Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie

Monday 15th March
(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.

St Patrick's Day Fundraising Ball, Kigali

Hi there friends, especially outside Rwanda. We are organising a St Patrick’s Day ball here in Kigali for Friday 19th March, a fundraising event in support of setting up a paediatric palliative care centre in Kibagabaga Hospital in Kigali. This will provide education to the mothers of children born with HIV/AIDS on simple and cost-effective ways of ensuring their children receive the kind of diet that is essential to maintaining their health. In a country where the malnutrition rate among chlidren aged 0-5 is 45% and the rate of anaemia 56% this type of education is vital.

We still have tickets left for this event: if you would like to sponsor a seat or a table, the ticket will be given to a member of one of the many voluntary organisations that work hard in the area of disability and HIV/AIDS, thus supporting our fundraising efforts and rewarding someone who is already contributing much to combatting HIV/AIDS and supporting les vulnerables, as we say in Rwanda.

So if you or anyone you know think you might be interested this is how it works: individual tickets are €45, a table of ten for €450. Please contact me ASAP at roheithir@gmail.com or ring me on +250 783 808130 and I'll explain how to go about it.

Oh, and I will be on the Pat Kenny Show on St Patrick’s Day – listen out for me!!!

A DAY ON THE ROAD

Today I was to visit two schools in Mugombwa sector, down on the Rwanda-Burundi border and about as far from my house as it is possible to travel in this district. I had booked the moto driver to come at 0800 but he said 0730 would be better as it would take us a long time to get there. I got up at 0600 (I had set the alarm for 0530 but somehow managed to fall asleep again!), had a very cold wash in a bucket of water, then breakfasted on tea, bread and two hard-boiled eggs which I had cooked a few days ago. Wasn’t too sure about the smell of the second one but thought ‘What the hell’ and ate it anyway (Alfred: to avoid the suspense, it was fine – you don’t have to worry about later and unnecessarily detailed accounts of dashing behind bushes in the Rwandan countryside. That is always an interesting experience as there is no such thing as a deserted spot here and you get used to people standing close by watching you pee .. or whatever). The weather was lovely when I got up but by 0700 it was very cloudy and at 0715 the heavens opened. I rang Alexis and told him to hold off for the moment and we would go if the rain stopped and if he thought the roads would be OK.

By 0730 the house was enveloped in cloud, through which it was still relentlessly raining but it cleared around 0815 and I rang Alexis to come. Packed my bag – inspection forms (only one), copies of my recent analysis of the examination results, poncho, clipboard, pens … and a wodge of toilet paper just in case. On with my wellies and then off we went around 0830. It was still raining but not too heavily. Alexis said that it had not been raining at all in the adjoining sector where he had come from so he hoped the roads would be OK.

It was a nice wish but unfortunately didn’t come true. We ploughed on for about an hour, stopping to ask directions as we went. The school is called Mushongi but the final ‘gi’ is pronounced in a very peculiar way, so Alexis was usually greeted with blank stares when he asked, until he tried every possible combination of sounds that might approximate to ‘gi’. All of them sounded exactly the same to me but eventually one of them clicked and the people all said ‘Ah, Mushongi!’ It never fails to amaze me the way in which people here cannot recognise a word unless you pronounce it exactly correctly. After all, we were only about ten kilometres from the school at this stage!

As we got near, the road got really bad – I got off and walked while Alexis paddled the moto up or down slopes with his legs – but eventually it got so bad we abandoned the moto and set off on foot. I presumed that this meant we were really close to the school (Alfred: NEVER, NEVER, NEVER use the words ‘presume’ or ‘assume’ in this country … NEVER). Forty-five minutes later of tramping through mud the consistency of regurgitated superglue in wellington boots one size too small for me (Alfred: just as well or they would have been sucked right off his feet), in drizzle strong enough to make me keep my poncho on beneath which I was sweating probably harder than it was raining, we finally reached the school.

