"petit a petit, l'oiseau fait son nid"

13 October 2009

Today was our first day of school here in Rwanda. (don't worry, we took a first day of school photo of course) But listen, 4.5 or however many hours we spent in our Kinyarwanda language classes, left us all feeling completely beat. Once classes were over at the end of the day (5:00pm), we all wanted nothing more than to just go into town, relax and sip on a brewskie. You know, in East Lansing, this would involve nothing more than finding an open table at the Peanut Barrel where you can chill, breathe and watch passer-bys as you sit, lost in thought, or more preferably, in nothingness. Here in Nyanza though, the idea of being anonymous is throughly out of the question. A group of us walked into town, took a seat in a tiki hut sort of thing, ordered beers (probably 2.5 or so times the size of a normal beer for $1.20 USD) and sure enough, it took but a moment to be swarmed with louche men talking us up and down and all around in their attempted English, in their fluent Kinyarwanda and in then again in their Kinyarcais (Kinyarwanda + Francais - a French unlike most I've heard). It was so obnoxious to sit there and listen to a man go on and on and on about who knows what when all we wanted to do was sit and have some time to breathe!

Anyway this went on for quite some time until the men working at the bar decided to come over and have their go with conversation. One of the trainees tried explaining that today was our first day of language classes and we have so far to go in our Kinyarwanda language skills and one of the men working at the bar said in response to that, "petit a petit, l'oiseau fait son nid". The translation for this is "little by little, the bird makes its nest". Hearing his words and realizing the translation struck me hard like when a good friend shakes you out of a day dream or snaps you out of bitter thoughts. This proverb could not more perfectly describe how I feel at this point in my life right now. I kid you not, last night in my journal I wrote in these exact words: "Funny, I haven't nested here at all. No pictures up or anything. Maybe it all just seems so temporary still". And it's strange, because ask anyone, I'm a nester... maybe it's because we have no dressers here, we still are, and will continue to live out of our suitcases for the next 3 months - I'm sorry, but it's hard to call a place home when all of your belongings are either scattered on the floor besides your bed or stuffed into a box on wheels (my cabins at camp this summer were super cozy, especially compared to the florescent light and cement floor in this room). I think that another part of it is that I can't even begin to wrap my mind around the fact that I could be here for 2+ years. Truly, I feel like I'm on study abroad trip (except our classes are so much harder! - or maybe that's because I have absolutely no background with the language). It's so impossible to imagine that these next 3 months of training aren't just 3 months of learning a new language for the heck of it, it's 3 months of acquiring a language and life skills that will help us to be "successful" (however you measure success...) volunteers over the next 27 months. These things we're learning in class aren't just for fun, they're teaching us this to help us LIVE.

I don't know. Another thing I am really struggling with is the line between here and home. I hadn't felt homesick or sad really until last night when one of my roommates received first a call from a friend and then one from her mom. Getting into bed here at 8pm, yes you're sleepy, but you know that if you fall asleep then, you'll be waking up at 4am with 2 hours to kill before anyone else starts to stir.. so it's in this down time that we actually have time to reflect on home, friends, family, loved ones and it's easy for your heart to be consumed with sadness and loneliness, just hurting for someone to call and wish you goodnight, for a text from a familiar face just to say they're thinking of you.. the little connections with the outside world are gone, or, if they exist at all, they're crammed into the 15 minutes you may or may not decide to spend online that day and then the excitement or in other cases the disappointment you feel when you see who has and who has not sent you a message or written on your wall. Goodness, I've been here not even a week and I am already concerned with these things... with finding out who my true good friends are and others who will just watch my life play out in pictures from afar. I guess that's just the way life goes. I know that other trainees are running through the same emotions and I almost feel like I want us all to (Kyndell - you'll understand this) be alone, together. I guess it would just be really nice to feel like all of us trainees are on the same page, rather than all of us with one foot here in Africa and the other somewhere back in the US of A and I feel like I'm floating around lost in the ocean between. I am making some really wonderful friends though, I truly do enjoy the company of several people in our group, and I feel like they will help to bring me to earth, to plant my feet on the ground.. or shoot, you know what? Maybe that's something I need to do by myself, for myself. Either way, it's really great to know that these developing friendships will be there to offer strength and support through the most challenging of times over the next couple years... hell, maybe even throughout the rest of my life. Who knows?

New haircut.

New Africa.

New me.

I have to say, I wanted to cry within the first 20 minutes of Kinyarwanda class today. It is hard. Learning Kinyarwanda is hard. Not to mention the fact that now I have so much phonetic background (or at least whatever's left that stuck) since taking a couple of classes with Anne Violin at MSU.. so now I find that I have a totally different approach to language learning tackling Kinyarwanda than I did years ago starting off with French. I have always, always struggled with spelling (French, English, whatever language, you name it, i can't spell in it).. I know that I have a really hard time looking at a word and thinking of how to pronounce it (same goes for hearing a word and trying to imagine how to write it). Now with all of this phonetic knowledge though, I find myself looking for patterns, for contexts in which letter combinations "se prononce" one way or another, and why that might be.. due to voyelles or consonnes, ect ect (it's so strange to write or think about this without doing it in French because that's the only language I've ever learned about this subject in). Also, rather than translating the grammar points or verbs in our book into English, I find myself writing their French counterparts. It's such a bizarre place for my mind to be in, and at first this morning I was super frustrated and telling myself "I know you want to cry, but just think of what you'd tell your students.. you'd tell them not to give up, that it's okay to struggle, that it will get better in time".. and then after our tea break, I found that if I try not to stress out over what my peers think of my horrible pronunciation or mistakes, that I can just laugh it off and you know what, maybe I can even have a little fun learning this new language. Heck, during our second (out of three) language class periods today, we took our new vocab and put it to work, stopping men, women and even children walking by the school to take the opportunity to practice introducing ourself and having a simple conversation. That was pretty neat. As annoying as it is to have so many people stare at us all the time, most of those strangers are only a greeting away from a warm smile and language practice. It's all about perspective. I gave myself an Attitude Check today. I have a feeling I'll be doing that a lot over these next 10 weeks of training. It'll be hard, getting through it, but I can do it.

It's going on 10 now, I'd better get to sleep. I find that even though I'm sleeping better through the night and later into the morning, my body is starting to require more and more sleep and feeling that need for a nap come midday. I don't know if it's the malaria meds or whatnot, but still lots of dreams. We'll see what tonight has in-store for me. G'night.