This past term at Maranyundo has been a full one. With respect to student tutoring, I have been working with the lowest scoring English language learners in small groups, individually tutoring those who have been ill or struggling in specific courses as recommended by teachers, and attending students’ group discussions to assist with their understanding of course content. My adult students at the Bugesera District Office have made considerable progress in their English language skills, particularly in speaking and listening. Teaching the advanced class, I have made a point this term to incorporate local news articles, songs and even short stories into the curriculum to augment the grammar, business lexicon and templates (memos, formal letters, job descriptions) that are fundamental elements of the course. I myself am learning so much about the differences in British English versus American English, as most of the reference material available here come from the UK. Many Americans are aware of the “colour/color” and “organise/organize” differences, but did you know that learnt, burnt and spelt are perfectly acceptable conjugations in the simple past? Or that, at the weekend (even at weekends), one can have a break? Or that for a long period away from work, one shall have a holiday, and before dressing in the morning, one shall have a shower; just a few of the oddities that I’ve come across in teaching the mother tongue here. But in all honesty, in six months time I’ve learnt that I shan’t fuss too much over these differences in everyday parlance...or it may effectively drive me bonkers. Nevertheless, I’ve managed to inflict a good dose of American culture on my students at the district, from giving dictations about Michelle Obama, to assigning passages from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and, coming up later in the week…teaching the lyrics of the "Cheers" theme song (“sometimes you want to go…where everybody knows your name” – something I know we can all relate to).
In Term 2 Mary and I also started teaching music to the girls at Maranyundo. Without any real curriculum on which to structure the class, we were able to teach the students some of the basics of music theory, including how to identify notes on a staff, musical notation (treble clef, bar, key signature, etc.) and a thing or two about scales, with the help of Julie Andrews and the Von Trapp Family Singers. The most rewarding part of the class for me was teaching them a song that I loved to sing as a child in Our Lady’s Church Choir in Newton, "Dona Nobis Pacem". This song, Latin for “Give Us Peace,” is simple yet elegant, and easy to teach to small and large groups alike. Set in the key of C, it has three parts which can be sung as individual sections, as a round or in harmony. The only words in the song are those three of the title, so it easy to commit to memory and to practice. Since teaching this song in music class, the girls have started singing it during school cleaning, at lunch time and even in the evening as a prayer before going to bed. Like the refrain from Cheers, it is without doubt a message we all can relate to, no matter where we live.
The students in my after-school clubs have also been keeping busy this term. The art club in particular has been working tirelessly on a mural project that is nearly complete. At the end of the first term, our close friend Els, who works as a teacher training coordinator for all the primary schools in Bugesera, approached me about having the art club participate in a community service project. This project would benefit the students of a neighboring public school, Maranyundo Primary, which happens to share our school’s name due to its location on the same hillside. I was thrilled at the prospect of having our students participate in such a project, knowing well enough that it would take a lot to orchestrate and carry out. In meetings with the headmistress of the primary school and our school’s headmistress in late April, we decided on a budget, schedule and plan of action. Over the following two months, six of the best students from our club met each Wednesday and Saturday afternoon to draft, grid, enlarge to scale and finally paint two murals on the walls of Maranyundo Primary School: one detailed, labeled map each of the continent of Africa and the country of Rwanda. We began to practice drawing these kinds of maps with pencil and paper, then with permanent markers on large (empty) rice sacks, which are an excellent available resource in Rwanda as they are cheap, durable and don’t smudge, even in rain. Before drawing grid lines on large posterboard and calculating the scaling of the actual maps, we were able to create six or seven rice sack maps of the world, Africa, Rwanda and even the alphabet, in which each of the 26 letters had its own box and a corresponding English word and picture starting with that letter. We showed our students examples, but also let them use their own English words and pictures for each – the funniest, perhaps, was the letter U, for underwear…accompanied by a picture of giant pink and blue striped knickers. The rice sack maps will be donated to area primary schools for use in classrooms, and we hope to create more in the third term.
When our girls felt sufficiently adept at drawing maps on rice sacks, we drew grid lines on large posterboard and then drafted the maps of Africa and Rwanda, which would serve as the templates for the actual wall paintings. We walked to Maranyundo Primary to take measurements and calculate scaling, and the following weekend, Els and I went into Kigali to pick up the brushes, primer, paint thinner and heavy-duty, oil based paints we would use for the murals. Once we had our munitions in tow we primed the walls, drew grid lines and map outlines in pencil, labeled countries, and eventually began to paint. Els’ friend and compatriot Paula, who had carried out a similar project in a district in the north, showed the students how we could create upwards of 15 different colors with the basic red, white, yellow, blue and black paints we had at our disposal. Week by week, little by little we got closer to completion. From the first time we visited Maranyundo Primary, our project crew drew crowds of fascinated elementary aged students who would initially guess and eventually marvel at what was being painted on their school walls. Now that the maps are nearly complete, we’re witnessing the benefits of our weeks of planning, practice and painting; being positioned on the two sides of the school’s main building, next to the drinking water tanks, students pass by and study the maps all the time!
Like the art club, the anti-AIDS club has also been quite active in the second term. In addition to visiting Dr. Paul Farmer’s health clinic in remote Rwamagana last month, students from the club hosted an event in which students from a neighboring school’s anti-AIDS club performed skits, dances, speeches and songs warning students of the dangers of acquiring HIV and how to avoid getting into uncomfortable or coercive situations. Our students opened the event with facts about AIDS in Africa and worldwide, some of which are listed in my entry from May 20th below. One of the most unfortunate facts is that sub-Saharan Africa is home to 68% of all HIV/AIDS cases in the world and 76% of the deaths due to the illness. It is our hope that school clubs and presentations like these will help minimize the rate of opportunistic infection and decelerate the spread of this incurable disease, not only in Africa, but everywhere.
The Maranyundo School basketball team has also made a lot of progress this term. With official practices twice/week and captains practices once/week, the 16 girls of our team have really started to come together as a unit and encourage each other to be as fast, aggressive and attentive as possible on the court. Although the court itself has yet to be paved, as a team we have worked a lot on learning the correct way to shoot, practicing lay-ups, making eye contact and ensuring accurate passes, rebounding, blocking, learning where to set up on the court and learning basketball vocabulary in English. Although we still have not been able to compete against other schools teams, we have had scrimmages within our team and even against another group of girls at Maranyundo. We’ve also learned a lot of useful fitness exercises in warm-ups (courtesy of Coach Kate), and have seen improvement in the 3 Man Weave drill and the fabulous game of Knock-Out.
S2 students singing "Dona Nobis Pacem"