This Groupe Scolaire has about 850 students, six classes of primary and two of senior level. They are building eight new classrooms but work has stopped completely as they have run out of materials and have no money to buy more. Three of the semi-built classrooms have students in them – typically, they have put the 1st and 2nd Year primary in here and the senior students are in the older, intact classrooms. They also have not had any new latrines built – the last time I visited the school the latrines were the main issue – six horrible decrepit crumbling …. I can’t say ‘rooms’, whatever, for (at the time) seven hundred or so students. They are planning to build 20 new ones and have got as far as digging out the holes for the foundations but that’s it.

So I spent the next three and a half hours working with the director and visiting the classes (brief visits, just to say ‘Hello’ and not to actually inspect the classes). The director is a young, enthusiastic man who is in his second year as director and keen to change and improve the school. It is the best school in the sector, but the sector is the worst in the district so there is still enormous scope for improvement.

Anyway, we worked through my checklist and focussed on a few main areas: timetabling, teacher attendance (one class we visited had no teacher there and no-one seemed to have any idea where he was), strategic planning (there is no strategic plan but he had put together a project proposal on equipping the school with solar panels so all the classrooms would be able to use electrical equipment – more on that anon), peer evaluation and training, data collection and analysis and a few other things.

In the middle we toured the classrooms as he wanted me to visit all the teachers and students before the morning shift broke up at 1140. The school is clean and reasonably well equipped with furniture etc – I did see some desks with five or six pupils crammed into them but there were usually desks with only one or two in the same room, so it is more a question of classroom management for the teacher than lack of resources. One or two classes were around fifty but most were in the 30-40 range. Quite a few of the classes had some basic teaching aids or posters to be seen and the kids were bright and alert, even at the end of their school day.

However, the level of English was abysmal. Not one class could answer even the simplest question I asked them (‘What subject are you doing?’, ‘Do you like English?’ and so on). Only two of the teachers could talk to me in English – and neither of them were among the three who actually teach English in the school. And a lot of the material written on the boards was so inaccurate you wondered where it had been copied down from. I did learn in P4 Science that the ‘testicules’ are shaped like ‘two uggs’ and the penis need to be ‘elected’ before intercourse can take place. I had a vivid of images of all these penises standing to attention and hoping to garner enough votes to be elected and get their chance at continuing their genetic inheritance into the next generation. (Alfred: Interesting – the phrase ‘electing penises’ brought to my mind vivid images of most of the leading politicians of the last twenty years……)

Later, as I worked through the analysis of the school’s 2009 results with the director to see what they could tell us about the strengths and weaknesses of the school (I don’t go with this coy ‘areas for improvement’ business I’m afraid), it became clear that there was one, single, overriding problem – English. They have no Science textbooks at all for P5 or P6 and no Mathematics textbooks for P6 – just one teacher’s book in each subject. The teachers seemed well-prepared, in good spirits and (as far as I could tell on a brief visit) hard-working but teaching in a completely foreign language. Every class I visited had textbooks in it and in half the classes the students were actually using them as part of the class – if that seems like a really obvious thing to you, it isn’t!!! In most schools the books are locked up and from the layers of dust on them have been so since they arrived – but not here. He commented when I said this that he has a horror of books lying unused and has endlessly nagged/encouraged his teachers to use them. He even lets the children bring them home from time to time to read and use for homework – only the second time I have come across this and something you are really not supposed to do but I wish directors would do more often!

Since my last visit the school had built twenty rabbit hutches and I was introduced to their occupants, munching away on a haphazard collection of plants and weeds. When they are mature, they are given to the poorer students to take home and sell so they can buy pens, copybooks etc. When I asked him how they decide who will get the rabbits, he told me the children decide. They know very well who is in the most need so they draw up a list of who should get them. Other than a quick check by the director to ensure no obvious unworthy candidates are there, all the input comes from the pupils.

