Day 376 in Rwanda and finally back up to date!!!!

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.


Uganda Part Two

OK – the pictures below speak for themselves. The rest of the holiday was pretty much getting back to Kampala in one piece and then on to Kigali. The drive back to Kampala was a bit of a trial – luckily the rains had not affected the road too badly and we made better time than we expected, stopping en route to get bus tickets and money. Another night in the Sahel Suites, 0900 bus to Kigali and a nine-hour journey back left us both pretty shattered.

Saturday 22nd August
The day of my official birthday party!!! I had been keeping a list and told Lucky in the restaurant to expect about 40-45 people. And it was quite a night!! Everyone turned up, so to speak – a few VSO volunteers were tied up elsewhere – Chris correcting exam papers, Charlotte and Ken in Tanzania, Joe stranded too far away in Nyamasheke, Soraya in Gitarama but pretty much everyone else was there as well as various visitors and friends of volunteers and other non-VSO friends from Kigali – Sarah, Graham, John and Gaudence, Micheál and so on. The food was amazingly good, the ambiance excellent and I got loads of presents for which thank you very much again to everyone (Alfred: and, by the way – because Ruairí is too embarrassed to admit this – who gave him that fabulous shirt? The staff packed his cards and presents separately and he couldn’t figure out who had given it to him. He did wear it to the VSO Family dinner hoping someone would say: ‘Oh, I see you are wearing the shirt I gave you’ but no luck!)

Afterwards we went off to the pizza bar up the road but I called it a night around 0130 when South African John produced a bottle of tequila! A great night, just a great pity that Jane and Jean couldn’t be there.

Sunday 23rd August – Tuesday 25th August
The last few days of Mammy’s holiday consisted mostly of resting and chilling out in Beau Sejour. We met up one night with Martine and Christina (Alfred: Sunday, as you will see by a simple process of elimination) and Christina’s visiting friend from Ireland and drank the two bottles of wine that Mammy had brought me from Brussels (a Fleurie and a Nuit St. George) – a pretty special event for me. The following night we met with Cathryn and Marion in Stella 2 and had a really nice evening chatting away. And then Tuesday was departure day (Alfred: Ruairí has opted – wisely and somewhat unexpectedly – to omit the saga of trying to confirm the flight and book a specific seat for his mother on the plane) – and off to the worst-run airport in the world!! OK, maybe not THE worst but it is a crazy place. The main complaint is that you have to go through security to get to the check-in and, once in, you can’t come out again. There are virtually no facilities in the airport itself so, once you have checked in, there is little or nothing to do. At least Mammy’s plane was more or less on time!!

Wednesday 26th August – Tuesday 15th September
Yes, my friends, one massive bite and I will be back up to date!!

Good News
The really great news is that my new housemate and colleague has arrived - Sarah Wragg from Banbury. She arrived in Rwanda at the end of August and has been here with me and Alfred for about a week now. It’s really great having someone around, especially from a work point of view and, to put it mildly, she has got off to a much faster start at work than I did (Alfred: there are times when even the phrase “to put it mildly” doesn’t really adequately sum up the situation!).
I met her and the other new volunteers at the airport with Amy and various Programme Office staff – including an Irish volunteer from Tipperary called Karen Hardiman who, to my joy, turns out to be an Irish-speaker!! I spent the next few days helping Amy out with them, bringing them on trips into town, answering their questions and frantically trying to learn all their names. A really nice bunch of people, it’s going to be nice getting to know them better. One major hiccough is that one of Sarah’s two suitcases got lost by Ethiopian Airlines, the one with virtually all her clothes in it but she coped with it all fairly well (Alfred: Oh, for goodness’ sake, you are writing this on September 15th! Just tell them it eventually turned up, or at least that they SAY it has turned up and is in Kigali waiting to be collected this weekend!)

