Fifteen minutes before I go home and I have just finished the 2010 staff listings for all 78 schools in my district (except for bloody MUGANZA ESI whose file turned out to be a pupil list from 2008 - must remember to actually open all files when they are delivered on flash). Not the most exciting work in the world but kinda important. It means we now have the list of how many teachers the schools claim they need for next year based on projected pupil numbers, as well as the actual number of teachers MINEDUC is willing to give us (Alfred: guess which list is longer). This is going to be fun - luckily Alexis' fun rather than mine!
Also, today the REAP training was supposed to start for all teachers in the district but we haven't heard a word from MINEDUC or the Teacher Services Commission yet so I have no idea what is going on. Judging from the rumours that the start of the next school year (January 11th) may be postponed as late as early February to allow for English training, you get the feling they already figure things are going to get seriously postponed. Sarah went up to Kigali to train mentors for the programme and half of them didn't turn up. Not a good omen generally.
What else? Finished downloading the last part of the Murphy Commission Report. Why exactly I want to depress myself even further after having already read the early sections I have no idea. The day it was published I was listening to the evening news at 1900 our time and the very first item on the news began: 'The Government of the Republic of Ireland has announced ....'. Had NO idea what was going to come next except to wonder what in the hell could possibly have moved Ireland to the top of the news (unless we had declared war on France over the Main de Dieu incident). I can tell that many of my work colleagues want to ask me about it but aren't sure how to go about it and, to be honest, I really don't want to get into it. How in the name of God do I explain that such a thing could go on for such a long time, though at least Rwandans would appreciate the fact that bishops are all-powerful and untouchable and, if they wanted to, could actually get away with such a thing for a long period of time. In fact, given the level of clerical involvement in the events of 1994, maybe they would be harder to shock than I imagine ......
Spent the weekend in Kibuye at a farewell party for Bruce Upton, one of the longest-serving volunteers here who is finally ehading back to the UK. Nice weekend and I will be heading back to the same place for four days over the Christmas holidays. Some pictures in the next blog. My copine Martine is more-or-less recovered from the typhoid and somehow or other I managed to avoid catching it from her!
What else (I can see the maintenance guy heading towards the generator!)? Chelsea hammered Arsenal 3-0 on Saturday but that's too long a story for the next three minutes so more of that anon. I have been invited to a wedding in Kigali next Saturday and given that I have not attended any of the other ones I was invited to, maybe I should go this time if only to see if they are actually as long as people say they are! And that's it for now - gotta post this while there is still power!! Murabeho
Monday, November 30, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
AND HE'S BACK!
PUPPIES AND BABY GOATS
Yes, I know they are called ‘kids’ but the word is open to misinterpretation. Yes, there seems to be a bit of a four-legged baby boom on in the village at the moment – baby goats bouncing around the place like rubber balls, usually on top of each other (Alfred: That’ll be TWO brochettes then please kadogo, and a Turbo King ikonge). But it’s the puppies that are the real thrill – OK, you can’t pet them but in a country almost completely lacking in dogs it lovely to see them around. And they don’t do puppy brochettes here, thankfully.
On the downside, I have woken up late at night a few times to hear all the dogs in the village howling together. Sometimes it happens before I go to bed, so you can tell they all start howling pretty much simultaneously – creepy. Doesn’t last long, though.
Why not pet the dogs? Well a) tiny possibility of rabies b) their mothers might get anxious c) they wouldn’t understand what you were doing. No one pets dogs here so they would probably assume you were attacking them. Animals generally get a pretty raw deal here though I read a story in the ‘New Times’ that the Eastern Province has launched a big crackdown on animal cruelty. In the same issue was a letter from an indignant reader who had just returned from a trip to the UK and was disgusted at the way the British fail to beat their children. As a result, children had absolutely respect for their parents or authority in general. The reader acknowledged that there was a lot Rwanda had to learn from the UK but at least here was one area where Rwanda could do the instructing!
REAP (RWANDA ENGLISH ACCELERATED PROGRAM)
(Alfred: We tried pointing out it should be 'programme' but .....meh!)
The ongoing saga of Rwanda’s attempts to teach their teachers English so they can teach their pupils in English. The whole story would take forever so suffice to say it has been one of the most interesting and at the same time intensely frustrating experiences I have had since I got here. At the moment my housemate and colleague Sarah has gone to Kigali to take part in mentor training –she got a call on Tuesday evening and headed up Wednesday. The course actually started on Monday so I have no idea who has been doing the training for the first three days!
My most recent contribution was to go up to Gikongoro for two days and interview prospective candidates for the post of trainers – these people will train groups of 20-40 teachers in their district for three weeks. Is was fun in a way – as much fun as doing 30 back-to-back interviews can be! Best of all was I got to spend two nights at Amalia’s – she has the most beautiful house there but is leaving soon. Then we got a lift back to Kigali from the MINEDUC guy Bonaventure which was an added bonus(called ‘Bonnie’ by his friends – he’s the one who raised the topic of labia-stretching during dinner with Amy, Amalia and me) !!
If anyone remembers me talking about the exam/assessment we gave every teacher in my district (every teacher in Rwanda actually) – took up two or three weeks of my work time and was then abandoned on the basis that the exam had leaked in so many districts the results were unreliable. Luckily I am a sanguine man – weeks and weeks of photocopying, sorting, delivering, supervising, correcting, inputting, analysing, printing and list-making down the drain. An absolutely amazing waste of time and resources nationwide and I don’t see that anyone will have learned anything from the experience.