The same applies to the Parents’ Committee which has two teacher and two pupil representatives. The students first of all vote for a President, then a Vice-President. The first vote is completely open; then, if a boy is elected President, only girls can stand for Vice-President and vice versa.

One thing I always check is what clubs the school has: they usually have antiHIV/AIDS (ü), sports (X), antigenocide (X - but starting later this year for the seniors), and sometimes environment (ü) and dance (X). (Alfred: Maybe not the most suitable topic for a joke but when Ruairí ran the spellcheck, it wanted to replace ‘antigenocide’ with ‘ant genocide’!). When I asked him if there were any others, he said they had a School Attendance Club. ‘A what?’ I asked, wondering if I had heard correctly. He explained that every month all the students meet in geographical groups depending on where in the sector they live. They then pool their knowledge to draw up lists of children they know in their area who are not attending school. These lists, with parents’ names and as specific a geographical location as they can manage, are given to the Director. The schoolchildren then speak to the non-attending children to encourage them to come while the director, along with the Executive Secretary of the cell (the smallest local government unit) speak directly to the parents. Amazing idea!!!

I then asked him how come they had no sports club. Easy one – no equipment whatsoever and no space. He showed me the football ‘field’ – a smallish piece of ground covered in long grass, far too small for anything except a disorganised kickabout, which is what eight boys were doing with a punctured football that may well have been used in the original 1930 World Cup final in Uruguay. They do have a boys and a girls football team but have to play all their matches away. If they could raise RWF300,000 – 400,000 they could buy the adjoining field but with half-completed classrooms, no proper latrines and all the other current problems, extra land for sports is not a priority for anyone! The volleyball area was a piece of ground – the director explained that the net and posts had been stored away as they had no ball to play with! So I promised him that the next time I saw him I would have a football and a volleyball for him (and thanks to all of you back at home who have been sending me various sums, small and large, with which to do this kind of thing!).

There were a few specific areas where there was ‘room for improvement’. This school has the largest disparity between girls’ and boys’ performance of any in the sector and in Kinyarwanda, where girls usually perform as well as boys or close to it, it has the largest gender performance gap in the entire District. I also counselled him to get on to the sector directly about providing additional support for English training for the teachers (Alfred: given that this is the best school in the sector, Ruairí is going to be saying this to ALL the schools in the sector – the Sector Executive Secretary is going to LOVE him by this time next week!). I also agreed to look over his project proposal for installing solar panels in the school – a good idea but the actual document was a shambles. The budget had been drawn up by a friend who knew about electrical things – maybe so but he sure had no concept of either Mathematics or common sense. One item had been costed at RWF2,400,000 (€3,000) instead of RWF240,000, there was an estimate of 50 plugs and 180 lights for a school of nineteen rooms and so on and so on. But, and this is very important, the director had done this on his own initiative and was going to approach a range of NGOs and foreign government agencies like DfID, SNV and VVOB to seek funding himself, rather than doing what most people seem to – draw up wildly optimistic documents with grandiose plans and then think that somehow that is enough in itself!

Alexis and I headed off around 1500 – I would have waited longer but the director said he thought rain was approaching. Sure enough, when I left the office and looked over the roof towards Burundi, there were big black thunderclouds coming towards us, growling, like a small pack of black mastiffs that hadn’t actually seen me yet but were definitely feeling out of sorts with the world in general. So I hopped on the bike and was going to tell Alexis to get us home ASAP but that proved completely unnecessary as we zoomed off down the hill which, luckily, had pretty thoroughly dried out in the afternoon sun.

The thunderclouds, rather than coming straight at us, seemed to think they needed some kind of visa to enter Rwanda and moved along parallel to us just on the Burundi side of the border, so we were able to get back to the villagedry and in one piece by 1600 or so, about half the time it had taken us to make the morning trip. A quick lunch of roasted corn on the cob (it is market day and the gaurd always buys extra corn and roasts it for us (Alfred: no he doesn’t! Sarah told you he buys it already roasted from the little old ladies who roast it across the road!)) and cheese and crackers and coffee (a new brand called MIG Highland coffee, not as nice as my favourite brand Kinunu but pretty good all the same).

