Alfred's August Update

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.

August: Alfred’s Top Ten Moments.
So, for August Ruairí went off with his mother, visiting exotic parts of Rwanda and Uganda, animal trekking and lounging around amid beautiful scenery, drinking beer and meeting loads of interesting people. At the moment he is compiling his Top Ten Moments from his mother’s visit.

Needless to say, he didn’t bring me with him. But it didn’t really matter – I don’t need Ruairí to have a good time and keep myself occupied. I had a FABULOUS time here in Gisagara on my own. So here are my top ten moments from the last month:

The day a lorry went past
This was around eight o’clock in the morning. At first I could hear a roaring sound in the distance, which gradually got nearer. Then I realised it was a lorry. It was a big Chinese-made lorry with bad suspension, travelling very slowly and spewing out a thick dark cloud of foul-smelling, sticky diesel fumes. Of course, I couldn’t actually SEE it from the bedroom but trust me, the description is accurate. It slowed as it passed the house using the traditional Rwandan method of slowing a vehicle of changing down gear without using the clutch or the brake while the gears wail like banshees (plural, though I don’t know if banshees congregate in groups as a rule). Gradually, the noise faded away and the usual silence descended, broken only by the melodic expansion and contraction of the tin roof and the wailing of the goat next door waiting to be turned into brochettes and meatballs.

The day it rained
It’s not supposed to rain at this time of year. It did one day. Amazing.

The day of Catherine’s visit
Ruairí’s mother Catherine came to visit on the 12th August. I was really really looking forward to this, I can tell you, and not just to break the monotony (‘What monotony?’, I hear you cry!). Anyway, she and Ruairí arrived and I could hear her being introduced to Alexandré and then shown around the house. As the door to the bedroom opened, the trousers Ruairí had left on the back of my chair slid down and covered my face (and most of the rest of me as well). I heard Ruairí say: ‘And this is my bedroom’ and then they were gone. She never even noticed me. Not that I care, of course. If she had raised her eldest son to be a little more thoughtful and caring, I WOULDN’T BE STUCK IN THIS BLOODY ROOM ALL THE TIME!!!!!

The day I almost saw a cockroach
One day I saw a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye. What was it? Was it a cockroach? I had never seen a cockroach in or near the house (and neither had Ruairí as I knew I would have heard ALL about it if he did!). Whatever it was, it was scuttling backwards and forwards about the floor in a rather aimless and totally silent manner. My brain was a mass of fevered speculation but cockroach was my definite hunch. It zoomed left, and then right, then circled a bit ... and then rose straight up into the air and hovered there. A small dustball caught in the breeze. But it COULD have been a cockroach ....

The day I invented a New Unified Field Theory
They say an infinte number of chimpanzees with an infinite number of typewriters (presumably laptops these days) would eventually write all the great works of literature. So, I thought to myself, one smarter-than-average bear with an awful lot of time on his hands should be able to achieve something. So I decided to invent a new Unified Field Theory, on the basis that I might as well do something useful. It took about three days and, apart from the fact that I wasn’t able to reconcile it with some aspects of Superstring Theory (I always seem to end up with one dimension extra, like an extra sock after doing the washing) I think it works pretty well.

The day I chatted with Jeremy the Bat
Jeremy’s accidental excursion into Ruairi’s bedroom some months ago seems to have given him notions. For some reason, he seems to think that falling out of the attic and geting trapped under a bed and finally being bundled into a tupperware container and thrown over a fence has given him a superior status among the bat community. Anyway, he has taken to popping down when Ruairí is not around and chatting in a ‘Hail-fellow-well-met’ kind of way, long and insanely boring monologues about how none of the other bats understand him and how limited their experience of the ‘real’ world is (.i. the inside of a lunchbox). Last night I got three hours on the different ‘crunchinesses’ (his word, I assure you) of the different types of insects he eats. I suspect the others bats are encouraging this behaviour just to get rid of his company for a couple of hours and get a bit of sleep.

The day I listened to Alexandré’s radio
Alexandré had his radio on today. To be fair, he has it on every day and usually at full blast. Ruairí is always muttering to himself about this (not that he has muttered anything to Alexandré so far, which might be a more positive step to take in the circumstances) but I don’t think Ruairí realises that the radio is old and the volume control faulty, so it’s either whisper or shout.

Anyway, this day Alexandré was in a less pious mood than normal. Usually we get Mass, then hymns, then a religious phone-in programme (funny how you can tell, even when you don’t understand any of the language, that a programme has a religious theme) but today he was listening to little bits of mass and then flicking to a pop music channel. As the channel was playing gangsta rap, it made for a rather alarming (if entertaining) sequence of contrasts, with the sacrifice of the eucharist being intercut with various graphic accounts of that the singer was intending to do to anyone of his friends (who all appeared to have had carnal relations with their mothers) if they happened to even look at any of the female dogs he was surrounded with. There were also constant mentions of pirates’ plunder for some reason (I presume that’s what he meant by ‘booty’) and his close homosexual friends (‘homies’) and then it’s back to praying for Pope Benedict, the usual stuff about bread and tresspassing and a lot of ‘Alleluias’ thrown in for good measure.

The day I had an Itchy nose
Teddy-bears aren’t supposed to get itchy. If we did, we should be able to move our arms!!!!!

The day there was a bird on the roof
OK, OK – not a day passes that there isn’t a bird or birds on the roof, usually those big magpie-coloured crows. The funny thing is that, no matter how often it happens, you can never quite believe that it is just a bird making that incredible racket. I have lost track of how often I have heard Ruairí unlocking the front door and rushing out into the garden, muttering: ‘That CAN’T be just a bloody bird, can it?’. And it always it.

The day nothing happened at all
One day, I was sitting on the chair in the bedroom (as I always do). The hours slipped past and, as they did, I realised that absolutely nothing was happening. As morning slipped into afternoon, I began to wonder, with increasing excitement, whether we might actually be about to have a day where ABSOLUTELY NOTHING happened. As the hours slipped by, my excitement mounted. At any moment I feared Alexandré might switch on his radio, a fly might enter the room, someone might call to the door, that something would happen to spoil the perfection. As darkness fell, I was biting my non-existent nails with the tension. And then, there it was! The day was over and NOTHING HAD HAPPENED. I resisted the urge to run around the room shouting with glee (as a teddy-bear running around the room shouting with glee would very definitely BE SOMETHING). Incredible ... only the one hundred and eighty-seventh time this has happened to me since I came to Rwanda and got stuck in this bloody bedroom!