Sour Towels and Spinning Chairs

It has been a long time, a really long time.  Sorry.  I have been missing you. A lot has happened, but I haven't had time to blog.  I am working with kids pretty much every minute of the day, even when I'm off of my scheduled work, I'm being a mentor, or a role model, or the butt of some jokes about cassava bread and it's pretty hard to say this sentence to an orphan, "You know I would be happy to help you with that BUT I'm planning on sitting down and writing a blog post."
Where are we now anyway?  Well, there's one month left of class in the 3rd and final term of the school year. Kids are starting to freak out about the end of year exams that will occur in November.  Kids are starting to ask me several times a day if I am really going home in a few months.  I blink back tears at them and change the subject.

I am absolutely shocked that I have been here for 9 months now.  It feels like a snap.  The days are long and the months are short, which I guess is a good way for things to be.

I was planning to write a long post about the dry season and the dust and the heat and all of the grass dying and the earth being a cracked-over baked crumbly biscuit.  When you are running in the dry season and a truck goes by the dust is so thick you cannot see for a few seconds.  But the days got away from me and now it is the rainy season, so we missed that one.  Now it is cold (upper 50s /lower 60s) and rainy and everything is damp and muddy.  When I do laundry, it usually doesn't dry before it gets rained on and everything smells kind of musty. It's a classic 'grass is always greener in the rainy season' conundrum, because the pitch is nice but the football match is cancelled for rain.  When it rains hard the water pours in under the door onto our concrete floors and sometimes the roof leaks as well.  I am muddy a lot which bothers my girls, but not me so much.  Cold showers are more annoying to me when I start out cold from the day.

My English, which I am supposed to be teaching and demonstrating, has really suffered this year and I will be speaking like Tonto for a few months when I get home.  Sometimes, you just need to speak like the people you are speaking with to be understood and I have adopted some local ESL-style expressions that will make you look at me funny when I get home. I was going to tell you all about this too but now I don't even notice them as odd, so that milk has expired I guess.  You're probably seeing them in this blog post right now, so just give me a pass. Thanks.

Here's the annual report for Agahozo Shalom if you're interested in that kind of thing.  (This is a much cooler one than most annual reports, I promise.)

One awesome thing that happened recently is that I, with the help of an amazing future leader (Maxime from Steve Jobs Family) started a new group for discussing current events in English at dinner time on Thursdays. We have had really fun rousing discussions about Syrian air strikes, and Libya 2 years after the removal of Muammar al-Gaddafi.  (Gaddafi is a big hero in parts of Africa because he was seen as being able to stand up to the West and be a strong leader.  It was an interesting discussion to say the least. ) Next week is an update on the Kenyan Mall hostage situation.  We talk a lot about root causes and I love watching the kids formalize and solidify their opinions.  It is one of my favorite things that happens each week.

Every Friday at 6:30 PM is Village Time, which is like a variety show.  The kids put on songs, presentations, show a news cast and perform skits.  Two weekends ago it was "Cousins Village Time".  With a cast of 9, I sang, formed a human pyramid, performed in a cross dressing fashion show, wrote a sketch about holding your breath and performed another about a fake village quiz.  It was a riot and the kids loved it.  If you find any footage on YouTube I will deny it.  All the cousins worked really hard on the show.

In Eleanor Roosevelt Family, things are going pretty well. Our marks (grades) have dropped a bit from first term and I think this is just due to the material getting harder but it is a subject of concern for my Big Sister / counselor Erica and family Mother Daphy.  I think the girls will be fine.  We have had some trips to the health clinic, and a few pretty minor behavioral things to discuss as a family (who's turn is it to fill up the water buckets, some small thefts, etc.) but generally I continue to be amazed at the harmony with which 15 high school girls from vulnerable backgrounds live together.  They certainly get along better than I did with my family at that age.

