A Brief Tribute to Cowboys

Cowboys are awesome. This is why.

Having lived in Colorado for most of my life, I would have thought that I had a pretty firm handle on what it means to be a cowboy. However, what it means to be a cowboy in Colorado and what it means to be a cowboy in Rwanda are almost entirely different things, the only similarity being that they both have cows. For one thing, Rwandan cowboys do not have horses. For another, they do not have land. Your average Rwandan cowboy is therefore a man (or little boy) with a stick, chasing their cows around on foot all day. Fortunately for them, there are so many of them that they have practically become institutionalized outlaws since there isn't the funding to actually crack down on the rather non-threatening act of illegal grazing.

I don't know if it's because of their lawlessness or because of their poverty or what, but the cowboys are some of the most generous people in my community. Despite living three men to a shack with no door, they're less interested in asking me for things than they are in sharing, whether it's that they offer to take me to Mosque when I ask or they offer me a seat and some milk (which is fresh from the cow and unpasteurized so I can't actually take it, but it's the thought that counts) when I stop by to visit, they always go out of their way to make me feel welcome. The one time they did ask me for anything was when they tried to sell me a puppy, but now that I know them better, I think this was less because they wanted the money and more because they thought it would make me happy. I think they would have actually been quite sad to give it up.

They have three other dogs of their own, all of which are well fed, trained, and cared for, which means they know better than to be afraid of Beans whereas the majority of people make a point of informing me they are worried she will eat me in my sleep when they see me walking her. Instead they rough-house with her a little bit and let her have some of the milk they're putting out for their own dogs. It's nice to have a place to go where I play with my dog and not feel like I'm scaring the locals and even better to have some friends that are animal people like me.

Questions, Questions, and More Questions

Three weeks ago, I started to do what I actually came here to do: teach. That's three weeks that I have been running around with my head cut off, trying to make sense of a world that is simultaneously frustrating, uplifting, thought-provoking, and hilarious. I don't know if I can fit the entire spectrum of what I have been faced with into one blog without doing a disservice to some of it, but I am fairly certain that, the longer I put it off, the harder to will be to do so here it is.

The start of term in Rwandan schools in notoriously chaotic. Students (and sometimes teachers) show up a week or two late to school, the schedule isn't decided until a month in, and even then, no one sticks to it. I think things are a bit different at mine. Besides a steady trickle of additional students coming into the classroom, things went off without a hitch for me. I spent the first day on introductions. I thought this would be relatively simple. And I was wrong. In America, students don't normally want to know a whole lot more about their teacher besides their name and whether or not they assign a lot of homework. In Rwanda, it is a custom for students to spend the first day of each term asking their teachers questions about themselves, a custom I hadn't taken all that seriously because I didn't really think that there were even that many questions to ask. But there are. So, for three straight hours on my first day of school, I got to answer awkward questions about myself, questions about where I'm from (explaining snow was fun), questions about my family, my studies, my university, the American education system, and, most importantly, the big one, “Are you single?”

Soon enough, I was able to turn the heat back onto my students and made them tell me about themselves, giving me only a fraction of the information that had pulled out of me, but valuable information nonetheless. Knowing the names of your students isn't a requirement for Rwandan teachers, but it is a requirement for me so I made each of my students a name tag to help me learn them. This was a completely foreign concept. When I brought the name tags to class (having already explained them the day before), their unanimous question was “Teacher, what is the significance of this paper?” The significance?... the significance is that it's your name and that I'm planning on using it when I talk to you because you should feel significant in your own classroom. I also like learning their names. Some of them are difficult and in Kinyarwanda (Enock, Nadjilla, Bahati), some of them are quaint and easy to say (Jean Peter, Pat, Innocent), and some of them are straight up ridiculous because I told them that I would call them whatever they wanted to be called in my class (Priestartist, 44 shooter, Holy Mafia). There is apparently a lot to be learned from somebody's name alone.

I also made them tell me their age, which most of them thought was unfair because I had made the decision on day one not to disclose my name for fear that I would lose the respect of my students if they knew how young I am, telling them I would tell them when they graduated. This was definitely a good call. I slip and call them kids sometimes in a sad, subconscious effort to make myself feel like more of an authority figure, but half of my students are older than I am, ranging from 16 to 25 years old. Conversations held over the lunch break and after school have informed me that most of them are as old as they are because of opportunities lost in the year of 1994. Many of them now are the “chiefs of their households,” meaning that there are no parents left to take care of their younger siblings so it is on them now. They are burdened with heavy questions, questions they pose like this:

“Catie, in your opinion.......

How may I stop my mind from worrying about my family when I sit down to study?

Can someone be successful in Africa without the opportunity to go to university and no capital or connections?

And.....

Why do the leaders of this world do nothing while other people are dying?”

Answers like meditation and self-initiated job creation can begin to satisfy the need for an answer to the first two, but the latter has me caught up in an existential crisis that I can guarantee will last me longer than the two years of my service. I ended up writing my friend Moses in Uganda and asking him to start up something like an advice column for some of my students because I knew I wasn't the right person to be fielding their questions. Even when they aren't asking questions, my students can be overwhelming. I have found myself in shock this evening when one of my students casually mentioned that he was afraid to swim because his father was murdered on a boat during the genocide and then asked me what ice cream is.

