JUST A QUICK SCRIBBLE

Fifteen minutes before I go home and I have just finished the 2010 staff listings for all 78 schools in my district (except for bloody MUGANZA ESI whose file turned out to be a pupil list from 2008 - must remember to actually open all files when they are delivered on flash). Not the most exciting work in the world but kinda important. It means we now have the list of how many teachers the schools claim they need for next year based on projected pupil numbers, as well as the actual number of teachers MINEDUC is willing to give us (Alfred: guess which list is longer). This is going to be fun - luckily Alexis' fun rather than mine!

Also, today the REAP training was supposed to start for all teachers in the district but we haven't heard a word from MINEDUC or the Teacher Services Commission yet so I have no idea what is going on. Judging from the rumours that the start of the next school year (January 11th) may be postponed as late as early February to allow for English training, you get the feling they already figure things are going to get seriously postponed. Sarah went up to Kigali to train mentors for the programme and half of them didn't turn up. Not a good omen generally.

What else? Finished downloading the last part of the Murphy Commission Report. Why exactly I want to depress myself even further after having already read the early sections I have no idea. The day it was published I was listening to the evening news at 1900 our time and the very first item on the news began: 'The Government of the Republic of Ireland has announced ....'. Had NO idea what was going to come next except to wonder what in the hell could possibly have moved Ireland to the top of the news (unless we had declared war on France over the Main de Dieu incident). I can tell that many of my work colleagues want to ask me about it but aren't sure how to go about it and, to be honest, I really don't want to get into it. How in the name of God do I explain that such a thing could go on for such a long time, though at least Rwandans would appreciate the fact that bishops are all-powerful and untouchable and, if they wanted to, could actually get away with such a thing for a long period of time. In fact, given the level of clerical involvement in the events of 1994, maybe they would be harder to shock than I imagine ......

Spent the weekend in Kibuye at a farewell party for Bruce Upton, one of the longest-serving volunteers here who is finally ehading back to the UK. Nice weekend and I will be heading back to the same place for four days over the Christmas holidays. Some pictures in the next blog. My copine Martine is more-or-less recovered from the typhoid and somehow or other I managed to avoid catching it from her!

What else (I can see the maintenance guy heading towards the generator!)? Chelsea hammered Arsenal 3-0 on Saturday but that's too long a story for the next three minutes so more of that anon. I have been invited to a wedding in Kigali next Saturday and given that I have not attended any of the other ones I was invited to, maybe I should go this time if only to see if they are actually as long as people say they are! And that's it for now - gotta post this while there is still power!! Murabeho

AND HE'S BACK!

PUPPIES AND BABY GOATS
Yes, I know they are called ‘kids’ but the word is open to misinterpretation. Yes, there seems to be a bit of a four-legged baby boom on in the village at the moment – baby goats bouncing around the place like rubber balls, usually on top of each other (Alfred: That’ll be TWO brochettes then please kadogo, and a Turbo King ikonge). But it’s the puppies that are the real thrill – OK, you can’t pet them but in a country almost completely lacking in dogs it lovely to see them around. And they don’t do puppy brochettes here, thankfully.

On the downside, I have woken up late at night a few times to hear all the dogs in the village howling together. Sometimes it happens before I go to bed, so you can tell they all start howling pretty much simultaneously – creepy. Doesn’t last long, though.

Why not pet the dogs? Well a) tiny possibility of rabies b) their mothers might get anxious c) they wouldn’t understand what you were doing. No one pets dogs here so they would probably assume you were attacking them. Animals generally get a pretty raw deal here though I read a story in the ‘New Times’ that the Eastern Province has launched a big crackdown on animal cruelty. In the same issue was a letter from an indignant reader who had just returned from a trip to the UK and was disgusted at the way the British fail to beat their children. As a result, children had absolutely respect for their parents or authority in general. The reader acknowledged that there was a lot Rwanda had to learn from the UK but at least here was one area where Rwanda could do the instructing!

REAP (RWANDA ENGLISH ACCELERATED PROGRAM)
(Alfred: We tried pointing out it should be 'programme' but .....meh!)
The ongoing saga of Rwanda’s attempts to teach their teachers English so they can teach their pupils in English. The whole story would take forever so suffice to say it has been one of the most interesting and at the same time intensely frustrating experiences I have had since I got here. At the moment my housemate and colleague Sarah has gone to Kigali to take part in mentor training –she got a call on Tuesday evening and headed up Wednesday. The course actually started on Monday so I have no idea who has been doing the training for the first three days!

