the straw that broke the camels back. I received the spit because I was the next white person to walk by a minute later. I am not sure what I should've done. There were no police in that exact spot, but there was one not too far away. Should I have turned him in? Should I have called out? Should I have given him money, simply because I could? Simply to prove him wrong or to prove that I am different? I have been here long enough to know that I probably could have gotten him into trouble. Is it better to let him have that victory? Did he need that more in that moment than it takes from me? There is very little he can really do to me or take from me that doesn't cost him a lot. The law, as unfair as it may seem, is mostly on my side due to my "wealth" over his. Spitting on me and then disappearing into the crowd is one of the few things he can actually get away with, one of the few things he might control in regards to me, to whites, to all the foreigners in his country, to his wealth versus mine. It upset me a lot; more than it probably should have in reality. When I reflect upon the ways and times Arficans all over the world (especially African Americans and those under colonialist rule) were treated as second class citizens, that they were spat on and worse without the ability to say anything against it, one little instance isn't really bad is it?  I got a very small taste for what it is like to be a minority, to be treated as less than human. So why, if it was so small, does it bother me so much then? 

Monday, March 10, 2014

Umuganda

On the last Saturday morning of each month, the whole country shuts down. Cars are not allowed to drive after 8 am and the community is expected to gather together to clean the public places in the neighborhood in an event called Umuganda. Afterwards, there is a community meeting. Tim and I woke up early on Saturday and wandered out into the deserted street. A block away from our residence we found a crowd of people "working". By working I mean there was about 5 people with machete's cutting grass and about 50 people standing around in the street watching. Every minute or 2, the machete would be passed off to someone else, so everyone could participate. We slowly worked our way down the street "making improvements". We live in a very well kept neighborhood to begin with because the national stadium is a block away, so it is generally kept up by the city, so there was not really a lot if actual work to be done. One of the nuns for the center where we live was there too, and it was funny to see her with a pair of hedge clippers snipping here and there at a already perfectly manicured hedge that someone, moments before, had already trimmed. It was nice to see more people from our specific neighborhood, the event is more about socializing than anything else since the entire city/country is shut down and there is nothig else to do, but also because there is not that much real work to be done, so everyone just chats. It looks a lot like American construction work. Afterwards, we wound up in a school playground for the meeting. Everyone was just lounging around on the grass for a while, goofing off because we were actually locked into the compound. Everyone had to go into the playground and then the umuganda guards/security officers in charge of our area locked the gates because democracy was to be had damn it! The meeting was interesting, we were with a priest who translated for us and it was a lot of community announcements like they needed volunteers for a parents committee and things like that, more importantly, the neighborhood was going to elect, by vote,  people for a few positions associated with this event. However, some people there were not strictly part of, aka they did not live, within the bounds of the neighborhood, so at 11:30 when umuganda officially ended they were released and free to go while he rest of us stayed to vote. A rable-rouser shortly before 11:30 had made a big stink about people not in the neighborhood voting and had insisted everyone who lived there move to a different area of the school ground so as not to include these other people. The voting was interesting. Tim and I didn't understand the campaign speeches people were giving, but we were voting on 4 or 5 different positions, only 1 position however was there any opposition with more than 1 candidate. After the speeches, the candidate(s) stood with their back to the crowd and people lined up behind the person they were voting for to form, in essence, a living bar graph. I have never voted in that manner before. I found it interesting that, while those who did not live specifically within the peramiters were discouraged from voting, Tim and I were welcomed to vote. To be fair, we technically live in the neighborhood, but neither of us felt as if our voice/vote should count because we really aren't part of the neighborhood, we aren't even citizens of the country, but even though we looked different and were the most obviously not actually connected to umuganda (we are actually exempt from participating) we were welcomed to the vote. Someone joked about this being our chanced to participate in democracy, and I joked back that it's not like our country hasn't been doing that for hundreds of years now. 

