KEN FRANKLIN'S BIRTHDAY PARTY LINE-UP
(As I didn't bring my camera, these are all previous pictures taken of the guests on various occasions. And I have no recent pictures of Steve with his beard and he looks COMPLETELY different to this picture but I didn't want to leave him out!). Surnames included at the request of various readers who are trying to keep track of everyone.
Steve MacFadden and me.
Kerry Carrington and Amalia Da Silva Lima at Bruce's birthday party in Gahini
Ken Franklin (at Han and Mans' party) and Charlotte Shaw and Hayley Pert having one of their 'market clothes day' parties!
Cathryn Devine (at the St Patrick's Day party) and Bruce Upton (at his own birthday party)
Anyway, I trot out my few Kinyarwandan phrases, among which is the Kinyarwandan phrase for deoch an dorais or 'one for the road': agashingura cumu. Antoine is very pleased that I know this (Alfred: though, it must be said, he did express surprise that Ruairí can say something as abstruse as this but can't put a basic sentence together that includes a functioning verb!) and asks me if I know what it means? In olden days, only adult men were allowed to drink (pretty much still the rule) and all adult males carried a spear as a mark of their status and entitlements. When you visited someone's house to have a drink, you would drive your spear point-first into the ground outside the door of their hut/house. As the evening progressed towards its finale, at soem stage someone would suggest that it was time to go. Then another would say that they should have one final drink agashingura cumu - 'to give the strength needed to pull the spear out of the ground'. Nice one, eh?
SATURDAY
Moira Kelly at the St Patrick's Day party (like you couldn't guess)!
Kerry Carrington and Amalia Da Silva Lima at Bruce's birthday party in Gahini
Ken Franklin (at Han and Mans' party) and Charlotte Shaw and Hayley Pert having one of their 'market clothes day' parties!
Cathryn Devine (at the St Patrick's Day party) and Bruce Upton (at his own birthday party)
Well, it has been a great weekend, overall! Friday was fine at work, started writing up the reports for the two schools I had just visited and then found out that I was expected to teach an English class - sports has been rescheduled to Wednesdays so everyone presumed this meant the English class on Wednesday is rescheduled to Friday afternoon!
These classes are bad enough but, Friday afternoon? Ah well, I was hanging around anyway for the after-work bus into Butare so I said OK, grabbed some vocabulary sheets etc when I went home to pack and set up bright and early for class. One student came. One. And it was Antoine, of course, who is the only person actually interested in learning English for its own sake. His English is already quite good, to be fair, but he is very poor on the oral and aural aspects, so chatting to him and making him talk is probably the best thing I can do for him.
As we chat about languages in general, he notices I am reading a magazine and has a look at it - it is the May edition of COMHAR, an Irish-language magazine devoted to literature and politics (and other things thrown in as well) which a very kind friend sent me as a present. Intrigued by this, he asks me what languages I speak and how much Kinyarwandan I have been able to learn before (Alfred: this was after the 30-minute discussion on whether natives of this country should be described as 'Rwandans' or 'Rwandese'. 'Rwandan' does seem more natural as it fits with 'Ugandan', 'Kenyan', 'African', 'Nigerian' and so on, but we do use '-ese' in English too: 'Chinese', 'Maltese' and 'Japanese' spring to mind. Who cares? Well, lots of people it seems. If 'Rwandese' is being used because it is like the French 'Rwandaise', then they should be using 'Rwandan' in English; but if 'Rwandese' is a legitimate English ending in its own right, then that is OK. The politics of language: bet Ruairí can't wait to get back to Ireland to get away from that sort of thing .......)
Anyway, I trot out my few Kinyarwandan phrases, among which is the Kinyarwandan phrase for deoch an dorais or 'one for the road': agashingura cumu. Antoine is very pleased that I know this (Alfred: though, it must be said, he did express surprise that Ruairí can say something as abstruse as this but can't put a basic sentence together that includes a functioning verb!) and asks me if I know what it means? In olden days, only adult men were allowed to drink (pretty much still the rule) and all adult males carried a spear as a mark of their status and entitlements. When you visited someone's house to have a drink, you would drive your spear point-first into the ground outside the door of their hut/house. As the evening progressed towards its finale, at soem stage someone would suggest that it was time to go. Then another would say that they should have one final drink agashingura cumu - 'to give the strength needed to pull the spear out of the ground'. Nice one, eh?
