St Philippe Neri Day
Wednesday 27th May is St Philippe Neri Day, the patron saint of the local secondary school I have visited quite often. François (my director) and I had both received invitations and he was down to make a speech but he said that he couldn’t go as he had a meeting (and hadn’t actually been told this was happening anyway) ... so could I please give the speech on behalf of the District! Well, everyone knows how much I hate speaking in public – so of course I agreed immediately. It didn’t dawn on me until later what language the speech might have to be in (Alfred: feeble attempt to build up suspense – of course it was in English).
So, having put in a few hours at work, I went home to put on my suit and off I went. We started with mass (eventually – Mass began an hour late and everything else ran even later – surprise surprise!). I had a desperate time trying to stay awake for some reason. The ceremony was not overlong, the singing was enjoyable but my eyes just kept closing. Luckily, at the gospel, a girl came over to me with a Bible in English and a slip of paper showing the reading – which was extremely thoughtful of somebody or other! Anyway, having read John Chapter 18 I then turned to Matthew and read that for a while. I had forgotten the huge list of parables he tells and how bluntly they are phrased in some cases, or at least the translation the Good News Bible uses! Anyway, that kept me going AND made me look suitably devout at the same time until, quite suddenly, my head cleared and I wasn’t sleepy anymore! (Alfred: what he ISN’T telling you is that he was actually looking for the bit that Moe the bartender refers to in The Simpson, in the episode where Homer founds his own church and invites Moe to join. Moe says: ‘I was born a snake-handler and I’ll die a snake-handler’ . And it is in Mark 16 and Luke 10, not in Matthew! But it got him reading the bible again! Mass, bible-reading – what’s next?)
Anyway, I waited until most people had left and then wandered out and started heading back through school. A group of 5th Years, mostly boys, joined me and we chatted – in French – as we headed back. They were worried that they are the last group who will do their exams in French and will therefore be at a severe disadvantage when it comes to university and jobs. I sympathised and one of the boys said: ‘I love you’ and then took my hand and insisted that we walk all the way back to school hand-in-hand.
Now, that would be unlikely to happen in Ireland and, if it did, would attract more than a little bit of attention. Here, the only person who felt in any way awkward was me, and to be honest I quickly realised that this was just how people are here (Alfred: it did eventually dawn on Ruairí that the large number of Rwandan men and women who have told him they love him owes less to his incredible personal attractiveness and magnetism than it does to the perils of translating the phrase ‘I like you’ from one language to another).
Once we got to school it was time for the ceremony part. There are loads of pictures below – actually, let’s do the pictures now.
1. Volleyball match between staff and students
Students on the left; teachers plus their coach (my friend Enock) on the right
Spectators: notice how the (literally) cool sixth years have gathered under the only tree available to keep the sun off.
More spectators; teachers celebrate winning the second set amid furious accusations of biased umpiring by the students!
3. The 'ballet' (sorry for getting people's hopes up about this!) and
4. a humourous poem (or maybe dialogue - the tall guy was either part of the item or just kept interrupting, not sure which)
5. Speeches: the Director (Protogene), the PTA Chairman (no idea) and the Executive Chairman of Ndora Sector (Bede Jean) - more on the latter's speech later!!!
6. Acrobatics! And me! I didn't realise Enock had figured out how to use my movie camera and he filmed me while I was talking.
The speeches - mine included (Alfred: his especially) were prettty innocuous - except for Bede Jean's. Enock was translating for me as people spoke because I wanted to know what everyone was going to say as they were all speaking before me (Alfred: like anyone was going to a) understand anything you said and b) care less). It dawned on me that Bede Jean seemed to be launching a scathing attack on the Christian churches. He said that when you see someone wearing a crucifix and professing to be a Christian, you need to be cautious because often they are anything but that, but thieves, hypocrites and evildoers. He then started asking the students questions, eliciting the answer that Jesus was crucified on Golgotha. Indeed, and when you wear a crucifix in memory of Golfotha, remember that two of the three crosses belonged to thieves - only one of the three was that of Jesus! So therefore any you meet wearing a crucifix has a 66.7% chance of being a thief!! Well, blow me down! I didn't get a chance later (you'll see why) to inquire further but rest assured I will be seeking clarification on this one! (Alfred: Reminds me of Amy's wonderful story about going to church in Kigeme and being told that the day's gospel was about how Jesus was circumcised on the Cross!)
Then we all went in to eat dinner - a melange courtesy of the school. It was really good with huge lumps of lean beef from one of the school's own cows. I chatted to two new Principals, Aimable and Innocent. Aimable showed me pictures of his two kids on his iPhone - the eldest is called Queen and the youngest is called ... Diana. I didn't dare ask.
They were interesting guys. They were only appointed in the last six to eight weeks and had given up jobs in Kigali (and left their wives and families behind) to take positions in the (their words) 'remote countryside'. Both of them said they wanted the change but also that it would look good on their CVs to have taught in less-favoured schools.
