Sunday's Top 5!

I figured that after my last post, I needed to shed some positive light on my life here. Sunday was overall a very good day, so here are the top five reasons why:

1.  Although it rained all morning in Ngara, we were visited by the DEO and had a really nice conversation with him about education, American politics, marriage, and Tanzanian culture. Then he offered to drive us to town and even gave us a little money to buy ourselves lunch. How nice!

2.   In the taxi back to Rulenge, we had 5 people plus a baby in the back seat, four people plus a toddler in the front seat, and one man in the trunk with so many bags and crates of soda I couldn’t believe it. Good news of this is that the toddler was sitting on our laps! He was so cute wearing his little suit with pointy-toed black dress shoes. Adorable!

3.  On the piki piki home, we only had our backpacks to carry, rather than our backpacks plus our weeks worth of groceries. We were able to send our things back with my driver on Saturday after the market, so when we got home it was already put in basins for us. Not overly exciting, but making the journey from Ngara with all of our food from the market is definitely a tiresome experience.

4.  Also when we got home, we found a fresh delivery of water…6 full buckets! You have no idea the impact that the presence of water has on your life until you don’t have any…

5.  Say good-bye to our kerosene lantern! We invested in candles this weekend, and not only are we able to save ourselves from the awful fumes of kerosene, we can now have romantic candlelight dinners every night. Ha.

So there you have it! Sunday was a great day, giving us high hopes for the rest of the week J

Not Top Ten

This week's "Not Top 10 List"...

1.  Long weekend in Muyenzi. No school on Friday last week meant that we spent Friday night in Ngara and came back to Muyenzi on Saturday. Unfortunately, too much time in this house, ie spending Saturday night and Sunday here seem to be directly related to our general lack of good mood by mid-week.

2.  Giant bug. Literally a monster. In the road by our house. Bright orange, furry, at least 6 inches long and 1 inch in diameter. And it shoots white poison from its butt at least a foot when hit by a rock.

3.  Rationing of resources. Namely, surviving for two days on a ½ bucket of water between us. What do we need water for? Oh, everything…drinking, bathing, cooking, dishes, washing our hands…Monday and Tuesday were rough to say the least.

4.  How long can we go without washing our hair? 8 days. Without washing our bodies? Oh, 9 days. Between lack of water early in the week, and consistently rainy and really cold afternoons, our showers were put off for way too many days. And even once I did finally bathe, it’s such a miserable experience when its cold outside and the water is cold. You’ve seen my shower room right? Exposed to all elements, including wind, rain, lizards, bats, spiders, etc., so am I even clean now? I will keep telling myself yes…

5.  We now have a family of huge a** birds living in our ceiling. They hit the side of the house to announce their arrival, and then romp around disturbing all the bats. Occasionally, they stop walking and we hear their poop fall above our heads. They also like to attack the bats in the middle of the night, which sounds like murder happening above my bed. I’ve had multiple dreams where I’m Katniss Everdeen, and I take out the birds with my bow and arrow. Seriously.

6.  There was a plague of insects in our house Thursday evening. Literally at least 70 moth/locust/flying creatures appeared in the matter of an hour around our do-everything-table. It was the most insane killing spree ever, and after sweeping up the carnage, we went to bed early.

7.  I arrived at school Thursday to find out classes were cancelled because the day would be spent cleaning the environment. The students spent the day carrying bricks, cutting the grass (which is done by hand by long lines of students swinging long sickles in the grass) and cleaning classrooms. I spent the day reading Hunger Games.

8.  General lack of fruit. Or any variety of food for that matter. Basically we eat rice. Pasta. Biscuits. And whatever vegetables we happen to have, which means a lot of tomatoes, carrots, peppers, onions, and eggplant. I’ve been craving bananas all week, but to no avail. We also didn’t get a pineapple this week.

9.  There is a questionable spot on my right big toe. What initially looked like a harmless blister has now turned to a hard black spot. Hmm…

10.  Finally, it’s now the time of year for a locust infestation. On my ride to school on Friday (which was only 45 minutes behind schedule because of the rain), everyone from the villages was out picking up these bugs. Why? Oh apparently they’re a delicacy, boiled or roasted. Apparently they lose their wings and fall to the ground, where they are easy to collect. Also on Friday afternoon, my students were all gathering large bags of locusts from the school grounds. AH! So gross. And word on the street is that it’s only going to get worse in the next few weeks… 

So there you have it. I suppose it’s safe to say that this was a week of low morale for both of us. Lack of communication brings little comfort from home, and when it’s cold and rainy it seems harder to let things just roll off your back. Thankfully, while Marisa and I bond in our crazy love for Africa and ability to laugh at almost everything, we are also able to bond in our misery. We’ll make it this year, of that I am certain. But through it all, I just keep reminding myself that we have a purpose here. I’ll leave you with my inspiration for the week:

One night a man had a dream.

