This is going to be a short post. I try to have a key topic with pictures that go along with that topic. Today I have neither. I have some little newsy bits, but not too many pictures to go with.
I didn’t take this picture. It was forwarded to me by Fr. Alexandre, who received it from a friend. It is the blood moon, which we were able to see last Saturday evening. In this picture you are seeing a lunar eclipse, which last a little more than an hour. I loved three things about this eclipse: the clouds stayed away so we could see it, the darkened moon made the stars look spectacular, and I shared the moment with two priest friends who humor me when I get excited about this sort of opportunity and were willing to step outside with me after dinner. Fr. Alexandre sent the above image claiming to have taken it with his phone before eventually coming clean.
The really big news for this week was the start of school in Rwanda! However, it didn’t go exactly as anticipated.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, there is a pre-school called “Amizero” (Kinyarwandan for “hope”) and The Children’s Academy (mainly Primary 2 students from the local public school). Amizero began on Monday as planned. The pre-school is divided into Nursery One and Nursery Two. The above picture is Nursery Two. Yes, that is 36 children (ranging probably from 4-6 years old) with one teacher.
Nursery One happens to have a smaller number, and has two teachers. Just because the uniforms for Nursery One are adorable, below is a picture of Jehovanis.
Because we receive the Children’s Academy students from the local primary school, we are their mercy. They promised to send the kids on Wednesday. No luck. Then they said they would be there on Thursday. Nope. They promised today. Finally, the students showed up today, though very late for both sessions. I look forward to next week with a full routine.
So far my perspective on teacher attitudes toward instruction is that they are pretty loose. I am accustomed to clearly defined semester outcomes that inform unit objectives that anchor daily lesson planning. Not here. Several times this week I have been placed in front of a group of students with the message, “teach them something while I go do….”
I find especially with the nursery students that it is difficult to teach when you don’t know their native language, don’t know their prior knowledge, and don’t know what they should be learning. It happened this morning with the Children’s Academy kids, and fortunately between groups of students I was able to ask what specifically she wanted me to cover, and so I was much more prepared for the afternoon group.
The supplies at the school are rough. Admittedly, this is the worst ball they have, but it isn’t the worst by much. The pre-school teachers especially lack instructional aids, so we are scrambling to load up my daughter Bree with teaching supplies for when she comes over. By the way, my daughter Bree is coming over for the last week of my trip and then we will fly home together. I absolutely cannot wait to see her and to share this experience with her. Travelers are allowed one carry-on and two bags up to 50 pounds, so my hope is she can pack most of her stuff in the carry-on and bring 100 pounds of supplies for the classes.
People of all ages wear clothes that clearly have been donated from outside the country. I saw a sweatshirt from UW-Whitewater Volleyball (a school maybe an hour from where I grew up), a man wearing a softball hoodie with “Hailey” across his back, and another favorite was someone walking down the street with a Turkey Trot shirt from some fun run back in the states. I have to admit I got a little misty when I saw Yvan walk into Amizero wearing this Husker jacket. What a small world!!! Thank you, whoever donated this cute little jacket.
I have made a few young friends this week. I mentioned in an earlier post about a student who fell asleep on me and wet his pants (and ultimately mine) while sleeping on my lap. That same student (Mugisha) is less than two years old, is in Nursery One, loves for ME to hold him (not really anyone else) and has wet himself several times this week. So I have had Mugisha’s urine on my pants, my arm, and my shirt. He and I are getting to know each other better than I would have liked. Lucky for him he is an adorable kid.
This picture is the home picture or profile picture for my blog. It was taken back in January of a little girl named Gloria. For some reason, she seemed to take to me right away and we were fast friends. When she came to school on Monday, she was very excited to see me and has been my little shadow. She is generally one of the last children to be picked up from Amizero, which gives us a lot of extra time to either throw or kick a ball back and forth. She always has that adorable smile, and she is constantly chatting. She tries so hard to make me understand Kinyarwanda…so far not with much success!
I don’t have a picture of this last topic, but it seems widely agreed that last night marked the start of the rainy season here. It came in with a vengeance. Lightning, loud thunder and rain that fell harder and longer than I think I have ever seen before. Of course, with such a storm comes a power outage. Lights went out during dinner, and I am not entirely sure when power was restored (no power, no internet–which is why I couldn’t post yesterday). I must say, when the power goes out at night at the Cana Center, there really isn’t much to do but go to bed. I unfortunately had been working on my computer before dinner, so I was low on power BEFORE the outage, and my phone can only do so much without a network connection. First world problems, right?
As Garrison Keillor would say, “That’s the news from Lake Wobegon.” I have loved it here, but I have to admit that I have bouts of homesickness. My poor wife is single-handedly trying to find a home in Wisconsin while packing our house in Lincoln, my new schools in Wisconsin have started and I hate not being there, I am missing almost two full months of my almost five month old grandson (nearly half his life!), and while WhatsApp has helped me be able to communicate with my family, it just isn’t the same. Now that school has started here, I think time is going to pass by even more quickly, and I will be heading home before I know it.
Until then, God bless us all!