The road beckons. The traveling bug has bitten again. We're off!!!
Well, not just yet. Still lots of prep work to do. But first, some backstory.
After graduating from college in the early 1970's, we both headed overseas - separately - working in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Iran, and - together - in Indonesia, Italy and Saudi Arabia as English language teachers, teacher trainers, and administrators. We returned to the States permanently in 2004 and our professional dreams were realized when we both secured jobs teaching at Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) in southwest Florida. Click on the video below for a brief aerial view of our campus, only 20 years old and developed in the wetlands. Go Eagles!!!
So, after ten years of teaching face-to-face, hybrid and online courses to undergrad and grad students, we wanted to explore other challenging and exciting opportunities. In a nutshell, we wanted to travel. As former Peace Corps Volunteers (We loved it!!), Peace Corps Response had been on our radar screen for some time and then we received an advert for an innovative Fulbright program seeking teachers of English as a foreign language (TEFL). This appealed and I applied for the 2016-17 academic year. The TEFL award permitted multiple country choices and in early December, 2015, Fulbright notified me that I had successfully passed the first selection stage for a position in Rwanda (click on the video below). Great news!!
Concurrently, we had both applied for 2016-17 sabbatical leaves from FGCU and received approvals also in December. What a month of Neat News!!
Preparation for our ten-month stay in Rwanda began in April when the grant was confirmed. In communications with the U.S. Embassy and the University of Rwanda, we shortly learned that I would be teaching in the College of Education of the University of Rwanda in Kigali. I was informed of my fall courses - Foundations of English, Communication Skills in English, and English Teaching Methods - and that I would also work to enhance the English language communication skills of the university debating clubs. I then started gathering texts, online resources, my course syllabi and those that my FGCU colleagues so graciously shared...everything we felt that we might need once in country. The FGCU COE and Foundation kindly provided materials for distribution and the COE also purchased a projector while we have assembled all sorts of electrical doodads to ensure that we can easily connect.
At this time, the then current American Fulbrighter at the university, whom I will replace, kindly Skyped with us from her apartment in Kigali, answered our many questions and offered valuable advice. Before the spring semester ended, we were invited to an afternoon celebration titled The Fulbright Experience sponsored by FGCU International Services in which the students and faculty who received Fulbright awards - both former and future recipients - were honored. Here's a photo of us at the event. Happy Day!
In mid-June, Sheila and I attended a three-day Pre-Departure Orientation (PDO) for all sub-Sahel 2016-17 Fulbrighters in Washington, D.C. This was a valuable learning experience with seminars and panels by Fulbright and State Department officials and former Fulbrighters. At this event, we met our seven fellow 2016-17 Rwandan Fulbrighters (and spouse, in one case) and a former TEFL Fulbrighter in Rwanda, originally from the country and now teaching in the U.S., who led discussions on all issues Rwandan...well, not all, for sure!...and offered insights which added to our knowledge base of the country, culture, people and work. Here are some pics from the PDO.
Once back home in southwest Florida, we continued preparing for our ten-month stay abroad. We arranged to store our car locally; temporarily stop our magazine subscriptions; request electronic correspondence - not snail mail! - when possible; open a Virtual Post Mail account to which the USPS will forward our mail; cancel our smartphone accounts; open WhatsApp accounts and start to use them with our friends and relatives; have work on our condo completed; ship four boxes of educational materials to Washington, D.C. to be sent to the U.S. Embassy in Kigali via the diplomatic pouch; receive prophylaxis for yellow fever, typhoid, and malaria; develop this blog; and, continue to learn as much as possible about Rwanda (see list of books and articles read below).
Besides all of this, we met with friends and spent precious time with our daughters and grandson. Saying goodbye is never easy but touching home base today is only a text or Skype call away.
It's mid-morning on Wednesday, August 31, we've just dropped off our rental car and we're about to check our baggage at the Delta desk at Southwest Florida International Airport in Ft. Myers, Florida. And look at that baggage!!! Ha! Would you believe there are a projector and printer in those check-ins along with course, personal and household items?
We have prepared for this adventure but know that surprises await us...and we look forward to them!!
And, now, we're off!
