Simple Life Rulenge

This is it. Here we are. This is seriously so insane. I literally don’t even know where to begin. So if this post is a little random, keep in mind that I really don’t even know what my life is right now. Ha.

So I suppose I can start with the fact that it’s 8:00pm on Wednesday as I’m writing this by light of a kerosene lantern. The sun sets around 6:45, and after that we just hang out in the dark, eat our dinner, share some good stories, and see how long we make it before it’s naturally just bedtime…which is usually 8:30. No big deal. I guess I’ll mention that our house has an abundance of bats as well. They live above our ceiling in the rafters, and are seriously so loud all the time. Maybe I’ll eventually think of it as a lovely serenade for my dreams. Either that, or our ceiling tiles will just fall down because of the weight of the po-po poop that seems to drop through the cracks all too often. Again, no big deal.

So on the topic of our house, it’s actually really nice for the area! We have a main room with our dining room table and six red plastic deck chairs. There are three bedrooms as well, two bedrooms and one for a storage room. Luckily, we both have beds with new (quite hard) mattresses, although that’s the extent of any furniture in the whole house. Which means storage for anything, like dishes, food, clothes, medicine, books, shoes, etc, is literally the floor. It’s an unfortunate reality, because unpacking/making this feel like home is nearly impossible. And considering our location, it will be nearly impossible to obtain any sort of shelving or tables, unless perhaps we take up woodworking in our free time…hmmm….

We also have a really nice courtyard in the back of our house, with rooms for showering, toilet, cooking, and storing water. I have not actually attempted the bucket shower yet, washing my hair one night was an experience enough for me. As for our toilet, minus the lizards and occasional frogs that make an appearance at night, it’s not too bad for a hole in the ground. The “kitchen” has been a lovely area for storing our food and charcoal jiko. Everyone laughs when we say we have charcoal, but kerosene is so expensive here! So, we will be patient and light our charcoal to cook dinner and boil our water. Thankfully, our water is delivered to us by students from the school, and it comes from a well, so once its purified it tastes just fine. Yay hydration! Sometimes though, we just collect rain water and use that instead for washing. What? No big deal.

So what else do you want to know? OH. How about how I take a piki-piki to school every day? For those of you not well versed in Swahili, that’s a motorcycle. It’s a common mode of transportation here actually, and every morning at 7am sharp, one of the teachers from Muyenzi Secondary (where we live) drives me to Bukiriro Secondary. It’s about a 9km drive, which is definitely too far to walk or ride a bicycle, so piki-piki it is! I must say that I actually really enjoy it, we are in some of the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen and the ride is breathtaking! Except if its raining, then it’s a little intense and potentially really wet, but it happens. No big deal.

When I rode up to the school for the first time on Monday morning, you might have thought an alien was approaching. Students were cleaning the environment and clearing the road, and they all stopped what they were doing to stand to the side, stare, mouths open and eyes popping. I suppose they didn’t expect to see a new teacher, nonetheless a woman from America. A few details about Bukiriro: I’m the first WorldTeach volunteer at the school (so most likely the first foreign teacher ever), and I’m the only math teacher, and I’m also the first female teacher the school has ever had. So many shocking things for the students! No wonder the mzungu riding the piki-piki up to the school was such a sight to see! The headmaster has introduced me as the “matron” of the school multiple times…what does that even mean? No big deal.

Monday was a pretty relaxed day at school, the students cleaned and we met as a staff. The headmaster is wonderful! He has been so welcoming and even conducted the staff meeting in English because I was there. The rest of the staff is also very welcoming and easy to talk to, even with some language barriers. There are nine staff members total, including the headmaster, second master, academic master, discipline master, four teachers, and myself. With such a small staff, the class sizes are very large. As the only math teacher, I am teaching all four forms. The forms are not broken down into smaller streams, because so few teachers and a lack of classrooms would make that very difficult. Instead, Form 1 has 92 students, Form 2 has about 70, Form 3 has 85, and Form 4 has about 50. The classrooms are so tight with kids sitting in rows with 12 or 13 desks across that I can’t even walk around to see every student’s work. Also, I have NO idea how on earth I am going to learn names. I teach every student in the school! What! And English is a huge problem for the students, they have such a hard time understanding and speaking. So even when I ask them their names, I can’t understand them…and so thinking I’m clever, I started having students write their names. Fail. First, their names are so long and foreign to me; second, they whisper so quietly that I can’t understand their pronunciation; third, it’s really hard to read their handwriting so I can’t even sound out their names; forth, they just laugh when I try. AH. I’m still working out how I’m going to get a system in place to learn names, check for understanding, and accomplish grading. Challenges for sure. I’ll keep you posted on how this goes for us.

Oh. Here’s another thought for you. Clearly we have no electricity. So what do you do when your cell phone dies? Well this was our reality on Sunday, so we decided to walk to Rulenge to charge our phones. An hour and a half later we made it there, found the charging station, and then needed to kill two hours while we waited for them. Now, Rulenge is small village to a tee, so we wandered until we found a man who sold warm sodas and sat on an empty stoop and had some lovely conversations with people walking by. We made some friends with little kids and a few old men, and the time passed quickly enough. Once our phones were ready, we were not about to walk all the way back through the mountains to Muyenzi village, so we shared another lovely piki-piki ride. What is our life? It was totally worth it though, because a few phone calls home to familiar voices was quite refreshing that evening!

Now, I think I’ve rambled long enough. And I think I’ve covered nearly every aspect of my life currently. I still can’t really wrap my mind around all of it, but perhaps it will become more natural as time goes on. Until next time, please enjoy your microwaves, washing machines, and sinks for me. Asante sana! :)