10/28/11
It’s been a little while since my last post. A few things have happened! I went on my site visit and met the volunteer I’m replacing and visited my new school where I’ll be teaching. The more important stuff though in my opinion is what happens after you visit your site. For me, I loved my site! I’m next to the water!!!!! I’m near a big town, there are volunteers close by and more importantly I get to teach content courses as opposed to plain old EFL!! I get to dabble in Fine Arts and Music!!! Super exciting!!! I’m thinking for my fine arts class we’ll try and introductory drawing and sketching for the first semester, painting second semester, and maybe! if we have the resources sculpting for third semester. In terms of music I hope that I’ll be able to teach my students the basics of music like key signatures and how to read music and in terms of application, do some a cappella work!! I think it would be so wonderful if at the end of each term we put on a concert of songs and maybe even some dances!!
Next week we start “model school”. This part of training is basically student teaching, or practicum. For us the trainees, our program directors have solicited students to come and allow us to teach practice lessons on certain topics, usually with a grammatical focus. I’m excited and nervous. Yes I have taught before, my students were usually either adults or little munchkins and here I have students in the middle of that spectrum I’m familiar with, but isn’t that what Peace Corps is all about?! Giving yourself that challenge until it hurts haha.
BUT! Before model school we have Halloween, one of my FAVORITE holidays state-side. I’m not sure what my costume this year will be but we are having a party amongst us American trainees. AND, we’re going to try and have an American style Thanksgiving. We heard through the grapevine that Peace Corps might pay for turkeys!! It’s ridiculous the things that I miss here in Rwanda. What do you mean Saara?, you might ask. Well I’ll tell you!
For example, I never in my life thought I would become homicidal at the thought of having an apple. But, just now I ate a green apple(a wonderful friend brought me two from Kigali!!). It was my first apple in over a month and the satisfaction I had in hearing the crunch of fresh produce and tasting sweet juicy apple-NESS was enough to make any bad day here a vague memory. Another example!! Peanut butter and Jelly sandwich. The Quintessential American lunch item. I just have to say, it’s iconic for a reason. There is nothing more satisfying that eating a sandwich first of all, in a country that prefers most food to resemble some kind of slop haha, and second that sweet/savory blend of peanut butter and strawberry jelly on white bread. Pure perfection! All this talk of food is making me hungry so I’ll stop for now, but just remember, it’s true when they say that absence makes the heart grow fonder!
In terms of being a trainee right now, I feel like I’ve hit some sort of wall. The shock of first arrival is gone and the once intriguing aspects of Rwandan culture aren’t as endearing anymore which in turn causes my motivation to really delve further into language learning and interacting with my host family and community that much harder. A friend of mine said it well today. He talked about how when he envisioned serving in the Peace Corps he had initially thought that it would be much more physically and logistically demanding, but now that we’re here, it’s more case of psychologically demanding. There are times when I’m a fly under a magnifying glass in the sun and sometimes it gets too hot to handle. Hopefully the small break from constant language, with model school, will be that next push we all need to get past this funk we’re all in.
Right now though I’m going to watch a little American film called Kill Bill Vol. 2 and then crash. More later.
XoXo
11/02/2011
Today was our first day of model school. Wow! This experience was informative to say the least. I had no idea how different the Western approach to teaching is when put side-by-side with a developing countries. I had planned on spending the first class today with introductions and in particular the “Find someone who game”. Basically, students are given a list of things for example, “Someone who is left-handed” and are asked to go around the room and ask each other
11/03/2011
I stopped writing yesterday because of a lovely conversation with my momma! Yesterday at model school was incredibly challenging. For that Find Someone who game, it crashed, crashed some more and then burned, sputtered a little bit and then blew up Michael Bay style. (I think he’s the guy who directed the Transformers movies?) After we saw our first idea fail, we transitioned into something more structured and in my opinion boring. We did a basic presentation of nouns, what they were, their functions etc. and they fucking loved it. It was BIZARRE! In America if you tried to teach 13 year olds a grammar lesson for an hour you would see mutiny and utter chaos.
Today, we taught a lesson that incorporated a grammar focus but in a more actice way and it went over really well! The students were excited and laughing and seemed to be having a good time. One thing that was interesting however was the fact that while the students have a near-perfect recall of grammatical points they have no way of applying the knowledge to form contextually appropriate sentences. I got sentences today that were grammatically correct but made no sense! For example, I walked to pen. Conjugated for the simple past, correct subject-verb agreement but if someone said that in America you’d think they were batshit crazy. Tomorrow we’re going to try and encourage them to create original sentences but with a foundation of word banks. We shall see!
