(Alfred: Hold onto your hats, guys - it's a LONG one!)
Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!
(Especially for Ken Goodwin!)
I had come back from the pub rather later on Sunday night than I had intended. Sarah was still up and mentioned casually that, as she was in the kitchen, she thought she had seen ‘something’ running into my bedroom … but she wasn’t sure. Maybe a spider, maybe a mouse, maybe nothing. I figured ‘nothing’ sounded good to me, brushed my teeth and propped myself up in bed with the laptop to do some essential Facebooking before bed. And then out he trotted, small brown mouse from under my bed and across to hide behind my rucksack. (Alfred: Ruairí is using ‘he’ in the generally accepted neutral literary sense; as you will find out – predictably – he never got remotely near enough to find out if this is the technically correct pronoun for this particular mouse, even if he knew what he was looking for). ‘Oh crap’ I thought and pondered the possibility of pretending it wasn’t there and dealing with it in the morning. Then I remembered exactly what my morning schedule was like!!
So, out of bed. First – stay quiet and don’t panic the bugger until you have figured out what you are going to do. We want him out of my room into the kitchen and then out the back door, not through or under the door into the rest of the house. So we put on a dressing gown, (Alfred: Ruairí is currently wearing only a rather short t-shirt in bed which doesn’t really …. Never mind), grab a towel from the laundry bag and block the bottom of the door to the sitting room, open the back door, turn off the light in the kitchen (figuring he will run away from light and towards darkness and then gave the rucksack an almighty whack with my walking stick (which I had had the presence of mind to fetch from the sitting room).
Out he shot, straight into the kitchen (Stage One completed – close bedroom door and block bottom with second towel). He shot straight for the back door (Stage Two completed – almost) and missed it by about two inches, slamming straight into the closed half of the double door. He sat there for a minute as I hurtled towards him with a bucket (Alfred: ‘Hurtled’? Really?) Then he ran straight up the wall for a bit as I ran round in circles after him, waving my stick for some reason, even though I wasn’t actually trying to hit him. Then he shot straight into the towel that was blocking the bottom of the door. I must have packed it in well because he rebounded back off it like a trampoline artist, flew past me and landed – unfortunately – under the low shelf that runs along one side of the kitchen.
I flailed around under the shelf for a while with the stick but he wasn’t budging (Alfred: Ruairí did locate two knives and a fork though, so that was a plus!) so I gave up and went to bed, only pausing to move the towel around to my side of the door. In the morning – no sign. I think (Alfred: Emm, ‘hope’ is the word you want here, sunshine) he crawled out under the back door during the night and into the garden so that’s OK (Alfred: Wishful thinking – this is a mouse for goodness’ sake. And even a Kate Moss mouse would have had a job getting through THAT gap).
I had had very weird dreams that night and it was really hot (Alfred: yeah, hermetically sealing yourself into a room can have that effect, I’ve heard). I had to visit a very remote school that day but having missed the previous Monday morning meeting I figured I needed to come in this time, plus I needed to photocopy some additional school inspection forms and copies of the individual sector reports I had prepared. So, meeting over by 0900, a quick 30 minutes printing and copying and on the road by 1000.
Experienced Rwandan hands are already either howling with laughter or crying in disbelief that I ever really thought such a thing could be possible (Alfred: ‘Experienced’ meaning anyone who has been here more than a week). First the meeting – OMG. Even my experienced hardened Rwandan colleagues were drooping like unwatered tulips after only one hour of the three – two hours and a bit to read the minutes, each line of which was followed by a detailed discussion of … whatever. Alexis gave up translating after a while and I can’t say I blame him. The irony of it was (Alfred: this is actually even more ironic than most of you will realise and in a variety of different ways and definitely not in an Alanis Morrisette way) that he was reading a book in French entitled (I think) Comment utiliser votre temps plus efficacement. Occasionally he would read a pearl of wisdom from it to me in hushed, reverent tones, to which I would reply Oui, à la recherche du temps perdu, eh! Which actually means nothing when you think about it.
The only interesting that happened was that Denyse came in late and sat down at the farthest extremity of the hall from me. Now every Monday I always look out for Denyse – she is very attractive as it happens but she wears the most insane outfits from time to time and this time I could see flashes of vivid green, the same shade you get with lime-flavoured Angel’s Delight. I tried to get a better look and of course she caught me staring at here and immediately nudged her girlfriends on each side, causing such an outburst of giggles that the Executive threatened to move them all down to the front row if they didn’t keep quiet (Alfred: Yes, he actually does that from time to time. HE once confiscated someone’s phone because they were using it too much in a meeting and not paying attention.)
So when the meeting eventually finished (Alfred: when it did, everyone just sat there, lacking the energy to stir, for about five seconds) I chatted to Alexis and then wandered over to the office where I work. All I wanted was five minutes on a printer and then fifteen or twenty on the photocopier. But our IT guy Tema Jean has gone to Japan for IT training (see previous blogs for details – we are NOT going into that saga again) so nobody else there has any IT knowledge to speak of and when the internet goes down that’s that. So Alexis has to print off stuff from his new computer for a meeting with the mayor in 30 minutes but of course the driver for the printer isn’t installed on his machine. So I am trying to copy the driver from my computer (Alfred: One day when Ruairí was VERY bored, he made a list of all the printers in the office and then downloaded and stored all the relevant drivers. How bored was HE that day, eh?) onto Alexis when Denyse turns up, a vision in lime green strappy dress and a black gauze shawl-thingy over her shoulders, her hair newly braided in a variety of interesting colours, grins at me … searching for an adjective here … anyway, grins at me and asks me why the internet is not working. I explain about Tema (it astonishes me that when one of their colleagues is one of only two people in all of Rwanda chosen to go abroad to JAPAN for goodness’ sake for training, almost no-one seems to know about it!!) and she asks if I have my modem with me.