The key fact now is that there is no way of deciding who will or will not get English training. The original idea was that anyone who scored at Upper Elementary level or below would go – we estimated this at 50-60% of teachers. On that basis 30 trainers were assigned to each district. But now that we can’t use the results to choose the candidates, the suggestion seems to be that EVERYBODY will go for training – the Minister for Education hinted on the radio that those who fail to attend may lose their jobs! But that will give us classes of 50-60 in some cases as there has been no increase in the number of trainers being supplied. And classes are supposed to be starting next Monday …….
I was actually supposed to be away from the 7th-18th December doing a survey of the standard of English in the Teacher Training Colleges but with Sarah away I can hardly leave as well – and I have a sense of impending doom about all this so I had better stick around and see what happens!
ASTI COMES THROUGH
Some of you may remember these pictures from before – they were taken in Nyarunyinya Primary School not far from my house. The teachers have no staffroom and the director no office. She sits at the back of the P1 classroom to do her work and the teachers sit in the back of other classes or in the open. This year they built themselves a ‘staffroom’ out of branches and bits of canvas, as you can see from the photos. However, it’s only usable when it isn’t too cold, or too hot, or isn’t raining.
Anyway, the ASTI have a Global Development Fund and I applied to Standing Committee for a grant of €1,000 which is what a new staffroom and director’s office would cost and last week I got an email saying they have approved the grant!! Now I just have to plunge into the bureaucratic minefield that is the procurement and contract protocols of Rwandan local government – I’ll be lucky to get it built before I leave!!
CABBAGES, CLEANLINESS AND CURTAINS
(Alfred: Good grief – he stays silent for weeks and then you can’t shut him up. Well, the last few weeks have been interesting. Sarah’s arrival has really cheered the house up a bit – new curtains, washed surfaces, the courage to light more than one dimly flickering candle at a time. She also persuaded Ruairí that having used the same plastic bottle containers more-or-less since he moved in a year ago, it might be time to get new ones (you’d have thought the black mould inside the bottle tops would have been a hint!). And the diet has really changed too – Sarah is a cabbage and avocado fan and it turns out so is Ruairí! So mealtimes are actually a doddle. Maybe he’ll even start putting some of that weight back on again!
QUID EST VERITAS?
As Pilate said to Christ – quidestveritas? It is actually the username I use on any online forum I am a member of. Imagine my surprise then when I walk into Sylver Chris and Bellancille’s office and see a big poster saying “Pilato abaza Yezu ati ‘Ukuri ni iki?’”. So now I know my username in Kinyarwandan – ukuriniiki! (Alfred: And if you are wondering why there is a poster saying this in the office ... well, we are going to need some time to research that one).
RANDOM PHOTOS
To finish for today, just some random photos from various happy times I have had so far – enjoy!
Paula and Sonya and bearded Rwandan leprachaun at the St Patrick's Day party
My favourite photo of Moira - sneakily pouring smuggled-in waragi into her Coke!
Mícheál Boland at the St Patrick’s Day party. Mícheál went home a few weeks ago – hope you are enjoying a rainy season even wetter than here!
Dancing masterclass - Thom and Andy with Eric doing his Superman take-off routine in the background
Andy and Thom - these were taken at Tiga's party. Andy and Tiga have left, Thom is leaving shortly ....
My favourite picture of all so far - taken at the Labour Day celebrations.
Our mayor and former Rwandan international volleyball player, KAREKEZI Leandre
Cassava Growers' Co-operative March, Labour Day
The many faces of Tiga ....
Girls' toilet block, Mushongi school, Mugombwa sector. Three 'cubicles for 400 girls.
Primary 1 classes, Gisanze Primary School. These kids had no teacher that day and were sitting like this when I walked in, I swear.
Yes, I know they are called ‘kids’ but the word is open to misinterpretation. Yes, there seems to be a bit of a four-legged baby boom on in the village at the moment – baby goats bouncing around the place like rubber balls, usually on top of each other (Alfred: That’ll be TWO brochettes then please kadogo, and a Turbo King ikonge). But it’s the puppies that are the real thrill – OK, you can’t pet them but in a country almost completely lacking in dogs it lovely to see them around. And they don’t do puppy brochettes here, thankfully.
On the downside, I have woken up late at night a few times to hear all the dogs in the village howling together. Sometimes it happens before I go to bed, so you can tell they all start howling pretty much simultaneously – creepy. Doesn’t last long, though.
Why not pet the dogs? Well a) tiny possibility of rabies b) their mothers might get anxious c) they wouldn’t understand what you were doing. No one pets dogs here so they would probably assume you were attacking them. Animals generally get a pretty raw deal here though I read a story in the ‘New Times’ that the Eastern Province has launched a big crackdown on animal cruelty. In the same issue was a letter from an indignant reader who had just returned from a trip to the UK and was disgusted at the way the British fail to beat their children. As a result, children had absolutely respect for their parents or authority in general. The reader acknowledged that there was a lot Rwanda had to learn from the UK but at least here was one area where Rwanda could do the instructing!
REAP (RWANDA ENGLISH ACCELERATED PROGRAM)
(Alfred: We tried pointing out it should be 'programme' but .....meh!)