The speeches - mine included (Alfred: his especially) were prettty innocuous - except for Bede Jean's. Enock was translating for me as people spoke because I wanted to know what everyone was going to say as they were all speaking before me (Alfred: like anyone was going to a) understand anything you said and b) care less). It dawned on me that Bede Jean seemed to be launching a scathing attack on the Christian churches. He said that when you see someone wearing a crucifix and professing to be a Christian, you need to be cautious because often they are anything but that, but thieves, hypocrites and evildoers. He then started asking the students questions, eliciting the answer that Jesus was crucified on Golgotha. Indeed, and when you wear a crucifix in memory of Golfotha, remember that two of the three crosses belonged to thieves - only one of the three was that of Jesus! So therefore any you meet wearing a crucifix has a 66.7% chance of being a thief!! Well, blow me down! I didn't get a chance later (you'll see why) to inquire further but rest assured I will be seeking clarification on this one! (Alfred: Reminds me of Amy's wonderful story about going to church in Kigeme and being told that the day's gospel was about how Jesus was circumcised on the Cross!)
Then we all went in to eat dinner - a melange courtesy of the school. It was really good with huge lumps of lean beef from one of the school's own cows. I chatted to two new Principals, Aimable and Innocent. Aimable showed me pictures of his two kids on his iPhone - the eldest is called Queen and the youngest is called ... Diana. I didn't dare ask.
They were interesting guys. They were only appointed in the last six to eight weeks and had given up jobs in Kigali (and left their wives and families behind) to take positions in the (their words) 'remote countryside'. Both of them said they wanted the change but also that it would look good on their CVs to have taught in less-favoured schools.
The high point of the dinner was when I mentioned to them that, while I had visited the school as an inspector previously, today I was wearing 'a different hat'. They really liked this phrase and immediatley ran around the room telling everyone. The room became full of people taking off and putting on imaginary hats, bowing to each other, even looking at the imaginary hats in their hands as if trying to figure out which one they were wearing! Really funny - in Kinyarwandan you wear a different skin, which is not that different to wearing a different hat, so I'm not quite sure why it was seen as so hilarious!
And the beer flowed - Primus and Mutzig for all who wanted it and then off to the local pub for even more!! We then got into a LONG philosophical discussion in English/French on the nature of 'change', with everyone talking at completely cross-purposes, for about an hour and a half! Much of the argument centred around Barack Obama but soon branched off into all kinds of areas, straying dangerously close to the topic of the desireability of regime change somewhat closer to home.
At 2045 Enock and I went off to see Barcelona - Man Utd. This was showing in the school dining-room (Alfred: this is a good one - the teachers persuaded the new principal to buy a satelllite dish for the school with a subscription for football on the grounds that the boarders were sneaking out of the school at night to go and watch matches in private houses, so a satellite receiver would keep them in school! Brilliant - and he fell for it!) - a normal-sized small TV set up in a corner and hundreds upon hundreds of schoolboys (and a handful of girls) trying to watch it.
As muzungu guest-of-honour, I was of course ushered up to the front and some boys summarily ejected from their seats (Alfred: to be fair, they had taken a chance by sitting on the benches clearly marked as being reserved for the teachers) and sat squashed in on all sides with beans and cassava bread underfoot as there had not been time to properly clear up the dining-room before the match began!
The match you know about (but weren't Man Utd so poor on the night? Amazingly one-sided match. At the end Barcelona almost looked a little deflated, as if it had been a little too easy for them!). Then it was back to the pub, where the others wre still drinking away and insisted that we have another beer ('one for the road' Innocent said, which makes me think they must use the same phrase over here).
And then, the most almighty row broke out. It is very rare to hear Rwandans raise their voices or show aggression in public: not unknown - I have seen pushing and shoving and even fisticuffs, especially among bus touts or the like- but you don't get it in social groups, even where they strongly disagree with each other. But the wonderful thing about this row ios that it could only have happened in Rwanda. They were not fighting about religion, or politics, or sport, or any of the usual things men in a pub would row about. The row was over differing views on the proper use of the Past Conditional Mood in English. 'If I knew v. If I had know'. I swear. Bottles banged on the table, fingers poked into chests, hands waved passionately in the air - it was great. Of course, they then asked me to adjudicate and I explained that, as a native speaker of English, I didn't know ANYTHING about English grammar (Alfred: it wasn't quite as simple as that! When pushed harder he had to do a quick diplomatic shuffle and say that, while 'If I knew' was very commonly used by English-speaking people, 'If I had known' would be more grammatically correct. That seemed to leave everyone reasonably satisfied.)
Then, although it was now 0200, Enock and the Deputy Principal Elie INSISTED on walking me home (and, as we were leaving, the principal checked with them in Kinyarwandan that that is what they were doing). And it was 0230 (and I think a total of 5 Primus - or was it six?) by the time I got into bed.
ASTIR ARTICLE
VSO Ireland recently asked me to write a short piece for my trade union's in-house magazine ASTIR. If anyone is interested this is a link to it but bear in mind it is for the whole magazine and the PDF file is about 4MB in total. And, yes, I did notice that they didn't spell my name properly, I am well used to that by now (Alfred: I'm more interested where they got that picture of a road with traffic markings in the middle of it! Doesn't look like anywhere in Rwanda we've seen so far!)
Alfred: and that's it for this episode. Ruairí's off to Kigali on Friday to get his knee checked out as it has started paining him again. I suspect that something crawled in there and laid its eggs when he had the accident and they are finally hatching out now but that kind of idea tends to freak him out so I am keeping it to myself. There are also going-away parties for Tinks and Mory so it should be a fun weekend!! Update soon!
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