Stories from Rwanda Part Two - School Days

After a weekend of getting to know Caroline and the family, it was time to teach my first lessons at Espoir primary

school. Espoir was created by Xaverine ten years ago, starting with just one class. In the past ten years she has managed to expand the school to three nursery years and six primary years, with a view to eventually having secondary and post-secondary levels. The only picture I had seen of Espoir prior to leaving Scotland was one that had been taken just after the roof of the school had blown off. When I arrived at the school I observed a brand new shiny roof which was of course a very nice thing to see.

My first classes were P5A and P5B. Students at Espoir are placed into either the “A” class or “B” class depending on ability. It’s a huge deal for the students as I witnessed on one of my later days in Rwanda. Caroline seemed to have spotted something in the window of a classroom and she called me over. I saw a little boy crying his eyes out and at first I thought he was playing some sort of game, but then I noticed the real tears streaming down his face. As I looked around the classroom I noticed he wasn’t the only one; several other boys and girls were wailing uncontrollably. Caroline and I thought that perhaps someone had died, and I even worried for a minute that it might have been one of the teachers we had gotten to know during our stay. A teacher informed us later that those students had failed a test and would be placed into the B class.

This was a shining example of how important education is to these children. I had witnessed something similar in 2011 when I done some work with children in India; those kids would walk for miles and miles to school, and would stay behind late to do homework because they value their education that much. Rwandan children are exactly the same – Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure kids here in Scotland would be upset about being placed into a B class, but the uncontrollable weeping that I witnessed from these Rwandan children was both heartbreaking and somehow chilling.

I hadn’t given a huge amount of thought about what exactly I was going to be teaching to the Espoir kids. It was a two and a half year journey for me to finally come to Rwanda, and in that time I had been concentrating on raising the funds and finding the time to actually do it. The actual work in Rwanda had been temporarily shifted to the back of my mind. I teach music in Scotland – mostly focusing on drum kit. In 2011 I set up my own drum school which has been relatively successful, and I also teach African drumming and run a rock group with the NHS for patients with mental illnesses. In the weeks leading up to finally coming to Rwanda I started to panic about what exactly I was going to do, and it wasn’t until I was actually in Rwanda that I had an epiphany:

Just be yourself and do what you do for a living.

Music isn’t a subject which is widely taught in Rwandan schools, and even in schools in Scotland there is a distinct lack of music theory. Music theory would be a completely new concept to Rwandan children, something that perhaps no-one before me would have done with them, and it’s something I teach on an almost daily basis back home. But, in solving this problem I was presented with another:

Music theory is boring!

Ah, but is it? I drew inspiration from two brilliant people I knew from my past who would do an amazing job if they had been put in my shoes. I had a terrible experience while studying music post-school which I won’t go into here, but I remember the most fun I had was in my music theory classes. The reason was because of the tutor – he was this incredible man with a brilliant sense of humour who made those classes unbelievably good fun. He very sadly passed away two years ago, and even people who only had him for a couple of classes were deeply mournful to hear the news.
The second person I thought of was my old drum kit and percussion teacher from school. I could write a whole novel about the amazing things this man done for me but I will keep it simple here. He taught me everything I know about drum kit theory and done it in such a silly, funny way that I will never forget it, or him.

So my usual class consisted of playing some games with the children outside, and then teaching them music theory inside. By the time I left Rwanda, most of the Espoir students could compose music by themselves using crotchets, quavers, semiquavers, minims, rests, and half rests in several different simple time signatures. And the way they learned it was actually very practical, clapping out rhythms using the words “tea” “coffee” “Coca-cola” and others, and writing their own rhythms on the blackboard. Sometimes I felt the children could be quite confused by this, but I was so pleased to walk by a classroom and occasionally hear the kids clapping out rhythms and shouting “tea”s and “coffee”s and writing them on the board. I felt I had taught them something quite valuable that would last, and let them have a bit of fun at the same time.

I have seen some truly amazing things in my life, but nothing has blown me away quite like watching the toddlers in Espoir’s Nursery 1. I visited this class simply to observe the teacher and her three year old students, ands what a joy it was. Remarkably, the children could speak a little bit of English. I knew that French used to be taught in Rwandan schools until three years ago when they changed it to English, but I never would have dreamed that children as young as three had already started to learn it. The alphabet was posted on the wall with English words representing each letter, and there were even two posters showing colours and shapes in English too. If that wasn’t enough, the teacher got them to sing me some songs and count to ten in English. The ability of these children was just amazing to witness, and I don’t quite know why but it brought a little tear to my eye.

During her stay in Rwanda, Caroline also had the opportunity to work in a school for visually impaired children, and on my last day in Rwamagna I went with her to watch her work with some young children. She had explained to me that some families in Rwanda are ashamed of their children if they are blind, and as a result they are often orphaned. In one extreme case, there was a boy at the school who had been tied up and left in his house for days. He had developed a permanent limp as a result. It was nice watching Caroline help them to make things from some homemade playdough she had made that morning. I also had the opportunity to hear some of the older students play guitar and sing for us, and I let them hear one of my own band’s songs which they all said they enjoyed. It was a great day just to visit the students, and the blind kids were some of the nicest people I met in Rwanda.

A big difference I noticed between Rwanda and back home was the amount of respect the teachers rightfully receive. I’m not saying for one second that teachers here are completely disrespected, but in Rwanda we celebrated a day called International Teachers Day. I thought at first that language had been a bit of an issue and that they simply meant that Rwanda had its own day of celebrating teachers, but when I returned home my partner (A primary school teacher) informed me that it was indeed an international day, it just wasn’t celebrated here.

In Rwanda the Espoir teachers had the day off, and attended a short meeting/celebration. Certificates were handed out to the best teachers in Rwamagana, and we all went back to Espoir to have some food, beer and awkward dancing (I really can’t dance). It was just incredible to see teachers get the respect they deserve, and the Espoir teachers really do earn every bit of it.

On one day Espoir was involved in a competition for champions, with four other schools from Rwamagana. The

competitions involved drawings of Rwanda’s history, a play, poetry, and traditional Rwandan dance which I enjoyed a lot more than I ever thought I would. I’m not a huge fan of dance, but the raw energy of the boys playing the drums and the girls dancing was fantastic to observe. Unfortunately, the day ran on Africa Time, and I arrived at 8:00 as Xaverine instructed me to, and she appeared with Espoir at approximately 9:30 with a huge grin on her face.

Espoir won the competition; they were awarded points for not having to read their poem from a page, having the best drawings (Many of which included graphic drawings of Rwanda in 1994 which broke my heart), and – get this – Arriving early.

On the way back to Espoir I had a long conversation with one of the teachers. He told me that the school we were in was set up shortly after the genocide to take in students who had been orphaned either because their parents were dead, or in jail. The children at the school are taken in from the streets and given free education, food, water, and a place to sleep. They are also trained in skills which will help them find work when they leave. This conversation turned out to be possibly the most important part of my trip to Rwanda, as the teacher turned from the subject of school to the subject of genocide...