Writing and Giving Exams Continued…

Things turned around completely on Tuesday. I had to monitor some other teachers’ exams so that pretty much meant no stress for me. While doing this I had the chance to grade my own.

When I arrived in the morning I saw the secretary laying out the tests to be given first, so I told her I wanted to see my English exam today before the exam is given tomorrow. She can’t understand English so we cannot communicate very well so she went and found the headmaster to talk to me. He tried to tell me to just wait till tomorrow, but I explained to him that I wanted to correct any mistakes in the test before the test so I may be better prepared than I was for my Math exam. Right after I said this, another teacher who was listening in chimed in with “We have a problem of economics here, and…” This same teacher kept telling me this the day before and finds himself to be very funny. I didn’t want to hear this again because I still hadn’t calmed down completely from the day before I guess so I blew up at him. “I know I that the school can’t afford it. I was told this twenty times yesterday. I just want to see what the secretary typed so I can correct any mistakes before we give it tomorrow.” He apologized after that. Then the headmaster said that I should be able to see it before I left today. This made me happy, but not as much as what happened next.

During the first exam the headmaster came and talked to me. He had the English exam that I had made with him as well as a calculation that he had done. He found that the cost of photocopying my exam was cheaper than he thought it would be and decided that was what they would do. My exam had been altered a little so it did have a couple of mistakes I had to fix as well as a mistake that I found I had made. I just needed to meet up with the secretary and use her computer to fix these problems.

After lunch I was ready to make this happen. I walked up her office and she wasn’t there. It was still lunch time so I went to the teachers’ room and worked on correcting exams. I waited an hour and went back up there and she still wasn’t there. I know that professionalism is a foreign concept for a lot of people here so I really shouldn’t expect her to be in her office as soon as lunch is over. I waited another hour and returned and she still wasn’t there, so I called the headmaster and asked him where she was and he told me he would call her. After that I returned to the teachers’ room and told the others who were there that I needed her and they suggested I go to her house. I didn’t know where she lived, but everyone else did so it wasn’t too hard to find. I started knocking on her door and I had to wait for about five minutes before she answered it. I could hear inside so I knocked more than once, this made me think of when I worked for the census, I would have waited there knocking as long as it took to get her to respond. She finally came out and she rubbed her eyes like she just woke up. She knew exactly what I wanted I didn’t even have to say anything. We went to her office and I made the corrections and left the test with her like the headmaster instructed me to do.

The next day my English exam was administrated without any problems. If the headmaster was trying to redeem himself to me, he did and more. Going through that bad experience on Monday was all made worthwhile by them taking me seriously on Tuesday.

Writing and Giving Exams

Being a teacher in Rwanda has some very interesting challenges that arise. For most of them I am patient enough to shrug them off, but there is one, which happened today, that I cannot let go as easily. I think that is a fair warning that I am going bitch in this blog a little. Devin pointed out that this was my first bad day.

Things that happen that don’t bother me too much include: the five to six hour meetings where I can’t understand what they are talking about except when the other English teacher translates about 30% of it (which is all the more I think I would want to hear), the students not understanding anything that I am teaching or even saying to them, being told that the next day is a national holiday so we don’t have class by the students and other teachers and then I get a call that day asking why I am not at the school, and other teachers taking my class periods. I feel like I have dealt with all of these in stride and they haven’t bothered me for more than a second. Some of these have given me the opportunity to be flexible, patient or humbled by the situation. I have progressively slowed down my speech to a crawl and taken other teachers classes while they take mine.

The one thing that is hard for me to accept as just part of Rwanda is how I was deceived today. Deceived might not be the right word, but they weren’t honest with me. Writing exams here means the teachers handwrite on a piece of paper that is given to the secretary to be typed. The secretary uses an old-fashioned type writer that she bangs away on at a rate of ten words per minute. They then take that paper and use an old fashioned printing press of some kind that I haven’t seen yet and make copies.

I asked the other teachers and the master of discipline if it would be ok for me to write my exams on my computer and then I could give them that. They said that would be fine so that’s what I did. For the math exam I typed it in Microsoft word, and if you have ever used the equation tool you know how much of a pain it is and you will understand why it took me six hours to write it. When I was writing that I was wishing I had my old computer that had Mathcad. I have also got to tell you that after spending six hours trying to make this exam look as much as possible like the national exam I was pretty proud of it. I was proud of it because I really felt like I was giving these students solid practice for the exam, not only in the content but also in the design and feel of the test as well as show the other teachers what a test made by an American looks like. For me pride is so easy to develop and hard to recognize. I know that this pride that I acquired is the reason that it hurt so much when I wronged.

Upon finishing both of the tests last Tuesday I transferred them onto the secretary’s computer and printed out copies of them. She told me that she would go to the village center where they have a photocopier and make enough copies for the students. At this point I felt like there was nothing to worry about. How could anything go wrong?

