Camilla in Rwanda: The day of reckoning

Today heralded my first official visit by vso personnel to check on my progress in my placement so far. As you can imagine, as soon as I knew they were coming I was madly trying to tidy up the bits of cardboard everywhere to present my resource centre in the best possible light. And thats when I found it. The dead bird. Now I know I should be upset that a living creature met its end in my resource centre, but the damn thing shat all over my ‘what makes a good teacher’ display so I wasn’t. The only trouble was trying to remove it. I hate dead things, they are just so disgusting. And I didn’t have any resources such as a broom or shovel which I could use to get rid of it. Fortunately someone came in and did the deed for me when I said ‘le ouiseaux, il est mortir’ and pointed to the corpse.

Well the official reckoning was that I’m doing fine. In fact vso personnel were so pleased that they took photographs! Praise indeed. Steven and Mary also hitched a ride down to the college and it was lovely for them to see where I work. Today was also a day of celebration at the college because all of the previous year’s students passed their exams. I was treated to some truly fabulous singing where the sound gave me goose pimples, I am so jealous of the singing ability of the students here, if only I had a voice like theirs. I’d be right down to the x factor auditions...so in actual fact its probably a good thing for the world at large that I don’t.

After the ceremony with the students I went back to the staffroom and drank too much fanta. Ever since coming to Rwanda I have become a fantaholic. I don’t even really like the stuff that much, but it everywhere here and gives me my fix of sugar. Drinking too much of it makes me hyperactive and ditzy (well ditzier than normal) and I’m sure it does bad things to my blood sugar levels but I can’t see myself kicking the addition. Apparently girls are either classed as ‘fanta citron’ or ‘fanta orange’...I’m definitely a fanta citron lover....my affection for the green bottle tops replaces my love of the green mugs in the Hannah More staffroom...oh how I miss the green mugs! No one else liked them for some reason so they were always available to be filled with a nice hot cup of tea...made with real milk from real cows...oh deary me I feel another larium dream coming on about cows and milk and dairy produce. Its because now I’ve found eggs I’ve stopped dreaming about chickens, so I think cows will be next.

Here is the TRC so far. When I first moved in it was completely empty so I've made a start.