Monday, July 2, 2012

Week 7 - Jumbles, Mumbles, and Fumbles


A few notes before I begin:

Thank you to everyone who has sent me emails, and facebook messages in the past couple of weeks. Your support is incredible, and it is wonderful to hear from you. PST (Pre-Service Training) is very tough, and I always enjoy a quick message from America.

I’ve been getting a few emails about people unable to post on my blog. I think I have fixed this problem. But if you are still unable to post to my blog please let me know. Internet is very slow here, and it can be difficult to figure out what’s going on.

Ok let’s get to week 7 –

Sunday was Rwanda’s Independence Day. This is unrelated to the Genocide. Independence day is when Rwanda became independent from French colonialism, mid twentieth century. I watched a parade with my Parents in the morning. We have a television in my house but no electricity. I believe the tv is hooked up to a car battery right now. It kind of looks like a science project from Middle School. The parade on tv was awesome, but besides that there was not much celebration, as far as I can tell. My parent’s left me after the parade to visit my Mom’s brother. Being all by myself, I walked to the hub (about an hour and twenty minute walk), which goes through the center of town, and there was absolutely nothing going on. I am thinking that there maybe celebrations going on Kigali.

This week has been one of the most stressful weeks here. The first week was maybe a bit more stressful, adjusting to the new environment and all, but that is debatable. On Monday I got my LPI test results. There are nine levels of language proficiency: novice low, novice mid, novice high, intermediate low, intermediate mid, intermediate high, advanced low, advanced mid, advanced high. Before we swear in we are supposed to be at the intermediate mid level. For the mid LPI, we had last week, we were expected to get at lest a novice high level. I set a personal goal for myself as well, which was novice high. And I got novice high on my LPI test results!

Good right? No. Peace Corps was not happy with my performance. Let me rephrase that, I believe the exact words were “we know you did your best, but you have a long way to go in three weeks.” Awesome. Apparently I did too well to be in the novice mid group, but also barely scratched the surface on novice high level. Story of my life.

Peace Corps also decided to rearrange the language groups according to skill level. I like this idea, I think it makes a lot of sense. Before this we were doing language groups according to who lives in the same village. There are twenty four of us spread out into four different villages. Some of the villages are thirty-minute walks from each other, others are two hours. So they would arrange language groups according to who is near you. It is also expensive to pay a driver to bus us all around six days a week. But this week they’ve decided to change that because some of us are almost fluent, while others (like me) are still struggling. This system has worked out, for the most part, except I had to switch language teachers again. This is the third time that it’s happened to me, and I really do believe that it is one of the many reasons why I’ve been struggling. Every language teacher has a specific teaching style. Likewise, I have a specific learning style, and it takes about a week to convey that and for our language teachers to truly understand how I learn.

So I’ve been upset with my test results, trying to learn with a new teacher that I don’t know very well, and I’ve been slightly stressed because I have to take the final LPI in two weeks (to date). My teacher is a great person, I like her a lot, but she speaks in English during class, and my main issue is speaking. I do amazingly well with reading, and writing but that doesn’t count for anything because we need to be able to speak it. Peace Corps doesn’t really care if you can read and write in Kinyarwanda well.

On top of the stresses of language, the bugs have come back. Week two I woke up in the middle of the night with over fifty bites on my body. This is not an over exaggeration. I counted. After speaking to the doctor (we have two doctors on call 24/7), we determined they were either bed bugs or fleas. By the time the week was over I determined that they were fleas. I know what bed bugs are, they are not bed bugs, and I have seen fleas all over my house. I was also told that they like chickens, and travel by chicken, and the chicken coop is next to my bedroom window.

So after spending hours getting rid of the bugs, they came back this week. I think they are gone now though, it’s been two days since I got a new bite, so things are looking up. But when I have them I can’t sleep at night because I am freaked out about all this. Overall it’s been a very stressful week with the bugs, the language, and the final LPI is just getting closer and closer.

Yesterday (Saturday), there was umuganda (omu – gaa –nda). Umuganda happens the last Saturday of every month. It’s a community service day, in which the entire community gets together to do something for their village. President Kagami put this in place a couple years ago, and as far as I’ve seen it works really well. They last for only two hours, eight to ten, and usually involve fixing the roads. The weeds grow insanely fast here so umuganda is usually spent hoeing weeds, and making the roads wider. We are required to participate, as it is extremely important for integration.

I have participated in two umugandas in my village, and for the most part they are fun. Yesterday Peace Corps wanted us to finish building a garden at the hub, so that was our umuganda work. It was fun and nice to be together with everyone, and was a pretty good end to the week. The garden is looking good too, and I took many pictures, when I wasn’t working. Hopefully they will be up on my blog soon!

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