One for me...

Tuesday, I have class with a student named Rachel (so many Rachel's in this blog, eh?). Rachel had been following me around for a few weeks, asking for my email. After class yesterday, I finally gave her the special "teacher" address I made for my students on gmail, but she hung around for a long while while I cleaned. "I think you will be my best friend," Rachel said. I smiled, but shuddered slightly. When I hear that, it's usually followed by a flurry of emails with questions ranging from my favorite singer to how I can get someone a visa to the United States. "I do not tell, but I only have my grandfather. Both of my parents died in the genocide and the government gives me money to be here. I like to talk to you. I will write you and we can be friends, ok?" "Absolutely," I said, for the first time being very open with one of my students, "I live right next to school. If you ever need someone, come and get me." "It is not a problem," Rachel said, "I do not feel alone, but I wanted to tell you. I try to remember my parents, but I cannot be sad or I cannot study. I take one day a week for me. I will write you on that day this week, ok?"

I try to stay upbeat in my posts, but I hope that in doing so I'm not also making life here sound just peachy. In fact, after this past week, I won't lie, I had a few hours where I was ready to pack my bags. A week of flu in a foreign country will tucker anyone out, but this week I was especially low. 

Friday night, my friend Rachael came to visit me. I was so happy that for most of Friday and Saturday I ignored the fact  I was perhaps still sick, and tried to do all of the things I hadn't done while convalescing. I also found myself unloading just about everything: how my colleagues insist I became sick because I don't wear a hat and not because very few people in this country find it crude to pick their noses and shake your hand; how tired I was of trying to eat all of the food on my plate rather than eating just what I wanted; how most of the time I was only guessing at what was going on, and how I felt like I had very little control over my everyday life. 

It all came pouring out over the weekend, and, as expected, once you identify a problem, you start to see it everywhere. Suddenly, everything was bothering me- even something as hilarious as our botched talent show act. Rachael and I had decided a week earlier that we would perform in my school's talent show Saturday, and had been incessantly rehearsing "Live Your Life" by T.I. and Rihanna (If you haven't heard it, look for it on YouTube - my students were already excited to see their teacher play a tall, handsome, black man...) After practicing for two hours straight, our student accompanist said, "Will you sing for talent night too?" "What?!" I said, "of course! We're singing tonight!" "But talent night is moved to March 7. The Mistress of Discipline moved it on Wednesday night. You can still sing tonight, though." "What IS tonight?" I asked, trying not to blame Patrick for my colleague's oversight. "Tonight is our ecumenical prayer service." Brilliant. Here I am, wearing a sideways baseball cap and sunglasses, rapping to a song about how I've been thuggin' all my life and I ain't a hater. I collapsed right there. (Incidentally, we decided at the last minute to teach the students "I'll Fly Away." Now as I walk down the hallway, I can hear little voices humming the song behind me... totally worth it in the end...)

I couldn't figure it out. I'm where I've planned to be, where I've wanted to be for a year now. I started saying how much I missed home - something I never dared do aloud before, afraid that if I started, I might not stop. I went back to counting the days until the end of our first term, and then the days until the end of school. I sat in my room alone and listened to my music instead of going to lunch. Why was it suddenly all so difficult again?

After talking to my student Rachel yesterday, I think I got the message. I can't let all the little things bother me - otherwise I wouldn't be able to make it the eight short months I have left in this country. But I also can't completely ignore all of the little things - otherwise, they begin to build up and come crashing down in one go. I have to admit, I absolutely hate it when adults ask me for money six or seven times. I hate being asked for visas, or books, or told that I must not be eating because I think I'm better than Rwandans. I wanted to get up and walk out when I explained to a colleague that I didn't have the money to fly back and forth from the United States and was told I was just making excuses not to live in here- all Americans have more money than they know what to do with. I want to scream when people tell me I don't eat enough, or that there must be something wrong with me because I'm not married- no one must want me. I am so unbelievably tired of explaining that yes, I am a female, and yes I am quite capable of learning new things and holding good jobs. I don't like eating when other people tell me to, or showing up for a meeting and being told by three different people that the meeting has been changed to three different times. And I HATE shaking hands with someone when I've just watched them pick his nose. 

So there. There are the things that are bothering me. Getting those things out, rather than holding them in, makes it easier to handle - to laugh at, to move on. Maybe getting those things out from time to time will mean I'll have fewer moments where I want to take the next flight home. Yes, I imagine I'll be a lot more positive next week :) but for now, this post was just for me...

Have Patience...

Bleh. "Have patience" is the last thing I wanted to hear yesterday morning. But having patience is sometimes the only thing you can do when you've lost your voice. This week, I finally got really sick for the first time in Rwanda. No, no tropical illness or intestinal worm (yet!), just a good, long, old-fashioned cold. I went away this weekend, which is probably why my sniffles quickly progressed into bronchitis, but I've been treating my symptoms with my medicine from home and LOTS of unbearably sweet (read: delicious) Rwandese black tea. Although it was terribly amusing to hear me squeak out "Mara mutze" or "good morning" in Kinyarwanda, I got "go home and rest" two or three times in the teacher's lounge. "I will be ready on Thursday," I said, sounding more like nails on a chalkboard than simple English. "We'll see you when you're well. Have patience," I was told.

