Making the most of a slow day! (volume 1 of dozens)!

Feb 12th

With Claude not around there seems no point in going into the office today. I’m worried about my laptop because of the virus I’ve picked up from Innocent’s computer. It’s made me realise just how totally dependent we all are on our laptops. If this thing wrecks mine, then I have do diary, no photos, no memories of home, and my ability to work is severely restricted. No to worry, though: I’m sure that sooner or later I’ll be able to get my machine and flash drive cleansed, even if I have to take them to Kigali to get it done.

So I work at home. I’m picking through a maze of hugely detailed spreadsheets from another district which have been done by Mans, one of the Dutch volunteers. I’ve also got, via him, printouts of official MINEDUC documents which don’t exist in our office. Eventually I know what I’m going to do today. I’m going to produce a spreadsheet with all the French educational jargon terms in these papers, and get it so that I can print it off. I’m going to recommend to Charlotte that we distribute it to all Ed Management vols here, and might even post it on the VSO “Volzone” bulletin board if ever I get email that works. Who knows, I might be famous….

Four hours later I’ve missed out on lunch, but I’ve got it done. There’s niceties such as “la démographie galopante” and “classes surpeuplées”; there’s congé de circonstance and « enfants de mauvais souvenir ». (Respectively : galloping population growth, overcrowded classes, maternity leave, children traumatised by having seen or done horrific things during the genocide and its aftermath) – Ed.

I realise that if I sort it alphabetically by the English terms, it’ll also be useful for Claude and anyone else in the office.

I’m chuffed by now – at one stroke I’ve solved one of the problems I’ve been facing: my conversational French is (just about) adequate, but the specifics of educational terms, of gestion, formation, atouts and données have been bugging me. Until now.
(Management, training, assets, data) – Ed.

Now, if only I could find a way to get through the muddy accents of all these Rwandans. One little example: where a French word ends in “e” they always pronounce the “e”. So “une verre” becomes “une verre-uh”. And that’s just a simple one to adjust to!

Spend the evening watching one of the DVDs from home. “Letter to Brezhnev”: 1980s Liverpool seems as far away as the moon from here.

High point of the day – seeing the finished spreadsheet and saying “Gotcha” out loud.
Low point of the day – that feeling that the whole electronic world’s against me.