The term finished on Sunday with a Mass which include Confirmation and Baptism of several of the pupils from the Centre Sourds et Muets so it went on for quite some time but gave me a chance to meet my deaf friend Martin's sister, who is a dressmaker in Kigali and is pretty stylish. she is also Deaf and was a former pupil at the school.
I had spent several hours last week acting as an interpreter for Martin who was being interviewed by a Canadian accademic in Butare researching into Post Genocide Society. Very fascinating to observe her interview techniques and also to relay Martin's respose to her questions. I also had a visitor - a young German girl called Freddy who is about to start studying to be a teacher of the Deaf in Cologne but is currently working here a a volunteer at a nursery school in Gahini. she helped me keep children occupied on 2 days while teachers added up marks and practised for the Mass. We made some collages with older children and played games and coloured with younger ones. The highlight of the final week was the football match which was played on the final Friday after the "declarations" - announcing how well or badly all the children had done and lining up in order of class place.
I had been to Kigali to buy some footballs and then suggested a match between staff and students - it was a good game despite an extremely uneven pitch and goal posts very close together at one end, thus making the goalee pretty much invincible!! In the end the Deaf won - to wild rejoicing and I then sent Frere A in search of a couple of crates of fanta for the students and beer for the teachers!! This was better than going to a bar where I would have had no control over the consumption!!
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