Today is my four month anniversary. Its like that point in the relationship when you start to know each other well enough to feel comfortable with silences and establish routines. You also start to notice things you don’t like about each other that you hadn’t noticed before and some of the initial giddiness wears off. I would say all of those things are true for me right now. Four months into my 27 months of service I am settling in, feeling more and more at home but also struck by the reality that this is my life, not just a trip and that teaching is hard, hard work.
The last month has been full of ups and downs but they seem to balance each other out-if I have a rough day at school my time after school in the community is extra encouraging and if I have a frustrating day in the community with drunken men or screaming children, class goes well. So all in all I am doing well. I really feel blessed to be at my sight with really wonderful friends and a stunningly beautiful landscape. My s1 students finally came and I am beginning my third week with them. Teaching them has been one heck of a challenge because their language skills are SO SO low and they are just so young and do not take school very seriously. They are very confused and frustrated by all the new teaching techniques I use with them because my explanations generally go over their head. But buhoro buhoro (slowly slowly). Many days I leave class feeling very defeated but then there are those few moments where the students seem to get it and get excited about English and I rejoice! There was a stretch of days where I didn’t even teach at all because of surprise holidays, local elections (all the teachers just decided not to come back to school after voting), teachers telling me they needed my hours, and poop in the classroom that meant students refused to enter. Awww I am learning patience and not to be married to my plans that’s for sure. I try to work hard and be prepared for excellence but just let it go when things change…which they usually do. I am also learning a great deal about humility as day in and day out I am faced with the ugly reality of my pride. But my life here is a humbling existence so I feel confident that I am growing☺ just very very aware of my need for Christ.
One highlight of this last month was I had all the secondary school teachers (about 20) over to my house for dinner. They seemed to really appreciate that and start to realize that I am meant to be their collegue and friend and not just some outsider. Rwandan’s are a guarded people and they take their sweet time to warm p to you and decide if they will trust you or not. I think they are deciding to trust me. Which is a very good thing!
Buhoro buhoro. ☺
I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you some things you may not know about Rwanda. There are many surprising and ridiculous and wonderful things about this country that you should know about:
1) IT IS BEAUTIFUL! I mean really. Rwanda is a very very small country but it has volcanoes, mountains, grasslands, rainforest, lakes, forests, and even an island! It is nicknamed the land of a thousand hills for a reason, there are SO SO many hills in every direction so that going for a bike ride is a very courageous endeavor. I am just about 8 km from a beautiful lake called Muhazi and goodness it is breathtaking. I went down to the water for the first time a few weeks ago to a little restaurant called Jambo Beach and kind of never wanted to leave. J
2) 1) Fashion is a very very serious thing here. There is this absolutely fantastic fabric called ibitenge which the women wear and it comes in about a thousand different shades and patterns. I seriously have to control myself from new fabric every week at the Wednesday market. The women here wear their igitenge with pride and flair especially on Sunday to church. But what may be even more surprising to you is that men’s fashion is an even bigger deal here than women’s fashion. All the rage this season is the half length tie and the long pointy shoes (that require the men to walk like peacocks!). Also very popular are the satin shirts and shiny pants. They don’t mess around.
3) Kinyarwanda is a ridiculous language (oh wait you may have already figured that out from my venting in other posts) haha ☺ I’ll get there.
4) Rwanda has an incredibly efficient and active government. There are so so so many initiatives aimed at encouraging development, creating a culture of advancement and supporting the poor. And Rwandans LOVE their local government. There are a lot of different levels of government: the umudugudu (or village), the sell, the sector, the district, the province and THEN the country. And all this in a country smaller than most of the states in the US.
5) Rwandans are really really good sharers. In fact, its pretty socially unacceptable to eat alone. I gave up on trying to eat dinner by myself. If I really want to cook then I do and just bring it over to Claudine and Chantel’s house to share and add to whatever we are eating there. A person with a job may pay for the school fees of 5 or 6 kids who aren’t their own and house family members in need. Homelessness is not a problem here and there are no street kids outside of the big cities. That’s because no one is without a family of some sort and people just take care of each other in a really remarkable way.
