Please note that VSO is in no way connected with or responsible for the content, comments and observations in this blog: these are solely my own in a personal capacity.
Alfred: Well, well, well. One hint from Ruairí on his Facebook site and suddenly I am getting queries from as far away as Papua New Guinea (Hi Don!) as to what is going on, seeing as he isn’t going to spill the beans. Well, you all know me as a crusty, hard-hearted, unsentimental type whose main function in life is to try and keep Ruairí’s feet on the ground and head out of the clouds (so he doesn’t fall into any more holes, real or metaphorical) but this time even my curmudgeonly heart is moved. Yes, the guy is definitely, comprehensively, completely smitten. As I sit here on my chair in the bedroom (where I have been for almost 400 days – even my soft furry bottom is getting pretty sore at this stage) I can see him sending silly texts at all hours, writing poems (yes, I kid you not – no love-lorn teenager has agonized more over what rhymes with ‘amour’ than this fifty-year-old one) and generally carrying on in a style that, if it were written about in a work of fiction, would be condemned as hopelessly stereotyped. And all in French too!
I could witter on for ages about Cupid’s arrows, the sweet dew of love falling through the tough outer skin and softening the careworn fifty-year-old heart, sun and stars, sunlight and roses, swans with intertwined necks drifting silently down the peaceful river under the moonlight (I can hear Don shouting all the way from Papua New Guinea in his mellifluous Dublin accent: ‘For Jaysus sake get on with it and tell us who she is!!!!’) …. Well, I won’t. So there. It’s going to leak out eventually so you will just have to wait! Il est tombé éperdument amoureux de quelqu’un, or should that be ‘quelqu’une’? – strange bloody language (woops – hope M. isn’t reading this, not sure she understands the fact of my separate existence; mind you, who does, least of all me).
Just be happy for him – he is certainly very happy for himself!!!
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
October Update (like, it's becoming monthly, isn't it?)
Please note that VSO is in no way connected with or responsible for the content, comments and observations in this blog: these are solely my own in a personal capacity.
Demonic possession, rivers of blood and slaying the enemies of the Lord
A lot of religious stuff around at the moment! Last Sunday I went to church with Martine. It was the Zion Temple near the Rwandex coffee plant, not far from the Sonantubes roundabout and a place quite a few of the VSO Rwandan office staff go to worship. It is a Rwandan church that was founded in Kigali ten years ago (see www.ziontemplerwanda.org if you want more) and now has branches in many other countries. It was an ….. interesting experience. The whole thing lasted about three hours and part of it was your usual revivalist kind of thing with lots of very good singing by the choir (directed by my colleague from VSO Emilianne) and some good preaching as well. Everything was translated into French or English.
However, there was also an awful lot about smiting the enemies of the Lord, wiping out those who opposed His vision, generally a lot of killing and destruction. The main text was Judges Chapter 3 where Ehud kills the King of Moab, Eglon by hiding a dagger and then disembowelling him under the pretext of having news to tell him in his private quarters. We were then told that those who kill the enemies of the Lord can expect years of peace and security (I couldn’t quite tell how many). It was all a little bit unnerving, especially as the crowd got more and more enthused and passionate about it.
Then we moved on to demons, sorcerers and witches. The preacher told us we were in deadly danger at every minute from demons and sorcerers. He called on the Lord to surround this church with a river of his blood to protect us from the malign influences that were waiting to attack us (made me wonder if we were going to be able to go home). And there was a lot more in that vein.
A general belief in sorcerers and witchcraft is quite common here. A school in my own district has been closed recently and a general meeting of parents, teachers and 4th to 6th class pupils was called to discuss how to combat the demonic influences that were causing so many children to fall ill in the school. Glad I wasn’t sent to deal with that one.
REAP – latest update
The first phase of this has now finished (Alfred: see earlier blogs if you don’t know what he is on about, but it’s not THAT interesting to be honest) and Sarah and I ended up doing a lot more of it than we would have liked, due to our being the only functioning education staff at the moment (see next item for clarification). So not as capacity-building as we would have liked ...
District re-organisation
For those of you who have been following my escapades, sorry, WORK here in Rwanda, news of a major personnel change. Since I arrived, I have worked directly for the Director of Education, François Hakizimana and with the chargé Alexis Bigira. But every district in Rwanda has had a major reorganization which involves devolving more power to the sector level and away from the District offices. So we now have only one person in the Education Unit (which has itself been subsumed into a new Social Affairs and Territorial Administration department) and that is Alexis; François has been transferred to work in one of the sectors. I will miss working with him (despite the frequent frustrations). He was (and I hope will continue to be) a good friend – his was the first house I was invited to here in Rwanda, his children the first I met.
Anyway, the re-organization has been in progress for so long that everything has been virtually paralysed as everyone waited for the changes to come into effect. It also promises to be even more hectic for me and Sarah (Alfred: HECTIC? What do you mean hectic? Half the time you don’t have anything to do and you are about to head into the school holidays anyway!!!) OK, I take Alfred’s point but the World Bank analysis of Rwanda’s local government some years ago estimated five people were needed to do the education administrative work properly and now they have reduced from two to one. I know more is supposed to be done at sector level but at the moment the money doesn’t exist to hire the additional staff needed – so we have cut at our level and have not added at the lower level. Alexis is going to need to be on his toes!!!
Interesting stories from the newspapers
More leavings: Marion and Ken
And still they continue to leave. In the next few weeks Marion and Ken will be off. Ken has been in Nyanza for … gosh, is it three years? I haven’t really seen much of him in my time here but he is a really nice guy and will be missed.
But Marion – ah now, that is going to be really hard. I got to know Marion even before I came here as she was the one person to answer all the emails I sent even before I came to Rwanda, giving me advice on what to bring, clothes, water regimen, all kinds of advice all of which turned out to be accurate and useful!!! She has provided me with a bed, cats to play with, plentiful advice on a wide variety of topics (some of which I even occasionally followed), copious information on a wide range of gods and goddesses, elemental forces and beliefs around the world that rarely get talked about, gave me her novel to read and proof (a most enjoyable experience) …. I am really going to miss her.
Articles in COMHAR
If you feel like reading recycled versions of parts of this blog in Irish, I am now writing a monthly column for the Irish-language magazine COMHAR (though not in the October edition – that’s a special on new writers). And if you can’t read Irish, most of it was already in the blog anyway!!
New Kinyarwanda-English vocabulary book: interesting phrases
I have to admit I have made less progress with my Kinyarwandan than I would have like. On Monday Sarah and I went on a shopping expedition to Butare for supplies – flip-chart paper, giant rulers, markers and so on. The shop we bought most of the stuff in is also a bookshop of sorts – mostly textbooks but some fiction in French and various other bits and pieces. And I found a new English-Kinyarwandan vocabulary book and thought ‘What the hell’ and bought it (RWF6500 or €8 which is well over one day’s allowance for a volunteer, which is why you stop and think about these things!).
And a fascinating book it is too – you can learn a lot about a society by looking at the phrases they choose to illustrate words. Or so you would think. Anyway a few things that struck me as … well, odd.
Demonic possession, rivers of blood and slaying the enemies of the Lord
A lot of religious stuff around at the moment! Last Sunday I went to church with Martine. It was the Zion Temple near the Rwandex coffee plant, not far from the Sonantubes roundabout and a place quite a few of the VSO Rwandan office staff go to worship. It is a Rwandan church that was founded in Kigali ten years ago (see www.ziontemplerwanda.org if you want more) and now has branches in many other countries. It was an ….. interesting experience. The whole thing lasted about three hours and part of it was your usual revivalist kind of thing with lots of very good singing by the choir (directed by my colleague from VSO Emilianne) and some good preaching as well. Everything was translated into French or English.
However, there was also an awful lot about smiting the enemies of the Lord, wiping out those who opposed His vision, generally a lot of killing and destruction. The main text was Judges Chapter 3 where Ehud kills the King of Moab, Eglon by hiding a dagger and then disembowelling him under the pretext of having news to tell him in his private quarters. We were then told that those who kill the enemies of the Lord can expect years of peace and security (I couldn’t quite tell how many). It was all a little bit unnerving, especially as the crowd got more and more enthused and passionate about it.
Then we moved on to demons, sorcerers and witches. The preacher told us we were in deadly danger at every minute from demons and sorcerers. He called on the Lord to surround this church with a river of his blood to protect us from the malign influences that were waiting to attack us (made me wonder if we were going to be able to go home). And there was a lot more in that vein.
A general belief in sorcerers and witchcraft is quite common here. A school in my own district has been closed recently and a general meeting of parents, teachers and 4th to 6th class pupils was called to discuss how to combat the demonic influences that were causing so many children to fall ill in the school. Glad I wasn’t sent to deal with that one.
REAP – latest update
The first phase of this has now finished (Alfred: see earlier blogs if you don’t know what he is on about, but it’s not THAT interesting to be honest) and Sarah and I ended up doing a lot more of it than we would have liked, due to our being the only functioning education staff at the moment (see next item for clarification). So not as capacity-building as we would have liked ...
District re-organisation
For those of you who have been following my escapades, sorry, WORK here in Rwanda, news of a major personnel change. Since I arrived, I have worked directly for the Director of Education, François Hakizimana and with the chargé Alexis Bigira. But every district in Rwanda has had a major reorganization which involves devolving more power to the sector level and away from the District offices. So we now have only one person in the Education Unit (which has itself been subsumed into a new Social Affairs and Territorial Administration department) and that is Alexis; François has been transferred to work in one of the sectors. I will miss working with him (despite the frequent frustrations). He was (and I hope will continue to be) a good friend – his was the first house I was invited to here in Rwanda, his children the first I met.
Anyway, the re-organization has been in progress for so long that everything has been virtually paralysed as everyone waited for the changes to come into effect. It also promises to be even more hectic for me and Sarah (Alfred: HECTIC? What do you mean hectic? Half the time you don’t have anything to do and you are about to head into the school holidays anyway!!!) OK, I take Alfred’s point but the World Bank analysis of Rwanda’s local government some years ago estimated five people were needed to do the education administrative work properly and now they have reduced from two to one. I know more is supposed to be done at sector level but at the moment the money doesn’t exist to hire the additional staff needed – so we have cut at our level and have not added at the lower level. Alexis is going to need to be on his toes!!!
Interesting stories from the newspapers
More leavings: Marion and Ken
And still they continue to leave. In the next few weeks Marion and Ken will be off. Ken has been in Nyanza for … gosh, is it three years? I haven’t really seen much of him in my time here but he is a really nice guy and will be missed.
But Marion – ah now, that is going to be really hard. I got to know Marion even before I came here as she was the one person to answer all the emails I sent even before I came to Rwanda, giving me advice on what to bring, clothes, water regimen, all kinds of advice all of which turned out to be accurate and useful!!! She has provided me with a bed, cats to play with, plentiful advice on a wide variety of topics (some of which I even occasionally followed), copious information on a wide range of gods and goddesses, elemental forces and beliefs around the world that rarely get talked about, gave me her novel to read and proof (a most enjoyable experience) …. I am really going to miss her.
Articles in COMHAR
If you feel like reading recycled versions of parts of this blog in Irish, I am now writing a monthly column for the Irish-language magazine COMHAR (though not in the October edition – that’s a special on new writers). And if you can’t read Irish, most of it was already in the blog anyway!!
New Kinyarwanda-English vocabulary book: interesting phrases
I have to admit I have made less progress with my Kinyarwandan than I would have like. On Monday Sarah and I went on a shopping expedition to Butare for supplies – flip-chart paper, giant rulers, markers and so on. The shop we bought most of the stuff in is also a bookshop of sorts – mostly textbooks but some fiction in French and various other bits and pieces. And I found a new English-Kinyarwandan vocabulary book and thought ‘What the hell’ and bought it (RWF6500 or €8 which is well over one day’s allowance for a volunteer, which is why you stop and think about these things!).
And a fascinating book it is too – you can learn a lot about a society by looking at the phrases they choose to illustrate words. Or so you would think. Anyway a few things that struck me as … well, odd.
- Babysitter’ is listed under ‘Sports and Leisure
- The section on ‘Greetings’ includes the phrase ababyeyi banjye baratandukanye which means ‘my parents are divorced’. This in a country where divorce may be legal but is pretty unheard of, at least in my experience.
- The section on ‘Difficulties’ includes inshuti zanjye zarantaye, ‘my friends have forsaken me’ (and the rather puzzling phrase which is translated as ‘Where is the police motion?’)
- The ‘Travel’ section includes the phrase for ‘Conveyor-belt’. It also has extensive vocabulary in Kinyarwandan for travelling by train. There are no trains in Rwanda.
- The first item in the ‘Clothes’ section is impeta ya diyama, a diamond ring
- In the ‘Religion’ section we find ahari kiriziya hafi ni hehe? ‘Where is the nearest church?’ presumably the denomination doesn’t matter, though the entire Lord’s Prayer is given in the Catholic version. This may also explain Hano haba hari abaporo? ‘Are there any Protestants here?’ And I have now discovered the Kinyarwandan for ‘atheist’: umuhakanyi (must find out what it actually means, probably ‘walking dead’ or something like that).
- Inzoka can easily be confused with inzoga (‘snake’ and ‘beer’ respectively). Ndashaka inzoka ikonje I would like a cold snake - must try that down the pub next time and see what happens (Alfred: You know what will happen – it’ll be ‘Let’s all laugh at the silly muzungu time again!).
- An intriguing section entitled ‘Diseases taken care by food’ includes ‘angry eyes’, ‘calculation of loins’, ‘crevasses’, ‘genital unrests’, ‘intellectual tiredness’, ‘intestinal verses’, ‘pain of road’, ‘pee in bed’, ‘bewitchment’ (Alfred: along with ‘poisoning in case you were wondering what had happened to the alphabetical order), ‘qualm’ and ‘skinning’. Unfortunately, it doesn’t say which foods take care of any of them.
- There is a big section on ‘Poritics'
‘Abbatoirs’, ‘Irish potatoes’ and ‘referees’ are all listed under Good Governance
And, while we are on the subject of Kinyarwandan, I was asked today in the office about the word ‘miser’, as in should he be saying ‘miser’ or ‘miserly’. It turns out that the word in Kinyarwandan, igisambo, means both ‘miser’ and ‘thief’. To hoard anything that you are not using yourself is the same as stealing it from people who need it.
Stories from Uganda
Now that I am going up to Kigali every weekend I am able to buy my favourite Ugandan newspaper, the Saturday Vision. Nothing could illustrate the difference between Uganda and Rwanda more than the type of stories their respective newspapers print, and nothing gives as good an insight into Ugandan life. Last week’s edition had a section on relationships that included the Top Ten Love Boosters and the Top Ten Love Poisons.
