it's true what they say...

I know I haven't posted in awhile, training is a lot of the same with not too many landmark events. Its crazy to believe that in just 9 days I will be swearing in as a Peace Corps volunteer! The last three weeks we have been doing something called model school where we have been teaching around 700 students each morning. It has been really fun and a lot of work to plan lessons and teach in the middle of also attending tech sessions, language class, and sessions on health, cross cultural, safety and security. The days have been long and sometimes mundane but there have been a few highlights that I would like to share.
For one thing, it was wonderful to teach the kids in our classes. The sheer fact that PC administration was able to find 700 students who wanted to just for fun come to school on their holiday break is pretty amazing. The kids are so motivated and eager and there was more than one moment when I teared up at the overwhelming preciousness of them! There is no way you could get kids in the states to come to three weeks of school on break. I realized just how different it is to teach English as a second language as opposed to teaching an English class in the states. I guess teaching wasn't really something I was worried about in coming here but I now realize that it is going to be incredibly difficult to learn to teach kids english who literally speak no English. struggle. and challenge. I am definitely open to good ESL resources that anyone might know of.
Another highlight was last weekend we look a trip on Sunday to a national park. We drove in a bus for three hours through the AMAZING countryside of Rwanda, waited for an hour and a half to pay and be admitted, went for an hour long hike, got caught in a torrential thunderstorm that included hail in the middle of the rainforest, waited for another hour and a half for the second group to finish and then drove three hours back. All in all, a lot fo travel time for a fairly short hike but worth it. It's apparently true what they say, it does rain in the rainforest...a lot. It also hails in tropical rainforests, lesser known fact....I guess hailforest didn't have the same ring to it. In short, this country is amazingly beautiful and its very exciting to slowly by slowly start to feel at home here.
A few other highlights have been our weekend dinners. There is a guys house just near to ours in our little village of Muganda Mure and every weekend we think up creative things to cook. We have made some amazing stirfrys, veggie fajitas, bean burgers, PUMKIN CHOCOLATE CHIP BREAD (shout out to Annie for rocking that! on a charcoal stove no less), french toast, pumpkin soup and grilled cheese! Basically we eat the same thing every day at the center and so when we get the freedom to cook ourselves we take advantage and go big!
The other major major highlight as of late is, of course, today! Well, and yesterday. Yesterday (Christmas Eve) we had a big white elephant gift exchange which was great because Rwandans have a love of all that is cheesy and flashy so finding entertaining gifts was not a problem. Especially popular this season was the Obama swag-beanies, bags and belt buckles. There were also a lot of ridiculous children's toys and a few american candy bars that people had gotten in packages from the states (those went quickly). Then we had a talent show and the people from my Muganda Mure (farside as we call ourselves) clique performed Crayola Doesn't Make a Color. It was fun, and I was thoroughly impressed with the talent in our training group! There were dances, karate, songs, spoken word and even a re-inactment of the Hiphopapotamous! then we had a big dance party and ate fries! haha This morning I went to a very long, very warm but very enjoyable Christmas church service and now I am about to go eat christmas chili at the center! Tonight I get the best present of all because my very own Joelee is coming to visit and its going to be such a blessing to have him here!
I definitely am feeling some homesickness loud and clear today but I know that this day is just as special no matter where in the world I am and I am so grateful to celebrate Jesus' birth in another culture and language!!
I wanted to send you all my love today and know that I am thinking of you and missing you!! Merry Christmas to you and may your day be filled with Christ centered love!

