"So many Americans! But if they are like you it's okay." -H

Over the weekend I went with two of my colleagues and four of my former students to a conference in Kibuye, a nice little lake town in the west of Rwanda. A lot of the conference was information – HIV/AIDS, Sexual and Gender Based Violence – that most Peace Corps Volunteers could recite in our sleep, but it was undoubtedly an exciting and informative experience for most of the Rwandans there.

Health volunteers have trainings and conferences like this somewhat frequently, but this was my first time to go to an event with people from my community. For most of the people with me it was their first time to Kibuye so part of the excitement for them was just getting to see another part of their own country. We stayed in a nice centre right on the lake and spent a couple afternoons teaching students to swim and sending them off on their first boat rides. The food was delicious and frequent, and one colleague joked that he finally understands now why I’m always so hungry.

In addition to all of this luxury, though, I’m confident that my colleagues and students left the conference armed with information that just a few days before was almost foreign to them. We discussed HIV/AIDS in numerous contexts, and it was incredibly eye-opening to see how our community members have interpreted information and come to conclusions about such a prominent issue. Some attendees, for example, understood for the first time that a person can be born HIV positive. This small and seemingly simple realization could ultimately lead to a new outlook and reduced stigma about people living with HIV/AIDS because it means that they may not have willingly engaged in any behavior that so many people associate with contracting the virus.

We also discussed Sexual and Gender-Based Violence. Unfortunately SGBV is very common in Rwanda and often goes unreported and/or overlooked. One woman at the conference was extremely persistent in getting an answer from the presenter and the attendees about why any woman should report her husband for sexually abusing their children when she knows that he is the breadwinner and all of their lives will become more difficult if he isn’t able to work and bring money home.

On one hand I think if I were a Rwandan student leaving that conference, I would be more afraid than before of what might happen to me if I chose to indulge in any of the activities that are associated with curious, hormonal teenagers all over the world. Throughout numerous discussions, declarations ranged from school leaders insisting they would expel students if they publicly announced that they were in a committed relationship, to girls saying they felt would be at least partly blamed if they were raped after consuming alcohol, to an attendee insisting that infidelity is a result of men not being legally allowed to take multiple wives.

On the other hand, though, I’d like to think that if I were a Rwandan student leaving that conference, I would see that while my community may not yet be a collective organism I could turn to, Peace Corps Volunteers are. I know my students made connections with other volunteers at the conference, and I would like to think that they left it knowing they have our support. I would also like to think they left it feeling motivated, responsible, and most of all informed and able to make a difference within their communities.

Peace Corps above all is a development organization with the aim of sustainability. Essentially anything a volunteer does – from individual tutoring to building community wells – is done with the intent that in a relatively short amount of time that same project could be maintained whether a volunteer was around or not. And that, in itself, is what the conference was for me. It was a weight lifted off my shoulders and a liberating reminder that I am only a tiny fraction of a small part of the changes that will happen in this community. It was an opportunity to watch my colleagues and students take on the social responsibility of improving people’s lives that I have unnecessarily been carrying alone. I’m back at site now feeling, probably for the first time, like maybe I’m finally starting to have the relationship with my community that Peace Corps wants me to have. Not bad for a 17 months into service, right?

All of us at the conference!

"Those poor passengers don't know whether to stare at us or the baboons." -P

They told us this in training, but I’m really starting to understand how important it is to relish in small victories. Though few and far between in the unrelenting deluge of losses, those small victories are the only things keeping me here. Yes, it’s been an incredible learning experience and I’ve met people I hope to know for the rest of my life, but I could leave now and still have those things. I could be on the next flight to the land of the free and I wouldn’t be giving up those memories or those relationships. But I won’t be on the next flight out. I’ll be here for another cycle of my nieces’ and nephews’ birthdays and spend another Thanksgiving away from my family. I’ll stay here for another nine months, hoping for just few more small victories like these:

I started this year’s English clubs earlier this month, and as I was going around to classrooms to make the announcement it was very clear that the students I taught last year understood and could respond to every word I said, whereas the students I didn’t teach got next to nothing out of the announcement. I’m sure there are numerous reasons for this, many of which have nothing to do with me. And of course I hope and will work for the best for all of the students at my school, but I have to admit it’s incredibly encouraging to be able to see and hear the tiny difference that I made for my students last year.