Then off to Butare, bank for money and Faucon for beer, where Jane Keenan joined me. It was really great to catch up with Jane - I really missed her while she was back in England in hospital and, since she got back, we seem not to have seen each other very often. Anyway, we had a great chat and a nice bottle of red wine - can't remember the last time that happened!
SATURDAY
Saturday I wandered to the post office and found a surprise parcel! Usually I know parcels are coming because even when people send them as a surprise, after three or four weeks they email or something wondering if I got it. It hasn't arrived yet of course! This parcel contained two bars of really good chocolate, a copy of the Phoenix magazine and an article on dyscalculia (Alfred: Hmmm, wonder who on earth THAT could have been from???). Then hopped on the bus to Nyanza for Ken Franklin's birthday party.
Nyanza is a funny place. Ken says it is a great place to live and it looks like it could be - I've only been there twice and it has a strange feel to it but that is probably because I don't know it well. The market seemed nice but was closing up when I got there, the internet cafe was insanely slow, unbelievably so (Alfred: because, of course, Ken had emailed instructions on how to get to his house but Ruairí had neither printed them out nor written them down, had he!), and the omelette speciale in the cafe in the centre of town was as good as I remembered it from the last time.
I downloaded and wrote out the instructions to Ken's house, which seemed clear and then I checked in to the local motel which has the most unusual name of any hotel or guesthouse I have ever stayed in – Scanlife. What the hell is that about? I felt like asking but in either English or French, the process of just getting a room in an establishment whose sole raison d’être is to hire out rooms to visitors, usually tourists, was so prolonged and laborious that I felt no urge whatsoever to prolong the agony any further. The room was OK even if the place itself looked like a prison that had fallen on law-abiding times and was hiring one of its wings out to make a bit of cash on the side. It was RWF 8,000 for the night (€10) (Alfred: yep, the euro is now worth 800 francs, a big improvement on recently – long may it continue). They had rooms for RWF5,000 but there was no way I was starting the process all over again!! As I settled into the room, the girl reappeared lugging a large jerrycan of water – OK, no water today. Then she reappeared with a nice bar of soap in a box, a small tube of Colgate, also sealed in a box and a brand-new, quite expensive toothbrush! Definitely the first time I have had that level of accessories in a room (Alfred: which is probably the only difference between a RWF5,000 and RWF8,000 room! And he only took the toothpaste and left the rest behind!)
So I headed off (having purchased the Nido that Ken had asked for). (Alfred: for the sake of non-Rwandans – because EVERYONE in Rwanda knows what Nido is, it is powdered milk and a staple of the VSO diet here, though expensive. A standard tin of Nido costs 3500 francs which is well over half a day’s wages and you can get through one quite quickly, especially if you drink coffee as regularly as Ruairí does!) . The road was dusty but not too hilly, the weather was pleasant and the house was ... rather farther than I had expected. Eventually I began passing the kind of landmarks that I realised would have been mentioned in the instructions – either I was on the wrong road or had overshot by a long way! It was the latter (courtesy of a phone call to Bruce) so I headed back. This time I found myself almost back in town when I heard running steps behind me and turned to find Bruce sprinting after me as I had overshot the house again! (Alfred: or, to summarise the entire previous paragraph in a sensible way, “I bought some Nido and eventually found Ken’s house”!)
And we had a really great night. Present were Charlotte (Shaw), Hayley, Moira, Kerry, Amalia, Bruce, Cathryn , and Steve who turned up later having had a similar experience to mine in getting there (Alfred: actually Steve’s journey was much more interesting and worthy of a longer telling than the boring farrago outlined above, especially the bit where he ends up back in town on a moto, lost, and Cathryn jumps on another moto with Ruairí’s phone to head off and try and find him!!). There was really nice food (some of it VERY spicy) and brochettes, and a friend of Ken and Cathryn’s turned up with amazing deep fried bahjis (Alfred: that is NOT how you spell it, make an effort for goodness’ sake).
