Extreme Beauty Girl

During the third term a student asked me to visit him during the holidays. The school I teach at is a boarding school so the students don’t necessarily come from the immediate area but most do come from Rusizi and Nyamasheke districts (collectively referred to as Cyangugu or as the PCVs in the region have affectionately named it, the G’ug (long u sound)), so I wouldn’t really be going out of my way to visit someone. His guestimation for travel time between Kamembe and his town was 45 minutes. Actual time—1 hour waiting in a twege (a squeeze bus), 2 hours in the bus and 1 hour walking up steep hills in areas where I seriously doubt another white person has been (though plenty of Chinese as I was abundantly referred to in Kinyarwanda).

As soon as he saw my twege pull up his face lit up like a Christmas tree and the entire hour walk to his house he kept telling me how excited and happy it made him that I came to visit. I met his real mother (as he called her because as he explained to me he is a “bastard” and lives with his father and his stepmother) on the walk to his house. Three sketchy makeshift bridges, dozens of dirty handshakes with kids covered in who knows what and probably a 500 meter elevation increase up the hills, we arrived just as the afternoon torrential downpours started.

Before we arrived at his house we got on the topic of how he loves to rap/sing and when we got to his house he brought out a notebook full of songs he and two other students had written (approximately 120 in total, in English and Kinyarwanda). My favorite was called Extreme Beauty Girl, about some girl at school that he likes. He also wrote one called Intwari (Hero) about President Kagame and how he has improved Rwanda to what it is today and how he continues to help the people. I figured since we were talking about music that I would show him my iPod and play some stuff for him. I showed him how to use it, including the shake to shuffle feature. The first song to come on when he shook it was Don’t Get Too Drunk To F*** by Avenue D. Luckily he didn’t understand it and we just left it at that.

We ate some peanuts, bananas, bread and drank a Fanta but that was all the time I could afford to spend with him. It was 3pm and I needed to get back to Kamembe to catch an early morning bus to Peace Corps’ training site since I was observing the new trainees at model school. Another hour walk (this time downhill and after it had rained), more kids calling me Chinese, an hour wait in the bus again, and another two hours in the twege until I arrived in Kamembe.

Visiting this student helped open up a relationship with him that I would not have gotten otherwise and for that I am really thankful for even just the single hour that I was able to spend with him at his house. He has invited me over again but next time for an overnight stay. It undoubtedly will be sufficiently awkward but I’m sure the benefits will outweigh any negatives.

I am thank you mother!

Change. It comes slowly or instantly, there’s really no middle ground here.  Take for example my town.

This was taken the first day of site visit, about one year ago. Literally almost nothing has changed in that time. That is until about two weeks ago. I came out of the school compound to buy some food on market day and almost every single store (save the mosque on the right) has been painted blue. Tigo, one of the phone companies here, has started putting a little money into the town or something and quite literally every store is blue now and tells you to “Smile. You got Tigo.”

Change isn’t always that immediate though. Walking out of my compound I will be berated by voices from places I cannot see shouting “IAMFINETHANKYOUTEACHER!” “WHAT IS MY NAME?” “I AM THANK YOU MOTHER!” (my personal favorite) and the like. Most are told without comprehension (thus the lack of spaces in the first example, it’s usually shouted in one continuous breath) and if you respond the kids just giggle and laugh but recently the kids have shown the smallest semblance of finally understanding the difference between good morning and good afternoon. One girl started saying good morning but then corrected herself to afternoon. When the kids are actually in reasonable distance from me and if I’m in a good mood and not annoyed from said throng of kids then I generally tell them, in Kinyarwanda, that we say good morning in the morning and good afternoon after 12pm. Generally I shy away from good evening just because it’s easier to omit it for now, though one kid actually asked me what about “mugoroba” (evening) after I gave the spiel about morning and afternoon.

I question my effectiveness with my students when a large percentage of them almost fail an exam that I made easy but when the town kids start accurately greeting me according to the time of the day it makes me feel like I am vaguely accomplishing what I am here to do.