The ongoing saga of Rwanda’s attempts to teach their teachers English so they can teach their pupils in English. The whole story would take forever so suffice to say it has been one of the most interesting and at the same time intensely frustrating experiences I have had since I got here. At the moment my housemate and colleague Sarah has gone to Kigali to take part in mentor training –she got a call on Tuesday evening and headed up Wednesday. The course actually started on Monday so I have no idea who has been doing the training for the first three days!
My most recent contribution was to go up to Gikongoro for two days and interview prospective candidates for the post of trainers – these people will train groups of 20-40 teachers in their district for three weeks. Is was fun in a way – as much fun as doing 30 back-to-back interviews can be! Best of all was I got to spend two nights at Amalia’s – she has the most beautiful house there but is leaving soon. Then we got a lift back to Kigali from the MINEDUC guy Bonaventure which was an added bonus(called ‘Bonnie’ by his friends – he’s the one who raised the topic of labia-stretching during dinner with Amy, Amalia and me) !!
If anyone remembers me talking about the exam/assessment we gave every teacher in my district (every teacher in Rwanda actually) – took up two or three weeks of my work time and was then abandoned on the basis that the exam had leaked in so many districts the results were unreliable. Luckily I am a sanguine man – weeks and weeks of photocopying, sorting, delivering, supervising, correcting, inputting, analysing, printing and list-making down the drain. An absolutely amazing waste of time and resources nationwide and I don’t see that anyone will have learned anything from the experience.
The key fact now is that there is no way of deciding who will or will not get English training. The original idea was that anyone who scored at Upper Elementary level or below would go – we estimated this at 50-60% of teachers. On that basis 30 trainers were assigned to each district. But now that we can’t use the results to choose the candidates, the suggestion seems to be that EVERYBODY will go for training – the Minister for Education hinted on the radio that those who fail to attend may lose their jobs! But that will give us classes of 50-60 in some cases as there has been no increase in the number of trainers being supplied. And classes are supposed to be starting next Monday …….
I was actually supposed to be away from the 7th-18th December doing a survey of the standard of English in the Teacher Training Colleges but with Sarah away I can hardly leave as well – and I have a sense of impending doom about all this so I had better stick around and see what happens!
ASTI COMES THROUGH
Some of you may remember these pictures from before – they were taken in Nyarunyinya Primary School not far from my house. The teachers have no staffroom and the director no office. She sits at the back of the P1 classroom to do her work and the teachers sit in the back of other classes or in the open. This year they built themselves a ‘staffroom’ out of branches and bits of canvas, as you can see from the photos. However, it’s only usable when it isn’t too cold, or too hot, or isn’t raining.
Anyway, the ASTI have a Global Development Fund and I applied to Standing Committee for a grant of €1,000 which is what a new staffroom and director’s office would cost and last week I got an email saying they have approved the grant!! Now I just have to plunge into the bureaucratic minefield that is the procurement and contract protocols of Rwandan local government – I’ll be lucky to get it built before I leave!!
CABBAGES, CLEANLINESS AND CURTAINS
(Alfred: Good grief – he stays silent for weeks and then you can’t shut him up. Well, the last few weeks have been interesting. Sarah’s arrival has really cheered the house up a bit – new curtains, washed surfaces, the courage to light more than one dimly flickering candle at a time. She also persuaded Ruairí that having used the same plastic bottle containers more-or-less since he moved in a year ago, it might be time to get new ones (you’d have thought the black mould inside the bottle tops would have been a hint!). And the diet has really changed too – Sarah is a cabbage and avocado fan and it turns out so is Ruairí! So mealtimes are actually a doddle. Maybe he’ll even start putting some of that weight back on again!
QUID EST VERITAS?
As Pilate said to Christ – quidestveritas? It is actually the username I use on any online forum I am a member of. Imagine my surprise then when I walk into Sylver Chris and Bellancille’s office and see a big poster saying “Pilato abaza Yezu ati ‘Ukuri ni iki?’”. So now I know my username in Kinyarwandan – ukuriniiki! (Alfred: And if you are wondering why there is a poster saying this in the office ... well, we are going to need some time to research that one).
RANDOM PHOTOS
To finish for today, just some random photos from various happy times I have had so far – enjoy!
Paula and Sonya and bearded Rwandan leprachaun at the St Patrick's Day party
My favourite photo of Moira - sneakily pouring smuggled-in waragi into her Coke!
Mícheál Boland at the St Patrick’s Day party. Mícheál went home a few weeks ago – hope you are enjoying a rainy season even wetter than here!
Dancing masterclass - Thom and Andy with Eric doing his Superman take-off routine in the background
Andy and Thom - these were taken at Tiga's party. Andy and Tiga have left, Thom is leaving shortly ....
St Philippe Neri Secondary school English debate: Monogamy is better than Polygamy (monogamy won)
My favourite picture of all so far - taken at the Labour Day celebrations.
Our mayor and former Rwandan international volleyball player, KAREKEZI Leandre
Cassava Growers' Co-operative March, Labour Day
Kids at Dahwe primary school, Ndora sector
The many faces of Tiga ....
Girls' toilet block, Mushongi school, Mugombwa sector. Three 'cubicles for 400 girls.
