"We like Muzungu! We like teacher!"

February 8, 2011

I am completely exhausted. At 8 AM today, I began working at our construction site. The warehouse looks awesome – we are up to putting in windows already! It’s only been a week and we have made great progress. Today I worked with Pelage (pay-laj), who is 23 and lives in Rubona (when you spend four hours handing bricks and cement to someone, you learn a few things about them). He was trying, quite hopelessly, to teach me Kinyarwanda, and in turn, I was teaching him words in English.

After schlepping bricks and “cima” (see-ma, the Kinyarwanda word for “cement”) for most of the day, we broke up into pairs and divided the workers into groups of about twenty. We spent the next hour teaching them English. My friend Ilyssa and I were teaching together; our group was at the lowest English level (they didn’t know “Hello, my name is” until a few hours ago). We reviewed simple conversation words, and then moved on to colors, body parts, “I like” and making small sentences. Going around in a circle, everyone took turns saying, “I like” something; we had a lot of “I like Jesus,” and one said, “We like Muzungu!” (We like the white people). Ilyssa and I had a good laugh at this, especially when one then added, “I like teacher!” and pointed at us. To practice parts of the body, we taught them “Head, shoulders, knees and toes,” which, by the end of the hour, they almost had perfectly. At first, they were confusing the whole “eyes, ears, mouth and nose” verse, but I think by next week they’ll be able to do it without our help. I did, luckily, get a video of this, but it most likely will not be uploaded until I return to Israel. At the end of our lesson, they all came up to us, shaking our hands and thanking us, telling us that they love English. It was a really amazing time, watching people who didn’t know a word of English take notes on scraps of paper, writing down everything we said, repeat after us, trying their best to master a language completely foreign and very difficult for them.

Every Tuesday afternoon the entire village takes part in Tikkun Olam. At ASYV, this means going into the surrounding communities and volunteering at a local school, an HIV/AIDS clinic and at families’ homes doing what they term “social work.” The philosophy behind this is that the students in the village are very fortunate in comparison to the surrounding area, and part of their ASYV education is learning to give back to a place that has given them so many advantages. I was assigned to social work, which involves visiting local families near the village, assessing what they need and figuring out how to best help them. This was the first week of Tikkun Olam this semester, so we visited Peter, who, at age 75, has seven children and can’t afford to send any of them to school. In Rwanda, school costs about 4,000 francs per child per year (this is $6.75). However, Peter has no job and lives in a simple mud hut (one room, no furniture) with his children who will remain poor and uneducated. Unfortunately, the meeting took place entirely in Kinyarwanda so it was impossible for us to follow, but some students were trying to translate. From what I understand, we are starting by repairing Peter’s house; he has no windows or real doors, so the carpentry club at the village is going to make him some, and then, after next week, we are going to figure out how to raise money to (we hope) send his children to school.

Visiting Peter and his family made me realize for the first time since arriving in Africa just how difficult life can be here. People who live less than a ten minute walk from the village see its red tile roofs and stucco buildings every day, probably wishing they could live in such a beautiful place. We go without running water for a few days and feel miserable; I didn’t see any evidence of running water in Peter’s house. Not today, or ever. We complain about rice and beans for every meal while Peter and his family are lucky if there is enough food for all of them in a given day. The argument can be made that since we are living in such a “westernized” village, we aren’t in “real” Africa. We have electricity, wireless Internet, and on most days, running water. This is not evidence of a third world country; Peter’s lifestyle is. I have never felt such guilt. I take things like water and plumbing and rice and beans for granted; I usually think nothing of them until they are gone and I find myself feeling their absence. Now, I will be much more conscious of everything I eat, the water I drink, the showers I take, the smallest things in my life that make a world of difference. Seeing Peter, and especially his children, who, despite having no toys or place to play, continued to smile (they really liked making faces at me and watching me make them back) and run around in the dirt, oblivious to a world where children their age are privileged and unaware of their own fortunate lives. Do they know that I have lived such a different life? Do they know that when I was six or seven I had Barbie dolls to play with and hot dogs for lunch? Probably not. At this thought, my stomach sinks. I never realized just how lucky I am to live how and where I live, to have a loving family, to expect three meals a day and eat until I’ve had enough. Peter and his children will likely never know such luxuries. And yet, they are happy. Simple, doing without, yet happy. They have no windows, no real doors, no kitchen or bathroom, but they have one another, and to them, that is enough. It’s amazing to see what it really means to survive, to live with the minimum and to learn the difference between what is really necessary to be alive and what we only think we cannot live without. In reality, as I saw today, people live without what I take for granted, what I thought I couldn’t do without, every single day for their lifetime.

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Tonight was my weekly visit to family time. Family 8 is truly an incredible group of girls; on Tuesdays they are supposed to speak only English, so to practice, we played a game of charades. They came up with some really creative and hysterical skits (acting out brushing their teeth with a spare shoe as a toothbrush, for example) and did their best not to revert back to Kinyarwanda (although it’s obviously much easier for them). After exhausting charades, their counselor, Erica, explained to them that in the coming weeks, they will be choosing the name of their house. All first-year (Enrichment Year) houses are first assigned a number, and after 2 months in the village, they research and choose a name. The house must be named after someone no longer alive; the girls have to research this person, why they are important in history, what they contributed to the world and present to the village administration why they believe their house namesake is a good one. Unfortunately, this presentation is happening after we leave, but research and brainstorming is beginning now.

After discussing “business,” as the girls call it, we had time for them to begin their usual Spanish Inquisition. They are all very interested in Valentine’s Day, and since they know I have a boyfriend (that was last week’s discussion) they are set on figuring out how we are going to celebrate Valentine’s Day since I am in Rwanda and Roi is in Israel. I told them not to worry; I will call him and tell him “Happy Valentine’s Day.” This was much easier than explaining that Valentine’s Day does not really exist in Israel; like our previous Jesus discussion, they weren’t likely to understand the whole anti-Valentine’s thing, so I skipped it. Later, one of the girls, Cadette, whose English is excellent, cornered me and asked if I had a picture of my family. I told her yes, I do, but not with me. She asked me why, because she said that if she had a family, she would always have their picture. This got me thinking. I am not thankful enough for my family and I don’t carry their pictures with me. Maybe I should start doing that, to remind myself how lucky I am. I told Cadette I have pictures of my family and I would show them to her before we leave. She accepted this offer, gave me a hug and told me to have “nice dreams.” On my way out, a few of the other girls (Souvenir, Vanessa and Diana, namely) stopped me and said I have nice hair, and they don’t like their hair, they want hair like mine. I told them they have beautiful hair and that my hair isn’t so exciting. They said, “Yes it is! You have nice Muzungu hair!” I had to laugh at this. Muzungu hair? I guess so.

It has truly been a day of reflection, of appreciating everything that I either take for granted or simply overlook. I’d explain this more, but to be frank, we have to wake up well before the sun tomorrow because we are going to the safari in Akagera, so I should probably get some sleep.

More after my next African adventure!

Love,
Elana the Muzungu