English Class

11/24/09
In my English class on Monday, I showed the children a magazine picture and presented a made-up story that I had written about the girl in the picture. Then, I divided the class into groups and gave each group a different magazine picture. They were instructed to create a story of their own. They wrote these stories down, handed them in, and I corrected them that evening. This was a pretty good activity. It took quite a while for them to complete it, and it really allowed me to see their writing ability. The focus was again on clothing, since that was what we'd been talking about. So they had to describe the people's outfits in the picture, and then imagine what is happening in the scene. One group did a very nice job of creatively elaborating on the picture. Theirs was just a simple image of two teenage girls talking on the phone. Well, they had this drama going on about one of the girls is talking to her friend, but her friend loves the other one. The one wants to know which is her true friend, but she doesn't know that she actually loves the other one. The sentence structure was quite confusing for me – I got the gist of what they wanted to say, but I spent a long time correcting this one and trying to make comprehensible sentences. The other groups did a pretty good job of describing the people's outfits and naming them and giving them ages. But no other group really had such a good story to go along with their description :) Nearly all the groups had problems with including "a" before they describe a singular noun. For example, I found a lot of  "She is wearing red sweater."

After class, Jean d'Amour comes up to me and says that he wants me to give him a gift. There was a bit more explanation to this, but that's basically what he said. I told him that I don't have anything to give him, but he says he wants me to get him a book or something.  Here we go again…expecting that I'm made of money…we debate back and forth as I walk him to the gate, and all the while he keeps telling me that you give someone a gift to show your affection for them. I tell him that I would if I could, but I really don't have anything to give. He says to me "if your heart obliges you to give something, you give it. You hate me then?" I just start cracking up and explain that refusal to give something to someone does not signify hatred. He's laughing too at this point. I tell him "Jean d'Amour, I am giving you my friendship. Isn't that enough for you? Why do you want someTHING?" And at this point we meet up with Sr. Charlotte, who asks what's going on. Jean d'Amour explains his request and she gives him this look of "you are ridiculous, go home." She sides with me and says that its enough that I am giving my time and friendship, now get outta here. It was quite comical.

Patronage!

11/24/09

Monday was my first day of Patronage – it was awesome! We get there a bit before 8am, and there are already a good number of kiddos waiting for us to bust out the bag of balls and ropes and other toys. We basically just play with them for the next half hour until there are about 150 kids. I decided I'd join these 2 girls, probably about 9 years old, who were bouncing around these tennis ball type things. They were very curious about me, as are all African children towards a muzungu, and they just stare and stare at you. So I motion for one of them to throw the ball to me, and she does, and we start up a nice game of catch. We quickly attracted about 5 other girls, and it turned into a game of keep-away/fetch/fake-out/bounce the ball wherever you want. Pretty soon there were 10 of us, and they were laughing and having so much fun! They really liked to throw fakes.

There was also this little troublemaker boy who I decided to chase around. I don't even really remember how this started, but he would get all scared-excited whenever I'd catch him looking at me and he would run away. So I would run after him and a bunch of other kids would either laugh or follow me.

Well after a while of that it was time to round everybody up and begin.

So we form a huge circle and Fabrice, one of the Animateurs, leads everybody in a Kinyarwanda cheer that all the kids know. We're marching and dancing around in this circle, we're clapping, they're singing and I'm just smiling and going along with it, and the kids love every second. I had my little friend whom I chased around right next to me, and I would clap and dance extra crazy whenever he stealthily shot a glance at me. He and his friend would just laugh and laugh. We also do the umugari song, which is about the classic African dish that you eat with your hands – I believe I've posted about this previously, its delicious. This cheer is complete with hand motions to indicate that you break off a piece of umugari, dip it in the sauce, put it in your tummy, and mmm mmm good. Then there was also this very weird meat game. Yes, meat. I had no clue what we were jumping forwards and back for, but I was holding hands with some kids so I'd jump whenever they did. Fabrice gave me a brief run-down to inform me that when the leader says a meat that you eat, you jump forward. If you jump for a meat that you don't eat, such as zebra, you have to go in prison in the center of the circle. Hm.

We played clapping-circle games for at least 45 minutes, then the kids got in lines to sing Patronage songs (all in Kinyarwanda). These are more bible-camp type songs, and they all know the words very well and loooove to sing! I just kind of stand at the back and observe. Then they all proceed into the classrooms of the public primary school where Patronage is hosted.

