Classes, Cows and Clive

It’s an overcast Sunday afternoon here, and I’m recovering from my first bad bout of ‘angry belly’ and my first live spotting of Clive Owen. It’s all true, but before I get to that a lot happened between Monday and now!

In the classroom…..

It was a challenging week for the girls, and me too, as we worked our way through more of the SAT book… yet on Friday we were left with all but two sections completed. Yea!!! It was also exceptionally hot every day and as the girls fanned themselves repeatedly during one lesson on “The four logical relationships” necessary to know for the sentence completion question part of the SAT, I had to stop, have everyone get up and wave their hands dramatically over their heads (jazz hands!) in order to break it up. After laughing at the fact that it could be the beginning of a dance routine… they sat back down and got to work. I love jazz hands. And also the fact that even with the heat and the confusing material, the girls stayed focused. Nadege, one of my more outgoing students did say at one point, “It seems like these relationships aren’t actually logical at all.” True.  At the end though, when they took their practice tests on the section, the average score was 7/9 correct! Satisfied with the importance of learning these seemingly illogical relationships and happy with the outcome, we moved on to more concrete things… like vocabulary.

During the week we also had three visitors… all serving as bursts of energy for our day. Tuesday morning Josephine and Eugenia, two women who work as leaders for the FAWE schools(There are many FAWE schools throughout Africa) came by. Josephine spoke to the girls, saying how proud she was of them and how they all should feel her support everyday. The girls really glowed under the praise and a few put their hands over their hearts. Then, Josephine said, “So, you will all go to the United States, get your degrees and leave us. Become Americans. Is that right?” She smiled as she said it, but there was definitely a serious question underneath. Immediately came the shouts of “NO NO NO NO!!!” from every single girl in the class.

“We will come back, we will be leaders here in our country!!”

“You say that now”, said Josephine,  “and it’s not bad to become American” she added looking at me.

“No. There is nothing wrong with being an American” replied Sheba who really lights up when she speaks. “But, we are Rwandan. We love our country and we will be back.” “We are Rwandan,” she said again.

Josephine nodded and smiled. “Yes. Yes. You are.”

Eugenia smiled too, saying. “And we believe in each of you.”

When they left, the excitement in the air was palpable and everyone focused on Geometry with new determination. We didn’t say anything for a few minutes, letting the impact of the visit sink in…..

By Friday, minds were crammed with 30 new vocabulary words, the task of re-writing their personal
statement used on college applications for the 7^th time, 15 reading comprehension passages for the TOEFL, Geometry, a bit about verb agreement, topped of with 2 hrs on subjective/objective pronouns, oh and all of the “logical relationship’ material too…. (As I mentioned earlier…it was an INTENSE week!:))

Needless to say, it was just perfect timing when Rina, one of last years OAD girls came to visit. She is leaving tomorrow for Haverford, and said she couldn’t imagine leaving without saying good-bye to the current OAD group, and to wish them luck in the process. Everyone lit up when she came in, and she immediately got to work helping me to edit their personal statements. It was one of those moments, where I wanted to put my hand to my heart as I overheard Rina say, “ I know you, and you need to put more of you into this essay. You need to literally jump out of the page so the people reading your essay will not forget who you are.”  She went around to each girl in the class, offering feedback and encouragement. It went so well that we extended our class until 2:30(We usually break at 1).  Rina stayed for a second after class and said she was nervous and excited about leaving…about “starting this next chapter in my life.” I was so touched that she took time to come here, knowing she had a list of millions of things to do before leaving. “I couldn’t imagine not coming” she said again. “This is too important” gesturing to the books, the classroom, the girls. “OAD, you know?”
I watched her leave and know she'll shine in this next chapter.

Friday after our afternoon session ended, I locked the classroom door and wanted to call out, “Wait!” to all the girls. I've had the urge to do that many Fridays actually. Each week there's so much that happens and as we come down the home stretch every day is packed from start to finish with material, questions, setbacks and steps forward. In the transition from the close of class to the weekend, the first few hours always seem oddly, if not eerily, quiet and I miss the upbeat chaos of it all.

I'm realizing it’s hard not to completely immerse myself in the planning, the girls, the energy level of the class, the worry of finishing what we need to finish, the knowledge that I’m leaving soon and won’t be here when they take their SAT/TOEFL…. I can get very caught up in my own head. Luckily, having visitors helps. And when there aren’t visitors, sometimes it helps to have an actual cow moo in your face. Which happened to me this week when I was feeling stressed that we wouldn’t finish the unit on pronouns and was literally running to the classroom in a frenzy. I turned around the corner of my house and directly in front of me was a BIG brown cow. She was startled, gave me a serious MOOOOOOO, which then startled me so I turned and ran in the other direction. Where there was another cow, who MOOOO-d me too! Holy. Cow. The man in charge of watching them called the second cow over to him, giving me a clear path to school. Phew!! Of course by then I was laughing at myself…..And when I started my teaching day I was a whole new person. Sometimes it takes a little interrupti-MOOO. (knock knock joke about the interrupting cow??) ;)  to get you out of a funk. 

So, here we are at the tail end of the weekend.... Yesterday morning I was discovering an amazing new little area on a run exploration. It was so lively, full of shops, women selling tomatoes, bananas, fried bread and also full of small corner bars with names like, “Baby boy” “Baby boy 2” and “Las Vegas Special” hmm.( I know them well now because I ran by them multiple times as I accidentally did loops around the same place)….Yesterday afternoon I was re-thinking my decision to ignore the “Refrigerate after opening” label on my long life milk… but then I ignored the feeling in my stomach too because I was meeting people for dinner at a really nice spot that overlooks all of Kigai. I’m glad I did because….. Yesterday evening, low and behold, found me next to a reserved table for 20. Among the 20 was Clive Owen!! Upon sight confirmation from all of us at our table, I really, really wanted to get closer than my 10 feet. Oddly enough, I saw my chance when I recognized one of the women, Rachel, seated right next to him! She just moved to the area near where FAWE is, and I’d talked with her a few times at the local store. Soooo, I went up, whispered hello to her, and asked, “Is that really Clive Owen?” So smooth.

She nodded. I wanted to ask what in the world was going on, why he was here, how she knew him…but I sensed that with him right next to her it wasn’t the time ;).  And, at that moment he glanced over, smiled and nodded. 

“Hi.” I said to him, in a very weird, very quiet voice. Next I looked at Rachel and am certainly hoping I didn’t do the thumbs up(or give a fake golf swing which I did once when I was nervous) but I honestly don’t know.

Then I left. Quickly.

Now, as I sit in the coffee shop in Kigali Center, nursing my belly back to health with an egg and fries(the waiter insisted fries were the right choice…we shall see) I am wondering what this next and last full week here will bring. Hoping I can keep perspective on all that we have accomplished so far in the class and not get caught up in the little things that will absolutely get done….after I leave.

I am really really excited to get the girls registered for their SAT/TOEFL tests, which they'll take in October.... and even more excited to register them for the College Common Application! Yea!!

I’m looking forward to re-exploring the new area I stumbled onto yesterday…and the fact that this exploration will probably lead me to finding a totally new area... :)

I’m definitely stalking the local store to find Rachel…. and getting answers to my Clive Owen questions….

All in all….I know the week ahead will fly by. I'm going to try and be aware of those moments though; moments that slow things down, maybe moo at you...and always offer some good doses of present reality(I'm in Rwanda!!!)

View of Kigali and the beautiful sky too, en route to the restaurant