The blind leading the blind.
Well its exam time at the orphanage, everyone is studying hard out. Well they are walking around with books so I assume they are going to study. At least they dont have facebook to distract them. So I have been doing a lot of classes with kids of all ages and sizes. English is no problem , all I have to do is reread the text book and I know what pronouns, conjunctions etc mean.Geography is also passable. But then I got asked by John Bosco who is a small 14 year old with great english , who is picked on and excluded by the others a lot because of his nerdiness and size , ' please please please help him with Maths '(I know he is senior two and instantly my mind screamed warning signs , don't do it don't do it don't do it. I remembered the lesson I had had with Nobert who is 2 grades lower for maths, most of the maths I still remembered how to do although I didnt know the formula to do it without a calculator , but there were some questions that I thought, I did not learn this at school, what on earth is a dag unit of weight?) Of course I would love to! I said to John Bosco.Two hours of torture later , I wiped my brow pheww I am never doing that again. Not only did I have no idea what the answer was, I had not even heard of some of the things taught . John Bosco knew more answers than me , but still half the time he didnt have a clue either. It was like the blind leading the blind . Speaking about the blind there are two older Blind boys at the orphanage (and more at school), their friend from down the road who went to the Blind school with them and is obviously also blind, visits them quite often . Today I went to visit the special needs classroom where we sing dance, draw , clap , play the drums, and write. I found the Boy from down the road , I forget his name , and one of the blind boys eric from the orphanage singing and playing the guitar for the special needs kids. The neighbour boy was extremely good at playing the guitar.We tried to find songs that I knew the English words of and they the kinyarwanden words of. It ended up being that the only songs we both knew were christmas carols. So we sang all the chirstmas carols we could think of, the other special needs kids and some of the kids that follow me everywhere and had followed me into the classroom sang and clapped along. It was a very special moment , I was very encouraged to see the Blind boys giving back to the orphanage. Later on I saw Eric leading the neighbour boy out of his seat and through the door, it really was the Blind leading the Blind .
We snuck some of the older boys (allan , oliver, John and innocent) to the beach in Gisenyi. For the first time it was super windy and there were waves on the usually calm lake Kivu , some of the boys had never been swimming or in water before. It was really fun , I had just as much fun as them , it was like we were at the beach minus getting sand and salt in our eyes, and plus having a million little boys around me diving for my feet and trying to pull my board shorts off (don't worry they didnt ,but they did get a pile of water thrown over them) Two boys were screaming like girls , I think a mixture of fear and excitement. Especially with the waves it could be a little daunting I think .
Noella is not feeling good this week , I walked into her room to find her having a super big tantrum the other day that she didnt want her medicine , she even made her nurse cry. She was in a lot of pain , but she can be a very difficult patient sometimes, today she was well behaved again. I walked to Mahoko the nearest town with a big market with Providence , my friend, and I am getting a skirt and a top made. She told me about the story of her parents how they were killed in front of her in 1994 . Shes currently in fourth year vet studies. We walked around town 'to waste time' and went to all these shops I wouldn't normally go to , then we walked back to Noel , but also stopped for pictures, to go to the gift shop and to go see the only art school in rwanda, across the road from the orphanage. It was really fun to spend time with her. Yesterday we had a meeting with Madam director about how she wanted us to teach english, so inspired by her speech I had a special english class for some of the younger kids, teaching colours. I was very shocked to find out that there were some kids who didnt even know the colours in kinyarwanden , and they were ten and went to school. So for some kids my focus is teaching them the colours in kinyarwanden. Me a Kinyarwanden teacher... My kinyarwanden is not going as fast as I would have liked but I feel like i understand more now than I ever did, maybe if I had an intensive course like the peace corp volunteers do , I would be semi fluent, but I dont have time or patience for that :)
anyway I have to go back to the orphanage , and wash my feet and eat dinner
amahoro (peace)
Kim
We snuck some of the older boys (allan , oliver, John and innocent) to the beach in Gisenyi. For the first time it was super windy and there were waves on the usually calm lake Kivu , some of the boys had never been swimming or in water before. It was really fun , I had just as much fun as them , it was like we were at the beach minus getting sand and salt in our eyes, and plus having a million little boys around me diving for my feet and trying to pull my board shorts off (don't worry they didnt ,but they did get a pile of water thrown over them) Two boys were screaming like girls , I think a mixture of fear and excitement. Especially with the waves it could be a little daunting I think .
Noella is not feeling good this week , I walked into her room to find her having a super big tantrum the other day that she didnt want her medicine , she even made her nurse cry. She was in a lot of pain , but she can be a very difficult patient sometimes, today she was well behaved again. I walked to Mahoko the nearest town with a big market with Providence , my friend, and I am getting a skirt and a top made. She told me about the story of her parents how they were killed in front of her in 1994 . Shes currently in fourth year vet studies. We walked around town 'to waste time' and went to all these shops I wouldn't normally go to , then we walked back to Noel , but also stopped for pictures, to go to the gift shop and to go see the only art school in rwanda, across the road from the orphanage. It was really fun to spend time with her. Yesterday we had a meeting with Madam director about how she wanted us to teach english, so inspired by her speech I had a special english class for some of the younger kids, teaching colours. I was very shocked to find out that there were some kids who didnt even know the colours in kinyarwanden , and they were ten and went to school. So for some kids my focus is teaching them the colours in kinyarwanden. Me a Kinyarwanden teacher... My kinyarwanden is not going as fast as I would have liked but I feel like i understand more now than I ever did, maybe if I had an intensive course like the peace corp volunteers do , I would be semi fluent, but I dont have time or patience for that :)
anyway I have to go back to the orphanage , and wash my feet and eat dinner
amahoro (peace)
Kim
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