And then we played charades. Now, I have always enjoyed charades but tonight’s were a bit special. We started off with the usual book/film/play/TV thing and then moved on to a variant that seems to have evolved among VSO volunteers here in Rwanda – animal charades. You are given an animal and a descriptive word (usually an adjective but not necessarily – randy mosquito and anorexic aardvark were two of the ones I got to perform) and have to perform both simultaneously until someone guesses what it is. Later on, we decided (to speed things up) that the descriptor and animal had to be alliterative (mad monkey, ridiculous rooster, bewildered beetle, stoned snake, hesitant hippo, cantankerous crab and so on. I tried to get someone to do amorous amoeba but they objected that an amoeba isn’t an animal). It was great fun and there was some great acting but the absolute, hands-down winner for performance of the night had to be Steve’s performance as a lesbian lion to which mere words simple cannot do justice ... and I forgot to bring my camera. Those who were not there, just eat your .... heart out.
Then back to the hotel. In the bar there were various groups of Rwandan men in various stages of inebriation. One guy called to me when he saw my Chelsea shirt and told me he was a fanatical Liverpool fan (Alfred: the combination of alcohol and lack of secure command of either French or English on the Rwandan/Rwandese man's part makes that – and following - confident assertions by Ruairí somewhat less dependable than they might seem). He told me he was the local guy in charge of all security and if there were any problems, any problems at all, I was to come to HIM! Then he wanted to know what his job title would be in English and I told him District Security Chief sounded good to me. After fending off five offers of a beer or a Fanta (which, I couldn’t help notice, none of the other people at the table seemed to be encouraging me to accept and I suspect with my best interests at heart!) I headed for my room.
So I headed off (having purchased the Nido that Ken had asked for). (Alfred: for the sake of non-Rwandans – because EVERYONE in Rwanda knows what Nido is, it is powdered milk and a staple of the VSO diet here, though expensive. A standard tin of Nido costs 3500 francs which is well over half a day’s wages and you can get through one quite quickly, especially if you drink coffee as regularly as Ruairí does!) . The road was dusty but not too hilly, the weather was pleasant and the house was ... rather farther than I had expected. Eventually I began passing the kind of landmarks that I realised would have been mentioned in the instructions – either I was on the wrong road or had overshot by a long way! It was the latter (courtesy of a phone call to Bruce) so I headed back. This time I found myself almost back in town when I heard running steps behind me and turned to find Bruce sprinting after me as I had overshot the house again! (Alfred: or, to summarise the entire previous paragraph in a sensible way, “I bought some Nido and eventually found Ken’s house”!)
And we had a really great night. Present were Charlotte (Shaw), Hayley, Moira, Kerry, Amalia, Bruce, Cathryn , and Steve who turned up later having had a similar experience to mine in getting there (Alfred: actually Steve’s journey was much more interesting and worthy of a longer telling than the boring farrago outlined above, especially the bit where he ends up back in town on a moto, lost, and Cathryn jumps on another moto with Ruairí’s phone to head off and try and find him!!). There was really nice food (some of it VERY spicy) and brochettes, and a friend of Ken and Cathryn’s turned up with amazing deep fried bahjis (Alfred: that is NOT how you spell it, make an effort for goodness’ sake).
And then we played charades. Now, I have always enjoyed charades but tonight’s were a bit special. We started off with the usual book/film/play/TV thing and then moved on to a variant that seems to have evolved among VSO volunteers here in Rwanda – animal charades. You are given an animal and a descriptive word (usually an adjective but not necessarily – randy mosquito and anorexic aardvark were two of the ones I got to perform) and have to perform both simultaneously until someone guesses what it is. Later on, we decided (to speed things up) that the descriptor and animal had to be alliterative (mad monkey, ridiculous rooster, bewildered beetle, stoned snake, hesitant hippo, cantankerous crab and so on. I tried to get someone to do amorous amoeba but they objected that an amoeba isn’t an animal). It was great fun and there was some great acting but the absolute, hands-down winner for performance of the night had to be Steve’s performance as a lesbian lion to which mere words simple cannot do justice ... and I forgot to bring my camera. Those who were not there, just eat your .... heart out.
