Parting with the workers

Workers waving us goodbye

Today was our last day of construction work. The workers have become really accustom to our presence and even though we see them every morning, they still act so happy and excited when we arrive at the work site. Everyone stops his work to come up to me, shake my hand and say “Teacher! Malamutes!” which means “Good Morning!”

Although I’ve only taught them English in a formal classroom 4 or 5 times, all of them still refer to me as teacher. The last class I had, I wrote a list of about 50 English words with the Kinya-rwanda translations and handed it out to all of them so that they can still practice their English after I leave.  They were so thankful at the end of lesson that all 20 of them kissed both of my cheeks as they left the classroom. During construction work, they try practice English as much as they can as well as return the favor by teaching me Kinya-rwanda words.

For our last day with them, my group decided to throw a goodbye party for them. Because there are about 80 workers in the village, we each chipped in to buy 35 pineapples. Right outside the village, there was a boy with a bike full of pineapples and we bought the whole bundle from him (It’s his lucky day!) After cutting up all the pineapple, all the workers came and one of the girls on my trip who can speak French made a speech about how thankful we are for being able to meet and work with them. They all applauded and one of the workers who spoke a decent amount of English said, “We have had such a pleasure meeting all of you and thank you so much for helping at the site and teaching us English we’ll never forget you! After eating pineapple and laughing and talking with the workers a bit, one of the men proposed to me in front of the whole group (I’ve never actually seen him before)!   My face turned tomato red but everyone started laughing and clapping and he grabbed my hand and people frantically started snapping photos. After the party, we gave the pineapple “heads” to some of the workers because with just the top of it, you can grow more pineapples without having to water it or anything! The building, which is now almost finished (all it needs is windows and paint), was just a pile of bricks a month ago.  It’s extremely fulfilling seeing the building come together because just five months ago, we were knocking on doors selling T-shirts and raising money for this project. Because of us, this building will be standing for some fifty years and if I’m able to return to the village later on life (which I’m really hoping on doing so) I can revisit the memories of backbreaking, exhausting but satisfying work. We stuck our hands in wet cement and carved the name “Young Judea Year Course 2011” into the pavement.  It was a really great closing to our project.

One of the only woman workers at the village that I've become very close with(she's also in the English class I taught)

The man who proposed to me.