Friday, April 30, 2010

“When you return to the States, people will ask you if you are sick. You will say, ‘yes, I am suffering from Africa.’”

Am I suffering from Africa already? It’s possible. I’ve begun to walk slower. My work ethic has become worse. I give a non-committal “eh” when I mean yes. I stare at white people. And I arrive late sometimes. Oh and yesterday, I accidentally punched a hole in my window. I swear it was accidental. Some kids were tapping on my window and trying to enter my house so I “tapped” back a little too strongly.

This blog is about an incredible organization called Books for Africa. Peace Corps Rwanda was lucky enough to be contacted by Books for Africa and most of the ed volunteers received large shipments of books to their primary schools. I honestly am not sure where the funding came from. Going through the books was a delight and these were just a few of the jewels I found:
George and Martha: One Fine Day
A Sherman Alexie book
Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle
10 Ten Most Influential Rappers
Spanish books about killer whales and sharks (I’m keeping those)
Phantom Tollbooth
Goosebumps
Glow and Gleam
A book about the life of Angelina Jolie
A book based in Littleton, Colorado

My high from receiving all these books was instantly crushed when I had a conversation with officials and teachers from the primary school. They appreciate the books but need dictionaries to understand them and shelves to house them. They won’t be read while they collect dust in boxes. The school has no money for either of those, nor do I. There are two ways to look at this dilemma. I am using both viewpoints now as I decide what to do.

The first way of seeing this problem is this: “I can show you the way but it is up to you to go.” I can bring you food, but it is not by job to feed you myself. So I’ve helped you receive these books, here, it is a gift but now it is up to you to build shelves and see that they are used. The opposite way of looking at this problem is that I have ultimately failed them. And this is how development often fails Africa. I have facilitated this delivery of English books to meet the need of their new English curriculum but without a dictionary, how can they understand them? Without shelves, how can they use and organize them? Without instruction can they use them? Though my primary responsibility is teaching at the secondary school, I will make an effort every week to see that there is progress with the library. I will hound people (headmasters, education directors) about shelves and dictionaries. I will see that the books are stamped, organized and USED by the teachers and pupils. In this way, I’m finding the middle ground between those two outlooks on the shipment that I talked about above.

Books for Africa is an incredible organization. They sent containers of used/new books to Africa and the recipients must fund 25% of the shipping cost. We are currently working for a new order for our secondary schools. The need is great at my school because the school has many books for “ordinary level” (S1-S3, provided by the government) but has little to no books for the advanced level (S4-S6). Teachers at my school have had to skip whole sections in their curriculum because they do not have the books to teach. We hope to overcome this problem by the end of the school year in October. Support Books for Africa if you can!

See this article about Tressa's school and Books for Africa: http://www.newtimes.co.rw/index.php?issue=14243&article=28496 

Saturday, April 17, 2010

"I'm going to the market to selfish"

I've been working on this blog for a while. It's called... Note to self(ish): 

Don’t do hundreds of push ups and then expect to be able to write on the chalkboard the next day. 

Don’t tell a Rwandan male that your back hurts or they will assume you were making lots of sexual intercourse. 

Don’t leave clothes outside unattended for even a second. 

Your mood swings are giving the neighbor kids whiplash.

Don’t expect there to be class just because it’s a Monday.

Boiling spoiled milk doesn’t fix the problem. 

Don’t assume everyone has parents. 

Rwandans can hike for hours without food or water. Which leads to the next… Don’t travel without snacks. 

Stop bringing up homosexuality in class. They weren’t ready last couple times and they won’t be ready anytime in the near future. 

Don’t touch your eye. Do you know how dirty your hands are? 

Don’t show your knees at school. 

The word amazi (water) should never follow the verb kugira (to have). 

Sometimes the thing that you want to do the least and the thing you must do are the same. Like bathe. Leave your house. 

Don’t wear tennis shoes with business attire. Don’t worry, I didn’t make this mistake. 

Don’t ignore people that try to flag you down on the road. They could be your good friend’s mom, the leader of the Women’s Equality Association, or both. 

Now that you know what goat’s butt looks like, you can avoid eating it next time. 

Carry your cell phone in your right hand so if a man tries to shake your hand directly after urinating, you can offer you wrist. 

Even if it’s posh, Peace Corps is still hard.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

What does 16 years mean?


Yesterday marked the 16th year anniversary of the start of the genocide in Rwanda. Though the violence lasted a decade, we are specifically commemorating the 100 days of slaughter that began April 6th, 1994 and led to the deaths of close to 1 million Rwandans. The theme for the commemoration this year is “Let’s remember the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi by uniting more in the fight against trauma.”

 

At least 2000 villagers crowded around our town’s small genocide memorial today for the five-hour ceremony of speeches and prayers. I was the only white person.  It’s more than taboo to mention ethnicities in Rwanda so it was shocking today to hear those names.  A group of widows placed flowers on the memorial and I continued to watch them throughout the ceremony. I wanted to monitor their sorrow and exhaustion so I could understand how much pain 16 years had erased. Their faces were the most expressive that I saw but we’re talking about a culture that is averse to showing emotion. As I watched people’s physical and emotional responses to the event, I began to question what 16 years means.

How much do you remember and how much can you forget in 16 years? What do you hold on to but what have you let go? Does it depend on how well you knew the killers? Or how large the massacre was? What’s 16 years when people lived in constant fear from 1990-1998, when the country only became “normal” in 2003 and when there is still intermittent ethnic violence? What does 17-year old Fabian think of the 16 years he’s been an orphan? How were those 16 years if you could not share them with your loved ones? What’s 16 years when the Parliament still bares battle scars?

I cannot gauge it. Is 16 years a long or short time? Seeing the rapid development in country, you would imagine it’d been a quarter century, at least. Hearing people’s monotone descriptions of killings makes it seem like they’re telling their grandparents’ stories. But if I think about losing half my family, unborn nieces and nephews, and schoolmates, I think those 16 years would have been too dark to do anything more than slowly crawl through the wreckage. 


After 16 years, where should the country be? Well, I think they’re ahead of schedule. They are full of forgiveness and I am full of admiration.



I cannot believe I am here.

__________________

I am revisiting this blog post after the commemoration week ended. A fellow volunteer read my post and asked a colleague if 16 years was a short or long time. He said that 16 years is neither: when it’s something you’ll never forget, 16 years is just 16 years.