Its hard to believe, but we are coming to the end of our year with WorldTeach. This weekend we had our End of Service Conference and I think we all started to more fully realize how hard the end will hit us. We are all getting ready to head in different directions, some off to travel for a few weeks, some home to find jobs, some returning to Rwanda, and others to other foreign teaching jobs. For financial reasons, the WorldTeach Rwanda program will not be around next year, (although it should be up and running again in 2012), and so none of us will be staying on with the program. Despite this, close to half our group has decided to return to Rwanda next year. Some are moving to Kigali to work at a private school managed by Westerners which also teaches English to local businesses and organizations.

I will be returning to Michigan at the beginning of November to spend the holidays there and in January, will return to teach at INES Ruhengeri, a college in Musanze which focuses on Statistics and Economics and more specific fields such as Land Survey. I'm looking forward to teaching at the more advanced level, to living close to a market, and to visiting my students up at Rwaza. Two other members of our group may also work at INES with me.

But for now, I'm trying to not think too hard about what's ahead of me after the next few weeks and focus on enjoying the remaining time with my students and the WT group, and plugging away at the last stacks of ungraded exams.

Feeling the beat of the African drums: a check mark on the bucket list.

Projects

A few projects I'm working on:

Igitenge Designs
My senior 2 math class learned about transformations and rotational and reflective symmetry a few weeks ago. Since the fabric that they all wear here is full of symmetry, I had them bring their own in and find the symmetries in them. They were so excited about it that I decided to have them design their own. So I got some old cardboard boxes from a store in Kigali and cut them up and got fabric scraps from the tailor. The students drew their own designs and recorded all of the transformations in them. Now they are cutting out the shapes from the fabric and pasting them onto the cardboard. Some of them are really well done. Next week we're going to have a "show" and display them for the other teachers and students. I'll post pictures when they're finished.

Graphing Calculators
Much thanks to all of you who have donated old graphing calculators! I have been teaching the teachers how to use them with the ones that I have and thanks to a generous donor through a WWU connection, there is a classroom set on their way so that the teachers can use them in class. I'm working on a handbook on how to use the calculators and sample exercises involving them to put in the library.

Discussions
I've been helping out a little bit with the new English club at school and we've discussed the Maya Angelou poem "Africa" (see below). Also, my colleague Emma, who works at a school in Musanze has been having discussions groups with some of her students. I've been going down for them and helping run the discussion. Some of the papers and literature that we've discussed: The Milgram Experiments, the Stanford Experiments, e e cummings poetry, and a report on the science of love. It's been fun talking with the students about something besides just math. I've definitely gotten a better idea of some of the backgrounds and worldviews of the students.

Africa (Maya Angelou)
Thus she had lain
sugar cane sweet
deserts her hair
golden her feet
mountains her breasts
two Niles her tears
Thus she has lain
Black through the years.

Over the white seas
rime white and cold
brigands ungentled
icicle bold
took her young daughters
sold her strong sons
churched her with jesus
bled her with guns.
Thus she has lain.

Now she is rising
remember her pain
remember the losses
her screams loud and vain
remember her riches
her history slain
now she is striding
although she had lain.

Peace Day

A Day of "Solid"arity
After our peace lesson on Tuesday was math. The lesson was on solids and I had them cut sectors out of paper and make them into cones. From the dimensions of the sector, they calculated the radius of the base and cut it out. But by the end of class, they were all wearing the cones on their heads. It was so funny to see 45 cone heads that I went and grabbed my camera for a picture. Note the peace signs.


This Tuesday, Sept. 21^st, was International Peace Day. The African Union declared that this year would be a “Year of Peace and Security in Africa.” It’s supposed to be a time of reviewing and strengthening peace initiatives on the continent. As part of this, most schools set aside time to have a lesson on Peace. At our school, we were given a lesson plan (I’m almost positive it was written in America), and each class was assigned a teacher to give them the lesson. I was given my Senior 1 class. Since the lesson was a bit too heavy with political and social development language for 12 and 13 year olds, I decided to just give them some questions to discuss in groups. Here are some of the questions we talked about:

What are some examples of times or places without peace? Do you believe that there will be a time when there is Peace all over the world? What would have to happen to bring about peace? Who are some famous people who have fought for peace? What do you think about the following statement: “Peace is not achieved through a few large acts, but through many, many small actions.”