Having patience isn't necessarily my strong suit. I want to be able to write emails now. I want to be at work and teaching, now. I knew good and well that I was getting run down this past week, and still couldn't get right with the idea that I could actually still be doing my job is if I didn't teach my scheduled classes and took a rest. After failing miserably several times on simple laboratory experiments after school each night, it never occurred to me that I might be making mistakes because I was tired and not because I haven't the foggiest idea what iodometry is (is that even an English word?!) No, instead of "taking a rest" as I was instructed to do by my colleagues (oh Lord, I've become my mother! :) ) I decided that the better solution would be to get away and visit my friend Rachael in Shyrongi.

Rachael is my wonderful roommate from our orientation in Kigali, and she now teaches in a small town called Shyrongi, about 1.5 hours away from my school. This past weekend, one of the other teachers from her all-girls Catholic boarding school was getting married, and Rachael, the token American with a digital camera, was elected the couple's wedding photographer. I was her date, as we soon found out, it is more of a faux pas than showing deference to the guest list if you don't bring your family, friends, and uncle's pet goat to a Rwandese wedding. The ceremony, a Catholic mass almost all in Kinyarwanda, lasted about 2 hours, complete with a period where the bride and groom received offerings from the 400 or so people gathered. After the ceremony, the reception was held in the school's great hall and guests were invited to take from a selection of Coke, Fanta Orange, Fanta Citron, and a few Primus' (a South African beer) while watching girls perform traditional Rwandese dance. The bride's father spoke in Kinyarwanda to the groom, presumably about giving his little girl away in exchange for whatever Athenese (the groom) was able to give for her, and the couple tasted their wedding cake, in a true example of globalization, by smashing it squarely into each other's faces. (Shortly thereafter, there was a mass exodus of faculty. Although the reception was still going on, Rachael and I took the hint and excused ourselves out the back door. As we peered around a dark side of the building, we could just make out the shapes of 10-12 faculty members of this very Catholic institution huddled around a crate of beer...)

When I arrived back in Musanze for church on Sunday, I was exhausted. You can get a bus going directly from Musanze to Kigali to drop you off in Shyrongi, but on the return journey, I had to take a minibus and a motorcycle into Kigali in order to board a coach back in the opposite direction. By Monday afternoon, I was obviously not well. "Jennifer!" my headmaster, a priest, said in a stern voice, "You did not tell me you were going away this weekend!" My tired mind raced to find a time when I was told I needed to inform him of my whereabouts. He smiled, "you are sick because you did not tell me. But next time you go away, let me know and you'll return in one piece. Now, turn around and go home." "I still have three hours of class today," I said, not sure if I was pleading to and teach or to be forced to rest. "Then finish your work today and rest," he said. "But know that the best work you can do today is have patience."

I hope you are well, know that I'm thinking of you, and that you have patience :)

Jen

Viewing the Third World as a First World Citizen...

Hello All!

I am so sorry I have not been able to respond to emails, but I must say before I start this week's post that I am so very thankful to be able to read notes from home. With the internet connection here, gmail doesn't stay open for long. I'm starting to write emails from school and send them off my flash drive, so in the next week, expect to hear from me. Otherwise, thank you so much for your patience and your encouragement. It's needed. :)

With that said, this past week I've wondered just what all the fuss was about "living in the third world." In my routine and comfortable with my friends and colleagues, I looked around last Sunday and thought just how lucky I am. On Friday nights, teams of our students participate in the Friday Quiz. Friday Quiz (and bear with me if I spoke about them before) is the time when five students in two classes debate. On Monday, they are assigned the topic, usually fairly developed and complex (in my three Friday Quizzes, the topics have been 1) should Rwanda integrate into the East Africa Union, 2) Is Barack Obama an answer to the problems of every American, or an answer just for Africa-American males, and 3) is the high percentage of women in Rwanda's Parliament a solution or an added burden to Rwandan woes). Friday night at 9 pm, the students debate in front of the school, with the headmaster as moderator and the audience as an extremely critical peanut gallery. Every so often, the language of the debate changes - last week's debate was conducted in English, this week's debate will be in French. "Third world?!" I thought as I took notes on student presentation, diction, and pronunciation.

I had the same thought sitting at our Talent Night on Saturday, when the students accompanied themselves, without any music lessons whatsoever, on an electric keyboard, singing pop and gospel songs to a crowd of 700 students. And on Sunday again, when I was invited to the Protestant student's worship, (and consequently, I missed mass and the priest/headmaster, aka my boss, thought I was lazy and had slept in...) I was blown away by the student's organization of their own choir, their own keyboard music, and their own sermon. Equipped with a translator and a Gideon's Bible in English, what more could I want?, I thought. What am I really missing out on?

