Getting to grips with my statisticals!

Mar 17th

Slept like a log last night; woke up still feeling tired. Off to the office early. No need to feel guilty about not doing school visits; it’s exam week in the schools and they wouldn’t want to see us. So I’m going to spend the whole week getting to grips with the “recensement” statistics. These are the very detailed census of schools, carried out in January. All the forms should have been back ages ago, and the Heads I’ve been visiting all assure me their forms are at the District Office.

Except that when I ask Venantie, the forms haven’t come in yet. Out of 106 primaries there are barely 20 who’ve sent their stuff in. Anyway, I get to grips with the twenty. There’s loads of material there; if I can only get a really large representative sample I’ll have an excellent idea of how our schools tick. They ask everything – about the buildings, water supply and facilities, about the children – ages, handicaps, orphans, redoublements and abandonments; about the staff (ages, qualifications), and about the budget. If I really get a load of these forms in, it’ll make my school visits easier. I won’t have to spend so much time asking the Head questions, and I can either observe more lessons or teach a demo lesson myself. It’s about time I did the latter and change my street cred from Mr Scary Inspector to Mr Friendly Adviser.

I use some of the day to write up my blog, and show Venantie the pictures from the party. She’s suitably impressed. Claude is back already, but he’s too busy to speak to. That’ll wait till later in the week. Also, I clean forget to ask the vice-mayor for my VSO documents to be signed. No matter, there’ll always be time.

Just at the end of the afternoon Karen comes in; haven’t seen her for ages, so nice to catch up on gossip and thank her for all the stuff she gave me for my birthday. She’s doing a house communion on Thursday, but I have to decline because I’ve got two people coming round for a meal and I don’t think they’ll want to go.

Getting clearer in my mind what I want to do next weekend: Marisa and Els to arrive Thursday evening; Friday off to either Butare (Museum, Belgian quarter, University), or to Nyanza (Mwami’s palace and museum, but only if Cathy Devine is free to come round with us), then to Tiga’s at Gikongoro. We can sleep in Samira’s house ‘cos she’s elsewhere for Saturday. Then Saturday, if we get up at dawn, we can get to Nyungwe Forest and do the monkeys; might just possibly see the chimps if we’re early enough. Stay at Gikongoro again on Sat night, and back home on Sunday. We might even be able to get Soraya to come down and join us from Mushubi.

Well, that’s the plan as it stands on Monday. It’ll no doubt be all changed by the weekend!