At 2pm today was the first of our Sunday English - Kinyarwanda lessons. I arrived 15 minutes early to find most of the work crew there already and the balance arrived shortly after that. It was heartening to see the old guys (50+) there as well, not leaving it for the youngsters only.
With a marker pen and white sheets of paper I started with the basic greetings first, writing the English on the paper for them all to write down/make notes whilst I wrote down the Kinyarwanda for the same word(s). It was a pleasant surprise to see that some of the guys already knew a small number of words with one or two knowing the odd sentence in English.
Throughout the guys were firing questions about plural and singular forms and similar words they had heard before. The lessons had been scheduled for 2pm as Rwanda was playing Cameroon (football) at 3:30, so they wanted to be finished. Naaah, the guys went on close to 4pm just wanting more and more!
Eventually I had to stop them and say that we all had to first practice the first heap of words from today - and I mean a heap of words. We agreed that I would speak Kinyarwanda with them answering in English and in that way also check each other's pronunciation.
I really enjoyed this day and it was great to see the smiles all round as people got the words right. Definitely a very rewarding part of the project.
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