Primary 1 classes, Gisanze Primary School. These kids had no teacher that day and were sitting like this when I walked in, I swear.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Let’s start in the present and work our way back …
And today it’s IMIHIGO day – the day when all the top brass of the district come together and sign the official performance contract for the next year. It’s a big big occasion, so big that no-one told me it was happening. I was sitting in the office frantically trying to cram 46 different Excel files onto one massive spreadsheet (Alfred: I know, I know, don’t ask) when New Augustin popped his head around the door and asked if I wanted to walk up to the ceremony with him. So off we went. Everyone else was really dressed up but I was expecting just another day at work and hadn’t bothered (hadn’t even shined my shoes and they were in a rather sorry state).
The event was supposed to start at 0900 and finally got going at 1140 – even by Rwandan standards that is pretty terrible. I was sitting on a small wooden school bench and by the time we finished (1530) my ass was as sore as … well, it’s never been that sore before so it is hard to say.
We had presentations from all 13 Executives Secretaries of the 13 sectors regarding their plans and priorities for next year, then the Executive Secretary of the District had his, much longer, plan. Then the Mayor asked for suggestions from the floor for areas that had not been mentioned and that people felt should be (there were three – youth empowerment, family planning and reminding women that it is traditional in Rwanda that when they applaud, they are also supposed to hum at the same time). Then the Mayor added on a whole stack of additional ideas for everyone to prioritise – in fact the idea seemed to be “Prioritise everything”. His suggestions included:
The event was supposed to start at 0900 and finally got going at 1140 – even by Rwandan standards that is pretty terrible. I was sitting on a small wooden school bench and by the time we finished (1530) my ass was as sore as … well, it’s never been that sore before so it is hard to say.
We had presentations from all 13 Executives Secretaries of the 13 sectors regarding their plans and priorities for next year, then the Executive Secretary of the District had his, much longer, plan. Then the Mayor asked for suggestions from the floor for areas that had not been mentioned and that people felt should be (there were three – youth empowerment, family planning and reminding women that it is traditional in Rwanda that when they applaud, they are also supposed to hum at the same time). Then the Mayor added on a whole stack of additional ideas for everyone to prioritise – in fact the idea seemed to be “Prioritise everything”. His suggestions included:
- Promoting the ‘one cow per family scheme’ (the scheme was suspended in our district as many of the cows got sick and/or died as people didn’t know how to take care of them. Now they have training courses and backup advice in place and are presumably restarting the scheme)
- Environmental protection and tree-planting (he strongly advised planting fruit trees so as to kill two birds with one stone)
- Regular performance appraisals at local levels to identify high-performing workers who can act as mentors/exemplars to others
- Innovation (didn’t get any more details on that one)
- Health care – provision of ‘smart toilets’ (I think these are toilets with washing facilities … I think)
- The Nine Years’ Basic Education construction programme
- Tackling high dropout and nonattendance rates in schools
- The need to increase social security membership (at 28% of the population, I think we rank 30th out of 30 districts)
- Family planning
- Reducing the rates of kwashiorkor/beriberi and other malnutrition-related illnesses (presumably by tackling malnutrition which is a massive problem in this district)
- Promoting the planting of kitchen gardens to grow vegetables, especially green vegetables (see previous point)
- Reducing the rate of maternal deaths in childbirth (didn’t realise this was a major problem here)
- Continue and escalate the fight against corruption – RUSWA OYA! (No Corruption). Our district is ranked 3rd of 30 in the anti-corruption war so we’re doing a good job there
All that to be ‘prioritised’ on top of the various things the 13 Exec Secs already mentioned. When he finished, there was another suggestion from the audience – why had none of the Exec Secs mentioned developing tourism in their areas? After all, tourism is now Rwanda’s number one earner, having displaced both tea and coffee. I tried – more-or-less successfully – to keep a straight face as I struggled to think of anywhere whatsoever in our rather inaccessible district that could possibly qualify as a tourist attraction.
While the Mayor was speaking, a succession of young girls came in carrying boxes of laptops – TOSHIBA Satellite – and stacking them on the floor, over fifty of them. Then 13 printers, a box of flash disks and a few other bits and pieces. It turned out that there was one for every sector and cell (Alfred: boring political science intervention – Rwanda (which is almost exactly the size of Munster/Yorkshire) is divided into 30 districts each run by a Mayor (elected) and Executive Secretary (appointed). Each district is divided into a number of sectors (13 in my district), each run by an Sector Executive Secretary. Each sector is divided into cells, run by …. You guessed it, a Cell Executive Secretary. After that, cells are subdivided into umudugudu which is a small group of houses, originally a hilltop of houses I am told. Ruairí has just asked Enock, his friend to clarify. Enock – who has been in Rwanda 13 years, says it beats the hell out of him, he has never been able to get his head around it). Many of the cells and sectors do not have electricity readily available but most have generators and the rural electrification scheme is forging ahead, so it’s all progress.
We also had a demonstration of a new torch/lantern. It is made of steel and some kind of toughened glass, recharges in only five minutes and then gives off light for 24 hours, is very tough (the guy demonstrating bounced it up and down off the concrete floor to illustrate the point) … but it costs RWF 25,000 or about €30/£27 which seems a lot to me.
(Alfred: by the way, in case you think Ruairí’s Kinyarwandan skills have taken a sudden leap into the stratosphere, New Augustin sat beside him for the whole meeting and translated really well. There was an Augustin in the District before him who is the Logistics and Human Resources co-ordinator which makes HIM the busiest person in the district; New Augustin used to work in the Genocide Memorial Centre in Gisoze in Kigali with Julie Hurst and Christina Campbell, two VSO volunteers, before he was transferred out to us in the sticks. I say ‘us’, I’ve never actually met the guy but Ruairí and Sarah seem to like him).