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Update

It has been a busy few weeks and so I haven't written in a while. Midterms have come and gone (for me at least). I wrote 2 tests, which is harder than it sounds, gave 3 exams, and have since graded all 83 of them. In other news at the school, the teachers at the primary school played us, the teachers of the secondary school in volleyball this past Friday annnnnd.... we lost all 3 games. We at the secondary school combined with some of the students and so I played in the first game with 2 other teachers and 3 of the students. We actually played pretty well, but the primary school teachers had one guy who was really good at serving and he just wracked up the points at the end so we lost 20 to 25. The experience was pretty incredible though. The primary school teachers came over to our court chanting and cheering and full of energy (to be fair, they were younger than many of us secondary school teachers) and then, not too long into the game, a bunch of the primary school students came over and they lined half the court to cheer and so the secondary school kids lined the other half of the court to cheer louder and it was noisy! It was very cool to be on the court playing at that time though. The students started getting competitive with one another. Every time the the primary school teachers scored a point they celebrated together by stomping their feet if and yelling something that sounded like "mi shabo" (though at is probably spelled wrong) which means something about " a lesson" which I interpreted to be the Kinyarwanda equivalent  of "you just got schooled" and the little kids started picking it up and chanting it and dancing to it when their teachers had a good play. The older kids retaliate by booing and coming up with chants of their own in response. It was a lot of fun. The final game, the teachers fielded a full team of just themselves and it honestly wasn't really pretty, we went down faster than I would like to admit, but agin it was a lot of fun. School in General is coming along a little better. It is still hard to be a first year teacher, but I am able to lesson plan faster than before and I am a little bit better (though not much) at thinking on my feet. I attempted to have one of my classes play a version of catch phrase Friday because I taught the last 2 periods of the day and the kids were wrapping up a long week a tests, so I figured hey wouldn't pay attention to much but a game. It got out of control rather quickly. Not to say it wasn't pretty fun, it was just really loud. The kids were all shouting words, at one point a chant of "China China China" broke out amongst several of the teams with dance moves and all the while the teachers who were not teaching at the moment were sitting in the staff room right next door listening to the noise and trying to peek into the classroom to see what it was all about. I feel like I am slowly getting to know the students a little bit better, which I enjoy, but it is also hard because there are definite lines between students and teachers here. Teachers are professionals. You hear things like "stand up, show the teacher some respect" when you walk into a classroom and when you aren't in the classroom teaching it is expected that you are in the staff room usually; that way, teachers and students don't have to mingle. I am breaking down the wall a little bit, some with the students and some with the people who work for the school cleaning and doing yard work, as well as with some of the construction workers hired to build the rest of the school. When it is nice out I sometimes grab my grading and sit outside on the steps correcting the work which is rather scandalous because here no one sits on the ground, no one, and my American sensibilities just don't really care, the ground is probably as clean as anything else, probably cleaner considering how thoroughly they clean (recently some of the workers have spent their day scraping dirt off the bricks of the school building - something I still haven't found a reason for. I suppose to make the bricks shine more or so they will look more defined? Who knows.) Anyway, my willingness to sit on the ground is a big statement and puts me a step closer to the workers and those doing manual labor. There was also the time that one of the workers was cutting the grass with a machete and I wanted to try, so I asked, and despite the fact that we don't speak the same language, he got the idea and handed the machete over to me. For the record, it is way harder than it looks to cut grass that way. The worker can do it one armed, but I really had to use 2 like a golf club to get the blade steady enough and I could not get my cut close enough to the ground. The grass that had taken me 5 minutes to cut, the worker went back over to fix up in 2 swings. It's the little things that count though.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Weekend #1 out of the city

