corner of the world

I am sitting in a coffee shop in downtown Kigali. I came for a moment of alone time and to also prove to myself that I can get out and about on my own now. I sit in a corner (always the best spot) listening to a podcast of George Saunders reading for the New Yorker. Large coffee, bigger salad -I am happy. My friends and family are twenty four hours of travel away but also, when the internet is up, right here with me. Hi y'all.

Tired is the adjective I use the most here. Everything takes a few extra steps, many more minutes, and much planning. My favorite taxi driver, Tachien, comes to a complete stop before maneuvering over the many speed bumps on Kigali's rough roads, my computer is not compatible to our one school printer (I save on flash drive, borrow another teacher's computer, print, return computer, realize I have printed the wrong document, repeat steps), and everywhere I go, there is so much to take in, language barrier to overcome, etc. It is not hard, in fact, this transition has been easier than I first assumed it would be. But I am tired. Very tired. It seems each summer I forget (as does voice and feet) how much school takes out of me. I'm trying to get in the rythm, figure out my kids, and get a vision of where each class will go.

Today, with 9/11 as the subject of my dailey journal writing, each student was to write on a course of action that altered his/her country's history. Eleven countries were represented in one of my classes and every student shared a portion of their world. They told of their family members deaths in the genocide, their ancestors part in the formation of the slave trade, their flight out of South Africa...

"Nobody in the world knew what truth was till somebody had told the story." Rudyard Kipling