This evening ( once I have finished this and making and eating dinner – lentil, tomato and carrot curry with rice) I write up my report on the visit and then get ready for Lynley’s visit tomorrow. She is coming down from the Program Office to interview focus groups of teachers in a primary and a secondary school in my district for a report VSO are doing on teachers’ working conditions. Then it is off to Kigali for the Friday Education Management meeting and, hopefully, to Gikongoro for weekend rugby!



The existing classrooms in Mushongi school. The steep slope makes any effective use of the ground in the middle very difficult.

The volleyball court and the ruins of the latrines that were built in 2004 and almost immediately fell down due to shoddy workmanship.

One of the three girls' latrines (there are over 400 girls in the school)

Girls on one side, boys on the other.

The intrepid Alexis, my moto driver (NOT taken today as you can see from the sun shining!)

When is news not news?

RUMOURS, RUMOURS
Hmm ... the attacks I spoke about in my last blog all turned out to be rumours: the bus near the US Embassy and the one in Remera. But there was an attack on the Eden Restaurant in Gikongoro in which three Sri Lankans were injured, one seriously enough to be taken to Butare Hospital to have shrapnel removed. I know the Eden Restaurant, though I have never eaten there. The one time we did attempt to eat there (I think it was with Amalia and Bujingo) they said they had neither brochettes nor fries available, so we went elsewhere. I remember saying rather sarcastically to the waitress 'If Rwanda has run out of goats and potatoes, the country is obviously in deep, deep trouble!'.

Interestingly, though that was Friday night, I still haven't found any mention of it on the news even though all the other attacks were covered quite extensively. Is this because stuff outside Kigali doesn't get noticed or is it embarrassment because muzungus were injured? Meanwhile, Afrique en Ligne announced that Rwandan authorities had warned about attacks on 'jam-packed train stations and cafes'. This is the kind of detail that makes you realise some websites are crap - there are no trains in Rwanda.

CORRECTION
(Alfred: Sorry folks - gave you the wrong link in the last blog but one for Ruairí's photos. Forgot that Flickr is spelled with a 'c' in it. So the correct address is www.flickr.com/photos/ruairioheithir)

Ode to the Brochette

NDASHAKA BROCHETTE ….


Goats you can find everywhere,
Fleet of foot and brown of hair
(Or white or black or grey or blue -
They come in every single hue).
The kids are cute – they bounce and play
And run about throughout the day.
They munch on grass and herbs and leaves
And generally seem quite pleased.

And they are easy on the eye
As on the road we pass them by
And to our lips they bring a smile
And even tempt us bide awhile.
But as we’re watching these chevrettes
The word were thinking of? – brochette!

So don’t run fast – that’s quick enough
Or else your meat will get too tough.
And we ignore your plaintive bleating
Because we know you make good eating.
To no avail your plaintive cries -
Tomorrow you’ll be served with fries!

Your destiny is all that matters
Served up on a shiny platter.
Slightly pink or half-cremated
(And usually long-awaited)
Drenched with salt and piri-piri
(You want some ketchup? Don’t be silly!
That would spoil the taste of goat -
The best Rwandan cuisine haute!)

Served up neatly on a skewer
Six bits of goat – or maybe fewer.
Bits of onion and green pepper
Means that they don’t stick together.
Or maybe you got zingalo
Which I have had three times or so,
Goat’s intestines neatly twined
(Though most of us are disinclined).

So now at last it’s time to eat
(and while the food retains some heat)
We choose a skewer and then try
With all our might and main to pry
A piece of meat from where it lies -
And therein lies the next surprise.

A fact that’s little understood
Is - goat meat glues itself to wood.
Like limpets fastened to a rock
Or pointy ears on Mr Spock,
Superglue, wallpaper paste –
None of these takes pride of place.
But goat on wood – once well attached –
In this respect remains unmatched.

