Ruairí and Alfred: 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!