Site Visit

I apologize in advance that this post will be brief, but my time at the internet cafe right now is slightly limited, so I'll try and give as many details as possible in a concise post.

I arrived back to Nyanza from my site visit only a few hours ago. Everything went pretty well, an experience for sure. To start, my site is about an eighty minute "moto" ride from Nyanza. There are no buses which run from Nyanza to my site, which is located in the Musange Sector, which is in the Nyamagabe District, which is in the Southern Province. My "cell" {kind of like a large neighborhood} is called "Masizi", and the "village" is called Karama.

It's a small place, located in the valley between some notable hills/mountains. The school I will be teaching at has about 300 students, split up between three different "grades". Perhaps a brief outline of the Rwandan education structure is needed, so here goes: There is Primary School, which is basically up through sixth grade, and then there is Secondary School, which is basically 7th, 8th, and 9th {where I will be teaching}, and then there is Upper Secondary, which is 10th, 11th, 12th. Secondary 7th, 8th, and 9th translates to "S1, S2, and S3", or may be called "Form 1, Form 2, and Form 3". My school is specifically only for S1, S2, and S3. I'm not sure what grade or grades I will be teaching yet [I'll explain why that is in a moment].

So I arrived Monday morning, and was met by the school Secretary and the Headmistress/Dir Ajoint. I learned the day before my visit that the Headmaster was going to be out of town for a training conference in Butare. So for the whole time there, I never met the Headmaster. However, I stayed at his house the whole time, and was cooked for and helped by his live in help/domestic worker as they call it.

After dropping my stuff off in the house, I walked around a bunch, talked to people, saw the town, and saw where I'm going to live. I will be living almost right next to the school, which has advantages and disadvantages, but I'm alright with it. It's not a house, more like a unit of a few rooms in a rowhouse kind of setup. I will not have electricity, but there are places in town and the at the school where I can charge electronic devices. They told me they are also building a latrine and a bathing area for me, which came under construction yesterday, so all seems well and that things will be good. Water is readily available at a tap in the center of town, and there is a small market on Monday right in town, and then on Friday there is a large market (which I never got to see because I left in the morning, but the Monday market was of ample size, so I imagine the bigger market should be plenty sufficient for my needs).

The school itself is small but nice, with the standard three person desks for students and blackboards at the front and back. There is also a reasonable amount of books in the main office, which I only nominally looked over but appear useful.

I will say that I don't expect many abazungu [plural of muzungu which means white person generally, or more technically it means foreigner but is primarily used for referring to someone who is white] have been through my village, so of course I was quite the site. I'll be a bit of a celebrity in that sense for quite some time, but the people are nice and I was received quite well on the whole.

I will try and write a second part to this post, but for now I'll leave it at that. I'm back in Nyanza now, back to training and language work, and after another week I start "model school" which is basically practice teaching with real Rwandan students from the area. I'll try and write more soon. I love and miss everyone.

- Dylan