The boosters are:
Communication
Forgiveness
Companionship
Romance
Money
Status
Children
Outings
Gifts
Faithfulness
The Poisons are:
Adultery
Violence
Desertation (presumably Desertion)
Bestiality
Homosexuality
Promiscuity
Public scorn
Witchcraft
Poverty
Impotence
And I leave you with a few of the more bizarre and light-hearted stories from last week’s Ugandan news.
TENANT EVICTED OVER SONG
Kampala
Residents of Kivulu, Makarere, were surprised when a woman was evicted from her room because of a song. Namukasa was playing Sophie Gombya’s Spare Tyre aloud. Her landlady, Nakito, gave her 48 hours to move out of the house. Nakito said the song was an insult because she was a second wife to her husband. The landlady refunded her rent and told her to vacate the house.
FOOD ATTRACTS MEN TO MEETING
Mityana
The women of Bulera sub-county met last weekend to discuss the problems in their homes. However, men gatecrashed the venue knowing that food would be served. When the women got out for lunch, they found the men had served themselves as many as three plates of food.
DRUNK TEACHER STAGGERS IN FRONT OF OYAM DISTRICT BOSS
Oyam
A primary school teacher in Oyam district recently got into trouble for drinking during working hours. Ongada was with his mother-in-law when the Oyam district LC5 boss, Charles Okello Engola, bumped into him. Ongada fumbled and as he tried to stand and beg for forgiveness he fell down. Engola gave him a stern warning as residents carried him away. (Alfred: Love the last five words of that one)
CONGRATULATIONS TO SARAH!
And to finish, a great big 'Well done' to my colleague and housemate Sarah Wragg who heard today that she had got her MA which she had completed under enormous pressure as she was getting ready to leave for Rwanda!! Well done!!
Monday, September 28, 2009
Alfred rides again
Please note that VSO is in no way connected with or responsible for the content, comments and observations in this blog: these are solely my own in a personal capacity.
Alfred: and yet again the humble stuffed toy has to step into the breach and give you all an update on what has been going on in the last few weeks. To be fair, it has genuinely been pressure of work, plus trying to write his articles for COMHAR. It’s a pity because a lot of genuinely interesting things have been going on over the last few weeks – well, at least I think they are interesting. So here are my highlights of the last few weeks.
1.Sarah has arrived.
Finally, the general atmosphere has taken an upward tone and what used to be considered unimportant and irrelevant matters such as hygiene and interior decoration have now been at the very least according some basic consideration. The diet has improved (note to self: is there such a thing as eating TOO many avocados? And is the plural ‘avocadoes’? And if not, why not?). Sarah looks like she may knock some sense into this guy – God knows, I’ve been trying for long enough. Even when Ethiopian Airways lost the suitcase with all her clothes in it she didn’t bat an eyelid but remained confident it would eventually turn up. Which it did, about twenty days later. And, amazingly enough, it turned up in Addis Ababa. Who would have thunk it – it was in the one place the plane had stopped on the way to Rwanda!! Amazing piece of detective work by Ethiopian Airways, one has to salute their ingenuity, intrepid spirit of investigative … OK, I’m overdoing it a bit.
Mind you, stuck in Ruairí’s bedroom as I am, I can’t be exactly sure what is going on at the moment but it looks like Vodaphone seem to have replaced Ethiopian Airways on the ‘Sarah’s Most Wanted List’. Could be interesting – will try and keep you posted.
2. District Restructuring
Sarah has arrived at a spectacularly interesting time as no one in the District seems to know what their job is. It does look like her director, Francois, is being ‘moved’ and the charge, Alexis, will take over. All the changes are being announced officially tomorrow morning at the regular Monday morning meeting – should be interesting. (PS: It was interesting but no announcement yet.)
3. REAP
Short for Rwanda English Accelerated Programme, this has been occupying Ruairí’s thoughts for quite a while now. In brief (be glad I am writing this and not him and he gave details in the last update) the Department of Education here (MINEDUC) is starting English classes for every teacher in Rwanda starting next year. The first phase is to test everyone’s level of English to see what level to put them into. So every teacher in Rwanda, primary and secondary, had an English test last Friday at 1100 (well, in theory anyway).
Stage One was photocopying the exam papers. Now, there are a maximum of 1225 candidates for this test; the paper is two pages long and there is a separate answer sheet. The District photocopier (apart from the trivial issue of producing near-illegible copies) takes about eight seconds to make a copy. Even presuming no jams, the time for reinserting sheets to copy double-sided and the fact that other people just might want to occasionally use the only photocopying machine in the District Office, it would take 8 seconds x 3 copies x 1225 teachers = 29, 400 seconds = 490 minutes = over 8 hours.
So Ruairí explained to his boss that the photocopying would have to be done in Butare on a proper machine and the District would have to sort out how to pay for it. So on Monday around 1400 Ruairí meets his boss and they go to a little photocopy shop – with exactly the same model machine as the District office! So, long story short, Ruairí heads off to proper machine in University District, spends three hours photocopying (and making sure all jammed copies etc are handed over) and then pays for it himself (FRW56,000 or $100). He’ll be waiting a while before he sees that money again).
More on REAP next instalment!
POEM
Some of you will have been emailed it (if you saw verse one on Facebook and requested the rest, that is). The poem is pretty crap but at least the footnotes add a touch of class and some much-needed accuracy. Andy is Andrew Crow who was a PHARE volunteer here and who may be remembered by some of our regular readers. He is currently job-hunting in the UK, or so he says. And a big ‘Hello’ to Debbie, one of our more faithful readers – hope you’re not getting tired already of having Andy back!
The Adventures of Andy in Rwanda
by Ruairí (and Alfred1)
Now gather round, Rwandan friends, and listen to my song.
‘Tis only twelve short verses so I won’t detain you long.
(But order your brochettes right now, ‘cos service can be slow)
While I relate to you the tale of Andrew Kenneth Crow.
A callow2 youth of twenty-one he left old England’s shore
And set off for Rwanda’s schools to work for VSO.
And everyone he met he greeted thus in tones of glee:
‘Hello – my name is Andy Crow and I’m with YfD3’.
He spoke in French of dulcet tone, with accent most unique,
Which caused his friends to utter: ‘Gosh – just where did HE learn Greek?’
He learned Rwandan – of a sort – just vital phrases needed
To get a beer, to fix a price or make sure he was feeded4.
Though he has left Rwanda’s slopes, they still recall in awe
The thin muzungu – like a rake – who could outeat us all.
A full melange, a few brochettes, an omelette or two,
Washed down with pints of Mützig (his favoured local brew).
‘Tugende5’ was his motto (or at least that’s what we’re told)
‘Cos he called it out so often as he strode off down the road.
Where others ambled, walked or paced, our Andrew zoomed ahead
As if in fear that going slow would make him late for bed.
On the slopes of Karisimbi6 ‘twas our hero showed his skill.
While others talked of mountain slopes, he said ‘It’s just a hill!’
He bounded up like a gazelle, the others to his rear
(Or at least that’s what HE told me as I swallowed back my beer).7
FOOTNOTES: VERSES ONE TO SIX
1Yes, Ruairí AND Alfred. Once I had read this piece of tripe, I decided that only the addition of my footnotes would make this drivel readable and explain some of the more abstruse references to those who were not there. And if you don’t know who I am – tough!
2 ‘callow’? Well, OK.
3 Youth for Development, VSO’s programme for new graduates that has now been scrapped following their recruitment of Andy. Not that there is NECESSARILY any cause-and-effect at work here ......
4 People of taste and discernment will stop reading at this point and find something more useful to do. Anything at all will qualify.
5 As in ‘ar aghaidh linn’ in Irish or ‘andiamo’ in Italian.
6 A very very steep volcano in Northern Rwanda which Andy claims to have climbed. There are actually witnesses and photographs and no obvious evidence of Photoshop tampering in the latter (or the former, for that matter).
7 The note of scepticism implied by the use of upper-case letters here is unjustified – see previous footnote.
He rode around Rwandan schools, his willie made of wood.8
He demonstrated condom use as only Andy could.
His work for PHARE9 was blemish-free, his hard work could be seen in
The results achieved by his great team of Allan, Lee & Keenan.
Though sometimes in Rwanda he was on a sticky wicket
Through the wonder of the Internet he never missed his cricket10.
Through England’s glorious Ashes Tests he savoured every run
And sent a most effusive text when finally they won!11
To try and list all Andy’s skills would take about a year,
His DJ mix, his repartee, his gulping down of beer,
(Though – strange to say – his drink of choice was neither beer nor wine,
But lemon-flavoured Fanta and he drank it ALL the time).
But when we think of Andy - yes, we always think of hair,
His shining golden tresses as they wafted in the air.
On village streets the children came and marvelled at the sight,
And dreamed of elves and fairies as they slumbered through the night.
But as we know of Samson when Delilah took a shine,
A woman with a scissors is your downfall every time!
The blades that Tiga wielded shore12 our hero’s locks in twain
(Though they grew back very quickly when she vanished off to Spain13).
So, goodbye Andrew Kenneth Crow, or is it au revoir?
Perhaps we’ll meet at cricket match or boating on the Loire14.
On Stamford Bridge’s comfy seats or sipping beer at Lords’
Or maybe at Kilmarnock (if we want to feel real bored).
FOOTNOTES: VERSES SEVEN TO TWELVE
8 Obviously, we are talking about a model penis here to demonstrate how to put on a condom and not inferring that his actual .... anyway, back to the poem!
9 PHARE stands for Prevention of HIV and AIDS in Rwanda through Education (thanks Thom – had to text him for that as neither Ruairí nor I can EVER remember what it stands for).
10 OMG - this man has no shame. Surely words like ‘thicket’, ‘ticket’, ‘ricket’, ‘lick it’, or ‘pick it’ could have been used. In fact, that last with a ‘nose’ in the line would open up all sorts of possibilities, as Mr Bassett would have said.
11 As this poem may be read by minors and people of tender sensibilities, it would be inappropriate to reproduce the actual words of the text. Of course, anyone of tender sensibilities is probably throwing up in a pit latrine at this stage .... if they even got this far.
12 ‘shore’ as in the past tense of ‘shear’ and not a drunken Irishman trying to say ‘sure’ – OK?
13 OK, OK, OK – so she actually went to France. Cut the guy a bit of slack. Mind you, couldn’t he have done something with ‘Aquitaine’? ‘went to Aquitaine’? Hello? HELLO? Is he even reading these footnotes?
14 Oh sweet Jesus! ‘Boating on the Loire’ . I mean .... eh, eh, eh, eh, eh!
Alfred: and yet again the humble stuffed toy has to step into the breach and give you all an update on what has been going on in the last few weeks. To be fair, it has genuinely been pressure of work, plus trying to write his articles for COMHAR. It’s a pity because a lot of genuinely interesting things have been going on over the last few weeks – well, at least I think they are interesting. So here are my highlights of the last few weeks.
1.Sarah has arrived.
Finally, the general atmosphere has taken an upward tone and what used to be considered unimportant and irrelevant matters such as hygiene and interior decoration have now been at the very least according some basic consideration. The diet has improved (note to self: is there such a thing as eating TOO many avocados? And is the plural ‘avocadoes’? And if not, why not?). Sarah looks like she may knock some sense into this guy – God knows, I’ve been trying for long enough. Even when Ethiopian Airways lost the suitcase with all her clothes in it she didn’t bat an eyelid but remained confident it would eventually turn up. Which it did, about twenty days later. And, amazingly enough, it turned up in Addis Ababa. Who would have thunk it – it was in the one place the plane had stopped on the way to Rwanda!! Amazing piece of detective work by Ethiopian Airways, one has to salute their ingenuity, intrepid spirit of investigative … OK, I’m overdoing it a bit.
Mind you, stuck in Ruairí’s bedroom as I am, I can’t be exactly sure what is going on at the moment but it looks like Vodaphone seem to have replaced Ethiopian Airways on the ‘Sarah’s Most Wanted List’. Could be interesting – will try and keep you posted.
2. District Restructuring
Sarah has arrived at a spectacularly interesting time as no one in the District seems to know what their job is. It does look like her director, Francois, is being ‘moved’ and the charge, Alexis, will take over. All the changes are being announced officially tomorrow morning at the regular Monday morning meeting – should be interesting. (PS: It was interesting but no announcement yet.)
3. REAP
Short for Rwanda English Accelerated Programme, this has been occupying Ruairí’s thoughts for quite a while now. In brief (be glad I am writing this and not him and he gave details in the last update) the Department of Education here (MINEDUC) is starting English classes for every teacher in Rwanda starting next year. The first phase is to test everyone’s level of English to see what level to put them into. So every teacher in Rwanda, primary and secondary, had an English test last Friday at 1100 (well, in theory anyway).
Stage One was photocopying the exam papers. Now, there are a maximum of 1225 candidates for this test; the paper is two pages long and there is a separate answer sheet. The District photocopier (apart from the trivial issue of producing near-illegible copies) takes about eight seconds to make a copy. Even presuming no jams, the time for reinserting sheets to copy double-sided and the fact that other people just might want to occasionally use the only photocopying machine in the District Office, it would take 8 seconds x 3 copies x 1225 teachers = 29, 400 seconds = 490 minutes = over 8 hours.
So Ruairí explained to his boss that the photocopying would have to be done in Butare on a proper machine and the District would have to sort out how to pay for it. So on Monday around 1400 Ruairí meets his boss and they go to a little photocopy shop – with exactly the same model machine as the District office! So, long story short, Ruairí heads off to proper machine in University District, spends three hours photocopying (and making sure all jammed copies etc are handed over) and then pays for it himself (FRW56,000 or $100). He’ll be waiting a while before he sees that money again).
More on REAP next instalment!
POEM
Some of you will have been emailed it (if you saw verse one on Facebook and requested the rest, that is). The poem is pretty crap but at least the footnotes add a touch of class and some much-needed accuracy. Andy is Andrew Crow who was a PHARE volunteer here and who may be remembered by some of our regular readers. He is currently job-hunting in the UK, or so he says. And a big ‘Hello’ to Debbie, one of our more faithful readers – hope you’re not getting tired already of having Andy back!
The Adventures of Andy in Rwanda
by Ruairí (and Alfred1)
Now gather round, Rwandan friends, and listen to my song.
‘Tis only twelve short verses so I won’t detain you long.
(But order your brochettes right now, ‘cos service can be slow)
While I relate to you the tale of Andrew Kenneth Crow.
A callow2 youth of twenty-one he left old England’s shore
And set off for Rwanda’s schools to work for VSO.
And everyone he met he greeted thus in tones of glee:
‘Hello – my name is Andy Crow and I’m with YfD3’.
He spoke in French of dulcet tone, with accent most unique,
Which caused his friends to utter: ‘Gosh – just where did HE learn Greek?’
He learned Rwandan – of a sort – just vital phrases needed
To get a beer, to fix a price or make sure he was feeded4.
Though he has left Rwanda’s slopes, they still recall in awe
The thin muzungu – like a rake – who could outeat us all.