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Two weeks ago, as part of a new secondary project between volunteers and another organization, I taught an English class to a group of Rwandan judges and court staff. This program is brand new and, as with most pilot programs, it has kinks and will be developed through a lot of trial and error. Nonetheless, spending my Saturday morning with that group of people was a joy. Watching high-ranking, professional men and women struggle courageously through group presentations and exercises, making mistakes and welcoming both positive and negative feedback from their peers and from me, reminded me of the importance of my commitment to this country and to people like them in particular.

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Last week I wrapped up the first term of my new role at school: full time teacher-trainer and advisor to teachers. Since each term ends with exams, I decided to make the last session a methodology training about writing assessments. I was very impressed with all of the thoughtful questions teachers asked at the end of the session and felt like the term ended on a high note. While I was walking home, one teacher came and thanked me for all the sessions we’ve done. He told me that when he saw there would be some methodology training, he couldn’t imagine what there could possibly be to learn about teaching. “But now I am seeing there are many things to learn about being a good teacher,” he said, “and it is very interesting to me.”

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Maybe how ‘small’ these victories are is debatable, and maybe ten years from now I’ll realize I should be giving myself more credit. Or maybe I’ll realize I’m not really accomplishing anything and my time in Rwanda has little to do with development and is more about personal connections and experiencing another culture. Either way, these are the types of things that keep me going.

"This year with you, I think it will be my chance." - E

In the beginning when I was preparing for life in Rwanda, I was pretty certain that I wouldn’t come home during my service. You always hear that going home makes you not want to come back to your host country and that it’s better for you emotionally if you can just tough it out. “Two years is not that long in the grand scheme of things,” I told everybody who asked about my travel plans. And, while that statement is certainly true, as the one-year-in-Rwanda mark approached, toughing anything out for any reason pretty much went completely out the window.

So Ryan and I found good deals on tickets out of Tanzania and decided to come home together and make a real adventure out of the whole trip.

It started with an approximately 27-hour bus ride from Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Rwanda is such a tiny country that only three of those hours were actually spent driving here, whereas all the rest were in Tanzania. Ryan and I were surprised to find that people piled into this bus – sitting on armchairs (mine), standing and sleeping in the aisles – as though they were getting on for a quick trip down the road. We did manage to snag a $3 bed for a few hours at the midnight rest stop, but I’m pretty sure all that comfortable sleep was completely negated by the physical and mental toll it took on us when woke up realizing we hadn’t set our phones forward an hour and were running an hour behind.

Ryan studied abroad in Dar es Salaam in college, so we were warmly greeted by his host family at the bus station when we arrived. They were so kind to us, cramming our huge bags into their compact car and taking us back to their house for a quick meal before we had to get back to the port to catch a ferry to Zanzibar.

ZANZIBAR! I can’t decide if I want to tell people to try to go and risk it actually becoming a commercial tourist attraction, or keep it to myself so it could potentially be the exact same when I’m able to go again. Zanzibar is an island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Tanzania. It’s paradise, literally. The sand is white, the water is clear, the weather is perfect. Ryan snagged us a room in a guesthouse, and fortunately for us the guy who manages it is also a local fisherman. When we told him we wanted to go snorkeling, we paid a few bucks to tag along on a fishing boat, watching as they caught octopuses and fish with their bare hands, speared eels, and spotted obscure poisonous creatures that had me convinced my time in paradise would have a tragic end. The following day, we went swimming with dolphins in the Indian Ocean! I am still so completely in awe of that experience; nothing I could say would do it justice. They were so close we could see them perfectly even when they were scratching their backs on the ocean floor, and never seemed affected at all by our presence. It was incredible!