The following weekend we met our landlord for a drink in Kigali and said we needed to use the large room he had locked up in the house as a bedroom cum workspace for Sarah and he said no problem. He also indicated he would be willing to put in a toilet (Alfred: awesome!!) but that he hadn’t received any rent yet from the District Office (Alfred: one presumes that was a sort of a little hint!). This was good news as the bedrooms in the house are TINY. Mine is a little bigger than the other two but the one Sarah would have been in was ... well, anyway, now Sarah has a fine big room with space to work and lounge around in.

Not So Good News
One by one, all my friends are leaving. This is something they warn you about as a VSO volunteer, especially if you have committed to a placement longer than one year, but it still comes as a bit of a shock when it happens. At home, people occasionally leave but it happens occasionally and usually one by one, not a sudden mass exodus. Of the 20 of us who arrived together, only Amy, Joe and Michael will still be here after Christmas. Thom, Sonya and Christina have all extended until around Christmas and will then head off, as will Jane who has finished her VSO placement but is staying on until Christmas with a different NGO. It is really difficult thinking that Steve and Nidhi are not up in Kigali to visit any more, that I can’t pop into Butare and make rude comments about Tiga’s plants (Alfred: Like you ever dared!!!) or meet Andy for a pint in the Faucon and pretend I know one-hundredth of what he does about either Premiership football or the English cricket team.

But, dark clouds and silver linings. There are many volunteers from before I arrived still here and I have made a lot of good friends in the two new intakes since then, so it’s not all bad! But there is something special about the friendships you make here – maybe the intensity of life, the fact that we all depend on each other here in a way you never would at home or the fact that you are in a completely new environment and maybe more open and welcoming to people – I don’t know (Alfred: Duh! – you think so? Want to throw a few more ‘maybes’ in there while you are at it?). We all promise to keep in touch and some of us will but, at the same time, we know it is a big world out there and many places to go and new people to meet so the chances are most of us will not see each other again (Alfred: though if Tiga does end up running a little bookshop in a sleepy village near Toulouse swarming with venison and wild boar – and truffles, I bet – I’d wager a fair amount on your turning up on the doorstep at some stage. And meeting up with Andy next summer for the test match is a given .......)

Work

Yes, remember that? I do do that too, not that you would guess it from reading my blog. Sometimes my blog readers email me with queries as to whether I am on an extended holiday or what and I realise I should – at least occasionally – tell you what I am actually here doing!

The main things at work are as follows:

a) REAP or Rwanda English Accelerated Programme. This is a project to teach English to every primary and secondary teacher in Rwanda (just under 50,000 of them) and get them all up to a minimum of Intermediate standard by 2012. We are just preparing the testing ... sorry, assessment procedures to divide them into classes and training will start next year for the weakest categories. A huge problem is trying to convince them that this is just an assessment, not a test. In one District (NOT mine) they were told that their jobs could be hanging on this test, so they are all furiously studying and learning for it, which will only result in their being placed in a class too difficult for them! Also, the logistics of trying to assess every single teacher in the country on the same day (Friday 25th September) is a bit mind-boggling but here’s hoping!!

We were supposed to be having a briefing meeting this Friday for all sector education officials who are the ones who will be actually administering the tests. Then my director said there wouldn’t be enough time to inform them because the official letter telling them needs the mayor’s signature, so the meeting has been postponed to next Monday. Today someone realised Monday will be Eid (the end of Ramadan which is a national holiday here) so now it’s going to be Tuesday. The exam is (supposed to be) on Friday .....

Interlude: at 0900 today the chargé came into the office and said that, as part of the Nine Years Basic Education initiative, all district staff were going to Cyamukuza school nearby for some sort of ceremony. So Sarah and I stopped what we were doing, packed up our stuff, went back to the house to drop off our stuff and then headed to the District office to join the rest of the staff. When we got there they told us it wasn’t happening because no-one had done anything to prepare for it. I rang the chargé and he confirmed that it wasn’t happening after all. Phone calls are expensive here so I will wait until I see him to ask how come the chargé of education is the only one who doesn’t seem to know about this. Sara and I are now back at the house wondering what to do. When I left the Education Office they had turned off the generator and locked up, so there is a good chance that if we walk all the way back there we won’t be able to get in, which means walking back to the District Office AGAIN (did I mention it is boiling hot today?). I think Sarah is wondering if it is always like this. Sometimes I wonder myself!

