My First Week

(1/23/09) NB: This is a really long, overly detailed post only meant for those who are really bored or just that interested. I will not take offense if you skip!

I got to my school Saturday night when it was too dark to see anything. After dinner with the sisters, I went to bed– between going out the night before, getting up early to pack, traipsing around Kigali in burning sun and then torrential rain, and then of course the deluge of introductions in French and Kinyarwanda, I was exhausted.

On Sunday, I had breakfast with the nuns – meals with them would become a regular occurrence until I moved into my permanent housing (for the first few days I was in the guest quarters without cooking space). Then I went to church. Whether this will become a regular activity, I’m not sure. Mass was two hours long in Kinyarwanda, but the singing was absolutely beautiful and kept me transfixed for the duration. The rest of the day I was in a bit of a daze. I never really knew what was going on, I followed two of the nuns around as they introduced me to the other teachers, showed me the school in the light and where I was going to live for the rest of the year, but I never really knew what was going on from one minute to the next. And all the while I was so sure we would get to talking about what I was going to teach, but somehow that never came up! (And they had already been in school a week when I got there.)

Finally, after breakfast on Monday the headmistress (also, the kind of head sister) took me to see the Prefect of Studies to give me my schedule. All this time I had been told that the school really needed a Physics teacher, but I ended up with only two classes of first year physics and then seven of computers! It seems that when the headmistress saw my abilities with excel as I helped the secretary enter some names the night before she had a change of heart. So now I’m teaching computers to the first years, second years and fifth years. More or less in French. This makes my schedule pretty hectic. I teach about 5 to 7 classes in an 8 period day – but I don’t have any on Wednesday thank God – while the rest of my compatriots across the country are teaching no more than 8-16 classes total! Lucky me. I am partly saved by the fact that the first years don’t get here until the first week of February (because they are only sorting out the results of the national admissions exams right now), so for at least my first two weeks I only have about 2/3 of the classes. But trust me, that’s already an overwhelming amount. Each class for computers meets only twice a week, so I basically spend the week repeating two lessons. This makes lesson planning easy, but kills my memory as I try to sort out what specific points were covered in each session in each class. And then there’s the whole problems of learning names. I estimate that this week, in seeing only six different classes I taught about 240 students!

So the week passed from class to class, period to period. For now I have a lot of breaks in between classes so I could at least catch my breath in between. (I’ve almost finished The Poisonwood Bible which I started on Monday – send me books!) There were no grand failures, though the one time I took one of my classes to the computer room (usually we teach computers in a regular classroom with just a blackboard) none of the computers had been connected to their power sources so we spent half the period just trying to boot up. I’ve spent much of our class time simply fielding questions about me, the US and my impressions of Rwanda so far. The students are always struck by how young I am, shocked and amused that I’m not married or engaged or particularly worried about it, and almost unanimously love T.I. and Akon, Obama, and Manchester United or Arsenal.

The sisters are wonderful. There are eight of them ranging a lot in age, from what I can guess, but all so jovial and welcoming. As I said, I ate all my meals with them my first six days until I moved to my permanent housing (more on that in a minute). We always stood to pray (or rather I watched while they sang) before, and sometimes after, meals. Then they’d tell me to serve myself and if I didn’t take enough one of the sisters would take it upon herself to just add more to my plate! For breakfast we ate bread with cheese and sausage, assorted fruits (many bananas, passion fruit and Japanese plums – like passion fruit, but red and tastes kind of like a combination of blackberries and kiwi) and tea – or really, hot milk with sugar and a tea bag that is more or less decoration. Lunch and dinner were a combination of many starches (bananas baked or stewed, rice, potatoes, Rwandan sweet potatoes – white, not orange!) beans, a vegetable and some meat. First we drank warm milk with every meal (the school has some cows so it’s really fresh, but once they found out I liked beer they’d press it on me like a second serving! One night they got so excited to show me their favorite movie which they were sure I’d love – it was the sound of music, only dubbed in French! Needless to say, I was thrilled. They also made sure there was a little viewing party for Obama’s inauguration – the headmistress was out of town but she called a teacher at the school to go get me and set up the TV, and in the end about 50 students joined us as well. So really, if there is one definite indication that my year will go well, it’s the sisters.
That’s not to say that everyone else isn’t as friendly as well. Almost all of the teachers came by my guest suite to say hello in the first few days. They’re very nice and keep telling me to come and spend more time in the teachers room – I have been a little bit reclusive what with all the chaos of starting classes and frankly getting tired of speaking French all day – but I am trying to mend my ways. Now that I am not longer living right next to all the classrooms I will probably not have the time to be running back to my room between classes…