A full melange, a few brochettes, an omelette or two,
Washed down with pints of Mützig (his favoured local brew).
‘Tugende5’ was his motto (or at least that’s what we’re told)
‘Cos he called it out so often as he strode off down the road.
Where others ambled, walked or paced, our Andrew zoomed ahead
As if in fear that going slow would make him late for bed.
On the slopes of Karisimbi6 ‘twas our hero showed his skill.
While others talked of mountain slopes, he said ‘It’s just a hill!’
He bounded up like a gazelle, the others to his rear
(Or at least that’s what HE told me as I swallowed back my beer).7
FOOTNOTES: VERSES ONE TO SIX
1Yes, Ruairí AND Alfred. Once I had read this piece of tripe, I decided that only the addition of my footnotes would make this drivel readable and explain some of the more abstruse references to those who were not there. And if you don’t know who I am – tough!
2 ‘callow’? Well, OK.
3 Youth for Development, VSO’s programme for new graduates that has now been scrapped following their recruitment of Andy. Not that there is NECESSARILY any cause-and-effect at work here ......
4 People of taste and discernment will stop reading at this point and find something more useful to do. Anything at all will qualify.
5 As in ‘ar aghaidh linn’ in Irish or ‘andiamo’ in Italian.
6 A very very steep volcano in Northern Rwanda which Andy claims to have climbed. There are actually witnesses and photographs and no obvious evidence of Photoshop tampering in the latter (or the former, for that matter).
7 The note of scepticism implied by the use of upper-case letters here is unjustified – see previous footnote.
He rode around Rwandan schools, his willie made of wood.8
He demonstrated condom use as only Andy could.
His work for PHARE9 was blemish-free, his hard work could be seen in
The results achieved by his great team of Allan, Lee & Keenan.
Though sometimes in Rwanda he was on a sticky wicket
Through the wonder of the Internet he never missed his cricket10.
Through England’s glorious Ashes Tests he savoured every run
And sent a most effusive text when finally they won!11
To try and list all Andy’s skills would take about a year,
His DJ mix, his repartee, his gulping down of beer,
(Though – strange to say – his drink of choice was neither beer nor wine,
But lemon-flavoured Fanta and he drank it ALL the time).
But when we think of Andy - yes, we always think of hair,
His shining golden tresses as they wafted in the air.
On village streets the children came and marvelled at the sight,
And dreamed of elves and fairies as they slumbered through the night.
But as we know of Samson when Delilah took a shine,
A woman with a scissors is your downfall every time!
The blades that Tiga wielded shore12 our hero’s locks in twain
(Though they grew back very quickly when she vanished off to Spain13).
So, goodbye Andrew Kenneth Crow, or is it au revoir?
Perhaps we’ll meet at cricket match or boating on the Loire14.
On Stamford Bridge’s comfy seats or sipping beer at Lords’
Or maybe at Kilmarnock (if we want to feel real bored).
FOOTNOTES: VERSES SEVEN TO TWELVE
8 Obviously, we are talking about a model penis here to demonstrate how to put on a condom and not inferring that his actual .... anyway, back to the poem!
9 PHARE stands for Prevention of HIV and AIDS in Rwanda through Education (thanks Thom – had to text him for that as neither Ruairí nor I can EVER remember what it stands for).
10 OMG - this man has no shame. Surely words like ‘thicket’, ‘ticket’, ‘ricket’, ‘lick it’, or ‘pick it’ could have been used. In fact, that last with a ‘nose’ in the line would open up all sorts of possibilities, as Mr Bassett would have said.
11 As this poem may be read by minors and people of tender sensibilities, it would be inappropriate to reproduce the actual words of the text. Of course, anyone of tender sensibilities is probably throwing up in a pit latrine at this stage .... if they even got this far.
12 ‘shore’ as in the past tense of ‘shear’ and not a drunken Irishman trying to say ‘sure’ – OK?
13 OK, OK, OK – so she actually went to France. Cut the guy a bit of slack. Mind you, couldn’t he have done something with ‘Aquitaine’? ‘went to Aquitaine’? Hello? HELLO? Is he even reading these footnotes?
14 Oh sweet Jesus! ‘Boating on the Loire’ . I mean .... eh, eh, eh, eh, eh!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Day 376 in Rwanda and finally back up to date!!!!
Please note that VSO is in no way connected with or responsible for the content, comments and observations in this blog: these are solely my own in a personal capacity.
Uganda Part Two
OK – the pictures below speak for themselves. The rest of the holiday was pretty much getting back to Kampala in one piece and then on to Kigali. The drive back to Kampala was a bit of a trial – luckily the rains had not affected the road too badly and we made better time than we expected, stopping en route to get bus tickets and money. Another night in the Sahel Suites, 0900 bus to Kigali and a nine-hour journey back left us both pretty shattered.
Saturday 22nd August
The day of my official birthday party!!! I had been keeping a list and told Lucky in the restaurant to expect about 40-45 people. And it was quite a night!! Everyone turned up, so to speak – a few VSO volunteers were tied up elsewhere – Chris correcting exam papers, Charlotte and Ken in Tanzania, Joe stranded too far away in Nyamasheke, Soraya in Gitarama but pretty much everyone else was there as well as various visitors and friends of volunteers and other non-VSO friends from Kigali – Sarah, Graham, John and Gaudence, Micheál and so on. The food was amazingly good, the ambiance excellent and I got loads of presents for which thank you very much again to everyone (Alfred: and, by the way – because Ruairí is too embarrassed to admit this – who gave him that fabulous shirt? The staff packed his cards and presents separately and he couldn’t figure out who had given it to him. He did wear it to the VSO Family dinner hoping someone would say: ‘Oh, I see you are wearing the shirt I gave you’ but no luck!)
Afterwards we went off to the pizza bar up the road but I called it a night around 0130 when South African John produced a bottle of tequila! A great night, just a great pity that Jane and Jean couldn’t be there.
Sunday 23rd August – Tuesday 25th August
The last few days of Mammy’s holiday consisted mostly of resting and chilling out in Beau Sejour. We met up one night with Martine and Christina (Alfred: Sunday, as you will see by a simple process of elimination) and Christina’s visiting friend from Ireland and drank the two bottles of wine that Mammy had brought me from Brussels (a Fleurie and a Nuit St. George) – a pretty special event for me. The following night we met with Cathryn and Marion in Stella 2 and had a really nice evening chatting away. And then Tuesday was departure day (Alfred: Ruairí has opted – wisely and somewhat unexpectedly – to omit the saga of trying to confirm the flight and book a specific seat for his mother on the plane) – and off to the worst-run airport in the world!! OK, maybe not THE worst but it is a crazy place. The main complaint is that you have to go through security to get to the check-in and, once in, you can’t come out again. There are virtually no facilities in the airport itself so, once you have checked in, there is little or nothing to do. At least Mammy’s plane was more or less on time!!
Wednesday 26th August – Tuesday 15th September
Yes, my friends, one massive bite and I will be back up to date!!
Good News
The really great news is that my new housemate and colleague has arrived - Sarah Wragg from Banbury. She arrived in Rwanda at the end of August and has been here with me and Alfred for about a week now. It’s really great having someone around, especially from a work point of view and, to put it mildly, she has got off to a much faster start at work than I did (Alfred: there are times when even the phrase “to put it mildly” doesn’t really adequately sum up the situation!).
I met her and the other new volunteers at the airport with Amy and various Programme Office staff – including an Irish volunteer from Tipperary called Karen Hardiman who, to my joy, turns out to be an Irish-speaker!! I spent the next few days helping Amy out with them, bringing them on trips into town, answering their questions and frantically trying to learn all their names. A really nice bunch of people, it’s going to be nice getting to know them better. One major hiccough is that one of Sarah’s two suitcases got lost by Ethiopian Airlines, the one with virtually all her clothes in it but she coped with it all fairly well (Alfred: Oh, for goodness’ sake, you are writing this on September 15th! Just tell them it eventually turned up, or at least that they SAY it has turned up and is in Kigali waiting to be collected this weekend!)
The following weekend we met our landlord for a drink in Kigali and said we needed to use the large room he had locked up in the house as a bedroom cum workspace for Sarah and he said no problem. He also indicated he would be willing to put in a toilet (Alfred: awesome!!) but that he hadn’t received any rent yet from the District Office (Alfred: one presumes that was a sort of a little hint!). This was good news as the bedrooms in the house are TINY. Mine is a little bigger than the other two but the one Sarah would have been in was ... well, anyway, now Sarah has a fine big room with space to work and lounge around in.
Not So Good News
One by one, all my friends are leaving. This is something they warn you about as a VSO volunteer, especially if you have committed to a placement longer than one year, but it still comes as a bit of a shock when it happens. At home, people occasionally leave but it happens occasionally and usually one by one, not a sudden mass exodus. Of the 20 of us who arrived together, only Amy, Joe and Michael will still be here after Christmas. Thom, Sonya and Christina have all extended until around Christmas and will then head off, as will Jane who has finished her VSO placement but is staying on until Christmas with a different NGO. It is really difficult thinking that Steve and Nidhi are not up in Kigali to visit any more, that I can’t pop into Butare and make rude comments about Tiga’s plants (Alfred: Like you ever dared!!!) or meet Andy for a pint in the Faucon and pretend I know one-hundredth of what he does about either Premiership football or the English cricket team.
But, dark clouds and silver linings. There are many volunteers from before I arrived still here and I have made a lot of good friends in the two new intakes since then, so it’s not all bad! But there is something special about the friendships you make here – maybe the intensity of life, the fact that we all depend on each other here in a way you never would at home or the fact that you are in a completely new environment and maybe more open and welcoming to people – I don’t know (Alfred: Duh! – you think so? Want to throw a few more ‘maybes’ in there while you are at it?). We all promise to keep in touch and some of us will but, at the same time, we know it is a big world out there and many places to go and new people to meet so the chances are most of us will not see each other again (Alfred: though if Tiga does end up running a little bookshop in a sleepy village near Toulouse swarming with venison and wild boar – and truffles, I bet – I’d wager a fair amount on your turning up on the doorstep at some stage. And meeting up with Andy next summer for the test match is a given .......)
Work
Yes, remember that? I do do that too, not that you would guess it from reading my blog. Sometimes my blog readers email me with queries as to whether I am on an extended holiday or what and I realise I should – at least occasionally – tell you what I am actually here doing!
The main things at work are as follows:
a) REAP or Rwanda English Accelerated Programme. This is a project to teach English to every primary and secondary teacher in Rwanda (just under 50,000 of them) and get them all up to a minimum of Intermediate standard by 2012. We are just preparing the testing ... sorry, assessment procedures to divide them into classes and training will start next year for the weakest categories. A huge problem is trying to convince them that this is just an assessment, not a test. In one District (NOT mine) they were told that their jobs could be hanging on this test, so they are all furiously studying and learning for it, which will only result in their being placed in a class too difficult for them! Also, the logistics of trying to assess every single teacher in the country on the same day (Friday 25th September) is a bit mind-boggling but here’s hoping!!
We were supposed to be having a briefing meeting this Friday for all sector education officials who are the ones who will be actually administering the tests. Then my director said there wouldn’t be enough time to inform them because the official letter telling them needs the mayor’s signature, so the meeting has been postponed to next Monday. Today someone realised Monday will be Eid (the end of Ramadan which is a national holiday here) so now it’s going to be Tuesday. The exam is (supposed to be) on Friday .....
Interlude: at 0900 today the chargé came into the office and said that, as part of the Nine Years Basic Education initiative, all district staff were going to Cyamukuza school nearby for some sort of ceremony. So Sarah and I stopped what we were doing, packed up our stuff, went back to the house to drop off our stuff and then headed to the District office to join the rest of the staff. When we got there they told us it wasn’t happening because no-one had done anything to prepare for it. I rang the chargé and he confirmed that it wasn’t happening after all. Phone calls are expensive here so I will wait until I see him to ask how come the chargé of education is the only one who doesn’t seem to know about this. Sara and I are now back at the house wondering what to do. When I left the Education Office they had turned off the generator and locked up, so there is a good chance that if we walk all the way back there we won’t be able to get in, which means walking back to the District Office AGAIN (did I mention it is boiling hot today?). I think Sarah is wondering if it is always like this. Sometimes I wonder myself!
When I met Alexis later he was extremely apologetic – apparently someone in the main office had gone over to Cyamukuza, found nothing had been prepared (probably because they hadn’t been told – it is one of the best-run schools here) and gone back to the District Office and cancelled the whole thing, but without anyone ringing across to the Education Office to tell us!
b) Nine Years Basic Education (NYBE) (Alfred: there should be an apostrophe in there somewhere but he can’t figure out where!! Or should there? Nine Years’ Basic Education? Nine Years Basic Education? Nine Year’s Bas... OK, not that one. But you don’t have to know Ruairí very well to know how much it is bugging him that he can’t decide what the right one is!!). One year ago the government suddenly decided that basic education would be extended from six to nine years. Up to now only a minority of students who achieved very high marks in their final primary school exam were allowed to continue to second level. From now on, any student who passes will be allowed to do so. This means that a large number of additional classrooms were suddenly needed to house all the additional students. This was achieved by the draconian and educationally disastrous move of reducing every primary school to ‘double-shifting’ – each class is split in two and comes to school for only half the day, meaning you only need one room for two classes (e.g. 3rd class A and B can share a room instead of needing one each). The extra rooms were then allocated for the new 7th Class or Secondary One.
Now all those rooms have been used up. In January these schools (16 out of 65 in my District) will have to accommodate Secondary One and Two and many are reporting double or triple the number of applications for continuing on to secondary that they had last year. In addition, the government campaign of persuading more parents to send or keep their children in school means a general rise in the number of students in school and therefore a need for more primary level classrooms as well. All at a time when there is little or no money to meet the ongoing construction needs for schools and a crying need for toilets, water systems and so forth.
Anyway, we are in the middle of a funding drive, public meetings to encourage people to do voluntary construction work, appeals to the Rwandan diaspora (which is a VERY small group as Rwandans hate emigrating) and various other activities (mostly involving speeches and meetings) to try and make sure that in January we actually have somewhere to send all these children. I have been drafting fundraising appeals in English to various companies (Alfred: luckily these are being checked by the IT guy whose English is good and thereby saving the District from some political embarrassment. Ruairí’s English may be good but there are still things about the local political set-up he is less than clear about!), visiting schools to check on their progress, will be attending various public meetings with ministers and other officials – presumably serving as some sort of mascot or whatever – and we have all been officially told that EVERYTHING else in the education area (except for REAP) is now relegated to non-urgent status.
This means that Mugombwa School about which I wrote (and posted photos) before needs about eight new classrooms to cope with the increase in numbers. They already have more than 1400 students – 1700 by next year – and seven semi-functioning latrines for them all. They had hoped that something might be done about this this year but now all available funds are going into classroom construction to meet government targets on Nine Years Basic Education. Ours not to reason why .....
