Felicite's Wedding

Yesterday, Jess and I went to my friend Felicite's wedding. We were very excited as it was our first Rwandan wedding. Thankfully another friend and head teacher, Leandre, was there to act as interpreter for us which was really helpful as I'd been told that the first ceremony, the dowry giving, was very funny...but only if you understood Kinyarwanda.

During this ceremony, the man's family arrive and request that their boy is allowed to marry the girl of the hosting family. A dramatic debate follows where the girl's family put up lots of reasons why the boy cannot marry her (these are fictitious but present a humorous display for all the guests). Yesterday's reasons included "You came here before and wanted to marry another girl, she is still waiting for you" (the other girl was an elderly woman who stood up and waved at him!) and "our family member was stood by the roadside and you did not stop to give them assistance". Both times the boy's family responded well, much to the enjoyment of the wedding guests and eventually the girl was invited out of the house and presented to the groom. The groom's family gave a dowry of many gifts including money (to represent cows), alcohol, food and baskets to the bride's family and everyone celebrated.

After the 2 hour dowry-giving, where we were given food, drink and plenty of inhore dancing, we bundled back into our mini-buses and headed for the church. A Catholic service followed, which was very similar to the church weddings we have in England. Then we walked to a beautiful area near the church where the bride and groom served each other drinks, presents were given by the guests, more traditional dancing took place and we all shared some of the sponge cake.

It was a wonderful day and a great opportunity to get a snap-shot into the traditions of Rwandan marriage

Guest Blog by the maths geeks

Yesterday we took part in holiday training and ran a session for secondary maths teachers. Amy had warned us that the school was rural and the roads dusty, but we weren't quite prepared! After we left Kibungo, we were on our motos for about 45 minutes, all on dirt tracks - the views were spectacular and we passed through many small villages and banana groves. As I got off my moto at the school, Amy had total hysterics; I had left my visor up and my face was covered in a browny red dust. The rest of the dust was beaten off us by our moto drivers, but my face still has an orange hue!

 

9 maths teachers, a technology teacher and a biology teacher gave up a day of their holiday to spend with us. Having planned the day before, we hoped we had chosen the correct topics and methods to share with them, we chose topics we felt were important and had checked were on their curricula. We delivered learning through discovery, teaching kinaesthetically and the use of plenaries. The highlights included: hearing the teachers say they liked a technique and would use it in their classroom, their willingness to particiate even when we spoke too fast and it was difficult to understand, followed by the light bulb moment when they did understand and singing the circle song about 100 times.

 

 The teachers particularly liked doing graph aerobics, so much so that they kept giving us really silly graphs to represent (for the mathematicians amongst you try using your arms and legs to create y = 1/x).

Their positive attitude was evident in the feedback we received, all of them talking about learners enjoying techniques and their intention to share what they had done today with other teachers at their schools.

Whilst Rwandan schools often have 60 students in a class and much of the teaching is very traditional, it was great to see how quickly they caught onto new ideas. We were particularly impressed that they were able to identify techniques that are good for identifying the progress the students had made and where they need more help (AFL). 

We enjoyed the day so much that I am hoping to run the session again for teachers from a different area later in the week.

Guest blog by Karen

It's amazing the people you meet and the opportunities that arise when you engage in conversation on your travels. Met a group from Team schools and IUE university who are  volunteering to teach as part of the Global village initiative, so I invited myself along for the morning.  Little did I know at the end I would be a guest speaker and have to critique the lessons I saw.

At 9am ten students from IUE and two students from Team high school New Jersey began teaching three classes of around forty children on a rota basis. Lessons were 55 minutes each, one on writing, one reading and one vocab taught  kinaesthetically all based around a story written by one of last year's students. This year's theme was the elephant and the fly which the Rwandan students will perform as a play on the last day of school.

The Rwandan students have to pay a small amount for the classes to show commitment, something none of them are short of...imagine a class of 40 English students working solidly for three hours in their summer holiday - I had difficulty when I thought of some of my students. I digress....in the kinaesthetic class the students played charades and Simon says based on verbs some of them knew and verbs from the story. This was to ensure they understood the meaning of the words. In the writing class they were using a grid to start to plan their own stories, characters/setting/problem/solution, some of the older students in English, some in a mixture of kinyarwanda and  English. They then shared and one of the Rwandan teacher volunteers translated if  needed. The reading group had the students repeating the story, acting out key words before writing them into the books and pens donated from fundraised money back in America.

