I've been SKWID-ed!

Another week closer to departure. Just finished my second training course at Harborne Hall in Birmingham (it's a converted convent: little statues of Mary in niches along corridors). Very intense course; I think we all felt emotionally drained after four days. I have to say, the VSO training regime is very detailed and thorough. Such a great bunch of other trainees, too - nobody in common with my first course, but at last I've met another volunteer who'll be in Rwanda with me! The range of posts and countries between 14 of us is simply amazing - Cambodia, the Gambia, India, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. Jobs ranging from paediatrics, to working with HIV positive sex workers, to education, to compiling a signing language for deaf people. Restores a bit of faith in humanity.

Our course ended up with VSO's customary health and safety advice. This can be summarised as:

Don't eat anything - it's nearly all buggy, or you'll blow yourself and half the neighbourhood to smithereens if you tinker around with your gas cooker

Don't drink anything non-alcoholic - 'cos it's swimming in bacteria, even in ice

Don't go anywhere - 'cos the roads are dangerous and everyone drives like maniacs

Stay indoors - 'cos if the bugs don't get you then the sunshine will

Don't have sex with anyone (or even anything) - you're guaranteed to end up infected or married

Can someone please bang me on the head and remind me why I signed up to VSO?

Now it's back to reality; yet more injections (3 this week alone); insurance to sort out and all sorts of boring domestic finance to prepare for departure. My clockwork radio has arrived and I've been fiddling with it to try to get short wave reception (world service is going to be a life saver); my new camera works beautifully but I need to get more proficient on close-range shots, and at last I have a moped helmet which fits me. (Apparently it's the biggest size they make, but if I tell you all then you'll make the obvious comment back).

Au centre du monde

OK, here's proof that Rwanda really is at the centre of the world!

Now I know what a pin-cushion feels like

Today I'm almost half way through my jabs. I've had hepatitis B in my left arm, and rabies in my right. A while ago, both arms felt as if they were made of lead, but that's worn off now.

All in all I need at least 10 jabs - 3 each for rabies and hepatitis, one each for typhoid, meningitis and polio/tetanus/diphtheria, and a booster MMR to cover measles, mumps and rubella. Just about the only thing I don't need is japanese encephalitis. The sole jab from previous expeditions which seems valid is my yellow fever one. I've no grumbles with the Bridport Medical Centre - they're incredibly thorough.

It's the little asides that surprise me, the things I wasn't expecting. Apparently some of the immunity from the BCG jab I had back in 1961 might have worn off, so they want me to have another test to see if I still have resistance. All very well, but now that they've stopped doing the BCG jabs in schools there's hardly anywhere left to do the testing. I have to go about 35 miles to Stalbridge twice in November - once for the test and again in two days' time to have it read. If it transpires I need an injection then apparently I'll have to go all the way to Bristol for it.

No problem; it'll be a day out in the autumn sunshine/pouting rain! But why Stalbridge, of all places? - it's a village lost in the middle of Blackmoor Vale in the wilds of North Dorset. The most random, illogical place I can imagine to use as a repository for specialised medical treatment!

Then I've got to see my G.P. about anti malarials. Of course, the common-or-garden chloroquine and paludrine are no good for Rwanda as the bugs have become immune to them. So I need either mefloquine (side effects: bad dreams, sleep disturbance, headaches, rash, anxiety, depression, diarrhea and -{beat this} - paranoid hallucinations), or doxycycline (side effects: photosensitivity or heartburn). Photosensitivity for a year on the equator, anyone?.....

The jabs are expensive, too, even on the national health. Rabies - £105; meningitis £30, mefloquine - about £170, or doxycycline about £200.

And then I read about an outbreak of ebola in the Congo. No immunisation possible, 90% mortality rate, unbelievably awful way to die, no known cure. Fortunately it's a long way away from the Rwanda border, but, then again, diseases can travel a long way fast with long distance lorry drivers and the like.

So, I think, why am I putting myself through all this? Can't answer that yet. But Rwanda had better be good when the Bridport pin-cushion finally gets there!

Rwanda progress report - 100 days to go.......

Well, folks, in just over a hundred days I'll be on the plane winging my way over Africa and wondering what the hell I've let myself in for! Part of me wishes I was going next week; the other part is in a slow panic, thinking about all the things left to do and all the "what if"s both out there and back here at home.

At the moment I seem to be half drowning in bureaucracy. Over the past couple of weeks I've sent off all the documents for my work permit (including having to get 6 copies of each of four academic certificates and five copies of my CRB clearance, all notarised by a solicitor). I've arranged for my medical jabs - they start tomorrow. I've also arranged powers of attorney so that Teresa can deal with any financial stuff that crops up during my absence.

