The bus ride

I’ve taken the bus between Butare and Kigali a few times now. It’s a pleasant two hour ride along a curvy road. Aside from the occasional whimper from an impossibly well-behaved baby, it’s usually a quiet ride: passengers lean their heads on the seats next to theirs and sleep, they read day old newspapers or listen to talk radio played by the driver at a reasonable volume.

I spend a lot of time looking out the window: at the mud brick homes with terracotta roofs and wooden doors, all blending so easily into the hillside that they look like nature somehow built the homes itself; at the people walking purposefully along the sides of the road, many with whom I’m able to exchange a fleeting glance as we pass by; at the fields, the crops and the women who bend over at stab at the clumps of earth with their hoes. There’s a lot to look at. Unlike home, every stretch of this road is plodded by women wrapped in bright, colourful fabrics, by children with yellow plastic containers balanced on their heads and by men pushing bicycles loaded with stuffed burlap sacks. And unlike home, nearly every stitch of land along the way is cultivated.

I like the ride.

The other day I took a different bus, a big 70-seater, blue and white bus with the words the National University of Rwanda painted on the side. I rode the bus to and from Kigali with about 40 journalism students and a handful of lecturers. In this bus, the aisle becomes a spontaneous dance floor for the male students whose voices grow hoarse belting out well-known songs in Kinyarwanda, and whose hands must sting from clapping them together so hard to the beat in unison.

The born-again Christian girls sit in the seats and sing gospel songs in sweet voices. A male student joins the choir, perched on an armrest of a nearby seat and adds a rough harmony. Sometimes the bus suddenly veers off onto the side of the road to appease a student who has a hankering for a snack: cobs of corn roasted over a road-side charcoal grill.

The ride took a bit longer than usual, my ears were ringing and I had to pick the kernels of corn out of my teeth, but as always, the bus ride between Kigali and Butare was a pleasant one.

Teaching and Learning

My students have been teaching me a few words in Kinyarwanda. At the beginning of each class I hand over a piece of chalk to one of the students. He or she then marches up to the blackboard and scratches out a word on the right hand side of the worn board. Then I say it aloud and without fail, unabashedly butcher it. My rough attempts are met with guffaws, and thanks to a few sympathetic students, a scattering of proper pronunciations. It’s fun. We start every class this way and I like it.

Teaching radio is hard enough without dealing with this constant language barrier. Case in point: the first word my students taught me was “buhoro,” Kinyarwanda for “slowly.” It’s pretty clear I talk too fast and my students have trouble following me. I’m starting to learn now, though, and have started checking in more often with the students.

I say, “Sybio?”
They reply, “Nybio.”

“You got it?”
“Yeah, we got it.”

I have about 22 students in the class. We meet three times a week in a big old classroom with a concrete floor, a high ceiling mounted with one fluorescent bulb and dozens of small wooden side desks. Each morning I find the cleaner dousing the floor with buckets of soapy water, mopping up the mud from the day before with a broom wrapped in a stained rag. This morning I jumped over one of the pools on the floor, and as casually as I could, offered up “mybabarila” or “sorry” as I scooted past.

My first day was tough. A small American film crew, carting a camera, a tri-pod and two big smiles, showed up before any of the students. I’d met them a few days earlier and heard about their plans to shoot a documentary about journalism in Rwanda. I knew little else. My students didn’t know anything. I introduced the two filmmakers to blank stares and folded arms. I tried telling a joke. They wouldn’t budge. Not a chuckle, a smile or even a flinch. In the end, the film crew didn’t shoot anything that day.

These days, we all get along. The filmmakers have even been back and shot some footage. Apparently, they’ll be following the students and me around for the next couple of months.

I’m teaching radio production with two brand new marantz recorders, pried out of the careful and hesitant hands of the director over at Radio Salus, my newish Olympus recorder and a studio equipped with two microphones and a mixer. Sure, it’s not quite the recorder-per-student I’d like, but the students don’t seem to mind working in groups, and why should I.

Meanwhile, life in Butare is great. I love the 40 minute walk to school each morning. It’s one long road all the way there, and it’s always jammed with people: some in high heel shoes carefully plucking their way to work, others walking briskly in no shoes at all. Thanks to my students and an especially gregarious and keen project coordinator, I’ve learned a smattering of phrases and words in Kinyarwanda. When I’m feeling confident I’ll toss some out to people passing by – usually it earns me a wide, beautiful white-toothed smile.