Office boredom and 20 ways to recycle

An office day. Which basically translates as a ‘make up things to do and make them last as long as possible’ day. Bored, and no amount of rice sack visual aid making, or bottle top bashing could remedy the restlessness. Having said that, I did make a rather impressive water cycle visual aid this afternoon, with improvised labels made from cut up coloured plastic ring binder dividers from our Rwanda arrival folder! I am taking recycling to new heights. In fact, I think our recycling has reached its absolute pinnacle as during a hole-making, bottle-top stringing afternoon our ever strange chickens decided to eat all the silver foil from the tops of the mutzig beer bottle tops. They attack our compost daily, they eat the silver foil, I’m just waiting for the golden eggs to start appearing! It is surprisingly how little waste you create when all the food comes direct from the market and plastic bags are banned. Catherine is currently rather proud of her powdered milk paper weight which she brought to the office today to hold up Rwanda’s first ever school filing system J

I was training yesterday, my first one. I think after that high, it was hard to spend two mornings in a row in the office. 7:00 to 12:00 lasts a very long time, when you have nothing of substance to do. The training however was like being back at work finally. It felt a bit like being back in the classroom (which I shockingly miss quite a lot!) but with a slightly less receptive audience. Talk to your partner is an unheard of request. My attempt at getting the teachers to do a drum roll fell on deaf ears and left me a slightly embarrassed at my one man band. However, with a fantastic warm up using a pair of socks instead of a ball (this is a country were making do, and improvising is part and parcel of everyday living) the teachers really began to get involved and ask questions and make suggestions. The workshop lasted four hours with the ubiquitous fanta-break, although thank god nobody tried to force a second fanta on me which is quite the norm. It felt good to be doing what I came out to do. It felt good to be active and working hard. It’s incredible how much I hate slowing down!!!! I love being surrounded by countryside and I love not having to work all evening, but it is very hard to adapt to the pace when you’re so used to running round like a headless chicken all day every day. So, yesterday was good. I felt like myself and as far as I could tell the teachers not only enjoyed the workshop (and got amusingly competitive with some of the games/teaching tools I suggested to them) but found it useful, which of course is the most important thing. Next step is to return to the school and see if there is any impact at all. I think the thing I feel the strongest about, is getting across the idea that learning can be fun. It was fascinating to see the teachers competing and discussing and getting involved in a dynamic manner and wondering if they could see that you can have fun AND learn, that they are not mutually exclusive.  I was really tired at the end, but it was worth it. Having said that, I have another tomorrow afternoon and a following one on Thursday and Friday, then Monday too. I’m going to be exhausted! But hopefully very satisfied.

Things are changing the village too. When I first arrived I felt like the circus freak, people were in so much shock that they couldn’t even respond to my smile with a smile in return. There was a lot of staring, standing still was an impossibility if you didn’t want to gather a three deep crowd and going into a shop alone was a scenario I didn’t welcome. I couldn’t deal with the language confusion, the staring, the lack of knowing what was there, the vulnerability, and so I just didn’t do it at all. It’s quite strange how this has begun to shift in recent days. I’ve heard my name called out by children on my lane and wave with smiles, which is a long way from the muzungu call and stare. I say they say my name, that is they call ‘Rachelli’ or ‘Rashelly’ if you want it a little more phonetically, which I really quite like. And then today, out of the blue, one of the shop keepers spoke to me in English and another remembered my name and smiled and laughed at our little ritual greeting role play until we both discovered the other spoke French! It seems I’ve made a few assumptions. Number one that people only speak Kinyarwanda, and two that it’s going to be impossible to make connections because it is such a simple village of simple, hardworking village folk. I think Kirambo is beginning to let me in, little by little. The next step is mine, I know. I’ve made an arrangement today to start getting Kinyarwanda lessons, this is the beginning for me. Language is my all access backstage pass. As soon as I have a little more to say, I hope that I will find more people entering my day to day life. I’m not necessarily expecting great friendships, but it will be nice to know the names of my neighbours, to communicate with the shop keepers I meet regularly, to play a game with the kids, to understand if someone asks me a question. I live here, and I need to find a way to open up my world, because at the moment it is so closed and sheltered and I’m suffering from really bad cabin fever!