Visas

January 15th

I have a later start today in Kigali, but still get the same bus in. I wander up to the Sierra (Indian) supermarket and have a browse to see what things they’ve got there. There’s a super collection of spices, both in bulk and in small sachets, but everything’s a lot more expensive than in Gitarama. (Italian pasta shells are 1500 in Kigali; Turkish pasta shells 900 in Gitarama – and taste just as good).

I meet first Ruairi, and then (after I’ve gone into Blues Café for a coffee to wait for our meeting to start) I find Heloise and Chris from Nyagatare. We drink coffee and generally chill for the best part of an hour. I discover that Heloise and Tom have both been to Rwanda before, doing anti-HIV work when they were students. I’m quite surprised at how well travelled so many of these young volunteers are, and how many of them have done more than one stint of volunteering with another organisation before signing up with VSO.

Today and tomorrow we have a conference for all the volunteers working in education, whether they are District Officers like me, Teacher Trainers like Soraya, HIV trainers like Heloise or others like Hayley with her YWCA brief. Just about everybody is there, so there’s a lot of meeting and greeting.

I start getting a lot of grief from VSO because my resident visa expires tomorrow, and apparently the police clearance I need before it can be renewed takes some days to come through. I could be in line for a fine. On the other hand, the dates in our visas seem wonderfully random; mine is dated neither to the day I arrived in Rwanda, nor the day I started work in Gitarama, and in any case I didn’t actually receive it till well into April. Nobody else has a visa so close to its expiry date as me: Épi’s ends in February; Soraya’s in May; Tiga’s some time in between those extremes. I may have to miss part of the meeting tomorrow to go to the Parquet in Kacyiru to collect and fill in the police clearance form. I hate all this bureaucracy; it’s very easy for Rwanda to play games with us because we don’t speak the language or properly understand the system, and I wish the VSO office staff would do the things for us. I know that in Tom’s FHI outfit, for example, there’s one person who spends virtually all her time making sure everyone’s documentation is up to scratch.

At lunchtime we meet a group of Americans who are coming to work as teachers in Rwandan schools for a year. They seem to be spread across the country, and I wonder if I will have any in Muhanga. I wonder, too, if there has been any co-ordination with the District (i.e. whether Claude knows if they’re coming), and it will be fun if I roll up to inspect a school and end up watching the lesson taken by an American!

We spend an interesting afternoon discussing VSO’s education programme for the next three years. Our existing licence with the Rwandan authorities runs out in the middle of 2009, and is largely built around the idea of volunteers going into individual schools as English or Science teachers. We have moved a long way away from that model, and at the present time most volunteers are working in Districts, like me. There’s a pretty general feeling that working in the districts is spreading ourselves too thinly, and that it would be better if we simply focussed on a few secteurs, or even on just one secteur. To make things more interesting, there’s a proposed shake up of the country’s educational administration system due, which will transfer some powers down to secteur level.

If I were to have been allocated to a secteur I would only have around one or two secondary schools and seven to twelve primary schools to work with. That would mean I could visit each school once a month, and I could begin to make a real difference. It’s far too late to change the pattern for me and the current volunteers, but working in Rwanda would be very different for those who followed me. The most needy secteurs in Muhanga district are Rongi and Nyabinoni in the far north, and if Soraya and I were secteur based we would be living in a village somewhere up there in the wilds, and not in comfortable Gitarama. I think I would miss the sheer variety of schools I see on my travels even just within Muhanga. It’s good that the Rwandan system is so open that changes of this magnitude can be discussed, but I wish they would plan further ahead and give a greater lead-in time for people to prepare themselves.

We are given a description of schools in Cameroon, visited by Ruth and Charlotte from our Programme Office over Christmas. I really must stop grumbling about Muhanga schools, because the situation in the far north of Cameroon is awful. The school buildings are so bad they’re almost non-existent, and the government’s policy is to give a community three teachers only; if the community wants or needs more teachers they have to pay the salaries themselves. As you can imagine, education in Cameroon is in quite a state! Oh, and education there is almost exclusively for boys. Rwanda really is a shining beacon of gender equality in Africa, and in some aspects (primary enrolment) is almost as good as England. (I wonder what the reaction would be in England if the Government announced that all children would only be attending school for half the day, and that teachers would be teaching nine hours a day plus marking, preparation and compulsory extra curricular activities!)