My most recent contribution was to go up to Gikongoro for two days and interview prospective candidates for the post of trainers – these people will train groups of 20-40 teachers in their district for three weeks. Is was fun in a way – as much fun as doing 30 back-to-back interviews can be! Best of all was I got to spend two nights at Amalia’s – she has the most beautiful house there but is leaving soon. Then we got a lift back to Kigali from the MINEDUC guy Bonaventure which was an added bonus(called ‘Bonnie’ by his friends – he’s the one who raised the topic of labia-stretching during dinner with Amy, Amalia and me) !!

If anyone remembers me talking about the exam/assessment we gave every teacher in my district (every teacher in Rwanda actually) – took up two or three weeks of my work time and was then abandoned on the basis that the exam had leaked in so many districts the results were unreliable. Luckily I am a sanguine man – weeks and weeks of photocopying, sorting, delivering, supervising, correcting, inputting, analysing, printing and list-making down the drain. An absolutely amazing waste of time and resources nationwide and I don’t see that anyone will have learned anything from the experience.

The key fact now is that there is no way of deciding who will or will not get English training. The original idea was that anyone who scored at Upper Elementary level or below would go – we estimated this at 50-60% of teachers. On that basis 30 trainers were assigned to each district. But now that we can’t use the results to choose the candidates, the suggestion seems to be that EVERYBODY will go for training – the Minister for Education hinted on the radio that those who fail to attend may lose their jobs! But that will give us classes of 50-60 in some cases as there has been no increase in the number of trainers being supplied. And classes are supposed to be starting next Monday …….

I was actually supposed to be away from the 7th-18th December doing a survey of the standard of English in the Teacher Training Colleges but with Sarah away I can hardly leave as well – and I have a sense of impending doom about all this so I had better stick around and see what happens!

ASTI COMES THROUGH
Some of you may remember these pictures from before – they were taken in Nyarunyinya Primary School not far from my house. The teachers have no staffroom and the director no office. She sits at the back of the P1 classroom to do her work and the teachers sit in the back of other classes or in the open. This year they built themselves a ‘staffroom’ out of branches and bits of canvas, as you can see from the photos. However, it’s only usable when it isn’t too cold, or too hot, or isn’t raining.








Anyway, the ASTI have a Global Development Fund and I applied to Standing Committee for a grant of €1,000 which is what a new staffroom and director’s office would cost and last week I got an email saying they have approved the grant!! Now I just have to plunge into the bureaucratic minefield that is the procurement and contract protocols of Rwandan local government – I’ll be lucky to get it built before I leave!!

CABBAGES, CLEANLINESS AND CURTAINS
(Alfred: Good grief – he stays silent for weeks and then you can’t shut him up. Well, the last few weeks have been interesting. Sarah’s arrival has really cheered the house up a bit – new curtains, washed surfaces, the courage to light more than one dimly flickering candle at a time. She also persuaded Ruairí that having used the same plastic bottle containers more-or-less since he moved in a year ago, it might be time to get new ones (you’d have thought the black mould inside the bottle tops would have been a hint!). And the diet has really changed too – Sarah is a cabbage and avocado fan and it turns out so is Ruairí! So mealtimes are actually a doddle. Maybe he’ll even start putting some of that weight back on again!

QUID EST VERITAS?
As Pilate said to Christ – quidestveritas? It is actually the username I use on any online forum I am a member of. Imagine my surprise then when I walk into Sylver Chris and Bellancille’s office and see a big poster saying “Pilato abaza Yezu ati ‘Ukuri ni iki?’”. So now I know my username in Kinyarwandan – ukuriniiki! (Alfred: And if you are wondering why there is a poster saying this in the office ... well, we are going to need some time to research that one).

RANDOM PHOTOS
To finish for today, just some random photos from various happy times I have had so far – enjoy!


Paula and Sonya and bearded Rwandan leprachaun at the St Patrick's Day party



My favourite photo of Moira - sneakily pouring smuggled-in waragi into her Coke!


