Burundi girls teach culture by dancing in US(America),ntitwaje kwicara mumahanga soma akaranga k'Abarundi muri America$$

Monique Munezero, 8, left, and Jessica Nizeyimana, 6, perform a dance for kindergarten students at Jefferson Elementary School on Jan. 27. The girls are from Burundi and spent time in a refuge camp in Tanzania before immigrating to Erie.

Hari abantu benshi bama biyumvira ko abarundi barimumahanga bataye akaranga,bandanya usoma ahohepho....


The nine girls, ages 6 through 17, fled with their families from civil war in their native Burundi. In camps in Congo and Tanzania, they developed and practiced intricate dances to help pass the time.

"It's for joy," Elina Nintereste, 17, said of why they continue to dance in Erie.

"Everything here is wonderful," others said in unison.

The girls now also dance to help other children learn. They performed Tuesday at Jefferson Elementary School, where kindergartners heard a story about refugees, found Burundi in atlases, and traced the geometric patterns of the girls' dances.

The program is part of a Mercyhurst College Education Department initiative that uses the arts to teach more traditional subjects. The college works with Jefferson Elementary School to introduce innovative curriculum in the classrooms.

"The arts are engaging to students, much more so than the skills drills we see in classrooms," said Leanne Roberts, Mercyhurst associate professor of education.

Kindergartner Kendall Janke, 5, was immediately engaged by Mandaleo. She swayed in her seat while the girls danced and listened intently as leaders chanted lyrics and instructions. Afterward, she learned a few words of the girls' native Swahili in a lesson with Mercyhurst College education majors.

"I want to learn to say 'hi' to them," she said. "They look pretty."

Mercyhurst junior Sarah Iabone, of Rochester, N.Y., helped teach Kendall and others rudimentary Swahili and about Burundian religion and culture.

"I wasn't great with paper and pencil stuff," she said. "This kind of learning would have helped me."

Jefferson kindergarten teachers Kim Matthews and Karen Briggs studied aesthetic education with Roberts at the Juilliard School's Lincoln Center Institute. A $100,000 state grant to Mercyhurst College paid for the course and for a three-day aesthetic arts workshop for local teachers.

Briggs has no doubt that aesthetics help children learn more than theater, music, art and dance. She taught music for 22 years before switching to kindergarten five years ago.

"I put the arts into everything that I do in the classroom," she said. "If I read 'The Three Bears,' then the kids act it out."

The young African dancers love to perform and continue to craft their dance. They get together after school and on weekends to choreograph movements to African secular and praise music. Most sessions are at the home of Erie Art Museum education and folk art Director Kelly Armor, who introduced them to their adopted city at its Heritage Festival in summer.

"There's so much of Africa still in them," said Armor, who lived for a time in East Africa. She tells of the girls' delight in the pears and apples lying under the fruit trees in her backyard. "Most American kids would have seen bruised fruit not worth eating. These girls thought they were wonderful and immediately began to fill their skirts with them."

Erie students can learn more of those kinds of lesson from international students, Jefferson Principal Diane Madara said.

"Sometimes they just need to see the appreciation in these children's eyes to appreciate things they take for granted," she said.


Abobana wakwiye gushimirwa?
Sangira ivyiyumviro vyawe nabandi kuri vugaduhabwe ahohepho