A story behind African shirts

A few years ago, Soeur Josephine was in hospital, very sick. She told me she was waiting for the end. But it was not yet her turn... Instead she had a vision... Why not start a sewing workshop to help some young girls in the Muganza community who had dropped out of school to do something fulfilling and income producing. Soeur Josephine recovered fully, left the hospital and followed her dream. No money, no space where to set up the workshop, no sewing machine: only minor obstacles for Soeur Josephine! She eventually found one machine, Abana donated a few more, she found a room to let next to the Health Centre where she lives, rented it very cheaply from the church to which it belongs. She trained five or six ‘girls’ (as she call them) who were keen, who felt proud, who learned fast. Quickly they made enough money to buy their own machines to continue their business and train six new ‘girls’ on the now training sewing machines. The ball was rolling. The sewing project is flourishing today. They will sew the uniforms that Abana will buy every year to those children who can’t afford the 9 $ it costs. A win-win system for everybody. A good business plan, Bill Gates you’ve got competition...
On my second visit to Kigali, I bought some material to have a couple of shirts sewn by the ‘girls’. They did a great job and I have vowed that to have a warm thought for them and Soeur Josephine whenever I will wear them. Soeur Josephine has also embarked on another project: helping all the handicapped children in the area... children who are usually ostracized and who are definitely ‘at risk’. This is not a money making business, this is a purely altruistic, money costing operation, but she is as ‘successful’ here as she was with the sewing project. She recently told me that there is a small business opportunity for hair salons run by local young men...
Dick Smith, you think you are an entrepreneur.. Too bad I am balding.

Helping Rugerero teachers

To day, Saturday afternoon, I have a two hour session with the Rugerero teaching staff. 23 teachers out of 26 have showed up and most of them on time! Could this be a cultural change in the organization?? On my agenda, two main items: (i) what would entering a performance contract with Abana entail? And (iia ) what have I bought on behalf of Abana to make teaching aids for the classroom and basic teaching books and (iib) how can they develop and use their budding resource centre.
But first I tell them about the Abana motto. ‘Helping them help themselves’ and how this can apply to the children in their classes. I also say that it is time to stop feeling sorry for themselves, to strongly believe; ‘yes, we are poor, we don’t have much material, please do it for us!’ NO! We can help you buying a few things, we can tell you one thing or two about teaching efficiency, but after that it is all in your hands. You ARE the Force! And, we, muzungus can also learn a few things from you, Africans! You know how to work together, how to support each other, how to laugh and have fun together. This is your strength, and one day, YOU to the western, civilized world to teach us what we have lost... They smile. I mean what I am saying...
I go over the six points of the contract. Basically”
1. I will go to school every day and fill out and attendance sheet
2. I will teach when I am supposed to teach
3. I will prepare my classes
4. I will attend all teacher training sessions sponsored by Abana
5. I will keep my classroom hygienic and tidy
6. I will allow the school ‘direction’ (management) to visit my classes, observe my teaching and see all relevant pedagogical documents (class diary, class register, class marks, pupils note books, Term teaching plans and lesson plans).
I give them a chance to discuss all this in small groups and make comments, criticisms, suggestions. We reconvene. They don’t have anything to add. They think it is fait dinkum, me too! I think to myself ‘if this thing works, it is more that ¾ of the battle won.
Second half of the session: the teaching resource room and staff room. ‘This is YOUR working space away from the children. I would like ALL of you to come here and feel that it is YOUR space – not only senior teachers working with senior pupils, but you, Class 1 and Class 2 teachers. You are very important’. I show them sample stationary I bought to demonsytrate how it can be used to create teaching tools. I can see that for some of them, this is a new concept, that this is a new way to look at their job... ‘Yes, there is more to teaching than to make children repeat together very loud, day in and day out “ one – two- three – four”, or “this is a book”. They realise that they might have to work harder, to be more energetic. I also promise them that they will fee emotionally rewarded when they see the children enjoy learning and actually integrate new learned stuff to their inner world... ‘Why did I buy some whitener? To recycle old French text books (which have wonderful Rwanda culture drawings) used to teach vocabulary. ‘White out ‘maison’, cuisine’, ‘jardin’ – sorry Monsieur Sarkozy you came too late to apologize- and replace by ‘house, kitchen, garden’... I also spoke how to use flashcards and how to make new ones when required... EASY! I tell them that the school will have money provided by the Rwanda government to buy more stationary. They work in group again to decide (a) what is not so useful, (b) what is useful and (c) what else they could use. They do come up with positive comments and suggestions. I tell the ‘direction’ that the staff room needs more desks, a few more chairs, so each teacher can have his/her own individual working space, which will have to be kept separated from the collective, communal space shelves, cupboards where material and books will need to be organized in a systematic manner. Collected property, shared resources! I tell them that I am very impressed that the two pairs of scissors I bought when I arrived are still here for the benefit of everyone. ‘Well done! Way to go!”
Four fifteen... we worked overtime... Time to go home and start the weekend. I feel like a beer!
Only a few more weeks of work for me here. On Monday I am expecting a big delivery of textbooks and dictionaries badly needed. A solar panel technician is coming to the school to make suggestions about what we can do when we are ready to move into that phase. I have a meeting with teacher trainers who have agreed to come and help when I am gone. I would love the parents committee to organise a ‘clean up the classrooms working bee’ on the next compulsory community work day on the last Saturday of the month.
Will I be able to pull it together? Don’t know... Where’s my beer!!!