Some groan and weep, some rant and rave,
And generally misbehave.
Some pull it off by dint of force,
Some try and use their knife and fork.
Some chew the meat off from the side
Some just give up and eat their fries.

While omelette-eaters munch with ease
And gulp their beer and eat their peas
And chips and beans and rice and cheese
And peppers, pasta – all of these
Part of an omelette rwandese.
(And in their minds the question burns –
When will these people ever learn?)

And when the battle’s won at last
And all have finished their repast,
One task remains still incomplete -
Remove the goat meat from your teeth!
Select a toothpick from the holder
(Remove false teeth if you are older),
Extract the lumps if you are able
And flick them high across the table.
Or take them out and reassess
Before deciding to ingest!

Brochettes are good, brochettes are fun,
Brochettes are always overdone.
Brochettes are fun, brochettes are cheap,
(Don’t eat them walking down the street).
Sometimes tough and rarely tender -
Maybe they should use a blender?

PHOTOGRAPHS AND GRENADES
Sitting in an Internet café in Kigali typing this while uploading about a hundred photos onto my Flikr account (Alfred: www.flickr.com and search for Ruairí if you are interested: if you are reading this IN Rwanda make sure you are NOT working off your modem when you do this - many of the photos are high resolution!). Also trying to get clear information on the latest series of grenade attacks over the last two days which are now escalating beyond what we had previously been used to. One last night was on a bus near the American Embassy, or at least that is 'the word on the street' - nothing on the Internet so far about those ones, only the previous night's two attacks. The other attack was somewhere in Remera where I am staying at the moment but that's all I know.

Some guy, former head of the Rwanda Journalists' Association, has been arrested in Burundi and extradited here - the government claim he is the mastermind but are also blaming a number of former high-ranking members of the RPF and RDF (Rwandan Defence Forces) - these would be very senior former associates of Kagame now living in exile. A much more serious proposition than random ex-Interahamwe members trying to destabilise on a small scale. Best updates are from the BBC news website and also the New Times newspaper which is pretty much the official Rwandan government line on what is happening.

WORK
Work is proceeding as normal. I finished off and printed all 15 of my reports and then trieed to email copies to each of the 13 sector executive secretaries and/or Social Affairs officers (the latter being responsible for education in the sectors). This took the guts of two days! First of all even trying to get a list of email addresses was a challenge. Then the list only had ten of thirteen executive secretaries and no Soc. Aff. So I texted all the Social Affairs officers and asked them to text me their and the Exec Sec's email addresses. After one day three of thirteen had replied. But that's the way it goes here. I am also organising the training that Peter, Cathy and I will be giving on March 24th and 25th to all the directors on Leadership and Management, Quality of Education in the classroom and Data Gathering and Analysis. At the moment this consists of trying to ensure no-one else will be using the room when we want it and the tricky business of negotiating the price for lunch and what exactly will be in each of the lunch-boxes! At the moment it looks like two pieces of meat (goat), one egg, potatoes and I am not sure what else! More anon.

Another problem is the one I wrote about last time - the unrepaired damage to Rwamiko secondary school which has left them with doubled-up classes of up to 120. It turns out that the school is owned by the Catholic Diocese who are - in theory - responsible for the buildings etc. Surprise, surprise, that is not how they see it and they want the District to share the cost. The District seem to have agreed in principle but the argument over how much it will be and who pays what looks like going on forever. The estimate is RWF3m (about €4,000) which seems very high - I suspect the real cost is half that and each side is hoping that if they can persuade the other side to pay 50% they will end up paying nothing!






Meanwhile, my ASTI project of building a staffroom and director's office for Nyarunyinya Primary School has fallen foul of local bureaucracy. The money the ASTI was donating would pay for part but not all of the project. Initially the District said they would match the funding but now say they cannot spend money on anything except classroom construction - staffrooms are not a priority item! They said they can apply again in May but a) there is unlikely to be any more money then and b) that is too close to my departure date. So I am trying to come up with a new project and submit it in time to Standing Committee and then get it implemented before I leave!