He dreamed he was walking along

the beach with God.

Across the dark sky flashed scenes from his life.

For each scene, he noticed

two sets of footprints in the sand,

one belonging to him and the other to God.

When the last scene of his life flashed before him,

he looked back at the footprints in the sand.

He noticed that many times along the path of his life

there was only one set of footprints.

He also noticed that it happened at the

very lowest and saddest times in his life.

This bothered him and he questioned god about it.

"God, you said that once I decided to follow you,

you'd walk with me all the way.

But I have noticed that during the most

troublesome times in my life there is

only one set of footprints.

I don't understand why when I needed you most

you would leave me."

God replied "My precious, precious child,

I love you and would never leave you.

During your times of trial and suffering,

when you see only one set of footprints in the sand,

it was then that I carried you.

CNN iReport

In case you haven't seen this yet, here is my story on CNN!

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-861998

How great is it that when you Google search Bukiriro Secondary School, where most of my students may never have access to the internet because we live such a remote village, our school actually shows up now! :)

Back to the Simple Life!

After our weekend getaway, we were refreshed and ready to tackle another week in the village. Although not nearly as exciting as Kigali, here are the highlights from Muyenzi last week:

            Monday: I taught all three forms today, which is every student in the school! Crazy. But I also realized that while I don’t know hardly anyone in forms 2 and 3, in Form 1 I know all of the students except for 10! It’s actually a huge accomplishment, so I’ll let you know when I finally know all of them!

            Tuesday: I forgot my keys at school. Realizing this on the way down the crazy hill away from school, I spent the entire ride praying that Marisa’s keys would open my locked bedroom door. If not, the possible scenarios weren’t promising: wearing the same outfit to school the next day, not brushing my teeth, potentially sleeping in one of our red plastic chairs, since we have no blankets and our floor is literally concrete, or most likely, me learning how to pick a lock or break down a door…Thankfully, her key opened my door no problem.

            Wednesday: Lacking fresh vegetables, we made chapatti for dinner and I ate it with peanut butter. I was happy. Except I left my phone at school to be charged. And Marisa’s phone was dead. So we had no access to communication. That’s the problem of having no electricity, particularly during the rainy season when the sun doesn’t come out.

            Thursday: Instead of mandazi during chai break at school, we had sweet potatoes! They were tastey!

            Friday: We woke up to find out there was no school…so here I am, Friday night in Ngara, typing away on a computer that’s fully charged with the lights on in the room. I can’t complain. And while we were frustrated this morning that no one told us that there was no school today, it turns out that today is Eid, a Muslim holiday that is determined by the pattern of the moon. Last night, the moon was in the right place, so this morning was a day for celebration, and hence no school. It still might have been nice for a little heads up about this, but such is life.

            Saturday: While Muyenzi might not be the ideal place to spend a Saturday night, there’s a great possibility that we will watch our first movie. Mind blown!1

Destination: Kigali

After two weeks in Muyenzi, it was certainly time for a little change of scenery.  Enough nights by the kerosene lantern, brushing our teeth outside spitting down the hole that leads out of our courtyard, eating rice and vegetables, having limited cell phone service, enduring heavy rains, and sharing our life stories with no one but each other…So where’s our destination of choice? Kigali, Rwanda! We left school an hour early, and had my piki piki driver take us to Rulenge so we could catch a taxi to Ngara that afternoon. We stayed with Alex and Sue, eagerly anticipating our adventure for the weekend! We all woke up early and left for the taxi stand by 7am. By 7:45, a taxi pulled up next to us, asked where we were going and we hopped in and headed off to Rusumo, the small town on the border of Rwanda. It only took about an hour to get to Rusumo, with a few stops along the way to fill up the car. In Rusumo, we had to pass immigration in Tanzania before walking over the bridge into Rwanda. The bridge passes over Rusumo Falls, some pretty intense waterfalls. As we continue walking to immigration, we pass through the long lines of semi trucks waiting to enter and exit the country. We made it through immigration with no hassles, and were immediately summoned aboard a bus to Kigali. The bus ride took about 4 and a half hours, with several stops along the way. But the road was nicely paved, people were friendly, and everyone had a seat (unlike Tanzanian transport where as many people as possible are squeezed in). Like Tanzania, Rwanda is a beautiful country, with rolling hills of banana trees and very green countryside. Along the main road, many of the shops were built of nice concrete fronts, the homes seemed well maintained, and the sides of the roads were so clean. It was very impressive, and unlike other parts of Africa that I’ve seen. I wasn’t sure what to expect, considering the recent history, but Rwanda is doing very well for itself.

