Noheli Y'Abana

12/28/09 – Noheli Y'Abana


Today was the big culminating event to close off Patronage: Noheli Y'Abana, or Kids' Christmas. This was a crazy, long, tiring, and awesome day. Now, this is the day that we have spent all of Patronage preparing for. All the songs and poems that we taught the children, all the zumba practice, everything was in order to display these things at the Christmas show. This event is open to everyone, but it is mainly for other children of the neighborhood who opted not to come to Patronage. It is meant to help them understand the Nativity in a kid-friendly presentation, and to just give them a rip roarin' fun time. Well, we got off to a slow start, as usual. The Patro kids were supposed to come at 9am to start decorating the place, get costumes set up, in general to get organized and stuff in order to prepare for Mass at 10:30, during which a group of the older kids would act out the Nativity (in Kinyarwanda) as the gospel reading. Mass actually started at like 11:15. Totally not surprised by this. When I came a bit before 9, Sr. Charlotte was frantically trying to direct the people in charge of setting up the sound equipment, and there were already a ton of kids. We were in the midst of sorting out the Patronage kids and distinguishing them from the "audience" kids. The kids who came to Patro received a special scarf/sash thing to wear, and they got a paper Christmas hat as a present. So there were probably about 400 kids out on the field, assembled in circles based on their age-groups

The animators were doing their best to call out names from the Patro attendance sheets to give them their scarves. There were way too few of us for this task, but with time and persistence we got it done. Soon thereafter we headed into the church for the kids' Mass. This was more chaos, as kids here tend to just get up and walk wherever and whenever they want. So the animators were trying to move them into rows, filling up the front of the church and keeping kids separated in their age-groups, but they were wandering everywhere to go sit in the back or by their friends in a different group. I used my sparse Kinyarwanda vocabulary to tell kids "come" and "let's go" to try to keep them in order. Plus, now that there are kids here who didn't come to Patronage, there are many children who have never seen me before, and I'm getting all kinds of "Muzungu! Muzungu!" like when I first arrived. It was ok, but quite a step-down from being habituated to having Patro kids call me by name. Finally Mass begins, with the choir dressed their best walking up from the back of the church with the priest and altar servers and a train of white-robed dancers preceding them.

There was a cluster of parents who came also, which I was really grateful for because their presence helped me stay focused. It really didn't feel like Mass at all because we were constantly shushing children or turning them around to face forward, so it was nice to have a steady group of people who actually came to worship. The kids did a great job acting during the gospel, although they weren't expecting to use a microphone, and I'm sure most of them had never spoken into one before. So they were probably pretty hard to understand. But the skit went very well .

It was a bit of a problem though when it came time for Communion. Some of the animators and a few of the adults had to go stand at the front and filter out all the kids who came up to receive that had not yet had First Holy Communion.  All in all, it seemed extremely long, but very Salesian. I love that about this order . . . there is a particular Salesian "feel" at events like this. They do such a good job of giving kids a fun and lively way of practicing their faith, with things such as Patronage bible camps and goofy Masses where there is acting and the homily is actually more of a fun quiz show.

Now, at the end of Mass a handful of people moved benches from the church to the lot outside where we would have the rest of our extravaganza. Meanwhile, the kids started getting up and wandering all over the place, so we had our work cut out for us sending them back to their places. A guy whom I don't know attempted a bit of animation with the whole group (now numbering about 700) by singing some songs, trying some call-and-response things, but it seemed to not be working. But he pressed on and held their attention loosely until we were done clearing benches. I was a small anchor for a group of young kids who were mesmerized by my whiteness. They sat by me during the whole mass and were really quite sweet. So I thought it best to stay seated…if I got up to try to help send kids back to their seats, surely this little crowd would get up and follow me, thus adding to the attempted exodus. A few older kids came as well and were eager to speak some English. This one boy asked me my name and then said, "Jacqueline, what do you like in your life?" Seriously, where do these kids learn such strange questions? I was trying to set the example of listening to the guy who was trying to animate us at the front of the church, so I told them hush hush, we'll talk later.

Soon we received the a-ok to send all the kids outside to proceed with the day's events. It was really a very cool showcase. The only issue I had with it was that all the performances were directed toward a very small "panel" of grown-ups. There were about 20 desks that we had pulled out from nearby classrooms where the Fathers from Muhato, Sr. Candide and Sr. Gisele, and some other people who work at the Church were seated. So basically all the dancing and stuff was for them, which I didn't really get. All the performers had their backs to the 700 children sitting in the benches. Inevitably, a bunch of them got up and walked over to the sides to where they could see better, so we again had to man the task of shepherding children back to their benches. But the performances themselves were very good. A few girls from Rubavu's Patronage performed a traditional Rwandan dance with as Honoline, one of the Animators, sang a song .

