New blog with a new reason for writing.  I have signed up to write every day for a month.  A week off was not part of the plan.

I started last week with a walk on the clay trails behind Treverbyn village.  We were visiting for a ‘Book and Bake’ sale in the Community Hall and the dog needed a walk.  Despite the long dry spell the path was muddy, hidden away under gorse, bracken and trailing cow parsley.  I looked back, admiring the views over the hills, so many of them man made out of china clay waste.

This blog is a great idea to make me go out and take notice of where I am and what I see.

The wind has been a strong disincentive to do anything much.  I have now started.  I am sorry this entry is not very exciting but I promise to try harder.

Ramblings 1 July 2012

Sometimes you really need a cup of tea and ask a smiling waiter if his establishment can do “English tea”.  What arrives is pretty varied.  I have had a tea bag briefly dunked in hot milk, a teabag beside more or less hot water, with a jug of hot milk on the side and once a cup of hot water thickened with powdered milk, a teabag and a spoonful of hot chocolate powder cunningly concealed in the milk.  The latter was pretty disgusting.  Today, sitting beside the pool at the Manor Hotel in a wealthy part of Kigali, I am enjoying a pot of tea with a jug of hot milk.  African tea would be hot mixed milk and water, a teabag briefly introduced to the mix, loads of sugar and a few spices – often ginger and nutmeg.  If you don’t think of this as tea, it is quite a nice drink.

Last night was a big farewell do for the many volunteers who are leaving Rwanda within the next few weeks.  We went to New Cactus, a very plush restaurant and bar and sat in the garden.  Luckily most volunteers carry a torch so we were able to read the menu.  I had the best pizza I’ve had in Rwanda and it only took 20 minutes to arrive, which is stunning here, especially when we were such a big group.  Getting there was quite entertaining.  4 of us went out to look for motos and there was much discussion about how to find the place.  One driver reckoned he knew and we set off.  The group got separated and Rachel and I were with drivers who didn’t have a clue.  We saw lots of streets I never knew existed and eventually asked for help.  The drivers were very relaxed about the whole business and were surprised when we gave them a bit over the agreed amount to cover the wasted miles.  I wondered how a British minicab driver would have reacted in the same situation as we clearly had very little idea where the place was.

I think it is a public holiday tomorrow – accounts vary.  Rwanda is celebrating 50 years independence today and on Wednesday 18 years since the end of the civil war and genocide.  So, do we have to go to work on Tuesday?  Are there events I should be at tomorrow or Wednesday?  On previous occasions I have had a text message saying that something is going on and I should be there so I quickly jump on a moto and go!  Kigali is full of important personages – we heard the helicopters flying low over the office a group of us were working in Friday and Saturday.  This morning there are police and soldiers everywhere and no shops open.  We had an email from the VSO office saying that these momentous event s would be celebrated nationwide with …… a series of debates!  Not sure how much I would be able to contribute to that, despite the progress I have been making in Kinyarwanda.

We had a lovely two days working on illustrations for stories written by teachers for young children.  There is a huge programme going on to improve literacy and reading in Rwanda.  One part of it is a 3 day workshop on writing stories.  The first workshop was held in April and a group of volunteers got together to illustrate the finished stories, according to instructions from the authors.  The idea is that they will then be printed and distributed to the schools where the teachers work.  I had never done anything like this before and have always been convinced I can’t draw.  Marit assured us that they had amazing software and we could download pictures etc.  the software didn’t quite come up to snuff and I ended up drawing for two days and loved it.  I found some basic pictures on the internet I could adapt and set to work copying and changing them.  It was wonderful.  I finished two stories, just – by working up to the last minute.  The stories, like my pictures, are incredibly simple.  These are people who have never before been encouraged to try original creative work of any sort.  Their education consisted of copy and memorise so this was a big departure.

I will try posting my efforts when I have finished tidying them up and sent them to Marit for publication.