Since it has been so long, things have piled up. Of the past 3 weekends, Tim and I were relatively busy for 2 of them, both times we took our first excursions outside of the city. On the other weekend, we both spent our time prepping for the upcoming tests we were about to give. Our first trip out was intentionally alone, to the south of the city. South of the city was one of the hardest hit areas during the genocide, and 2 memorial sites exist commemorating the events. Both sites are the sites of old Catholic churches where thousands of people were massacred a piece. The histories are not pleasant. At the first one we visited, that Church in particular had been a sanctuary in the past. A European woman, a missionary of some sort I think, had lived across the street from the Church and had used her pull as being a well connected European to protect those who sought refuge there. However, she was killed in Rwanda for speaking out before the genocide began and so when people flocked to this church for the protection they had received in the past, it didn't come. In some cases churches became massacre sights because the clergy themselves were informing on the people, but I am not sure if that holds true for either of the sites we were at. The people, thousands of them, had locked themselves into the church which was then bombarded with bullets and grenades to break to the metal gate down. When you step inside you can see how many of the windows had been broken and the bullet marks at chest and head height that cover the walls. All the benches that were used as pews are piled, probably a foot tall, with dirty, bloody, decaying clothes from the victims. In the center of the church was an opening in the floor where you could go down and see some of the bones of the victims there, which I had expected to see having read they would be there. What I was not prepared for was to go behind the church where they have an underground crypt I guess I would call it, 2 of them actually and we were told by the lady sweeping there to enter them. You go down these steps and when you reach the bottom there is a single light and you wind up in the middle do this huge tomb, that probably stretches for 25 feet to the left and to the right. Upon turning left or right there is a small aisle way you can walk down, so you are then walking down this aisle that is maybe 15 or 20 feet tall with shelves first of coffins (we found out later holding 10 bodies a piece) and then of straight up bones. Piles and piles of bones. All the skulls were on a in few shelves together, all the femurs, all the .... You could see the damage on some of them, one you could tell the skulls had been cleaved I half by a machete, another, you could tell was the skull of a child that had been bashed in. The church holds 40,000 remains. They were not all killed at the church itself. Some of the people were just killed in the area and their bodies had been brought to the church later to be kept. The second site was even more powerful. The church was left as it was except they had to add a roof above it and some support beams to keep it from falling over. There are holes in the side of the church where you can tell more clearly that grenades were thrown at it to break it. This church had been slight more fortified and so it was harder to "conquer." The inside tells a similar story, but with more debris, though the church itself was smaller. Some bones remain, lots of bloody clothes and sheets, bits of other things too like pots and pans of the refugees, an I.D. card, shoes, some of the school books of the children who had brought them thinking they would return to school afterwards. We were taken to another building, a kitchen for the church, that had been fire bomb with people inside it, and lastly, though most disturbing of all, we were taken into the the building of the Sunday School where all the kids had been brought to be killed. I'll just say that I knew what the stain on the wall was 20 years later, without having to be told, it was still very dark. They also had a replica of this wooden pole probable 15 feet tall used to kill the women very unpleasantly. Finally, they had a commemorative wall with names on it and a little garden, though it didn't really bring peace.   It was eery being at both sights. A definite silence hangs over them, similar to the feeling of visiting a concentration camp in Germany, but much less clinical, much less sterile. I would hate having the job of giving tours at either place. I have no pictures because they were not allowed, but I don't think I need pictures to remember those places. I haven't really processed it yet to be honest. It took a full morning to visit both places trying to figure out the transportation ourselves and we got caught in a thunderstorm that was strong enough to bring hail on the return journey, so we had some distractions, but that's not why. Tim and I talked as much as we felt was necessary at the time as we, in a move that seemed to confuse many of the locals, walked the few kilometers back to the main road (we'd told out mototaxis not to wait for us). We had undertaken this journey alone because we didn't want anyone else with us. Our closest friends are the other teachers and I have no idea how connected each of then are to the genocide. All of them were alive for it, though many were very young, but I have no idea who they might've lost. We wanted to be able to view it with out world view, which is western, and to be able to discuss it freely if we needed to. Mostly though, there is such a disconnect between what I saw and the people I've gotten to know here, such a disconnect between this place and that event. I can't wrap my mind around it. How do you even begin to process it? And I am speaking as a third party observer or 2 sites...how do you heal from that as a country? As someone who lived through it? As a survivor or perpetrator? Rwanda has come a long way, it is very evident. Considering the hate that existed here as recently as 20 years ago, everything I've experienced, everything on the surface level (and I hope deeper) speaks to how far the country has come. In many ways, it feels like they have made more progress coming to terms with the hate and making strides away from it than white Americans have been able to do with African Americans in 150 years time.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

More pictures

Sorry for all the typos in the last post, I didn't proofread it before posting I just hit post as soon as I had internet. 

More pictures of the ball game.

Molly schooling a high school boy at ball (look at that form!).
Molly being schooled in return by very very tall kids...

Settling In....