So I say ‘Yes’ but she has to use it on my computer and I will be around for about an hour (already the awful truth about my optimistic schedule was beginning to dawn on me). Anyway, I finish installing Alexis’ printer driver, print off a few sheets of my own (including my entire work schedule down to June 14th, my last day in the District), grab the other stuff I want to photocopy and head off to find a photocopier.
The photocopier lives in Tema’s room and is therefore locked. I get the key from Françoise the secretary and let myself in and try to lock the door behind me so no-one else can get in. No such luck, the door doesn’t close from the inside. Anyway, I switch on the copier and check for paper – two sheets. Crap! Out again, lock the door behind me so no-one else can get in (I now have the only key) and start searching for anyone who will give me paper. I won’t bore you with the details but eventually between three different offices I manage to scrounge the 100 or so pages I need. Back to the door and there are two people waiting outside it carrying loads of documents. So I stroll by as if just passing and wander up and down until they get fed up and walk off. Then I shoot back in and load up the machine and get started. Once I am on the machine, only the Mayor or his secretary can budge me!!
In comes the Mayor’s secretary wanting to copy. The key question: how many copies? It is quite common for someone to ask if they can do a quick copy (Alfred: the word ‘quick’ is a bit of a misnomer – it takes the machine eight seconds to make each copy) and then use up all of the paper you have so painfully amassed for your job. Luckily Gaudence did only want one.
So I continued – five copies of the sector reports and then as many copies of the seven-page school inspection report as I could manage. To my pleasant surprise, it turned out to be more than I expected. By now it was 1200 and my moto driver called to say if we didn’t go soon we wouldn’t be back before dark. So I went to get my computer. Of course Denyse still hadn’t sent this vitally important email and suggested I leave the computer with her! As if! She looked at me in tragic, stunned disbelief, rather like a lime-green braided Ophelia with her jaw bouncing off the desktop, as I packed it up and headed off.
Got home and quickly sorted through the photocopies to staple the ones I needed for the day. Then I found out why I had got more copies than I had expected – the photocopier had omitted pages 3, 5 and 7 on every copy! Bloody hell! Well, nothing I could do but at least I could use the original. Grabbed a bite to eat and then the moto arrived.
Alexis said we had to hurry, especially if we got rain later. I told him to get me to Mugombwa as fast as he could. He looked at me quizzically. ‘Vraiment?’ he said. ‘Oui, oui’ I replied. The trip usually takes almost an hour. We got there in 27 minutes. Alexis is an excellent driver so I wasn’t actually terrified at any stage – well, not quite. On the way we did come across a new species I hadn’t seen before – a VTOL chicken or, to be more precise, a VTO chicken.
Most of you may be familiar with chickens. Not the greatest fliers in the world, indeed I was never sure they could fly until I came here and saw them fluttering madly out of the way of bicycles, motorbikes, cars and whatever. But this chicken was different, or maybe it was the circumstances. Maybe any chicken can be a VTO chicken given the right encouragement. And that is to have a ruddy big moto with two guys on it hurtling down a goat track towards you with thick bushes on each side and therefore nowhere to go. So this chicken performed … I swear … a vertical take-off, just like a Harrier Jump Jet, only faster and then flew away to one side quite quickly. We were going too fast for me to see how and if it landed so I can’t swear that the landing was also vertical but it was pretty impressive all the same.
The inspection went well (photos below) – the director is a new guy, recent graduate of the Kigali Institute of Education and full of new ideas which he is actually implementing: all textbooks are in the classrooms being used and not locked in storage, group work in all classes, seating rearranged in as efficient and pupil-friendly a fashion as possible and so on. I particularly noted the relaxed and good atmosphere between students and teachers, though there were still children kneeling at the back of classes as punishment, one of them with a placard around his neck with something in Kinyarwandan written on it.
More on that and school visits in general later. I zoomed back home with Alexis after four hours there and got there before dark. Quick stir-fry dinner and then off to meet Enock for drink. HE had rung me to say that the last time we met, someone had ‘borrowed’ his laptop while he was away and now it wouldn’t work. Well … (Alfred: I edited this bit out, a long, self-congratulatory rant about how Ruairí followed instructions he downloaded from the internet and fixed Enock’s computer. Ruairí with computers is like Neanderthals with fire, they are perpetually astonished with their own brilliance that they are able to do ANYTHING with it!) …. Amazing eh!!!
My friend Tema arriving in Okinawa!
The following pictures are from my school inspection on Monday. Note all the pictures of group work - I so seldom see it I took LOADS!! However the first one you see that looks like groupwork isn't - it is four students in Senior One sharing one textbook because that is all they have. In Geography it was one between NINE!
These following pictures are from Thursday 11th March with Sarah and Lynley Mannell, a Canadian VSO volunteer working in the Program Office who was doing some interviews with groups of teachers. On the way back we found these people who were cutting up a tree on the road, as one does. Otherwise, you crush the crops.
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