What a Wet Week!
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This has been a week of endless frustration due in the main to the weather. I went to school on Monday to find that once again more than half the teachers were missing, evidently chasing their salaries so it was pretty much impossible to do anything. Things were slightly better on Tuesday and I managed to have a long talk to the older girls and their teachers and establish that sitting sewing and crocheting all day with some of them making cardigans in revolting colours on a knitting machine is not a specially stimulating educational experience!! So we are to start cooking once a week and actually do some reading and writing of recipes - plus I hope visits to the market to buy ingredients. Of course money is an issue but I propose to use the dosh that some of you have so kindly sent me and I have acquired from Meg, ( a Kigali volunteer), a second kerosene stove, which I can leave at the school. I have also spent quite a lot of time trying to capture a few words with Frere Alexandre to get his agreement to this and to have dancers come to teach the children traditinal and contemporary Dance - also using your funds but he is either very occupied or not there and when I do approach him he raises an imperious finger and says " Non, Pas aujoured hui' and diappears. I have asked Amanda my Programme Manager to try to come down to Butare to see him to establish if all that I am trying to do is OK.
On Wednesday I was awoken at about 4.30 by dazzling flashes of lightening, deafening claps of thunder and rain hammering on the roof. This continued all morning so I made no attempt to go to school until the afternoon when I found that no one else had done so either and at least one of the classrooms was flooded so no work done that day!
Paying all the Electogaz bills has been almost as tedious as chasing Frere A!
One has to go to a window where a grimfaced woman peruses the bill, counts out the money one hands her, checks it with a calculater, has to borrow change from another customer and then wearily writes out a receipt which you then have to take to another window where 2 men verify it, check through endless files and then laboriously write it all out again before handing one the next months bill!! The Rwandans are not very disciplined about queueing so quite often one has to put up with pushy customers barging in front. The whole operation takes hours and there's no where to sit so I was thankful to have a letter to read last time and a French nun to talk to although her replies to my sallies were "C'est Ca, C'est ca"!!
I'm off to have coffee at the Ibis now and then take a moto to a restaurant that serves grilled rabbit wher I'm to meet Jessica's family over from America for 12 days. Her father is a Real American Lawyer!!
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