6) Rwandans have not been too creative with their food over the years. They are constantly weirded out by my recipes. They pretty much have two meals: ibitoke (plaintains) with peanut sauce (and maybe a tomato thrown in) and beans (maybe some cabbage) and rice. I am working on trying to start a garden in which to plant some new veggies like broccoli and spinach and herbs to a) introduce more nutrition and b) just add some VARIETY! If my little garden here at home is successful, the headmaster agreed to allocate some land on the school property to plant some new foods with the incentive that any kid who helps gets to take home the food. Hopefully I can find a few nutrient dense foods that Rwandan’s like and maybe introduce it to the community on a wider scale. All of this is again, buhoro buhoro. You can just dump new food on a culture and demand that they like it just because its good for them. Slowly by slowly☺
Well that’s all for now friends! I hope February has been a tremendous month for you thus far despite the SNOW (I think I would die in the cold at this point) and that Valentines Day was full to the brim of love☺
Much much love from me to you!
cg
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
called by name
I tell you what…the days here are crazy long but the weeks seem to fly by! I realized (from the questions of a number of dear friends) that I had not written since I began teaching! Well, I believe God heard the prayers voiced in my last blog post because the very next day I started teaching. It was certainly a slow slow start with a painfully floppy schedule at first but each week it gets better. For the last three weeks I have been teaching S2 and S3 students and it has been a lot of fun. The lessons have been kind of random since these are not going to be my permanent students (once the S1 students return on the 7th of Feb I will shift to teach them full time). Basically I have just been choosing random topics that I thought were interesting or fun to talk about and practice different kinds of activities. So far we have covered question words, letter writing (Emma and Tess can get excited since they have about 100 letters coming their way), advertising, futball vocabulary, a story called Police Chase and “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.” Its been fun and I am starting to feel more comfortable in my position as a teacher. It is always difficult to find the balance between being friendly and fun with the students and being strict and authoritative, I think I am starting to find my stride. It will certainly be nice, however, when I have my own students so that I can start building my units, establishing procedures, and knowing students names etc.
Rukara is wonderful, it is starting to feel more and more like home. We are entering the hot, dry season which is a bit painful, and we have had a rude introduction this week with incredibly high temperatures and no water in the whole village.
My house is now all decorated (painted some scrap wood from a construction pile with sunflowers….I am so predictable sometimes) and I have a bed and bookshelves and a table which beats the heck out of having piles of stuff on the floor.
Today was the first meeting of a new club called G.L.O.W. club, it stands for Girls Leading Our World, which is VERY exciting. I am really hoping this club can be a safe place for girls to blossom. In Rwandan high schools there are far fewer girls than boys so as my training director in Nyanza liked to say the girls who are still there are the survivors who have resisted family pressure to drop out to work at home, have children or get married. Girls also fall behind boys in performance in school and it is just clear that they are (as a whole-obviously there are those standout girls in every class) more insecure and shy in class. As many of you probably know I LOVE WOMEN and that means I am super pumped at the prospect of encouraging, challenging and getting to know in a personal way the teenage girls in my village! I gave the girls a long speech about the purpose, method and ideology of the club and summed it up by saying the club is about fun, learning and serving i.e. its going to be a blast. My good friend and neighbor Floflo is going to help me with the club which is SO EXCITING! She is a lawyer and an orphan and is just an incredible example of a powerful, smart, independent woman who is quickly becoming a dear friend! She is not very involved in the Rukara community even though she has lived here for a year and she thinks I am way weird for the way I am always moving and talking to people but she puts up with me…hahaha. BUT she asked if she can be apart of GLOW! I about cried with joy!
Of course I am bubbling over with ideas but God has been faithful to give me patience to just be with people before I even begin to try and problem solve or implement my ideas. And for once in my short little life I am ok with that. I am actually having so much joy in taking it slow.