I've started trying to learn Ikinyarwanda; I've got about thirty words so far and then I seem to have stalled. I'm finding it really hard because it's so different from any other language I've looked at. The words all seem random and many are very similar to each other ("gatatu" = 3 and "gatanu" = 5).

I've ordered my helmet for moped riding. However, VSO in its wisdom has decided I won't have a moped of my own while I'm out there; I'll either have to be taken as a pillion passenger by someone else or I'll have to hire a bike locally. I can't quite reconcile this with a job description which seems to imply I'll be travelling round from school to school but no doubt it'll all become clear when I get there. In the meantime I've sent off for a International Driving Permit in case I decide to buy a second hand land rover or similar.

I'm compiling a master kit list, mainly to see what things I'm going to need to buy between now and Christmas.

There's also lots of busywork on things like insurance and the VSO setting-up grant.

On a positive note, I went to a local Dorset VSO group meeting last week and met Heidi Farrow who had just returned from three years in Rwanda at Butare, about 50 miles from where I'll be based at Gitarama. In her three year stint she managed to acquire a Rwandan husband, so clearly the country suits some people very well indeed! She was so reassuring about all the stupid things I wanted to know about, and It'll be great to have her on hand to answer any last minute panics. I've also made contact with three Canadians current out in Rwanda, one of whom will be one of my closest colleagues in Muhanga district.

I've spent hours on line googling everything I can think of to learn about the country; google earth is absolutely brilliant. I think I've already got a good feel for what the landscape is going to look like but I'm sure it's going to be a huge culture shock when I arrive. For the first few days I'll be based in Kigale, the capital, for intensive briefings on things like security.

The first question I get asked by friends is "is it safe to go there?" The answer seems to be a definite "yes"; in fact by many measures Rwanda is safer than most other countries in Africa.
It seems to be making an exceptionally fast adjustment back to normality after the genocide of 1994. The remnants of the interahamwe rebels and disaffected Rwandan army soldiers seem to have been pushed into Burundi and the Congo, where they're still causing mayhem but don't cross the borders and therefore don't cause trouble inside Rwanda proper. We're banned from going into the Congo and very strongly discouraged from Burundi because they're so dangerous. That's a shame, but, then, the situation could improve during my year there.

The mountain gorillas are in the north of Rwanda, right up against the borders with Congo and Uganda. So also is the big Karisimbi volcano - 14500 feet, very active, and just begging to be climbed......

So, it's onwards and upwards, and roll on my SKWID training course in mid October.

Grandad's Flight

It's August 16th and we've finally got Grandad airborne (at the third attempt). What a saga! When we arranged this back in Christmas 2006 we thought it would be a doddle to turn up and fly. And with Grandad being 90 it seemed a beautiful way to celebrate his birthday. In the event, however, it turned into such a marathon that we wondered if he would be 91 by the time we got off the ground!


After all the faffing around fixing a date when both Ruth and I were free, after booking ferries to the island, meeting up and collecting "Biggles"................... on the first attempt we arrived at the airfield to find the plane had broken down that morning. On the second attempt we got there to find the weather had closed in and the cloudbase was too low to allow a flight.


Never mind. On August 16th the sun was shining, the plane was working, and we were all there ready and waiting. We were airborne around 45 minutes doing a complete circuit of the island, clockwise from Sandown. The cabin on the plane was too cramped to get any decent pictures of Grandad, but I was able to take lots out of the window. Here are two of my favourites. Firstly the Needles and Alum Bay:

Secondly, Yarmouth harbour:

The views were stunning - everything we could have wished for. Flying through a rain shower, looking at individual houses (we were only about 1500 feet up and only doing about 80 knots), identifying from the air the places we've visited on land - magic! The island looked very green and pleasant.

The only negative thing was the constant lurching around of the plane whenever a gust of wind took it. That took some getting used to!

When we landed we asked the pilot to take a picture of the intrepid crew:

So here's to you Grandad! Not bad at all for a 90 year old. The spirit of Biggles lives....

The WOMAD festival, July 2007

Went to womad ("World of Music and Dance" for those not in the know) with Rachel. I've always wanted to go; the kind of music at womad is much more my thing that anything at Glastonbury.