What else? In retrospect, it was more interesting than most six-hour-all-in-Kinyarwandan meetings I have attended – they sang the national anthem at the start and finish which was nice (I do love the national anthem here, a little reminiscent of the South African one in places and every verse has a different rhythm or tune). Oh yes, we now have a mobile ICT bus which will visit every sector and train about 20 people in each one. The Mayor was majorly pissed off with district and sector staff not doing sports and waved the national District volleyball trophy at us (which our team won on Sunday) to emphasise how important it was (‘mens sana in corpore sano’ and all that). My friend Jacques (you reading this, Tinks?) got an award as his present sector – Muganza – was the best-performing sector in the District. He gave a speech that had everyone roaring with laughter but was, according to Augustin, untranslatable.
We finished with the Mayor giving a speech summarising everything that had already happened. A long speech. Then he said he only had one more year in office and he really really wanted Gisagara to win the best District award this year – we finished 10th and 4th in 2008 and 2009 so it is all shoulders to the wheel!!!!
And that was that. We scattered outside (luckily the torrential downpour that lasted most of the meeting had finished) and got a Fanta and a lunch box. It was actually quite edible – three roasted half-potatoes, two pieces of grilled banana, two pieces of goat with onion and green pepper slices and an egg. And then walked home with Enock and typed this up to keep people happy.
(Alfred: But what, I hear you cry, has been happening in the long gap since the last entry? Well, stay tuned. Labia-stretching aside, we have puppies and goats, the progress of customer service in Rwanda, TURBO KING, April’s Bad Taste Birthday Party, the role of avocado in the Gisagara diet, the ongoing saga of English training, and watching Ireland-France. Stay tuned!!)
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
I give up!
Alfred: I have tried everything but there seems to be no way to get this idiot to realise his responsibilities to the legion ... well, handful of friends, acquaintances and random browsers who occasionally read this blog. I'll keep on nagging at him - his feeble excuses of work, visiting Martine in Kigali (who has recovered well from her typhoid by the way), writing articles and so on can't hold out forever. Having said that, his promised piece on labia-stretching is probably best put in hold indefinitely (though it does give a whole new meaning to the phrase 'Pull the other one'!).
Plus loads of people are leaving around now and that is definitely distracting him - Jane, Thom, Charlotte, Cathryn, Bruce, Chris, Tina, Christina, Amalia, and there are probably a few others he can't remember (or hasn't told me about). It's going to take quite a few bottles of TURBO KING - Rwanda's newest beer - to get him through this. Plus the startling news that the Principal of his school in Ireland is leaving at the end of this year ..........
Plus loads of people are leaving around now and that is definitely distracting him - Jane, Thom, Charlotte, Cathryn, Bruce, Chris, Tina, Christina, Amalia, and there are probably a few others he can't remember (or hasn't told me about). It's going to take quite a few bottles of TURBO KING - Rwanda's newest beer - to get him through this. Plus the startling news that the Principal of his school in Ireland is leaving at the end of this year ..........
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ....
Really, really sorry. But life is so hectic at the moment. Promise something good by this weekend (the dinner-time conversation on labia-stretching will be one highlight of many!). Promise .....
Thursday, November 5, 2009
GETTING BETTER, GETTING WORSE
GETTING BETTER, GETTING WORSE
After 14 months it is interesting to look at which things I have now got used to and other things that now seem to be bugging me more than when I arrived! I am completely used to:
After 14 months it is interesting to look at which things I have now got used to and other things that now seem to be bugging me more than when I arrived! I am completely used to:
- hanging around for ages doing nothing
- presuming everything will start late
- living on a range of foods approximately 97% smaller than I was used to in Ireland
- warm beer (which isn’t to say I don’t still prefer cold)
- having people stare at me
- being oblivious to the most amazing scenery in the world because I am ‘used to it’
- goat brochettes
- eating my bodyweight in eggs every month (Alfred: even though he has lost some weight since coming here, this is an exaggeration. Speaking of weight, do I notice those trousers are seeming a little tighter again recently around the waist ….?)
- going crazy places on appalling roads on unsafe motorcycles at stupid speeds in the pouring rain
- being asked extremely personal questions by people I have barely met
- being careful telling people about my religious beliefs (or lack of them) in case they start crying
- the amazingly slower pace of work here
- having beautiful young girls I have never met before tell me they love me, have always loved me and want to marry me and bear my children
- the fact that I drink the most gorgeous coffee every day
- bargaining for everything (Alfred: Well, everything else was OK up to this, but let me tell you, in his heart, he is still not really up for it. He still yearns for the world of pricetags!! And if he ever beats a moto driver down from 800 to 700, he usually ends up giving him the 100 anyway as a tip.)