Being back in the States was overwhelming but amazing. My only regret is that it was such a short, whirlwind trip. We spent a little time in DC on both ends of the trip and visited Texas and Seattle in between. Everyone in both of our families went above and beyond anything Ryan and I could have hoped for in terms of making us feel welcome and comfortable. And yes, coming back was absolutely excruciating. And yes, it was worth it.

After a number of delays and a few choice words with airlines about baggage fees, we landed back in Tanzania with just a couple of hours to spare before we had to get back on a bus for another 25+ hour ride. We actually did almost get left behind at one point on this trip, but thanks to Ryan’s unparalleled ability to chase buses while simultaneously running sideways and calling my name, we barely made it.

This time, because of bus schedules, we had to go up through Kenya and back down through Uganda to get into Rwanda. Since we would’ve had to pay the visa fees either way, we made plans with two other volunteers to spend New Year’s Eve in Uganda together. The other two volunteers went white water rafting while we tried to get our heads back on straight, and then we all went bungee jumping together on New Year’s Day. Ryan and I did a tandem jump, which is absolutely the way to go if you need a little push. It was incredibly thrilling and surprisingly painful, but certainly an exciting element to add to an already amazing trip!

After another nine hours into Kigali and then three more to my site, I was back in my house and back to my Rwandan life. School started about a week later and we’re now a couple weeks into the first term. I miss home and it’s lonely at site, but things are slowly getting back to normal. Whatever that is.

The beautiful beach in Jambiani, Zanzibar.

"If I were pilot I would eat banana in atmosphere." -J

I have officially taught for an entire academic year in Rwanda! The hours and days have crawled by but somehow the year has flown.

Reflecting on the past year, I can say without a doubt that I have learned more than I have accomplished, as I’m sure will be the case for the rest of my Peace Corps experience. I feel like I know more with every day that passes, which of course means I still probably know essentially nothing. Nonetheless, it’s really incredible to think about how different next year will inevitably be with what little knowledge I do have going into it.

On one hand, I’m absolutely ecstatic about the ideas I have for improving my school next year and the possibility of seeing any of them manifest into real, effective projects. On the other hand, I have so many of these ideas that part of me reacts to it the way some of us do when our to-do list is too long to finish: retreat and do nothing. I can’t get away with that, of course, neither personally nor professionally, but I’d be lying if I said it’s not all incredibly overwhelming. It certainly makes me appreciate even more the value of being here two years as opposed to one; I didn’t know anything when I got here and I can’t imagine how defeated I would feel if this experience were ending now, right as I’m scratching the surface of how to potentially have an impact.

As much I’m pinning my hopes and dreams on next year, though, this year certainly hasn’t been without its exceptional moments. I did end up having the reading stations that I mentioned in a previous blog, and I feel like I can’t even express what a pleasure it was to watch so many of my students relaxed, with books, learning from each other and enjoying reading.

I’ve also seen a number of my students become more confident in speaking English, whether or not they know as much English as some of the other students. When we were doing reading stations, one group had a book about wild animals. They wanted to discuss what the book said about hunting, so I asked them to think about whether it would be good or bad if people started killing the gorillas here in Rwanda. One of the boys, among the lowest in the class in terms of grades, exhausted what seemed like every expression he could think of to be a part of the discussion. I am so proud of him not only for trying to speak English, but also for thinking seriously and critically about the question I asked – a task that has been more difficult than expected with these students.

Overall, I couldn’t have asked for an experience that asked more of me. I know here in Rwanda I’m not on either of the extreme ends of the Peace Corps spectrum, but I am in a place where my skills, patience, and compassion are stretched constantly. Every single day I am forced to analyze what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and, most importantly, how I could be doing it better. And, in the end, isn’t that really what it’s all about?

One group of students at a reading station. This book was a big hit with every group because it has a pair of pop-up 3D glasses to examine the insects.

