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!