Gardenings

A little while ago I wanted to weed my garden. I however went a little berserk and ripped everything out except for my jalapeños, Serrano, and forget-me-nots. The peas were taller than me and the watermelons I couldn’t keep from spreading like wildfire. Fruitless plants coupled with the overabundance of rain we’d been having that caused some roots to rot sent me into a rage and I uprooted everything and tossed it all aside. It’s been about three weeks or so since I did that and now my forget-me-nots are blooming and beautiful, the jalapeños are starting to flower and the Serrano’s are still dwarf sized but hanging in there. I have a renewed sense of energy and excitement and this week I’m going to tackle the rest of the brick path I started, clear out the weeds and overgrowth crowding around my garden, and build a fence to protect it from the cows. Right now it’s starting to be the dry season so I’m going to hold off on planting anything, save those that grow best in this weather, and focus on preparing the garden for the next rainy season. In a few months I’m hoping to have a beautiful garden surrounded by flowers and plants that actually grow food. Tuzareba (we’ll see). Pictures to come when I have internet that can handle the uploading process.

The name of the game is…

…what just crawled on me?

The answer is a blister beetle and it crawled on my back one night while I was asleep. It didn’t bite me, didn’t sting me, didn’t so much as ask me out to dinner. It only crawled on me and left what looked like a six in gash on my back that was really tender to the touch and could be seen through a white T-shirt.

I guess it works like poison ivy where you only have to come in contact with it and get a rash. In my case I didn’t realize anything until I worked out in the morning. I took my shirt off and thought I felt a pimple forming on my back. I touched it and it just kept on going. Luckily the pain subsided quickly enough, after a day or two, and it turned into feeling like a bad cut scabbing over. I’ve only had two strange things happen to me so far (the first was having Strep-leg) in Africa and I’m going to try to keep a cap on no more than one hand’s worth. 

The timetable strikes again!

Last term I was plagued with what seemed like the ham-burglar constantly sneaking into the teacher’s lounge and switching my classes around just to mess with me. This term he’s really stepped up his game. Two of the teachers at my school decided to accept different jobs and apparently that means they are also leaving immediately, with only four weeks of teaching left. So now I’m the lucky native English speaker who is going to double his workload (albeit from 8 to 16hrs/wk), increase my number of students by 150ish, teach said students without knowing diddly squat about their level or what they’ve learned, and on top of all of that give them a final exam which I am responsible for.

It’s kind of a win-lose situation. On the one hand I get to interact with that many more students at my school and (theoretically) help improve their language skills and teach them about American culture (the third goal of PC). However, from my understanding of the situation, I am only subbing in for the rest of this term until a new teacher is brought in for the last term, which is only like 8 weeks long. So these students are going to have had three different English teachers in one year. English is still really new to Rwanda and the Ministry of Education has set lofty goals and objectives for a newly adopted school language that if I were to teach I have no doubt in my mind that not one student would pass my class, so being taught from three different people with three varied English language abilities is going to confuse and hinder their learning. In five years or so things will hopefully be drastically improved but right now, after only three years of being an Anglophone country, students are falling short of the ambitions of the government which hasn’t adequately prepared them for. Rwanda is doing great things and making wonderful strides to the general welfare of the country but inevitably it’s not a perfect system and with the shortcomings of government bureaucracy there will be those who fall through the cracks.