It hasn’t been long since my last post but I don’t feel like finishing my lesson plans for next week so I’m blogging instead. Or, to put it another way, I feel inspired to blog because I’ve had a really good week. The lesson plans will get written.
Yesterday I took a walk past the school up a hill I’d never explored before and met a young woman on her way home from the market. She had her month-old baby girl tied to her back with a cotton cloth, which is how mamas carry their babies here. She immediately invited me to visit her at her house and due in equal parts to curiosity and confusion over what she was saying, I followed her. When we arrived she brought a stool out for me to sit on and unslung her baby girl and burped her and then handed her to me. My first thought was, this is going to be messy. As if on cue, the baby urinated all over my legs. The mother ignored this. When the baby started to cry she took her from me and began to breastfeed her without batting an eye. I tried my best to be calm and cheerful despite being soaked in pee. I sat for as long as I could stand to and then I got up, promised a future visit, and went home to change.
As soon as I got inside it began to pour rain. I left the door open and sat on my bed and played guitar with a pen cap because I can’t find my pick and sang as loudly as I could into the downpour. I have no idea what there was to be so happy about, but I was ecstatic. Simple pleasures are profound here - like, for example, not being caught in the rain, and not being soaked in pee.
I should be starting an English club sometime in the next couple of weeks. I’ve located the teacher who is supposed to help me and now that I’ve met him and I can see why he was chosen to do so. He’s been teaching English in Rwanda for the last eight years and he speaks English impeccably, if haltingly and pedantically. He is in the process of writing a comprehensive English textbook with explanations in Kinyarwanda and as a result he’s been too busy to start an English club by himself, but he told me that if the club meets once a week only he can be there with me. I told him we could talk about it again after I give a midterm exam. I have no idea what the process is for giving a midterm and I want to tackle one unknown at a time.
In spite of (or maybe because of?) all the minute frustrations and confusions, I feel more and more every day like I belong here. Earlier this evening I was out watching the sunset and struck me how badly I will miss things like the smell of charcoal fires and I was incredibly sad for a moment, but then I realized I have almost a whole two years ahead of me.
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