Mícheál Boland at the St Patrick’s Day party. Mícheál went home a few weeks ago – hope you are enjoying a rainy season even wetter than here!

Dancing masterclass - Thom and Andy with Eric doing his Superman take-off routine in the background

Andy and Thom - these were taken at Tiga's party. Andy and Tiga have left, Thom is leaving shortly ....

St Philippe Neri Secondary school English debate: Monogamy is better than Polygamy (monogamy won)

My favourite picture of all so far - taken at the Labour Day celebrations.

Our mayor and former Rwandan international volleyball player, KAREKEZI Leandre

Cassava Growers' Co-operative March, Labour Day

Kids at Dahwe primary school, Ndora sector

The many faces of Tiga ....

Girls' toilet block, Mushongi school, Mugombwa sector. Three 'cubicles for 400 girls.

Primary 1 classes, Gisanze Primary School. These kids had no teacher that day and were sitting like this when I walked in, I swear.

Let’s start in the present and work our way back …

And today it’s IMIHIGO day – the day when all the top brass of the district come together and sign the official performance contract for the next year. It’s a big big occasion, so big that no-one told me it was happening. I was sitting in the office frantically trying to cram 46 different Excel files onto one massive spreadsheet (Alfred: I know, I know, don’t ask) when New Augustin popped his head around the door and asked if I wanted to walk up to the ceremony with him. So off we went. Everyone else was really dressed up but I was expecting just another day at work and hadn’t bothered (hadn’t even shined my shoes and they were in a rather sorry state).

The event was supposed to start at 0900 and finally got going at 1140 – even by Rwandan standards that is pretty terrible. I was sitting on a small wooden school bench and by the time we finished (1530) my ass was as sore as … well, it’s never been that sore before so it is hard to say.

We had presentations from all 13 Executives Secretaries of the 13 sectors regarding their plans and priorities for next year, then the Executive Secretary of the District had his, much longer, plan. Then the Mayor asked for suggestions from the floor for areas that had not been mentioned and that people felt should be (there were three – youth empowerment, family planning and reminding women that it is traditional in Rwanda that when they applaud, they are also supposed to hum at the same time). Then the Mayor added on a whole stack of additional ideas for everyone to prioritise – in fact the idea seemed to be “Prioritise everything”. His suggestions included:

• Promoting the ‘one cow per family scheme’ (the scheme was suspended in our district as many of the cows got sick and/or died as people didn’t know how to take care of them. Now they have training courses and backup advice in place and are presumably restarting the scheme)
  
• Environmental protection and tree-planting (he strongly advised planting fruit trees so as to kill two birds with one stone)
  
• Regular performance appraisals at local levels to identify high-performing workers who can act as mentors/exemplars to others
  
• Innovation (didn’t get any more details on that one)
  
• Health care – provision of ‘smart toilets’ (I think these are toilets with washing facilities … I think)
  
• The Nine Years’ Basic Education construction programme
  
• Tackling high dropout and nonattendance rates in schools
  
• The need to increase social security membership (at 28% of the population, I think we rank 30th out of 30 districts)
  
• Family planning
  
• Reducing the rates of kwashiorkor/beriberi and other malnutrition-related illnesses (presumably by tackling malnutrition which is a massive problem in this district)
  
• Promoting the planting of kitchen gardens to grow vegetables, especially green vegetables (see previous point)
  
• Reducing the rate of maternal deaths in childbirth (didn’t realise this was a major problem here)
  
• Continue and escalate the fight against corruption – RUSWA OYA! (No Corruption). Our district is ranked 3rd of 30 in the anti-corruption war so we’re doing a good job there
  

All that to be ‘prioritised’ on top of the various things the 13 Exec Secs already mentioned. When he finished, there was another suggestion from the audience – why had none of the Exec Secs mentioned developing tourism in their areas? After all, tourism is now Rwanda’s number one earner, having displaced both tea and coffee. I tried – more-or-less successfully – to keep a straight face as I struggled to think of anywhere whatsoever in our rather inaccessible district that could possibly qualify as a tourist attraction.