Then back to the hotel. In the bar there were various groups of Rwandan men in various stages of inebriation. One guy called to me when he saw my Chelsea shirt and told me he was a fanatical Liverpool fan (Alfred: the combination of alcohol and lack of secure command of either French or English on the Rwandan/Rwandese man's part makes that – and following - confident assertions by Ruairí somewhat less dependable than they might seem). He told me he was the local guy in charge of all security and if there were any problems, any problems at all, I was to come to HIM! Then he wanted to know what his job title would be in English and I told him District Security Chief sounded good to me. After fending off five offers of a beer or a Fanta (which, I couldn’t help notice, none of the other people at the table seemed to be encouraging me to accept and I suspect with my best interests at heart!) I headed for my room.
There I continued reading my C.J. Sanson novel accompanied by a half-bottle of pineapple waragi I miraculously discovered in my backpack. It really is one of these ‘unputdownable’ books and is not going to last me half as long as I had hoped. That means I will have finished three of the four existing books in the series so I will save the last one for when Mammy is here and we are travelling around together.
SUNDAY
Arose earlyish, splashed water on myself, did not brush my teeth (the water was just a little bit too brown for my taste) and headed back to Ken’s for breakfast. Ken had to head off for a baptism and when he left, he locked the gate behind him! So, having managed to push the gate open, someone had to stay on the inside to close it and then climb out over it. Hayley and I had to scoot off as her lift was waiting for her and I gather Amalia was nominated to carry out the acrobatics!! The driver who was collecting Hayley was called Paul and had li9ved in Dublin for a year, on Kimmage Road West where I lived as a very small child! When I said I lived in Dún Laoghaire he said he knew an Irishman called Paul Tierney (I think) who was from there, had worked in Rwanda and had married a Rwandan/Rwandese woman (Alfred: Oh, for goodness; sake, are we going to continue this pedantic b***shit for the next 300 days? They say 'Rwandese', that's good enough) and is now living back in Ireland. Small world! That means there might be someone living around Dún Laoghaire to give me Kinyarwandan lessons when I go back (Alfred: WHAT??? You are actually IN Rwanda at the moment, lessons cost next to nothing and you are thinking of waiting until you go BACK to take classes? What in the name of ....... I'm speechless).
Arose earlyish, splashed water on myself, did not brush my teeth (the water was just a little bit too brown for my taste) and headed back to Ken’s for breakfast. Ken had to head off for a baptism and when he left, he locked the gate behind him! So, having managed to push the gate open, someone had to stay on the inside to close it and then climb out over it. Hayley and I had to scoot off as her lift was waiting for her and I gather Amalia was nominated to carry out the acrobatics!! The driver who was collecting Hayley was called Paul and had li9ved in Dublin for a year, on Kimmage Road West where I lived as a very small child! When I said I lived in Dún Laoghaire he said he knew an Irishman called Paul Tierney (I think) who was from there, had worked in Rwanda and had married a Rwandan/Rwandese woman (Alfred: Oh, for goodness; sake, are we going to continue this pedantic b***shit for the next 300 days? They say 'Rwandese', that's good enough) and is now living back in Ireland. Small world! That means there might be someone living around Dún Laoghaire to give me Kinyarwandan lessons when I go back (Alfred: WHAT??? You are actually IN Rwanda at the moment, lessons cost next to nothing and you are thinking of waiting until you go BACK to take classes? What in the name of ....... I'm speechless).
And then shopping in Butare (bread, peanut butter, Nido, pasta, tuna, fruit juice, coffee, waragi and kidney beans. Couldn't find peanut oil for cooking anywhere and went to six places vefore I could find mayonnaise. An expensiove lot of stuff!). Then a coffee and a fanta in Faucon and home to Gisagara.
1 comment:
Stick to your guns, Ruairi, an amoeba is a unicellular member of the animal kingdom.... an smorous one would be fun... next time !!
Jennifer.
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