            When we made it to downtown Kigali, we took a taxi to our hotel and made our way to the nearest restaurant. Hamburgers, French fries, and a mango smoothie? YES please! After a delicious meal, we spent time soaking up the internet for the afternoon, enjoying each other’s company and the presence of wi-fi. We also ventured into an actual grocery store and you would have thought we’d never seen one before! A bakery, pasta in different shapes, cereal, olives, cheese, candy bars, and on and on and on. We walked around in shock for most of the time, and then picked out a few life essentials, like pasta, olives, cheese, toothpaste, and baby wipes for our ever-so-dirty feet. It was epic. And much more expensive than market day in Rulenge; so much for $10 groceries this week…

When it came time for dinner, the real adventure of Saturday began.  Alex had found a place in the Lonely Planet guidebook that sounded worthwhile, so we figured we would try it out. According to his map, it was just down the road, up a hill and to the left…but after walking in circles, we stopped to ask for directions. Now, the question is what language do we ask in? French? English? Swahili? Kishubi? We actually aren’t sure what language anyone spoke ever, but I tried my little bit of French and it didn’t get us far. A little Swahili and we were able to determine that we should go ask someone else. So we ask someone else, in multiple languages, and they finally say that they know the restaurant! But it’s too far to walk, so we’ll have to take piki pikis. Ok, if you insist... However, all of the piki piki drivers in Kigali had two helmets, one for themselves and one for the passenger, a bright vest with their telephone number, and only took one person at a time. (The Muyenzi in us wanted to fit on one bike, but we had to split lol). So Alex, Marisa and I hopped on three bikes and took off.  I actually enjoy a good motorcycle ride, believe it or not!

The real excitement begins though, when our drivers don’t actually know where they are going, and have to stop to consult with each other, with us, and with passerby’s on the street. Too many languages, and too many wrong turns for my liking, and after circling the city at least three times, we told them to take us back to our hotel. After trying to overcharge us, we paid them for the ride and sadly walked into the hotel and asked the guy at the desk if he knew the restaurant. He said yes, and that he would get a taxi for us to take us there. We thanked him, headed to the taxi and took off…to the exact street we went down multiple times on the piki pikis! The restaurant was no where to be found, but Marisa was bound and determine to have a delicious dinner, so we stopped at another hotel on the road and she went in to ask about the mysterious restaurant. Come to find out, it had moved to another location nine months earlier, but had previously been on that road. Ah, no wonder there was such confusion! But it took us asking at least 25 people and at least an hour before we figured this out. Good news, however, is that there was a couple from New York City at the hotel who quickly befriended Marisa, Alex and I, and sent us to a great Indian place around the corner. They had founded a non-profit to train teachers and doctors in English in Rwanda and previously in Niger. The woman was a third grade teacher in Brooklyn, before turning to her passion of education and health in Africa. She has written four children’s books (published by Scholastic?!) and comes to Rwanda three times a year to train doctors and teachers for their missions in the country. She was awesome! And told us we were crazy for living in the bush and teaching for the year. She asked if our mother’s knew what we had gotten ourselves into, and said that next time she’s in Kigali, we must come visit so she can take us out to a nice dinner. How sweet! Come February 2 when she’s back in Rwanda, I guarantee you that we will be in Kigali. It’s crazy and wonderful the people we meet here!

At this point, we’re all starving, so we finally exchange information and head to the Indian restaurant. Oh it was so great! SO so great! There were other wazungus, tourists on holiday, people working for non-profits, etc, so we didn’t feel so out of place (minus our Muyenzi outfits that actually aren’t good for anywhere but the village). We ordered so much delicious food and were actually able to be out after dark, which was a nice change of pace. Dinner was lovely, and I definitely went to bed happy, and quite full, that night.

Waking up to a hot shower Sunday morning was also a wonderful surprise. My twice a week bucket bath with cold water in my courtyard just can’t compare to hot water in an actual tub. It’s the little things in life that count. We left the hotel early and went for breakfast at Urban Coffee, a very western place with more wi-fi and more wazungus. Mostly, just the presence of other foreigners all weekend was refreshing, rather than being the 1% of diversity in Muyenzi. I was able to order a cup of coffee and veggie omelet, breakfast of champions! After a relaxing breakfast, we each got on a piki piki to take us to the bus stand so we could head back to Tanzania. Unfortunately we couldn’t stay any longer, but the journey back for us was long and we needed to make it home before dark. We boarded the bus, and made it back to Rusumo in a decent amount of time. After walking back across the border and passing through immigration again, we hopped into a taxi to take us to Ngara. Since Marisa and I missed the Saturday market in Rulenge, we stopped along the way to the next taxi stand to pick up our week’s worth of groceries (namely, tomatoes, eggplant, onions, cabbage and peanut butter…) We walked to the taxi’s with all of our things, and of course it started to rain. And of course I had left my raincoat on the bus in Kigali. Oops. But we climbed into another taxi to take us to Rulenge, where we hopped on a piki piki (this time, both of us with a full backpack of clothes, computers, chords, and food plus a large bag of vegetables each, on the same motorcycle…we are the Muyenzi road show.) And oh, I must mention that by now we had been travelling for at least seven hours, so of course Mother Nature would pick this to be the time for a downpour! AHHHH. Take us back to Kigali! Never ride a motorcycle in the rain…it’s the worst! Thankfully we made it home in one piece, although just a little bit wet. It was quite the adventure of a weekend, but I can’t wait to go back! We are planning on taking our Muyenzi road show all around East Africa, so I’m sure Kigali will see us again one day J