In an attempt to indirectly address some of the issues my students seem to be concerned with, I gave them a lesson on Martin Luther King, which has rapidly expanded into a whole unit on human rights, nonviolent vs. violent revolution, and what it take to make change in the world. One of my classes is so invested in the topic that they actually chose to have a history lesson today instead of playing a game so I'm planning on introducing them to Malcolm X next week and having a mock debate from their two perspectives.

English Club is one of few retreats I can find to have lighter topics of discussion. It's three times a week and run by none other than my fabulous dog sitter Priestartist/Faustin, who, I am convinced, will someday rule much more than English club (seeing as he does aspire to be a Music Superstar/Doctor and spends his free time attending national conferences as a representative of the youth of our district). In the meantime though, he organizes topics of dialogue and persuades even his older peers to humor him in a games like Simon Says over their lunch breaks. English Club is completely optional so its members are confident and enthusiastic, which makes it fun for me to be there and a great place for me to test out new game ideas for my classes.

The teachers also have their own Teacher English Club, which is pretty much the polar opposite of the student English Club. Student English Club is run by students, but Teacher English Club is (apparently) run by me. Student English Club is willing to play games, but Teacher English Club is too serious. Student English Club lets me act any way I like, but Teacher English Club insists that I compose myself in the manner of a Rwandan teacher, which is “to be very serious,” never to use the eraser myself and always exit the class before any of my “students” can leave. Of course, the biggest difference is that my teacher students are actual horrific classroom participants due to the fact that most of them are too shy to actually speak English, seeing as they spent most of their education learning French and only recently have been forced to make the switch to English. They're terrified of actually using English and absorbed in the details of the difference of the simple present and present perfect tense and when it is appropriate to use the word “for.” That's not to say that they can't speak English though. They can and they do when they are one-on-one, but getting them to do it in our mock classroom is a battle.

Despite its challenges, I have to admit that I have a pretty cushy setup as far as my school goes. Burdened as my students are, they are privileged to three meals a day (that's three meals a day more than most schools in Rwanda can guarantee their students), running water, and electricity to study by at night. Discussing the hard stuff pays off because I know that they actually have a chance to take what they are thinking about and apply it when, someday, they are actually leading their country. It's hard to know what they've been through, but it is inspiring to think about where they are going.

Getting My Hands Dirty

I had never lived alone until the past month of my life and I had certainly never lived alone in a foreign and developing country so I was terrified at the prospect of starting my life at site. Probably shockingly to anyone who knows me and knows how much of an extrovert I am, I am ecstatic to have the house to myself. It means that I can do all of the weird American things I want on a daily basis. I can do workout videos in my living room, I can listen to music, and, most importantly, I can eat....things that I can taste. My first ventures into the world of cooking in Rwanda have been more than satisfactory. I stocked up on pasta and learned to make a mean marinara and Thai peanut sauce almost from scratch. I even made my first few batches of french-fries! On top of all my, less-than-healthy comfort food, I've finally been able to make myself a fresh salad with homemade vinaigrette, which has become a staple with almost every meal to make up for not being able to eat a single fresh vegetable during my three months of training. Last weekend, I even learned how to make yogurt, which means that I can have either strawberry or honey-cinnamon (or honey-cinnamon-peanut butter) in the morning instead of my normal eggs with veggies. And tonight, it's time for cheese sauce. I know that to my readers at home, my culinary adventures are probably somewhat less stimulating than my cultural ones, and we'll get to those, but I feel that, to truly convey my experience here I have to be honest about the things that take a priority in my life and quality cuisine is definitely one of them.

But I'll get on to the good stuff since I've done much more than sit around locked up in my house cooking. I do, after all, have to go to the market to buy ingredients and I spend a great deal of each day on foot, greeting people. Rwandans love greetings and nothing seems to make my village people happier than seeing me walk (or run, depending on the time of day) down the street saying “Mwaramutse!” (Good Morning) or “Mwiriwe!” (Good Afternoon) to everyone I see. As another a way to get integrated in my community, I've taken up farming. The nuns down the street from me help to run a farming cooperative, which has turned out to be a great place to make friends in the community. On the first day that I picked up a hoe, is was a huge shock. My friend Marigo was beyond incredulous that I was actually capable of doing the work. She kept on asking, “Azi gukora?!?” (she knows how to work?!?) and I don't think she believed it until she saw me with her own eyes. So farming has gone a long way towards changing my community's initial perceptions of me as an American, as well as providing me with something I like doing to fill what would probably otherwise be painfully dull days. One of my happiest days here was spent just sitting in the dirt, cutting the roots and shoots off of onions with a couple of breastfeeding mothers. I had already cut on one of my fingers (ironically, from chopping an onion the night before) and the juice was making it sting and we were there for so long that I got a sunburn and a callouses on my hands, but the sense of togetherness that comes from making sure that everyone has food on the table when they go home is insurmountable.