I have to wait for a later than usual bus home, and it’s completely dark when I reach Gitarama. Fortunately, yet again Tom has the dinner almost ready, and we’re both pretty tired after that. Roll on the weekend and an opportunity to rest and have a lie-in.

Best thing about today – most of it really, it’s been a nice day

Worst thing – I’m feeling pressured and stressed about renewing my visa. I really don’t want to be landed with a hefty fine because the system here is so slow that they can’t process my paperwork quickly enough.

How to be a District Education Offocer

January 13th and 14th

Tuesday and Wednesday follow the same pattern. Up at half past five; out of the flat by half past six, and on the seven o’clock bus to Kigali. Everybody working for the bus company recognises me, and it makes for a relaxed start to the day.

All during the days we work hard at our “How to….” book. By the end of Tuesday we’ve finished the text; Wednesday is for copying it and compiling and making forty copies of the CDs of back-up materials. Three of us have new laptops with Windows Vista, which is very different from XP and takes a lot of getting used to. The air is blue for a while until we find our way round the CD copying software!

Amanda has finished her volunteering spell in Rwamagana but has just landed a job in Zanzibar. She is pretty well the most “Africanised” of all the volunteers; I really think she’d find it enormously difficult to slot back into American life if she went home.

As the days pass we learn more details about the primary curriculum changes. Tronc Commun (the first three years of secondary school) will now be free; only the second three years will be fee paying. French is not just being dropped as a medium of instruction, it seems that it not even to be taught at any level in schools. That is an enormous change and will be so, so difficult for primary schools to take on board. The public exams at the end of primary year six, my main yardstick for assessing school performance, are being abolished and the only formal exam will be after nine years at school (the end of the “Basic Education”).

During Wednesday Tiga and Michael both arrive from Europe, and Antonia who after three years working with deaf children at Butare is coming back to do a new project near Kibuye in the Western province. She’s another thoroughly “Africanised” volunteer, but one of the most experienced ones still in the country and it’s lovely to have her back.

On Tuesday evening Tom and I dine at Soraya’s; she’s doing a special Philippine meal in honour of Matteo. Matteo is a young Italian teenager who has been doing a spell of volunteering with the Franciscan community at Kivumu. He’s a lovely lad and we are going to miss him. I still find it difficult to get used to that aspect of being a volunteer - it is a game of constant comings and goings, and just as you get to know somebody really well and appreciate them, they leave for home. Matteo’s an adventurous soul; he took himself off along into the Congo over Christmas. He went to Bukavu and bought a ticket on the lake steamer towards Gisenyi. This is a very long journey, at least a full day. Unfortunately the steamer’s engine broke down, and its cargo of potatoes had to be jettisoned. The children on the ferry had the time of their lives throwing mountains of potatoes overboard to lighten the load and help the first boat which came to rescue them.

We haven’t had any proper rain all this week; it feels as if the rainy season has properly ended at last. Immediately this is the case, the roads get covered in a layer of fine dust, and you can already feel it between your teeth after walking along earth lanes.

Surreal sight of the day on Tuesday – a pick up truck speeding through Kigali town centre with a Christmas tree – still fully decorated – being disposed of by one of the main town centre shops.

Impressive sight on Wednesday – traffic slows to a crawl on the main road near Parliament house, and a high speed convoy rushes past with President K in a Range Rover. I could see him quite clearly. That’s my second sighting since I arrived here. And I’ve never ever seen a British Prime Minister in the flesh!

Yet another bad road crash on Wednesday morning. I think a lorry’s brakes must have failed on one of the steepest hills on the Kigali road; the wagon is on its side with the cab mangled beyond recognition. Poverty - and the inability to afford proper maintenance – almost certainly claims another life.

Looking ahead, I talk to Paula and suggest a combined Bruce’s birthday bash and St Patrick’s day celebration in march, just like the one we had last year. I tell everyone to keep the weekend of the 14th clear, and Paula’s going to sound out the rest of the Irish contingent which is far greater than last year. There Rwanda Irish society is planning some flash event the following weekend, but tickets for it will cost around 35000 francs and its being held in the Serena Hotel. I think the price will put some people off, and hopefully they’ll come to my do at Gahini instead!

I’ve downloaded a set of pictures from Joe who is our first volunteer in Nyamasheke. He has had a difficult start, coping with isolation and a house so small you could barely get inside the door – more like a monk’s cell. But now he has a nice modern house and a view across the lake to die for! I’m going to post some of his Nyamasheke pictures because, although I haven’t been there (yet), it’ll show you just how beautiful parts of Lake Kivu shore can be!