We have a shortage of animators, so the children are in three groups – Malaika ("angels") which are the littlest ones, ages 3-5 then Abapietro ("St. Peter") which are the middle kids, ages 6-9, then Abastrong ("strong") for the older kids, age 10 and up. Each group has at least 40 kids, and there are 2 animators for each group. So each group packs into a classroom, which miraculously fits everyone, I'm not sure how.

The rooms back at Centre de Formation Maïn (the school the Sisters run) are much nicer than this one. Here, the rooms are very small, and the desks are large wooden benches with old wooden tabletops attached to them. Each one sits 3 or 4 students, and they are all thoroughly carved in and written on by all the bored students who have spent their days in these desks. And there is no electricity in the school. Each room is illuminated by the sunlight peering through the windows and through a panel on the ceiling. Its actually quite effective. But the walls and floor are pretty dirty, and there is only one blackboard at the front of the room – this is the only teaching medium available. But, our rockin animators do their job with what they have! The animators teach the kids about advent, they read them bible passages, they teach them poems about Baby Jesus, and they teach them songs to correspond with what they've learned.

All of the formation that the animators teach is in Kinyarwanda, so I just sat outside one of the classrooms and played with two really little kids, probably about 2 years old. They were 2 girls who wandered over from I have no idea where. They just sort of smiled and giggled at me, so I was smiling and making faces at them and playing little hand-clapping games with them. For a good 20 minutes they just gave me high-fives, and then my hands were covered in dirt. But I had brought along my little bottle of hand sanitizer, so I cleaned up, don't worry. Both of these girls were super cute, with big baby eyes and cute little smiles. But they were sooo dirty! One of them had a torn dress on, and she had obviously been sitting in the dirt, because her undies, which I could visibly see through her torn dress, were all dirty. The other little one was wearing a jumper with a hood – it was actually really cute…picture a little kid running at you with a dark blue fleece onesie on, all the way from her ankles to her head. But she too had a big dirt splotch on her butt. I wondered if these kids were potty trained…I think so, but if not that could lead to some major problems with all the dirt they're sitting in. Well after a while a very fierce-looking mother comes out from behind the school, and immediately the girl with the torn dress starts crying and tries to hide behind me. I realize that this was her mama who must have not known where she was, and yep, now she found her, playing with a muzungu, tsk tsk. I felt really bad, that I should have made sure these were Patronage kids before I started playing with them. But I really have no means of asking since I don't speak Kinyarwanda, and since their parents were no where around I assumed they were ours. Well I motioned to the little girl that she had better go by her mama, and she eventually did, crying the whole way. The mom took off her sandal and threw it at her. I was a bit shocked by that, but I think its pretty normal around here for parents to hit their kids. Throwing shoes I'm not so sure…It didn't hit her very hard though. Not that I'm condoning this or anything…

After the kids in the classrooms finish about an hour of formation with the animators, they all come back outside for playtime. Well, this was interesting. We again bring out all the balls and jump ropes, and many of the kids start forming their own soccer games or catch or jump rope or what have you. A small cluster of them just circle around me, like they want me to put on a show or something. So, I say we should play follow the leader. I grab hands with one kid and have the rest grab on to each other, and motion to the leader that we'll follow them. She has no idea what I'm getting at. So I take the lead and start skipping around, and then they all follow me in a pack. This gains a few more kiddos. So I skip around some more, changing the move to jumping, running, clapping, all kinds of things. I'm now pretty tired, so I point to someone else and say "your turn, go!" But again, no idea what I'm saying. This game has really become "do whatever the muzungu is doing." So I continue to roll with it…we walk over to an open patch of field, and I attempt to play Simon Says. Now, right off the bat I know this won't work because they don't know enough English. But if I do the moves along with them they'll just copy it. So we really played the "mirror" game. Put your hands up, jump, touch the ground, stick your elbow out, face that way, run over here, touch the ground, run that way, run over there, run that way, run over there, stand up, touch the ground, stand up, touch the ground, faster faster faster!!!! They were laaaaaughing a lot and I was having a good time but this game is exhausting! Fortunately for me, it was time to reconvene.

To end the morning's activities, the kids perform for each other the poems and songs that the animators taught them.

 They line up again in their groups, each one performs their piece, we do a special "bravo" clap for each group, and we sing the Patronage song one more time. Then everybody goes home, ta da! As soon as they were dismissed, I was mobbed by a hoard of kids proudly saying "bye" in English and wanting to shake my hand. I did my best to give high-fives or handshakes, but there were so many. I just had to sort of push my way through them to join the animators and Sr. Charlotte for our de-briefing meeting afterwards.