Site visit, big dreams and thankfulness

Last week I crossed a major milestone in my training as a Peace Corp volunteer: site visit. Peace Corps assigns each volunteer to a different town based on the requests of the local schools. Apparently about 100 schools in Rwanda requested a Peace Corp volunteer and then PC staff selected 65 sites to send volunteers. Last week we got to spend 5 days getting to know our village and the people we will be working with for the next two years. My site assignment is a small village called Rukara in the eastern district of Kayonza about an hour from Kigali.
I travelled with four other Peace Corps Trainees to my site because we were in the same general direction from Nyanza. As we approached Rukara my stomach was in knotted anticipation to see where I would be living and working for the next two years! The bus I was on stopped at the side of the road where there is a small sign announcing Rukara 7km. I got off and greeted my headmaster who had met me at the stop and then hopped on the back of a moto bike to ride up a steep hill to my village.
Rukara is a quiet place with friendly people and little to no industry. Most people there are substistence farmers and there is definitely a culture of sustaining the status quo rather than one of progress and moving forward. One of my favorite things about Rukara was the women! I met so many incredible, lively women and I am very excited to work with them perhaps in community, vocational classes when I live there. The secretary at my school and her sister are two such young women that I anticipate will be my best friends while living there. Though they speak no English we still had so much fun together and they give me some good extra motivation to learn Kinyarwanda.
There is a convent founded by the Spanish church in the village and this is where I stayed during my visit. For the first 4 days of my stay the sisters were actually on a vow of silence and prayers, which they do periodically, so no one could really talk to me! I was very confused until about 10 pm on my last night there when all the sisters came running to me to explain that they are actually very fun and love to sing and dance and talk but only could not this week! Haha that was a relief I must admit because the sisters were not lying, we had a wonderful time celebrating the end of their week of silence and prayers with singing, dancing and REAL CAKE! Nuns are such a unique group of people. They have so much joy and softness but a pronounced stealiness in their core and they definitely understand sisterhood. I will be living at a house owned by the convent during my service so I am excited to be a frequent visitor and honorary sister with them. There are about 20 Rwandan sisters and two Spanish nuns. My brain was about to explode trying to remember my Spanish from high school at the same time as I tried to construct sentences in Kinyarwanda!! Who would have thought that all those years of Spanish would pay off in Africa!? And I will certainly be using it because none of the nuns-Spanish or Rwandan-speak any English!
My primary assignment in Rukara is to teach Secondary school English. Rwanda just recently switched from French to English as their national language and around the same time they extended their public education from 6 years to 9. Schools have struggled to handle the influx of students at the same time as they shifted to a language that neither students nor teachers have a firm grasp on. I will be helping fill the gap and also introducing new pedagogy and learner centered teaching techniques. Teaching is only a part time job however, and the rest of my time will be spent training teachers, teaching English to different members of the community and doing secondary projects. As I walked around Rukara, meeting people and getting a feel for the great need in the community, my mind was racing with ideas for secondary projects. Murals, art and dance clubs, women’s vocational classes, health sessions….the list is endless. Peace Corps administration and even the other volunteers seem to downplay secondary projects, emphasizing the need for these things to start slowly and have small goals. I am not a small goal kind of a girl. I can’t help but dream big dreams. I am not sure if this makes me naïve or just foolish but I am filled with excitement and anticipation at the change and progress that is possible in Rukara. I know without a doubt that there will be tremendous challenges and difficulties. I know I will struggle with loneliness and purpose but I also know I have hope in a big God with a big love for his people in need and I am THRILLED to be his hands and feet in Rukara for the next two years.
This Sabbath day I am filled with joy and peace and big dreams that seem a little impossible but well isn’t that what its all about?? If not then what the heck are we doing here??
I definitely missed home this week of Thanksgiving. I hope you all had remarkable holidays filled with gratefulness for both your blessings and your struggles. I am grateful for the incredible support system God has blessed me with both at home and here. I am grateful for the new friendships I am building here and for dear friends all over the world. I am grateful for the profound beauty of the country where I am living. I am grateful that I dont have to cook turkeys in massive holes dug in the ground every Thanksgiving (haha) and I am grateful for the opportunities I have each day to love the one in front of me, to be excellent for the kingdom and to be the hands and feet of Christ.
I hope your Sabbath is also filled with God-sized dreams and visions for bringing heaven to earth whether you are in Rwanda, Kenya, New Zealand or Nashville. :)

