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.