For my 'day job' lately, I am working most of the time with Sr. 6 students on college essays, scholarship applications and TOEFL test prep.  There are 20 students who have been chosen to attend 'Application Boot Camp' with Elizabeth and me for one extra week in the village after the school year ends to apply for as much as we can together while they still have computer access.  That should be a crazy/fun/exhausting week.  It is an amazing honor to work with the top 20 seniors, all so accomplished and driven and so grateful and appreciative.  They are quite a cohort and I am really going to miss them.  I cannot imagine working in a high school and seeing this happen every year.  It's like my favorite TV series ending, but the characters are still out there.  What is McNulty doing now?  Is Marlo still in the game?  I think I will be reflecting fondly on these kids for the rest of my life.

Recently I attended a management planning workshop at Muhaze Lake resort to discuss plans for 2014. It was a difficult event.  Budgets are shrinking.  Hard choices must be made.  There is a big question here about how to get the students more hands on practical skills. In the Rwandan job market there are plenty of college graduates and even Master's degree holders that are unemployed but there is great demand for plumbers, electricians and skilled labor.  Our kids could improve their chances of getting work when they leave Agahozo by getting practical job skills, but this is a big philosophical question. How much healing the heart is there time for?  What is the trade off if art therapy is cancelled for masonry classes?  If kids don't want to learn tailoring or carpentry should they be forced?  I'm glad this isn't up to me and a lot of educators are thinking hard about their experience.  I can say there were a lot of strong feelings in the room and that I know everyone has the interest of the child at heart.

The aftermath of the workshop was completely shenanigan free, as you can see here:

Huge thanks to TG for my most recent care package which had much amazing junk food and a flash drive full of good 'ol television that I do not have to try an download unsuccessfully.  When I get some time I will be watching the new (still new to me) Netflix episodes of Arrested Development.  I cannot wait!  ( I had to ride a moto in the rain for an hour to get the package home and it was totally worth it.)

Here are a few random photos from the last month or so in the village:

There was recently a big competition at the school for the whole district. Kids came from 14 nearby schools. The categories of competition were 1) Traditional Poem, 2) Traditional Dance 3) Original Song 4) Karate.  ASYV won the dance competition and the top two spots for the original song.  Here's a pic of the Karate.  The kid does a test, like a dressage test, with no sparring and is judged on execution.  It was fun to see how hard the kids concentrate.

Here's my little yellow house and here's our new water tank.  Note it's location and also the location of the dripping downspout:

This happens sometimes too.  (More for some of us than others.)  This is Jerrod and Miki at Umuycho Bar, about a 20 minute walk from the village.  Jerrod brought his computer to play video games and have some beers.

These pretty flowers were blooming all over the village toward the end of the dry season:

Adelaide recently starred in a skit about Clara Barton at school:

Hey Food Network friends: I recently saw this on a menu, but couldn't bring myself to order it.  Probably a copyright violation, but international property rights are only so well enforced here:

Okay.  That's about 1/10th of what you've missed but I'm out of time.  Hope you are well.

I would like to thank the Chinese...

... for introducing this new insect repellent which is very popular in Rwanda these days.

They are not kidding about Zanzibar: Part 2

(Sorry for the delay.  This is from early August.  We have not had much power, therefore internet in the village for the past few weeks...)

I cannot tell you how gorgeous the beaches of Eastern Zanzibar are and these photos really do not do it any justice.  I wanted to stay forever.  I asked about buying a house.  

View from my breakfast table

View from my front porch.  Amazing.

You know I am always into the fauna.  These little guys were all over the place I was staying.  They are adorable.

The beach on the east coast was so beautiful. The water was warm and clear.  I went for a lot of great swims.  Running on the beach was fun too. The seafood was delicious and I ate spicy octopus soup every meal I could. 

The weirdest thing, for me, having mostly gone to the beach in North Carolina was the tides.  High tide and low tide on Zanzibar were about half a mile away.  So at high tide, the ocean came almost to the steps of the place I was staying.  At low tide, standing on those steps you cannot even see the ocean.  You can go walking out on these sandy mud flats with some small tide pools for ages, walking toward the sea.  There were lots of sand dollars, star fish and sea anemones in along the way.  This leads to some funny images, because bars and restaurants that are beach front at high tide, are in the middle of a muddy wasteland at low tide.