The Complexity of Collectivity

Rwandan society, like much of the east African community, is based around a collective social identity rather individualism which is the foundational social identity in the western world. The phrase “it takes a village (or umudugudu in Kinyarwanda) to raise a child” is very much a reality here. Children are fed, disciplined, instructed and herded by the entire village and not just the biological mother or father. In fact, there is no word in Kinyarwanda for the sister of my mother, she is simply called mama wacu-our mother.
Likewise, there is an expectation that any surplus in the household budget to go towards a neighbor’s hospital bill, sister’s children’s school fees or brother’s schooling. In the wonderfully insightful book “Africa Friends and Money Matters” the author lays out the stark differences between the American/western economic system and the African one. He argues that the African system is structured so that everyone has just enough and does not reward growth or innovation as more valuable than subsistence of the whole. Western capitalism on the other hand is structured such that growth is the ultimate goal and without growth there is great civil unrest. The African economic system based on the collective social identity incentivizes generosity and community solidarity. The western system based on individualism and growth can incentivize greed and amassing of individual wealth.
At first glance, it can appear that Africans have got it right when it comes to a socially just, equitable and generous economic system. It may not be growing rapidly or driving the most innovative progress but at least everyone is taken care of equally right? I think my mindset has been that Africans have the social mindset of economics on the right track and just needed to work on the innovation, investment side of things a little more so that there would be more wealth for everyone. Three weeks into my Rwanda experience, I am thinking that things are much more complicated than they first appeared. It is more complicated because the collective social identity that makes Africans so wonderfully generous and community minded is the same thinking that binds their hands when it comes to innovation and development. The collective social identity that encourages solidarity also incentivizes conformity. It becomes highly undesirable to be different in anyway. From how you dress, to how you clean, to how you make money, different is seen as bad.
Rwandans are quick to criticize a person who chooses to shirk social expectations. This holding each other accountable can be good when it helps make a city cleaner (for example on the monthly day of nation wide community service called umuganda), but it can be destructive when a person trying to increase efficiency by doing an old thing in a new way is ostracized by their community.
I think this spirit of conformity is what I am struggling most with right now. I want to integrate fully into Rwandan community, to be accepted as part of the umudugudu. To do so I must conform to the unspoken rules of dress, behavior and interactions. My very existence here, however, is an oxymoron. I am here to make a change, to facilitate progress because there is a need for change-otherwise Peace Corps would not have sent volunteers here. Change and progress require a breaking with a status quo and a shift in the way things have always been done. Thus my life is lived in the tension between conforming to the pressures to behave, dress and interact like my Rwandan friends and challenging the way they do things in a humble attempt at making things better.
I have never been one to go with the flow of popular opinion or one to conform to the wishes of others. I am having difficulty swallowing the necessity of conformity for the sake of progress. This unforeseen personal challenge is an interesting microcosm of the difficulty of development in east Africa. And like development in east Africa, it requires a great deal of humility, listening, patience and a long long time to see progress. I must learn to swallow my western ideals of individualism and independence if I wish to enter in to the fabric of the collective. If I want to make change I must first make myself nothing, taking on the posture of a servant so that I might work from within to move the collective forward in solidarity instead of conformity. That is why I am here, and that is what I must remind myself on days when I think having a wrinkly shirt is not such a big deal or I don’t feel like greeting everyone in the neighborhood on my way to work or I don’t want to bow to the strict hierarchy in Rwandan schools. I must live in the tension between integration and change, and between solidarity and conformity. I pray for strength to be ready for such an existence, for humility to sustain it and for love to endure it.

In solidarity but never conformity (and of course in shalom)
cg

A Scar is Never Ugly

Peace Corps is very intentional to ease its volunteers into their country of service, in Rwanda, a post-conflict country, they are particularly careful. I arrived, along with 70 other volunteers, to Kigali, Rwanda on Thursday evening where we spent three days in a compound in Kigali doing basic orientation- safety, health, culture, greetings in Kinyarwanda and getting to know the other volunteers. The volunteers in my group come from all over the country, range in age from 21-60 and include three married couples. The range of experience is vast from a few people who have spent time in Africa (probably about 5 of us) to people who have never been out of the country. We are all going to be teachers, either math, science or English, but even the experiences there range from long time teacher to only having tutored once or twice. The great diversity in our group is both a blessing and a challenge because we have SO many different skills and gifts to learn from but we also have to go slowly slowly through all material to address everyone’s individual situation. I found it a bit difficult at first to bond with the group because the primary source of bonding in the first week is the shock, awe and shared experience of exploring/seeing Africa for the first time. There is one other girl here who has been in east Africa and she has been my buddy. Thankfully we were roommates while in Kigali so we could freely share our thoughts and feelings.

The most pivotal point in our few days in Kigali was our visit to the Genocide Memorial Museum. This museum was build to commemorate and remember the genocide of 1994 and to declare to the world “never again.” When we first arrived we placed flowers on the mass graves of 250,000 people who are buried on that ground. This was a hugely emotional action for me as I considered the fact that 250,000 people is essentially 100 Furman Universities buried there. When I thought of the mothers, fathers, children, young people, elderly and babies who were brutally murdered I broke down. The genocide was the result of hatred that had grown over several decades beginning with Belgian colonization and perpetuated by extremists and propaganda. The first floor of the museum discusses the Rwandan genocide but the second floor presents information about other genocides throughout the 20^th century: the holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Namibian genocide and others. The brokenness of the world was staring me in the face and my heart was heavy with grief at the capacity of humankind for evil. I know in my heart that I am no better and I sincerely believe that. I was overwhelmed with the need for Jesus in the world today just as much at it ever has been. I was also filled with admiration for the Rwandan people who have done amazing things in picking themselves up and moving on. Walking down the street afterwards I was struck with the laughter, chatter and well-for lack of a better word- normalness of the people. There is definitely a kind of quiet strength in the Rwandan people that is not seen elsewhere in east Africa.