I've thought about that since Wednesday, and how far personally I've come in the last few weeks. The first week I was in my town, I must admit, I counted the days on my calendar until the first term ended. Breaking months down into to segments somehow made my time shorter - something I desperately needed when I was not teaching and was sitting alone in my room at night thinking about the number of mosquitos that could come through my window's hole. I read the "Intestinal Worms" chapter in my Health in Africa book everytime I got a slight stomach ache. And just a week ago, I drank a whole liter of water because I ate cassava paste at dinner and remembered from my West African studies that cassava contained trace amounts of cyanide. I've done incredibly silly things because I feared what might happen in this strange new place called a developing country.

Instead, now I've come to appreciate the unique position I'm in to be a first world citizen living in the third world. I live on about $1 a day. I eat well - more healthily than I would in the United States - despite the odd pebble that finds it into my rice. I get my exercise walking to town, especially since I once estimated it was only a mile from school and after driving that distance find out it's actually more like four. I do things I've never done back home - take taxi-motorcycles home, sit in restaurants just for a coke and to listen to French news, haggle with the banana man to reduce the price. I save toilet paper rolls for test tube holders and bottle caps for pieces on a checker board. I travel when I want, use the internet when I want (well, if the connection is there!) and make phone calls when I've got enough spare change to buy a phone card. And all in the comfort of knowing that despite my $100 a month, my health insurance will cover me if I'm sick and I have a place back in the first world when I leave here. While I live on $1 a day, my shoes are made of leather and not of plastic. My comforter keeps me warm at night, and I have bug spray and antibiotics to ward away malaria. And while I still miss my family and friends, I've got everything I could ever need materially right here.

I would tell everyone that they must experience living in the third world at least once, but I'm not even sure if that's really what I'm doing. After all, I'm only here for a limited time, and even then, I hold an American passport and am surrounded by my American belongings. The best I can say, I guess, is that it is a curious feeling to recognize that my fears, while they may be founded, are not applicable to my situation, and that the people that should perhaps fear the things I did, still get up every day and practice debating in their third or fourth language.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, eh? I can't help but count it a small victory to finally come that realization, and a blessing that I'm in a unique position to experience the joys of this country as a citizen of my own.

I'll probably still drink a liter of water after eating cassava though... :)

Take care, have courage and I'll write soon,

jen

Oya! Nitwa Mahoro...

Hello! I'm so sorry that this post is late. I can now use the internet right next to school, so in the next week or so I’ll actually be able to respond to emails! Thank you so much for your patience!!

The past week has been utterly exhausting. Classes were finally in full swing for our upperclassmen, and I found myself teaching periods I really shouldn't have been. On Monday, one of my colleagues caught me at a free moment to ask that I help him translate the digestive system. After my spectacularly ignorant performance, let's just say I won't be asked to do that again... Three more classes of my own and one of someone else's later, I passed out on my bed before dinner. I was lectured that evening that I should take a little more time for myself.. and maybe only show up 30 seconds before my class starts so no one can grab me to do anything else. Another week, another good lesson.

And with another week came an important change. Maybe because I now have a routine, maybe because I have a circle of friends, but this past week was the first week that I didn't desperately miss home. In fact, after visiting friends in Kigali on Friday, I was very happy to come back to my home away from home. I've just about accepted that I will never fit in- how could I being of Norwegian, Scottish, and English descent?!- but I've come to the conclusion that the best I can do is allow myself be absorbed as much as I possibly can.

I usually eat my meals with the Mistress and Master of Discipline, the school librarian, the nurse, and an administrative assistant, and they usually try (unsuccessfully) to teach me Kinyarwanda. This past Wednesday night, their job was to think of my Kinyarwanda name. "If you're part of our family now," Josette said as she heaped more food on my plate, "you must have a Rwandan name." (Just as an aside, when eating with the teachers the other day, I was told that no one would marry me if I didn't eat more.) After discussing it for approximately 15 minutes, they reached a decision. My name in Kinyarwanda is "Mahoro" meaning "peace." My students love it. The teachers have stopped using "Jennifer." And laughing children on the street stop in their tracks when they shout "muzungu, muzungu (white person!!)" and I respond, "Oya! Nitwa Mahoro. (No! My name is Mahoro.)

I was initiated into my new life as "Mahoro" on Sunday - Heroes Day - when I was dressed in traditional Rwandan dress and asked to sit on the front row of the celebration to remember all who have served and died for Rwanda. I don't think I've ever had more eyes on me than when I walked into the ceremony, and I don't think I've shook more hands. Part of it was because I'm the whitest person they've ever seen, but part of it, which came as a surprise to me, was how honored people were that I would wear their dress and attend their ceremony. I was invited to dance with the girls who performed to the national anthem, and walking home, the whole group of ceremony participants said thank you. "You're officially Mahoro," my friend Foucas said as I was putting on my sunglasses. He looked at my glasses and shook his head. "Well, almost."

Every day has its ups and downs, its moments to remember and moments, like misspelling esophagus and pipette, that I'd much rather forget. I'm just about getting used to expecting the unexpected... well, almost. I have a saying taped to my wall in my room that I look at every night before I go to bed, and I will leave you with this:

"finish each day and be done with it. you have done what you could. some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. tomorrow is a new day. you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." - emerson

Take care and have courage,

jen