Boats resting waiting for the tide to come back to them.

selfie on  a windy beach

my view from my seat on the tiny plane i flew in back to dar

They are not kidding about Zanzibar

Part 1: Stonetown

Sorry.  This is cliche.  I was ready for Zanz to be touristy and not all that it's cracked up to be and it so exceeded my expectations.  Really beautiful.  Really nice.  Stonetown is cute and quaint and has tiny twisty roads and fun shops.  Immeasurable stray cats and weird tall rangy chickens. 

View from the Ferry on the way in from Dar

The view from my hotel rooftop in Stonetown.

The view from my hotel rooftop + me

There are 'ruins' like this everywhere in Stonetown

And lots and lots and lots of stray cats

I think I would really get a kick out of the Zanzibar Weightlifting Association

S.U.Z. - I am looking up if they have any master's programs that interest me.

weird tall chicken

I love this location.  Final slave market site in Africa, Restaurant, Youth Hostile, Beauty Salon and Art Gallery.  Oh and Anglican Cathedral. Just that.  That's all.

More stray cats. Everywhere.

Stonetown was a fun, walkable little town with lots of cafes, restaurants and shops.  Bill Clinton happened to be in town with the CGI while I was there and I ended up having a sundowner drink on a fancy hotel rooftop right next to Chelsea.  You can get there on a 2 hour ferry (air conditioned) from Dar that has pretty views, or you can take a tiny, tiny plane (more on that in the next post).

Most of the 'roads' in Stonetown are too narrow for a car to pass and wind around in a labyrinthine fashion.  I enjoyed playing hide-and-seek with myself, getting lost and then getting back to my hotel again.  As you plan your visit, you don't really need more than 2 days in Stonetown because you need to get to the beautiful beach! (See next post)

THE BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT OF MY ENTIRE LIFE: THE ONLY MEAT IN THE SAUCE

You know I get sick of cold showers and communication barriers and rice.  I am so sick of rice.  And I get a little cranky about doing my laundry in a bucket and all the dust in the dry season and all the rain in the rainy season.  And then out of the blue, I get the biggest compliment of my life.  Literally.

I bet there are teachers working crummy jobs for no pay in some American public school system for 20 years that deserve something like this a thousand times more than me, but the trick is that I am working with the best kids, the absolute best kids.  Rwandan kids, at least these ones, are not 'too cool for school'.  They don't have sarcastic senses of humor or a need to distance themselves from authority to be cool.  (Is every high school teacher reading this booking a one way plane ticket right now?)

So here at ASYV, we are running a little competition for the seniors.  We are inviting about 20 students to stay for a week after finals and the National Exam for 'Application Boot Camp'.  A lot of our kids won't have access to computers or native English speakers after they leave ASYV so the more work they can do applying for scholarships before they leave, the better.  There are 122 seniors, and they'd all like to stay, but we can't help everyone intensely, so we are going to select about 20 kids to work on application essays and collecting transcripts and letters of recommendations and whatnot.  The competition for the selection process is fierce.  They all want to stay and do this.

The application for ABC is one essay from the common application (... actually last year's common application but that is a long story) and one essay question from the Mastercard Scholars program.  The thinking here being whoever is selected has a good start on the applications we want to work on at the camp. The first essay you can choose from topics like a fictional character that impacted you, a national issue important to you or a person that influenced you.

Immaculee asked me if I would help her correct the English in her essay.  I said yes and we made an appointment.  I like Immaculee, and she's a great student, but she's a quiet kid and I don't know her that well.  We don't eat together or hang out outside of class.  I  didn't think I had made that big an impression.  Then she gave me her essay and I just started to cry:

     I am influenced by an inspiring woman who is always helping young adults to find their destination of the future. Her name is Courtney Kelly. She is an American of 37 years old from New York. She has been an IT business worker for 14 years after her graduation from university. After that, she decided to change her career into other thing she felt that she was more passionate about. This is helping Rwandan teens in Agahozo-Shalom as a volunteer, where I met her teaching English in class preparing for TOEFL. She influenced my life, thus I became a new person.

     First and foremost, she influenced me in social life. She used to help people in different domains such as teaching them English, advising them and this taught me to help others. Now I give any kind of help to my classmates and this gave me a good name in my class. Next, in social life I am influenced by her kindness and being flexible. I use to be a hard person; I never joked but through observing how Courtney is humble and how she jokes with people I decided to change my behavior.

