Canned Heat

On my first day in Shyorongi, when the nun gang was showing me around the school grounds, I was introduced to "the new dormitory", which looked to me suspiciously like an abandoned dirt field on the mysterious west side of campus. Thanks to the constant effort of our alarmingly hard-working handymen, the dirt patch has been quickly transformed in these five months into a beautiful red brick dorm with space for what looks like about 250 students. The uninhabited dorm was the only quiet, student-free place I found on campus and has a beautiful view of the misty hills of central Rwanda, so I used to like to sit on its steps at night and watch the stars come out. But, of course, our uber-efficient school cannot let good resources lie fallow for any length of time, so I was a little bummed but not surprised yesterday to get a text from our DOS inviting me to the inauguration of the new dorm at 4:30pm.

The inauguration was a much bigger to-do than I expected. Every student in the school was crammed into one half of the cement courtyard that wraps around two sides of the dorm, and the other half was set up with chairs and tables for the non-student attendees, which included the teachers, school administration, nun gang and various visiting nun friends, the local priest, the police chief, and various other local bigwigs that I think may have helped in financing the dorm. Everyone filed in according to their station and took their seats, and the festivities kicked off with a song that everyone sang heartily and I swayed along to. The priest led everyone in a prayer and a student read a passage from the Bible. Then, a bucket of water was trotted out for the priest to bless, after which he dipped a pine branch in said water and proceeded to flick it all over the crowd, making sure that all of the non-students got an individual splashing.

All the adults and a few select students then followed the priest on a tour of the inside of the dorm. The students sang the whole time, and the priest continued his blessed flicking over every inch of the interior. The dorm is totally packed with beds (really, it's just wall-to-wall bunk beds, with space enough for a slim person to walk between the rows and one 1'x1' bedside table for every four sets of beds), but it has lots of sunlight and seems like it'll be pleasant place to live for the kiddos. Once we had finished our slow crawl through the dorm, the priest flicked his holy water all around the outside of the dorm, and finally we headed back to our seats in the courtyard.

A few speeches followed from the headmistress, the priest, the police chief, and a couple of the visiting nuns. All was in Kinyarwanda, so I didn't understand anything, but it appears that the police chief is quite a character because his spiel got a lot of laughs. He mentioned me directly for some reason at one point, and I had to stand up and wave. Maybe it was the fact that I had no idea what was being said, or maybe it was the fact that they lasted for an hour, but the speeches seemed interminable.

Finally, after the last speech wrapped up, the dancing began! Traditional Rwandan dance is a popular hobby among the students, and the best of them were picked to dance for the ceremony. The younger kids came on first, all in traditional costumes (for this dance, that meant wrap skirts with sort of streamer-tassle things hanging from them in the school colors with bells tied to their ankles to keep time) and did a sort of mellow but intricate dance, accompanied by surprisingly skillful drumming from one of my favorite S5 students, Brigitte, and singing from the rest of the girls. After this dance, refreshments were brought out. It's never clear to me whether or not food is going to be provided at school gatherings; sometimes we blow right through dinner with nary a mention of a bite to eat, and other times they go all out with beers and food. Luckily, this was an all-out occasion, so out came the trays filled with Fantas and Mutzigs. It was freezing, so I had a beer, even though this may be a little scandalous for a woman to do at a gathering. Next, they brought out sambusas (little meat-filled dough pockets of fried yum) for the adults and amandazi (sort of like giant unsweetened donut holes) for the students. While we were eating, the older kids (about ten of them) came out to do their dance for us, and basically knocked it out of the park. Their costumes were long black-and-white wrap skirts with a big sheer white scarf/sheet thing tied around their shoulders, which they tied and untied and wafted around as part of the dance. Their dance was more lively than the younger kids', and even included each pair coming forward from the group to do a sort of freestyle. They were so fantastic! This group basically consisted of an all-star cast of some of my favorite students, and it was great to see them letting go and clearly loving what they were doing.

When we had finished eating, the one of the dancers pulled the headmistress from her chair and got her onto the dance floor. I was immediately terrified that I would be pulled up too, and I barely had time to acknowledge this fear before Alice, one of my prize S5PCM students, came up and yanked me from my seat, telling me, "You MUST, teacher." I threw my crippling fear of public grooving to the wind and did my best imitation of a freestyle Rwandan dance. I even tied my scarf around myself like a Rwandan kanga. The kids flipped their biscuits, and the adults clapped and hoorayed, and with everyone cheering me on in spite of my turning their respected traditional pastime into a gawkish funky chicken, I felt more at home and accepted by my school than I ever have over these past five months. Soon, everyone was dancing, all the kids and the teachers and the nuns and the police chief and even the priest, and it was wild and glorious an so much fun.

Often times, my students drive me crazy, and I can't wait until I'm 9,000 miles away from them. But seeing them enjoying themselves, letting loose and having fun, reminds me that they really are a remarkable collection of girls. They're incredibly hard-working and disciplined, they put up with all sorts of garbage from the administration, they take their rough schedule in their stride. And then, the one chance they have to kick back and relax, they make it their business to make sure that everyone is included and is as happy as they are. I am learning from them in the most cheesily inspirational made-for-TV-movie ways, and I'm happy to know that I'll miss them when I'm gone.