And, of course, there is the usual stuff – statistics to be compiled and updated, school returns, inspection schedules (though, to be honest, I have those on hold because REAP and the NYBE activities mean they are now not a priority) and the English classes, which have recommenced. The Executive and I gave a stern lecture to all the staff and I have had between 20 and 30 in each of the two classes so far, so that’s looking up. In the last class someone asked me for the precise meanings of ‘yield’, ‘revenue’, ‘production’ and ‘income’ – that’ll keep me on my toes!
Fruit
I don’t eat a lot of fruit so I had never asked our guard Alexandré to buy anything beyond the odd banana or so. Sarah does like fruit so we headed off to the market last Saturday to see what they had so we would know what to ask Alexandré to buy. And what did they have? Sod all, to be honest. No mangoes, no papaya, no passion fruit, no tree tomatoes. A few bananas, avocados and what I think were oranges (but were all gone when Alexandré went out later). Maybe it is the time of year – hope so for Sarah’s sake.
Computer Fans
Anyone any idea how I go about checking if the fans in my laptop are working properly? It is getting REALLY hot and I can’t hear any noises from inside (of course, I can’t remember if I used to hear any noises from inside before or not!). All suggestions and advice gratefully accepted.
Uganda Part Two
OK – the pictures below speak for themselves. The rest of the holiday was pretty much getting back to Kampala in one piece and then on to Kigali. The drive back to Kampala was a bit of a trial – luckily the rains had not affected the road too badly and we made better time than we expected, stopping en route to get bus tickets and money. Another night in the Sahel Suites, 0900 bus to Kigali and a nine-hour journey back left us both pretty shattered.
Saturday 22nd August
The day of my official birthday party!!! I had been keeping a list and told Lucky in the restaurant to expect about 40-45 people. And it was quite a night!! Everyone turned up, so to speak – a few VSO volunteers were tied up elsewhere – Chris correcting exam papers, Charlotte and Ken in Tanzania, Joe stranded too far away in Nyamasheke, Soraya in Gitarama but pretty much everyone else was there as well as various visitors and friends of volunteers and other non-VSO friends from Kigali – Sarah, Graham, John and Gaudence, Micheál and so on. The food was amazingly good, the ambiance excellent and I got loads of presents for which thank you very much again to everyone (Alfred: and, by the way – because Ruairí is too embarrassed to admit this – who gave him that fabulous shirt? The staff packed his cards and presents separately and he couldn’t figure out who had given it to him. He did wear it to the VSO Family dinner hoping someone would say: ‘Oh, I see you are wearing the shirt I gave you’ but no luck!)
Afterwards we went off to the pizza bar up the road but I called it a night around 0130 when South African John produced a bottle of tequila! A great night, just a great pity that Jane and Jean couldn’t be there.
Sunday 23rd August – Tuesday 25th August
The last few days of Mammy’s holiday consisted mostly of resting and chilling out in Beau Sejour. We met up one night with Martine and Christina (Alfred: Sunday, as you will see by a simple process of elimination) and Christina’s visiting friend from Ireland and drank the two bottles of wine that Mammy had brought me from Brussels (a Fleurie and a Nuit St. George) – a pretty special event for me. The following night we met with Cathryn and Marion in Stella 2 and had a really nice evening chatting away. And then Tuesday was departure day (Alfred: Ruairí has opted – wisely and somewhat unexpectedly – to omit the saga of trying to confirm the flight and book a specific seat for his mother on the plane) – and off to the worst-run airport in the world!! OK, maybe not THE worst but it is a crazy place. The main complaint is that you have to go through security to get to the check-in and, once in, you can’t come out again. There are virtually no facilities in the airport itself so, once you have checked in, there is little or nothing to do. At least Mammy’s plane was more or less on time!!
Wednesday 26th August – Tuesday 15th September
Yes, my friends, one massive bite and I will be back up to date!!
Good News
The really great news is that my new housemate and colleague has arrived - Sarah Wragg from Banbury. She arrived in Rwanda at the end of August and has been here with me and Alfred for about a week now. It’s really great having someone around, especially from a work point of view and, to put it mildly, she has got off to a much faster start at work than I did (Alfred: there are times when even the phrase “to put it mildly” doesn’t really adequately sum up the situation!).
I met her and the other new volunteers at the airport with Amy and various Programme Office staff – including an Irish volunteer from Tipperary called Karen Hardiman who, to my joy, turns out to be an Irish-speaker!! I spent the next few days helping Amy out with them, bringing them on trips into town, answering their questions and frantically trying to learn all their names. A really nice bunch of people, it’s going to be nice getting to know them better. One major hiccough is that one of Sarah’s two suitcases got lost by Ethiopian Airlines, the one with virtually all her clothes in it but she coped with it all fairly well (Alfred: Oh, for goodness’ sake, you are writing this on September 15th! Just tell them it eventually turned up, or at least that they SAY it has turned up and is in Kigali waiting to be collected this weekend!)
The following weekend we met our landlord for a drink in Kigali and said we needed to use the large room he had locked up in the house as a bedroom cum workspace for Sarah and he said no problem. He also indicated he would be willing to put in a toilet (Alfred: awesome!!) but that he hadn’t received any rent yet from the District Office (Alfred: one presumes that was a sort of a little hint!). This was good news as the bedrooms in the house are TINY. Mine is a little bigger than the other two but the one Sarah would have been in was ... well, anyway, now Sarah has a fine big room with space to work and lounge around in.
Not So Good News
One by one, all my friends are leaving. This is something they warn you about as a VSO volunteer, especially if you have committed to a placement longer than one year, but it still comes as a bit of a shock when it happens. At home, people occasionally leave but it happens occasionally and usually one by one, not a sudden mass exodus. Of the 20 of us who arrived together, only Amy, Joe and Michael will still be here after Christmas. Thom, Sonya and Christina have all extended until around Christmas and will then head off, as will Jane who has finished her VSO placement but is staying on until Christmas with a different NGO. It is really difficult thinking that Steve and Nidhi are not up in Kigali to visit any more, that I can’t pop into Butare and make rude comments about Tiga’s plants (Alfred: Like you ever dared!!!) or meet Andy for a pint in the Faucon and pretend I know one-hundredth of what he does about either Premiership football or the English cricket team.
But, dark clouds and silver linings. There are many volunteers from before I arrived still here and I have made a lot of good friends in the two new intakes since then, so it’s not all bad! But there is something special about the friendships you make here – maybe the intensity of life, the fact that we all depend on each other here in a way you never would at home or the fact that you are in a completely new environment and maybe more open and welcoming to people – I don’t know (Alfred: Duh! – you think so? Want to throw a few more ‘maybes’ in there while you are at it?). We all promise to keep in touch and some of us will but, at the same time, we know it is a big world out there and many places to go and new people to meet so the chances are most of us will not see each other again (Alfred: though if Tiga does end up running a little bookshop in a sleepy village near Toulouse swarming with venison and wild boar – and truffles, I bet – I’d wager a fair amount on your turning up on the doorstep at some stage. And meeting up with Andy next summer for the test match is a given .......)
Work
Yes, remember that? I do do that too, not that you would guess it from reading my blog. Sometimes my blog readers email me with queries as to whether I am on an extended holiday or what and I realise I should – at least occasionally – tell you what I am actually here doing!
The main things at work are as follows:
a) REAP or Rwanda English Accelerated Programme. This is a project to teach English to every primary and secondary teacher in Rwanda (just under 50,000 of them) and get them all up to a minimum of Intermediate standard by 2012. We are just preparing the testing ... sorry, assessment procedures to divide them into classes and training will start next year for the weakest categories. A huge problem is trying to convince them that this is just an assessment, not a test. In one District (NOT mine) they were told that their jobs could be hanging on this test, so they are all furiously studying and learning for it, which will only result in their being placed in a class too difficult for them! Also, the logistics of trying to assess every single teacher in the country on the same day (Friday 25th September) is a bit mind-boggling but here’s hoping!!
We were supposed to be having a briefing meeting this Friday for all sector education officials who are the ones who will be actually administering the tests. Then my director said there wouldn’t be enough time to inform them because the official letter telling them needs the mayor’s signature, so the meeting has been postponed to next Monday. Today someone realised Monday will be Eid (the end of Ramadan which is a national holiday here) so now it’s going to be Tuesday. The exam is (supposed to be) on Friday .....
Interlude: at 0900 today the chargé came into the office and said that, as part of the Nine Years Basic Education initiative, all district staff were going to Cyamukuza school nearby for some sort of ceremony. So Sarah and I stopped what we were doing, packed up our stuff, went back to the house to drop off our stuff and then headed to the District office to join the rest of the staff. When we got there they told us it wasn’t happening because no-one had done anything to prepare for it. I rang the chargé and he confirmed that it wasn’t happening after all. Phone calls are expensive here so I will wait until I see him to ask how come the chargé of education is the only one who doesn’t seem to know about this. Sara and I are now back at the house wondering what to do. When I left the Education Office they had turned off the generator and locked up, so there is a good chance that if we walk all the way back there we won’t be able to get in, which means walking back to the District Office AGAIN (did I mention it is boiling hot today?). I think Sarah is wondering if it is always like this. Sometimes I wonder myself!
When I met Alexis later he was extremely apologetic – apparently someone in the main office had gone over to Cyamukuza, found nothing had been prepared (probably because they hadn’t been told – it is one of the best-run schools here) and gone back to the District Office and cancelled the whole thing, but without anyone ringing across to the Education Office to tell us!
b) Nine Years Basic Education (NYBE) (Alfred: there should be an apostrophe in there somewhere but he can’t figure out where!! Or should there? Nine Years’ Basic Education? Nine Years Basic Education? Nine Year’s Bas... OK, not that one. But you don’t have to know Ruairí very well to know how much it is bugging him that he can’t decide what the right one is!!). One year ago the government suddenly decided that basic education would be extended from six to nine years. Up to now only a minority of students who achieved very high marks in their final primary school exam were allowed to continue to second level. From now on, any student who passes will be allowed to do so. This means that a large number of additional classrooms were suddenly needed to house all the additional students. This was achieved by the draconian and educationally disastrous move of reducing every primary school to ‘double-shifting’ – each class is split in two and comes to school for only half the day, meaning you only need one room for two classes (e.g. 3rd class A and B can share a room instead of needing one each). The extra rooms were then allocated for the new 7th Class or Secondary One.
Now all those rooms have been used up. In January these schools (16 out of 65 in my District) will have to accommodate Secondary One and Two and many are reporting double or triple the number of applications for continuing on to secondary that they had last year. In addition, the government campaign of persuading more parents to send or keep their children in school means a general rise in the number of students in school and therefore a need for more primary level classrooms as well. All at a time when there is little or no money to meet the ongoing construction needs for schools and a crying need for toilets, water systems and so forth.
Anyway, we are in the middle of a funding drive, public meetings to encourage people to do voluntary construction work, appeals to the Rwandan diaspora (which is a VERY small group as Rwandans hate emigrating) and various other activities (mostly involving speeches and meetings) to try and make sure that in January we actually have somewhere to send all these children. I have been drafting fundraising appeals in English to various companies (Alfred: luckily these are being checked by the IT guy whose English is good and thereby saving the District from some political embarrassment. Ruairí’s English may be good but there are still things about the local political set-up he is less than clear about!), visiting schools to check on their progress, will be attending various public meetings with ministers and other officials – presumably serving as some sort of mascot or whatever – and we have all been officially told that EVERYTHING else in the education area (except for REAP) is now relegated to non-urgent status.
This means that Mugombwa School about which I wrote (and posted photos) before needs about eight new classrooms to cope with the increase in numbers. They already have more than 1400 students – 1700 by next year – and seven semi-functioning latrines for them all. They had hoped that something might be done about this this year but now all available funds are going into classroom construction to meet government targets on Nine Years Basic Education. Ours not to reason why .....
And, of course, there is the usual stuff – statistics to be compiled and updated, school returns, inspection schedules (though, to be honest, I have those on hold because REAP and the NYBE activities mean they are now not a priority) and the English classes, which have recommenced. The Executive and I gave a stern lecture to all the staff and I have had between 20 and 30 in each of the two classes so far, so that’s looking up. In the last class someone asked me for the precise meanings of ‘yield’, ‘revenue’, ‘production’ and ‘income’ – that’ll keep me on my toes!
Fruit
I don’t eat a lot of fruit so I had never asked our guard Alexandré to buy anything beyond the odd banana or so. Sarah does like fruit so we headed off to the market last Saturday to see what they had so we would know what to ask Alexandré to buy. And what did they have? Sod all, to be honest. No mangoes, no papaya, no passion fruit, no tree tomatoes. A few bananas, avocados and what I think were oranges (but were all gone when Alexandré went out later). Maybe it is the time of year – hope so for Sarah’s sake.
Computer Fans
Anyone any idea how I go about checking if the fans in my laptop are working properly? It is getting REALLY hot and I can’t hear any noises from inside (of course, I can’t remember if I used to hear any noises from inside before or not!). All suggestions and advice gratefully accepted.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Uganda (and other) Photos
Please note that VSO is in no way connected with or responsible for the content, comments and observations in this blog: these are solely my own in a personal capacity.
OK - the actual blog update will have to wait but here are a load of pictures from Uganda (except for the picture of my real birthday party in Butare on August 13th - pics of official birthday party in Kigali to come).
Birthday dinner at Hotel Faucon, Butare on August 13th: me, Jane Keenan, Mammy, Enock, Jean de la Croix, Andy, Francois (my boss) and Charlotte (his wife)
The two lionesses had eaten so much they had to lie on their backs as their bellies were so distended!!
This guy was actually photographed in Kibuye, Western Rwanda
OK - the actual blog update will have to wait but here are a load of pictures from Uganda (except for the picture of my real birthday party in Butare on August 13th - pics of official birthday party in Kigali to come).
Birthday dinner at Hotel Faucon, Butare on August 13th: me, Jane Keenan, Mammy, Enock, Jean de la Croix, Andy, Francois (my boss) and Charlotte (his wife)
Sausage Tree - elephants love to eat these things because they get high on them!
I was going to caption the right-hand picture 'Male Baboon' but it is pretty damn obvious .....
The two lionesses had eaten so much they had to lie on their backs as their bellies were so distended!!
This guy was actually photographed in Kibuye, Western Rwanda
Monday, August 31, 2009
Part Two is on the way!!
Major problems with Internet at the moment and I want to include a load of photos with the next chunk. Maybe at work tomorrow?? Next instalment will include return from Uganda, my 50th birthday party, Mammy's last few days in Rwanda, my first appearance in print writing on Rwanda and the arrival of the new volunteers, inculding one Gaeilgeoir and my new colleague in Gisagara, Sarah Wragg. So hang in there guys!!
Friday, August 28, 2009
August: Ruairí's Update (Part One)
Please note that VSO is in no way connected with or responsible for the content, comments and observations in this blog: these are solely my own in a personal capacity.
