Kids Week: Oren's 7th and the End of School

David's class had a facepainting day in the last week of school.

It is getting past 9pm here in Kigali and I have made a vow to get this blog out before I fall asleep.  This seems especially important because we will be in Kigali for the week and the activities here have little or no connection to what happened last week, so I want to make sure I can write about them separately.

We are now finished with the kids school and just 2 weeks away from our 4 week homeleave.  I am trying not to count the days, but truth be told, I have been experiencing the now familiar ‘compassion fatigue’ phenomenon where you just feel a bit too invaded by need and desperate requests for help that begin to swallow you up.  I feel a real desire to scream and beat the obdurate beast of poverty with a stick.   But of course that never works. It might cower momentarily in a corner but springs back out at you the minute you let down your guard.

Oren and M. Mai Violaine his teacher.

For those who have had compassion fatigue, you know what all that means.  All that to say, we are looking forward to a chance to step away and reset a bit.  The remaining days will hopefully pass very quickly because our schedule in them is just short of insane in terms of travel and work.  We will be going to Rwanda at least once more, maybe twice, and doing an extensive tour of rural Burundi as well.  The reason for all this activity has to do with a visit from Mark Sprunger our Area Director, followed by a visit from Ruth Clemens (and her husband Jonathan and daughter Hannah).  She is the program director for MCC USA.  She is also a friend so we are happy to host them, but it does mean a lot of driving around to see our projects.

David and M. Balthazar, his teacher.

Finally, in the last days before we leave, I will go back up to Kigali to get Bethany and Annie, our SALTers in Rwanda who will accompany us back to the US (with Janelle) as that will be the end of their term.  The logistics behind all of this is understandably stressful, not to mention the continuous driving up and down the treacherous route from Buja into the interior. 

I was reminded of that again yesterday when we drove to Kigali.  You really have to be a very good defensive driver in order to avoid a wreck each time you go, because being a good driver is not enough.  There are times on each trip that you have to make evasive maneuvers to avoid a car, truck or bus coming at you in your lane.

Oren and class at the zoo.

But we are here in Kigali, arriving yesterday evening about pm.  Mark Sprunger arrived from Addis about 2 am and I was voted to go get him, so I have felt a bit out of it all day as a result.

But I will save some of the news for this week for a later date because last week was really quite full and needs some space for elaboration.

It was, in fact, the last week of school for the kids, and also the last quasi-normal week for us until our return from the US in the fall.  What I mean by quasi-normal is that while we did not do any traveling, it was not without its complications.  It seems that the last week of the Ecole Belge is really play time.  The kids each had various field trips and special activities which required unusual pick-ups and drop-offs that kept us running around most days.  It was particularly hard because these were not coordinated between the kids so one day Oren’s class would be going to the zoo and the next day David’s class went over to his teachers house.  

Oren and classmates, last week!

It was complicated but we did manage to get them to everything and there were some really great results as well.  On Wednesday,  for instance, I was very proud of Oren for advancing a rank in karate after failing at the past attempt about a month ago.  He actually really practiced and he looked really good to me doing his Kata’s for the class and his Sensei. 

What really struck me and made me happy was his own sense of achievement, and even seeing him have an ambition to achieve in karate.  I feel like the his lack of language comprehension that created such an impediment for him at the beginning of the year has been overcome and this has allowed him to understand what he is trying to do in the class.  He will get a second yellow bar on his belt before we go home for the summer. 

Thursday was another day of accomplishment for him as he got his report card and Rebecca went in for a teacher conference.  He has shown a lot of improvement in French comprehension, and did very well on his reading test.  Math continues to be his real forte though and he did very well in that. 

dinosaur piniata

The teacher did confirm that he continues to be stubborn in certain ways, but that he had made great strides in language learning.  I still marvel that he can read a book in French better than he can in English.  (It is interesting hearing him read an English book with all French phonemes.  He complains that English is not spelled right.)

Friday was the real highlight though.  It was Oren’s Birthday and it was really a full day’s celebration that actually began Thursday afternoon when he made chocolate cupcakes for his class and iced them and decorated them.

Dinosaur tag, David is 'it'.

What we did not know is that by Friday, so many of the kids had left that in the entire school it seemed there were only about 50 out of 600, and only about 3 in Oren’s class that day.  They still had fun and they shared the cupcakes with kids in other grades who were around. 

While the kids were at school and Rebecca was at work I was busy preparing the house for a party including clearing out the living room, making a piniata and generally cleaning up.  Rebecca has ordered a cake and finished off the decorations on it with some plastic dinosaurs (It was a dinosaur themed party).

We also reserved a bouncy castle for 3 hours.  (Submitting to the cultural requirements of kids’ Birthdays here.)  We made a ton of food and decided to have fresh lemonade as the main beverage.  Marceline and Odifax harvested about a bushel of lemons off of the trees in our yard and made several gallons of lemonade from  them. 

Guests started arriving about 3pm, and although many of his school friends were already gone, there were enough friends around to have a pretty big party.  Among the guests were Emily and Rebecca (Kirsten’s daughters), Astrid and Travis’ family (Noni, Zoey, Davine, Yaida and Jasmine), Naja brought Elias and Aviaja, there were some friends from Sunday school as well, Janette brought her sons Samuel and Josiah, and Joy and Jessie’s son Zack came.

I think they all had a lot of fun.  They played dinosaur tag, and a parachute game where they had to sit on the floor with their feet underneath it and had to try not be ‘eaten’ by the creature that was underneath.  Oren opened his presents with the group and then we had a long piniata breaking activity followed by cake. 

Fortunately Marceline stayed around for the whole party and helped serve and clean up. 

People headed home about 7pm.  It was a good time for kids and adults.  We did say some goodbyes as several were on their way out that week for the summer or for good. 

We were pretty worn out by the weekend and laid low most of Saturday.  Oren really did not want to leave the house, but wanted to play with his presents all day.  He really got exactly what he wanted… a dinosaur poster, a solar system poster, an anatomy book, a Spiderman game, a lego kit, and some smaller toys that he really loved.  I think either Rebecca tipped some people off or else other parents just knew what 7 year olds love.  (He is really into science these days and dinosaurs.)

bouncy castle!

David also had a good week despite having a cold.  He really enjoyed the Birthday and wants to know when his Birthday is coming.  His school class did some fun activities including face-painting one day, and on the last day of school he was invited to his teacher’s home to play in her yard and have lunch.  He did seem to do well this year in school although he is not speaking French yet. 

Both of the boys are really looking forward to getting back on the big airplane to Baltimore.  They are here in Kigali with us this week.  Hopefully Rebecca and I will be able to tag team them successfully in a way that allows us to get their work done. 

Most of the Birthday pictures were taken by Marceline.  For more Birthday pictures go to my picasa site on this link: Oren’s 7th