Meeting my boss for the first time

Wednesday Jan 16th

Today is the Employers conference. It’s the beginning of the end of induction. All of us beginning to feel collywobbles at thought of leaving the safety of our group at Amani.

The Employers are slow arriving, quite a few can’t come and sent representatives. This is difficult for those of us who need to negotiate timetables, workloads etc because there’s nobody in authority.

Finally I meet Claude Sebashi. He’s small, neat, fit, and very young. Sharp, too – he asks a lot of leading questions. He speaks good English; fortunate, this, because I find his French accent and speed of speaking French difficult to follow.

The conference itself starts drearily (reminded me how nice it had felt to retire from teaching), but comes alight during discussion over contracts. Raina, a woman of European origin sitting next to me, is head of a private primary school and has a legal background. She’s very combative and as a result nothing is finalised about our contracts (the idea was to agree and sign them then and there with our employers).
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The conference ends with a long speech from Alex, then we feast with goat brochettes (at last! And VERY good they are, too).

Afterwards there’s nothing left to do but to pack up all our things ready for moving out. We all feel very flat and nervous about what is to come, but we all try to put a brave face on and nobody wants to admit they’re scared. What will our new accommodation be like? Can we do the job? Some of us have already been dropped-on with more teaching or more subjects than seems reasonable. I’ve still got no idea how I am expected to get to the farthest fringes of Muhanga to fulfil my inspection role (Claude has made it clear he wants me to focus on raising classroom standards through inspection and monitoring).

Nobody seems in the mood to go out for a final drink. We all retreat to our rooms. A phone call from Teresa is most welcome, then we all settle down for an early night.

High point of the day – meeting Claude at last
Low point – all of us dreading splitting up, being on our own, possibly isolated etc