Today Was a Real Saturday-Saturday

I worked in the morning, tutoring Sr. Rose, and then I had the afternoon off.  This is how its supposed to be for me, but often I spend my Saturday afternoons cleaning or doing laundry or planning next week's lessons. But today I hung out with John, and it was ridiculously fun.  He was supposed to come over at 2:30 to learn to say the rosary in English and to teach me a new song in Kinyarwanda.  Well, after I tried calling him a couple of times at 3pm ish, I decided I might as well go ahead and begin a project, because it'll probably be a while.  So I fixed a few of my shirts that had holes in them.  Then at 4pm John finally called me back and came over.   I gave him a little brochure of  "Say the Rosary Daily"  in English, and we went through each prayer and each mystery.   It was very beautiful.  

Each mystery he would pause and think of the Kinyarwanda equivalent, and then say that he knew which one it was, and would often give a little commentary on it, such as "Ah! When Mary said 'Faites ce que lui vous dites.'!"  And I learned the "Our Father" in Kinyarwanda.  Its so much fun being taught by your students.  I've noticed that they get really heated about correcting my pronunciation and my attempted spelling.   So when I try to sound out a word phonetically, the response is often "Not!!" And he writes it on the board. Then we wrote an email to Kathryn, and let me tell you, this was really where the laughs came in. So John dictated (in English) what he wanted me to write, and I typed. I had brought my laptop into the classroom where we were teaching/learning.  So, being that his English is not that good, I had to fix many of the sentences.  But I tried to leave the general sense.  Example: "Me, I am studying only.  And then I will go to become a Salesian Man."  I cracked up when he said this, and inserted "aka – priest" after Man.  He also had me write "You can respond by emailing Jacqui, because I do not have my own email.  I don't know why."  He meant "I don't know how."  But I left both in, and then added  "But Jacqui will show me how to get an email address." And he got suuuuper excited as I explained that we can go to the Cyber Café and create an account, that its really quite easy.   I typed an example email address that he could choose if he so desired and he was very pumped about it.


So a few weeks later we went to make this happen.  Oh. My. Gosh.  The internet at the café's here is as slow as the day is long.  I can't tell you how many times I thought of how much easier it would be to just use the Sisters' internet, but I didn't feel right about using their pay-by-the-minute modem for this kind of errand. We went to this internet café that is on the 2nd floor of a big building of tiny businesses.   Its a small room, probably the size of a typical bedroom in the States, filled with small semi-private desks with computers.  And it was HOT.  So sticky…uck.  The connection failed twice and we had to re-try.  Finally on the third try we succeeded to make John a yahoo account, but it took an hour and a half.  Can you believe that?!?!  Each page takes like 5 minutes to load, no exaggeration there.  It was annoying.  But it makes me very grateful for the ease with which we have access to information at home.  I am also amazed by the patience of the Rwandese people.  Waiting for web pages to load is just the tip of the iceberg here…people wait for lots of things.

People wait for class to begin when only a few students are there on time, they wait for the school director for 3 hours in order to ask about employment opportunities, they wait to speak with priests/sisters/anybody really, and often the fruit of their waiting is that they must come back tomorrow.   And in general, they don't seem to get as frustrated about this as an American would.  They're used to it.  I'm sad and disappointed when I see the inefficiency with which things work around here, that it becomes the norm for someone to waste their day waiting for nothing.  But the easy-going spirit of people around here truly is a positive by-product.

- 1/16/10: Today we watched a dvd that a member of Sr. Rose's family had made of her father's funeral.  It was very interesting to see the cultural differences between acceptable forms of showing your grief.  I've been told that in Rwanda, you should not cry in public.  So at a funeral, people are very stone-faced, and if they become emotional they go sneak out and get away from everybody to let their tears fall. 

Well, Congolese funerals are totally opposite.  If you do not cry at a funeral, it will be perceived as you not caring that the person has died.  Especially those who were closest to the deceased, you must unleash even greater expressions of grief.  I actually find this beautiful – I mean, why shouldn't you feel free to cry your eyes out?   Although I will say that it was strange how "scripted" the crying seemed.   Everybody would burst into tears and wail loudly only at certain times.  For example, when the casket is first brought out of the car that transports it (which, by the way, is a vehicle that is mostly windows.  You can see right through that there is a casket inside, they don't cover or tint the windows at all).  So when the car with the casket comes, all the people come running, in tears, letting out loud cries of anguish, and some even come right up to the car and bang on the windows.   When the casket its brought out, everybody ran to crowd around it and the men carrying it had to put it down on the ground and open it to allow the people to see the body.

The mourning crowd continued to let out loud cries.  After a few minutes, the people compose themselves, and the ceremony continues.  At the end of the ceremony, everyone goes to the gravesite for the burial, and again there is much crying.   After saying the proper prayers, the casket is lowered, people throw flowers, and dirt is tossed on top.   All the while, people are again wailing out and crying, and they show no regret at all that the cameraman is recording their tear-streaked faces or capturing their big emotional outlets.  

Another example of how I admire the way that Africans don't care about others' opinions of them, or rather, that they simply don't make rash judgments about seemingly "unusual" behavior.