A Farewell to Béné

Béné’s Peace Corps assignment officially ends on December 11th.  For the past ten months, she has thrown herself into her job, teaching over 700 students at a boarding vocational-technical high school called the Lycee du Ruhango (The name reflects the historic French/francophone influence), as well as teaching teachers better English language skills so that they can improve their teaching.  The high school students at her school majored in hospitality and tourism, culinary arts, mechanics, construction, hairdressing/cosmetology or accounting.  Béné taught them all English.

She tirelessly prepared for her classes.  Often, she was in a panic because of the sheer volume of students – all at different levels of English ability.  She complained that the classrooms were too noisy, that the video equipment didn’t work, that she had no teaching background, hadn’t studied pedagogy, hadn’t taught large classes before, didn’t like teaching, had no idea what she was doing – and yet . . . she was an amazing teacher.  Her students adored her; they sent her notes saying, “I love you, teacher,” which Béné treasured.  And, she loved her students back.  Each week, she eagerly told me stories of her students.  Like the week she taught how to make a sentence with the words “I love_______,” asking her students to complete the sentence and tell the class something they loved to do.  After numerous students gave examples of mundane activities, one boy blurted out, “I love kissing.”  Without skipping a beat, Béné responded, “Well, I do, too.”

She went on field trips all over Rwanda with her tourism students, riding in crowded buses with them, listening to their teenage Rwandan pop music and partaking in their laughter.  Whenever Béné traveled outside of Ruhango, she would be sure to stop and see her students who were doing internships in hotels, restaurants or auto repair shops around the country.   She was proud of every one of them.  One day, she showed off her fire engine red toenails, meticulously painted by one of her cosmetology students during an internship at a beauty saloon (that’s how it’s spelled in Rwanda) in Ruhango.

One Saturday, she planned a special movie night, even putting up an artsy poster at the entrance of the school in advance, but the event started all wrong.  No one brought the speakers and mixer; the sound system wasn’t working and the students did not show up. She was disgusted and ready to give up when finally, the opening music to the film filled the hall. And just as suddenly, the hall was filled with excited students, who soon were falling off  their benches laughing at the Charlie Chaplin film she showed.

Béné brought her artistic talents to her work.  During one English Club meeting, Béné taught the members how to make paper-maché masks.

Then, on Halloween night in the dark, Béné and her mischievous mask-making companions wearing their masks and making ferocious sounds crashed the study halls, simultaneously scaring and delighting the teens studying at their desks.

She also revamped the library and, with her talent for art, made fun signs for shelves and otherwise transformed the previously dull library into an inviting place.  Unlike me, Béné refused to settle for the lackluster greeting cards available in the markets here.  Instead, she made her own, like this card for a fellow teacher’s wedding.

You may know that Béné loves to hike.  Many mornings, she rose before the crack of dawn to have time before school began to hike to a new part of town.  Most Sundays, she invited students to accompany her on a “walk and talk,” exploring the hills and valleys around Ruhango while talking about anything and everything – even the ants that they saw. Béné always brought extra water and made her own trail mix to share with her student walkers-and-talkers.

Being half French and a full gourmet cook, Béné prepared elaborate meals for friends and staff members in her cozy cottage of a home.  In return, she was invited to many Rwandans’ homes.

And, Béné wrote a love poem about Rwandans.

The Rwandans say….
The Rwandans say “yes” with their eyebrows. There is something very sly about it.
I love to repeat my questions,
And then to watch what happens.
The Rwandans say “no” with a firm “oya!” They stress the “ya” to make sure you know No is no. Oya. Oya!
The Rwandans smile with their whole face. It cracks wide open and changes shape. Their eyes crinkle and their teeth sparkle. And their eyebrows go up or down.
The Rwandans say “yes” with a “yego.” Yego to this, yego to that.
Say hello, they’ll reply Yego!
They stress the “o” to make sure you know. Yes is fine. Yego! Yego!
The Rwandans say “I love you” freely. They don’t worry about formality.
“I love you teacher” they say to me. “I love you teacher, I love you.”
The Rwandans say “yes” with their eyebrows. At first you don’t know what they mean.
But then you ask another question.
And then you watch what happens.

To thank Béné for her exemplary service, her school threw an extravagant party for her in the school’s lovely outdoor garden.  There was an official program sent out the week before.  She so looked forward to the event that she had a striking new dress made for the occasion.

Guests included a representative from the mayor’s office, the village chief, just about the entire school staff, Sho (a young, friendly and enthusiastic Japanese volunteer who teaches volleyball at several schools in Ruhango) and Béné’s Kinyarwanda teacher, who made us all laugh when she painted Béné as a bad student, always too tired from long days of teaching to concentrate on the ten different ways of saying “good” in Kinyarwanda.   Béné responded that she had in fact tried and, in any event, the five languages that she does speak should be enough.  (Yes, hard to believe, but she is an American.)  Indeed, Béné made ample use of her French during her time in Rwanda, because most Rwandans speak better French than English.

Béné was showered with gifts: a gorgeous dress and matching purse made from Rwandan fabric, a colorful woven bowl, a trophy for being a “Good Volunteer from Lycee Ikirezi Rwanda,” a gold medal around her neck, a beautifully inscribed and framed Certificate of Appreciation, and a mug with a picture of Béné and some of her students.

Béné gave a heartfelt thank-you speech sprinkled with a few Kinyarwanda words to prove that she wasn’t a complete linguistic failure, and halfway through she started crying.  There was no more fitting way to say “Murabeho,” the Rwandan way of saying goodbye when you knew you would not see the person again for a long time, or possibly never again.

Then, in addition to the huge bowls of peanuts that we had been snacking on during the  many speeches, we shared a delicious dinner of potatoes and beef, prepared and served by the industrious culinary arts teacher, with bananas for dessert.  And, of course, we had our choice of coke and various varieties of Fanta (citron being the most popular), plus Skol beer of which Béné having had two was feeling particularly happy.