NEWS FROM HOME
WTF? Every time I look at the news from Ireland things seem to be getting madder and madder! George Lee? Willie O'Dea? Trevor Sargent? And then the bishops decide that parishioners must pay the bills for the compensation for the sex abuse cases? It makes the revelation of a gay sex ring in the Vatican almost paltry by comparison. I suspect my readjustment to Irish society when I get back is going to be trickier than I thought!!

Alfred: in the next instalment: more on what the hell is going on with all these grenade attacks, creative writing (and the lack of it) in Rwanda, a new poem (currently in preparation) on the wonders of brochettes, and other engaging snippets of Rwandan life (I've told him to ease off on the work stuff, no-one is really interested, though I did phrase it more gently than that).

Ruairí Has A Bath

So, back on the road today. I spent the weekend having some blissful R&R with my friends John and Mukesh in Gikongoro, a weekend that unusually combined the attributes of being relaxing and very productive. As they have satellite TV, I also got to see Chelsea’s debacle against Manchester City (ouch!) but, more importantly, Ireland’s stunning win over England in the rugby. Happy days. And, Sunday morning ……………… I had a hot bath. Yes – a HOT ….. BATH! First one in two years. Awesome. Felt very wrinkly afterwards but I am sure that was my imagination.

John and Mukesh live near the main prison in Gikongoro – on Saturday morning it was umuganda (voluntary communal labour) and the area around the house was covered with pink-clad prisoners digging, tidying or whatever (Alfred: The word ‘voluntary’ mightn’t be the most appropriate in this specific context). I still get a slight shock when I see the pink uniforms – I am used to the idea of seeing prisoners out and about working, I am used to the fact that they are all convicted genocidaires – it’s the PINK! It is SO pink! If you were going to design a pair of (admittedly slightly butch) women’s pyjamas, this is the shade you would pick. And when you see them from afar, sprinkled lavishly across the landscape, it is as if someone had scattered a load of Remembrance Day poppies across the Rwandan hills last November and then left them to bleach in the sun until you got this soft pink.

Then, when I left Sunday to head for the bus back to Butare, as I got near the prison, I heard this immense roaring sound coming from inside the walls – people shouting and chanting like crazy. ‘Oh-oh’ I said to myself (Alfred: 'arsa mise i m’aigne féin' as we used to teach the students to write in Irish class) ‘sounds like a riot.’ I wondered whether to take a detour but had no idea where to go. Moreover the other passers-by didn’t seem too concerned. Then when I listened more closely I could distinguish the words Imana and Yezu – ah ha, Sunday Mass. I should have guessed, if you hear a lot of people getting excited here, it is usually religion (Alfred: Em, methinks the fact that it was Sunday should have given our erstwhile scribe a clue, n’est pas?).

When I got to Butare (the Sotra and Volcano men having had a barging and pushing match over which of their buses I was getting on!) I met up with Christine Mack, a new VSO volunteer who I had always thought was Australian but turns out to be French. (Alfred: Eh, France, Australia, two countries with so much in common they are easy to confuse. A special prize for the first reader who can actually suggest ANYTHING those two countries have in common!) She came out to Gisagara with me as we were planning to head out together today to do school inspections and (Alfred: for some strange reason) she thought she might learn something from watching me work.

However, getting from Butare to Gisagara on Sunday night was the tricky bit. Christine caught the 1430 from Kigali which, in theory, should have got her in before 1700 when there was a bus to Gisagara but I figured it was more prudent to get tickets for the last bus at 1800 just in case. So she arrived at 1645, her bus from Kigali having broken the Rwandan land speed record en route, and we went for a beer. Then my friend Jean de la Croix rang – I had completely forgotten I was also supposed to be meeting him so lucky I didn’t get the earlier tickets, eh? I won’t go into all of Jean’s stories at this stage (Alfred: They will certainly serve to liven up the blog the next time it gets too serious) but suffice to say I had to more or less prise him from my person with a metaphorical crowbar to get on the bus!