     Second, I have been influenced in education by her support by teaching English without any reward and knowing that it is a hard issue to handle because English in the village is a problem but she never gives up. This influenced me very much. Right now I can express myself in English and I learned from her to continue what you started. Now I love teaching others. Additionally, I had been influenced to be motivated in studying because I saw her one day very sick but she came to teach us English. This made me to love school now I cannot miss school, even at any circumstance.

     Furthermore, I have been influenced in the domain of health.  In fact, I was a kind of person who cannot do sport, even running 10 meters was a problem. Now my mind had been influenced by her because she does sport without thinking on other factors like being a woman or making herself tired. Right now I can do sport, even run a long distance. I reduced the fat and my circulatory system is functioning well therefore my I am healthier. Above all, I used to over work and getting tired every time I had head pain because I did not know how to plan for my day. Influenced by how Courtney plans for her day, now I am the best organized student in my class. I do not feel any stress or any more head pain.

     All in all, my life has been influenced very much and it is obvious, her kindness, her confidence, her hard work and her flexibility made me special and a changed person, not only I personally, but also many people in the village. I can estimate and say that we take her as the only meat in the sauce.

Visiting Honorine

I have so much to tell you.  It's been a while since we had time to talk.  This is the start of the third term and everyone made it back safe and sound this time to the village.  I can't believe I'm 2/3rd of the way done with my year at Agahozo.  It really has flown by.  I feel like it's almost time for me to go back home and there's still so much I haven't achieved.

Let me tell you about my visit to Honorine's home in Gisozi, a Kigali suburb near the Genocide Memorial.

Of the 15 girls in Eleanor Roosevelt family, only two 'went out' (left the village) on this 'break'.  As mentioned in a previous post, due to changed academic requirements for sitting for the leaving exam, 9 of the girls in my family had to stay through the break and study for what will amount to be a Junior High graduation exam.  Four others stayed and participated in an amazing 2 week theatre program that they absolutely adored.  Honorine and Agnes were the only two to have already completed the required exam and were not in the theatre program.  

I visited Honorine at her home on the first day of the vacation.  She has an amazing adoptive mom who would be the subject of a CNN Hero documentary or at the very least an episode of Extreme Home Makeover anywhere but Rwanda, but in Rwanda her story just blends in, as not that extreme.  Josephine has no biological children, but has 16 adopted children with no other family or guardian.  They all live, when not at school, in a very modest, tiny home.  When I visited most of the other kids were still at school, so I met one younger brother (8), one younger sister (15) and Josephine.  She speaks no English but smiles and hugs a lot and was happy to read to me from her Kinyarwanda Bible.  The family has no income and lives entirely on donations (mostly informal).  Josephine was a baller and when the kids turned on pop music on a tiny radio to dance, she got up and danced her heart out with them.  (Of course I had no choice but to join in.)

I couldn't believe how small the home is and there really isn't space for everyone to be inside at once, but somehow it works.  They really enjoyed the photo session so I took quite a few.   Below is a small fraction. These are taken in a common courtyard area a few paces from their home.

Josephine

Josephine, Honorine and two of her siblings

At one point Josephine literally ran back into the house and came back with this ID card.  No one could explain it to me but they all asked for it to be photographed and to be photographed with it.  I think this is someone who has passed, but I don't know the relation.

The document

Zoomed in on this ID card at their insistence

Family Portrait?

Honorine takes a photo

Josephine, Honorine and me

In some ways this was a tricky visit, because Honorine doesn't speak that much English and she was the only one who could translate.  There was a lot of smiling and nodding and hugging, but not to much to say.  I could tell that Josephine was a gracious and welcoming host, that Honorine was proud to have me there and that everyone was very friendly.

When Honorine came to pick me up at the designated meeting spot, she was so excited.  Then the whole way through the dusty walkways up to her neighborhood, about a 30 minutes walk, she held my hand and smiled and giggled while the residents stopped what they were doing to see what the Muzungu was doing in the area.  I was glad to see the type of living conditions she had and honored to thank Josephine for taking care of so many abandoned children.  She is a true inspiration.