Day Twelve (Wednesday)

Went to the market yesterday and not just to look.  They have system which is easy to use.  Piles of fruit and vegatables are laid out on the stalls. Each has a mixture of big/small/bruised and perfect items and the price is almost always 100 Francs (10p). So passion fruit, mangoes, onions etc all 2p each.  There is no meat for sale, but to be honest I wouldn’t want to buy it even if there was.  What we really need to find now is cheese and eggs.  Came back with a big bag of produce (mostly fruit and veg.) and material for curtains. The material was cut to size and then carried up to the tailor for the edges to be sewn and a top loop made to fit the curtain pole.  You should be able to see the product of this endeavour in the attached photographs of the house.  Yes, that really is the bathroom.  Oh, and that is the latrine block.  The kitchen is a masterpiece of make-do organisation, but on the outside the house itself is well built and secure.

Spent some time today trying to produce some documents that might be helpful when I meet up with my partner headteachers.  I put some school data into a  spreadsheet, wrote lists of issues for discussion and created a powerpoint.  I really want to be busy and feel that I am doing something useful. I shall just have to learn to be patient!

My motorcycle arrived just as we were eating dinner.  As it was dark it was impossible to do much other than help unload it and put it in one of the outhouses at the rear of the house. Then back to our first made-at-home dinner!  I can see I will be a vegetarian before I return to England.

Day Thirteen (Thursday)

A visit to a very large school (2700 pupils) in a sector adjoining the one my schools are in.  It is about 2 ½ km from our house in Kabarore.  The motorbike would not start, so we had to walk.  Quite a trek in the heat.    I am accompanying another Education Management Advisor and taking the opportunity to see a school at work, which hopefully will mean I can contextualise what  I see when I do get to visit my schools.  After all there are now only eleven weeks left to achieve something useful (and two of those will probably be lost with school holidays etc.).

I am still unable to meet the headteachers I should be working with, but at least this gives me time to get household matters organised.  And getting organised  in the house is very important!  With no running water we have to get a boy on a bicycle to stop and agree to deliver four jerry cans full of water  every day.  The pump is not far away, probably about 400m and we pay 5p per jerry can. Everything takes longer than at home.  When washing your hands (which I tend to do about 10 times a day), soaping up is ok, but trying to rinse the soap off is difficult as you pour water from a jug with one hand onto the other. You cannot rub your hands together under running water to help get the soap off. Essentially, living here is like indoor camping without a washroom block being nearby!

Day Fourteen (Friday)

At 9.00 a.m. we are outside the District Office waiting to see the Divisional Director of Education.  Unfortunately, he has had to stay in Kigali, and so I am still unable to ask him to introduce me to the people with whom I will be working. 

I spend some time ringing people to try to kick start things into action, but it is not easy without the introductions and in the end I achieve nothing and just run out of credit on my phone.

So after doing a bit of work (a lesson observation record sheet) I am going to take a journey on the bike to explore a little and get used to the way it handles.  Now it has a bit of petrol in the tank, it is much more amenable to starting.   I ride 5 km to the east along dirt tracks through collections of houses in clusters along the sides of the road.  To be able to travel with such freedom is a real privilege.  Most of the land is fertile and laid to agriculture.  But at the farthest extent of my ride is a ridge which is clearly too dry with soil that is too thin.  This is the first really uncultivated stretch of land I have seen and it may be a good site for an early morning amble.

Friday is market day.  The afternoon market is very busy and with a wider range of produce than in the morning.  There are aubergines and limes neither of which we have seen before.