OK – so it has been a while. My mother Catherine arrived on Tuesday 4th of August and there hasn’t really been time since then to update. I can’t pretend I had QUITE as exciting a time as Alfred but here’s a brief outline of what we got up to. (Alfred: Ha ha! Brief! Turn off your phone and lock the door ..... and order a pizza while you are at it).
Tuesday 4th August: Mammy arrives at Kigali airport only 30 minutes late, which is pretty impressive. As it happens, Martine Oliver was on the same plane – pity they hadn’t known this before they flew! Mammy had big problems with immigration because she had not applied for her tourist visa in advance. She pointed out that you were only required to do this if there was a Rwandan Embassy in your country but this distinction seemed to elude them. Finally they said they would allow her to pay for the visa then and there as a special favour. We also discover that Rwandan tourist visas cost $60 and are only valid for 15 days, which is a shorter time than most people come to Rwanda for, so it will have to be renewed or a new one purchased for another $60 dollars. Rip-off city!! Then we get a taxi to Beau Sejour, a nice little hotel near the VSO program Office where we plan to take a few days for Mammy to unwind and recover from the trip before we head off again. The rooms are nice but unfortunately they only had one en suite room, so I am using a shared bathroom which always gets on my nerves – whenever I am in there I always imagine a queue forming outside the door - not conducive to a relaxing shower (or anything else for that matter). (Alfred: of course it turns out that ALL the other rooms are en suite so it is actually Ruairí’s bathroom after all, even if it is down the hall a bit. So no need for all that angst. But hey! – angst for Ruairí is like mud for a rhino; he loves a good wallow from time to time .....). A quick bite in Sol e Luna, local Italian restaurant and then to bed.
Wednesday 5th August and Thursday 6th August: highlights of today were breakfast (great selection of fruit in particular – papaya, pineapple, tree tomatoes, oranges, bananas, passion fruit; also good coffee with hot milk, toast, eggs however you want them. Ham or cheese are an extra RWF1000 (£1) per piece, so avoid! Visited Ivuka Art Gallery and spent a long time there talking to the artists, then Novotel for a drink and then a wander around the city centre. Oh, hang on, that was Thursday wasn’t it? Wednesday was just wandering around the city centre, lunch in Bourbon, then meeting the Karisimbi Climbing Club in Simba (seven of the volunteers were heading off to climb Karisimbi volcano, an incredibly steep mountain in northern Rwanda – Andy, Thom, Els, Chris and Amy were there, Jane and Eric were joining them en route). Nidhi also turned up which was great as I really wanted Mammy to meet her. Or was Simba Thursday? Does it really matter? No. I think it was Thursday night Martine called over to the hotel for a drink and a chat and then we walked up to the Ethiopian restaurant in Kisimenti to meet Christine for dinner. It was a really nice evening (though I still remain to be convinced by those giant Ethiopian pancake-things they serve everything on).
Friday 7th August: got bus to Gitarama, booked into the Hotel Splendid which had easily the most magnificent bathrooms I have ever seen in this country (bar, possibly, the Serena) with just one little flaw – there was no water whatsoever all the time we were there. Called round to Soraya’s house for a chat and then headed back to the Splendid with her and the Polish couch surfer who was also staying there, where we met Moira and Kerry. Hayley and Charlotte turned up later from Hayley’s going-away party, Hayley with a fantastic set of embroidered YWCA duvet cover and pillow cases! Service at the Splendid was as fast and efficient as it was the last time (.i. the worst in Rwanda) and the food was so-so at best.
Saturday 8th August - Monday 10th August: Kibuye! Kibuye is on the shores of Lake Kivu in the east of Rwanda (Alfred: I think you mean ‘west’, don’t you? Hello? Anyone listening?...) and we were staying in a little guesthouse, well, quite a big guesthouse actually, called Bethany, right on the lake. I hadn’t been able to book until the day before as I wasn’t sure how long we’d be in Kigali so they only had the more expensive rooms free (RWF30,000 (€36) each per night). We didn’t do anything while we were there. The internet wasn’t working (doesn’t look like it ever did to be honest) and the one time I went into Kibuye itself the one internet cafe there wasn’t functioning either! So we read and ate and drank and lounged around and generally relaxed. The scenery there is stunning, really beautiful and I’ll certainly be back.
One complication is that there are no car taxis whatsoever, only motos. However I was able to hire a minibus to bring us to Bethany and then hired him to collect us the morning we were leaving. If anyone needs a contact number for that, just let me know! I also ran into two friends there, completely by accident. Robert is an Episcopalian pastor from San Antonio Texas who I had met previously in Kigali where he was attending a series of reconciliation seminars between survivors and perpetrators of the genocide. Now he was on holiday with his wife and two sons – she is a Spellman originally and gave us an amazing account of the Spellman family reunion in Uachtar Ard, Co. Galway some time ago with 500 people from all over the world, each wearing a badge in one of five colours to show which of the five original Spellman brothers and sisters they were descended from (one unfortunate had to wear a two-coloured badge due to two cousins have gotten hitched! Oh the shame!!).
Then I ran into John Simpson from the British Council who was there with his wife Gaudence, his three children (the twins must be just over one year old now) and two friends. John is possibly one of the most impressive people I have met since I came to Rwanda – he has been working in Africa for years and was until recently based in Addis Ababa but the recent developments with the Rwandan government and English meant he eventually had to relocate permanently to Kigali. He has worked with a lot of different VSO volunteers and is a man of enormous ability and even greater patience and it was really nice to see him. He also confirmed he would be free to come to my birthday party in Kigali!!!
Tuesday 11th August: Back to Kigali. Think we stayed in Beau Sejour again (or was this the time we had to stay in St Paul because Beau Sejour was full? Can’t remember). Anyway, it was really a day for travelling and recovering, don’t remember anything else in particular.
Wednesday 12th August: Off to Butare. Booked into the Faucon where an apartment with two bedrooms and a big sitting-room cost RWF30,000 per night. It did smell a little of damp however. We dropped our stuff and headed for Gisagara to visit my house. Mammy met Alexandré, missed Alfred as he has rather pointedly pointed out (Alfred: ‘Pointedly pointed out’? Lose your Thesaurus function on the laptop or what?) and afterwards we ended up in Vestine’s bar for beers with Enock and two other friends of mine from the village (Alfred: such close, dear friends are these that Ruairí can’t actually remember their names!). Then the taxi rolled out from town to collect us and back to the Faucon. It turned out the damp wasn’t actually damp but more likely some sort of broken pipe or leak below the floor and the smell was horrendous. We endured the night but made sure we changed rooms the next day.
Thursday 13th August: My birthday, and the same day of the week as the day I was born too! We had a latish start and then changed bedrooms (the new ones seem OK but you can sense the problem is about to spread here too). Lunch in Matar where Tariq informed me that Hassan was flying back from Beirut that day, so I invited them to my dinner party at the Faucon that night if they were free. And then off to the District Office!! The Executive Secretary had said, very mysteriously, when I applied for leave, that I ABSOLUTELY had to be in the District Office, with my mother, on my birthday, so I had actually rejigged the entire holiday to fit in with this. We arrived out ... and there was virtually no-one there. The Executive Secretary had gone off to Gisenyi, the Mayor was in Kigali and the two vice-mayors were in Kansi and ... somewhere else. My boss was off sick and the chargé, Alexis, was off with one of the vice-mayors. And, as usual, with all the authority figures missing, loads of other people had decided to bunk off. However, some of my friends were there – Antoine, Betty, Etienne, Odette, Augustin and a few others but what I thought was going to be something that would take a big chunk of the day turned out to be 30 minutes and then we headed back to Butare.
Dinner that night was good fun – I had run into my boss Francois on the street that day and had invited him and his wife to come. Enock had come back from the village with us and would also stay the night in the Faucon. Jane Keenan was there and Andy Crow had come down from Gikongoro. South African John was in Kigali but had hoped to join us later (but wasn’t able to in the end). An uninvited guest was Jean de la Croix, a guy I have met a few times in the Motel Ineza and around Butare. We met him on the street as we were heading for the Faucon, so it seemed the right thing to do to invite him (Alfred: No, you were just too embarrassed to actually tell him and you were also intrigued as to what Catherine would make of his French which he speaks rather the way Jackie Healy-Rae speaks English, only faster). It was a really nice evening and Andy even produced a cake at the end of it!! Enock had bought my mother a present for my birthday, a giant wooden map of Rwanda he had had carved with Gisagara District picked out on it especially. It weighs a ton so I suspect it will remain with me for now until I get round to having it shipped!! No sign of Tariq or Hassan (it turned out Hassan’s plane was delayed and he was wrecked by the time he got in) so eventually to bed.
Friday 14th August: back to Kigali, back to Beau Sejour. Popped down to Nyabugogo to buy the tickets to Kampala and then .... hmmm, can’t really remember. I think Mammy rested while I went off to the Program Office to scrounge some books and use the Internet (Alfred: which wasn’t working, of course). I also contacted the Indian restaurant, Handee’s, to confirm the arrangements for my official birthday party on the 222nd.
Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th August: off to Kampala. I always forget it is actually a nine-hour journey, not seven. And the traffic when we got to Kampala was horrendous, every bit as bad as the worst I remember from the last time. Our hotel was miles outside the city and it took half an hour and three phone calls to the hotel to locate it, but it was really nice and, because it is far out, it was quiet and there was no air pollution. So we ordered food (arrived in Rwandan-quick time) and had a few beers. Now, the last time I was here I developed a taste for Nile Special but they didn’t have that, so I went for Tusker malt which was very nice, but later in the holiday I developed a definite taste for Club, which has slightly less alcohol than Nile (and at the rate at which I drink beer, that is an important consideration in the Ugandan sun) and includes maize grits in its list of ingredients. Later we also came across Moonbeam, the only Ugandan beer that can be sold in Germany as it conforms to German beer purity laws (Alfred: there has to be a less evocative way of phrasing that, you being an historian and all). On Sunday we got a taxi into town and wandered around a bit. Mammy bought a really nice dress but after a bit we decided to head back to the hotel. Kampala just isn’t that interesting a city to wander around, to be honest and its being Sunday probably didn’t help! Hung around the hotel, read, showered a few times (ah! The luxury of screaming hot water all day and a needle shower! Awesome! And TV with the World Athletics Championships! And Premiership football! And all for RWF17,000 a night!)
Later that day Mike and Dave from GoSeeAfrica.com turned up to discuss our itinerary – a real Little and Large act: Dave is a big, chunky, confident guy with a strong voice and commanding presence. Mike, who will be our driver is a small, slight quiet-spoken man, a complete contrast. I paid over the cash and they said Mike would be there at 0800 the next morning to head off. He stressed the importance of punctuality on these trips if everything was to go according to plan, which Mammy and I were both pleased to hear! About an hour after they left, I suddenly had a thought. I only knew these guys from an Internet address. I had just handed over $1300 in cash to two guys who I had absolutely no information on or way of contacting other than a web address and a cell phone number. Ah well, hope for the best!
Monday 17th August: And of course I slept in! Mammy had knocked on my door at one stage and I glanced at my Palm pilot to check the time and it was only 0630 so I rolled over again. Of course my Palm pilot was still on Rwandan time and it was actually 0730 so I ended up having an extremely hasty shower and breakfast and off we headed at 0810 (Alfred: because of course Mike did turn up, and promptly too!). We were heading to the Zwiga rhino sanctuary and it took us about five hours to get there. The main problem was speed bumps: wherever the road has been dressed, instead of putting up signs for loose chippings and a speed limit as they would at home, the Ugandan authorities have rightly figured no-one would pay a blind bit of attention, so they create a speed bump EVERY TEN METRES. One stretch of road had so many of these I stopped counting after 100. It was easily the single most irritating motoring experience of my entire life!
The sanctuary was fantastic – nice big rooms, good food, nice staff. There was a Scottish girl called Joanna working there as the accommodation and catering manager, having just started a few days before. When I introduced myself as Ruairí and my mother as Catherine she fell around laughing – her brother and sister are called Ruaraidh and Catherine. Then we went off to track the rhinos. This you do on foot, once you have driven reasonably close to them. I couldn’t believe just how close we actually got to them. At one stage of the males obviously wondered exactly what the hell we were and ambled over for a look. He got within about five metres of us before the ranger shouted something at him in Swahili and he just turned away and ambled back. As you will hear later, we saw lots and lots of animals in Murchison Falls but this was definitely the highpoint for me! Then back to the guesthouse and dinner and more beers and then I stayed up really late chatting to Joanna who, had she been twenty years older I would probably have ended up proposing to (Alfred: I suspect you really mean had YOU been twenty years younger)!
Tuesday 18th August: drove to Murchison Falls, one of the worst drives I have experienced in Africa so far. The main road to Masindi was fine but then we turned off and drove about 80km on a crappy dirt track, part of which had been recently relaid but was still soft and slippy. We lost quite a bit of time as a result (plus a stop at the souvenir shop at the entrance where Mammy bought rhino-related objects) so we skipped our hotel and went straight to the Red Chilli Pepper camp where we grabbed an ultra-quick lunch (Alfred: food wasn’t great but you have to admire the business sense of someone who tells you what on the menu is available for someone who only has thirty minutes to eat!) Then it was off to the boat (our driver, Mike, had warned us to get there early and grab a seat on the left-hand side of the boat and he was right!) for the three-hour cruise to end bottom of Murchison Falls. And it was great – hippos, crocodiles, elephants, kobs, buffalo, storks, kingfishers, fish eagles, egrets, Jackson’s hartebeest, and the falls themselves were fabulous, even if we couldn’t get too close. See the photos!!
Then back to the actual hotel we were staying in and the one and only cock-up of the trip. Because Red Chilli Pepper was booked out, Mike had booked us into the Sambiya River Lodge, a much posher and more expensive place. As a result he had us sharing a room, which is not what we had expected. Now, Mammy and I have often shared a room before and, had we found out earlier in the day it might have been OK but we were tired and fed up and I got really annoyed with poor Mike. However, we had enough sense to realise that it wasn’t that big a deal really, had dinner (which was OK but not the biggest meal I have ever had) and a few beers. Mike turned up again and he said the programme for the next day was to head off at 0600 for the game drive, return for lunch and then visit the top of Murchison Falls in the afternoon. We said we were too tired for that so we would have a late breakfast, do a later game drive and not bother with the Falls. And then off to bed.
And then the heavens opened. It rained and it rained and it rained, an absolute deluge, for hour upon hour. It finally stopped by about 0500 but everything was an absolute quagmire. We got up late, had a late breakfast and lounged around until around 0830. By then the sun had appeared and things were beginning to cheer up. So we headed off to catch the 0900 ferry. After about two miles we came across a lorry stuck in the mud on the road and waited behind it for about forty-five minutes while men arrived on foot to dig it out. After this we headed on again, only to be overtaken by the same lorry which then went and got itself stuck AGAIN on the road in front of us. I was really impressed with Mike’s patience and forbearance. He helped to dig out the lorry a second time, whereupon the driver floored the accelerator, bounced about ten metres down the road and careered into the ditch. Even I had seen that one coming. Mike gave him a sarcastic round of applause and then managed to squeeze our 4x4 past him and on to the ferry.