The bus. Anyone who has been in Rwanda even a few weeks, let alone eighteen months, will have their quota of dodgy, funny, terrifying, boring, smelly, boring bus stories. But this was the worst bus journey I have had so far in Rwanda. OK, we didn’t break down, the passengers didn’t have to get out in the mud and push the bus that had gotten stuck in it, it didn’t crash, it didn’t puncture, it didn’t turn out to be going in the opposite direction to the one were told for an hour before we realised, no one urinated on us, no one was carrying a pig or a chicken or a sack of fermenting cassava (Alfred: cassava, that’s the worst, no question), no one was spitting constantly on the ground near or on our feet, no one got sick out of a window further up the bus only for it to fly back in through a window open beside us, the back door didn’t fall off and deposit all the contents of the boot (Alfred: that’s ‘trunk’ for those of you reading this in the US of A) on the road, no one was begging for money or lecturing us on how as ex-colonialists or just plain peau blancs everything that was wrong with Rwanda, Africa and the world was our fault, no one asked us for a dictionary or the money to buy one, no one spent the entire trip asking us to marry them, convert to their religion or take their baby away to Europe/USA with us, no one beside us was carrying a large rolled up ancient-and-never-washed-despite-the-incontinence-of-previous-users mattress that filled the entire width of the bus where we were sitting, no one asked us for our phone numbers, and no one tried to hold a conversation with us in English for the entire trip using only the alternating phrases ‘Good morning’ and ‘How are you?’.

So, by Rwandan standards it wasn’t anything as bad as it could have been. But the bus was ancient, it had no suspension to speak of, it was absolutely packed, some of the windows were being held in by having the black runner lining that should have been between the windows and the frame of the bus tied across them to stop them falling into the bus, it was bucketing rain and the windscreen wipers weren’t working properly necessitating the driver to drive incredibly slowly, the engine was pumping a steady stream of carbon monoxide into the bus, all of whose functioning windows were tightly closed (only the broken ones saved us from asphyxiation). The roof above the back seats was cracked, admitting a steady heavy trickle of cold water down the backs of those of us unlucky enough to be sitting on the back seats, the rear door was not closed so every time we hit a bump it flew up and then whacked against the back of our seats.

Once we set off, we first had to negotiate the steep hill down out of Butare which is a good road but VERY slippery in wet weather. Then we hit the wet muddy bits – because we had no suspension the bus driver had to negotiate these spots very slowly in case he hit something unexpected. However, this either led to the bus getting stuck and frantically trying to reverse out of the mud or else stalling. Every time the driver tried to restart, you could hear the absence of people breathing as everyone held their breath wondering if it was going to start. Each time, after ten to fifteen seconds of what sounded like an aged asthmatic horse being dragged unwillingly into an abattoir, the bus would start up and lurch forward and off we would set again.

Anyway, what usually takes twenty minutes took almost an hour and, when we pulled up in the centre of Gisagara, everyone just stayed in their seats for a couple of seconds as if unaware, or in disbelief, that we had actually arrived successfully at our destination.

The next day, after a hearty breakfast, Christine and I set off on our visits. It was a good but (as usual) frustrating day. In both the schools we visited the directors had received phone calls that morning calling them away to meetings in the sector office. We were able to do the inspections after a fashion but hurriedly and without anything like enough time to go through all the stuff we wanted to. In particular, I had wanted to go through the new statistical analysis I had prepared for each school to see how much they could grasp, how interested they were and so on to give me an idea of how I need to tailor them to people’s level of understanding and interest. Anyway, it was OK if rather shorter than I had planned it to be. I did think of visiting a third school en route but figured the director would probably also be away and anyway my moto driver said rain was coming and the road back was very treacherous in parts.

