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Val & Bryan Hixson with kids at school.

            We have had a couple of days of getting oriented, buying groceries and recovering from the resulting sticker shock.  If you are concerned about the rising costs in the states…here are a few examples for you.  One can of coke $1, 1# cheese $12, 6 – 2” apples – $4,  evap. milk $5!  And the average Rwandan makes about $30/month.  We have no idea how they make ends meet.  There are some large open markets on the other side of town but nothing on this side.  But I know we will do just fine.  We did buy a case of peanut butter yesterday for $42, about $3.5 a jar…small jar, so we are doing fine. 

Steve interviewing a teacher.

Today we had a very productive morning and met with most of our ‘students’ who themselves are teachers.  Next Monday we will begin group classes, teaching English to 8 teachers from Fawe secondary school, a girl’s boarding school with about 700 students, and 12 teachers from another school that is nearby.  This school serves kids from kindergarten through secondary school.  There are 2800 students and 44 teachers!

Laundry day at FAWE.

After a short explanation of what we will be offering them, we were able to talk individually with 17 of our 20 teachers and learned that their range of English abilities is going to be quite manageable in a group class.  Thank you, God.  We gave them a questionnaire to fill out today and asked them to list three things they wanted to learn.  The top one was ‘speaking’, then ‘listening’ and ‘grammar’ and also songs.  They also want help with the vocabulary and pronunciation of words specific to the subjects they teach.  We have English teachers, biology, chemistry, physics, math and literature. Val and I are now tailoring lessons for them.  We will teach two groups of 10, four hours a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Teachers filling out their questionaire.

            In addition to group classes, they will also be able to practice English in one-to-one sessions with help from a team of four college students from David Lipscomb and Tennessee Tech universities in Nashville.  This week these young folks are reading with some of the Fawe teachers, as well as many students from Fawe along with others channeled through Christ’s Church in Rwanda (CCR).  They read both at the school and at the Kigali International Community School (KICS), next to, and associated with CCR.  Cody, Josh, Kacy, and Kelcee are a great group and have very busy schedules.  Next week the school break begins so many of their readers will go home for the four-week holiday.  That will free up their schedules so they, along with us will be able to read every day with our 20 teachers.  As usual we will use passages from the gospel of Luke to guide our conversations.