Telling the truth

In a moment of enthusiasm, after getting on line at last and posting my first blog entry of this trip, I told Antoine's sons about the blog. Now they read it and so does A. (He asked if he could write a blog. 'Yes, I'll show you how.' It hasn't happened yet.) It's an interesting challenge to maintain my analytical stance without being critical in ways that could cause hurt or lead to unnecessary changes in how I am used.

It becomes even more important to resist any temptation to massage the facts for the sake of a story or punch line. Would a good Quaker massage the facts? Well, it's tempting sometimes. Is every episode in those generations of Quaker journals a strictly accurate rendering of the messiness of events perceived as they are still developing? We know that in the case of George Fox his 'journal' (which might more helpfully be classified as autobiography) was dictated towards the end of a long life, well after the inner and outer turmoil of his early years. Now that the immediate is so easily captured in e-communication by blog, email, camera phone etc, I would consider it a diminution of this experience with AGLI in Rwanda not to be sending impressions to a wide circle of personal contacts. This blog, I am told, appears on googling at least one phrase I didn't consider significant when I wrote it.

I also have to be alert to spreading untruth by misunderstanding what I am seeing or hearing. If readers find me writing something they think is wrong I hope they will tell me.

Perhaps the most obvious barrier to good communication is not being fluent in a common language. French continues to serve more frequently than English as the best match. Antoine's wife makes a pleasant joke of talking English at table with me and scolds the others if they don't play along. I have a deal with Antoine that we will speak as much English as possible, and I know he's working hard to bring his speaking and listening skills up to his level of reading comprehension. But for serious matters such a arrangements and expectations, French is more reliable.

I have a further difficulty to do with hearing. Sometimes I simply can't hear, from a combination of age related degeneration and noise pollution. I wish I were not so sensitive to poorly tuned radio and TV; there are times when my hands jump to my ears at a new blast through an amplification system. I wish I were not so distracted by radio etc that I can't follow what's being said to me. But that's how it is.

Then there are the problems of pronunciation, which seem to be all on my side. I'm rarely asked to repeat anything, but I quite often fail to make sense of what is being said. I learnt in February to try exchanging r and l as a first test; that works fairly often. I've come up once or twice recently against another feature of Kinyarwanda, a softening of k to ch. That's not a problem for Kigali (Chigali) or Kicukiro or Kicirongi, but my brain will not accept Chenya for Kenya, even when the context ought to make it plain.

All in all, however, my experience is of a wonderful meeting of minds and souls. It's worth saying again, I am glad to be here.