Tim and I spend a lot of time at school, or with people related to school. It has been wonderful how welcoming everyone has been (students, teachers, and staff alike), taking us around, helping us explore the city, inviting us to their homes or various community events, but it is also hard. Everyone we know is related to school, everyone we hang out with (including ourselves) are connected to St. Ignatius and I am beginning to go a bit stir crazy. We have hit the point, that happens any time you move to a new place for an extended period where you transition from being a tourist in that place to actually living there. Tim and I have a lot we want to see and do, but we feel limited by our lack of language and cultural savy, but at the same time, we don't want to continue to solely rely on the kindness of others to help us get around because we do live here, we are capable adults who just need to man up, so to speak. Kigali, while a thriving metropolis doesn't necessarily offer a lot to do on a regular basis culturally or otherwise and so I am working to find "my place." I am working to find that thing or that place where I can go to feel at home, I am working to make Kigali my home, but it's a challenging transition. We have seen the market now and the downtown, we have ridden he one escalator in, I imagine, he whole country. We have been to the supermarket and to a local corner store for a pop and the question is what's next? When we don't have plans, where do we go to get out, but that isn't just wandering around? 

In other news, last Friday, the teachers played basketball against the students (and by the studnets I really just mean the 5 best players in the school out of the roughly 130 kids). With the teachers, the pickings were much more slim. Despite the fact that I haven't played on a basketball team in 10 years? 12 years? I still made the staring line up. With 2 subs, and a few cheerleaders on out side, the students       beat us 49 to 30? Or 29? We didn't much like talking about the score. To be fair, the teachers put together a fighting team. There was moment there, at the beginning of the game when we actually were winning. It was only 2-0 and we just happen to have scored fist, but still! It was fun to interact with the students in that way though. There was plenty of trash talk and lots of cheering or book depending on scores and fouls, but most of the student body came out to watch. 

So, while most of our time is spent at school, some of that (outside of he teaching) is really great. Tim got us an invite to join the cultural club at the primary school, so I might do that. They practice Wednesday afternoons and I don't teach then, so that could be fun to learn some traditional dance (or better yet, have some primary students teach me French and Kinyarwanda). 

Also, please pray for one of our students who was hit by a mototaxi walking to school yesterday. She is in he hospital.

Tim has also posted some excellent pictures from our time here at timnendick.com if you are interested.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Teaching...

The first week and a half of school have been rather rough. It has been very difficult for me to learn the students names because some are just so very different from the kinds of names I am familiar with, plus many of the students speak very softly and it is hard for me to catch. I think they probably consider me to be a somewhat strange eccentric teacher because I am always asking "what??? Can you say that again please?" while walking up the aisle toward the speaker's desk. Overall I have been very impressed by the English of my students though. This week I am having my S2A's work with the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is tough stuff. The language in that document, like most formal declarations, is not very accessible to the reader, but they are managing pretty well.  After we've talked about it a little more, I plan to do the exercise with them in which the number of students in the class represents the population of the world and based on different statics, a certain number of students would step forward to demonstrate that. For instance if the 20 studnets in class's represented the world, then 1.5 of them would have a college education and 1.5 students would step forward to show that, or 3 of the 20 would not have acess to clean drinking water. I am guessing that they haven't done anything like it before, while is am very impressed with the quality of education here overall, my one critique so far is that the students have never been challenged to think beyond "the test," to think as people who belong both to a specific country and the world as a whole. TheN again though did my education teach me that back when I was 11 or 12? Or am I preaching from college? In my other class I was having the students do family trees, which seemed to be something new for them, and it was a lot of fun. I blew their mind when I asked the to decorate it, I think. I don't think the kids are used to directions like that. Despite a few small successes, the past week and a half has been challenging. The kids like to test me a lot because I am new, but also because they know they can get away with more when I am around simply because i don't know the culture and the rules as well. It has also been incredibly hard for me to lesson plan from scratch for each class too. I have a curriculum to follow which helps, but I put everything together on my own. On top of that, there is so much I want  to be and do as a teacher, but it is hard to implement things sometimes and to find a rhythm with each class, not to mention trying to find the balance between being a teacher and getting to know my students. All of that takes time though, and it hasn't been that long. I will post more later. That is all for now.