While the Mayor was speaking, a succession of young girls came in carrying boxes of laptops – TOSHIBA Satellite – and stacking them on the floor, over fifty of them. Then 13 printers, a box of flash disks and a few other bits and pieces. It turned out that there was one for every sector and cell (Alfred: boring political science intervention – Rwanda (which is almost exactly the size of Munster/Yorkshire) is divided into 30 districts each run by a Mayor (elected) and Executive Secretary (appointed). Each district is divided into a number of sectors (13 in my district), each run by an Sector Executive Secretary. Each sector is divided into cells, run by …. You guessed it, a Cell Executive Secretary. After that, cells are subdivided into umudugudu which is a small group of houses, originally a hilltop of houses I am told. Ruairí has just asked Enock, his friend to clarify. Enock – who has been in Rwanda 13 years, says it beats the hell out of him, he has never been able to get his head around it). Many of the cells and sectors do not have electricity readily available but most have generators and the rural electrification scheme is forging ahead, so it’s all progress.

We also had a demonstration of a new torch/lantern. It is made of steel and some kind of toughened glass, recharges in only five minutes and then gives off light for 24 hours, is very tough (the guy demonstrating bounced it up and down off the concrete floor to illustrate the point) … but it costs RWF 25,000 or about €30/£27 which seems a lot to me.

(Alfred: by the way, in case you think Ruairí’s Kinyarwandan skills have taken a sudden leap into the stratosphere, New Augustin sat beside him for the whole meeting and translated really well. There was an Augustin in the District before him who is the Logistics and Human Resources co-ordinator which makes HIM the busiest person in the district; New Augustin used to work in the Genocide Memorial Centre in Gisoze in Kigali with Julie Hurst and Christina Campbell, two VSO volunteers, before he was transferred out to us in the sticks. I say ‘us’, I’ve never actually met the guy but Ruairí and Sarah seem to like him).

What else? In retrospect, it was more interesting than most six-hour-all-in-Kinyarwandan meetings I have attended – they sang the national anthem at the start and finish which was nice (I do love the national anthem here, a little reminiscent of the South African one in places and every verse has a different rhythm or tune). Oh yes, we now have a mobile ICT bus which will visit every sector and train about 20 people in each one. The Mayor was majorly pissed off with district and sector staff not doing sports and waved the national District volleyball trophy at us (which our team won on Sunday) to emphasise how important it was (‘mens sana in corpore sano’ and all that). My friend Jacques (you reading this, Tinks?) got an award as his present sector – Muganza – was the best-performing sector in the District. He gave a speech that had everyone roaring with laughter but was, according to Augustin, untranslatable.

We finished with the Mayor giving a speech summarising everything that had already happened. A long speech. Then he said he only had one more year in office and he really really wanted Gisagara to win the best District award this year – we finished 10th and 4th in 2008 and 2009 so it is all shoulders to the wheel!!!!

And that was that. We scattered outside (luckily the torrential downpour that lasted most of the meeting had finished) and got a Fanta and a lunch box. It was actually quite edible – three roasted half-potatoes, two pieces of grilled banana, two pieces of goat with onion and green pepper slices and an egg. And then walked home with Enock and typed this up to keep people happy.

(Alfred: But what, I hear you cry, has been happening in the long gap since the last entry? Well, stay tuned. Labia-stretching aside, we have puppies and goats, the progress of customer service in Rwanda, TURBO KING, April’s Bad Taste Birthday Party, the role of avocado in the Gisagara diet, the ongoing saga of English training, and watching Ireland-France. Stay tuned!!)

I give up!

Alfred: I have tried everything but there seems to be no way to get this idiot to realise his responsibilities to the legion ... well, handful of friends, acquaintances and random browsers who occasionally read this blog. I'll keep on nagging at him - his feeble excuses of work, visiting Martine in Kigali (who has recovered well from her typhoid by the way), writing articles and so on can't hold out forever. Having said that, his promised piece on labia-stretching is probably best put in hold indefinitely (though it does give a whole new meaning to the phrase 'Pull the other one'!).

Plus loads of people are leaving around now and that is definitely distracting him - Jane, Thom, Charlotte, Cathryn, Bruce, Chris, Tina, Christina, Amalia, and there are probably a few others he can't remember (or hasn't told me about). It's going to take quite a few bottles of TURBO KING - Rwanda's newest beer - to get him through this. Plus the startling news that the Principal of his school in Ireland is leaving at the end of this year ..........

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ....