Two obstracles to learning

Two obstacles to learning

Let’s talk about learning in the broadest sense – learning maths, learning a foreign language, learning how to drive, how to use a computer, learning how to love, how to listen to others etc. Let’s put all of the above in the same category: ‘learning’. Let’s focus now on ‘obstacles to learning’ and more specifically on what I consider to be the two main obstacles. One is purely psychological, the other is purely physical. I have experienced both here, in Rwanda (and in many other places, of course.)
Psychological obstacle
We all know it. It goes: ‘No, I can’t learn this! It’s too difficult for me! I am too old. I don’t really need or want to learn this...’I have personally experienced this obstacle: ‘Learning Kinyarwanda? Too difficult – Bantu languages SO different from Indo-European languages, my brain is too old, where else would I need Kinyarwanda, besides Burundi...’ Result: I have only learned greetings in two months.
Example two. Workshop for teachers at the Jesuit school in Kigali where I was invited to give an informal talk about bilingual education. Before starting, I noticed that all male teachers were sitting on my left and all female teachers on my right. ‘Is this a coincidence’, I asked jokingly. They simply said ‘no’. OK... I went on with my interactive presentation, code switching between English and French all the time, to show how easily it can be done in a bilingual school... and I quickly discovered that the divide was not made along gender differences but along a linguistic divide. Men, who were the younger group had all embraced the challenge of learning English – one of them told us how he did it: listening to BBC radio and Voice of America every day, writing down unfamiliar words, looking them up in a dictionary, reading the English language Rwanda newspaper (‘the New Times) every day. He said that after four months he could understand everything and was able to start expressing himself confidently. I applauded him and told the rest of the group: ‘See, it can be done. On my right was the ‘No, can’t do it’ group, the older group, the women. A coincidence? No. A proof that men are smarter than women? No way, José! It is clear than an elderly wife-mother-full time teacher will be less available to tackle the task of learning a new language on her own. So the ‘I am too old, I am too busy, I have no real desire to do it, I have taught in French for the last 15 years, why change now?, let the young men do it’ will interfere with the learning process... Psychological barrier, a phenomenon well documented by a Bulgarian psychiatrist named Lozanov (worth reading...)! I doubt that these women will ever learn English, but I did not tell them that...
Obstacle 2
‘Yes, I want to learn, I know I can do it, and I’ll show you how easy it is..... BUT sorry, we have no ‘New Times’ or any other reading material to give you. No electricity, no radio, no CD to listen to. No transport to access them either... A minimum of material conditions are required to be able to learn anything (including to learn how to really love? Perhaps...). I am not talking about falling into the trap of educational gadgets consumerism, I am talking about basic infrastructures and material to get started on the road to learning. This is why my gamble at Rugerero is to provide pupils with as much learning and teaching material as possible and show the teachers what can be done with basic ingredients to feed any learning hunger. This is why I am bringing more staple food from Kigali to feed those who are starving, who suffer from learning deprivation... No, not everybody can learn calculus, understand James Joyce, or play Paganini on his/her violin, but MANY more people than those who actually do the above potentially can. And EVERYBODY potentially can pass the entrance examination to secondary education in Rwanda!

jungle

I like to sit on top of the highest branch,

On the highest tree.

No one can get to me up there,

Not even the lion or the hyena.