I was informed today that a package has arrived! Based on this one package, I would estimate that a package from the states to Rwanda, and more specifically to ME haha takes about three weeks. I’m super excited to see what my mother has been able to fit inside one box!
My friends and I were talking today about how after model school we have a couple more weeks of training and then we swear in as Peace Corps Volunteers. Once that happens we go to our site and start our experience here. When I go to bed at night here, under my mosquito net surrounded by bugs, I think how am I here? How did this happen? I had always thought about doing Peace Corps and now that the reality has happened, it’s so much more than I had ever anticipated and I’m not even officially a volunteer yet! It really is a 24/7 job. At any one time during the day, or night for that matter, you are under a constant gaze of inquiring onlookers. It’s the weirdest sensation. Everything we do, or as the case may be, no do is examined and analyzed for its degree of difference to Rwandan culture. Teaching is one thing; it’s the time outside of your actual job responsibilities in Peace Corps that make this experience completely unique. Enough postulating for now, it’s been a very long day and there’s more awkward socializing ahead!! XoXo
11/13/11
It’s been a while since I’ve sat down and written anything. I want to say it’s because each day since I last wrote has been so epic and life changing that I’ve just been too engrossed in Rwandan life that I couldn’t tear myself away to type, but I can’t. Granted some things have happened this week that were unique, but mostly it seems like we’ve fallen into the very, sometimes painfully slow rhythm of Rwandan life.
Interesting moment for this week though I think goes to the story of cow: one and Saara: zero! I was walking down my street talking to my friend Chinelo on the phone, and jerked because a giant cow ran past me, followed by a boy about the size of an emaciated Gary Coleman. I told Chinelo over the phone that a cow just ran past me and awkwardly laughed then told her that I’d see her in a couple minutes. Click. I hang up the phone and continue walking down the road. At this moment the cow turns around and looks at me, looks into my soul, and judges my moral fiber, and then decided to charge at me. I, being a normally responding human, had to run behind a pillar and then into a barbershop where a man was getting his hair cut in order to avoid losing my life to this damn cow.
The thing that was infuriating was that every Rwandan on the street banded together and laughed at me. This laughter someone else’s expense is something about Rwandan culture that I don’t understand. It is prevalent everywhere you go here. When a motorcycle zooms past within an inch of my body and I freak out, the natural Rwandan response is to laugh. In my own culture the normal reaction would be of concern for your wellbeing or sympathetic anger towards the asshole driving the motorcycle. It is incredibly puzzling to me that a county like Rwanda, which has so much recent horrible history, people would act in such a strange way. But, I may have just answered my own thought nugget. I’m assuming at this point that the whole country is going through some kind of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Syndrome that makes them act in a way that is so bizarre. Bizarre at least to my eyes. Because it of course could all be bullshit and people here just have a weird sense of humor. Maybe, hopefully after more time things make sense according to my perspective.
One positive thing that came from this week. CUCUMBERS!!!! I found them at the market in the town down the hill and I was able to eat, with the help of Rachel providing mustard (J) a sandwich of the aforementioned mustard, avocado, tomato cucumber and a little bit of salt. It was so delicious! The experience just made me very excited to cook for myself once I get to site. The amount of oil that Rwandans cook their vegetables in destroys any nutritional value they might have had before drowning in fat. Top that off with ten thousand pounds of starch a day and it makes your digestive system feel like a crack whore, used and malnourished.
I gotta go. Little sister keeps knocking wondering what I’m doing in my room. More later hopefully! XoXo
11/14/11
Going for two days in a row here! Kind of a big deal. Right now I’m waiting to see if two people I don’t like are going to be staying for dinner. The first one is super creep neighbor dude. The second is incredibly rude host aunt. Outlook doesn’t look good right now, so hopefully I’ll chill in my room till dinner then eat really quick and return to my little sanctuary.
