about apagie musha

if you head due east out of kigali, you’ll shortly come to a little sign that reads ‘musha’ and points up a dirt road to the north. and by up i mean really up. not many cars go up this road. instead you see women with baskets on their heads, young men pushing bicycles loaded with food from the market or jerry cans full of water, all heaving up the steep terrain a mile to musha.

at the top of the hill there’s a crossroads. on one corner is a church, another a little booth selling candy and soap, and on a third there’s a mud hut with a sign reading ‘hair salon’. turn left here, and you’ll pass a couple more hair salon huts, a handful of houses, some of which function as shops selling green bananas, potatoes, tomatoes, whatever happens to be in season, then there’s a few local bars, and then the school.

g.s. apagie musha straddles the dirt road through town. on one side are the administrative offices and teacher’s room, the library, several classrooms, the girls’ dormitory and refectory. on the other side are the upper level classrooms, boys’ dormitory and teachers’ houses. there’s also a refectory and kitchen, a water pump, a volleyball net, and two basketball hoops that pass for a court. they’ve got a building with laboratory tables but no equipment, that’s being used as a mosque for the muslim students. there’s another building with ten or fifteen working computers that is the ICT classroom but doubles as storage for the minimal sports equipment and jerseys.  

the classrooms themselves each have a blackboard and the students sit on benches, two to a desk.  the average class has about 50 students, with the largest at 56 and smallest 37.  there are 26 teachers, some of whom live in musha and others commute from nearby towns.  the students get no textbooks, no photocopies or handouts.  there is a library with a handful of dictionaries, copies of old national exams, and some assorted textbooks for use by the teachers.  the library is almost always locked.

this blog is contains stories of my life and work as an english teacher here in musha.  i’m a vso volunteer and i live with another volunteer called amanda furst, a biology teacher from winnipeg in canada.  enjoy your read and feel free to comment!