a learning community

Some wise friends have asked (and I hope future interviewers will too) what I've learned here.  As the year is nearing it's close, I am happy to reflect on the many lessons that the learning community of Agahozo-Shalom gave me.  In a couple of categories, here's some of the things ASYV has taught me.

some really tangible lessons:
1) How to jimmy a lock.  I break into my and others' rooms extremely frequently, as well as my own, just to get my work done.
2) How to save frogs, and why to save frogs.  A lizard in your room can survive, but a frog will die without moisture and that is gross and sad.  Saving frogs is no easy task, as they hop around a lot, but with some skillful maneuvering every frog can make it back outside. 
3) How to hoe.  Thank you members of Patrice Lumumba family.

some less tangible, but potentially more important lessons:
1) Even if my ideas are excellent, and will make everyone happy, everyone still would likely rather not be told them.  Everyone likes to be heard, so give everyone a chance to speak up and have their ideas considered before making a change that affects them.  Someone remind me of this when I have kids and again when I'm just a few steps away from achieving world peace.
2) I don't work in the clinic. In other words, there's nothing life or death urgent in my work.  So I should walk rather than run, as a good friend once told me.  In the end it usually takes the same amount of time, and if I run I spend more time waiting and cursing, whereas if I walk I get to see the birds along the way (this is both metaphorical and very literal).  This is a big jump from my "everything is urgent" mentality of the DC activism world, and it will be interesting to reconcile the two.
3) I have a culture that I got from my upbringing and history, and it's very different from other people's cultures.  While I still believe that people are the same, more or less, and have the same basic goals, I've learned that cultural differences are very real, and should not be underestimated.  That doesn't mean that they should ever impede collaboration, but they should certainly be honored if collaboration is to work.

I've learned much more, including how to expect the most from people, how to teach about the present perfect tense, and how to find family in 16 teenagers.  Mostly I've learned that most things I thought I knew were only partially true, at least here, and that if I want to keep knowing things, I'd better be prepared to keep learning, probably forever.