Musical Interlude: Whatever

What Now?

 

Oh, heck. I can't believe how long it's been since I last updated.  I got swept away on the tide of life. So much has been happening.

We built a piano frame! The first ever in Rwanda.

All hail Samuel, modelling said piano frame above.

Suave. Sophisticated. Very gold.

The rest is causing a bit of brain ache, but we're getting there slowly.

My awesome cousin Tamsin came to visit with her partner, Guido. Last stop on a seven-month tour of Africa. You can follow their onward adventures in Dubai, Asia and India on their blog. We did lots of fun things, including drinking, partying and exploring a creepy abandoned funfair at midnight. Lots of sobering things too, like Kigali and Nyamata genocide memorials.

Mostly what's kept me away is another batch of textbook editing for Rwanda Education Board. I work through an education consultancy as a proofreader. There's a little team of us. It's hard work, but also quite a privilege to think that the words we help to polish will be read by school children up and down the entire country. That's fairly fabulous. I've been doing so much proofing lately: textbooks, children's books and two novels (not mine), one of which I'm due to start working on after I finish this contract.

I'll get back to blogging eventually but, after a heavy day of editing, all I'm really capable of is cracking a beer and watching movies.

Piano Girl

I do apologise for going so quiet recently. It's because I've been making a lot of noise in other arenas. Namely as a piano tuner and repair lady. Busy sorting out my Kigali Keys project. I have done a small amount of writing, but that has rather taken over for now. That, and turning my back shed into a self-contained guest apartment. Lot of builders in the yard from early in the morning until dark. Off tile shopping tomorrow. Hard to get much done with that and a recent spate of internet issues. I have family visiting this weekend, and once the building's finished and things have returned to normal, I plan on returning to writing. Until then, I can mostly be found wandering around Rwanda dressed as a piano. What do you think - new uniform?

2nd Edition

Very excited to read this article in the New Times today:

Activists are pushing for the recognition of sign language as one of the country’s official languages.

This would make it the fifth official language after Kinyarwanda, English, French and Swahili.

The development comes at a time when the country is awaiting a new sign language dictionary, which is expected to be ready later this year.

The dictionary, which would be the second of its kind for Rwanda, has been in the works since 2014.

I first came to Rwanda as a sign language researcher, and was involved with the inaugural dictionary right up to its publication in 2009. We travelled all around the country, documenting regional linguistic variations. It's really great to see it's being updated, and that the fight to recognise sign language is going strong.

 

1st Edition

Flip the Flop

I haven't been making many posts recently as editing is keeping me busy. Just wanted to share this, though. 

Possibly the world's first ever piano hammers made from recycled flipflops. Made for our Kigali Keys piano project thanks to our friends Ocean Sole in Kenya.

It'll be a couple of months before we can test them properly, but it's a really exciting experiment.

Perdua Publishers

Extremely proud to be working as an editor for Perdua Publishers in Rwanda. Or, rather, extremely proud of how far my friend Firmin has come. We first met back in 2008 when he was running Kivu Writers, a project to get secondary school kids writing. Now he's helped to found a publishing house.

I've just taken charge of ten short stories for upper primary and lower secondary.

I'm excited to be involved in the project whilst doing what I enjoy.

Versus

Very happy to be reviewing this collection. It's a bit of a milestone. The first anthology of contemporary adult fiction I'm aware of in Rwanda. Published by Huza Press (pronounced hoo-sa - Facebook/Twitter). They hope to have it available in e-format by the end of the year.

Each year, Huza run a short story award for Rwandan writers, with a $1000 prize. The eight shortlisted stories from their 2015 competition have now been released as Versus. This is a really big deal. ImagineWe has been making strides into children's books with Oh Rwandan Child! and ABC's of Rwanda, but this is the first time contemporary adult fiction has been offered up, and it spans a wide range of genres including literary, fantasy and science fiction.

I was really excited to get my hands on a copy. 

A couple of the stories that really stood out for me: 

Today I Leave You by Jean-Claude Muhire (Twitter): I first met Jean a couple of years ago when I was country director of a youth and human rights program. He came to give a talk on LGBT rights, and he has been a passionate advocate of women's rights since. Many of my friends in the writing community became friends after I read their work (and gushed about it): Remittance Girl, Will Davis and the like. It's always really awkward when you start as friends first, then sit down to read somebody's work. You're always terrified by the thought: what if I don't like it? It's easy to write honest reviews about strangers, but it's always really hard when there's a personal connection behind the writing. Thankfully, I can honestly say, I really enjoyed this story. A harrowing, and at times poetic, exploration of domestic abuse written convincingly from a woman's perspective. I look forward to reading more of his work. He told me he is developing something at the moment, so watch this space. 

Nomansland by Dayo Ntwari (Twitter): I've never met Dayo, but it's not for lack of trying. When I moved back to Rwanda and heard there was a science fiction writer here, I desperately wanted to read some of his work, but it's only now, with this compilation, that I've had the chance. I even turned up in the rain to a talk he was giving, only to realise the Facebook event was a year old and nobody had taken it down. He wasn't even in the country. Felt like a right plonker. Anyway. Finally got my hands on his work and it stood out a mile. A futuristic, apocalyptic war zone with shape shifting hyenas, spider-based hallucinogens and space castles. I bloody loved it. Very talented writer. Apparently he's working on a collection of short stories and a novel - absolutely one to watch on the scifi scene.

A Little Red Car at the Gusaba by Eva Gara: According to her bio, Eva is a retired teacher who began telling stories to her own children. This was a really touching one exploring childhood tragedy and how love has to battle to overcome family traditions. I just really enjoyed both her style and the flow of the story.

Back in 2007, when I did my VSO training before coming to Rwanda for the first time, there was a session on cultural adjustment. I remember we were shown a drawing of an iceberg, two-thirds submerged beneath the sea. As the little penguins on top, we were told that we would probably only ever come to understand a small amount of the cultures we were venturing into, and that there would always be a huge amount we would never understand.

That was until local authors started writing, and local publishers stared printing them.

At which point, that iceberg starts to rise rapidly out of the water. 

I've been teaching a fiction course in Kigali, and was really intrigued to receive a piece from a local student recently which explored both lesbian and asexual characters. What often stands out about my students' work, and the work in this collection, is that issues are similar around the world: sexuality, love, death, violence, loss, happiness. 

The fascinating gift that literature gives us is to see that, quite often, our thought processes as human beings are remarkably similar globally. What differs are our circumstances. Sometimes our laws, our religions and our social traditions force us to make different choices, or behave in a certain way, but, through literature, nothing is incomprehensible. Reading these stories has filled in a few blanks for me, and offered up some knowledge about local language and culture that I didn't know, but it's also affirmed that, thankfully - people are people. We can understand most things if we're willing to listen. Stories transcend any boundary. 

That's why collections like Versus are so important. 

The Lovely Mr. Jean-Claude Muhire