I used to say at Furman that I was trying to do so much that I was not doing anything with excellence but merely half doing everything. Well right now I feel I am in a season where I can actually do things with excellence because life is slow and I am surprising myself by really finding joy in the slowness.
My language skills are coming along and I am starting to feel like I have real friends here. Its also funny because my friends are real adults. Haha After being in school for so long is kind of funny to suddenly find that my natural community is adults-lawyers, secretaries and teachers. ☺
The people here are slowly starting to recognize me as a person rather than just a Muzungu, and the hollers of "Muzungu!" are slowly being replaced with calls of "Ket Ket" (their interpretation of Caitlyn) or "Gasaro" (my kinyarwanda name which means rare bead).
Isn’t it funny how there is just something about being known that just changes everything? It seems as though this desire to be known is one of the core, inescapable characteristics of human kind. It is why we have blogs and twitter and facebook. It drives our friendships and shapes even how we view ourselves. It seems as though people are scrambling to be known by any means necessary. But why are we scrambling? The Bible has told us that God has called us by name. We are known by him-completely and deeply known. This truth has become more meaningful to me in the last month. My heart leaps a little every time someone in my village calls out my name and not just muzungu, and yet the God of the universe has called me by name and I am his! I am blown away and humbled by this powerful truth and I pray that I would be more and more moved by this everyday. If the God of the universe has called me by name, whom shall I fear? Why should I scramble to be known or understood, accepted or proven worthwhile by worldly standards? I have been called by name. It is a journey and a process to really internalize and live out this truth and a joy that we get to do this journey in community.
I hope today you feel in your core that you are called by name-that you don’t have to scramble, that you are loved and that you have been counted worthy on his account. That truth frees us to love deeply and encourage one another on to good works for his Glory and not ours☺
Much much love and shalom
cg
Rukara is wonderful, it is starting to feel more and more like home. We are entering the hot, dry season which is a bit painful, and we have had a rude introduction this week with incredibly high temperatures and no water in the whole village.
My house is now all decorated (painted some scrap wood from a construction pile with sunflowers….I am so predictable sometimes) and I have a bed and bookshelves and a table which beats the heck out of having piles of stuff on the floor.
Today was the first meeting of a new club called G.L.O.W. club, it stands for Girls Leading Our World, which is VERY exciting. I am really hoping this club can be a safe place for girls to blossom. In Rwandan high schools there are far fewer girls than boys so as my training director in Nyanza liked to say the girls who are still there are the survivors who have resisted family pressure to drop out to work at home, have children or get married. Girls also fall behind boys in performance in school and it is just clear that they are (as a whole-obviously there are those standout girls in every class) more insecure and shy in class. As many of you probably know I LOVE WOMEN and that means I am super pumped at the prospect of encouraging, challenging and getting to know in a personal way the teenage girls in my village! I gave the girls a long speech about the purpose, method and ideology of the club and summed it up by saying the club is about fun, learning and serving i.e. its going to be a blast. My good friend and neighbor Floflo is going to help me with the club which is SO EXCITING! She is a lawyer and an orphan and is just an incredible example of a powerful, smart, independent woman who is quickly becoming a dear friend! She is not very involved in the Rukara community even though she has lived here for a year and she thinks I am way weird for the way I am always moving and talking to people but she puts up with me…hahaha. BUT she asked if she can be apart of GLOW! I about cried with joy!
Of course I am bubbling over with ideas but God has been faithful to give me patience to just be with people before I even begin to try and problem solve or implement my ideas. And for once in my short little life I am ok with that. I am actually having so much joy in taking it slow.
I used to say at Furman that I was trying to do so much that I was not doing anything with excellence but merely half doing everything. Well right now I feel I am in a season where I can actually do things with excellence because life is slow and I am surprising myself by really finding joy in the slowness.
My language skills are coming along and I am starting to feel like I have real friends here. Its also funny because my friends are real adults. Haha After being in school for so long is kind of funny to suddenly find that my natural community is adults-lawyers, secretaries and teachers. ☺
The people here are slowly starting to recognize me as a person rather than just a Muzungu, and the hollers of "Muzungu!" are slowly being replaced with calls of "Ket Ket" (their interpretation of Caitlyn) or "Gasaro" (my kinyarwanda name which means rare bead).
