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Renee Pellerin |
The first thing you notice when you first meet a classroom full of students is how quietly they speak.
They barely whisper. When they ask a question, or make a comment, I find I have to go right up to them to hear them. I doubt that the other students can hear them either, so I repeat the question before I answer. It’s a bit laborious at times, but the students are very patient as I struggle with not only their soft voices, but also their accents. And they patiently struggle with mine. For most of these students, English is their third language and I realize now that some of them must miss what I am saying to them, but rarely do they let me know they don’t understand.
They are quiet, and patient, and they’re very polite. It appears to be the Rwandan nature. It’s certainly true of all the Rwandans we have encountered so far…from the cook and the guards at the house where we are staying, to the people sitting next to us on the bus, to the taxi drivers in Kigali. Their shyness makes them appear unfriendly sometimes, and they won’t greet you on the street the way Kenyans do with their hearty “Jambo”, or the way we might nod or say good afternoon to someone at home. But whenever I say hello in Kinyarwanda to strangers I pass on the street here in Butare, I get huge delighted smiles in response.
The other day, walking back from campus, as I passed the guard at the gate who is usually atypically stern and surly, I said the Kinyarwandan hello. Suddenly there was a big grin on his face, he did a little dance and took hold of my arm as if I were a long lost cousin. I’m not sure if it was a surprise that I could utter a word in Kinyarwanda, or just that I bothered to say anything at all, but he was apparently very pleased.
In Kigali one night, I had just arrived back at my hotel after an evening out for dinner, and suddenly a young man rushed up to our already crowded elevator. We thought someone was trying to squeeze in before the door closed and wondered how that was going to work. Then, my partner noticed he was holding a jacket. My jacket. I had left it in the taxi we had just gotten out of, and that young man was the driver who went to some effort to chase after me. I could barely utter a Kinyarwandan thank you before the elevator door closed. I’m so sorry that I didn’t think fast enough to get out of the elevator right then to thank him properly. Now that would have been the polite thing to do.
