CVK Animal Kingdom: It's a Wild, Colorful World

 I have fallen in love with my students. For the most part, they are overwhelmingly sweet and loving. My days are made up of hugs, high fives, and games. (And sometimes cheek kisses, which occasionally turn into group cheek kisses, which end with students kissing teacher on the lips, at which point we have a weeklong cheek kiss. But that is neither here nor there.) We sing and dance, do arts and crafts, and read stories together. Even when they do misbehave, it’s mostly just because they’re kids being kids, and I don’t really have the wherewithal to stay mad at them.

This past weekend, all that love and affection, all that desire to have fun, really paid dividends. Well, that plus two months of seriously intense planning by myself and my Thai co-teacher, supplemented by heaps of help from Win. Thanks to all that preparation and hard work, we were able to give our students the most colorful English Day Camp you’ll ever see! 1, 2, 3, YAY!

Choosing to make the only goals those of a) having fun and b) playing games in English, we went all out. Basically, we gave 250 first, second, and third grade students an animal-themed English carnival day. They got different colored shirts and bags, nametags and pencil cases, ridiculous animal-shaped snacks, spaghetti for lunch, and a parade just for the school. Each foreign teacher planned one games, through which the students would cycle, while being bombarded with intense, joyful, loving energy.

They tossed balls, popped balloons, made masks, drew, spun roulette wheels, fished, acted, sang, spelled, and balloon animal-ed their way through the most absurdly exhausting day ever. And, damn, if all that planning, exhaustion, frustration, and difficulty wasn’t completely and totally worth it. The pure joy radiating out of their little faces made all the hard work seem like nothing.

This might be what people mean when they say ‘maternal instinct.’ That is, if that maternal instinct rolled around a color wheel and ended up with screaming, enthusiastic games, giant smiles, and lots of English. If ‘maternal instinct’ means never having to apologize for wearing yellow and orange leopard print leggings paired with a yellow t-shirt and yellow and orange feather earrings. Well, and if ‘maternal instinct’ includes the desire to avoid seeing any children for at least 48 hours after spending 8 hours straight entertaining them.

As an addendum of sorts, I have since learned that the day of our English Camp, September 21, is World Gratitude Day. Personally, this feels fitting in a way. It’s not always easy to teach such small children, especially when they don’t speak your language – sometimes it requires an immense amount of work, time, patience, and equanimity – but it is worth the effort to be able to help these children grow and flourish. The laughter and smiles are truly a gift that fills my life with immeasurable joy.

I am incredibly grateful for all the wonderful blessings that have allowed me to becoming a teacher of young learners. And I am grateful for the students themselves; they help me to see when I am taking myself too seriously, they help me to tap into the creative parts of my brain, they let me use my imagination and act like a complete fool, they are forgiving and loving and constantly remind me that the world is a big, beautiful, amazing place. And all this without even being able to speak the same language. 

Mzungu! Mzungu!

Gringo. Gavacho. Farang. Keenok. Suddha. Mzungu. As foreigners in a foreign land, the first word we learn in the local dialect is what they call us, the white people.  Schoolchildren shout it as we pass by. It jumps out in conversations held by locals. Sometimes it is derogatory in nature. Other times it is used matter-of-factly: we are the outsiders.

Here, in Rwanda, and throughout much of Africa, we are greeted with Mzungu! Mzungu! A Swahili term meaning ‘aimless wanderer’, the tag was originally applied to European explorers. Also used is the Kinyarwanda word Rutuku, or ‘red’, for the color we turn in the sun. Which is, in some ways, better than a name originating from bird shit or pink/white fruit, as is the case in Thailand.

And, despite the large number of expats in Kigali, never before have we been so clearly the foreigners. With almost nothing to speak of in the way of tourism (aside from some incredibly expensive gorillas), the number of white folks coming through Rwanda is miniscule compared to some of the more touristic countries. We are, in some ways, still a novelty: children run up to us in mobs to say hello, good afternoon, and touch our hands; I’ve even received a couple of hugs.

Our skin color, our hair, our clothing, our language, all of these things make us noticeably and immediately different. Unfortunately, the world over, these things make people assume we are inherently wealthy. We have discovered that it also means that, here in Rwanda, they assume we have the correct answer for every situation. Although, that is probably just because they don't have the hordes of drunk tourists visible in some places (another assumption we try to dissuade people from making about Westerners).

And though my name is not Mzungu, and I will not pay higher, mzungu prices, we try always to be good ambassadors for the white people, our fellow gringos, the farang spread across the globe, doling out handshakes, conversations, and hugs, dispersing myths of automatic wealth and knowledge, and spreading smiles.