Isn’t it funny how there is just something about being known that just changes everything? It seems as though this desire to be known is one of the core, inescapable characteristics of human kind. It is why we have blogs and twitter and facebook. It drives our friendships and shapes even how we view ourselves. It seems as though people are scrambling to be known by any means necessary. But why are we scrambling? The Bible has told us that God has called us by name. We are known by him-completely and deeply known. This truth has become more meaningful to me in the last month. My heart leaps a little every time someone in my village calls out my name and not just muzungu, and yet the God of the universe has called me by name and I am his! I am blown away and humbled by this powerful truth and I pray that I would be more and more moved by this everyday. If the God of the universe has called me by name, whom shall I fear? Why should I scramble to be known or understood, accepted or proven worthwhile by worldly standards? I have been called by name. It is a journey and a process to really internalize and live out this truth and a joy that we get to do this journey in community.
I hope today you feel in your core that you are called by name-that you don’t have to scramble, that you are loved and that you have been counted worthy on his account. That truth frees us to love deeply and encourage one another on to good works for his Glory and not ours☺
Much much love and shalom
cg
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Staying connected
Some other Peace Corps Volunteers and I opened a BP box where you can mail me things...not going to lie, a snail mail letter or care package can be soul reviving! So if the spirit should take you and you want to write address your letter/package as follows:
Caitlyn Griffith/Peace Corps Volunteer
BP 47
Rwamagana
Rwanda
and believe it or not thats all it takes!
letter take about 3 weeks and packages can take about two months to get here via US postal service.
I promise to write you back:)
much love to you all
cg
Caitlyn Griffith/Peace Corps Volunteer
BP 47
Rwamagana
Rwanda
and believe it or not thats all it takes!
letter take about 3 weeks and packages can take about two months to get here via US postal service.
I promise to write you back:)
much love to you all
cg
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
in the small things
Most of the wisdom I have to share comes from something I have read. A few days ago I read something most timely and thought I would share. Compliments of Ms. Katie Shultz, I have been reading the book Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. Yesterday the devotional included a small anecdote about a lay brother named Brother Lawrence from the 17th century who learned to integrate passion for Christ into the mundane and ordinary tasks of washing dishes and keeping the kitchen. He challenged others to “do our common business wholly for the love of Him.”
Right now, my life is a bunch of common business, a collection of mundane and frankly frustrating at times, tasks. I must learn to live the small moments, do the menial tasks with great passion and zeal for Christ and his kingdom. Glorifying God in the small things. I mean when you get down to it, I guess that’s what its all about. Oswald Chambers writes a lot about the challenge of being a disciple in the in-between times. The human spirit is resilient and can get us through the tragedies and “big moments.” Its being radical in the small things and living it day in and day out through the small moments that is what really defines our disciple status.
Today is my one week anniversary of being at my site, my small village of Rukara. It’s hard to believe that I have over 100 more weeks here. I truthfully have not been in one place that long in over 5 years!
This week has been packed and the days have been long. There have been so many minutes both high and low and the emotional whirl wind of trying to get my head around what I am doing here has left me on the brink of tears more than once. A few highlights from the week have been: my craft projects as I have been making my two concrete rooms into a home (its coming a long….my favorite projects being the transformation of my metal trunk into a padded bench with fantastic Rwandan fabric on top and my makeshift pantry made from cinder blocks and scrap wood from the local carpenter that I painted bright orange and green); I cooked for everyone in our little row house (about ten people) Mexican fajitas and they loved it (or were really good at acting like it-highly possible because Rwandans are not too keen on new food); I have tried to go on long walks every day to talk to people and introduce myself and that’s been really fun and a big test of my Kinyarwanda; I made (sort of) kettle corn and had a movie night with my neighbors and 6 girls ranging in age from 3 to 30 climbed into one bed to watch Prince Caspian as I tried to (fairly unsuccessfully) translate for them; I have found a great running route that goes through a lot of very beautiful, very peaceful farmland; AND I had a wonderful visit with the nuns I stayed with last time I was here and I am going to go over there twice a week to teach them English, do crafts (and eat food with them-they have an oven!!!); also I have a new friend named Magnific who is six and practically my shadow-haha. Peace Corps recommended that we not let kids into our home but on day one that proved impossible as she made herself right home among my things and just kept saying over and over “ni munsi mukuru, ni munsi mukuru!” which means “it’s a holiday, it’s a party!” hahaha and she has barely left my side ever since. Sometimes I guiltily lock my door to get a little privacy and keep her out. The funniest part is that she seems to be under the impression that I am fluent in Kinyarwanda and therefore has a constant stream of words coming out of her mouth at a low mumble so that even the words I know I can’t understand! Hahah it doesn’t keep to bother her that I just make little ”mmm” and “ooo” noises instead of actually responding.
