May 26, 2023
Today, while giving a test at the end of the day, I noticed that it was raining lightly while the Sun was out. The Rwandans have a curious expression for this, “The hyena is getting married.” I have no idea what the origin of this is. Sandra, the Peace Corps volunteer who also lives in Gatsibo province, said the Spanish expression is, “The witch is getting married.” Interesting how two cultures so far apart settled on marriage as a way to describe rainfall as the Sun is shining. When I asked my Zimbabwean colleagues about this, they said that they don’t have a similar expression. Many of the Zimbabweans speak Dereva, which has clicking sounds and other creative uses of the mouth as part of their phonology, and my colleague Joyce taught me the word for “rainbow” (which I quickly forgot) – you couldn’t call it a tongue twister but it’s really hard to pronounce. Here is the photo of the rainbow which visited Kabarore this afternoon.
May 25, 2023
Happy Africa Day! (May 25) I had never heard of this holiday until this morning. It’s a working holiday in Rwanda so school was in session. Between my four classes and grading Tuesday’s tests, I donated blood. The Rwandan Biomedical Center (great slogan: “Healthy People, Wealthy Nation”) came to TTC Kabarore to collect blood, as they did last term. A lot of students were there to donate. I was Customer #1 and they gladly took my O+ blood. Incidentally, most Rwandans have O+ blood which might be why we get along so well. There is a real lack of space at our teacher training college and the medical folks used the room where the assistant principal (dean of students) and directors of discipline usually sit to set up shop.
May 23, 2023
Today the 11th graders put their knowledge about Human Rights and Ethics, the content from Unit 7 in our textbook, to work. This part of the text was quite good at preparing future teachers for their roles as caretakers of children, and we studied all 42 rights accorded to children by the United Nations. The future teachers of Science and Math put on skits dealing with the rights of children. There was a lot of good acting, good plots and problem resolution at the end of each skit. The future Language Education teachers took a traditional end-of-unit test. Because the weather was nice, we were able to sit out on the lawn. I will grade the tests on the bus tomorrow as I go to Kigali to reapply for a passport at the US Embassy. That was my Tuesday afternoon – 3 classes from 2:45 to 5 p.m. It was a good day at TTC Kabarore.
May 21, 2023
On Sunday, the Catholics in Kabarore attend mass at 7 a.m. The mass lasts for almost three hours because of the amount of beautiful singing from the choir and the length of the homily, but other than that, it’s exactly the same as anywhere else. Today our priest was a man from Congo and not the usual Fr. Eric. I didn’t realize that his Kinyarwanda wasn’t native until my friend Denis told me afterwards. Catholic churches usually have prime real estate in any town but not in Kabarore – the church is way up the side of a hill. To get there, I have to walk about 35 minutes and like most Americans, I’m not a recreational walker, so it’s a bit of a hike. The church itself is quite plain, and there is no sign to indicate which saint or religious name it is named after. The pews are just benches and Stations of the Cross are just pictures tacked to the wall. Sunday mass is always packed out with approximately 600 adults and about 100 kids in the children’s section. There are almost always two collections and today there was a third so that they could pay the salary the nightwatchman. I feel really welcome here and they have asked me to speak a couple of times during the announcements after mass. I can’t say too much in Kinyarwanda but I let the congregation know I’m grateful to be among them. Soon I will be saying goodbye to them and the Peace Corps’ language trainers will help me craft an appropriate short speech in Kinyarwandan.
May 21, 2023
This May, the Rwandan Education Board created an English Language Skills competition for all 16 teacher training colleges throughout the country. Kabarore was the host for the Eastern Region, and we welcomed teacher trainers from Matimba, Zaza and Bicumbi. The competition was divided into four parts: Listening, Speaking (Debate), Reading and Writing. I coached the Kabarore team in listening. The students had to listen to an audio clip then write the answers in Round One, and then they had to listen to a second audio clip followed by oral questions in Round Two. The TTC Kabarore team came in second place. Mr. Aime finished fourth of twelve students, Ms. Teta Benise was fifth and Mr. Divine was sixth. Here they are hard at work on the writing portion of the listening test.
May 20, 2023
This May, the Rwandan Education Board created an English Language Skills competition for all 16 teacher training colleges throughout the country. Kabarore was the host for the Eastern Region, and we welcomed teacher trainers from Matimba, Zaza and Bicumbi. The competition was divided into four parts: Listening, Speaking (Debate), Reading and Writing. I coached the Kabarore team in listening. The students had to listen to an audio clip then write the answers in Round One, and then they had to listen to a second audio clip followed by oral questions in Round Two. The TTC Kabarore team came in second place. Mr. Aime finished fourth of twelve students, Ms. Teta Benise was fifth and Mr. Divine was sixth. Here they are hard at work on the writing portion of the listening test.
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