When I met Alexis later he was extremely apologetic – apparently someone in the main office had gone over to Cyamukuza, found nothing had been prepared (probably because they hadn’t been told – it is one of the best-run schools here) and gone back to the District Office and cancelled the whole thing, but without anyone ringing across to the Education Office to tell us!

b) Nine Years Basic Education (NYBE) (Alfred: there should be an apostrophe in there somewhere but he can’t figure out where!! Or should there? Nine Years’ Basic Education? Nine Years Basic Education? Nine Year’s Bas... OK, not that one. But you don’t have to know Ruairí very well to know how much it is bugging him that he can’t decide what the right one is!!). One year ago the government suddenly decided that basic education would be extended from six to nine years. Up to now only a minority of students who achieved very high marks in their final primary school exam were allowed to continue to second level. From now on, any student who passes will be allowed to do so. This means that a large number of additional classrooms were suddenly needed to house all the additional students. This was achieved by the draconian and educationally disastrous move of reducing every primary school to ‘double-shifting’ – each class is split in two and comes to school for only half the day, meaning you only need one room for two classes (e.g. 3rd class A and B can share a room instead of needing one each). The extra rooms were then allocated for the new 7th Class or Secondary One.

Now all those rooms have been used up. In January these schools (16 out of 65 in my District) will have to accommodate Secondary One and Two and many are reporting double or triple the number of applications for continuing on to secondary that they had last year. In addition, the government campaign of persuading more parents to send or keep their children in school means a general rise in the number of students in school and therefore a need for more primary level classrooms as well. All at a time when there is little or no money to meet the ongoing construction needs for schools and a crying need for toilets, water systems and so forth.

Anyway, we are in the middle of a funding drive, public meetings to encourage people to do voluntary construction work, appeals to the Rwandan diaspora (which is a VERY small group as Rwandans hate emigrating) and various other activities (mostly involving speeches and meetings) to try and make sure that in January we actually have somewhere to send all these children. I have been drafting fundraising appeals in English to various companies (Alfred: luckily these are being checked by the IT guy whose English is good and thereby saving the District from some political embarrassment. Ruairí’s English may be good but there are still things about the local political set-up he is less than clear about!), visiting schools to check on their progress, will be attending various public meetings with ministers and other officials – presumably serving as some sort of mascot or whatever – and we have all been officially told that EVERYTHING else in the education area (except for REAP) is now relegated to non-urgent status.

This means that Mugombwa School about which I wrote (and posted photos) before needs about eight new classrooms to cope with the increase in numbers. They already have more than 1400 students – 1700 by next year – and seven semi-functioning latrines for them all. They had hoped that something might be done about this this year but now all available funds are going into classroom construction to meet government targets on Nine Years Basic Education. Ours not to reason why .....

And, of course, there is the usual stuff – statistics to be compiled and updated, school returns, inspection schedules (though, to be honest, I have those on hold because REAP and the NYBE activities mean they are now not a priority) and the English classes, which have recommenced. The Executive and I gave a stern lecture to all the staff and I have had between 20 and 30 in each of the two classes so far, so that’s looking up. In the last class someone asked me for the precise meanings of ‘yield’, ‘revenue’, ‘production’ and ‘income’ – that’ll keep me on my toes!

Fruit
I don’t eat a lot of fruit so I had never asked our guard Alexandré to buy anything beyond the odd banana or so. Sarah does like fruit so we headed off to the market last Saturday to see what they had so we would know what to ask Alexandré to buy. And what did they have? Sod all, to be honest. No mangoes, no papaya, no passion fruit, no tree tomatoes. A few bananas, avocados and what I think were oranges (but were all gone when Alexandré went out later). Maybe it is the time of year – hope so for Sarah’s sake.

Computer Fans
Anyone any idea how I go about checking if the fans in my laptop are working properly? It is getting REALLY hot and I can’t hear any noises from inside (of course, I can’t remember if I used to hear any noises from inside before or not!). All suggestions and advice gratefully accepted.