Girly night in Butare

Hadn’t planned anything for this weekend so it was nice to get invite from Tiga in Butare. She promised a bucket pedicure, good food and…a haircut! She’s had a few probs with her placement recently so it was a good excuse to forget all the crap, paint our toenails and snip all the cares away. Dinner was a real treat. She’s managed to grow loads of vegetables in her garden so a starter of green salad with (oh my god) balsamic vinegar was followed by an ever so tasty vegetable risotto, nice. Now, the fact Tiga has hairdressing scissors says nothing of course about her ability to cut. Nevertheless, and despite exclamations of ‘wow, there are so many different lengths in your hair’ (which I’m not sure were made before or after she started cutting), she did a good job.
We finished the evening with lots of chat, then watched ‘The Little Mermaid’ which having been ‘disneyfied’ had an altogether cheerier ending...and not that I don’t love happy endings but I definitely prefer the original.

Another umuganda meant that everything was closed and no transport till later. So me and Tiga hung around Butare for lunch before heading to Gikongoro where Andy and John were planning to watch the cup final or Champion’s league…football in any case. And despite the promise of dinner (John has a proper oven!), I knew the match would be wasted on me so popped back to mine for a cosy evening in with Latislas.

The Golden Monkey

…Gikongoro’s first proper hotel!
Had Sunday lunch with Andy and Tiga then decided to check out the sauna here. After going to one in Gitarama recently, I was up for more pampering. Once again, it was pretty much just me and the boys who once again just can’t seem to relax. No sooner had I settled down, calmly breathing in the essential oils than I’m interrupted by grunts and the sound of bodies being pummelled…Anyway, the tea was nice. :0)

Monday

Finally the call came - we would definitely be starting the surveys today! It’s amazing it’s happening at all considering all the delays but at 9am I got the call from Diane at MINEDUC saying she was leaving Kigali and should be with me soon. It would take her at least 3 hours to get to me so I decided to pop into the office where it was unusually a ‘full house’. Me and Andy were squeezed onto the one desk while Chantal continued to occupy Andy’s old one (still full of his femidoms and wooden phalluses which I don’t think she’s noticed yet). Anyway, at around 1pm Diane still hadn’t called so we decided to grab some lunch at Eden. I love it here, the food is nice and there’s even a semblance of customer service which is rare indeed. The very fact that anyone takes your order is sometimes all you can hope for but here everyone’s really pleasant and we don’t wait long either. After that I meet up with Diane and we set off for the first school which is in Kigeme.

As we suspected, no-one had bothered to let them know we were coming and the head wasn’t around to speak with so I was a bit worried about how they’d react to our arriving to administer tests. Luckily, I think they’re quite used to little surprises like this from MINEDUC so were incredibly good natured about everything and sat the English test no problem. After this, me and Diane split the tasks. She would conduct the forum discussion since it would be better doing it in Kinyarwanda and I would carry out the classroom observation. The lesson wasn’t great but since it will be ‘judged’ anonymously I was honest about what I saw. It was a maths lesson with pupils between the ages of 16 and 21 sitting and listening (hopefully) to what the teacher was trying to teach-in this case quadratic equations (uuughh!). The truth is there were no resources and although he did engage with the pupils and got a couple up to the board, the children didn’t seem to be learning anything new and were more likely regurgitating old learned facts. The teacher did his best to deliver the whole lesson in English but I can’t help thinking at the detriment of the learning. The other thing is that the ‘teacher’ is actually only one because he’s waiting to go to university so has himself only just finished secondary education. Everyone has to take a year out after school before university because of when exam results get published. Anyway, of course I was just grateful that he let me watch the lesson and wished him all the best, after all he is just doing what he can in a crazy system…

Oh god I haven’t said the most embarrassing thing that happened. Just as I was about to start the observation, I walked over to the desk by the board and went to sit down. As I did so I didn’t notice that it was in fact set on a slightly raised area but that some of the desk was just over the edge of it. Anyway, to the great delight of the students, as I went to sit, I managed to tip the whole desk over and just about stopped myself from landing on my bottom. I was quick to join in the laughter and hope my embarrassment didn’t show through :0)

Mushubi tomorrow. It’s been raining really heavily lately so the dirt roads up there are likely to be swirls of mud. We have a 4 x 4 but even with this it’s tough. Still it’ll be nice to go somewhere so remote and the views should be great!