"Teacher, so a gang is like a group of punks?" -G

Last weekend I got on a bus to go to a nearby town, and one of my students was sitting on the bus. She was sitting with her son, who looks to be around 6 or 7. She was dressed in the clothes that only women wear (to be a woman here is to be married, especially with children) and had her arm around the boy just like a mother would. My student. Keep in mind, I am teaching Senior 2, which is about 8^th grade. In Rwanda, because you can go back to school whenever you’re able, it’s perfectly common for the youngest student in a class to be 10 years younger than the oldest . I have students who are 12 and 13, and I have students who are older than me, married and with children. And sometimes their children go to the same school. Imagine me, 23 years old, asking a married woman with children why she doesn’t have her homework.

Age also affects credibility. In the States, while we don’t necessarily expect recent college graduates to be wise with experience, there is a certain level of respect for someone who has finished university and has a Bachelor’s degree, even if they are only 23 years old. In Rwanda, being 23 years old and having finished university is essentially unheard of, and except to the well-educated themselves it certainly doesn’t mean a person knows anything. So it’s understandable, then, that to my colleagues, I am basically a child. And I don’t mean the kind of child that just made my mom say out loud, “But you are a child.” I know I’m young. But here I am a child.

Needless to say, this is frustrating on too many levels. When my colleagues can hardly even fathom that I could possibly teach them anything besides the English language and how to physically use a computer, it makes it difficult to make any significant changes within the school system. And when they’re not required to have university degrees to teach at the level we teach, why would they appreciate the fact that I do?

As frustrating as it is to be considered a child, I must admit it comes with its advantages. For one, I absolutely love playing with children. For an adult to do that here is pretty out of the ordinary, so the fact that I’m technically still considered a kid myself means that I can get away with a lot more playtime than I could if I were an adult. And if being so obviously not Rwandese isn’t enough, being a foreign child carries me a long way through those inevitable cultural faux pas.

And, to be fair, my colleagues are in no way disrespectful or condescending to me. It’s just that they sometimes casually avoid trainings or workshops. No big deal, right?

"Please, I speakn't English." -H

We’re into our third week of the last term of the year and so far everything has been significantly better than both previous terms. A variety of things at school are finally starting to fall into place, and I’m feeling more comfortable teaching than I have since I’ve been here.

Because it’s difficult for students to find time to go to our new library (and because, let’s face it, they’re frightened) I decided I want to try having book stations in my classroom next week. In preparation for that, I’ve been taking my students to the library in small groups this week to give them some time to choose books they would like to see in the book stations.

I cannot even begin to express what an absolute joy it has been watching them look through the books. For one, books and libraries are so new to them that they have no real concept of trying to keep books in order or even of putting them on the shelves with the spines out. When I noticed this and did a mini-lesson on the importance of the books’ spines, they refused to trust the front cover as an acceptable place to find the name of a book. Again, because books are so new and their English is so basic, even my oldest students felt absolutely no shame in writing down Baby’s First Colors as a book they would like to read. Boys were writing down princess books, and girls were writing down tractor and machinery books. One student found a book with dialogues and speech bubbles and I watched as she recited the entire dialogue to herself, complete with facial expressions and everything.

I’ve also been doing exercises with my students in class to work on determining and improving their reading speed, and it’s been really exciting to see their enthusiasm and eagerness to beat the highest words-per-minute rate in the class.

Even with these gratifying improvements in the classroom, though, the system as a whole is certainly not without its frustrations.

Today, for example, I arrived at school a few minutes before 7, which is when classes are supposed to begin. I had planned a jeopardy-like game to review the verb tenses we’ve covered so far and had to wait 15 minutes to get tape from the office so I could tape the game cards onto the chalkboard. When I walked into class 15 minutes after it was supposed to have begun, only half of my students were there. Nonetheless, I began to divide them into teams so we could start the game. Shortly after they started moving to sit with their teams, I noticed that almost every student at school was actually standing outside of the classrooms. A few minutes later a teacher came into my classroom and either made an announcement or gave some orders. Since the teacher said everything in Kinyarwanda and either didn’t think or didn’t bother to tell me in English what had just been said, I had no idea why all my students were suddenly picking up their desks and taking them outside the classroom.

