And so it goes......

It has been two months since my last substantial entry (Alfred: Obviously mine doesn't count as 'substantial'. Luckily my skin has toughened up over the last two years) and people have been wondering whether I was continuing or not. Well, to start with, settling back has been really hard, much much harder than I expected. I had - to a certain extent - allow for the change in climate, pace of life, missing friends and all the other things VSO warn you about when you are leaving (and their predictions were, for the most part, bang on the money). But all of them were more intense than I realised and are taking longer to resolve than I had hoped.



Add to that the fact that the job I am returning to has changed quite a lot as there have been so many things that have happened and changed here in Ireland since I left. The cutbacks mean that there are fewer resources in schools, fee-paying or otherwise, so many areas of school life that used to be covered by specific members of staff are now an extra area to be covered by ... somebody. Parents are struggling with fees, students can sense that the job market they are going to be heading out into is going to be a much more competitive and demanding one than previously, the pressure in general is a palpable thing you can sense every day.



So, as many people ask me, what is the most difficult thing about being back? I used to give rather glib, superficial answers (Alfred: Glib? Toi? Quelle surprise, mon cheri) - the shortness of skirts, the sight of people eating on the streets, the climate and the change in the length of daylight and so on. But now that I have been back for almost four months, there are more fundamental things that I realise are the real source of the difficulties I have fitting in.



One is the sheer frantic pace of life, so frantic that it often stops things getting done properly and efficiently because there are always so many other things waiting in the queue. And, to be frank, some of them seem so petty compared to what I was used to dealing with. I had hoped to get away from being in at 7.30 every morning, now I often find myself in at 7.00.



Having said that, my actual work day is probably much the same as it was in Rwanda but, second point, in Rwanda I had almost complete control over my work, within the very broad parameters laid down in my contract and by my superiors in the District (Alfred: Superiors? Can you remember ANY occasion on which they tried to lay down specifications on what you were supposed to do? Remember the first time you tried to convince either Francois or Alexis that they were actually your boss?). So I planned my days the way I wanted - inspections, visits, research, workshops, visits to the ministry in Kigali - whatever seemed most appropriate. If I felt it was suitable, I could spend an entire week or two on just one thing. Here, my life is completely spent responding to outside pressure, satisfying departmental regulations on statistics and returns and about 70% of each day is spent doing things I had no idea I was going to do when I came into school that morning!



And, to be honest, there is a status issue. In Gisagara, I was extremely well-known, the first ever muzungu to live in the district, friendly with the mayor, the executive secretary, the chief of police and army commander. For good or ill, I felt important. And, in another aspect to the same issue, the work I was doing felt important, it was work that, had I not been there, would not have happened. I could feel I was adding a definite extra something-or-other to the existing system. It is hard to convince myself that what I am back doing now carries anything like the same weight or importance.



And I miss my friends so, so much. I arrive home here in Glenageary from work and slump down on the sofa to watch reruns of Stargate and Star Trek (which is about all my brain can cope with at that stage of the day) (Alfred: You can tell it was a better day than most if he feels up to Law & Order). But in Gisagara I would be down in the new bar with Enock and Claude, maybe Joseph and Elie or some of the others, drinking chilled Mutzig (Alfred: He has switched to drinking cider here, of all things - claims that all the beers here are just inferior copies of the Rwandan beers) and discussing what is going on in the village. I miss Abraham in the craft shop in Kigali and his beautiful wife Alice and son Isaac (Alfred: Ruairí has never actually seen Isaac but we are assured he is beautiful), the crazy map-seller outside the UTC centre, the girls in the Sotra bus office in Kigali and Butare and their incessant questions as to when I am going to get married and which one of them I would choose, I miss being called 'Joe Cole' on the streets of Butare by people who have a vague idea of who I am but don't know my name and go by what was printed on the back of my Chelsea shirt (Alfred: If he does go back, they will be calling him 'Zola') .......... and so the list goes on.



But there are things I really really enjoy about being back. Above all the rest, by a mile, is actually being back in school and teaching teenagers again. In Rwanda I had no contact with students and, after all, that is what I became a teacher for. I only have a handful of actual class contact hours per week but those plus the general interaction with the girls is a wonderful experience which I hadn't realised I was missing so much.



And friends and family - this, actually, has been more difficult. Looking back over recent months, I realised that I made little or no effort to meet up again with friends or even, in some cases, family. Indeed, there are good, close friends, many of whom stayed in touch with me while I was in Rwanda whom I have not even contacted let alone met since I came back. At first, I think it was a kind of refusal to admit that I actually was back but I am not sure what it is now. But it is definitely still there. And, at the same time, I am someone who usually isn't the best at keeping in touch and I figure that whenever I run into people again will be time enough, so I was quite surprised at just how good it was to see my family again, especially my nieces and nephews in Dublin, Bristol and Munich. They say you don't realise how much you need something until you are missing it - in my case it was when I had it again I realised it!

The creature comforts are nice but, after the first few weeks, that wore off. I do still feel a childlike wonder every morning when I press a button and hot water pours down on me and I have to confess that I still spend considerably longer than is strictly necessary rinsing myself off! (Alfred: And, in case he doesn't mention it - because he won't - he is really loving immersing himself in old episodes of Star Trek and Stargate, to an extent an objective person might describe as obsessive!).

So today is Friday and we are beginning half term. Never in my entire professional life have I been so glad to see a holiday come. I spent three hours on a phone today to an IT support person trying to figure out why the statistical returns to the department kept generating error messages that meant they couldn't be sent. One reason turned out to be (Alfred: wait for it) because my keyboard was configured for US instead of UK it was inserting the 'wrong kind of apostrophes'. I mean. Really.

But my friends, especially my VSO/Rwanda friends, keep me going. Nidhi is visiting at the moment, Paula and Sonya will be home soon, Eric and Becky are around, I hope to get to Holland and visit Mans and Han and Berthe in the near future - it is amazing how the continued contact and communication with my former colleagues is so important, as well as hearing from Sarah and Emma and Brigid and Pauline and Steve and Pickles and Enock and everyone else back in Rwanda. So, onwards and upwards.

Don't expect too many posts, unless Alfred takes an executive decision to mount a coup d'état.