It’s been a strange couple of weeks. Uncanny things keep happening, small things, none completely without explanation but bewildering nonetheless. I feel as if Gihara is trying to send me a sign, though of what I have no idea.
Take, for example, the bull.
I was walking home from school in the late afternoon when I saw it. It was standing in the clearing in front of the church, so still I almost thought it was a vision. It was a beautiful animal, huge and golden-brown with enormous pale horns that curved inward at the ends like a giant coronet. I’ve seen bulls here before, usually being herded through the countryside or in stalls behind houses. But this bull was somehow so much more powerful, so much more majestic. Perhaps it was the absence of an owner or the fact that it was dangerously out of place, standing as it was in the middle of town. I stared at it, and for a moment I understood why bulls are sacred creatures here, why traditional Rwandan dance mimics this animal, the shape of its horns. It was standing at a fair distance but even so I could see its eyelid flicker and I swore for a second that something passed between us, some kind of silent communication.
Then it turned and charged.
I have no way of knowing if I was charging at me or just in my direction. It might not have even seen me; I was far enough away. Anything could have startled it. There were people on bicycles, motorcycle taxis going by, children playing on the steps in front of the church. Whatever the reason, it rushed at me. And I froze. It wasn’t so much fear as surprise that stopped me from moving. For an absurd half-second I thought maybe I should wait for it to catch up with me, as if it was running after me to tell me something. Then the threat of the horns registered and I took off in a perpendicular direction, bounding to safety behind the garden wall of the convent. The bull tore past me, scattering a group of children who ran screaming into the bushes. In it’s wake, a harried-looking pair of farmers dashed down the street. I guess it was their bull.
I texted a fellow Peace Corps volunteer about the incident. He texted back, “Peace Corps for the stories, right?” I guess so.
~
I’ve yet to organize classes for the teachers at my school but I have taken on an additional student. Her name is Yvette, a masters student from Kigali. Meeting her was almost as uncanny as the incident with the bull. I was out walking on the main road from town one Saturday evening when she drove up in a Range Rover, itself an unsettling sight in the middle of rural Rwanda. She pulled over alongside me, almost blocking my path, and addressed me through a rolled-down window. She said she’d been hoping to run into me. She claimed I had personally promised to tutor her in English, but that she hadn’t been able to find me. I asked her to remind me of her name. “I’m Yvette,” she said.
I knew for a fact I’d never met this woman before. Warily, I asked her how she knew me. She said I knew her brother. “Is he a student?” I asked. “Yes,” she said, “a student at university.” Not one of mine then. I didn’t know what to think. Later I’d find out that she’d mistaken me for another muzungu, but at the time I decided it couldn’t hurt to tell her I was a teacher in Gihara and that she could come find me whenever she wanted. Most people who ask me for help with English aren’t serious about following up.
As it turns out, she was quite serious. The following Tuesday as I was leaving school, the prefet asked me to meet him in his office. He said there were two men waiting for me there. Ominous and unexpected. They turned out to be Yvette’s brother and one of his friends. They had come to speak for Yvette; she couldn’t meet me herself because she had class that day. They spoke no English, so we had an awkward conversation half in French, half in Kinyarwanda. They explained that Yvette was quite serious about receiving English tutoring but that she had limited time to study. They asked if I could meet her the following day. Wednesdays are the busiest day of my week. I explained that I was available on Thursdays only, in the morning. I said that my first responsibility was to my school and my students and that I knew Yvette would understand. They thanked me and left.
The following day, the prefet interrupted my class to tell me that I had visitors again. He said it was a woman and her brother, one of the men from yesterday. Irritated, I apologized to him on their behalf and told him that I had another hour left of class. He said he’d relay the message. Fifteen minutes later, my phone started buzzing. I guessed correctly that Yvette had tracked down my phone number. Seething a little, I ignored it. Then the headmaster came in. He said he wanted to observe me. I was explaining in Kinyarwanda that we were doing a review, not a real lesson, when my phone started buzzing again. For the rest of the hour, I struggled to concentrate on teaching while my headmaster leafed through my lesson notebook and my phone buzzed at odd intervals.
Due to the various interruptions, my class ran ten minutes over. My headmaster commented in red ink on my lesson, “It’s good to finish on time.”
So it was that when I finally met Yvette face-to-face, I was prepared to draw a hard line. I told her I would tutor her if she was willing to make the trip to Gihara but only once a week, and only if she brought materials to study. She tried to bargain for more time, but at length she accepted. We start next week. Somehow, I feel like this is the boost I need, this little bit of extra work. It will give me some much-needed practice teaching adult ESL, and I’ll get a chance to look at materials from a Rwandan university. Yvette is a student of development studies. I’m actually quite excited.