School started(ish) on Monday which was certainly noteworthy day even if not especially meaningful. Apparently school here only fake starts on the day it is publicized to start. We were warned about this but its just so much more frustrating to experience it! I showed up a few minutes to 7 (starting time) on Monday and found myself alone with the headmaster. He informed me I might as well go home and he would call me when things started happening. And slowly slowly kids started trickling, their mothers behind them. About two thousand of the 6 thousand showed up the first day. Now I think of myself as a pretty savvy muzungu-you know I have been to east Africa, I know how things work, I am used to being stared at and yelled at and answer pretty patiently to the name “muzungu” and the kids who charge you to shake your hand. But let me just tell you, two thousand kids charging you and screaming at you is another story entirely. Frankly I was terrified. I mean kids were getting run over and trampled! Madness. I now know I have to go around the primary school and not through it to get to the secondary school if I don’t want a high intensity, near death experience at 7 in the morning.
Second surprise is that the grade I am teaching-Senior 1-doesn’t start until February because the Ministry has not yet finished grading their exams from last year. So for the next month I will just be stuck in random classes to teach random, disjointed lessons. (does my tone let you know how I feel about that) and observing Rwandan teachers. Also I will be starting an English club, creative expressions club, teaching English to the other teachers, and teaching the nuns in theory in the next month but things just kind of move on their own time so who knows when these things will actually happen. I am learning, however, that I don’t have to wait to be radically loving and justice seeking until my official “job” starts. I am trying to be radical and passionate in the way I love the people in my row house, in the way I treat and talk to the umukozi (house help who cleans the other houses) and respond to irritatingly forward men in the town. There does not have to be this big divide between your Job and the rest of your life…in fact their shouldn’t be! I am here to serve and love people and hopefully make their lives better in the long term by my existence here.
Well Magnific is getting antsy watching me write this so I am going to go and take the (sort of ) chocolate chip cookies I baked in my makeshift dutchoven over to her aunt’s house to share them☺
So the moral of the story, team, is be radical in the small things, talk to your neighbors, talk to the town crazy, be kind in unexpected ways, make things beautiful-especially things that aren’t usually beautiful like concrete walls and sidewalks!
Much much love to you all and a happy, shalom filled and sought new year!
Right now, my life is a bunch of common business, a collection of mundane and frankly frustrating at times, tasks. I must learn to live the small moments, do the menial tasks with great passion and zeal for Christ and his kingdom. Glorifying God in the small things. I mean when you get down to it, I guess that’s what its all about. Oswald Chambers writes a lot about the challenge of being a disciple in the in-between times. The human spirit is resilient and can get us through the tragedies and “big moments.” Its being radical in the small things and living it day in and day out through the small moments that is what really defines our disciple status.
Today is my one week anniversary of being at my site, my small village of Rukara. It’s hard to believe that I have over 100 more weeks here. I truthfully have not been in one place that long in over 5 years!