Yesterday I got a wonderful call from my ame! and wonderful cousins!! It was so nice to talk to them. Talking to them made me miss friends and family so much. Kept thinking of my life back in Monterey and what I would be doing if I hadn’t left. Going to class and hating the English language, heading to the bar for a burger, fries and a beer, hanging with friends. I feel like I left my own alternate reality for another one. Both are my life, but they are two totally different perspectives. It’s like I’m in my own Labyrinth but instead of David Bowie being the Goblin King, Kinyarwanda and Rwandan culture are a maze that I’m trying to get through. Gotta go. Host mom’s wondering where I am. More later! XoXo
11/15/11
Today was a good day overall. Teaching went alright. We had the kids do a combination of active things and sit down activities and it seemed to go pretty well. Tomorrow I’m going to teach a lesson on prepositions and I’mleave going to bring in my volleyball and we’ll see how they like that. I’m also going to try doing a dictation. Oh Oh Oh!
Other cool things that happened today: Had half of a grilled cheese sandwich! YUM! Played an awesome game of 20 questions with some pals. I was Yogi Bear and Cher. It’s the simple things out here that keep us occupied!
I want to reveal a secret about the Peace Corps experience. They kind of tell you before you during your interview and application process but don’t really describe it accurately. They tell you, “You’ll be a celebrity in your country.” This is a true statement. My friends and I were walking home from the brochettes places and there was a guy, who I hope was inebriated, break dancing in front of a bar. We stopped to watch because it was ridiculous and all the other people on the street stopped too. But, did they watch this drunk fool trying to break dance?? No! They stopped to watch us, watch the break dancer. It was completely mind-boggling to me. It’s like if Daniel Craig and his biggest fan in the world were to actually meet. It’s a TON of awkward staring and inappropriate whispering. Every minute action we do is analyzed and mentally processed first as foreign, strange, different then incorrect and foolish.
Right now I’m listening to some Journey “Don’t Stop Believing” and it fucking rocks! Music makes the world make sense sometimes!
11/19/11
Today’s entry is brought to you by: “Rwanda presents: Precious moments”. Today when some friends of mine and I were walking home from the hub, a little boy came up to me and said he wanted to speak English to us. He then went on to walk with us for about five minutes and told us that he was the top of his English, he was four years old, asked me what I like to do and why. It was so wonderful and astonishing because his English was better than some of the 12 year olds I was teaching this last week. He was so confident and pint-sized I just wanted to put him in my pocket and keep him for a rainy, shitty day of teaching. His stance was even better. He was walking down the street with three 20-something Americans, in the middle, holding his own. Walking with his hands in his pockets and responding to questions like a tiny Rwandan Yoda. Ugh, it was great! Tomorrow a big group of people are planning on going to Kigali, but I want to take a chill day and take my time doing my laundry, washing my floor, planning some awesome last three lessons that FORCE CREATIVITY upon these students. Being a teacher in Peace Corps is like a big punch to the ovary sometimes. You think, like my friend said, you’re going to inspire your students each and every day and it’s going to be like “Oh Captain my Captain” from fucking Dead Poets Society but when you get 45 blank stares your confidence as an educator fizzles and dies a little bit.
This battle between my background in education and the reality of developing education is going to be hard to remedy these next two years. Not to say that the Rwandan education system is an enemy of any sort. It seems to be, however, far behind the ideals of the current government that is struggling to imitate the Western world and move beyond its very recent after-the-fact publicized tragedy. ..
Our training is coming to a close. We have three more days of model school and then a few more weeks then we swear in as official volunteers. I think as time goes on, I realize more and more how it was probably good that I didn’t ever go to institutions such as summer camps as a child. Being with the same group of people for an extended period of time, which does give the opportunity to create incredible friendships, is exhausting. When I see the same people so often I can almost always tell just by looking at them what they’re going to talk about, and more specifically what they’re going to complain about. I’ve had repeat conversations with some people in my group and I’m definitely not a fan. One person complains about the lack of certain things to eat, one person complains about all the American food they miss, one person talks about the kind of people they miss and then there are some people who complain about all the complaining and it boggles the mind. I wonder how much different our time here would be if the art of complaining did not exist. I feel that complaining is like good chocolate, healthy in moderation but hard to accomplish on one’s own. To give my group credit, we do throw in the odd very inspiring and thought provoking discussions, but for the most part, not really, no. I guess I’m longing for the day when life here is more balanced. It seems now that the traveling between the extremes of frustration and exhilaration happen too frequently in one day. Looking for that mystical harmonious balance that comes from knowing what the fuck you’re supposed to be doing! Here’s hoping that with time in country the balance becomes a reality!