On the other hand, some things seem to be getting on my nerves the longer I stay here:
- how expensive life is here (relatively speaking)
- the appalling driving, especially the bus drivers
- the scarcity of decent and affordable red wine
- the fact that people never share any information with you unless they have to or you ask them directly
- MTN (Rwanda’s main telecom company)
- begging
Actually, that last one is becoming a bit of an issue with me. To be honest, far fewer people ask me for money than did when I first arrived. It only ever happens in my village on market day when people come in from far and wide and haven’t seen me before; occasionally kids say it as a joke and then laugh to show they don’t mean it (or, more accurately, by laughing give away the fact that they don’t mean it). But when it does happen, I find myself becoming much more irritated than I used to, even angry (though I usually – not always – manage to keep it inside). Not sure why exactly – there was one day in Butare when I saw this well-dressed and obviously well-off couple encouraging their equally well-dressed little girl to go over and ask me for money, which she did in a very embarrassed way. That may have been a turning-point. Since then, I have become much more sensitive to the sheer number of people who either directly or indirectly ask me for things – money, books, sponsorship, whatever. And most of them are – by Rwandan standards – well-off. Ah well, less than eight months to go, guess I can cope!!!
INSPECTING THE SCHOOL EXAMS
(Alfred: My health warning from the previous entry still holds)
A few random observations on the school exams here. Today the O-levels and A-levels started. There are four O-level centres and one A-level centre in my District and we visited four of the five today. Again, the same high level of efficiency and security that I mentioned in my previous post on the primary exams, maybe even more so. When we arrived at the first centre, there was a queue of 25 or so students outside every room: each one was carrying the examination entry form they had filled out at the beginning of the year (with photograph) plus their official student ID card. The teacher/invigilator on duty at the door checked one against the other to ensure the student was in fact the person themselves. They also checked that pencil cases had nothing in them. All students had to arrive with trouser and skirt pockets empty and turned inside out and the invigilators still patted down anyone they were suspicious of.
Each individual classroom had been scoured and all posters, signs, even scrawls on the blackboards removed. Invigilators are forbidden to have anything in the room with them – newspapers, books, phones etc – to ensure they pay undivided attention to the examinees (Alfred: this is also theoretically true in Ireland but more in the breach than the observance).
The centres in Kansi, Gisagara and Gikonko were only dealing with O-levels but Save had two centres, one of them the A-level centre for the District. There, depending on which A-level option a student had chosen, there could be as many as five different exams going on in the same room. Today, for example, was Mathematics (for the Science option people), Social Studies (for Humanities) and Kinyarwandan (for Languages). But everything went really smoothly. The seating was even arranged so that no two students doing the same subject nor any two students from the same school were sitting beside each other – an amazing logistical achievement! There were special arrangements for students – one centre had arranged cushions in front of desks for two students with back problems who had to kneel; another had put a mattress on the floor of one room for a girl who was lying on her front – I was told she had malaria and got dizzy if she sat upright and this was the solution.
Visiting St Bernadette School in Save again, I was struck by the contrast between the church-supported schools and the rest. Touring their laboratories I could only think of what passed for a laboratory in my local secondary school, St Philippe Neri, a school that specialises in science teaching but has only one lab, ‘stocked’ for want of a better word with odds-and-ends of outdated and obsolete equipment and almost completely lacking supplies. The other thing that struck me was the timetable stuck on the door of each of the three laboratories – each is used for only about 17-18 periods a week out of the 40 available. Most of the science classes seem to take place in the classrooms (Alfred: like that never used to happen in Irish schools when they first got labs!). I also couldn’t resist pointing out to the headmistress that in every room I visited, every word written on the blackboards was in French rather than English – weren’t they teaching in English here, I asked? ‘Une mélange’ she replied with a big grin!.
Anyway the exams went fine apart from a panic on the Social Studies paper where students were required to do all questions in Section A but they were numbered 1,2,3,5 and 6. A quick check of the paper showed that adding up the marks for the five questions there corresponded with the total given for the section so it was just a printing error. (Alfred: Please le that be the end! Oh, it is …)
PLAYING GOD
Rwandans tend to confuse the letters ‘R’ and ‘L’. So I have almost got used to the number of times Rwandans tell me they ‘play God’ (they tend to omit prepositions too). As I went around a school recently, a teacher proudly indicated a room and said: ‘This is where we play God.’ I completely forgot what she meant and said ‘What?’. ‘Yes’, she affirmed, ‘I play God here every day. Playing God is great. How often do you play God?’ I was actually tempted to tell her but decided discretion was the better part of whatever.
THANKS JANE
I recently got a really good/bad joke from a friend on Facebook which I shared with people in my status. She has now sent me the list of the Ten Worst Puns of which that was one – thanks Jane!!!
1. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger."
2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says "Dam!"
3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.
4. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, "I've lost my electron." The other says "Are you sure ? " The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive."
5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal ? His goal: transcend dental medication.
6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why ? " they asked, as they moved off. "Because," he said, "I can't stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer!"
7. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to Spain ; they named him 'Juan'. The other went to family in Egypt and was named 'Ahmal'. Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."
8. A group of friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town, to 'persuade' them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.
9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a (Oh, man, this is so bad, it's good!) 'super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis'.
10. And finally... there was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.
Monday, November 2, 2009
And suddenly it is November!
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.
