Massive March/April blog update Part One

It is now April 6th and I haven’t written a blog of any serious sort since March 16th!! Sorry all round but it does mean you are in for a bit of a marathon this time round! Feel free to skim (Alfred: Emm, I don’t think they need, or have ever needed your permission for that). Oh, and I can’t absolutely vouch for the chronological order of events at this stage – I know various things happened at weekends, but not exactly which weekends they were!


‘L’ and ‘R’
I wrote on Facebook recently about this. I visited a Science class a few weeks ago and written on the board was the following that the class were busily (Alfred: ‘busily’ is a bit of an exaggeration) writing down as part of their module on human reproduction: ‘Every man has two testicules shaped like uggs ….. The penis must be elected before intercourse can take place.’ My cousin in the USA said this latter must be a Bill Clinton reference. It reminded me of another incident involving the same confusion of ‘R’ and ‘L’ when a VSO staff member was informed by the students that they couldn’t come to school the next day because they all had erections.


St Patrick's Day in Gisagara
No St Patrick’s Day is complete without a drink so I met up with Enock and Claude in Vestine’s bar (which now has a fridge! Cold beer!). Poor Enock was wrecked so we only had the one drink. I did manage to ring most of my family to wish them a happy Paddy’s Day which was great! I also tried to explain to my friend and other customers the significance of St Patrick’s Day. I tried to explain about the snakes but that caused enormous confusion (Alfred: Might have helped if you told them Ireland was an island). However, I was wearing my Shamrock Rovers shirt so I told them about how he used the shamrock to explain the Trinity – that they got immediately and liked the idea very much!! (Alfred: sad to relate, Vestine’s has now disconnected the fridge – it was using too much electricity for the amount of cold beer they were selling)


St Patrick’s Day in Kigali
I headed up to Kigali on Thursday afternoon – was going to go after work but we had another of these power cuts and there was nothing to do so I bailed out early. Stayed with Sonya and Paula in their lovely (but probably temporary) new residence – their employer hasn’t got around to finding them a house yet so he has put them in one of the two he owns himself. Friday we headed in to the Serena Hotel to start setting up for the party. We had been a bit worried about ticket sales but sold 390 of the 400 in the end and raised all the money we had hoped for and more for the Kibagabaga Hospital Nutrition Education Project which gives advice to the mothers of HIV/AIDs-positive children on the best diet within their limited resources (Alfred: and a huge 'Thank You' again to the four friends who sponsored tickets for the Ball!!)

It was a great night, though not IMHO up to last year’s. But the Serena certainly had their act together better than last year, though their decision to move some of the seats around and set up an extra table came as a bit of a shock when Pamela had completed the extremely elaborate seating plan! There was also some weird business with the wine which poor Paul Stewart got to sort out with the management!! But it was a great night. My main contribution was to dress up in a leprechaun outfit and behave like a lunatic on the dance floor. Nic had also put on a red beard and giant green hat so it was like twins being reunited!

However, just like last year, as soon as the Irish music started the Rwandans pretty much all left. Another slight problem was that, unlike last year, the band didn’t adapt their set to where they were, so there were a lot of ballads when people actually wanted to dance which led to rather amusing sequences of people swaying like kelp in a current to ‘The Fields of Athenry’ or whatever.

So we actually wrapped up earlier than expected and a bunch of us headed to KBC night club. Various people begged me to go in my leprechaun outfit but I politely declined (Alfred: just to explain – there are photos out there somewhere of Ruairí in this outfit and he assures me he has been doing his best to track them down and destroy, sorry ... get copies of them to post here. There is even a video clip that Steve Vaid has on his phone – now THAT is really worth seeing!). But it wasn’t very interesting to be honest and we headed off pretty soon. John Harris did stay behind however – I think he eventually got to bed at seven! I also managed to lose my wallet at KBC but luckily and for no reason I can think of, when I was leaving Paula & Sonya’s house I decided to take absolutely everything out of it – credit card, business cards, ID and so on – only leaving a relatively small amount of money in it, so no real loss there.

