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.
OK – edited highlights only, it’s been a long time. And if you want to see some Christmas photos, go to my Facebook page: the uploader here takes FOREVER with photos!!
THURSDAY TO SUNDAY
Came back down home on Thursday and zoomed out to the District as fast as I could. Francois had said the Adult Literacy Report absolutely had to be finished and submitted by Friday. And I believed him, hence the rush. There were a few sets there and I did them in about ten minutes . However, no-one knew where the rest of the statistics were – somewhere in the main education office and Francois said I would have to do them tomorrow. When I arrived Friday Francois was away (as I knew) but Alexis, in a remarkable imitation of Bart Simpson in his early years, told me
a) he didn’t know where the statistics were
b) the place they were was locked and he didn’t know where the key was
c) the statistics were incomplete because quite a few sectors had not yet returned them.
I did find out that the generator in the education office had been fixed so I will be back in my proper office (with part-time use of a desk) as of Monday. But Friday was a complete washout. I invented things to do (am halfway through Excel for Dummies at the moment) and went home for lunch. And then I said ‘Sod it’ and stayed at home. I really didn’t see the point of coming back, so I had a nap (Alfred: a nap? What is happening to this guy – when’s the last time anyone remembers Ruairí taking a nap?) and that was that. I don’t know what guardian angel was looking out for me but it transpired that everyone was actually given a half-day that afternoon out of the blue: if I had dragged myself back to the office, to find no-one there at all, ........ eh-eh-eh-eh-eh, as they say here in Rwanda.
Fairly uneventful weekend: did a pile of laundry on Saturday (not before time) but hanging it out was an interesting affair. As I mentioned before, the local market has relocated to around my house, Wednesdays and Saturdays. This means several hundred people, mostly hanging aroiund and not doing anything much. The sight of a male muzungu hanging out laundry attracted an enormous crowd, which I tried to pretend wasn’t there(!). As I hung up each item, an excited burst of conversation would ensue – whether discussing the way I was hanging it, what the garment was used for (my boxer shorts and nightshirt both sparked off a higher than usual decibel level; the Chelsea shirt passed unobserved). For some reason, they found the socks particularly funny, no idea why.
One night (Friday I think) I did head out to my local – on my own as Enoch is still in Kigali on his way back from Kampala. As often happens a guy walked up to my table and asked if he could join me and, as usual, I said yes. His name was Joseph and it turned out I had met him that morning in the District Office. He owns the bar I usually drink in and Vestine, the barmaid, is his niece!! We had a long and very interesting chat. He has what appears to me to be a rather difficult job. He co-ordinates aid for genocide victims in the district – orphans, people who had limbs hacked off and so on. However, the people must be able to prove they suffered their losses directly from the genocide: if you are an orphan because your parents died in an accident or from malaria, tough luck. There are officials in each sector who deal with this and he gets called in to sort out the problem cases. Not pleasant, as he said himself, but that’s the way the system works. Anyway, he refused to let me pay for anything (we had eaten as well), though he did quietly establish I did understand that this was only for this one night and not for free booze and food for the remainder of my stay!!
MONDAY and TUESDAY
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. What a day! The first day of the new school year and all hell broke loose. I sat in the Education office (now up and running again now that the generator is fixed) and tried to finish the adult illiteracy statistics (Alexis was right: some sectors still haven’t returned them). Meanwhile an avalanche of people began to pour in the door and clog up the corridor as the implications of the new changes in the education system either became clear or were completely incomprehensible (depending on which particular changes you are talking about). Eleven principals turned up, either confused or – having figured out what was happening – explaining that the proposed changes simply could not work in their school. There were a host of other teachers – mostly French teachers I think – who wanted to know if they still had jobs or not, or if they were being moved to other schools or what? There were a load of parents whose children had been allocated to a particular secondary school and wanted them changed to another one (Alfred: this was all in Kinyarwandan – there is a certain degree of speculation involved in this description as Ruairí’s Kinyarwandan could most kindly be described as rudimentary, more accurately as virtually non-existent).
Alexis didn’t seem to figure much in all of this, apart from joining in the occasional discussion but Francois was really impressive. Despite the magnitude (woops, almost said ‘enormity’) of the problems facing him, he stayed calm, cool, reasoned and cheerful. One way or another – as far as I could tell – everyone left that office at least a little happier than they had arrived, which was quite an achievement. I know the guy drives me mad in other ways (he now owes me RWF 5000 for a mouse I bought him in Kigali – I wonder if I am ever going to see that!) but he can be really impressive at other times.
Tuesday followed much the same pattern. I filled in the time reading through the draft of the Education Management Manual that Charlotte sent me – they seem to have been working quite hard up there in my absence! Enoch was supposed to come and chat to me about English classes but never turned up at the office – Francois had asked me to give him a report on any discussions we might have oj the topic (a certain amount of tension going on there, as you will see). Later that evening Enoch and Kenneth called round to see me: I had brought some books back from the VSO Resource Room and Enoch immediately purloined Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, a book he had last read at school. Enoch was also most apologetic as the bottle of waragi he was bringing me back from Kampala got confiscated at the border. We talked about the classes – Enoch’s problem is that he hasn’t yet been paid for the classes he already gave (and they said they are only giving him RWF2000 per class instead of the RWF3000 originally offered) and so far has not seen a contract for the new classes and has no intention of starting unless such a contract is provided.
Then we went for beers and a long chat: Kenneth has more-or-less finished his work here in Gisagara and is being recalled to Kigali on the 23rd, which is where the Chinese-owned engineering company is based. Another nice pleasant evening and then I found out Enoch had sneaked off and paid for everything. I’m sure I’ll get to pay next time but this is getting not just friendly but a bit wierd to be honest!!
