Two weeks of my life back home was fairly routine and uneventful. Here, well, it’s predictably very different. The electricity returned after nine days, once the new transformer arrived from Europe! With that came the telephones (the antenna is powered by electricity). For a week the electricity went on and off frequently. I haven’t had a power cut this week but I can only turn certain items on in combination and the bathroom and bedroom lights just flash like they have a vendetta against epileptics and are giving me a headache. Nonetheless, we now have a mobile signal in Zaza. I have one bar at my house, enough to send and receive a text, and if I stand with the cows and chickens in the school farm’s fields I sometimes have three or four bars, enough for phone calls. It is all very exciting!
The transport situation has not been resolved – no 4x4 and no donkey. Since my last e-mail I’ve had a 8hr round trip to the nearest town in order to spend literally 5 minutes in the bank withdrawing money so I can pay for food, and a three day trip to the city to spend an hour on the internet! And the placement description echoes in my mind: “it is not difficult to visit Kibungo or Kigali”….
Like the headache I must be, I have voiced further concerns with VSO about the nature of this placement having discovered that we only have rain water in my village and the last placement here was cancelled because of the water shortage, and having been told by my school director that “it is a problem that you are neither Catholic nor Christian, all our teachers must be”. Hurrah! Add this to being told that it was actually a boys school only one week before I arrived and the now inconceivably assurance that my school was happy with Angie, my unmarried partner who I ‘live in sin’ with, coming to visit and stay.
Balanced against all of these mistakes or oversights, are all the positives of my new life here: I have a good workload, the house is nearing completion, the landscaping of the garden has already commenced and I have recruited two goats to mow the grass out back, I have just negotiated for the school to cook me beautiful loaves three times a week, I have bought a Jack Daniels bottle full of gorgeous locally harvested honey, my ‘houseboy’ is excellent despite getting stranded in Kibungo last time I sent him to the market because there wasn’t room for him on the sole bus that connects us to civilisation, the surroundings are beautiful, and my class sizes are very reasonable although I’m not sure how much of this is due to so many being absent searching for school fees.
However, with VSO refusing to go beyond their rhetoric and tangibly demonstrate responsibility for this predicament and provide me with transport, I am left in the unfortunate position of having to consider resigning and finding another placement. When VSO provide me with the alternative placements then it’ll be a case of balancing them against the cost of buying my own transport and staying put. It’s difficult emotionally and mentally to deal with all this and the prospect of essentially having to go through the last five weeks all over again. And if I move mid term it’ll all be happening at the same time – no chance to settle into the community and house before work started. And this is all presuming I can find something that is more appealing than buying transport and staying put, which is a tough challenge. Frustrating. I feel like I’m burdening all the consequences of someone else’s failings.
Anyway, at least it has distracted from the common frustrations of most placements – jumping out of your skin when you encounter a herd of cattle with massive horns whilst walking down a pitch black track, the aggressive hollering of ‘muzungu’, the endearingly named but infuriating ‘African time’ which the professional and male elements of society frequently adhere to in order to justify inefficiency and unproductiveness, and the culture of making promises or giving assurances without any evident sense of obligation, consequence or consideration.
The ‘maleness’ of society is weird too. Women are de-feminised, in the traditional sense, by the hard labour they dominate and the shaved heads that the majority have, while the façade of urban society is de-feminised by the background role of women and the prevalence of men everywhere, just loitering aimlessly for hours on end, play fighting, involving themselves in every heated conversation that occurs in their vicinity… while women, children and male labourers are toiling and juggling far too many burdens. I’m actually embarrassed to be male here because the overwhelming impression I get of men is a negative one.
The daily sight of tens of children of 3,4,5 years carrying 10 litre water canisters, herding goats, carrying bundles of sticks on their heads and lugging their younger siblings on their backs, of children of 7,8,9 years carrying 20 litre jerry cans that I can barely carry for more than 20 metre and shepherding herds of cattle that are ten times their size, the references my students frequently and openly make to the genocide, living as refugees or being orphans, the pictures and accounts you see and read of the events of the past fifty years here …never fail to at least leave a lump in your throat.
I haven’t made too many blunders so far. My house boy returned from the market with a tool for cultivating when I thought I’d asked him in Kinyarwanda to get some clean jerry cans, I have been told off for not being sufficiently respectful of the bishop – I must say “bonjour monseigneur” not “bonjour monsieur” - and in moments of frustration I keep saying ‘Alleluia’ to myself when I finally make sense to the students but the attentive and religiously devoted students just look confused and respond in a loud chorus, ‘Amen’ – it’s only a matter of time before I get told off. Still no diseases or illnesses although I have all the incubation periods stuck in my mind so I am counting down the days. It’s hugely reassuring knowing that it’s so practical to get to the doctor at the Belgium embassy and Kigali hospitals that I am supposed to use in the event of an illness.
