What luck! My evening class today was canceled, so I finally have two spare minutes to rub together for blog-updating. Because so many things have happened since my last real post, I’m going to make each little entry brief.
Fieldwork: About a month ago, I was able to go on fieldwork with my students. This was a stroke of luck for me, because even though I live walking distance from the park, I hadn’t been able to do any hiking there because the park entrance fees are really expensive. Since I went along to help my students practice their English, the school paid my park fees for our three day-trips into the park. It was nice to be out in the forest, and we saw some birds, waterfalls, and monkeys (Blue and Colobus mostly.) I took some pictures, but don’t count on them being posted anytime soon. I’ll do my best.
Community English Classes: Two weeks ago I started community English classes, as I mentioned in my last post, and these are going extremely well! My first class had 8 students, but my second had 27! Each class after that has had an average of 20 students. My students range in age from their 20’s to their 40’s or 50’s, and from relatively well-off shopkeepers to guards, groundskeepers, and other community members. They have various levels of initial education, from primary only to secondary school, but all know how to read and write. I teach in both Kinyarwanda and English, and they are very eager to learn, which is very nice to see in a class. I have found it a very rewarding experience so far. I have been approached by some community members who want to learn but can’t read or write, which I see as another educational opportunity for me. Hopefully sometime during my two years I can start an adult literacy class as well, but for now I’ve already got too much on my plate.
World Science Day 2011: Don’t let the date fool you, World Science Day 2011 was celebrated just 2 weeks ago in Rwanda’s Western Province! My school helped host the event with the district of Nyamasheke, which is just past Nyungwe Forest on the main road. Most of KCCEM’s staff and a number of students went to the event, which mostly consisted of people talking about science in Kinyarwanda (surprise!) It was my first time crossing the forest, and it is HOT over there by Lake Kivu! I’m very glad I’m on the cold side of the forest.
NUFFIC Organizational Analysis Conference: With little warning, I found myself in Kigali from Tuesday to Thursday last week to participate in a conference with NUFFIC, an organization from the Netherlands working on projects with our school. This projects works with a consortium of wildlife colleges in Africa and Europe (from the Netherlands, Cameroon, and South Africa) to help develop human capital and build capacity related to conservation and environmental management in the Albertine Rift region (aka here.) This particular conference was focused on discussing the strengths and weaknesses of KCCEM in terms of delivering competence-based training to environmental professionals in the region, particularly on our ability to respond to market demand effectively and run a business-minded operation. It was definitely the sort of thing I never would have had the chance to participate in in the U.S., and it was interesting to find myself in a management- level conference given my lack of business background. I still feel like I contributed, though, and I got to meet interesting people from Africa and Europe. But being away from my site for so many days in a row started to ware on me. I was staying in the Peace Corps hostel with a dozen or more other PCVs, and I found that I didn’t have much space to myself for quite a while. Anyway, I was happy to make it back to site.
With all these happenings, plus working on our curriculum document (85 pages) and trying to keep up with lesson planning and grading, I’ve been very busy. I’m a workaholic, so I don’t mind that too much, but some of the upkeep aspects of my life are starting to fall by the wayside. No, don’t worry, I’m still finding time to bathe, but laundry and house-cleaning aren’t getting done as often as they probably should.
Living with room mates hasn’t changed my lifestyle too much yet. Although both of my room mates have expressed interest in learning to cook, in practice I am now cooking for three. I don’t really mind, since cooking with charcoal is really the time-consuming aspect of cooking here, and adding one or two people doesn’t add much to the cooking time. We still need to work out a good way of sharing the grocery expenses, but I trust with time we come to some sort of understanding about that. Just so long as I don’t end up paying for groceries simply because I am the most proactive room mate, I’ll be happy.
Before I forget, a shout out to my mom, dad, and grandmother- I got your packages today! Beef jerky, coco powder, other fattening things, lots of seed to plant, some games to play with my students- thanks guys! I love you all and really appreciate the gesture. Project FatNick has been set forward weeks ahead of schedule.
Lastly, and probably most importantly- April is almost upon us. For those of you who don’t know, April is the month that the violence began here in ’94. The second week in April is a memorial week, and the start of the 100 days during which the genocide took place. From what I hear, life totally changes here during April. All of the tensions and memories and traumas that are repressed during the rest of the year are released. Business and transportation effectively shut down, at least for a while. And it is impossible to tell what will happen at a given site. Memorial services are frequently held, sometimes there are walkabouts and exhumation/reburial of bodies, and sometimes nothing happens until May or June, when the violence spread to a particular area. Current PCVs have been trying to steel us for April, but I don’t think anyone can really be ready for it. I will post more about it as the time comes.
Rwandan Nights 