Really, really sorry. But life is so hectic at the moment. Promise something good by this weekend (the dinner-time conversation on labia-stretching will be one highlight of many!). Promise .....

GETTING BETTER, GETTING WORSE

GETTING BETTER, GETTING WORSE

After 14 months it is interesting to look at which things I have now got used to and other things that now seem to be bugging me more than when I arrived! I am completely used to:

• hanging around for ages doing nothing
• presuming everything will start late
  
• living on a range of foods approximately 97% smaller than I was used to in Ireland
  
• warm beer (which isn’t to say I don’t still prefer cold)
  
• having people stare at me
  
• being oblivious to the most amazing scenery in the world because I am ‘used to it’
  
• goat brochettes
  
• eating my bodyweight in eggs every month (Alfred: even though he has lost some weight since coming here, this is an exaggeration. Speaking of weight, do I notice those trousers are seeming a little tighter again recently around the waist ….?)
  
• going crazy places on appalling roads on unsafe motorcycles at stupid speeds in the pouring rain
  
• being asked extremely personal questions by people I have barely met
  
• being careful telling people about my religious beliefs (or lack of them) in case they start crying
  
• the amazingly slower pace of work here
  
• having beautiful young girls I have never met before tell me they love me, have always loved me and want to marry me and bear my children
  
• the fact that I drink the most gorgeous coffee every day
  
• bargaining for everything (Alfred: Well, everything else was OK up to this, but let me tell you, in his heart, he is still not really up for it. He still yearns for the world of pricetags!! And if he ever beats a moto driver down from 800 to 700, he usually ends up giving him the 100 anyway as a tip.)

On the other hand, some things seem to be getting on my nerves the longer I stay here:

• how expensive life is here (relatively speaking)
  
• the appalling driving, especially the bus drivers
  
• the scarcity of decent and affordable red wine
  
• the fact that people never share any information with you unless they have to or you ask them directly
  
• MTN (Rwanda’s main telecom company)
  
• begging
  
  

Actually, that last one is becoming a bit of an issue with me. To be honest, far fewer people ask me for money than did when I first arrived. It only ever happens in my village on market day when people come in from far and wide and haven’t seen me before; occasionally kids say it as a joke and then laugh to show they don’t mean it (or, more accurately, by laughing give away the fact that they don’t mean it). But when it does happen, I find myself becoming much more irritated than I used to, even angry (though I usually – not always – manage to keep it inside). Not sure why exactly – there was one day in Butare when I saw this well-dressed and obviously well-off couple encouraging their equally well-dressed little girl to go over and ask me for money, which she did in a very embarrassed way. That may have been a turning-point. Since then, I have become much more sensitive to the sheer number of people who either directly or indirectly ask me for things – money, books, sponsorship, whatever. And most of them are – by Rwandan standards – well-off. Ah well, less than eight months to go, guess I can cope!!!

INSPECTING THE SCHOOL EXAMS

(Alfred: My health warning from the previous entry still holds)

A few random observations on the school exams here. Today the O-levels and A-levels started. There are four O-level centres and one A-level centre in my District and we visited four of the five today. Again, the same high level of efficiency and security that I mentioned in my previous post on the primary exams, maybe even more so. When we arrived at the first centre, there was a queue of 25 or so students outside every room: each one was carrying the examination entry form they had filled out at the beginning of the year (with photograph) plus their official student ID card. The teacher/invigilator on duty at the door checked one against the other to ensure the student was in fact the person themselves. They also checked that pencil cases had nothing in them. All students had to arrive with trouser and skirt pockets empty and turned inside out and the invigilators still patted down anyone they were suspicious of.

Each individual classroom had been scoured and all posters, signs, even scrawls on the blackboards removed. Invigilators are forbidden to have anything in the room with them – newspapers, books, phones etc – to ensure they pay undivided attention to the examinees (Alfred: this is also theoretically true in Ireland but more in the breach than the observance).