This meant we ended up getting the 1100 ferry (across to the north side of the river where the game lives) and were running very late but it was an extremely heavily-disguised blessing, as we found out. Everyone who had gone earlier had a miserable time – stuck in mud, cars and buses falling over, animals all sheltering from the rain. By the time we got out, the roads were drying out and all the animals came out to warm up! It was fantastic. Pictures will tell the story better once I get to upload them but the high points were the two lionesses we found comatose under a tree having just eaten half an antelope (one was lying on her back because her stomach was so distended with food it was the only way she could lie down! I swear I could have gone over and poked her and she wouldn’t have done anything) and the Jackson’s hartebeests, a type of antelope with a face straight out of a science fiction novel. Our ranger, Henry, was a mine of information and overall it was an absolutely fantastic day. We also realised what a good driver Mike was, partly through observing what had happened to other drivers who were not similarly blessed!
OK - looks like the photos will have to wait until I am in Kigali tomorrow and can get a reasonable Internet signal!!!
OK – so it has been a while. My mother Catherine arrived on Tuesday 4th of August and there hasn’t really been time since then to update. I can’t pretend I had QUITE as exciting a time as Alfred but here’s a brief outline of what we got up to. (Alfred: Ha ha! Brief! Turn off your phone and lock the door ..... and order a pizza while you are at it).
Tuesday 4th August: Mammy arrives at Kigali airport only 30 minutes late, which is pretty impressive. As it happens, Martine Oliver was on the same plane – pity they hadn’t known this before they flew! Mammy had big problems with immigration because she had not applied for her tourist visa in advance. She pointed out that you were only required to do this if there was a Rwandan Embassy in your country but this distinction seemed to elude them. Finally they said they would allow her to pay for the visa then and there as a special favour. We also discover that Rwandan tourist visas cost $60 and are only valid for 15 days, which is a shorter time than most people come to Rwanda for, so it will have to be renewed or a new one purchased for another $60 dollars. Rip-off city!! Then we get a taxi to Beau Sejour, a nice little hotel near the VSO program Office where we plan to take a few days for Mammy to unwind and recover from the trip before we head off again. The rooms are nice but unfortunately they only had one en suite room, so I am using a shared bathroom which always gets on my nerves – whenever I am in there I always imagine a queue forming outside the door - not conducive to a relaxing shower (or anything else for that matter). (Alfred: of course it turns out that ALL the other rooms are en suite so it is actually Ruairí’s bathroom after all, even if it is down the hall a bit. So no need for all that angst. But hey! – angst for Ruairí is like mud for a rhino; he loves a good wallow from time to time .....). A quick bite in Sol e Luna, local Italian restaurant and then to bed.
Wednesday 5th August and Thursday 6th August: highlights of today were breakfast (great selection of fruit in particular – papaya, pineapple, tree tomatoes, oranges, bananas, passion fruit; also good coffee with hot milk, toast, eggs however you want them. Ham or cheese are an extra RWF1000 (£1) per piece, so avoid! Visited Ivuka Art Gallery and spent a long time there talking to the artists, then Novotel for a drink and then a wander around the city centre. Oh, hang on, that was Thursday wasn’t it? Wednesday was just wandering around the city centre, lunch in Bourbon, then meeting the Karisimbi Climbing Club in Simba (seven of the volunteers were heading off to climb Karisimbi volcano, an incredibly steep mountain in northern Rwanda – Andy, Thom, Els, Chris and Amy were there, Jane and Eric were joining them en route). Nidhi also turned up which was great as I really wanted Mammy to meet her. Or was Simba Thursday? Does it really matter? No. I think it was Thursday night Martine called over to the hotel for a drink and a chat and then we walked up to the Ethiopian restaurant in Kisimenti to meet Christine for dinner. It was a really nice evening (though I still remain to be convinced by those giant Ethiopian pancake-things they serve everything on).
Friday 7th August: got bus to Gitarama, booked into the Hotel Splendid which had easily the most magnificent bathrooms I have ever seen in this country (bar, possibly, the Serena) with just one little flaw – there was no water whatsoever all the time we were there. Called round to Soraya’s house for a chat and then headed back to the Splendid with her and the Polish couch surfer who was also staying there, where we met Moira and Kerry. Hayley and Charlotte turned up later from Hayley’s going-away party, Hayley with a fantastic set of embroidered YWCA duvet cover and pillow cases! Service at the Splendid was as fast and efficient as it was the last time (.i. the worst in Rwanda) and the food was so-so at best.
Saturday 8th August - Monday 10th August: Kibuye! Kibuye is on the shores of Lake Kivu in the east of Rwanda (Alfred: I think you mean ‘west’, don’t you? Hello? Anyone listening?...) and we were staying in a little guesthouse, well, quite a big guesthouse actually, called Bethany, right on the lake. I hadn’t been able to book until the day before as I wasn’t sure how long we’d be in Kigali so they only had the more expensive rooms free (RWF30,000 (€36) each per night). We didn’t do anything while we were there. The internet wasn’t working (doesn’t look like it ever did to be honest) and the one time I went into Kibuye itself the one internet cafe there wasn’t functioning either! So we read and ate and drank and lounged around and generally relaxed. The scenery there is stunning, really beautiful and I’ll certainly be back.
One complication is that there are no car taxis whatsoever, only motos. However I was able to hire a minibus to bring us to Bethany and then hired him to collect us the morning we were leaving. If anyone needs a contact number for that, just let me know! I also ran into two friends there, completely by accident. Robert is an Episcopalian pastor from San Antonio Texas who I had met previously in Kigali where he was attending a series of reconciliation seminars between survivors and perpetrators of the genocide. Now he was on holiday with his wife and two sons – she is a Spellman originally and gave us an amazing account of the Spellman family reunion in Uachtar Ard, Co. Galway some time ago with 500 people from all over the world, each wearing a badge in one of five colours to show which of the five original Spellman brothers and sisters they were descended from (one unfortunate had to wear a two-coloured badge due to two cousins have gotten hitched! Oh the shame!!).
Then I ran into John Simpson from the British Council who was there with his wife Gaudence, his three children (the twins must be just over one year old now) and two friends. John is possibly one of the most impressive people I have met since I came to Rwanda – he has been working in Africa for years and was until recently based in Addis Ababa but the recent developments with the Rwandan government and English meant he eventually had to relocate permanently to Kigali. He has worked with a lot of different VSO volunteers and is a man of enormous ability and even greater patience and it was really nice to see him. He also confirmed he would be free to come to my birthday party in Kigali!!!
Tuesday 11th August: Back to Kigali. Think we stayed in Beau Sejour again (or was this the time we had to stay in St Paul because Beau Sejour was full? Can’t remember). Anyway, it was really a day for travelling and recovering, don’t remember anything else in particular.
Wednesday 12th August: Off to Butare. Booked into the Faucon where an apartment with two bedrooms and a big sitting-room cost RWF30,000 per night. It did smell a little of damp however. We dropped our stuff and headed for Gisagara to visit my house. Mammy met Alexandré, missed Alfred as he has rather pointedly pointed out (Alfred: ‘Pointedly pointed out’? Lose your Thesaurus function on the laptop or what?) and afterwards we ended up in Vestine’s bar for beers with Enock and two other friends of mine from the village (Alfred: such close, dear friends are these that Ruairí can’t actually remember their names!). Then the taxi rolled out from town to collect us and back to the Faucon. It turned out the damp wasn’t actually damp but more likely some sort of broken pipe or leak below the floor and the smell was horrendous. We endured the night but made sure we changed rooms the next day.
Thursday 13th August: My birthday, and the same day of the week as the day I was born too! We had a latish start and then changed bedrooms (the new ones seem OK but you can sense the problem is about to spread here too). Lunch in Matar where Tariq informed me that Hassan was flying back from Beirut that day, so I invited them to my dinner party at the Faucon that night if they were free. And then off to the District Office!! The Executive Secretary had said, very mysteriously, when I applied for leave, that I ABSOLUTELY had to be in the District Office, with my mother, on my birthday, so I had actually rejigged the entire holiday to fit in with this. We arrived out ... and there was virtually no-one there. The Executive Secretary had gone off to Gisenyi, the Mayor was in Kigali and the two vice-mayors were in Kansi and ... somewhere else. My boss was off sick and the chargé, Alexis, was off with one of the vice-mayors. And, as usual, with all the authority figures missing, loads of other people had decided to bunk off. However, some of my friends were there – Antoine, Betty, Etienne, Odette, Augustin and a few others but what I thought was going to be something that would take a big chunk of the day turned out to be 30 minutes and then we headed back to Butare.
Dinner that night was good fun – I had run into my boss Francois on the street that day and had invited him and his wife to come. Enock had come back from the village with us and would also stay the night in the Faucon. Jane Keenan was there and Andy Crow had come down from Gikongoro. South African John was in Kigali but had hoped to join us later (but wasn’t able to in the end). An uninvited guest was Jean de la Croix, a guy I have met a few times in the Motel Ineza and around Butare. We met him on the street as we were heading for the Faucon, so it seemed the right thing to do to invite him (Alfred: No, you were just too embarrassed to actually tell him and you were also intrigued as to what Catherine would make of his French which he speaks rather the way Jackie Healy-Rae speaks English, only faster). It was a really nice evening and Andy even produced a cake at the end of it!! Enock had bought my mother a present for my birthday, a giant wooden map of Rwanda he had had carved with Gisagara District picked out on it especially. It weighs a ton so I suspect it will remain with me for now until I get round to having it shipped!! No sign of Tariq or Hassan (it turned out Hassan’s plane was delayed and he was wrecked by the time he got in) so eventually to bed.
Friday 14th August: back to Kigali, back to Beau Sejour. Popped down to Nyabugogo to buy the tickets to Kampala and then .... hmmm, can’t really remember. I think Mammy rested while I went off to the Program Office to scrounge some books and use the Internet (Alfred: which wasn’t working, of course). I also contacted the Indian restaurant, Handee’s, to confirm the arrangements for my official birthday party on the 222nd.
Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th August: off to Kampala. I always forget it is actually a nine-hour journey, not seven. And the traffic when we got to Kampala was horrendous, every bit as bad as the worst I remember from the last time. Our hotel was miles outside the city and it took half an hour and three phone calls to the hotel to locate it, but it was really nice and, because it is far out, it was quiet and there was no air pollution. So we ordered food (arrived in Rwandan-quick time) and had a few beers. Now, the last time I was here I developed a taste for Nile Special but they didn’t have that, so I went for Tusker malt which was very nice, but later in the holiday I developed a definite taste for Club, which has slightly less alcohol than Nile (and at the rate at which I drink beer, that is an important consideration in the Ugandan sun) and includes maize grits in its list of ingredients. Later we also came across Moonbeam, the only Ugandan beer that can be sold in Germany as it conforms to German beer purity laws (Alfred: there has to be a less evocative way of phrasing that, you being an historian and all). On Sunday we got a taxi into town and wandered around a bit. Mammy bought a really nice dress but after a bit we decided to head back to the hotel. Kampala just isn’t that interesting a city to wander around, to be honest and its being Sunday probably didn’t help! Hung around the hotel, read, showered a few times (ah! The luxury of screaming hot water all day and a needle shower! Awesome! And TV with the World Athletics Championships! And Premiership football! And all for RWF17,000 a night!)
Later that day Mike and Dave from GoSeeAfrica.com turned up to discuss our itinerary – a real Little and Large act: Dave is a big, chunky, confident guy with a strong voice and commanding presence. Mike, who will be our driver is a small, slight quiet-spoken man, a complete contrast. I paid over the cash and they said Mike would be there at 0800 the next morning to head off. He stressed the importance of punctuality on these trips if everything was to go according to plan, which Mammy and I were both pleased to hear! About an hour after they left, I suddenly had a thought. I only knew these guys from an Internet address. I had just handed over $1300 in cash to two guys who I had absolutely no information on or way of contacting other than a web address and a cell phone number. Ah well, hope for the best!
Monday 17th August: And of course I slept in! Mammy had knocked on my door at one stage and I glanced at my Palm pilot to check the time and it was only 0630 so I rolled over again. Of course my Palm pilot was still on Rwandan time and it was actually 0730 so I ended up having an extremely hasty shower and breakfast and off we headed at 0810 (Alfred: because of course Mike did turn up, and promptly too!). We were heading to the Zwiga rhino sanctuary and it took us about five hours to get there. The main problem was speed bumps: wherever the road has been dressed, instead of putting up signs for loose chippings and a speed limit as they would at home, the Ugandan authorities have rightly figured no-one would pay a blind bit of attention, so they create a speed bump EVERY TEN METRES. One stretch of road had so many of these I stopped counting after 100. It was easily the single most irritating motoring experience of my entire life!
The sanctuary was fantastic – nice big rooms, good food, nice staff. There was a Scottish girl called Joanna working there as the accommodation and catering manager, having just started a few days before. When I introduced myself as Ruairí and my mother as Catherine she fell around laughing – her brother and sister are called Ruaraidh and Catherine. Then we went off to track the rhinos. This you do on foot, once you have driven reasonably close to them. I couldn’t believe just how close we actually got to them. At one stage of the males obviously wondered exactly what the hell we were and ambled over for a look. He got within about five metres of us before the ranger shouted something at him in Swahili and he just turned away and ambled back. As you will hear later, we saw lots and lots of animals in Murchison Falls but this was definitely the highpoint for me! Then back to the guesthouse and dinner and more beers and then I stayed up really late chatting to Joanna who, had she been twenty years older I would probably have ended up proposing to (Alfred: I suspect you really mean had YOU been twenty years younger)!
Tuesday 18th August: drove to Murchison Falls, one of the worst drives I have experienced in Africa so far. The main road to Masindi was fine but then we turned off and drove about 80km on a crappy dirt track, part of which had been recently relaid but was still soft and slippy. We lost quite a bit of time as a result (plus a stop at the souvenir shop at the entrance where Mammy bought rhino-related objects) so we skipped our hotel and went straight to the Red Chilli Pepper camp where we grabbed an ultra-quick lunch (Alfred: food wasn’t great but you have to admire the business sense of someone who tells you what on the menu is available for someone who only has thirty minutes to eat!) Then it was off to the boat (our driver, Mike, had warned us to get there early and grab a seat on the left-hand side of the boat and he was right!) for the three-hour cruise to end bottom of Murchison Falls. And it was great – hippos, crocodiles, elephants, kobs, buffalo, storks, kingfishers, fish eagles, egrets, Jackson’s hartebeest, and the falls themselves were fabulous, even if we couldn’t get too close. See the photos!!
