“The ceiling is full of bullet holes and when it rains I have to stop teaching.” “The genocide of 1994 came as a terrible shock to all of us,” says Thea Uwimbabazi, a teacher at Kinyinya school in Rwanda, the land of a thousand hills. “Picking up the pieces is no easy job and when it comes to teaching it is next to impossible,” says Thea. “How can you expect children who have lost their relations to share a classroom peacefully with pupils whose parents took part in the genocide and in some cases actually killed their families?” Two million Rwandans lost their lives in the genocide, including 50 per cent of the teaching profession. Of the twelve women teachers in Thea’s school, seven are widows whose husbands and children were murdered by the Hutu militia. “How can you expect these widows to have a sense of duty and deliver worthwhile lessons?” says Thea. “They’re in a state of shock.” Some 80 percent of the pupils in Thea’s school were orphaned and suffer from trauma and an immense sense of loss. To help them cope, the teachers try to organizes group recreation so that the pupils can play together and get rid of their inner suspicions but according to Thea, they need specialists to help them in this kind of work. The war did not just destroy human lives; it wrecked school, hospitals and reduced health centres to rubble. “School buildings are in a deplorable state,” says Thea. “The pupils sit on wooden planks and find it hard to pay attention all day, having walked miles to school. There are no school canteens so must teachers and pupils go without lunch. This means afternoon lessons are a write-off, not properly taught or learnt. As for living conditions, teachers in Rwanda are poverty-stricken; their salaries are not indexed to the cost of living and transport is a problem. “I have to get up at 4:30 a.m. to be at school by 7:30,” says Thea. Training is a major difficulty for Rwandan teachers. Without in-service tuition, teachers are becoming intellectually inert, whereas teaching methods evolve all the time. “Non-qualified teachers simply have to fend for themselves to keep up,” comments Thea. Another difficulty is shortage of teaching materials; handbooks and textbooks are virtually inexistent. “In Grade 6, I have one reader for eight pupils and a French and a maths textbook.“ Thea firmly believes that all Rwandans—especially the public authorities—should invest in education, and give it the same funding as that of defence. She calls for teachers’ unions to speak out for their rights and for parents’ associations to help them press their claims. “I am 100 percent happy as a teacher because education is he foundation of every occupation. All politicians have been to school, and all scientists, artist and technicians have been able to do what they have done thanks to the basic education they received.”
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 07:42:37 +0000
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