Another week of teaching and experiencing a different world.

Our second week of classes passed by quickly and our students (who are all teachers) have been very regular in their attendance.  A group from Britain began offering free classes along with free transport last week and we thought we had lost three of our teachers but one was sick and another returned after only one day.  The British classes have forty students and no 1:1 conversation opportunity.  We have two classes with seven students each and all get an hour 1:1 conversation four days a week.

Val and I get up Mon-Thurs at 6:30 so we can be out the door by 7:45 for a stop at the Kigali International Community School (KICS), which is across the street from, and owned by, Christ’s Church in Rwanda (CCR) where we teach our classes.  At KICS we xerox lessons for our students and have a devotional time.  For the last two weeks our first class has begun at 9am and students from our afternoon class met with members of the Nashville LST team for their 1:1 conversation sessions beginning at about 11 am.  Our second class began at 1:30 and the morning students had their 1:1 sessions duing the first hour or two of our afternoon class.  Each class had seven  teachers, eagerly being students. 

A common sight.

Cody, Josh and Kacy will be leaving tomorrow (Sunday) for the US meaning that Val, Kelcee and I will have to cover all 14 teachers for 1:1 sessions. this demands a modified schedule.  The last week of classes we will have only one group class for all fourteen, which will begin at 11 am and run till 3:30 with a half hour for lunch.  Our morning class students will come for 1:1 sessions at 9am and 10am with the three of us and our afternoon group will read with us at 3:30 and 4:30. Sound confusing?  We’ll see who turns up when on Monday!  We bring our lunch and have told our students that they should do the same but they never do.  We provide a few snacks but otherwise they just don’t eat.

We look forward to next week as it will offer Val and I more opportunity for one-to-one study with our teachers.  Unlike many of the places where we have worked, most of our teachers seem to be fairly strong believers so we get to open up the Word and learn together.

Daily we are reminded of how blessed we are to live in the Western world as we see Rwandans hauling their daily water from the public water spigots to their homes on their heads and carrying their babies wrapped on their backs.  The roads are always crowded with people walking because very few own cars and public transport is relatively expensive.  At least two of our teachers walk an hour  everyday to come to our classes.  We have had to explain what the stock market is, what pizza is, and who Winston Churchill was.  We were able to introduce them to peanut butter this week as we served small pbj sandwiches and peanut butter cookies that Val baked.  Only one had ever had peanut butter before and I’m not sure anyone had had jam.

 Today we visited the Genocide Memorial here in Kigali.  It is a sobering place that tells all about how a nation can be torn apart by hate.  Around a million men, women and children were killed in the space of about three months and that was only fifteen years ago.  The emotional scars that come from witnessing family members being slaughtered mark most of people living here.  Many who escaped death carry the physical scars of the wounds they received at the hands of the Innerhamwe (Hutu radicals) who fanned the flames of hatred against the Tutsi’s with whom they had lived at peace for hundreds of years.  In the intervening years there has been great effort to mix justice with forgiveness and today this nation seems to be healing from the wounds of their history but our short stay does not allow us to know the true measure of healing.

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