Morning Formation

11/13/09 Morning formation with the Animators was again great. I brought out 3 of the little cloth balloons that one of the retired Sisters in San Anotnio made, and we had a good time. I was explaining how we play this game – everyone holds hands in a circle, and you have to keep the ball in the air without breaking the circle. As I'm explaining that we all have to hold hands, John, one of the flirty ones, goes "J'ai un petit problème…" and moves so that he's right next to me. We all just laughed! Well, the game ended up being too hard because of the wind, but we had fun just playing volleyball with them. Again everything was in Kinyarwanda, so I practiced patience. Then we practiced one of the crafts that we'll be doing with the kids – tracing our hands and cutting them out and writing our name and "love" or "peace" or any other inspirational word (in Kinyarwanda) on them. This sounds like an easy enough task for most of you reading this, but for the people living in developing countries it’s quite difficult. In primary school, children don't have art class, so they miss the prime developmental age for training the small muscles in the hands and arms to be able to swiftly cut around curves and corners. Most of the Animators had to do 2 or 3 hands so they could practice using scissors. Sr. Charlotte was helping them see where their errors were – either they traced one of their fingers too narrow and it looked unnatural, or their cutting was jagged, or they couldn't maneuver around the little corner where the fingers meet the palm. It was another eye-opener that helped me to see the many things we take for granted in America.

We then made paper hats. This only involved folding, so it was not as complex an activity for the Animators.

They decorated them nicely, and then we all went to take a nice picture, which failed because my battery died. Sad.

We had a pretty good time getting organized for this picture though – it took a good 5 minutes because everyone was arguing about how we should squish to fit, and people's hats kept blowing off.

I had a nice chat with Liberata, one of the Animators, a wonderfully smiley one. She said that she really wants to learn English, and I said we can make an English-Kinyarwanda exchange. She was very happy about this idea and squeezed my hand in an approving gesture. I've noticed that friends do that a lot, either hold hands or are just more touchy-feely than Americans. One thing that I appreciate very much here is that everyone greets everyone with a handshake. If you walk into a room, you go say hello to each individual person and shake their hand. I'm gonna try to continue this when I'm back home…I really don't know why we only do this in professional settings…

Finally, we sorted toys that will be used at Muhato's Patronage and at Rubavu's Patronage (a neighboring city where Sr. Charlotte will be working a few days a week as well as here at Muhato parish). It was very much a Third World toy sorting. We brought two huge burlap bags of stuff and dumped them out on the bare cement floor.

The "toys" consisted of many tin cans, bottle caps, a bunch of colorful film canisters with filmstrips in them, a jump rope, 2 very good condition soccer balls, a handful of worn-out soccer balls, 3 balls made from trash bags, pieces of rope, some sticks, pieces of silverware, a sack full of bean bags, several Styrofoam blocks, and several whistles. It was rather heartbreaking to see this, and also a bit shocking to see the ideas that people were coming up with. Example: lets stick the handle of the fork in our mouths and see if we can carry a beanbag on the end of the fork. My thoughts: get that out of your mouth!!!!!! While I do embrace doing a lot with a little and making something fun out of just a few resources, I do not advocate sticking dirty old silverware in your mouth in order to come up with a good game. I wish that bottlecaps and tin cans were not the most abundant "toy" in the batch. But I am still confident that the kids will have a blast with whatever games we make up out of this stuff. We had fun doing lots of cheers/chants and playing volleyball outside today. Everyone got a turn riling everybody up with a cheer (I did not, because all of this is in Kinyarwanda…I don't mind though). I am constantly amazed at how not a single Rwandese soul is afraid to sing loudly and dance around. Its wonderful! We also practiced Patronage songs, which are all in Kinyarwanda. Even with the songbooks (thank God for songbooks) I still had a difficult time because the words are so long and complex. We also made teams and came up with a team cheer (in Kinyarwanda)…that was interesting, but I still had an uber fun time. I really spend most of this time smiling and laughing and not thinking about how out-of-place I must be, but instead just diving right in and doing my best to do whatever my comrades are doing.

Later that evening, I had the most hysterical fit of laughter that I've had since I've been here. Fr. Antoine, Fr. Théophile, and Sr. Charlotte all came for an English lesson on vowel pronunciation. It went very well. At the end, I asked if I could get a picture of my students. So they lined up real nice and I took a lovely photo. Well, upon seeing it, Fr. Antoine says "Oh no, we must retake. I don't look good. My head is tilted. I am not standing straight and tall. I do not look serious." The three of us bust out laughing and completely make fun of his remarks, but he insists that we must take another one. Well, I was stifling some laughter as I took the second one, couldn't hold it in, and burst out laughing as the photo took, resulting in a nice blur. So it actually took three tries to get it right. And even at that, Fr. Antoine was still not satisfied. I'm not sure what was wrong with the third one, since he didn't make us redo it again, but he had a thing or two to say about his appearance. I've really grown to love this man's demeanor. Pretty much, he is hilarious. He's a very young, hip priest who always has a smile on his face and can often bring laughter into any situation.