Moments of hope, spells of despair

Inconsistency of emotions is a well known characteristics of our human psyche... After about one week and a half of observing, teachers, talking to them, to headmasters, and to local authorities, the emotional state attached to my volunteer work at Rugerero primary school can fluctuate from hope and enthusiasm to self-doubt, discouragement, and despair within minutes. Here is a list of factors contributing to this polarity of emotions:
Positive factors
- Teachers’ eagerness to put their heads down and work
- Respect for teachers’ authority
- People are kind, friendly, cheerful, uncomplicated
- When I stress to them the extreme importance and crucial role of teachers in Rwandan society, they all seem to agree with me
- Taking a longitudinal view at their working conditions would show that there has been a slight improvement. It is slow, it is insufficient, but it is a fact: the Rwanda authorities have acknowledged the crucial role of primary school education and is trying to help.

Negative factors
- Classes are practically always teacher-centred: he talks, writes rules and examples on the blackboard whilst pupils remain quiet, passive and just copy what is on the blackboard.
- Active language skills (speaking and writing) are never practiced
- No authentic documents (such as newspaper articles, radio recordings etc) are ever used.
- Pair work is occasionally introduced but participants to still remain passive. It does not serve its purpose
- There is no room for teachers where they could work, prepare their classes, store their teaching material, share their teaching experience.
- There is no material whatsoever for teachers to create teaching aids for their classes.
- Most teachers have very little or no teacher training background. They have hardly reflected on what genuine learning requires. They are very far away from any institution where they could possibly receive proper teacher training.
- Teachers are paid 125 000 RwF (about 220US$) per month, which even by Rwanda standards is a very mediocre salary. They would need to be better financially rewarded if we expected them to work harder and seek further training.
- I detect among them a category which clearly shows that they have very little enthusiasm about their work. The concept of ‘injured’ learner has been coined by some educational psychologists, I would like to introduce the notion of ‘injured teacher...
- Finally, (or rather, first and foremost), the geo-socio-economical context in which all this is happening is a major contributing factor: poverty, lack of adequate funding, isolation and difficulties to access anything from any major city constitutes a major challenge, to use a diplomatic euphemism.
So, yes, my volunteer emotional state fluctuates. A Zen Buddhist master would hit me on the head with his stick and say: ‘Get, over it, mate!” And I would eventually agree with him.
I will do what I can do, I will share what I can share and I will live with the hope that one drop of beetroot juice in the Kivu Lake will slightly affect its colour and flavour...