A typical school day... The basics

School starts everyday at 7:30am sharp.  When we teachers arrive, the students have already been in their classrooms for 20 minutes waiting for us.  The day consists of 8, 50 minute periods.  In a change up from the American system I am used to, students here don't change classrooms, instead it is the teachers who rotate and they just show up at the classroom of the class they are teaching at the correct time. The kids have a 20 minute break in the morning, a 1 hour lunch break, and a 30 minute break in the afternoon between classes officially ending for the day and the mandatory afternoon activities beginning, which include a one hour study hall 3 times a week, clubs once a week, and sports once a week. Everyone is dismissed at 5pm to go home. Fir that schedule is not at testimate to how rigorously and seriously education is taken is taken here, then I don't what is. I am teaching Senior 1A, 1B, and Senior 2A English, with 5 classes of English a week for 15 "hours" of teaching, plus some super visions periods.  What's Senior in this case means that they are in "high school" the title senior seems to refer to people in secondary school, Senior 1 kids being "freshman" Seniors 2s being sophomores in High School and so on with the letter (A or B) denoting which class for each grade you are in. One bug difference though (and it's one I keep forgetting) is that the youngest kids here are like 11! I keep treating them like adults, like I would treat high schoolers in the US, easily forgetting how young some of these kids are. The photo is a picture of the first classroom I taught in, my S1A Englsih class. 

Monday, January 13, 2014

First Impressions

Kigali, in the past 5days alone, has dispelled many of my pre-existing stereotypes of Africa. For starters, the school, St. Ignatius High School - and the primary school too, are gorgeous.  A real pride is taken in education here, both in the act of learning -it is serious business- and the place of learning too, which is not something I expected. I feel like the stereotype in the US is that education is not a priority or it is done in shacks, and while that holds true for some places I am sure, not Kigali.  Not only that, but many people here, educated or not, are bi, tri, and/or even sometimes quad-lingual in Kinyarwanda, French, English, and potentially a fourth such as Swahili.  It is really an incredible feat considering that after 17 consecutive years of private education, I've only managed to learn one language, my native one, English.  I do have to learn French though, and fast!, because English is not as wide spread as I anticipated it being. It is tough sitting at a breakfast table with 5 other people and 1. Having no idea what is being said but also 2. Having no idea what language they are even speaking because it flips from French to Kinyarwanda so quickly and so much.  As for the city itself, it is very developed, but also very very clean, downtown Kigali is far more clean than downtown Seattle, but there is something here that is more than just cleanliness.  On day 2, as Tim and I walked around trying to find a bank to exchange money at, we passed a little sinkhole in the sidewalk (which, for the record, are brick, not a red brick but the type of patterned cement blocks that people use to build garden/yard walls with, but brick sized) anyway, the next day a road crew was out there fixing it.  Another example is that at the facility where we are currently living, there are a lot of domestic workers-domestic work is very big here- but several of those workers are employed to sweep the walks with these hand made brooms that look like twigs tied together without a handle and not only do they sweep the walks, they remove dead leaves from the bushes and they honestly sweep the dirt next to the walkways to make that clean too, as opposed to someone like me doing that work who would sweep the dirt on the walk into the side dirt and call it good. In other news, everyone has been very welcoming to us so far, I rode on my first motorcycle taxi today... That is... whoa... A little scary, but also fun, I put my navigational skills to work as we tried public transit and went downtown to explore - it turns out I am pretty kick ass at reading maps- and finally something I didn't expect.  The Jesuit retreat facility at which we are staying is much more of a community hub than I expected.  On the first night, New Years Eve, we were invited to attend mass at the church here to welcome in the New Year and reflect on the year past, a Rwandan tradition, and it was packed with people, standing room only, even with benches set up outside, but every Mass afterwards, and they have a daily Mass, continues to draw a crowd.  Incidentally, that first Mass was said in Kinyarwanda so Tim and I didn't understand a word of it until the very end, at announcements, when Father Ganza got up and spoke about a different priest (with lots of gesturing toward him) and then said in The only English words of the entire Mass "Tim and Molly please stand up." Very intimidating, but not at intimidating as having to stand up and teach in front of my first class on Monday.  DISCLAIMER, I WROTE THIS A WEEK AGO AND AM JUST NOW ABLE TO POST IT. I have since started teaching another post will follow shortly!