Quantifying life in Zaza

• Cake baking and consumption rate – 1.3333 per day (as with all statistics this is a bit misleading because I typically bake and consume within the space of 2hrs)
• Current record for number of people in taxi bus – 28 in seating for 15
• Number of times I have removed a bees nest from my front door only to have the bee return and start reconstructing it within a few days – 6
• Average daily rainfall (including the huge hail stones) – 1.37 metres (no official data - educated estimation)
• Number of horizontal surfaces in my house on which to cook, wash, prepare etc – zero
• Eyebrows left after first week using kerosene stove – 1 ¼
• Houseboy’s days off sick with malaria – 7 in 10 days of employment
• Days without electricity or phones – 7 and counting
• Cost of new transformer from Europe to repair the electricity - £2m
• Number of students missing from school during first week – at least 40 of the 240
• Proportion of students who trek to school one day and are sent home the next to get their school fees – c.25%
• Notice given of timetable – overnight (received Sunday night only because told them if I didn’t have a timetable I didn’t know what to prepare and I wouldn’t teach unless I’d been able to prepare)
• Days exposed to syllabus before term started: 1 day for S4 and S5 classes
• Average number of spelling errors in syllabus: 27
• Senior 4’s syllabus words per minute reading speed aspiration: increase from 300 wpm to 350 wpm (must first raise own reading speed to this)
• New career plan - Blue Peter presenter (can make anything out of anything at the moment although raw materials and products not terribly well suited to Blue Peter audience)
• Number of hours Rwanda clock is out – 6hrs (Rwandan day starts at 7 our time but since it’s the start of the day they call it 1 and so on – you basically have to read the clock face by looking at the opposite)
• Horrendously bad journeys since last e-mail – 1 out of 1
• Piritons taken in attempt to control cat allergy last night – 4 in 4 hours
• Percentage effectiveness of this dosage – 90%
• Number of side effects – 1. very drowsy, 2. serious hangover this morning
• Health and safety issues I have encountered in Rwanda – 681 and countingAddictions likely to have after living here for 2 years – 1. Kerosene (not good but stinks the whole house out), 2. Cakes