Arrived in good time on the first day, but found all the good camping pitches already taken by crew and people who had come the day before. Put up tent on stubble of cornfield with plenty of bare soil under groundsheet. So little room to put tents that ours encroached onto one of the pathways between tents - not one of our nest ideas as we had a constant procession of people tripping over guy lines, especially after dark (and a few bevvies!). Tents so close all our guy lines were interlacing; privacy there wasn't.

Main feature of the site was the mud. We became connoisseurs of mud, from the liquid, six inch deep variety (the best, because it was easier to walk through) to the shallower sticky stuff. This was absolutely treacherous - as slippery as ice, and it sucked your boots off your feet. Very physically hard work to walk through - my legs are still aching two days after returning! Just to make life more exciting there were unexpected, hidden ridges and pits where tractors had ploughed their way through the gloop. The only way to cope with the sticky stuff was to KEEP MOVING. If someone crossed your path you didn't dare stop to give way to them.....

I particularly liked the ice cream van in this photo. There's something very English about splashing through puddles, wearing waterproofs, to buy a lolly!

ENOUGH! No more talk about rain and mud. The music was tremendous and more than made up for all the discomfort. Highlights for me were: Congolese/Kenyan soukous, reggae from both Jamaica and Birmingham, several French/North African groups, and Brazilian samba. We saw Cesaria Evora, Mariza, Baaba Maal and Taj Mahal. The Warsaw Village Band were a revelation, and Daara J put enough energy into their hip hop to power the entire festival. The atmosphere was brilliant, too. This festival seems very family friendly, with a wide spread of ages and a relaxed atmosphere. Loads of food stalls from round the world (Jamaican breakfast, anyone?) and lots of colours. Everywhere there were flags flying. There was even a full scale funfair with steam yachts, helter skelter and gallopers.

Would we go again? YOU BET your life we would!

Polish interlude

(This is a second attempt to learn how to integrate text and pictures on the page).

At the start of April, Teresa and I spent a few days in Krakow - our first ever visit to Poland. We were bowled over by how beautiful the town was, and in particular how the centre has been spared the high-rise buildings and clutter of TV masts, advertising hoardings etc that disfigure so many of our English cities.

The first picture is of the old Market Square in Kazimierz, the quarter in which we were staying:

The nicest part of Kazimierz is Szeroka Street, a wide road at the centre of the old Jewish quarter. Many Jewish businesses have returned after the holocaust; in particular there are at least three restaurants.

The oldest part of Krakow is the hill, right next to the River Vistula, on which stand both castle and cathedral. Under the castle hill there is a cave - still visible - and the local legend tells of a dragon called Krak who used to be fed a diet of virgins etc in return for protecting the town. A metal statue of Krak belches fire every ten minutes or so. It's quite spectacular at night! We loved the randomness of these domes on side chapels of the cathedral:

This is a view up Kanonicza street. It's an unbroken succession of genuine very old buildings with a cobbled street. At a quiet time of day, with few other pedestrians and no cars, you really feel as if you've entered a time warp.

About 40 miles away from Krakow is the small town of Oswiecim, better known under its German name of Auschwitz. Auschwitz is a major railway junction with lines accessing all parts of central Europe - hence its choice as the ideal site for a camp.

The actual camp buildings are in two parts. Auschwitz proper is a former Polish army barracks taken over by the Germans after their invasion of Poland. Birkenau, the death camp, is about five minutes away by bus. Even now, the sheer scale and extent of the camp is sobering.

Some things are very deceptive. We visited on a bright, cold spring day, and the brick barracks of Auschwitz didn't feel as sinister as I expected - until you saw the lines of electrified wire. The dense crowds of visitors, including some from Germany and huge numbers from Britain, seemed somehow to populate the camp and made it less sinister than if we had been the only people there.

Inside the barracks the exhibits spoke for themselves and reduced us to silence. Huge display cases full of children's clothes, of shoes, spectacles, wooden limbs. Recreations of the cramped sleeping bunks, tiered three high.

In one corner, adjacent to each other, were the "hospital block" where Mengele and others carried out experiments, the execution wall, and the punishment block. Throughout the barracks were photos of inmates showing their dates of entry and death. The average life expectancy seemed to be around 4-5 months.




Here is the main gate with its infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" slogan:



And this is a small corner of the extermination camp at Birkenau. The sheer scale of this place is staggering. Four huge gas chambers and crematoria were sited in the woods at the rear of the photo. The majority of the huts were wooden and have been demolished or rotted away, but each hut had a brick chimney stack and these have survived. The chimneys stand like humans grimly at attention. It is a profoundly sad place, even on a bright spring morning. We were glad to have visited this awful place, but more than ready to get back on the coach and head back for sanity in Krakow.