One student raised her hand and said: “when there is peace, everyone will be rich.”

“Well, maybe not rich, but no one will be in need of money,” I responded.

“No Teacher, everyone will be rich in spirit.”

After the discussion, I wrote up some of the lyrics to “Imagine” and we listened to the song several times. By the end of the second repeat, they were all singing along or swaying in their seats. Here’s what they were singing:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
No Religion too.
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace.

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world.

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one.

I started tearing up listening to them: Every single one of them had written down Rwanda 1994 as an example of a time without peace, but only two people said that they thought world peace was impossible.

Of Mice and Lizard

Monday evening, I was walking around my house barefoot, putting some things away in my “kitchen.” Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something scurrying from one corner of the room to the other. “Must be time to mop the floors,” I thought. Every once in awhile, if I go too long without cleaning the floors, a little mouse shows up to sneak crumbs. Sometimes he turns up in the bedroom, sometimes in the backroom where I cook. I don’t have a table to cook on, so my hot plate sits on the ground and sometimes I miss some of the splattered food when I clean up the floor around the hot plate. He’s just a tiny little thing, two and a half inches long and an inch and a half high. He always keeps near the walls and runs away if I make any movement. Since his visits are infrequent and only after 9 at night, I let him take what he wants, making sure to mop the floors the next day so they’re not as inviting the next night.

Even though he keeps to himself, I didn’t want to risk him running over my toes as I was walking around, so I decided to slip on my tennis shoes. Stepping on the heel, I just put them on part way and continued getting ready for bed. But a few minutes later I felt something on my toe. I thought maybe there was a leaf in the bottom of it, or possibly a cricket. So I pulled my foot out of the shoe to check it out. Immediately a big green lizard scrambled out. He ran right into the kitchen and straight into the mouse. I heard a squeak and some rustling under my pile of grocery bags then saw a small furry streak head towards one corner and a long green one into the opposite one. Not wanting to deal with it, I shut the door on them and went to bed knowing they’d find their way outside by morning.

When I woke up the next day, I opened the door and saw the lizard curled up in a corner of the room sleeping. The mouse, as usual, was nowhere to be seen. A few hours later, when I went to dump out my dirty dishwater, I noticed that the lizard had gone. But as I was emptying my water outside, I saw something dark floating at the bottom. At first I thought it was part of an onion peel, but as the water drained out, I realized that it was the mouse! I have no idea how he got into my dish water, as the lip is a good 7 inches off the ground and it wasn’t sitting against a wall. I think I’m going to miss the poor little guy. But at least he had a good last meal…I had made spaghetti that night.

Brown goats (ihene) tied up in strings, this is one of my favorite things

The Bus Ride Lottery

Usually when I take a bus into Kigali, I walk down to Mukinga and hop on one coming from Musanze. Since I'm getting on later, I don't have much of a choice about where I sit. I always cross my fingers that there's a seat open in the front, otherwise it's a long, stomach churning hour and a half through the hills. Each row but the last has two regular seats, a bucket seat that folds into the aisle, and then another regular seat against the window. My favorite spot to sit is a non-bucket seat in the row behind the driver. This is because I can put my bag on the floor next to me without anyone having to step over it and I don't have to grip my hands and feet against something to keep my seat from chucking me onto the person next to me. Also, since it's close to the front, I don't get carsick and I can have the driver change the radio station for me if they play Kenny Rogers one time too many. Here are some of my more interesting bus experiences:

The Proposal Ride:

This time I was surrounded by men. A lot more men take the bus and the women who are on them usually don't want to talk with me. But not so with the guys. This time, one started up a conversation with me and after 5 minutes, had asked me to be his wife. That wasn't so unusual, but apparently my other neighbors thought they had a better chance, because by the end of the ride I had rejected four people.