The centres in Kansi, Gisagara and Gikonko were only dealing with O-levels but Save had two centres, one of them the A-level centre for the District. There, depending on which A-level option a student had chosen, there could be as many as five different exams going on in the same room. Today, for example, was Mathematics (for the Science option people), Social Studies (for Humanities) and Kinyarwandan (for Languages). But everything went really smoothly. The seating was even arranged so that no two students doing the same subject nor any two students from the same school were sitting beside each other – an amazing logistical achievement! There were special arrangements for students – one centre had arranged cushions in front of desks for two students with back problems who had to kneel; another had put a mattress on the floor of one room for a girl who was lying on her front – I was told she had malaria and got dizzy if she sat upright and this was the solution.

Visiting St Bernadette School in Save again, I was struck by the contrast between the church-supported schools and the rest. Touring their laboratories I could only think of what passed for a laboratory in my local secondary school, St Philippe Neri, a school that specialises in science teaching but has only one lab, ‘stocked’ for want of a better word with odds-and-ends of outdated and obsolete equipment and almost completely lacking supplies. The other thing that struck me was the timetable stuck on the door of each of the three laboratories – each is used for only about 17-18 periods a week out of the 40 available. Most of the science classes seem to take place in the classrooms (Alfred: like that never used to happen in Irish schools when they first got labs!). I also couldn’t resist pointing out to the headmistress that in every room I visited, every word written on the blackboards was in French rather than English – weren’t they teaching in English here, I asked? ‘Une mélange’ she replied with a big grin!.

Anyway the exams went fine apart from a panic on the Social Studies paper where students were required to do all questions in Section A but they were numbered 1,2,3,5 and 6. A quick check of the paper showed that adding up the marks for the five questions there corresponded with the total given for the section so it was just a printing error. (Alfred: Please le that be the end! Oh, it is …)

PLAYING GOD
Rwandans tend to confuse the letters ‘R’ and ‘L’. So I have almost got used to the number of times Rwandans tell me they ‘play God’ (they tend to omit prepositions too). As I went around a school recently, a teacher proudly indicated a room and said: ‘This is where we play God.’ I completely forgot what she meant and said ‘What?’. ‘Yes’, she affirmed, ‘I play God here every day. Playing God is great. How often do you play God?’ I was actually tempted to tell her but decided discretion was the better part of whatever.


THANKS JANE
I recently got a really good/bad joke from a friend on Facebook which I shared with people in my status. She has now sent me the list of the Ten Worst Puns of which that was one – thanks Jane!!!

1. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger."

2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says "Dam!"

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

4. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, "I've lost my electron." The other says "Are you sure ? " The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive."

5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal ? His goal: transcend dental medication.

6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why ? " they asked, as they moved off. "Because," he said, "I can't stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer!"

7. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to Spain ; they named him 'Juan'. The other went to family in Egypt and was named 'Ahmal'. Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

8. A group of friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town, to 'persuade' them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a (Oh, man, this is so bad, it's good!) 'super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis'.

10. And finally... there was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

And suddenly it is November!

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.

MORE ABOUT PRIMARY SCHOOL EXAMS THAN YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW
(Alfred: That’s a health warning – skip down to the next item if this isn’t your cup of tea! He’ll never know. I mean, he doesn’t even know for sure that anyone actually ever reads this stuff)

It was a hectic three days as we tried to visit each of the sixteen exam centres at least once and preferably twice. I must say I was pretty impressed with what I saw and learned about the logistics and security aspects of the examination process. All the papers are printed and packed in the UK – actually packed into individual bundles for each CLASSROOM that will be used for exams, so an individual bundle might be marked as 25 Kinyarwanda papers for classroom nine in Kabeza school, Mamba Sector, Gisagara District before it arrives in Rwanda. When the papers arrive in Kigali Airport in a sealed container, they are met by an armed police and army escort and brought to a central depot. There they are divided up by district and each consignment is sent off to the District Education Office, again with an armed guard, arriving two days before the exams start. The day before the exams, the papers are delivered to the exam centres (one or sometimes two schools in each sector). Once delivered, two armed guards sleep with the papers overnight to ensure they are not tampered with.

On each exam day, the individual supervisor collects the bag of sealed papers and brings it to the room. Once the students have been counted, the bag is shown to two or three students who witness it has not been opened. Then the bag is opened and, if any students are absent, the surplus papers are removed from the room. The papers are then handed out and students have 30 minutes to fill in all the requisite details on the front of the exam paper before the exam actually begins. The supervisor is not allowed to read the examination paper at any stage and must not be in possession of a mobile phone. At the end of the exam the papers are collected and then the students sign a sheet affirming that they have just sat the exam (this is to prevent students claiming they sat papers they did not sit and subsequently claiming they must have got ‘lost’ in the system; it also protects those students whose papers may actually get lost in the system).

