Week 3

Busy busy busy! We’re getting down to crunch time so there has been lots to do! We have officially made our team or students from INATEK and we had 2 meetings with them last week. There are 8 INATEK students: 3 are from the previous team in May, there are 3 girls, and 3 or 4 of the students are from the Faculty of Education as opposed to the Faculty of Rural Development.  We really wanted to make sure that we had girls on the team because for our Sprinkles project the focus groups will be with women so they might be more comfortable if a female is asking the questions. We also wanted to branch out to other faculties and since we’ll be working on a new methodology called “participatory action research” we thought it would be useful to have some students who know more about psychology and such. The team seems to be really enthusiastic and we’re all getting along really well. Like us, the INATEK students aren’t being paid for this. The commitment is pretty big so it’s quite commendable of them! In Rwanda I think there is more of a variety of students. Some start right after high school but from what I’ve gathered it seems like the majority of students start first year when they are 22 or 23. And there are also a lot of adult students. The schools offer day, evening and weekend programs so that people can study around their work schedules. One member of our team is actually the head master of a primary school, and is in year 4 at INATEK (The bachelor’s program takes 5 years).

 Previously, schooling was paid for by the government up to year 6, but they have recently changed this to year 9. Another big change--school used to be taught in French, but last year they changed the curriculum to English. That’s HUGE! I can’t imagine how hard that must be for the teachers and students, but it seems to have been a successful switch. They brought in some English teachers from other East African countries to facilitate the change. As a result it isn’t uncommon to find a person who speaks 4 languages: Kinyarwanda, French, English and Swahili. One guy that we have befriended speaks those 4 languages and has asked me to help him work on his Spanish! Very impressive. Another result from the English curriculum, whenever we walk past a group of school children that normally stop what they’re doing to stare at us, and eventually one of them will call out “good morning!” (even if it’s the afternoon or evening) and then proceed to ask “how are you?” with perfect pronunciation.  Yesterday we attended Language Day at INATEK. It was a huge competition for secondary students to use their English. The categories were song, poetry, public speaking and skits. It was quite entertaining! From what we heard in the poetry and public speaking sections, the students are quite passionate about learning/practicing their English because they see it as the key to the development of the country.

This week we have a meeting with the district office to go over the survey (we’ve been making many changes to it to adjust for the rainy season), and we hope to finalize it tomorrow. We have 2 more training sessions with the team and hope to do a pilot run at the health centre to get some practice in before the real deal.  Then we will have to go to Kigali to print off over 200 copies of the final survey, we have to arrange for a taxi-van to take us into all of the villages (4 villages a day for 6-8 days..TBD), we have to organize a picnic lunch to bring into the field for 11 of us (most likely samosas, chapatti, cake and fruit), and we have to pick up 200 bottles of oil to give to each household that we interview. We are also hoping to meet up with UNICEF so we can start making some decisions about the Sprinkles project.

Last week was all meetings and planning, and one trip to Kigali...Actually it was a trip to a new area for us (Nyamata), to visit a contact we have from World Vision. Nyamata is only about 60 km West of Kibungo, whereas Kigali is 90 km NW of Kibungo. However, the only way to get anywhere is through Kigali. So we left at 10am, go to Kibungo just after 12. Went to the national bank to transfer money to register for a conference in November, had a rushed lunch and then caught another hour-long bus ride to Nyamata. We had a meeting for about 1.5 hours which was very helpful for us, and then we had to face the long ride home. We had heard that there was a bus from Nyamata to Kibungo at 5pm, but apparently that information was wrong. We had the option of returning through Kigali or taking a new route through Sake. Everyone was VERY helpful and we drew quite a crowd in Nyamata while waiting for the bus. We heard that there would be a bus from Sake to Kibungo, but when we got on the bus I started talking to a guy who informed us that there wouldn’t be a bus until the following morning. This guy, Linny, was very helpful and actually called a friend of his in Sake and had him come with 3 taxi-motos to drive us back to Kibungo. The bus ride into Sake was great! It was very different from the ride into Kigali. With each turn we got onto a smaller and smaller road until we were on a one lane dirt road going through a banana field. It was really neat to be going through such small villages. As soon as we arrived in Sake the bikes were waiting for us. I think they were quite excited to be driving 3 muzungus to Kibungo on a Thursday evening (and we were quite excited too). I think i mentioned in a previous post that I’ve taken quite a liking to taxi-moto rides. I’ll get some pictures from Kathy to post on the blog. This moto ride was like none other. It was evening so the sun had just gone down, and were quite far from any cities so it was dark and just cooling off a bit. I put on my scarf and strapped my bag on tight ,and before getting on took out my ipod to further enjoy this experience. Once we had started moving my the driver took off his helmet and motioned for me to give him an earbud. I really enjoy sharing music so I of course conceded to his request and we continued along for 40 minutes happy as clams. I was singing into the wind and he was bobbing his head along to the tunes. His favourites were Vampire Weekend and Hawksley Workman...good taste. It was an exhilarating experience right up there with late night swims in Peachland or at ‘Hippie Point’, ATV-ing through a jungle to arrive at a cenote, or standing at the end of a pier during a wind storm... J