 

The Awkward Ride:

One day I was forced to sit in the very last bucket seat in the back. About 15 minutes into the trip I started to feel sick from all the bouncing around. The bucket seats have a short back that digs into your spine when you lean back too much making it hard to brace yourself against the motion. So usually I lean on the side of the larger seat next to me. It helps with the motion sickness and prevents my seat from rocking out of place on a big turn. This day, I closed my eyes, wishing I could just fall asleep and wake up in Kigali. I must have been tired because that's exactly what I did. But to my surprise, when I woke up, I was no longer lying against the cushioned side of the seat next to me. Hands hanging down to the ground like a monkey's, mouth open and cheek on a stranger's shoulder, I'm sure I looked ridiculous. Typically, not wanting to address an awkward situation, my new pillow never woke me up, so I have no idea how long I had been leaning on him.

 

The Ride Which Lacked Airsick Bags

One weekend, I went all the way into Musanze to catch the bus. I think there must have been a wedding in Kigali or else some kind of ceremonial event because almost every other passenger on board was a village woman with a basket of beans or rice. People from the villages don't ride the bus very often and they always seem to have problems with the motion. It was unusual to be riding with this many of them on board. Not far down the road, the vomiting started. Not having any bags, the ladies would take off one of the half dozen or so layers of clothing that they were wearing and be sick into that. Then they would ball it up and put it on their lap or next to them until they needed it next. Luckily, I had sat next to a window, so I just opened it a crack and stuck my nose out for the rest of the ride, trying not to think of the ball of fabric touching my leg. Adding to that, someone put a covered basket of beans on the floor, unsecured, and it tipped over, spilling several kilos of beans. The whole ride they would slide back and forth and back and forth around your feet as the bus took the hills. I was sitting right behind the step to the door and noticed that there was a small hole in the metal flooring through which you could see the passing ground. Every once in awhile a bean would make its escape through the hole. It was like watching someone play one of those games with the little metal ball that you try to tip into a hole in the cardboard background.

The Ride where I make a friend

Occasionally I'll sit next to someone who wants to talk with me but is not interested in proposing. This always makes for a pleasant passing of the time. One time I sat next to a man who works for World Relief in Masaka, an area of Kigali. He told me about his work turning street kids into students and we found out that we had a mutual friend: he had gone to school with one of my neighboring priests. This past weekend, I sat next to Martin, an English and Geography teacher at the police academy in Musanze. He showed me a picture of his wife and told me about how they're going to have a little girl in a few months. We talked about different social issues in Rwanda, traded favorites in English and African literature, and discussed the plusses and minuses of the two newest phone companies in Rwanda. We traded numbers and hopefully will meet up sometime to exchange some books.

 

The Ride with real Food

Coming back from Kigali I had caught a bus that wasn't express. This means that they will make stops besides Musanze. Since most people's destination is Musanze, it usually only stops once or twice. This particular day, we made a stop and along with the gum and peanut vendors, a man came up to the window with roasted corn! This was the first time I had seen it sold in Rwanda. I wanted to buy an ear, but was having a hard time believing that it was actually okay to eat it on the bus. Hesitating too long, I missed my chance and the four ears he had to sell were soon bought up. As we got back on the road I noticed that the driver in the row ahead of me had bought one and was having a hard time eating it and driving at the same time. "Muzungu!" he called. "Umuchoferi!" (driver) I responded. He handed me his partially eaten ear of corn. He seemed to think that I had never tried such an exotic thing before and that he was going to help culture me. He kept telling me to eat so I took a bite and tried to hand it back. When he refused to take it, I broke it into a few pieces and gave them to a couple of the other passengers and we finished it off. I'm hoping that roasted corn on the bus will become a trend, but I haven't seen it again, so maybe it was just a dream.