All of the lessons had an interactive element and the smiles from the students indicated they were enjoying their learning. The most powerful scene was the Rwandan teachers joining in with enthusiasm and learning new techniques. The whole process repeated in the afternoon with a new cohort of students most of whom arrived an hour early. It is not often you can spend a day where every individual is learning all at the same time and so obviously enjoying themselves.

Guest blog by Jesso

Today we joined in umuganda; the community work that Rwandans do the last Saturday of every month. The idea is that every family sends at least one person to join in the Project that the community is working on. Today we were preparing the ground ready for a new road to be built. Lucy and I headed down with a couple of other people armed with a rake, hoe and a couple of shovels. 

There were nearly 100 people there, of all ages helping to move earth. My favourites were the women with the most gorgeous babies strapped to their backs, who worked so hard I was a little embarrassed at the fact sweat was flying off my face and I did only a fraction of what they did. (Although they were impressed enough with my work to say that if I was a Rwandan girl they would find me a good boy to be my husband- very chuffed!!) The air was full of chatter as people gossiped about what was going on and it was amazing how much got done with so many people helping. 

As the work finished, there was a bit of a sing song, and then a village meeting. Totally amazing- both the male and female co-ordinators, their equivalent of town councillors, gave short speeches on current issues. These were translated for us. They spoke about how it is important to talk about family issues every day and said if any family had problems they couldn't resolve the coordinators would help them find solutions. And even more impressive, about how to limit the spread of HIV through family planning. 

A wonderful way to help bring the community together and we felt very privileged to be part. Although I have a feeling I'm going to ache from head to toe tomorrow!!! 

VSO Education Conference

I was struck by some of the facts that were presented to us by DFID at the VSO Annual Education Conference last week. Whilst they highlight the progress that is being made in Rwanda, they also demonstrate the difficult situation that we continue to work in. Here are some facts I wanted to share:

1. In 2008 the average ratio of pupils to teachers in a Rwandan classroom was 67:1. Now it has dropped to 62:1. However, this is still twice the size of many English classes, and the teachers in Primary school see this number of pupils twice a day due to the double shift system.

2.  In 2008 52.5% of pupils finished P6 (equivalent of Year 6 in the UK) at the correct age. This year, 72.7% of pupils managed to do this which is a great rise. However, we are still losing 27.3% of pupils as they drop out of school, repeat school years or start school at a later age.

3. 93.5% of teachers in Rwanda register as A1 or A2 on the CEFR scale of English proficiency. To put this into perspective, having no English knowledge is registered as A0 and fluent English is given a C. Quite a scary thought considering teachers are expected to use English as the language of instruction in P4 onwards.

Food for thought any way!

I'm still here!

Many people warned me before I went away, that I would be a keen blogger to begin with but it wouldn't last long.....and sure enough I seem to have become lazy with my blog updates. Life has been hectic recently with school visits, a festival in Kigali, the VSO education conference, numerous  meetings and even a Rwandan graduation in Kibungo. I am now eagerly awaiting Jess' arrival on Wednesday, which will bring about more great adventures (and blog posts, I promise). In the meantime, here are a few snaps from my recent shenanigans:

Si nitwa muzungu - Something I say every day!



Elie, my Kinyarwanda teacher's graduation celebration



 

 

 Reggae, folk, rap, salsa - we had it all at Rwanda's only annual music festival, Kigali Up. Two days of music, craft stalls, good food and excellent company. Felt like I could have been at a festival anywhere in the world!

 

Tea Party

It is a public holiday in Rwanda today although, as is typically the case here, this was not made official until yesterday. To celebrate the long weekend, I held an afternoon tea party at my house for VSO volunteers. As many of you know, I also held an afternoon tea in England before coming here, to fundraise for VSO so I thought it would complete the circle nicely to hold one here to celebrate being in Rwanda.

The tea was a huge success. All of my guests brought something for the spread and we enjoyed some real treats (I've never seen adults get so excited about fresh cream!). I also managed to cook scones in a homemade oven on my charcoal stove and they tasted like the real thing (quite pleased with myself!) but obviously not quite as good as Granny's!

Here are some highlights from the party including playing twister on a rice sack and posing behind the wacky portrait rice sack a la Brighton pier:

Scones cooking in my homemade oven over charcoal