So, home to bed … well, not exactly. We got to the house and remembered that someone had to ring Amy at 0500 – she had been at the Ball and had gone home earlier because she had to be up by 0500 to catch a bus to Kampala or Nairobi or somewhere, so someone had to remain awake until then to ring her, and I was volunteered. So bed at last at 0502.

Saturday Morning, Afternoon and Evening
At 0900 my phone rings – it’s Jörg from the Dutch NGO, SNV, asking if I was still OK for breakfast at 1100! I had forgotten about this. I drag myself out of bed, shower, breakfast and then wander off down the road to meet him as he comes to fetch me. He has the most amazing house, next door to Jane Baxter, the Deputy British Ambassador (Alfred: No, no, no – Deputy High Commissioner. Rwanda is in the Commonwealth now! Wonder how much it cost to change all the headed notepaper …..), really beautifully designed and with fabulous furniture. Another VSO volunteer, Dorothy, had met Jörg in Kibungo in the south-east and he had mentioned he was going to be working in my district next so she said we should meet. He had visited my district and met with my chargé, Alexis, the previous week (Alexis had told me someone from MINEDUC had been to see him so I thought nothing of it). While there he had seen my statistical analysis of the examination results and, this being one of his areas, was intrigued.

Anyway, we had an amazing breakfast, almost Central European style, cold meats, cheese and so on – his Rwandan wife, Gaudence, cures her own pork! – and chatted away. Then Dorothy said she needed to head for the bus soon. So Jörg goes into the house (this is around 1230) and comes back with …. a bottle of Chivas Regal and three glasses so we can toast our new friendship. Sweet Lord. Anyway, I figured a) I had never tasted Chivas Regal and b) it was a good opportunity to put the ‘hair of the dog’ theory to the test. And I don’t know whether it is the excellence of the Chivas Regal or the validity of the theory but two glasses of that had me feeling pretty chipper all over again!!

I agreed to come over Sunday with all my data so we could have a proper business meeting and then headed for Nyarutarama – my friends Graham and Sarah McFadden, the two British Council representatives in Rwanda, were leaving the following week and had basically invited anyone who wanted to to come to their house and take stuff. So I did – a coffee machine for Paula & Sonya’s house (Alfred: yeah – those of you who know Ruairí and coffee will appreciate that when he first stayed with P&S, they only have one tiny little percolator – a really beautiful metal one but it makes one small cup and then, being metal, is boiling hot, making cleaning and refilling it a bit tricky!), some thrillers … and a printer! They had a really old Canon printer but they said it was really good but you need a cable to convert the parallel port connection to USB. Hope I can find one!!

And then, having delivered the stuff back to Sonya and Paula’s I …. Em, what did I do? Saturday 20th March – football? Dinner? I actually have no idea (Alfred: Who cares?? It obviously wasn’t interesting, or else the alcoholic overload finally caught up with you. Didn’t you meet John in the MTN Centre in Nyarutarama, and met the guy from Manchester who is opening Rwanda’s first Irish pub? And then you and John got something to eat …… exciting stuff!!!! Actually, the Irish pub bit actually IS exciting).

Ok – Alfred as raison as the French say. Met Jörg Sunday for about four hours and then headed back to Butare. A really good meeting (Alfred: I love the moment where, Ruairí having transferred all his statistics onto Jörg’s computer, he opens the files and says, after a few minutes, in that wonderfully laconic way the Germans have: ‘Ah! I can see you have never had any training whatsoever in statistics!’) It was funny but, interestingly, he pointed out that had he been doing it, as a trained statistician he would have done it very differently but the chances are the Rwandan directors and district officials would have been completely unable to understand it!

The length of the meeting meant I didn’t get to Butare until 1900 which meant a moto-ride in the pitch dark back to Gisagara with an enormous rucksack (including Canon printer) on my back. Luckily I had rung the faithful Alexis and he had waited for me.