Some readings we have enjoyed:
"As veteran journalist Stephen Kinzer reports in his new book A Thousand Hills, Rwanda is an orderly, peaceful, and economically developing oasis in an otherwise strife-torn region. Kinzer points to Rwandan leader Paul Kagame as the prime mover behind this transformation. Ever the cautious journalist, Kinzer knows the pitfalls of this great-man approach to history..." Foreign Policy in Focus. October, 2008.
Other Reviews:
African Reflections. October, 2008.
Project Muse. Excerpt from African Studies Review. Volume 52, Number 1, April 2009 pp. 194-196.
Foreign Affairs. May-June, 2009.
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"Ambassador Robert Gribbin's book, published in the Memoir and Occasional Papers series of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, is a very welcome contribution to literature on Rwanda's recovery after catastrophe....The author's account of the period of his service in Rwanda leaves no doubt that he was and remains well versed with the critical issues that faced the new government of Rwanda following the genocide..." ResearchGate. July, 2006
Other Reviews:
PeaceCorpsWriters. 2006.
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"Marc Sommers has written a remarkable book on the plight of youth in postgenocide Rwanda. Sommers’s findings draw upon semistructured interviews with central and local government officials, as well as focus groups and questionnaires with youth, meaning Rwandans between the ages of fourteen and thirty-five. Adults living in Sommers’s two urban and three rural research settings were also interviewed on issues confronting Rwandan youth..." ProjectMuse. April, 2013.
Other Reviews:
ResearchGate. January, 2013.
NewSecurityBeat. February, 2012
AfricanAffairs. August, 2013.
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"Josh Ruxin did not write a book about food, although his story takes place against a backdrop of heart-wrenching hunger and Eden-esque abundance, tracing a journey from famine to feast.He did not write a book about restaurants, although he tells how two American ex-pats created one of the hippest dining establishments in Africa." The Huffington Post. January, 2014
Other Reviews:
Heaven. (Author's website)
The Daily Beast. November, 2013
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"Many visitors to Rwanda have little knowledge of how some basic things are done in Rwanda. Many don’t know how to travel around the country since there are no metro, trams, and trains yet, or how to officially register as a resident. Relocating overseas to a foreign country is adventurous and can also be challenging now and then." Diplomat Magazine. May, 2015.
Other Reviews:
The New Times. September, 2015.
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"This book is a result of many observations anthropologist David Maranz made while living and working among Africans, in different parts of the continent over many years, starting in 1975. According to Maranz, he wrote [End Page 108] the book to (1) contribute to an understanding of how African economic and social systems work on the individual level, and (2) to show Westerners that, contrary to commonly held impressions the African economic system is unique and accomplishes its purposes well." Project Muse. Fall/Winter, 2003.
Other Reviews:
Goodreads. January, 2003
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"...Courtemanche's novel conveys the pressure of lived experience very powerfully; yet at the same time experience is clearly mediated by a sophisticated literary imagination. His time in Rwanda, where he worked as a journalist, may have produced the first great novel of the catastrophe that befell that country, but its literary qualities are what count, not their context." The Guardian. October, 2003.
Other Reviews:
WSWS. November, 2003.
Curled Up. October, 2003.
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"This, Jean Hatzfeld's third book on the Rwandan genocide, opens with a joyous description of a wedding. A decade and a half after the massacre, a Tutsi survivor is getting married. Life, however improbably, has to go on being lived. "Thanks to the wedding, time wears a kind face at present," says the bride, Claudine Kayitsei, "but only at present. Because I see clearly that the future has already been eaten up by what I have lived through"." The Guardian. March, 2009.
Other Reviews:
Publishers Weekly. January, 2009.
The Washington Post. April, 2009.
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"All is quiet at Our Lady of the Nile, an elite boarding school high in the mountains of Rwanda. Or so it seems. Our Lady of the Nile,Scholastique Mukasonga’s fairytale-like novel, is the literary equivalent of a slow burn. Set in 1979, it is a highly charged, fictional account of the events leading up to the 1994 Rwandan genocide." Book Forum. November, 2014.
Reviews:
The Christian Science Monitor. October, 2014.
The Guardian. October, 2015.
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Taught or interested in teaching overseas? Been a Fulbrighter or Peace Corps Volunteer? Have stories to tell? Suggestions to offer? Links to share? Please comment and click here to contact us directly and/or receive future posts.