Then back to the actual hotel we were staying in and the one and only cock-up of the trip. Because Red Chilli Pepper was booked out, Mike had booked us into the Sambiya River Lodge, a much posher and more expensive place. As a result he had us sharing a room, which is not what we had expected. Now, Mammy and I have often shared a room before and, had we found out earlier in the day it might have been OK but we were tired and fed up and I got really annoyed with poor Mike. However, we had enough sense to realise that it wasn’t that big a deal really, had dinner (which was OK but not the biggest meal I have ever had) and a few beers. Mike turned up again and he said the programme for the next day was to head off at 0600 for the game drive, return for lunch and then visit the top of Murchison Falls in the afternoon. We said we were too tired for that so we would have a late breakfast, do a later game drive and not bother with the Falls. And then off to bed.
And then the heavens opened. It rained and it rained and it rained, an absolute deluge, for hour upon hour. It finally stopped by about 0500 but everything was an absolute quagmire. We got up late, had a late breakfast and lounged around until around 0830. By then the sun had appeared and things were beginning to cheer up. So we headed off to catch the 0900 ferry. After about two miles we came across a lorry stuck in the mud on the road and waited behind it for about forty-five minutes while men arrived on foot to dig it out. After this we headed on again, only to be overtaken by the same lorry which then went and got itself stuck AGAIN on the road in front of us. I was really impressed with Mike’s patience and forbearance. He helped to dig out the lorry a second time, whereupon the driver floored the accelerator, bounced about ten metres down the road and careered into the ditch. Even I had seen that one coming. Mike gave him a sarcastic round of applause and then managed to squeeze our 4x4 past him and on to the ferry.
This meant we ended up getting the 1100 ferry (across to the north side of the river where the game lives) and were running very late but it was an extremely heavily-disguised blessing, as we found out. Everyone who had gone earlier had a miserable time – stuck in mud, cars and buses falling over, animals all sheltering from the rain. By the time we got out, the roads were drying out and all the animals came out to warm up! It was fantastic. Pictures will tell the story better once I get to upload them but the high points were the two lionesses we found comatose under a tree having just eaten half an antelope (one was lying on her back because her stomach was so distended with food it was the only way she could lie down! I swear I could have gone over and poked her and she wouldn’t have done anything) and the Jackson’s hartebeests, a type of antelope with a face straight out of a science fiction novel. Our ranger, Henry, was a mine of information and overall it was an absolutely fantastic day. We also realised what a good driver Mike was, partly through observing what had happened to other drivers who were not similarly blessed!
OK - looks like the photos will have to wait until I am in Kigali tomorrow and can get a reasonable Internet signal!!!
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Alfred's August Update
Please note that VSO is in no way connected with or responsible for the content, comments and observations in this blog: these are solely my own in a personal capacity.
August: Alfred’s Top Ten Moments.
So, for August Ruairí went off with his mother, visiting exotic parts of Rwanda and Uganda, animal trekking and lounging around amid beautiful scenery, drinking beer and meeting loads of interesting people. At the moment he is compiling his Top Ten Moments from his mother’s visit.
Needless to say, he didn’t bring me with him. But it didn’t really matter – I don’t need Ruairí to have a good time and keep myself occupied. I had a FABULOUS time here in Gisagara on my own. So here are my top ten moments from the last month:
The day a lorry went past
This was around eight o’clock in the morning. At first I could hear a roaring sound in the distance, which gradually got nearer. Then I realised it was a lorry. It was a big Chinese-made lorry with bad suspension, travelling very slowly and spewing out a thick dark cloud of foul-smelling, sticky diesel fumes. Of course, I couldn’t actually SEE it from the bedroom but trust me, the description is accurate. It slowed as it passed the house using the traditional Rwandan method of slowing a vehicle of changing down gear without using the clutch or the brake while the gears wail like banshees (plural, though I don’t know if banshees congregate in groups as a rule). Gradually, the noise faded away and the usual silence descended, broken only by the melodic expansion and contraction of the tin roof and the wailing of the goat next door waiting to be turned into brochettes and meatballs.
The day it rained
It’s not supposed to rain at this time of year. It did one day. Amazing.
The day of Catherine’s visit
Ruairí’s mother Catherine came to visit on the 12th August. I was really really looking forward to this, I can tell you, and not just to break the monotony (‘What monotony?’, I hear you cry!). Anyway, she and Ruairí arrived and I could hear her being introduced to Alexandré and then shown around the house. As the door to the bedroom opened, the trousers Ruairí had left on the back of my chair slid down and covered my face (and most of the rest of me as well). I heard Ruairí say: ‘And this is my bedroom’ and then they were gone. She never even noticed me. Not that I care, of course. If she had raised her eldest son to be a little more thoughtful and caring, I WOULDN’T BE STUCK IN THIS BLOODY ROOM ALL THE TIME!!!!!
The day I almost saw a cockroach
One day I saw a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye. What was it? Was it a cockroach? I had never seen a cockroach in or near the house (and neither had Ruairí as I knew I would have heard ALL about it if he did!). Whatever it was, it was scuttling backwards and forwards about the floor in a rather aimless and totally silent manner. My brain was a mass of fevered speculation but cockroach was my definite hunch. It zoomed left, and then right, then circled a bit ... and then rose straight up into the air and hovered there. A small dustball caught in the breeze. But it COULD have been a cockroach ....
The day I invented a New Unified Field Theory
They say an infinte number of chimpanzees with an infinite number of typewriters (presumably laptops these days) would eventually write all the great works of literature. So, I thought to myself, one smarter-than-average bear with an awful lot of time on his hands should be able to achieve something. So I decided to invent a new Unified Field Theory, on the basis that I might as well do something useful. It took about three days and, apart from the fact that I wasn’t able to reconcile it with some aspects of Superstring Theory (I always seem to end up with one dimension extra, like an extra sock after doing the washing) I think it works pretty well.
The day I chatted with Jeremy the Bat
Jeremy’s accidental excursion into Ruairi’s bedroom some months ago seems to have given him notions. For some reason, he seems to think that falling out of the attic and geting trapped under a bed and finally being bundled into a tupperware container and thrown over a fence has given him a superior status among the bat community. Anyway, he has taken to popping down when Ruairí is not around and chatting in a ‘Hail-fellow-well-met’ kind of way, long and insanely boring monologues about how none of the other bats understand him and how limited their experience of the ‘real’ world is (.i. the inside of a lunchbox). Last night I got three hours on the different ‘crunchinesses’ (his word, I assure you) of the different types of insects he eats. I suspect the others bats are encouraging this behaviour just to get rid of his company for a couple of hours and get a bit of sleep.
The day I listened to Alexandré’s radio
Alexandré had his radio on today. To be fair, he has it on every day and usually at full blast. Ruairí is always muttering to himself about this (not that he has muttered anything to Alexandré so far, which might be a more positive step to take in the circumstances) but I don’t think Ruairí realises that the radio is old and the volume control faulty, so it’s either whisper or shout.
Anyway, this day Alexandré was in a less pious mood than normal. Usually we get Mass, then hymns, then a religious phone-in programme (funny how you can tell, even when you don’t understand any of the language, that a programme has a religious theme) but today he was listening to little bits of mass and then flicking to a pop music channel. As the channel was playing gangsta rap, it made for a rather alarming (if entertaining) sequence of contrasts, with the sacrifice of the eucharist being intercut with various graphic accounts of that the singer was intending to do to anyone of his friends (who all appeared to have had carnal relations with their mothers) if they happened to even look at any of the female dogs he was surrounded with. There were also constant mentions of pirates’ plunder for some reason (I presume that’s what he meant by ‘booty’) and his close homosexual friends (‘homies’) and then it’s back to praying for Pope Benedict, the usual stuff about bread and tresspassing and a lot of ‘Alleluias’ thrown in for good measure.
The day I had an Itchy nose
Teddy-bears aren’t supposed to get itchy. If we did, we should be able to move our arms!!!!!
The day there was a bird on the roof
OK, OK – not a day passes that there isn’t a bird or birds on the roof, usually those big magpie-coloured crows. The funny thing is that, no matter how often it happens, you can never quite believe that it is just a bird making that incredible racket. I have lost track of how often I have heard Ruairí unlocking the front door and rushing out into the garden, muttering: ‘That CAN’T be just a bloody bird, can it?’. And it always it.
The day nothing happened at all
One day, I was sitting on the chair in the bedroom (as I always do). The hours slipped past and, as they did, I realised that absolutely nothing was happening. As morning slipped into afternoon, I began to wonder, with increasing excitement, whether we might actually be about to have a day where ABSOLUTELY NOTHING happened. As the hours slipped by, my excitement mounted. At any moment I feared Alexandré might switch on his radio, a fly might enter the room, someone might call to the door, that something would happen to spoil the perfection. As darkness fell, I was biting my non-existent nails with the tension. And then, there it was! The day was over and NOTHING HAD HAPPENED. I resisted the urge to run around the room shouting with glee (as a teddy-bear running around the room shouting with glee would very definitely BE SOMETHING). Incredible ... only the one hundred and eighty-seventh time this has happened to me since I came to Rwanda and got stuck in this bloody bedroom!
August: Alfred’s Top Ten Moments.
So, for August Ruairí went off with his mother, visiting exotic parts of Rwanda and Uganda, animal trekking and lounging around amid beautiful scenery, drinking beer and meeting loads of interesting people. At the moment he is compiling his Top Ten Moments from his mother’s visit.
Needless to say, he didn’t bring me with him. But it didn’t really matter – I don’t need Ruairí to have a good time and keep myself occupied. I had a FABULOUS time here in Gisagara on my own. So here are my top ten moments from the last month:
The day a lorry went past
This was around eight o’clock in the morning. At first I could hear a roaring sound in the distance, which gradually got nearer. Then I realised it was a lorry. It was a big Chinese-made lorry with bad suspension, travelling very slowly and spewing out a thick dark cloud of foul-smelling, sticky diesel fumes. Of course, I couldn’t actually SEE it from the bedroom but trust me, the description is accurate. It slowed as it passed the house using the traditional Rwandan method of slowing a vehicle of changing down gear without using the clutch or the brake while the gears wail like banshees (plural, though I don’t know if banshees congregate in groups as a rule). Gradually, the noise faded away and the usual silence descended, broken only by the melodic expansion and contraction of the tin roof and the wailing of the goat next door waiting to be turned into brochettes and meatballs.
The day it rained
It’s not supposed to rain at this time of year. It did one day. Amazing.
The day of Catherine’s visit
Ruairí’s mother Catherine came to visit on the 12th August. I was really really looking forward to this, I can tell you, and not just to break the monotony (‘What monotony?’, I hear you cry!). Anyway, she and Ruairí arrived and I could hear her being introduced to Alexandré and then shown around the house. As the door to the bedroom opened, the trousers Ruairí had left on the back of my chair slid down and covered my face (and most of the rest of me as well). I heard Ruairí say: ‘And this is my bedroom’ and then they were gone. She never even noticed me. Not that I care, of course. If she had raised her eldest son to be a little more thoughtful and caring, I WOULDN’T BE STUCK IN THIS BLOODY ROOM ALL THE TIME!!!!!
The day I almost saw a cockroach
One day I saw a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye. What was it? Was it a cockroach? I had never seen a cockroach in or near the house (and neither had Ruairí as I knew I would have heard ALL about it if he did!). Whatever it was, it was scuttling backwards and forwards about the floor in a rather aimless and totally silent manner. My brain was a mass of fevered speculation but cockroach was my definite hunch. It zoomed left, and then right, then circled a bit ... and then rose straight up into the air and hovered there. A small dustball caught in the breeze. But it COULD have been a cockroach ....
The day I invented a New Unified Field Theory
They say an infinte number of chimpanzees with an infinite number of typewriters (presumably laptops these days) would eventually write all the great works of literature. So, I thought to myself, one smarter-than-average bear with an awful lot of time on his hands should be able to achieve something. So I decided to invent a new Unified Field Theory, on the basis that I might as well do something useful. It took about three days and, apart from the fact that I wasn’t able to reconcile it with some aspects of Superstring Theory (I always seem to end up with one dimension extra, like an extra sock after doing the washing) I think it works pretty well.
The day I chatted with Jeremy the Bat
Jeremy’s accidental excursion into Ruairi’s bedroom some months ago seems to have given him notions. For some reason, he seems to think that falling out of the attic and geting trapped under a bed and finally being bundled into a tupperware container and thrown over a fence has given him a superior status among the bat community. Anyway, he has taken to popping down when Ruairí is not around and chatting in a ‘Hail-fellow-well-met’ kind of way, long and insanely boring monologues about how none of the other bats understand him and how limited their experience of the ‘real’ world is (.i. the inside of a lunchbox). Last night I got three hours on the different ‘crunchinesses’ (his word, I assure you) of the different types of insects he eats. I suspect the others bats are encouraging this behaviour just to get rid of his company for a couple of hours and get a bit of sleep.
The day I listened to Alexandré’s radio
Alexandré had his radio on today. To be fair, he has it on every day and usually at full blast. Ruairí is always muttering to himself about this (not that he has muttered anything to Alexandré so far, which might be a more positive step to take in the circumstances) but I don’t think Ruairí realises that the radio is old and the volume control faulty, so it’s either whisper or shout.
Anyway, this day Alexandré was in a less pious mood than normal. Usually we get Mass, then hymns, then a religious phone-in programme (funny how you can tell, even when you don’t understand any of the language, that a programme has a religious theme) but today he was listening to little bits of mass and then flicking to a pop music channel. As the channel was playing gangsta rap, it made for a rather alarming (if entertaining) sequence of contrasts, with the sacrifice of the eucharist being intercut with various graphic accounts of that the singer was intending to do to anyone of his friends (who all appeared to have had carnal relations with their mothers) if they happened to even look at any of the female dogs he was surrounded with. There were also constant mentions of pirates’ plunder for some reason (I presume that’s what he meant by ‘booty’) and his close homosexual friends (‘homies’) and then it’s back to praying for Pope Benedict, the usual stuff about bread and tresspassing and a lot of ‘Alleluias’ thrown in for good measure.
The day I had an Itchy nose
Teddy-bears aren’t supposed to get itchy. If we did, we should be able to move our arms!!!!!
The day there was a bird on the roof
OK, OK – not a day passes that there isn’t a bird or birds on the roof, usually those big magpie-coloured crows. The funny thing is that, no matter how often it happens, you can never quite believe that it is just a bird making that incredible racket. I have lost track of how often I have heard Ruairí unlocking the front door and rushing out into the garden, muttering: ‘That CAN’T be just a bloody bird, can it?’. And it always it.