 

24 May 2012

 

A thunderstorm, rolling in over the mountains, crashes around me here in Byumba as I sit by candlelight listening to the rain thundering on the roof.  My house now has gutters and downspouts, thanks to quite a hefty investment by the landlord.  At the back the water flows through a pipe to the elephant trap in the back garden.  I asked the landlord if he was going to put in a water tank but that was evidently not the plan.  At the front there are two downspouts which empty into the storm drain at the front of my porch and thence though the front path stones, into the storm drain at the side of the road.  I find myself wondering just how much of an improvement this is.  At least the water no longer flows in through the back door!

 

Had a good meeting at work today – hooray!  I have spent the past four months trying to set up training for the tutors who will have to take over teaching the course I am responsible for at the moment.  After a meeting with other College Principals and volunteers the Principal and Deputy set up the meeting, saying it would be with the five tutors who teach the Foundations of Education course (a ghastly mish-mash of 1950s pop psychology and theory of childhood development) When I got there I found 15 tutors and four students from Kigali Institute of Education.  I had prepared the simplest VSO style activity and told them I was not there to deliver a lecture.  They thought me asking their opinions pretty odd – this doesn’t happen much in Rwanda but they seemed more or less to get the idea and slowly began to contribute.  At last they have agreed to observe and begin preparation for when they take over.  They even want a training session on making classroom displays.

DISCUSSIONS

 

I was demonstrating an exercise for students where you put mixed up sentences on the board and pupils have to unscramble them to make sentences about a topic.

 

The pattern is that I demonstrate the lesson, as if my students were primary pupils, then the students make notes and try to teach the lesson themselves, sometimes having made the necessary resources.

 

There were clues in the scrambled sentences which I pointed out: one word beginning with a capital letter for the start of the sentence and one with a full stop after it for the end.  One student rearranged the sentence, including moving the full stop.  His new sentence made perfect sense, grammatically and in the context of the information.  Others were outraged.

 

“He has not obeyed the rules!  He cannot be allowed to do this!”  Several were very vocal along these lines.  Eventually I asked if anyone thought what he had done was ok.  A few did.  One boy said, “You have to look at the objectives of your lesson.  He understood the information and made a good sentence, which is what you wanted.  So, his answer is correct.” There was uproar.  After a good ten minutes’ argument, very few had shifted their position.  Another worry was, “What would you do if your Primary Four pupils had done this?”  I said I would say, “Well done.”  That didn’t go down too well either!

 

Some Year 2 students have prepared materials and demo lessons for a visiting group of teachers.  In one the Primary Four class (actually their fellow students) had to arrange various important public buildings in order of importance and justify their choice.

 

They got into very lively debate, which seriously worried some of the visiting teachers.  One asked how the teacher would tell the students the right answer if everyone was allowed to argue for whatever position they liked.  One boy immediately asked if he could answer the point.  He said that the point was that each student had to justify his argument.  If he could give a clear explanation for his opinion, he was right, if not, he wasn’t.  He even said that he disagreed with one opinion given, but had to admit that the explanation made sense so if that was his pupil, he would say “Well done”.  I wanted to jump up and down and cheer.  I restrained myself because it was clear the teachers were not convinced!

I went to a wedding at the Catholic cathedral.  A colleague from the Teacher Training College was getting married.  Because the school is run by the De La Salle Brothers, all teachers can automatically have the use of the cathedral for weddings.  I was feeling a bit of a lemon because usually when I go to this sort of thing, I go with a Rwandan friend who tells me who’s who and what I am supposed to do.  So I looked around for a familiar face when I arrived and saw no one.  In fact I spent the first 20 minutes of the service wondering if I had gone to the wrong wedding.  When the two couples (it was a joint service – quite common here – you can see up to half a dozen couples making use of the same church service) went up to the front, I was relieved to see Bonaventure and work out that I was in the right place.  I had seen the bride enter but I didn’t know her anyway.