I can see everything in the world below.

I can choose my lunch carefully,

Spot my dinner miles away.

My claws are always ready to become my fork.

I survive by being extremely shy and sensitive.

Any noise, any visual intrusion into my clear horizon,

Any unfamiliar sound or smell

And I flee, I am out of here.

I move to another clear horizon

And to familiar sounds and scents.

I am not interested in any conflict,

Or any sort of confrontation.

I raise above the masses,

I don’t eat off the ground,

And won’t stoop for any low shrub.

My neck allows me to spot danger miles away,

Before it becomes a personal threat.

My legs are proportionate to my neck,

Just in case I have to run for my life.

Equal opportunities

Private, city school look

 

Rural, public school pupils

This boy alreday has a good command English and French

Nice buildings, nice school grounds

 

Classrooms in need of a clean up and light

Equal opportunities

I have been in Kigali for the last couple of days and, among other things, it has helped me put my life at and around Rugerero Primary into perspective. Coming to this capital city after leaving behind a carless, road-less, electricity-less, jobless, cashless, running water-less, shop-less world is an eye opener. A couple of hundred kilometres can translate into a couple of centuries’ differences on the road to ‘modernisation’. It is a bit like having Middle-Ages lifestyle right next to twenty-first century icons. It is much more than a ‘city’ vs.’ country’ dichotomy... it is more like ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Full stop!’
- ‘So, what’s new? Get on with it! Why do you think you are here in Rwanda???
- Ok, I’ll try, but...
As I watch this woman driving her children to school in her brand new Porsche four-wheel drive, I can’t help thinking of the hundreds of children walking a few kilometres to school, barefoot to a bare classroom, shivering when it has been raining. I can’t help juxtaposing the picture of the bureaucrats at the Ministry of Immigration, sitting in their nice offices, trying to look important but without having much to do and the picture of those subsistence farmers who start tilling their land at 5:00 AM every day of the week...
- So...? How do you feel about this? Surprised? Angry?
- ‘Surprised’, no. ‘angry’, a little bit. Mostly confused, yeah, ‘confused’ a lot!
- Get over it! What is, is and what ain’t, ain’t! Tell us about your day, this blog aion’t the wailing wall!
Ok, then... today, I spent half an hour talking to a bureaucrat comfortably sitting in his office at the Ministry of Immigration to have Abana registered in Rwanda and then spent the rest of the morning looking at and selecting teaching ads and books for the brave teachers from the Middle-Ages.
In the afternoon, I conducted a workshop on the topic of ‘bilingual education’ at a Jesuit-run-primary school from the twenty first century. Computer room, very neat classrooms, children working with textbooks, notebooks, pencils in front of them, children, who, after the final bell of the day, come and greet me warmly and confidently in English and in French, beautiful grounds, very thoughtfully designed school yard with plenty of space to build a secondary school, in due course. Teachers are actually teaching, children are clearly enjoying learning. All the things we take for granted in a school, clean toilets, staffroom, admin. office, spacious headmistress office with computers, filing cabinet are there, there is even a Visitor’s book, which I am asked to sign...
I had almost forgotten what a ‘proper’ place of learning does offer. I was about to forget what the eyes of a child whose brain and sensitivity have been stimulated looked like. I will need to prepare- myself to travel back to the Middle-Ages tomorrow. That’s where I want to be!

Natural beauty

Once in a while, I enjoy changing my perspective from 'the big pictuure' to the micro world around us. So much beauty!!

Today is savanah day

Today I am in Kigali where I have a few things to do (get some books for teachers, some basic material for children, do a workshop about bilingual education with teachers at a Jesuit school, meet people at the Directorate General for Immigration and Emigration, in order to register Abana in Rwanda.
But first, I have allowed myself one day off – a savannah day. At 5:30 AM I am off to the Akagera National Park to see some wild animals and look at another type of scenery (so far all I have seen is 976 hills... I want to see open spaces!).
Jean Baptiste, the part-time taxi driver / full time university student, whom I met when I first arrived to Rwanda, is waiting for me at the gate of the ‘Centre d’accueil Saint Francois d’Assise’. We leave at 5:31... Jesan Baptiste has told me that he has noticed that Muzungus don’t like it when other people are late... it is a few hour’s drive away. This will give us time to chat. Good!

Skies

I believe my blog is too wordy.... Take this!!! with love, Jose