11/21/11
Thought for the day: Rain on a hot tin roof is fucking loud. There was a short torrential downpour of rain and it always makes you think that the sky is falling.
Today went well teaching. Knock on wood tomorrow goes well! I’m going to try and do a lyric song analysis. We shall see if this whole push for creativity works! XoXo
11/25/11
Looking from where I left off, the push for creativity did not really succeed. They like the fact that I brought technology (IPOD and speakers) to class, but could not understand the concept of why people might write a song or the fact that creativity is an original creation, not copied! That was a difficult concept to get across. The last day of model school, which was an awesomely planned lesson crashed and burned. My co-teacher, Sara, and I designed a whole three hour chuck of time dedicated to the idea of holidays, what activities you do for certain holidays, things you cook, and the history of both American holidays and Rwandan holidays. The kids were so unruly and just ready to be done with summer school sessions that no matter how enthusiastic we were, couldn’t get them to fully engage.
After model school was over, we had our very own trainee Thanksgiving dinner. The preparation for this dinner took a good 24 hours. The preparation started with the massacre of eight Rwandan turkeys out behind HUB by both a trained Rwandan and American trainees. I can honestly say that I saw a turkey killed. It was a bizarre experience. First of all, I have to say that while few trainees wanted to kill a turkey there was a group of about 12 of us who wanted to see the process. We all gathered around to see someone kill another creature. Looking back on it, it seems we as humans have a pointed fascination with death. After watching the first turkey get butchered I was able to watch the second, but after I had to leave.
I had a strange feeling when watching the turkey die. The, murderers for lack of a better term, cut the turkey heads off and then hung the turkey upside down to drain the blood. The strange thing though was that for each turkey they put fresh banana leaves down and each time a head came off the leaves got splattered with blood. I couldn’t help thinking that the whole country must have looked similar to those banana leaves in 1994. It was that more than anything that made it impossible to keep watching. As a way of distracting myself from thinking too long about blood spattered Rwanda during the Genocide, I went inside and watched Dirty Dancing with a bunch of girls from the group. Half-naked Patrick Swayze is a good distraction.
Thanksgiving day we cooked a ton of food. We were cooking for around 60 people so think big. In the end the food was delicious! We were able to successfully make over outdoor fires: macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole, vegetarian stuffing, pumpkin bread!!!, two different kinds of salad, garlic and rosemary mashed potatoes, and of course turkey. It was amazing! After the meal, every trainee had to lie down because we had eaten so much. Most of have had some form of food poisoning these past couple months so we don’t really eat that much and the sight of so much American food, we couldn’t help ourselves and just ate till it hurt.
While having a proper Thanksgiving the in heart of Rwanda was a sight to behold, it still didn’t replace the feeling of being home for the holidays with family and friends. So, yesterday was bittersweet. It seemed that any time there was a lull in activity all of us would get this look in our eyes, and you could tell that everyone was thinking about someone or someones they were missing. Note to anyone traveling for a long period of time in a strange land, watching someone light their own fart on fire is one of the best ways to cure feelings of nostalgia you might have. I can confirm, because I saw it with my own eyes!, that farts can and certainly do catch on fire! And on that note I will leave you! Till later! XoXo
11/28/11
This last weekend was pretty entertaining all around. For starters, we found a place that makes crepes! They are just oh so delicious! Second, I got to go to Kigali this past Sunday and just hang out. When I was in the city I accomplished many things. I bought Nutella! I found and purchased a Barak Obama tote bag. I’ve decided to start a collection of Barak Obama paraphernalia because for those who didn’t know, his face is EVERYWHERE. It’s awesome. In Kigali, I ate a delicious tuna fish sandwich and had a nice big cup of coffee. I also discovered with friends and really awesome Indian restaurant called saffron. Quite scrumptious!
Today was great because we found out that the lady who makes crepes, while we eating them this morning, makes mini bagel-like pizzas during lunch. We ordered them and had them and holy hell! I was in heaven for a brief moment. Dough, tomato, cheese and some kind of meat. It was glorious! ** on a side note, if I was obsessed with food before I left America, I’m neurotic at this point. It insane how much satisfaction a person can get out of a tuna sandwich!
Also today, I managed to have an epic jumping photo with my family taken with the help of my friend Sara. It is so awesome! If I can get an electronic copy of it somehow I’ll try and put in on zee blog. Right now though, gonna awkwardly socialize! Till later!
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