MORE ABOUT PRIMARY SCHOOL EXAMS THAN YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW
(Alfred: That’s a health warning – skip down to the next item if this isn’t your cup of tea! He’ll never know. I mean, he doesn’t even know for sure that anyone actually ever reads this stuff)
It was a hectic three days as we tried to visit each of the sixteen exam centres at least once and preferably twice. I must say I was pretty impressed with what I saw and learned about the logistics and security aspects of the examination process. All the papers are printed and packed in the UK – actually packed into individual bundles for each CLASSROOM that will be used for exams, so an individual bundle might be marked as 25 Kinyarwanda papers for classroom nine in Kabeza school, Mamba Sector, Gisagara District before it arrives in Rwanda. When the papers arrive in Kigali Airport in a sealed container, they are met by an armed police and army escort and brought to a central depot. There they are divided up by district and each consignment is sent off to the District Education Office, again with an armed guard, arriving two days before the exams start. The day before the exams, the papers are delivered to the exam centres (one or sometimes two schools in each sector). Once delivered, two armed guards sleep with the papers overnight to ensure they are not tampered with.
On each exam day, the individual supervisor collects the bag of sealed papers and brings it to the room. Once the students have been counted, the bag is shown to two or three students who witness it has not been opened. Then the bag is opened and, if any students are absent, the surplus papers are removed from the room. The papers are then handed out and students have 30 minutes to fill in all the requisite details on the front of the exam paper before the exam actually begins. The supervisor is not allowed to read the examination paper at any stage and must not be in possession of a mobile phone. At the end of the exam the papers are collected and then the students sign a sheet affirming that they have just sat the exam (this is to prevent students claiming they sat papers they did not sit and subsequently claiming they must have got ‘lost’ in the system; it also protects those students whose papers may actually get lost in the system).
It was all very impressive and smoothly done: there were a few tiny hiccoughs here and there but nothing serious. In one sector the two overall supervisors for the exam centres had swapped assignments – this is forbidden as teachers are deliberately assigned to schools reasonably far from where they teach and moving could be evidence of collusion. Another school had followed the rule of 25 students to a classroom very strictly but, having 176 students in total, ended up with one room with one single student in it! But in general everything was running smoothly, everyone had turned up, the students looked unstressed and comfortable.
On the last day, however, we had have a larger hiccough. For one of the questions on the English paper – a long comprehension piece – they had forgotten to leave spaces for the answers (all answers are written on the exam paper). That morning we had decided to start with Magi school in Mukindo sector, about as far from where I live as it is possible to go. When we got there at 0945 the exam was almost halfway through. My colleague pointed out that thus was exactly why every school was supplied with sheets of blank paper and to give every student one and tell them to write their answers on those. However, it was noticeable that this obvious and commonsense solution was not implemented in this school until they had been told to do so – no-one was willing to take the initiative and do it themselves. And the same in the other school we visited (by which time it was near the end of the exam) – students got the sheets of paper barely 15 minutes before the end.
A lack of initiative is a problem here – people are very used to doing what they are told and therefore not doing things unless they are told to do so. A prime example is a school a colleague visited in another district shortly after the change from French to English as the medium of instruction. The teachers were unsure what exactly the new rules meant, so they decided not to talk at all in class in any language until they were told what to do. An extreme example maybe, but indicative all the same.
Obviously this year the focus has been overwhelmingly on coping with doing the exams through English for the first time. As I understand it, schools had the option for this year of doing the exams through French (after all, all these students had five years of education through French and only this year through English) but I have yet to find a single school that took this option. The upshot is that MINEDUC have announced that the option will be withdrawn as of next year and not in 2011 as originally announced. Inevitably the standard will fall this year and for the next few years until fluency is achieved among both teachers and pupils.
However, another area that will need to be addressed is the actual examination papers themselves. In a country that is trying to promote English as a means of communication, an examination paper that focuses almost entirely on abstruse points of grammar and contains no composition nor a single question where students use communicative language is not designed to promote English in any meaningful way. Asking P6 students about comparative and superlative forms, question tags and the like but not asking them to write creatively or expressively in any way will actually hinder the very change the government here is trying to bring about. But it is early days and there is a review of the curriculum under way so we hope changes can be expected in the near future.
FACEBOOK
I use Facebook a lot so I sometimes forget that I have only posted stuff there and not here. A couple of recent things:
Stole this from my friend Jane Moore in Australia - it's so bad it's brilliant!
Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.
This reminded Ian Poulton in Killiney of that great headline when Inverness Caledonian Thistle beat Glasgow Celtic in a Cup match: Super Cally Are Fantastic; Celtic are Atrocious which is the best sports headline since Malcolm Allison got attacked by a disgruntled Manchester United supporter: FAN HITS SHIT.
Actually, Facebook can be trivial, addictive, waste endless amounts of time and so on (hence the newly-formed group 'If I Fail My Exams I Want Compensation From Facebook') but it is great for keeping in touch with far-flung people - and they don't come much further flung than VSO volunteers!
HALLOWEEN PARTY
Thom, Sarah and Christiane threw a fabulous Halloween party last weekend - and a huge crowd turned up. Great fun all round though some of the costumes were a bit 'interesting' and quite a few people got really rat-arsed. Pride of place probably went to our country director Mike Silvey who came as Death (scythe and all), his partner Tamsin was a spectacular witch and the twins in their ... do we still call them prams? - dressed as a ghost. Awesome. Here are a few pics. (Alfred: not his pics of course - he brought his camera all the way from Gisagara and then left it in Martine's house! These are all stolen from other people's Facebook pages.)
Sarah and Thom, two of our gracious hosts
Sarah and Moira
Lynley
Martine and Sonya (left); Charlotte and Amy re-enacting 'CATS'
Julie and Christine
April and Anna
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Random Thoughts
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.
