College Town

As I’ve said before, I live in the Rwandan equivalent of a college town. I love college towns, so this is a real treat.

The university here, Umutara Polytechnic, is comprised of six faculties – Business, Agriculture, Veterinary Medicine, Information & Communication Technology, Technology & Applied Science, and Language, Communication & Media.

I’m not really sure what the quality of instruction is like. Several students have complained to me that their teachers are not well-qualified or that they frequently make mistakes. People have also told me that the library doesn’t have very many books, the computer lab doesn’t have very many well-functioning computers, and everything they learn is theoretical. The students also don’t have textbooks for the most part. They buy photocopies from the school for some things, but not all the students can afford them (it’s 30 francs, about 5 cents, per page, and there’s a lot of hand-outs); for other things, they take turns reading the one copy of the book in the library. I’m hoping to sit in on some classes at some point and get a better idea of what things are like.

Anyway, a lot of my good friends here are students, and they are really impressive. Many of them are from extremely poor families in very rural villages and grew up without electricity or other resources. On top of that, a lot of them are genocide survivors, who witnessed violence at an early age (around 6 for most of them), lost family members, and were even left to care for their siblings. But, they still finished secondary school and earned government scholarships to study at university. In a country where many people don’t complete secondary school and very few pursue higher education, that’s a really amazing accomplishment.

Even now, most of the students don’t have a lot of resources, but they work really hard (unless they’re always lying to me when they say they’re studying!). A lot seem to spend hours in the library, they come by with their reading assignments and ask me about words they don’t know, they practice English all the time, they sit in my house and copy vocab lists out of my Kinyarwanda books.

As the Rwandan government just changed the language of education from French to English last year, the students who grew up in Rwanda (which is the majority of them, as far as I know) are facing some difficult challenges. Imagine if you took a few hours of Spanish class per week in high school, then got to college and were told that everything was going to be conducted in Spanish. It would be a disaster. But, that’s what the kids here are dealing with, and they’re doing a remarkable job. Not only do they have little experience in English, but they’re not always getting great instruction in English, as not all of the teachers speak it very well either. Plus, they don’t have a lot of opportunities to really practice. I guess that’s where I come in – I’m really happy that I’m able to help them and give them a chance to practice. Two of my good friends were at my house the other day, and they told me that I explain things really well and that I’m helping them a lot – it was definitely a highlight!

Update

Wow, it’s been awhile! Life at site has been keeping me pretty busy recently. My time is mainly divided between working at my official job and trying to integrate into my community.

Most of my work is done in other sectors, which means I get to travel around the district a lot. I haven’t left Rwanda yet, but I’ve seen both Uganda and Tanzania! I mostly go to cooperative meetings and to health outreach trainings. Many of the cooperatives are just getting started, so we’re helping them conduct elections and set their procedures. Soon, they’ll start working more on income-generating activities and on micro-savings and micro-lending, which I’m really excited about. The health outreach trainings are mainly for Community Health Workers, religious leaders, and youth who have been chosen to work as peer educators. The trainings teach them about AIDS prevention, family planning, malaria prevention, water hygiene, and nutrition; provide them with resources; and, teach them how to educate others on health issues. I love that this project trains people to train others, because it will be more sustainable and have a bigger impact. My best day in the field so far was a at youth outreach event, which involved performances of traditional music and dance, football games for girls and boys, and speeches from youth on AIDS prevention.

I occasionally work in the office here in town, mostly on computer-related tasks that nobody else in my office can do [efficiently]. I’m trying to take those opportunities to teach my supervisor and other co-workers some computer skills that would be helpful for them. Hopefully, they’ll soon feel comfortable enough with computers that they won’t need my help any more. I’m a big believer that aid workers should aim to work themselves out of a job.

That about sums up my official job, which has been fine, but what’s been a lot more meaningful to me are the relationships I’m developing with people here. As my Kinyarwanda improves buhoro buhoro (little by little), I’m able to communicate a bit more with my neighbors, most of whom speak exclusively Kinyarwanda. But, sometimes I translate in my head things I say in Kinyarwanda. For example, my neighbor’s umukozi (housegirl) went to visit her family in her home village for a while and just returned. Wanting to say, “I’m happy you’re back,” I said, “Nishimiye wavuye hano” – “I’m happy you came here.” Only, I’m pretty sure that’s not grammatically correct, so it probably came across more like, “I is happy you came here.” Great.

Because religion is such a big part of the culture in Rwanda, like in most African countries, going to church is really important for integration. I’ve been going to the Presbyterian Church almost every Sunday and have made several good friends there. Last Sunday, the choir sang a song in English for me – I was so touched!

A lot of Peace Corps Volunteers barricade themselves alone in their houses as soon as it gets dark, which is around 6:00pm here. I did that for about a week before I got really bored and sick of being alone, felt unproductive, and realized I was missing out on a lot. I go out at night now, and it’s very liberating. Because so few people have electricity and there are so many fields, my neighborhood gets pitch dark, so I don’t really go wandering around alone at night. But, I go out with people whenever possible, go to the store across the street, visit my neighbors, and have people over. You can’t integrate when you’re spending 14 hours a day alone in your house, and I’m pretty sure it’s not healthy, so I’m feeling much freer and more social now.