Africa rocks!

Jan 28

Off to work early again, leaving home at 6.30 (that means a 5.30 wake up, deserves brownie points!). Another lovely morning – cool, fresh and sunny. Promise of real heat by mid-day, so glad I keep all my stuff in my day-sack just in case. For the record, the “normal” kitlist is: loo roll, sun cream, hat, sunglasses, cagoule, book to read, camera, platypus, deet spray, germicide gel, and bags of peanuts (emergency rations in case I miss lunch!)

This visit by the President on Friday is being taken very seriously. During Sunday every hole in the road has been filled in all round the town centre, and all the dirt roads he will use have been graded. All buildings under construction or eyesores have been shrouded in plastic sheets or corrugated iron fences. Ceremonial arches are being erected at key places – these are very much a Rwandan tradition and I will get some photos when they are finished. Someone has decreed there is to be umuganda every afternoon; by 2 p.m. there are gangs of men all along the road into town sweeping it clear of dust with tree branches. (So much for the anti-deforestation legislation passed recently). The place is thick with police; apparently they raided Karen’s house on Sunday night and demanded to see everyone’s papers because they live very close to the President’s route. I’m expecting to get challenged every time I go out, but no problems so far. (Quite the reverse: Gaston, one of the local bobbies who looks about sixteen, came into the office for a chat yesterday because he was bored and wanted to see the muzungu). When you think about it, with umuganda and gacaca there won’t be many working hours this week!

At the office I’m trying to get ready for my first formal inspection on Wednesday. Claude has rung the school and confirmed our visit; Cathy and Elson are sorting out transport. I’ve got my formal lesson observation sheet pad, very impressive with the Rwandan coat of arms on every page. I’ve made my crib list of questions to ask (in French). In the office I find copies of the secondary national curriculum booklets for Art, Music, Sport, ICT, Science and Religion so spend most of the morning going through them. The standard seems pretty close to our GCSE, and I wonder just how many of the population can survive primary school to get a crack at all these subjects. Unfortunately the ones most useful to me – French and English – are not there, and nobody seems to know if there are any lurking in the office. This is typical of the way things work here – everyone does his/her own thing and it’s very difficult to get any sense of joined up governance. Gets very frustrating. Absolutely nobody has a useful map of the district; I am going to have to go to Butare again and order a personal copy at the GIS office there. (See, Rachel, your university GIS would come in really handy here!)

After a while I get bored and discover brand new French textbooks (secondary) lurking in boxes in the office. Nobody has arranged their distribution yet. They’re lovely books, well illustrated and similar to our school books of the 1980s and 1990s. All the pictures are of Africans, and the places mentioned, animals, shopping items etc are all appropriate to Rwanda. It’s wonderful that these sorts of books are being produced, but I wonder how many are actually in the schools and how many children are actually using them? In other boxes there are primary school Kinya-rwanda textbooks; these are illustrated in black and white but, again, are lovely resources which need getting out into schools straight away. They’re all funded by various foreign NGOs, of course.

Mid-morning I escape the office to go to the bank. My cheque book, naturally, hasn’t arrived, but I’m almost out of cash and they give me a bank cheque to draw some dosh. Realise I haven’t a clue whether I’m living within my means, so decide to keep accounts for a bit.

Lunch at the Tranquilité restaurant again – meal and drink and tip for 1000RwF (£1). The waitresses all speak English, so that means they were refugees in Uganda during 1994. I really like it – fast service, nice food and pleasant ambience. Izikiah, the head waiter, won’t let me start eating till I’ve listed the names of all the ingredients in Kinyar; it’s a good game and I’m beginning to learn them. (The problem in Kinyar is that so many words are almost identical except for one letter).

Today the results of primary P6 exams are released; this is the means by which pupils are selected for secondary school. It’s really like our old 11+ exam. In the office there’s a huge wad of printouts and Innocent, one of my mates, is keying in some stuff into the computer. Looking through the sheets I realise they’re a goldmine of information for each school, telling me the strengths of each subject, and even (in one case) highlighting that boys seem to be favoured over girls. The results vary wildly from school to school and from year to year for the same school.

But the thing which stands out a mile is that the English results are dire across the board. So far as I can see, no school has reached even half way to the pass mark (38%) in its average English score, and it’s dragging the whole district’s results down.

So I spend all afternoon, all evening till 11 o’clock at night, and get up early next morning to make a statistical analysis of a large sample of the results. Sorry if that sounds nerdy and boring, but it’s exactly what Claude wants me to do and I know that the way he’s looking at the data won’t show him what he wants to know.

Polly comes round to let off steam at tea time; she’s doing exactly the same job as me in the next district down (Ruhango), but is having all sorts of problems communicating. She can’t speak French and has had to hire an interpreter, but worse is that she’s at the centre of a political tussle between her mayor (who arranged for her to come) and her education director( who is old, settled and doesn’t want anyone rocking the boat until he retires). She’s a brilliant ex-HMI, and we get on well. Nobody can believe I’m so sorted so soon in terms of job and materials, and I’m offering all sorts of bits to the others who are less fortunate. (Marisa is also doing the same job as me at Nyamata, which is close to Kigali).

Celebrated all this excitement by buying a whole cheese and a yoghurt at the shop, and did battle with the market traders for spuds. Poor Tom, he took one look at the pile of papers I was processing, cooked our tea, and then left me to it while he watched a DVD in the evening. I must be more sociable tomorrow, but, hey, Tuesday is salsa night!

High point of the day – getting some money out of the bank, and realising I’d struck gold with the exam result data. It actually managed not to rain today.
Low point – none. Life is cool, hectic. Africa rocks, at the moment!