The rain began about half way through and thanks to the corrugated iron roof, was looking likely to completely drown out the choir.  The main doors were closed and the rain thundered on.  As cathedrals go, this one is like most in Rwanda but would hardly be recognised as such from the inside in England.  The seats are low backless benches screwed to the concrete floor.  The ceiling is pretty high, because the building is so big but the roof is nearly flat.  There are huge banners with Bible quotations and behind the altar is draped in yards of glossy fabric – the same type they use for wedding reception rooms or marquees, political rallies and public meetings.  The colour is often changed according to the season, so for Easter it was yellow and then for Pentecost it was changed to red.  Now it is green and I am not sure what that is for.

The one thing every church and cathedral has is a good p.a. system.  Even at village weddings, where the reception is in the front yard or the street in front of the couple’s new home, you can see hired generators and speaker systems complete with radio mics and a harassed looking “technician”, usually somebody’s brother who likes to look cool with the gear and hopes he can make it work.  I went to one where everything was delayed for nearly an hour while someone went to buy petrol for the generator.

At the end, the priests and attendants led the way out (there are always so many of them!), followed by the first couple, then the choir and then Bonaventure and Marie-Alice.  When we got outside, the rain had stopped, the cheesy recorded backing stopped and the drums took over, while the choir continued to sing throughout the ceremony of greeting the bride and groom.  Definitely the jolliest bit so far.  Close up, I realised why I had not seen any other colleagues in the congregation – they were all in the choir.

The reception was in the school hall, likewise fitted with fixed low benches.  We had more from the choir, with Bonaventure singing and conducting and his new wife trying fairly unsuccessfully to look like she was enjoying it.  There was no formal traditional dancing, but when the choir had finished the drums took over again and we had some general dancing in Rukiga style, which involves a lot of jumping.  It is very unusual for the general crowd to join in like this and I really enjoyed it.  Usually weddings are strictly a spectator sport.

Speaking of which, I am going to a hotel nearby to watch football tomorrow – I think England are playing Sweden.  See what paucity of entertainment can do for you.  Apparently the food there is good …

Anyway I’ll have a night out with a few friends.

Here we go, then.  Off to Rwanda for a year of VSO in Byumba.

I will be teaching in the Teacher Training College in Byumba and supporting students on teaching practice in surrounding schools.

We have said good bye to friends and family and sit waiting for the taxi to take us to Heathrow….

In February Vern and I had a wonderful week in Zanzibar.  We were there for the Sauti za Busara music festival.  This is a festival primarily of East African music (rather than the much more widely known music of Mali and Senegal).  We heard a fantastic succession of bands we had never heard of.  One highlight was Taarab music which is traditional to Zanzibar and consists of a great mixture of Arab influence, Indian rhythms and African drums.  The singers are usually women and we were treated to a performance by Bi Kidude.  Vern described her as about 94 with a face like a riverbed.  She had an amazingly powerful voice and great energy in her singing.  She really is believed to be over 90 though she is not really sure.  We also saw the first all women’s Taarab group.  Until now, the women were only allowed to sing, not play any of the instruments so this was a big step forward. Zanzibar is Muslim and women are certainly not equally visible in public life, but Zanzibar is a pretty laid back place and seems to be open to change.

The festival took place in the Old Fort in Stone Town, which is the main town on one of the two big islands of Zanzibar.  The fort was built by the Omanis when they first took control of the islands and ruled Zanzibar from the Sultanate in Oman.  Later the Sultan moved his residence to Zanzibar – mainly I think because it is such a nice place!  The fort has big round towers at each corner, high stone walls and a big clear space inside.  Perfect for music. At one end was a stage with the same huge backdrop, showing the name of the festival and major sponsors, for every band and at the other a raised platform with chairs for “VIPs” – we paid a little extra and sat up there with a good view and waiter service for drinks.  This was a bit erratic as they often forgot the order and had to come back or brought the wrong things – still the thought was there.