WEDNESDAY
Long chats about English classes with Francois and with Eugene the Executive Secretary of the District. I also spent a few hours carefully reading through the textbooks themselves – there is going to have to be a lot of photocopying!! Also, I need to design a test to sort people into classes again, as over half never did any sort of assessment at all. Got that done by lunch, then headed home, dropped my stuff and headed into Butare and caught the bus to Kigali. This time we are staying in St Paul’s, a religious-run guesthouse right in the centre. It’s nice but, despite my having sent two emails to Jean-Claude regarding accommodation, they had no record of any booking for me at all, but were able to find me a room! Wandering around town I ran into an Irish couple, Simon and Greer, who have both been wandering around the world and Africa respectively for almost a year now (Simon recognised my Shamrock Rovers shirt) – it’s the first time I have run into anyone Irish here who wasn’t actually working for VSO or a similar organisation. We were supposed to go and watch Wigan-Man U later but they got sidetracked by a table quiz they were winning – probably just as well, tomorrow is a busy day!
THURSDAY and FRIDAY
The conference itself was really good, if somewhat tiring. The only thing that marred it was an enormous amount of confusion over accommodation with mixed messages being given to volunteers left right and centre. Some got so fed up they just booked themselves in elsewhere and paid for it out of their own pockets! But the actual conference was good – highlights were a presentation on VSO’s history in Rwanda, a complete outline of the PHARE (antiHIV/AIDS) project and its possible future, feedback from Ruth and Charlotte’s visit to Cameroon and a very interesting presentation by Richard Arden of DfID on the current changes in the Rwandan Education system. This last was particularly good: Richard has had enormous experience working in Africa (having started with VSO himself) and he said that, despite the frustration and craziness of much of what the Rwandans were doing at the moment, it was still far preferable to what tended to happen in most African countries where any change at all took forever. Here it was go for broke and sort out the problems afterwards!!
Thursday night I met up with Steve MacFadden and got to see his really nice new house (his beard has really come on nicely too!). We went for a rather indifferent Chinese meal in a place called Shanghai (my Goat in Garlic Sauce didn’t taste of garlic at all though the diced cucumber did give an interesting texture; the Sweet-and-Sour Pork was a sludgy sweetish pink sauce) but had a really good chat. Friday night I ended up in a long chat with Mike Tennant (Education Management Advisor like me) and George Pinto (working as a science teacher in a Teacher Training College in the North) – that’s one of the great things about these kinds of conferences, you get a chance to talk to people you don’t ordinarily have time to see!). I also - finally – got to the Chinese supermarket for some household supplies: a blanket, flask, knives, a pair of wellies, bits and bobs. All I need is some petrol and I can start making coffee again!!
But – way and away the most important of all – Tina Hewing arrived back!! She is looking great and – even better – (not really) brought me stuff!! A supply of deoderant (I had asked her to do this so no smart comments please), chocolate flavoured tea (Alfred: WHAT! Pretty sure you didn’t ask for that) which Tina assures me is gorgeous, a Chelsea alarm-clock and a set of Chelsea Top Trumps (card game – I was awesome at Military Aircraft Top Trumps at Christmas!!!).
SATURDAY and SUNDAY
Best football experience so far! I was watching Chelsea-Stoke in the Faucon while a much bigger crowd watched Bolton – Man U out the back. Losing 0-1 to Stoke was bad enough, then Man U (whose match had kicked off earlier) scored in the 89th minute. All the Man U supporters piled in to gloat at us, though we had just snatched an equaliser. Then Lampard scored in the 94th minute and all us Chelsea supporters went crazy (Alfred: right – overjoyed at beating Stoke City at Stamford Bridge, a collection of discarded pottery shards disguised in red-and-white shirts and pretending to be a football team; how have the mighty fallen!) – giant group hug in the middle of the bar!! Also met Cathryn Devine from Strabane who is back from home – hadn’t seen her in a long time!
Back to Gisagara on Sunday morning, did a load of laundry ... and then promptly fell asleep for the rest of the day!! Really wierd – not feeling sick or anything, just really sleepy. Slept from 1200 to 1800, got up to eat something and then straight back to bed again for the entire night. No idea what that’s all about!
(Alfred: is that it? Over a week of life in Rwanda and the most interesting thing you can come up with is that Steve’s beard is coming on nicely??? What about the human interest? Wry observations? Even a funny t-shirt or two?)
Well, I take Alfred’s point: maybe I am just getting so used to things here that things just don’t jump out and surprise me the way they used to at first. There are still the surprises – a t-shirt saying ‘Suck my D***’ (no asterixes on the original) being worn by a young man carrying a Bible, even more surprisingly was a ‘Who Shot J.R.?’ t-shirt in immaculate condition – where had that been lying all these years? I have been having more interesting conversations with Déo, my moto driver and there will be an update on that in my next blog update. My guard, Alexandre, continues to add a new English phrase to his vocabulary each day. And English classes are supposed to start this week (though Irene, the district solicitor who has been making very blatant approaches to me the last few times we have met, having established that she and I are two of the few unmarried people in the office) just told me that today is bad and tomorrow is worse as there is a meeting all day to discuss the new work performance contracts that have just arrived. Maybe Wednesday we can get started.
(Alfred: NOT THE POINT! You gotta make this stuff more interesting or people won’t bother themselves ploughing through it all! Don’t worry folks – I’ll make sure it’s better next time, even if I have to write it myself!)
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