Sadly, the same mindset that seems to make people so ecstatic to see me farm has had some negative repercussions in my community. People seem to think that white people don't know how to work, not because they are incompetent, but rather because they never have to do it at home. I am definitely humbling myself by being willing to get my hands dirty. I found that some of the villagers are under the impression that there is a hierarchy of race in which white people don't need to work because they are, by far, the best. I had a particularly heartbreaking conversation with a young man who was convinced of the fact that white people were the best “class of race” and that they were followed by brown and then by black people, who were lowest and least promising of the races because God had created them last (He then asked me for books on the apocalypse). This is, of course, precisely the opposite of any scientifically-based telling of the origins of humans. It might just be me, but I find it ironic that the same people that are convinced of my inherent superiority are also shocked that I can somehow manage to lift a hoe and simultaneously infuriating that someone found it acceptable to brainwash the people of Rwanda into a framework that makes them feel inferior.

Whether I like them or not, these are the perceptions I'm up against and I'm working hard to change them. It's not enough that to that I told that boy about the discovery of the world's oldest human bones in Ethiopia or the multitude of accounts of a brown or black historical Jesus. Everyday, no matter how much of a hurry I'm in, I have to take the time to stop people on the streets that call me Muzungu and tell them my name, explaining that I don't like the word Muzungu because it means the same things as different, but I'm a person, just like everybody else. I only wish I had the Kinyarwanda skills to explain that skin color is determined by one, singular gene in the entirety of a person's DNA. Normally my explanations go a long way, but there are definitely days that I have my setbacks. For instance, days on which missionaries have come to visit the church. Now don't get me wrong, I have friends who are missionaries and I truly believe that their work can be good and the church visibly benefits the members of my community, but it's rather frustrating when I realize that a new congregation is in town only when everybody in my market place starts asking me for cookies and candy because the bandi (other) abazungu had just given them some. I explained the differences between myself and the missionaries by pointing out that they didn't speak Kinyarwanda, live in the village, or work with any of the people there. I said it was nice that they gave out candy, but that I can't afford to do that since I am only a volunteer. What I can afford to do is to give the people of my village two years of my time and hard work in the hopes that, someday, if they want candy, they can buy it for themselves.

However much I disagree with my village's missionary visitors, I still maintain a strong relationship with my church by farming, spending social time with the nuns and priests, and attending holiday and Sunday Mass. It's fairly obvious that these efforts are paying off. Father Vincent had me for drinks to introduce me to some of the teachers at my neighboring primary school and gloated about my Kinyarwanda and farming abilities.

He was so ecstatic that I came and introduced myself to him in Kinyarwanda on my first day here that he made a point of introducing me to the church congregation of thousands on New Years by asking me to make a speech. The service itself was actually so much fun that it wasn't even nerve-wracking to have to introduce myself. It was so large that it had to be held outside because not everyone could fit in the church. There was a sermon-making in Kinyarwanda (some of which I could actually follow, but spent a fair portion of playing with children) followed by several other components than I am assuming come pretty standard at Mass anywhere.....waving around frankincense and praying etc. Father Vincent and the sisters then proceeded to give the sacrament to the entire crowd as they lined up in an impressive and tedious feet of crowd management. But then came the dancing. It was headed off by the same sleepy girls that normally perform at rather solemn Sunday Mass, but it really started to pick up from there with dancers in brilliant costumes jumping all over the place and, eventually, get the crowd to join them. Sister Rukundo, who I am coming to love, got up a shook it with the rest of them.

However, not every day in paradise is so perfect. There are days that I am too tired to play with the kids outside of my house and wish they would stop calling my name. There are also days that I wish they understood dogs the same way Americans do so the kids wouldn't incite Beans to play with them and then run away screaming bloody-murder when she actually does. Granted, her training is going fairly well and I can stop her before she gets too riled up most of the time now. And then there's Alphonse, the town umusazi (crazy man). It's hard to say what's happened in his past, but he's clearly of an age that he would have witnessed the crimes of 1994 and there are no psychological services to speak of in Rwanda to help people to deal with trauma. As a result, he stumbles around each day, rambling into a telephone that may or may not even have someone else on the other end, yelling at people. I'm pretty sure that he's harmless, but that the village people are afraid of him because he's different and being treated differently is something I can emphasize with quite well. I want to reach out to him, but it doesn't help that he's obviously a bit scared of me because of my skin. I actually think he would really appreciate it if I would leave so things could go back to normal, as evident by the fact that he normally follows me around the marketplace trying to scare me when he sees me there. Thankfully, my village people are very protective of me so I rarely need to tolerate this for very long.

For the most part, my village has been extremely welcoming and easy to move in to. I'm excited now that classes have officially started (which I will have to write about later) and I have a distinct purpose, but I am also looking forward to working on my own projects in the village. The priests and nuns want to learn English in exchange for French and my farming friends want to learn yoga after I told them I was more worried about their backs than my own. So much to do and so little time. Two years is already starting to feel like nothing at all.