The transport situation has not been resolved – no 4x4 and no donkey. Since my last e-mail I’ve had a 8hr round trip to the nearest town in order to spend literally 5 minutes in the bank withdrawing money so I can pay for food, and a three day trip to the city to spend an hour on the internet! And the placement description echoes in my mind: “it is not difficult to visit Kibungo or Kigali”….
Like the headache I must be, I have voiced further concerns with VSO about the nature of this placement having discovered that we only have rain water in my village and the last placement here was cancelled because of the water shortage, and having been told by my school director that “it is a problem that you are neither Catholic nor Christian, all our teachers must be”. Hurrah! Add this to being told that it was actually a boys school only one week before I arrived and the now inconceivably assurance that my school was happy with Angie, my unmarried partner who I ‘live in sin’ with, coming to visit and stay.
Balanced against all of these mistakes or oversights, are all the positives of my new life here: I have a good workload, the house is nearing completion, the landscaping of the garden has already commenced and I have recruited two goats to mow the grass out back, I have just negotiated for the school to cook me beautiful loaves three times a week, I have bought a Jack Daniels bottle full of gorgeous locally harvested honey, my ‘houseboy’ is excellent despite getting stranded in Kibungo last time I sent him to the market because there wasn’t room for him on the sole bus that connects us to civilisation, the surroundings are beautiful, and my class sizes are very reasonable although I’m not sure how much of this is due to so many being absent searching for school fees.
However, with VSO refusing to go beyond their rhetoric and tangibly demonstrate responsibility for this predicament and provide me with transport, I am left in the unfortunate position of having to consider resigning and finding another placement. When VSO provide me with the alternative placements then it’ll be a case of balancing them against the cost of buying my own transport and staying put. It’s difficult emotionally and mentally to deal with all this and the prospect of essentially having to go through the last five weeks all over again. And if I move mid term it’ll all be happening at the same time – no chance to settle into the community and house before work started. And this is all presuming I can find something that is more appealing than buying transport and staying put, which is a tough challenge. Frustrating. I feel like I’m burdening all the consequences of someone else’s failings.
Anyway, at least it has distracted from the common frustrations of most placements – jumping out of your skin when you encounter a herd of cattle with massive horns whilst walking down a pitch black track, the aggressive hollering of ‘muzungu’, the endearingly named but infuriating ‘African time’ which the professional and male elements of society frequently adhere to in order to justify inefficiency and unproductiveness, and the culture of making promises or giving assurances without any evident sense of obligation, consequence or consideration.
The ‘maleness’ of society is weird too. Women are de-feminised, in the traditional sense, by the hard labour they dominate and the shaved heads that the majority have, while the façade of urban society is de-feminised by the background role of women and the prevalence of men everywhere, just loitering aimlessly for hours on end, play fighting, involving themselves in every heated conversation that occurs in their vicinity… while women, children and male labourers are toiling and juggling far too many burdens. I’m actually embarrassed to be male here because the overwhelming impression I get of men is a negative one.
The daily sight of tens of children of 3,4,5 years carrying 10 litre water canisters, herding goats, carrying bundles of sticks on their heads and lugging their younger siblings on their backs, of children of 7,8,9 years carrying 20 litre jerry cans that I can barely carry for more than 20 metre and shepherding herds of cattle that are ten times their size, the references my students frequently and openly make to the genocide, living as refugees or being orphans, the pictures and accounts you see and read of the events of the past fifty years here …never fail to at least leave a lump in your throat.
I haven’t made too many blunders so far. My house boy returned from the market with a tool for cultivating when I thought I’d asked him in Kinyarwanda to get some clean jerry cans, I have been told off for not being sufficiently respectful of the bishop – I must say “bonjour monseigneur” not “bonjour monsieur” - and in moments of frustration I keep saying ‘Alleluia’ to myself when I finally make sense to the students but the attentive and religiously devoted students just look confused and respond in a loud chorus, ‘Amen’ – it’s only a matter of time before I get told off. Still no diseases or illnesses although I have all the incubation periods stuck in my mind so I am counting down the days. It’s hugely reassuring knowing that it’s so practical to get to the doctor at the Belgium embassy and Kigali hospitals that I am supposed to use in the event of an illness.
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