Better Late than Never!

ONE YEAR DONE, ONE TO GO:

THE BACK-TO-SCHOOL EDITION

Greetings and a belated HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone! 

Looking back over this past year I am amazed at what an extraordinarily interesting one it has been. The challenges of the job and the location continue but at the same time so do the delightful things that make being here always fresh and never dull.  The time is passing very quickly.

Our new school year started in early January, and after a few hiccups caused by abruptly mandated timetable requirements (it is all done entirely by hand without benefit of software) we are pretty much up and running.  I am now teaching in my resource centre, which I have  set up as much as possible like a model classroom.  In contrast to the rest of the school it has lots of stuff like maps, charts, and assorted topic specific visual aids on the walls, a small library, puzzles, games, etc..  These things most of us take completely for granted are conspicuously absent from the general learning environment in most schools here. 

Having learned a great deal last year we, the TTC volunteers at the 11 teacher training colleges,  got together for a week last November for a collaborative re-write of the curriculum, which we hope now more adequately reflects our students'  needs and adapts better to the realities they face.  We're also doing workshops with our colleagues and with the primary school teachers in whose classes our students do their practice lessons in order to familiarize them with what, for most of them, is an entirely different way of teaching. 

At the one year mark we have said fond farewells to a few fellow volunteers from our intake last January whose postings have ended, while some others have extended theirs.   Meanwhile, new ones arrive.  I want to put in a word here to say that CUSO and VSO are encountering recruiting problems as it seems fewer people are coming forward to offer their time and skills.  It is being put down in part to the global financial situation, but whatever the reason, and despite it,  I would urge anyone who is thinking about taking the plunge to seriously consider doing it.  End of commercial.

 I met a young man one day a few weeks ago as I walked home from the market who is now my kinyarwanda tutor.  He, Felix, like many of his peers, is earnestly pursuing higher education on the weekends while searching for a job.  He rides his bicycle to Kibungo and back every weekend, which must be at least 40 km each way over unpaved hill and dale.  He's a gifted, natural teacher and I keep assuring him it certainly won't be his fault if I don't learn to speak this diabolical language.

Last week we met at daybreak and rode our bikes up and down over back roads to a large town, Rwamagana, where we got some work done on the bikes at an open air bike repair place.  Bikes are the donkeys of Rwanda, by the way. They are used to transport everything: furniture, lumber, pineapples, building materials, huge bags of charcoal, you name it.   At one point we crossed Lake Mugesera in a wooden boat loaded with pineapples, bikes and people.  It was an all day excursion, hotter than stink but totally fun.  Along the way the derailleur fell completely off his bike and we thought we might have to walk the rest of the way, but true to form  we went no more than about 50 meters up the road and there was a guy with a toolbox, sitting with his mates under a tree, who cheerfully re-attached the derailleur.  It never ceases to amaze me how things are kept going here. 

Apart from school and some awesomely good times on the weekends with friends in Kigali the hands down highlight of the year, though it had some stiff competition from wonderful trips to Tanzania and Uganda earlier in the year, was a fantastic seven week backpacking trip I took to Ethiopia in November and December, during our school holidays.  (have you noticed, we have a lot of holidays?)  I have put off writing this blog because every time I try to think how to describe it adequately without writing volumes I get completely bewildered.  So, here's the Cole's notes version.

Highlights:

-a brief but very enjoyable time with my birder friends Denis and Stella who were on their way home to Australia after their year in Rwanda. Everything I know about African birds  (and that's not much) I owe to them. 

-five days on horseback trekking through the mountains in the southeast, through field and forest, often above treeline, staying in tents or huts.  The  pastoralist population lives on scattered isolated homesteads without road access or electricity, and during the day you can hear them calling to each other across the valleys as they herd their goats and sheep. Horses, donkeys and feet are the only means of transport.   At one mountainside homestead the mother of my guide served fresh milk  as assorted small siblings shyly peeked around her and a family of black and white colobus monkeys frolicked in a nearby tree.  I wanted to stay there forever!

-hitched a ride on a transport truck to the far southwestern corner where the Hamer and other tribes live pretty much as they have since ever. 

-Visited the Zege peninsula and stayed in a home in the forest surrounded by wild coffee and accessible only by boat or footpath.  The mother of my Ethiopian companion roasted coffee over her charcoal fire and served us some of her very refreshing home-distilled moonshine. I could live there!  Walked to a couple of ancient Orthodox churches and monasteries that are decorated from top to bottom inside with paintings and are uniquely Ethiopian.  

-Spent two days on a small ferry up Lake Tana where I met another solo woman traveler.   We self-organized a 5 day hike in the Simien Mts. where we saw an Ethiopian wolf and a Walia Ibex, both rare and beautiful animals.  It was SO cold there that there was ice on the tent every morning.  The landscape  is breathtaking, sometimes literally as we were up over 4000 meters looking way, way down.  There were large groups of Gelada baboons, tiny villages with houses made of stone and wood, tough mountain people on horseback.

-hitched another ride in an Isuzu transport truck over the most terrifying but at the same time spectacularly beautiful road to Axum in the north and after a few days wandering among the stelae fields and the camels took a plane (broke my land only rule this once as 45 minutes on a plane vs. three days on various buses was temptation too hard to resist) to Lalibela.  The rock hewn churches, which are still in use, are incredible and mysterious.  I spent days among them, passing through weird stone tunnels and soaking up the ambiance of a place that has got so much spiritual history.

-back to Addis for a quiet Christmas at a creaky old lady of a hotel, the Queen Taitu, then a short middle of the night flight to Nairobi, a restful night spent dozing in a chair at the bus station beside a window full of shrapnel holes from a recent grenade attack,  and a long bus ride across Kenya to Mbarara in Uganda where my Ugandan "sister" Jen Kamashaba is building a school in her village.  True to form, there was (yet another) bride giveaway and wedding to attend. 

So, all in all a fabulously varied and enjoyable experience. If I don't post this soon it is going to expire, if it hasn't already. 

Wish I could post photos but it's tricky as internet is so slow and it takes ages to upload them.   If anyone has some advice re re-sizing I could give it a try.  Using iPhoto. 

Daphne has been here for a week already and today we're heading off to Musanze and the gorillas on Monday.   More later.