The day nothing happened at all
One day, I was sitting on the chair in the bedroom (as I always do). The hours slipped past and, as they did, I realised that absolutely nothing was happening. As morning slipped into afternoon, I began to wonder, with increasing excitement, whether we might actually be about to have a day where ABSOLUTELY NOTHING happened. As the hours slipped by, my excitement mounted. At any moment I feared Alexandré might switch on his radio, a fly might enter the room, someone might call to the door, that something would happen to spoil the perfection. As darkness fell, I was biting my non-existent nails with the tension. And then, there it was! The day was over and NOTHING HAD HAPPENED. I resisted the urge to run around the room shouting with glee (as a teddy-bear running around the room shouting with glee would very definitely BE SOMETHING). Incredible ... only the one hundred and eighty-seventh time this has happened to me since I came to Rwanda and got stuck in this bloody bedroom!
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Oh dear!
Please note that VSO is in no way connected with or responsible for the content, comments and observations in this blog: these are solely my own in a personal capacity.
Hmmm .... maybe Alfred did have a point after all (about my tardiness in doing updates, not the other rubbish he ahs been on about). Eighteen days since the last post and the magnitude of the task facing me in updating continues to daunt me. Basically, my mother arrived on August 4th and we have been exploring Rwanda and Uganda since then. I truned fifty on August, had a nice dinner on my real birthday in Butare, then went off to Uganda for six days safari and returned to Kigali for my 'official' birthday party on Saturday 22nd (yesterday) which was really great - 45 people turned up at Handee's restaurant and we had a great time.
So that is it in a tiny nutshell, concise and to-the-point enough to satisfy even Alfred (Alfred: You'd think so, wouldn't you! Just wait, my turn will come .......). Specific details will follow at some stage along with some photos from Kibuye, Uganda and elsewhere.
Hmmm .... maybe Alfred did have a point after all (about my tardiness in doing updates, not the other rubbish he ahs been on about). Eighteen days since the last post and the magnitude of the task facing me in updating continues to daunt me. Basically, my mother arrived on August 4th and we have been exploring Rwanda and Uganda since then. I truned fifty on August, had a nice dinner on my real birthday in Butare, then went off to Uganda for six days safari and returned to Kigali for my 'official' birthday party on Saturday 22nd (yesterday) which was really great - 45 people turned up at Handee's restaurant and we had a great time.
So that is it in a tiny nutshell, concise and to-the-point enough to satisfy even Alfred (Alfred: You'd think so, wouldn't you! Just wait, my turn will come .......). Specific details will follow at some stage along with some photos from Kibuye, Uganda and elsewhere.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Apologies
Please note that VSO is in no way connected with or responsible for the content, comments and observations in this blog: these are solely my own in a personal capacity.
If Alfred's lurid exaggerations of my recent activities were designed to drag my attention back to my blog, he has succeeded. Suffice to say that, buried back in my bedroom in Gisagara, his over-active imagination has little else to do except fasten on small, relatively inconsequential happenings and inflate them into dramas of Hindenberg-like proportions. More details soon. Meanwhile my mother has arrived!!!!
If Alfred's lurid exaggerations of my recent activities were designed to drag my attention back to my blog, he has succeeded. Suffice to say that, buried back in my bedroom in Gisagara, his over-active imagination has little else to do except fasten on small, relatively inconsequential happenings and inflate them into dramas of Hindenberg-like proportions. More details soon. Meanwhile my mother has arrived!!!!
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Please note that VSO is in no way connected with or responsible for the content, comments and observations in this blog: these are solely my own in a personal capacity.
Alfred: that's it, I've had as much as I can take. Nag nag nag but still no result, just pathetic excuses about having to 'work' all the time and how the MTN modem now seems to not work more often than it does. I mean, we are now actually getting emails from people complaining about this (sorry Mike, sorry Jennifer, sorry EVERYONE!).
So what has been going on? Well, life HAS been quite hectic, it has to be said. First of all we had Ruairí's first full-scale sector training session for all the directors and bursars of the Ndora sector (fifteen in all). It has only taken him seven months to get around to this so one-and-a-half cheers all round, eh. Topics were Strategic Planning and How to Do it, Classroom Inspection Techniques, General School Administration and a feedback session on his inspections of all the schools. Two days before the session he decided (over his director’s protests) that he was doing the whole thing in French rather than English on the fairly flimsy basis that that was the only way anyone was going to understand anything. In other words, he thought they were more likely to understand him doing a SWOT analysis in French than in English (or analyse AFOM as it is in French).
It actually went OK as one or two of the directors have good enough English to help him out when he got stuck. However, he tried to cram far too much into just one four-hour training session (as they refreshingly bluntly told him on the evaluation forms). At least he got the chargé to join in the training with the idea that he will do more and more of it as time goes by. Also, glancing at the last blog entry, the parents were not invited in the end, thank goodness, as most of them do not speak either French or English.
Other than that, we had the wonderful occasion that was Gitfest 2009. Hayley and Thom decided to make up for the fact that we were all missing out on the music festivals back at home (not that Ruairí has actually ever attended one in his life!) and held our very own one in Gitarama last weekend. Ruairí went as Boy George, wearing the caftan and hat he bought in Nairobi airport and spent DAYS learning off the words to Karma Chameleon as he thought everyone was going to have to perform. Pretty weird lyrics they are too (‘Desert loving in your eyes all the way’ – WTF?). Anyway, everyone came as some sort of music festival-associated character (hen party, Bruce Springsteen, tarot card readers, hippies, peace protesters, whatever – see pictures on Ruairí’s facebook page http://www.facebook.com/notifications.php#/album.php?aid=129926&id=526238416). Anyway it was a great occasion and well done to Hayley, Thom and Charlotte and everyone else involved.
Ruairí was staying with Moira and Kerrie in their new houses in Kavumu and the three of them plus Amalia went for breakfast in the Hotel Splendid in Gitarama. You’d think everyone would be used to the abysmally slow service in Rwanda by now, but this really took the biscuit. I mean, it was only breakfast. Ruairí got really cross with the waitress which is not his usual style (and was a bit inappropriate really as none of the things were really her fault) but the hotel (and remember this is a hotel, not just a little restaurant) had no milk, no butter or Blue Band, no fruit and I suspect no eggs because the two omelettes arrived forty minutes after Kerrie and Ruairí got their toasted sandwiches. The entire thing took one hour and forty five minutes for tea and coffee, two toasted sandwiches and two omelettes, some bread and chopped fruit. The hotel looked really nice and the rooms are very reasonable but ….
Actually, another reason for his recent failure to update is that he is writing a column for the Irish language magazine COMHAR – the first should be appearing any day now in the August edition and he just fired off the second one. I suspect that is where his creative instincts have been leading him – probably means I am going to have to take over the blog entirely for the foreseeable future. I’m not really sure why this is so as he is just recycling in Irish all the stuff he wrote here in the first place, with maybe a little more political stuff (figuring it’s safer to write that stuff in Irish!). Anyway, if you are interested, go out and start buying copies of COMHAR or better still take out a subscription so all the money actually goes to the magazine!
Discretion prevents me from commenting in too much detail on Ruairí’s entry into the world of Rwandan dating and night clubs: suffice to say that there is actually something quite funny about watching someone climbing out of a car wreck only to leap into another speeding obviously-unsuitable vehicle. Actually, maybe watching the car wreck in progress is even funnier. Not sure – for me, this is definitely going to remain a spectator sport but I’m not sure I am going to be able to convince Ruairí of that. I can’t even convince him that dating your ex-girlfriend’s best friend immediately after her is a questionable tactic at best. It is also interesting (to say the least) watching a middle-aged previously married white guy who has absolutely no intention of getting married again interacting with these Rwandan women whose ONLY aim is to get married. At least he has finally discovered the delights of KBC, Kigali’s premier (and possibly only) night-club. I wonder whether the impending approach of his fiftieth birthday is anything to do with it all ……
And that’s about it for now. Looking back on all that I can maybe see a bit better why there has been a hiatus but I suspect it will be me for the time being anyway. No photos this time as the Internet café is running on Internet Explorer minus three and can cope with very little. I am having to type all this in Word and then cut and paste or else there would be no fadas on Ruairí’s name (and we all know how ratty he gets about that even though he pretends he doesn’t care when people misspell his name). His mother arrives this evening and they head off to visit the parts of Rwanda Ruairí has not yet explored – which is about 99% of it; real stick-in-the-mud here, folks. Will keep you posted!!
Oh, me? What do you think – still sitting on the chair in the bedroom watching the bats, geckoes and other assorted wildlife gamboling around while his nibs is away. And now we have cicadas in the attic – merciful Lord, the noise they make, like a set of uilleann pipes gone horribly wrong.
**********************************************************************************
Keats and Chapman found themselves at a loose end one summer and, rather than their customary focus on literature and the likes, decided to adopt new hobbies to pass the time. Chapman decided to go in for bird breeding but found that the market was already saturated with parrots, mynah birds, budgies, canaries and suchlike. He decided therefore to focus on trying to convince people to take more ordinary birds as pets, such as sparrows, blackbirds and especially crows. However, the results of his breeding programme were weak and feeble specimens and he became more and more frustrated.
One afternoon Keats called around to try and cheer his friend up. “So, Chapman”, he said, “bred any good rooks recently?”
(with apologies to the BC Radio 4 News Quiz where I heard the punchline)
Alfred: that's it, I've had as much as I can take. Nag nag nag but still no result, just pathetic excuses about having to 'work' all the time and how the MTN modem now seems to not work more often than it does. I mean, we are now actually getting emails from people complaining about this (sorry Mike, sorry Jennifer, sorry EVERYONE!).
So what has been going on? Well, life HAS been quite hectic, it has to be said. First of all we had Ruairí's first full-scale sector training session for all the directors and bursars of the Ndora sector (fifteen in all). It has only taken him seven months to get around to this so one-and-a-half cheers all round, eh. Topics were Strategic Planning and How to Do it, Classroom Inspection Techniques, General School Administration and a feedback session on his inspections of all the schools. Two days before the session he decided (over his director’s protests) that he was doing the whole thing in French rather than English on the fairly flimsy basis that that was the only way anyone was going to understand anything. In other words, he thought they were more likely to understand him doing a SWOT analysis in French than in English (or analyse AFOM as it is in French).
It actually went OK as one or two of the directors have good enough English to help him out when he got stuck. However, he tried to cram far too much into just one four-hour training session (as they refreshingly bluntly told him on the evaluation forms). At least he got the chargé to join in the training with the idea that he will do more and more of it as time goes by. Also, glancing at the last blog entry, the parents were not invited in the end, thank goodness, as most of them do not speak either French or English.
Other than that, we had the wonderful occasion that was Gitfest 2009. Hayley and Thom decided to make up for the fact that we were all missing out on the music festivals back at home (not that Ruairí has actually ever attended one in his life!) and held our very own one in Gitarama last weekend. Ruairí went as Boy George, wearing the caftan and hat he bought in Nairobi airport and spent DAYS learning off the words to Karma Chameleon as he thought everyone was going to have to perform. Pretty weird lyrics they are too (‘Desert loving in your eyes all the way’ – WTF?). Anyway, everyone came as some sort of music festival-associated character (hen party, Bruce Springsteen, tarot card readers, hippies, peace protesters, whatever – see pictures on Ruairí’s facebook page http://www.facebook.com/notifications.php#/album.php?aid=129926&id=526238416). Anyway it was a great occasion and well done to Hayley, Thom and Charlotte and everyone else involved.
Ruairí was staying with Moira and Kerrie in their new houses in Kavumu and the three of them plus Amalia went for breakfast in the Hotel Splendid in Gitarama. You’d think everyone would be used to the abysmally slow service in Rwanda by now, but this really took the biscuit. I mean, it was only breakfast. Ruairí got really cross with the waitress which is not his usual style (and was a bit inappropriate really as none of the things were really her fault) but the hotel (and remember this is a hotel, not just a little restaurant) had no milk, no butter or Blue Band, no fruit and I suspect no eggs because the two omelettes arrived forty minutes after Kerrie and Ruairí got their toasted sandwiches. The entire thing took one hour and forty five minutes for tea and coffee, two toasted sandwiches and two omelettes, some bread and chopped fruit. The hotel looked really nice and the rooms are very reasonable but ….
Actually, another reason for his recent failure to update is that he is writing a column for the Irish language magazine COMHAR – the first should be appearing any day now in the August edition and he just fired off the second one. I suspect that is where his creative instincts have been leading him – probably means I am going to have to take over the blog entirely for the foreseeable future. I’m not really sure why this is so as he is just recycling in Irish all the stuff he wrote here in the first place, with maybe a little more political stuff (figuring it’s safer to write that stuff in Irish!). Anyway, if you are interested, go out and start buying copies of COMHAR or better still take out a subscription so all the money actually goes to the magazine!
Discretion prevents me from commenting in too much detail on Ruairí’s entry into the world of Rwandan dating and night clubs: suffice to say that there is actually something quite funny about watching someone climbing out of a car wreck only to leap into another speeding obviously-unsuitable vehicle. Actually, maybe watching the car wreck in progress is even funnier. Not sure – for me, this is definitely going to remain a spectator sport but I’m not sure I am going to be able to convince Ruairí of that. I can’t even convince him that dating your ex-girlfriend’s best friend immediately after her is a questionable tactic at best. It is also interesting (to say the least) watching a middle-aged previously married white guy who has absolutely no intention of getting married again interacting with these Rwandan women whose ONLY aim is to get married. At least he has finally discovered the delights of KBC, Kigali’s premier (and possibly only) night-club. I wonder whether the impending approach of his fiftieth birthday is anything to do with it all ……
And that’s about it for now. Looking back on all that I can maybe see a bit better why there has been a hiatus but I suspect it will be me for the time being anyway. No photos this time as the Internet café is running on Internet Explorer minus three and can cope with very little. I am having to type all this in Word and then cut and paste or else there would be no fadas on Ruairí’s name (and we all know how ratty he gets about that even though he pretends he doesn’t care when people misspell his name). His mother arrives this evening and they head off to visit the parts of Rwanda Ruairí has not yet explored – which is about 99% of it; real stick-in-the-mud here, folks. Will keep you posted!!
Oh, me? What do you think – still sitting on the chair in the bedroom watching the bats, geckoes and other assorted wildlife gamboling around while his nibs is away. And now we have cicadas in the attic – merciful Lord, the noise they make, like a set of uilleann pipes gone horribly wrong.
**********************************************************************************
Keats and Chapman found themselves at a loose end one summer and, rather than their customary focus on literature and the likes, decided to adopt new hobbies to pass the time. Chapman decided to go in for bird breeding but found that the market was already saturated with parrots, mynah birds, budgies, canaries and suchlike. He decided therefore to focus on trying to convince people to take more ordinary birds as pets, such as sparrows, blackbirds and especially crows. However, the results of his breeding programme were weak and feeble specimens and he became more and more frustrated.
One afternoon Keats called around to try and cheer his friend up. “So, Chapman”, he said, “bred any good rooks recently?”
(with apologies to the BC Radio 4 News Quiz where I heard the punchline)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