Before we did the visits, however, we stopped at Groupe Scolaire Rwamiko. This is the school that was hit by a tornado some months ago which ripped the roof off a three-room classroom block. To my surprise there had been no repair work done yet so I called in. I also found (not to my surprise) that the six new classrooms for the Senior Two Year were also not ready but was flabbergasted when the teachers (the director was also at the sector office) told me that all the students were in school, distributed among the other classes. I then visited … wait for this one … a First Year Maths class with 120 students in it (Alfred: is this a record?). They were using a big room that had been used for storing building materials – they had filled it with desks and stuck two blackboards up at one end. And the class seemed to be going fine – all the students were attentive and focussed when we called in – but 120?!! The other rooms all had classes of 70 or 80 each.

Once we returned to the house we had lunch, debriefed a bit and exchanged ideas and observations on how the visits had gone and then I accompanied Christine into Butare to do a few chores. First I went to the Post Office to collect a parcel for a friend in Gisagara who uses my post-box. They wouldn’t let me collect it because it had his name on it and it was a registered parcel. Fair enough I suppose except they have never done that before! Then to the bank to take out RWF200,000 because I am going to have a lot of travelling and photocopying expense coming up. Again fine, except they had run out of RWF5,000 bills and gave it all to me in RWF2,000 and RWF1,000 bills: 95 banknotes in total. And finally some shopping, mostly for luxury items: olive oil and vinegar (for the avocados, our single most important food item along with cabbage), Nido (milk powder), coffee, sardines, cheese, tomato paste and bread. That last went without a hitch.

Then, it being 1557, I dashed for the 1600 bus. Got my ticket in the Sotra office and was told it was a big bus, not one of the little ones. I came out to see the bus heading off. I figured, heck I would just wait for the 1700 but the girl who had sold me the ticket ran out of the office onto the street, stopped a moto and told him to catch that bus! Which he did! So, the bus stops unexpectedly, the door opens and this muzungu gets on. Now, we are all used to various reactions when we get on buses – cries of welcome in three different languages, excited comments, children screaming or whatever, though in Butare, where there are lots of abazungu (to use the correct plural form) it rarely excited much comment. But when I got on this bus there was a stunned silence, which continued for the ten seconds or so it took me to get to one of the flip-down seats in the aisle. Then people began muttering under their breaths to each other and darting quick looks at me.

It took a while before I realised – this was not the ordinary Gisagara bus. This bus was heading for a much more remote part of the District called Mugombwa but would be passing through Gisagara on the way back. There is one bus out of Mugombwa in the morning at 0700 and then it comes back at 1600, so all these people had come in to Butare for the day. People in Gisagara are used to me and Sarah by now (I’ve been there for eighteen months after all) but there has never ever, to the best of my knowledge, been a muzungu working or living in Mugombwa, hence the surprise.

It was a real throwback to when I first arrived. After so long, I rarely experience this reaction any more so it was actually kind of nice in a way, especially when the little boy sitting on his father’s lap eventually plucked up the courage to shake my outstretched hand and then examined it carefully all over for any white marks that might have come off – it’s been AGES since that happened to me!

So, big meeting tomorrow with all the District heads and then working with Cathy and Peter to start fleshing out or training days for the directors which will take place on March 24th and 25th. I’ll keep you informed!!

On the left, part of the Maths class with 120 students in it. On the right (I had forgotten about this picture) a tribute to lovers of Casablanca (the film, not the famous chess-player). I took this picture in a director's office. Parents who send their children to the maternelle (nursery school) have to pay RWF300 a month but they can also pay in beans which, at this time of year - it being just after the bean harvest - they often choose to do. The little bowl in front represents RWF300 worth of beans. This is one reason why maternelles start off well and then drop off - once the beans are gone and parents have to come upo with actual cash for the teachers, most of the maternelles end up closing down because parents can't/won't pay. It also means that the teachers get paid in a mixture of cash and beans, depending on the mix of parents' payments that month!