Several minutes of confusion later, I was able to find out from a student that they had been told to leave the classroom so a few students could clean it-which is why most of the students in the school were standing outside. Of course, not one of the students chosen to clean any of the classrooms was a boy. If you’re asking yourself whether or not this was really an appropriate time to stop all learning and clean, I’m right there with you.

Needless to say, the entire first period was lost. At that point I was down to one hour to teach this class a game they had never played before, as well as to make sure what little time they had to play actually did prepare them for the quiz at the end of the week.

Inevitably, a few minutes after teams were established and all the game cards were on the chalkboard, another teacher came to do a uniform check. Since half of my students were wearing jackets in the frigid, rainy weather, they had to leave. Perfect. We began the game with about half the amount of students each team had a few minutes before, and about halfway through the game the rest of the students, clueless about rules, points, and procedures, were allowed to join their teammates.

Later in the day when I stopped by a class to make an announcement about an after-school meeting, I walked into the classroom to find that the students were being read their rights. Which rights, I’m not completely sure. And why their rights are being read to them nine months into the school year is absolutely beyond me.

Here’s to a great third term, and almost a year in Rwanda!

"The student who sit behind me try to cheat every time."* -D

Exams. Sigh.

Students here don’t have pre-made answer sheets, scantrons, etc. They also don’t write their answers on the test, like we usually do in the States. Instead, they write their answers on regular, blank sheets of paper. In order to avoid cheating, each piece of paper has to be stamped with the official school stamp before it’s given to a student. This way we know they aren’t turning in something they wrote before the actual exam. Each student (there are about 1,000 of them at my school) is required to contribute one clean notebook to the school for us to stamp and give to students as answer sheets.

This term (and last term), nobody began stamping the books until the Monday that exams started. Each notebook has about 96 pages. This means that even if only 10 students brought notebooks, we would still have 960 pages to stamp before we could start exams. And for most exams, the students need 2 or 3 pages to record their answers.

We have three levels at my secondary school: 1^st form, 2^nd form, and 3^rd form (basically 7^th, 8^th, and 9^th grade). Again, in order to avoid cheating, students are divided for exams. So room 1, for example, will have approximately 25 students from 2^nd form and approximately 45 students from 1^st form. There are more students in 1^st form than in any other form, so many classrooms have twice the amount of 1^st form students as 2^nd form students. Due to the number of students per room they are often required to sit 3 to a table, almost completely defeating the purpose of dividing them to avoid cheating.

As teachers, we are assigned a different room to supervise every day. To find out which room we are supposed to supervise, we consult a document that has a list of our names with our room numbers. Then, we have to find the one teacher that has the one document that says which students are in which classroom. Once we know which and how many students we have, we have to find the teacher whose exam the students are taking and ask them for the number we need.

This term, the director of my school decided that students who hadn’t brought notebooks couldn’t take exams until they did. Naturally, that sent more than half of the students into a frenzy, some of them choosing to try to beg their ways to forgiveness, others leaving school to go buy notebooks. Students who did bring notebooks were fighting to make sure they got their stamped papers, or at least that their names were on the list. After about 45 minutes of this, the director rescinded the new rule and announced that all students would be able to take exams. We started exams about 2 hours late.

As for the students, I really feel for them. Imagine how you would feel if you had to take at least half or your exams in a language you weren’t comfortable with, crammed between two other students on a wooden bench, with primary school students coming to your classroom window for no reason other than to distract you. I’m honestly surprised (though grateful) that I haven’t had any students storm out in a fit of rage. Not that that’s what I would do.

*The quote for this post is from a student's quiz. I asked them to write sentences with certain prepositions, and that's what one student wrote for 'behind.'