Teaching the comparative in Rwanda

Teaching the comparative in Rwanda for teachers


Today I attend an English class at Rugerero Primary. The focus is teaching the comparative and the superlative. The usual ‘Paul is taller than John but John is more intelligent than John’ is replaced by ‘In Rwanda, malaria kills more people than HIV-AIDS’. I do not have the statistics to validate this comparison but in the last couple of days Baptiste tells me that, back in Cyangugu, his mother has just been sent to hospital for treatment of malaria. Jean de Dieu’s son, d’Amour, spent the day at the local health centre to receive treatment against malaria. I call Jean de Dieu in the evening to find out how is so is going. He tells me that he will be fine. I do not look at the mosquitoes around here with the same attitude... I was told that there is no malaria around here , that it is more common in ciities like Kigali or Butare, but obviously the odd city mosquito likes to spend some time in the country once in a while. I am writing this from under my mosquito net, which I religiously spread over my bed every night. I practice my use if the comparative: ‘ I will be as mindful this Sunday as I was last Sunday and will take my weekly anti malaria pill’... As for HIV-AIDS, I saw a big sign in Kigali a few weeks ago saying: ‘HIV-AIDS, ignorance kills!’ . I did wonder if this was not too abstract for the average Rwandan...