Yvonne – stalker extraordinaire
A few weeks ago I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognise. Now, in Rwanda, this often happens and usually I don’t answer. But recently a lot of people I know have changed their SIM cards and I have missed a few important calls, so I decided to answer this time. The conversation went like this:

Me: Hello?
Voice: Hi there – how are you? Long time!!
Me: Emm, who is this?
Voice: It’s Yvonne!!
Me: Oh. Hi! Em, when exactly did we meet?
Yvonne: Don’t you remember?? (Instant pangs of guilt) We had coffee together in the UTC Centre. (Guilt dissapates - I have almost never had coffee in the UTC Centre and certainly never with an Yvonne. And I am pretty sure I have NEVER met a Rwandan called Yvonne, or any Rwandan woman with English as good as this) (Alfred: Hey, what’s with the italics? Those are MINE!!)
Me: I think you are wrong – I don’t remember ever having coffee in the UTC Centre.
Yvonne: No, no – it was in Butare!! (Out of the question – other than Matar, it is impossible to get decent coffee in Butare)
Me: Hmmm … I don’t think so.
Yvonne: Anyway, I just wanted to ring and say ‘Hi’ and ask how you were doing.
Me: Oh. I’m doing fine but …
Yvonne: I am sending you my Facebook address – have a look and see if you remember me. Maybe we can meet sometime if you are up in Kigali.
Me: Emm, can I just ask where did you get my num….
Yvonne: (hangs up)

OK – I definitely never met any Yvonne anywhere, never had coffee with anyone other than VSOs in UTC and don’t drink coffee in Butare except in Matar. But she had my number, knew that Butare was the obvious alternative to Kigali and, most interestingly, wanted me to check her out on Facebook. So I did. Lovely looking girl (Yvonne Mutesi if you want to look for yourself) but definitely not anyone I had ever met.

Over the next few weeks I get the occasional message or call – always brief, never pushy, not asking to meet but saying ‘Hi’ and generally inquiring after my well-being and amazingly adept – I mean amazingly – at side-stepping the issue of where she got my number. ‘Subtle’ I thought to myself – the usual Rwandan ploy is to rub their rear end against your crotch, say after five minutes ‘I love you’ and ask to get married immediately (Alfred: That is a tad harsh. But only a tad ...)

Eventually, when I was coming up to Kigali one weekend, I decided I really wanted to know where had she got my number and rang her and offered to meet up. She said rather than coming into town I could drive out to her place in my car. ‘I don’t have a car’ I said, wondering if this was suddenly going to end the whole thing. ‘No problem’ she said, ‘just get on a moto and if you ring me I will give him directions.’

‘But Yvonne’, I said, ‘we’ve never even met (an assertion I noted she didn’t dispute) and I don’t think it is appropriate to meet you for the first time in your house.’ ‘Oh there’s no problem’ she said, ‘my parents and all my brothers and sisters and cousins and everyone else are here to see you’.

So what could I do? I hung up is what I did. And she rang and rang and rang and eventually I turned my phone off. Passing an Internet café, I hopped online and checked my Facebook status. She had answered my Friend request seven minutes ago! Click of a button, friend deleted, end of story.

And this is the problem. I would love to make/to have made more Rwandan friends but the guys eventually (with a few exceptions) start looking for money, sponsorship, scholarships etc, the women pretty much the same though the mechanics of getting you to agree to it are a little different. Ah well!

Nicknames
Two interesting nicknames I came across recently. One is a friend of Enock’s called ‘Jambazi’ which means ‘thief’ in Swahili. Interesting name to have and one he seemed to take great pleasure in. Eventually, Enock and Jambazi together explained it to me. Jambazi (I have no idea what his real name is) is a Mathematics teacher in the local secondary school, but also teaches in a seminary school in Butare and also in the university, where he is finishing his Master’s degree in Pure Mathematics (he will have to go abroad to do a doctorate as there is no one to supervise him here; he was the only person to graduate in Pure Mathematics the year he did his BA). Anyway, that means he had the equivalent of three jobs, so that is why he is called ‘Jambazi’, as he is stealing the jobs of two other people.

The other one was a bit weirder. I was driving in Butare with Joseph, the guy organising the catering for our training (that will be in the next entry) and he waved at another driver. ‘Who is that?’ I said (in French). ‘C’est l’animal’ he replied. OK, one could think of various reasons for a nickname like that but I decided to ask why. Apparently, after the genocide he was accused of having decapitated a lot of people with a sword. He was put on trial and found not guilty, but the name stuck. Apparently everyone calls him that (I can’t be sure if they do it to his face or not). Weird!