WORK
Work is pretty dead at the moment. While the district restructuring seems to have come to a conclusion people are still a bit confused as to what their responsibilities are and last Monday everyone was informed that, as so many people had changed jobs etc, everyone has to draw up a new imihigo (performance contract) immediately (Alfred: Ruairí wisely postponed the lecture he was going to give everyone at the end of that meeting about their lack of effort and enthusiaism in using English. 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof' and all that). All schools are up to their ears in exams so there is little point visiting them. I can go around next week and see the directors but for Sarah it is pretty slim pickings at the moment. We did try and visit one last week but immediately realised it was a bad move. The director wanted to bring us around all the classes where the kids were doing their exams - imagine how disruptive THAT would have been!!
MINEDUC (the Ministry of Education) have decided to bring the national English training forward from June 2010 to this December! That's for 33,650 teachers. And that will put the kibosh on all the workshops etc that VSO volunteers had been planning for that time as 33,650 teachers represents about 70% of the national total. However, I will continue doing my training with school directors on a one-to-one basis, starting now with the ones whose English is poor so I can get them before they go for training and then continue with the others who will not be attending.
GOODBYES
I mentioned before that saying 'goodbye' to friends on a regular basis is an integral part of the volunteer's life ... but that doesn't make it any easier. Yesterday I said goodbye to one of the most amazing people I have met here, Marion Wooley. Marion has been here almost two years, worked with the organization that deals with the deaf and managed to complete the first Rwandan Sign language dictionary (Alfred: not that Ruairí is ignorant of the fact that many other people - including VSO volunteers - also contributed to the project!), set a new record in domestic untidiness, raised two adorable cats and found them a wonderful home when she left, set up a new NGO to help single parents in Kigali (which, at the moment of writing, seems to be on a sound footing), wrote a really good novel, taught me more than I ever knew (Alfred: or probably wanted to know, eh? eh?) about dreams, paganism, African traditional beliefs, standing stones and an amazing variety of other topics. I could write much much more but I don't want her to be too embarrassed when she reads this (Alfred: embarrass Marion, eh? That would be something. Somebody who marks their last few days in Rwanda by getting attacked by a monkey and having to arrange rabies shots both here and back in the UK - how do you top that??). She has left a lot of very very sad people back here who are managing to console themselves by reminding themselves how lucky they were to have met her.
Here are a few pictures for us to remember her by. And I'll be seeing her in Dublin in August for my special VSO birthday party next year!!!!! (Alfred: Yeah, there will be more about that anon). I did try and find some pictures of her looking serious ... but there don't seem to be any!
WORK
Work is pretty dead at the moment. While the district restructuring seems to have come to a conclusion people are still a bit confused as to what their responsibilities are and last Monday everyone was informed that, as so many people had changed jobs etc, everyone has to draw up a new imihigo (performance contract) immediately (Alfred: Ruairí wisely postponed the lecture he was going to give everyone at the end of that meeting about their lack of effort and enthusiaism in using English. 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof' and all that). All schools are up to their ears in exams so there is little point visiting them. I can go around next week and see the directors but for Sarah it is pretty slim pickings at the moment. We did try and visit one last week but immediately realised it was a bad move. The director wanted to bring us around all the classes where the kids were doing their exams - imagine how disruptive THAT would have been!!
MINEDUC (the Ministry of Education) have decided to bring the national English training forward from June 2010 to this December! That's for 33,650 teachers. And that will put the kibosh on all the workshops etc that VSO volunteers had been planning for that time as 33,650 teachers represents about 70% of the national total. However, I will continue doing my training with school directors on a one-to-one basis, starting now with the ones whose English is poor so I can get them before they go for training and then continue with the others who will not be attending.
GOODBYES
I mentioned before that saying 'goodbye' to friends on a regular basis is an integral part of the volunteer's life ... but that doesn't make it any easier. Yesterday I said goodbye to one of the most amazing people I have met here, Marion Wooley. Marion has been here almost two years, worked with the organization that deals with the deaf and managed to complete the first Rwandan Sign language dictionary (Alfred: not that Ruairí is ignorant of the fact that many other people - including VSO volunteers - also contributed to the project!), set a new record in domestic untidiness, raised two adorable cats and found them a wonderful home when she left, set up a new NGO to help single parents in Kigali (which, at the moment of writing, seems to be on a sound footing), wrote a really good novel, taught me more than I ever knew (Alfred: or probably wanted to know, eh? eh?) about dreams, paganism, African traditional beliefs, standing stones and an amazing variety of other topics. I could write much much more but I don't want her to be too embarrassed when she reads this (Alfred: embarrass Marion, eh? That would be something. Somebody who marks their last few days in Rwanda by getting attacked by a monkey and having to arrange rabies shots both here and back in the UK - how do you top that??). She has left a lot of very very sad people back here who are managing to console themselves by reminding themselves how lucky they were to have met her.
Here are a few pictures for us to remember her by. And I'll be seeing her in Dublin in August for my special VSO birthday party next year!!!!! (Alfred: Yeah, there will be more about that anon). I did try and find some pictures of her looking serious ... but there don't seem to be any!
(This is Martine and me saying goodbye to Marion at the airport. Think I have overcompressed a bit!)
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Il est tombé éperdument amoureux!!!!
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!!!
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!!!
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.
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