It was all very impressive and smoothly done: there were a few tiny hiccoughs here and there but nothing serious. In one sector the two overall supervisors for the exam centres had swapped assignments – this is forbidden as teachers are deliberately assigned to schools reasonably far from where they teach and moving could be evidence of collusion. Another school had followed the rule of 25 students to a classroom very strictly but, having 176 students in total, ended up with one room with one single student in it! But in general everything was running smoothly, everyone had turned up, the students looked unstressed and comfortable.

On the last day, however, we had have a larger hiccough. For one of the questions on the English paper – a long comprehension piece – they had forgotten to leave spaces for the answers (all answers are written on the exam paper). That morning we had decided to start with Magi school in Mukindo sector, about as far from where I live as it is possible to go. When we got there at 0945 the exam was almost halfway through. My colleague pointed out that thus was exactly why every school was supplied with sheets of blank paper and to give every student one and tell them to write their answers on those. However, it was noticeable that this obvious and commonsense solution was not implemented in this school until they had been told to do so – no-one was willing to take the initiative and do it themselves. And the same in the other school we visited (by which time it was near the end of the exam) – students got the sheets of paper barely 15 minutes before the end.

A lack of initiative is a problem here – people are very used to doing what they are told and therefore not doing things unless they are told to do so. A prime example is a school a colleague visited in another district shortly after the change from French to English as the medium of instruction. The teachers were unsure what exactly the new rules meant, so they decided not to talk at all in class in any language until they were told what to do. An extreme example maybe, but indicative all the same.

Obviously this year the focus has been overwhelmingly on coping with doing the exams through English for the first time. As I understand it, schools had the option for this year of doing the exams through French (after all, all these students had five years of education through French and only this year through English) but I have yet to find a single school that took this option. The upshot is that MINEDUC have announced that the option will be withdrawn as of next year and not in 2011 as originally announced. Inevitably the standard will fall this year and for the next few years until fluency is achieved among both teachers and pupils.

However, another area that will need to be addressed is the actual examination papers themselves. In a country that is trying to promote English as a means of communication, an examination paper that focuses almost entirely on abstruse points of grammar and contains no composition nor a single question where students use communicative language is not designed to promote English in any meaningful way. Asking P6 students about comparative and superlative forms, question tags and the like but not asking them to write creatively or expressively in any way will actually hinder the very change the government here is trying to bring about. But it is early days and there is a review of the curriculum under way so we hope changes can be expected in the near future.

FACEBOOK

I use Facebook a lot so I sometimes forget that I have only posted stuff there and not here. A couple of recent things:

Stole this from my friend Jane Moore in Australia - it's so bad it's brilliant!

Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

This reminded Ian Poulton in Killiney of that great headline when Inverness Caledonian Thistle beat Glasgow Celtic in a Cup match: Super Cally Are Fantastic; Celtic are Atrocious which is the best sports headline since Malcolm Allison got attacked by a disgruntled Manchester United supporter: FAN HITS SHIT.

Actually, Facebook can be trivial, addictive, waste endless amounts of time and so on (hence the newly-formed group 'If I Fail My Exams I Want Compensation From Facebook') but it is great for keeping in touch with far-flung people - and they don't come much further flung than VSO volunteers!

HALLOWEEN PARTY

Thom, Sarah and Christiane threw a fabulous Halloween party last weekend - and a huge crowd turned up. Great fun all round though some of the costumes were a bit 'interesting' and quite a few people got really rat-arsed. Pride of place probably went to our country director Mike Silvey who came as Death (scythe and all), his partner Tamsin was a spectacular witch and the twins in their ... do we still call them prams? - dressed as a ghost. Awesome. Here are a few pics. (Alfred: not his pics of course - he brought his camera all the way from Gisagara and then left it in Martine's house! These are all stolen from other people's Facebook pages.)

Sarah and Thom, two of our gracious hosts

Sarah and Moira

Lynley

Martine and Sonya (left); Charlotte and Amy re-enacting 'CATS'

Julie and Christine

April and Anna