Have You Seen a Hyena?

After much stumbling along, the library project is finally thriving! We have between 12 and 30 kids that come every Saturday morning and Thursday afternoon to the library for reading and writing practice, English lessons, math and science games, and read-aloud stories. I'm really enjoying the time spent with these younger kids (compared to my high school students) because they haven't picked up all those robot-like tendencies of their older friends, such as

Don't speak up during class, as it is disrespectful. Stay completely silent unless spoken to, in which case you are either to respond only with "Yes, teacher" or "No teacher".

Nope, these kids actually talk and respond and listen and laugh, and it's so refreshing! Granted, a lot of the youngest kids -- first and second grade -- don't speak Portuguese yet, so it's been a workout for me to try to talk to them in Nyungwe. I've been taking lessons twice a week with my next-door-neighbor and library counterpart Quizito, so I can communicate on a basic level ("Can you read?" or "Write your name here." or "Books are not for eating!") but it's difficult.

Today was one of those days where cultural differences threw me off in a particularly amusing way. We were going over names of animals in Nyungwe and Portuguese, using a poster of "Bzirombo Bza Tete" ("Animals of Tete") that my friend Jeni provided for us. I would point to an animal and they would shout the name first in Nyungwe, then in Portuguese, and then we would do a funny imitation of the animal all together and finally, I would ask if anyone's seen that animal in real life. We went through lion, elephant, snake, and finally came to hyena.

"What is this?" I asked.

"THIKA!" they all shouted.

"How about in Portuguese? Who knows it?"

"Hiena!" most of them yelled.

"Great! Now how many of you have seen a hyena before?"

Every single had shot up into the air.

Wait, huh? For all the other animals, one or two of the kids would timidly raise their hands (particularly impressive when we got 'lion') and the rest of the kids would stare at them, wide-eyed.  I wondered if there was some pack of hyenas roaming around Mavduzi-Ponte that I'd just neither seen nor heard of.

However, when I asked again, "You've all seen a hyena?" they nodded furiously and unanimously, keeping their hands raised.

Hmm.

A few minutes later, Quizito walked in, and told him "You know, these kids are saying that they've ALL seen a hyena. Are there that many hyenas around here!?"

He looked at me, a smile creeping onto his face, and turned to talk to the kids in rapid-fire Nyungwe. He asked them something, then told them something, and then they all died laughing.

I didn't get it.

He turned to me. "This is one of those cultural things," he explained, "We have a myth, that if someone asks you if you've seen the hyena and you say no, the hyena will crawl into your house at night and eat you. So whenever you ask a Nyungwe person if they've seen a hyena, they'll say yes."

OK, so maybe these kids aren't totally void of the weird quirks of the Mozambican student. Still, this particular one made me laugh.

Have you seen a hyena before? Because I certainly have!

Individual reading time.

Quizito enchants the kids.

Silly story about a silly monkey!