Likewise, Muhato's Patronage had a similar number (insert DSC00676).

All the different age-groups of Patronage came forward to do their poem or song or cheer for the audience.



We also had a bunch of games planned, but we only did one of them since we started late. This is great…one of the games that we did not do is pretty much a death trap. I can't believe this – we took a long piece of string, tied it between 2 trees, and hung smaller pieces of string from it, at the end of each one was tied a small gift, like a pencil or a piece of candy. The "game" a.k.a. death trap involved kids approaching the string of prizes, being blindfolded, given a pair of scissors, and allowed to freely chop in order to cut loose a prize. AH! Does this sound ridiculous to you?!?!? When Sr. Charlotte explained this to me, I flipped out and was like "We are blindfolding children and giving them scissors?! This is so dangerous! Don't you think they could accidentally cut each other or something?" Her response was that they won't be very close together, and we will not permit them to move around, just chop right in front of them. Good golly. I am relieved that this game did not take place. Many lives were saved today.

The one game we did play was a competition between one Muhato kid and one Rubavu kid, and everyone else watched and cheered them on. They each had their hands behind their back and a straw in their mouth, and they had to move beans from one big bowl into their own cup a short distance away.

 Muhato had the most beans after 1 minute, yaay! So that was cool. Sr. Candide gave an awesomely Salesian speech to the children too. I can't believe this woman is almost 70 years old…she really lives out the charism of the Salesians (they specialize in education and in working with the young). She spoke in French so Fabrice translated into Kinyarwanda for the kids, but she was so enthusiastic and animated that every eye was on her even though they couldn't really understand what she was saying. She is great (insert DSC00683).

Then the animators and I performed our 2 zumba songs, and the kids really got a kick out of that. Everybody was up out of their seats, crowding around to see. And some of the kids near the front were joining in. There was constant clapping and cheering. A truck that was driving by also stopped to watch. It was excellent.

After all the performances, all 700 kids received 2 pieces of bread, 2 pieces of hard candy, and a photo of the nativity scene. They were so appreciative, and they were all really hungry!

It was probably 2:30pm by this time, much later than we had planned. So they wolfed down their bread and candy. Then it was time for them to go home, and shooing them out of the lot was another big task. None of them wanted to leave! Eventually they did, and we were all very tired and very hungry. But we still had to clean off all the benches, put them back into the church, and have our "evaluation" meeting. Fortunately, there was a bunch of bread and candy stashed away for us, so we put some food in our bellies before beginning what ended up being a 1-hour meeting in Kinyarwanda to discuss the outcome of Patronage and offer suggestions for next year. I really didn't mind sitting through this meeting, as I've grown quite accustomed to sitting patiently and letting them do their business. I always pray a rosary for them during these meeting times, and I was really happy to just be around all the animators – the last time all of us were gathered in one place was during formation before Patronage began. And I don't know if all of us will be gathered together again like this!

I had such a fun time today – there were so many little things that made me overjoyed. Example – one little girl from Patronage followed me around everywhere. She was always holding my hand and/or playing with my arms. And I had a lot of funny snippets of conversations with various animators as we commented on different performances. Jean d'Amour told me he had a dream that he went to the U.S. "Oh Lord," he says with a solid African accent, "how can it be that I should to back to America with Jacqui?" I think he was making it up…he's hilarious. And during our clean-up, I took a lot of fun pictures with people. I've never been very good at this because I hate stopping life to make a pose; its much easier for me to just take a picture of something happening. But I got a picture with each animator, and many of them wanted other group shots, along with lots of the kids who refused to leave. We had lots of fun with that.

Its very true that people in poor countries love to have their picture taken because they very seldom have the opportunity to do so. But you've gotta be careful – after you take a picture they reach and grab for your camera like madmen! So be assertive, put the little wriststrap on, and let them know that you must be careful not to drop it or break it.

So now Patronage is finished…tear, sniff. And I have nothing planned for the next month! This is because the government suddenly decided that school will begin in February instead of January, in order to give teachers more time to learn English. That will change soon, as I will be starting up my classes again and probably helping teach teachers. But at least for the remainder of the holidays, I'm pretty free. Ibyiza. Cool.