Please note that VSO is in no way connected with or responsible for the content, comments and observations in this blog: these are solely my own in a personal capacity.
TUESDAY
Hmmm. Had my meeting this morning with the sector primary school representatives (Alfred: it would help if he explained how this works - Rwanda is divided into thirty districts, of which Giagara is one, Each is divided into sectors (13 in Gisagara) which are in turn divided into cellules. The principal of one primary school in each sector is designated as sector representative, a lot of extra work for no extra pay!) - I had thought it was supposed to be in the afternoon and with ALL the primary principals but that could have been my French letting me down. Anyway, Francois had asked me to talk to them about statistics and do out a sheet showing how exactly the forms needed to be filled in. When my turn came to speak, Francois kindly stepped out, so when they all started shouting questions at me, I had no idea what was going on! And the chargé, Alexis, just sat there and was no help at all.
Anyway, I think the problem was they thought I was asking them to do all this year's statistics all over again, whereas I was just pointing out that next year they needed to be done properly. Mind you, of the statistics I am working on at the moment, only 41 of 65 schools have returned anything and many of the 41 are a complete mess and in some cases unusable.
Meeting over, Francois and I went to meet my Education Manager Charlotte Phillips - we met at my house. Francois was (guess!) late and, as Charlotte and I sat in the sittingroom, I heard a wierd buzzing noise. I opened the door to the hallway to find it was full of bees!! We ran outside to see a swarm gathered around a ventilation brick in the roof and we could also hear them buzzing around in the attic. Panic! Long discussions about insecticides and other means of extermination. I promptly gassed all the ones in the hallway and Francois said he would ask the agronomist at the District for help. As it transpired, however, it seems to have been a swarm looking for somewhere to nest rather than an actual nest in the attic, so I think I am in the clear. They cleared off and haven't been back since
The meeting with Charlotte went fine. I obviously have reservations about the job so far but it is early days so no worries. Also she brought the generator, so that is being fitted and installed at the moment. Antoine, the local electrician, found out most of his wiring is cockeyed and had to redo it all. Then Alexandré the guard had a fit when he realised there was no lock on the door of the room the generator is housed in and it would be his responsibility if it got stolen! Anyway, all got sorted in the end and Antoine will be back tomorrow with more cabling, sockets and a proper plug for the generator (you really don't want to see what he jerryrigged to get it going!!).
WEDNESDAY
Another day, another whatever. Think I will knock off the daily reporting before I bore everyone to death. High point (so far): sitting in the cybercafe in Butare right now writing this, also finding out that Matar sell 20l jerrycans for only RWF1900. Low point: more pointless trawling through inaccurate statistics that are unlikely to be of any use. If there is one thing I really need a bike for, its trawling backwards and forwards between my own powerless office and the District Office a mile away. I found a baseball cap in the market today so at least I should be able to ward off the worst of the sunstroke. It really is hot, hot, hot, at least by my feeble standards (apologies to friends in Eritrea, Cambodia and Zambia reading this). Once I have proper power, I will post my considerd thoughts on Rwanda and Rwandans so far but that needs careful compilation, and probably in more than one language.
Anyway, I came into Butare to go to the bank, or else my guard will not get paid on Saturday and he seems pissed off at the generator coming for some reason so there's no point making things worse. The laundry situation is a story for another time. I'm off to Matar to buy an electric kettle so I can have coffee for breakfast tomorrow morning!!! And maybe some more pineapple gin (wonderful stuff, thought it would be horrible, how wrong was I!) - my colleagues back in Rathdown could probably do with some at the moment.
A Mutzig in the Faucon here I come - and then home. Will fill you in on my 'meeting' today with Enoch and Charis to 'plan' 'our' English classes another time - meeting them and Francois at 0700 tomorrow.
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