This brings me to the day of the test, today, six days after giving the secretary my exam. I show up at 20 minutes before the test and start grading something that I had left undone from the week before. When the other teachers start to arrive they all are looking at the tests sitting out on a table across the room. I get up and walk over there because I want to see how mine turned out. At first I cannot find any and I am getting worried until I realize that what I am looking at is my test. The secretary rewrote my test on the typewriter with about a hundred mistakes. I was confused and angry. What happened to my beautiful test I had worked so hard on? I started asking everyone what happened and why was my test changed. I didn’t have time to fix these mistakes because the exam was in five minutes. I found the secretary and asked her why she did this and she passed the blame to the headmaster. I called him and asked him why he had the secretary do this. He told me how it was too expensive to print enough copies for the students and then he told me how the secretary was not trained in writing math exams, which I assumed to begin with and is why I typed it myself. I told him the reason that I was upset was because no one told me about the change in plans. I personally find it hard to believe they can’t find enough money in their budget to make test copies. The students pay a lot to come here comparatively so I understand when they say they cannot afford accounting software or a projector, but I don’t when they can’t make 80 copies of my four page exam.

Next I had to go through the entire test and correct the mistakes the secretary made. Then I needed to go to every classroom and write the corrections on the board. Thankfully the headmaster helped me with this so I only had to do this six times instead of twelve. He must have sympathized with me or maybe he was taking responsibility for the mistakes. After finishing this task with a cramped wrist and a sore neck I walked over to where the headmaster was standing next to the other math teacher who also helped me to correct the mistakes and the headmaster reiterated how the secretary isn’t qualified to write math exams. I responded with saying that I want to see my English exam before the day of. He said yes to that, but I doubt that I will a little. He never apologized to me, but you don’t have to when you are the authority.

I do like the headmaster and until today I haven’t had any reason to be upset with him. I know that this sort of thing isn’t unheard of back in America and this definitely isn’t the worst thing a boss has done to me neither is it impossible or even unlikely that I would do the same thing to someone else. Writing this blog post has calmed me down enough to start grading I guess. I don’t really like doing that either though. I hope my English exam goes better. I don’t think it could be much worse.

What Kind of Christian are you?

The church in Rwanda that I have attended most is the Pentecostal church. In training my host family was Pentecostal and in Mulindi the Pentecostal church is closest to my house, other teachers I work with go there and I really enjoy he songs and watching them dance. Also when I go to church I get time to think and I take a notebook with me to write it down.

When I tell people I am a Christian, Rwandan or American, a lot of people ask the same question. What kind? I hate this question. I realize that they don’t mean anything offensive by it though. The Rwandans, I feel, just want to find something in common with me. But the imagery that is associated with Christianity is too strong not to automatically group them into a stereotype.

My church at home is called Northway Christian Community. I guess one would group it into the non-denominational category. If I were to respond to that question with nondenominational the image that comes to mind for me is of rebellion. The people who go that kind of church must not be able to fit in at any other church so they gotta start their own. Jesus wants us to rebel the flesh not the church. Northway is also a mega church, and I went to branch campus where show a recording from the night before. So you can picture me in a crowd of people watching church on a projector screen, and where it was filmed 2000+ people are watching it live. They do still have a live worship and a resident pastor though. I really like it there.

All I care about is being the kind of Christian that is in the New Testament. And when I read what Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, and John say about being a Christian all of the divisions of the Church seem so insignificant.

I am not Pentecostal. Even though I was raised full gospel, I don’t think that I will ever be comfortable praying in tongues or even hearing it even. When they do it here I can’t even really tell that they are doing so because it could just be Kinyarwanda, I don’t know.

I have also been to the Catholic Church on the top of the mountain, but I am not Catholic. I know that the Catholic Church does many great things and I have known Catholics who are a lot better Christians than I am, but Catholicism is too religious for me with the Vatican and all the saints. Therefore by default I am Protestant.

Of the Christian literature I have read my favorite authors were Anglican and Lutheran, but I have never met anyone who has told me they are either of these. I honestly don’t even know the difference between most denominations and I am not very interested either.

What I am interested in is learning about is Islam. I wish there was a mosque in my village and I could ask the Muslims questions about Islam.

My answer to that question (What kind of Christian are you?) is the same every time. “None of them, I’m just a Christian.” I know that I am not really answering their question, but their question really doesn’t have any thought behind it and they will get all kinds of images in their head depending on my answer not that they don’t already because I told them that I am a Christian. I think the other English teacher at my school said it best when he responded to my response with “It’s all the same God.”

Yesterday was the first of I hope many Bible Studies in Kigali. I led it on Philippians chapter 1. It was great. There weren’t a lot of us and I was the only guy there, but I loved it. I don’t want it to be exclusive so if you are still reading this blog post at this point and you want to come to Kigali once a month to study the Bible let me know by sending me an email at dserwon@gmail.com. The only stipulation is you need to be able to speak English and even though we are all capable of teaching English this is not an invitation to free English lessons. This may be unnecessary to say since it is in English, but it seems like a good idea.

These cranes are the most exotic animals I have seen here so far.

Heinz sent me a box of Ketchup.

The garden we started with the help of the grounds keeper where Devin works looks pretty sweet.

This is a drum I saw on the bus that is made out of an old can of powdered milk and animal skins.