A Glimpse into My Classroom

As we came to the end of the unit in my Form 1 and Form 3 classes, it came time for an exam. In Form 3, we were studying relations, including domain/range, graphing and inverse relations. They struggled throughout the unit, so my expectations going into the exam weren’t high. It’s been difficult teaching this class, because their math skills range from very basic to very advanced, the level of English is generally low or lower, and the attendance varies from 55 to 75 students on any given day. Even so, I spent a day reviewing the topics on the exam, and then gave them the exam the next class period. Keep in mind that I gave the exam last week Wednesday, to the 61 students who happened to be there. It didn’t matter if they missed the review, or the past two weeks, or if they had been in every class but missed the exam day. You simply give the test to the students who are present, and that’s that. Although, in reality the exam doesn’t actually count for anything, other than a measure of where the students are at. It’s still interesting to me that even though the exam doesn’t count for anything, the students take it very seriously and are so concerned with correct marks. Their mindset is completely different from American students. That being said, I had 61 students take the exam and if we say that 50% is passing, then 12 students passed (one boy scored 100% and one girl scored 95%!). However, I also had 6 students score 0, when they wrote answers for each problem and actively tried the entire period. Talk about discrepancy.

           

During the exam, the students were really well behaved, which is such a blessing compared to some of the classes I’ve had to give tests in before. Not having the behavioral issues is such a nice change of pace, although I did have one student who thought he could look in his notebook without me noticing. That didn’t work out so well for him, as I quietly took his notebook and asked him to continue. After class, I asked him why he was looking in his math notebook, and he said he had forgotten a calculation. I told him that cheating on an exam is not allowed, and that he must write me a formal letter in English about cheating on exams. He asked for forgiveness, but I figured a little practice in writing in English wouldn’t hurt. He came to my office a half hour later, letter in hand, apologizing for his mistake and ensuring me that it wouldn’t happen again. Mostly his use of the phrase “forgive me for destroying the rules of the examination room” makes me think my point was clear. The letter is priceless though; it’s definitely being saved for future reference.

On a lighter note, most students used two sheets of paper. Without a stapler, I just told them to write their names on both sheets before they handed it in. Well, students here certainly are creative, because all of a sudden I notice a boy pull a string from his sweater sleeve, bite it off with his teeth, and proceed to tie the corners of his exam papers together. What! The trend continued, and I was so enamored by this that I just let it happen. I might have been more concerned if their sweaters weren’t falling apart with wholes and frayed sleeves, but the damage of losing one more string had no apparent effect. So, I had cute little bows holding together all of the tests. I still am unsure as to how they were able to thread the string through the paper, but perhaps it’s an acquired skill. 

             

            I gave my Form 1 class an exam the very next day on the geometry unit we had just finished. I wasn’t in the best of moods going into the period, and I’ve come to realize that Thursday afternoons this class goes crazy. Bad combination for an exam, especially when other students were literally running around outside the windows disrupting everything. We were able to get through the exam all right, but I definitely had students looking in their notes and whispering about answers with their neighbor. With 59 students however, it’s nearly impossible to control this, especially when so many don’t speak enough English to even understand my instructions. By the time I finally collected all the tests, we were all ready to be finished. This class did much better than Form 3, with 35 students passing and a class average of 54%. Even taking into consideration the amount of cheating that was happening, I was pleased with the scores.

            As for their punishment, I gave the class another exam on Monday without telling them about it. We first reviewed the rules of taking an exam, while I was very clear that I knew they were all sharing answers and looking in their notes on the previous exam. For this exam, I wrote 20 questions on board on all of the topics they had supposedly covered this year, most of which was basic math facts. Results of this test were drastically lower however, with a class average of 18%. This tells me two things: first, their basic math skills are very low; and second, they definitely studied for the geometry exam. Pluses and minuses (literally...get it? because we were reviewing adding and subtracting with negative numbers...lol. Maybe that was too much?) But it definitely helped show me what topics we need to review before their terminal exams in December.

           

            Overall, my first examinations have been a learning experience for all of us. I struggle with the fact that there is no accountability for students who are absent, and have no idea what to do with the 49 Form 3 students who failed the exam. The challenge of teaching here has certainly presented itself these past few weeks, but at least we enjoy our class time together and perhaps by the end of the year we’ll see some improvement.