Caught

It's like something out of an Amy Tan novel. Children and adolescents and twenty-somethings caught between two generations and therefore caught between two cultures. It is the same thing that children and adolescents and twenty-somethings go through in the US when their families immigrate there. Language, customs, gender roles, job aspirations, power structure - they all shift. They have to change with the new environment and the new definition of success.

In Rwanda, the young generation is influx. Perhaps the most caught in the mix are those in the upper levels of secondary school. They have been caught in French or Kinyarwanda their whole education. Recently English became the priority. They now have to try to succeed at University taught entirely in English. Can you imagine? We have a hard enough in the US prepping the students who are the first generation of college students in their family. Now think of the international students who travel very far from their home, new stressors, new friends, new culture and we expect them to succeed. These Rwandan students aren't taken into a new country, although they are given great expectations.

I was sitting with my neighbor Eva yesterday. Eva is thirteen. She is completing the last semester of her Primary 6 level school, starting in a week. Eva and I read some English together. She tried to teach me a few new Kinyarwandan words (if only I would retain these things!). She started telling me about an eye disease. Then she ran to her house and grabbed a notebook from school. She has meticulously copied pages of medical terms, pictures and whole paragraphs describing the human eye. This was her science notebook. She also had descriptions of the human skeleton, reproductive system, etc. all in English. Having just read one chapter of Paul Coelho's The Alchemist with her, of which she understood absolutely nothing, I began to ponder the amount of English medical terminology she was catching. For that matter, how much the Rwandan teachers, teaching in English actually understand beyond having the students copy word for word and then regurgitate. Granted that is how I was successful in school, mainly because so many school systems are built upon the simple regurgitation of information.

If only I could find a way to teach critical thinking. Any ideas?

Well I went off on a bit of a tangent. The point I wanted to talk about was how the entire culture is shifting, not just education and language. Domestic violence is a huge problem here, coupled with the unequal rights of females and the low divorce rate. Yet the next generation is being taught to respect women, to value an educated woman. Adolescents here might have different ideals than their parents, different standards, different definitions of success. So I'm going to try to stop grouping all Rwandans together and making generalizations. Look at your own family structure. Do you have the same life goals as your parents? the same definition of what constitutes a job? even if the end goals are the same, was your method of getting there the same? I know my family is still trying to figure out why I'm in Africa.

Each generation automatically brings their own characteristics, what pieces of history they've witnessed, what music they listen to, the clothing they wear or lack of clothing they wear. But here in Rwanda this distinction of generations is more like a boxing match between Africa and the Western World. Are you on the side of the cool kids? Can you stomach pizza and guacamole or do you prefer the traditional rice and beans?

One thing I've realized is no matter how many layers of American I have to go through with a person, there is always a Rwandan at the core.