One thing that stuck out to me as I left the museum was the grave failure of the west to help. After the holocaust, the United Nations created an anti-genocide arm that was supposed to enforce “never again.” Many times the western world has been faced with genocide they have chosen to turn away or argue semantics instead of doing something. I felt guilt at the legacy of my country and frustration that the ideals we spout do not match up with our actions all too often. Even now in Darfur and the Congo mass killings are happening, but little (relatively speaking) has been done. Just something to think about I guess. Being here in Rwanda makes not only the Rwandan genocide seem more real but also makes the acute suffering of people all over the world seem more tangible as well. Facts and statistics can be thrown around a university classroom with indifference but when you look into the scarred face of a genocide survivor you begin to see the flesh and heart of those statistics. Action thus becomes more urgent. And let me assure you, it is urgent.

There is a beautiful quote in the book I just read called Little Bee. It says, “ …I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make and agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”

After our stay in Kigali we moved to Nyanza about 2 hours away where we will be staying for our 11 weeks of language, technical and cultural training. As I walk through the market here and practice my rocky Kinyarwanda (local language) I look into faces of those who survived. Some scars are external like many here in Rwanda but many more are internal. We all bear scars that the scar makers want us to believe are ugly. Christ died so that our scars could be made beautiful. And they are beautiful because they tell the story of his grace and great love for us-in that we can rejoice.

So rejoice today in your scars and the beautiful scars of those around you. Rejoice that you survived and choose to defy the scar makers knowing that they too have scars. Each person is in need of grace and each person is infinitely worthy of love for Christ first loved us.

In shalom and in defiance of the scar makers,

cg

all aboard

well, my ship as been pointed and soon I set sail. I decided to accept an invitation from the Peace Corps to serve as a high school English teacher in Rwanda. three months of pre-service training on the ground in Rwanda and then 2 years of being a teacher. an adventure awaits full of humbling moments, frustrations, small triumphs and powerful relationships...at least thats what I am hoping for.

I think the part I am most excited about is that I get to work with Rwandan teachers to develop new curriculum that focuses on critical thinking and problem solving(!!!) which is EXACTLY what I want to do! Also I will be able to integrate some of the As We Forgive stuff I have been working on and with into my class! It is so exciting when you have those brief moments of "wow THATS what God was doing there." Well that is how I feel about this placement-though I have never been to Rwanda-or really even wanted to go-it is SO apparent that the Lord has brought me to this place and equipped me with experiences that will be of tremendous value when I am there.

I am thrilled to really become part of the community and get to know my neighbors in a meaningful, long-term way.

I am not so excited to miss three falls, three thanksgivings and three christmas's but I know that the abundance I will gain from this job will make the sacrifices seem small!

Full speed ahead!

transition reflection

i am at a point where i get to hopefully move from transient to some form of consistent. i am kind of over the three month stint but not ready for the decade long one. i have a lot of fears right now but not the same ones as my friends. i am not afraid of dangerous places or not making enough money or staying single. i am not afraid of the unknown or unfamiliar. my fear is kind of nameless. it stems from a deeprooted belief that the world is not as it should be. we are far from shalom. far from rightness.

for the next few months i will again be transient. teaching. loving. serving. but only temporarily, as usual. in all this coming and going i know that any good done through me can only be evidence of the power of the Holy Spirit and God's work because it sure as heck has very little to do with me.

i dont think i want to be a billboard for social movements. i dont spend my time learning about trendy co-ops or researching scandals while pretending that i hate trendy things. i dont want to be bitter or angry or hypocritical. is that bad? i am not as edgy as my friends. i am not as angry as them either. i feel as though i dont need to read that stuff to know the world is broken. and to spend my energy on that kind of incessent movement watching would just make me tired. i would instead like to focus on the people, loving them, serving them, working shoulder to shoulder with them to make change in tangible ways not nessicarily loud ways. sometimes i want to be like two of my friends. very with-it, knowing the cool blogs and lingo. but i dont. and i dont want to. i think part of me doesnt want to spend any extra time talking about the change and the anger and the solidarity but wants instead to do it. though i might go to a protest now and again i am not a protestor. i am a creator. recently i decided that when i am creating is when i am most alive. not tearing down but building. and i dont want to create or build without being asked to. i dont want to sit at home on my laptop at 3 in the morning thinking of the plan to "save" anyone. i want to GO. i think God has put a desire in my heart to go to the dangerous places and love people until their hearts change, to work for a shalom on earth that provides a scandalous, fragrant hint of the eternal shalom to come. That will be the true structural change. but you cant work for small changes without having some larger, bigger, seemingly impossible change as the end goal. for me that is a new economic system that values people over growth. a prison system meant to rehabilitate rather that crush. a justice system meant to protect rather than perpetuate. a school system that teaches critical thinking and creativity instead of memorization and conformity. a church that LOVES RADICALLY, gives irrationally, serves thoroughly, is colorful and joyful and in the forgotten places.