Music began about 5 each day so we went off being tourists in the day.  We took a ‘Safari Blue’ which was a day out on a boat, visiting a small uninhabited island for lunch, a coral reef for snorkelling and a mangrove swamp for extra swimming.  It was a magical day out and I have put the pictures on facebook.  Vern told the guide that he can’t swim and was told that would be fine as the guide would help, which he did.  He taught Vern how to use the snorkel and flippers, put a life vest on him and towed him out to deeper water.  I went off by myself and swam with others from our boat (we were 9 in all) and another guide decided to look after me.  We swam around hand in hand, while he found different fishes I would have missed.  Every now and then he popped his head up out of the water to tell me the names and look around for anyone else to show things to.  Entirely magical.

We had a couple of quiet days, walking around Stone Town, visiting museums and sitting about watching the world go by.  Stone Town is actually built of coral, since that is what the island consists of.  Ragged lumps are smoothed over with a very sandy mortar.  Buildings are tall and close together, making the streets narrow and very hot.  We could usually only manage about an hour before escaping again to the shore and a breeze. It is a bit touristy but so good-natured you don’t really mind.

27 March 2010

BUS JOURNEYS AND OTHER INCIDENTALS

I have done a lot of long bus journeys lately – which is one reason why I am at home this weekend – a great novelty.  I am not bored yet and hope tomorrow will go equally well.  I am actually catching up on some of the things I promised myself I would do.

Police have been rather edgy lately and there have been few journeys without at least one stop for gloomy officers to walk around the vehicle, looking in with grave suspicion at students clutching folders from UNATEK, mothers with babies and middle-aged traders with bundles of clothes for next day’s market.  Sometimes they open the doors and gaze under the seats, other times they stare at the driver’s licence documents, clearly regretful that there is nothing wrong with them.  Yesterday one officer went to greater lengths, demanding that everyone produce identity cards.  I solemnly waved my tatty green card, nowhere near as smart as the credit card style sported by Rwandans.  I was completely ignored.  Several people were asked their names and a few cards were taken for inspection.  He was so disappointed by nothing to find fault with that the last card was chucked contemptuously back towards its owner, who then had to scrabble on the floor for it.  Rwandans are generally polite, especially to one’s elders and the shock rippled through the bus.

I remembered a previous incident, complete with suspicious looks, lack of conversation and general attempt to make everyone miserable.  Some people had got off the bus and suddenly a few young men sitting near me called out to the policeman, pointing excitedly at a building set a little way back.  They were clearly saying that someone had run off behind the building.  Three officers launched themselves into the chase, to return with an elderly farmer who had nipped out for a pee.  Most people on the bus laughed in delight.

A few days ago an old woman was next to me on the bus.  She was clearly a cultivator and not well used to travelling on a bus.  She smiled shyly at me and we exchanged greetings, as far as my Kinyarwanda would take me.  In a quiet patch she pulled out a box of matches and took a long time opening it and selecting a match, while I wondered if this was some form of rural terrorism.  She then popped the unlit match into her mouth!  I had some food with me and after a decent interval I happened to pull it out.  It is bad manners here to eat without sharing so I offered her a boiled egg – she seemed to like it.

When there is a flat tyre or a breakdown everyone piles out of the bus to stand around on the edge of the road.  For some reason this always happens when I have taken the late bus home and it is at least half dark.  Sometimes I am struck by the difference from a similar event in England.  Usually no one smokes, no one gets out anything to eat though some drink water.  People introduce themselves to each other and shake hands and start conversations.  There is always an interested crowd to watch the tyre being changed or whatever and of course the obligatory flurry of mobile phones.  Often people living nearby come out to watch the passengers waiting.  Children often shout ‘Muzungu!’ and sometimes their parents tell them not to be rude.  They all stare though.  I discovered yesterday that I am not just a muzungu but muzungazi – the female form of the word.  Not used very often I think.