This week has been packed and the days have been long. There have been so many minutes both high and low and the emotional whirl wind of trying to get my head around what I am doing here has left me on the brink of tears more than once. A few highlights from the week have been: my craft projects as I have been making my two concrete rooms into a home (its coming a long….my favorite projects being the transformation of my metal trunk into a padded bench with fantastic Rwandan fabric on top and my makeshift pantry made from cinder blocks and scrap wood from the local carpenter that I painted bright orange and green); I cooked for everyone in our little row house (about ten people) Mexican fajitas and they loved it (or were really good at acting like it-highly possible because Rwandans are not too keen on new food); I have tried to go on long walks every day to talk to people and introduce myself and that’s been really fun and a big test of my Kinyarwanda; I made (sort of) kettle corn and had a movie night with my neighbors and 6 girls ranging in age from 3 to 30 climbed into one bed to watch Prince Caspian as I tried to (fairly unsuccessfully) translate for them; I have found a great running route that goes through a lot of very beautiful, very peaceful farmland; AND I had a wonderful visit with the nuns I stayed with last time I was here and I am going to go over there twice a week to teach them English, do crafts (and eat food with them-they have an oven!!!); also I have a new friend named Magnific who is six and practically my shadow-haha. Peace Corps recommended that we not let kids into our home but on day one that proved impossible as she made herself right home among my things and just kept saying over and over “ni munsi mukuru, ni munsi mukuru!” which means “it’s a holiday, it’s a party!” hahaha and she has barely left my side ever since. Sometimes I guiltily lock my door to get a little privacy and keep her out. The funniest part is that she seems to be under the impression that I am fluent in Kinyarwanda and therefore has a constant stream of words coming out of her mouth at a low mumble so that even the words I know I can’t understand! Hahah it doesn’t keep to bother her that I just make little ”mmm” and “ooo” noises instead of actually responding.
School started(ish) on Monday which was certainly noteworthy day even if not especially meaningful. Apparently school here only fake starts on the day it is publicized to start. We were warned about this but its just so much more frustrating to experience it! I showed up a few minutes to 7 (starting time) on Monday and found myself alone with the headmaster. He informed me I might as well go home and he would call me when things started happening. And slowly slowly kids started trickling, their mothers behind them. About two thousand of the 6 thousand showed up the first day. Now I think of myself as a pretty savvy muzungu-you know I have been to east Africa, I know how things work, I am used to being stared at and yelled at and answer pretty patiently to the name “muzungu” and the kids who charge you to shake your hand. But let me just tell you, two thousand kids charging you and screaming at you is another story entirely. Frankly I was terrified. I mean kids were getting run over and trampled! Madness. I now know I have to go around the primary school and not through it to get to the secondary school if I don’t want a high intensity, near death experience at 7 in the morning.
Second surprise is that the grade I am teaching-Senior 1-doesn’t start until February because the Ministry has not yet finished grading their exams from last year. So for the next month I will just be stuck in random classes to teach random, disjointed lessons. (does my tone let you know how I feel about that) and observing Rwandan teachers. Also I will be starting an English club, creative expressions club, teaching English to the other teachers, and teaching the nuns in theory in the next month but things just kind of move on their own time so who knows when these things will actually happen. I am learning, however, that I don’t have to wait to be radically loving and justice seeking until my official “job” starts. I am trying to be radical and passionate in the way I love the people in my row house, in the way I treat and talk to the umukozi (house help who cleans the other houses) and respond to irritatingly forward men in the town. There does not have to be this big divide between your Job and the rest of your life…in fact their shouldn’t be! I am here to serve and love people and hopefully make their lives better in the long term by my existence here.
Well Magnific is getting antsy watching me write this so I am going to go and take the (sort of ) chocolate chip cookies I baked in my makeshift dutchoven over to her aunt’s house to share them☺
So the moral of the story, team, is be radical in the small things, talk to your neighbors, talk to the town crazy, be kind in unexpected ways, make things beautiful-especially things that aren’t usually beautiful like concrete walls and sidewalks!
Much much love to you all and a happy, shalom filled and sought new year!
Saturday, December 25, 2010
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!
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!
Sunday, November 28, 2010
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. :)
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. :)
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
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
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
