New Workshop

In Rwanda, the school semester ends in October with local and national exams. This is followed by 2 months vacations where volunteers are sometimes scrambling to do training or taking their own holidays. My latest workshop with the teachers in my district is a 2 hour training called 'Songs and Games for the Classroom'. It gives teachers some tools for making the classroom more active, participatory, and child-centered. It also means that tone-deaf, artistically challenged me has to sing and draw in front of teachers who are much better singers and artists than I'll ever be. I think I am actually an inspiration because the teachers look at my drawings and think 'well, I could do a MUCH better job so why don't I?'. I have already seen some improvements in the schools I visit. One of the songs I teach is 'Alice's Camel' which causes much hilarity amongst the teachers. The games I teach are a memory game (involving my drawings on a rice sack) and math bingo. The teachers love them both! Here is me showing my Pictorial Alphabet to the teachers.

Bees in my Bonnet

A couple of weeks ago, I came home to find part of my ceiling collapsed along with a huge beehive and a bunch of dead bees (there were still some live ones around to cause me trouble as well). Luckily, I found some community members to help me clean the hive (and honey) out of my ceiling and now it only remains for my ceiling to be fixed and the room painted so it no longer has honey leaking all over it. The community members were eating the honey straight from the hive that had been in my ceiling for months and months. When they offered me some, I said "oya, murakoze" - no thanks. I'll stick to the honey you can buy in the store, thank you.

Some of you know that a couple of days later I found out that my cat that was living with my ex (and also 21 years old) was put to sleep. It was a difficult week for me and I appreciate those of you who offered condolences. Here is a picture of the beehive that is outside my house now.