one of our many projects is working with gahima agape secondary school. bless 'em, it's the worst acronym ever. this school is supported by st peter's cathedral here in kibungo, which is supported by redeemer in nasty. i am SO impressed with this school, their programs, and how driven the students are. this is my understanding - if they pass their exam in their S5 - 5th year of secondary - the government will pay for them to go to university. big incentive. so these kids work hard and have big dreams.
there are 3 teachers on our team - N is a lit teacher at franklin road academy, D teaches 3rd grade in the public school system, and J teaches 8th grade english at brentwood academy. all are super smarty pants intelligent, and quite gifted at their craft. it's been fun to watch their skills in action.
today i was given the task of teaching subjunctive clauses. my response: "subjuncta-what?" luckily D, the elementary teacher, was partnered with me. i figured if i listened to the teacher, Eli, watched D's examples, i could hop right in with my exercises. the tricky part was that it was only the "if" clause. may i point out i haven't studied grammar since middle/high school? then suddenly, from the depths of my brain, came all this conjugation information. (thank you to miss catanzaro, teacher of my 4th grade class in port huron, michigan!) when Eli started speaking about past, present, and past perfect, i suddenly remembered that i knew what he was talking about.
D continued the class with exercises on how to know dependent vs independent clauses. several students were much more comfortable with their english, but it was such a struggle for them to translate ideas in their heads into english. i was thanking God in my head over and over for my next trick…. i asked for three volunteers, and when there were none, i recruited. one kid was the the independent clause, one kid was the subordinate clause, and the last kid got to be the comma. they thought this was hilarious. had a few more volunteers to be commas after that. they created their sentence, placed the comma, created the 2nd clause, and viola! a complex sentence!
'twas an ohmystarsiamsogladthatactuallyworked moment.
the fun and the funnies: richard, our guest house host and translator, has had some doozies. we were sitting at dinner, and off in the darkness we could hear these loud BLOOP noises. i figured it was some sort of creature, and i asked what it was. he tilted his head for a listen, and responded, "oh, the frogs are shouting to each other." we all howled laughing, and J explained that in the US, the frogs say "ribbit." he thought that was hilarious. so we all amuse each other.
richard is hungry for information about america, so we have many convos about traditions and culture. we were talking about races in rwanda vs races in america, and richard pointed out that i must be a different race than the rest of my team because i am so much paler than the rest. he was a little confused when we were all laughing, but now i know they can tell the difference world wide. sigh.
we also made him try hot chocolate for the first time. during a rather heated game of spoons - he loves to play cards - we mixed up some hot chocolate and set it in front of him. he took a few sips and remained slightly stoic, so we prodded him for information. not wanting to hurt our feelings + looking for good translation = funny. his assessment was, "it is sweet on the tongue but when it gets here (points to back of throat) it is not delicious." we have really enjoyed his translations and his wise innocence about life.
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