Best thing about these two days – getting our “How to “ offering complete.

The "How to....." guide for Education Managers

January 12th

Up at half past five; it’s only just light and feels impossibly early. Fortunately, once I’m properly awake I can get ready quickly and by just after half past six I’m out on the street in the fresh air. I’ve forgotten how nice it is to be up and about early here in Gitarama. At seven I’m off to Kigali on the bus. In my pocket is the dreaded flat key; once Kigali I mooch round the town centre trying to find somewhere to get a copy cut, preferably by someone who seems to have the right equipment and knows what they’re doing. Oh yeah! Some hopes! There’s not a single key cutter apparent anywhere in the town centre, and that’s ridiculous because the whole place is a warren of tiny workshops.

I don’t have time to search for long, because I have to be at the VSO office by 9.00. I just make it, and find myself plunged straight away into work. We’re producing a couple of “how to….” guides; in my case I’m one of 5 volunteers doing a “How to be a District Education Adviser” guide. The others have already been working on it for a week because almost all of them stayed over in Rwanda at Christmas. So I have to hit the ground running. In some ways that’s an easy job; after all I’ve been doing the job for a year. But the huge changes which are supposed to be starting this very morning (first day of the school year), after almost no preparation, are another matter altogether.

Fortunately someone has managed to get hold of a written copy of the document from MINEDUC setting out the proposed changes, and I hide myself away for a while to read it and try to absorb the implications. The more times I go through it, the more I can see what Mineduc thinks it can gain from the changes, but at the same time I can see lots of problems ahead. And the document rarely talks about the quality of education; it’s preoccupied with costs and the sheer volume of students. I think what it boils down to is that the Rwandan government is determined at any cast to meet the relevant Millennium Development Goad in 2015 because if it fails it might not attract overseas aid to the extent that it does at present. And if it can be held up as the golden example of African progressive development there might be all sorts of spin off with extra cash and foreign investment.

I would love to be a fly on the wall in any of my Muhanga primary schools today and just see whether they descent into total chaos or whether they simply ignore the new orders and start as they always have done. Secondary schools always seem to take a fortnight or so to get going at the start of the term, so I doubt whether it has affected any of their children yet.

We work hard throughout the day, punctuated by a super lunch inside the VSO building. I have been left to write the section on Inspections, because they’re seen as my special forte. Then I’m going through other sections with Mans or Joe or Sonya and smoothing the language and linking the text to dozens of example files which we’re putting as appendices. We are producing a written booklet and also a CD of materials. The ultimate objective is that all new volunteers doing our role will have a complete manual of not just what they’re supposed to be doing, but all the supporting documents they need – central strategic planning documents from MINEDUC, local examples of things like school census forms and primary exam results sheets which Mans and I took months to discover when we first arrived here. I would have given my right arm for this level of information when I got to Rwanda this time last year! I hope that VSO will send this material to all new volunteers before they leave England so they can do some reading and preparation before they arrive. It shows the extent to which VSO is getting more and more professional in its approach and moving further away from the pioneering days of sticking an intelligent westerner out in the outback and leaving them to find something to do and then make a difference!

By half past three we’re coming to a standstill and we’re all tired. I leave and hike down to Kersty’s house to deliver some goodies v- chocolate and cheese – which I’ve brought out from home and stored in the VSO office freezer all day. I daren’t leave them in the office overnight ‘cos I’m certain they’ll disappear if it do!

Kersty’s not there but I persuade the day guard (who must be new because we don’t recognise each other) to let me leave the stuff in her fridge for her. Then it’s a hurried trip on a tiny matata bus to Nyabogogo where I have been told there’s a decent key cutting workshop. I go to the right place, but there’s no sign of a workshop. I ask some of the locals and they direct me to one particular business. This consists of a tine room about the size of your average sitting room, containing two tiny booths for taking photos (every Rwandan document seems to need a passport-sized photo on it), a hairdressing chair and equipment, and a huge array of computers and DVD players which looks as though it’s a factory for making pirate DVDs. There’s a constant stream of people through the doors, mainly youngsters getting photos for school enrolment papers.

What’s conspicuously missing is any trace of key cutting hardware. I’m just about to give up when someone asks me what I want, so I explain. Yes, says this man, he’ll get me a key cut. He asks a ridiculous price and we haggle for five minutes until we agree on something which is too expensive but not outrageous. Then he takes my key and disappears round the corner. Twenty minutes is all he needs, he says. He’s obviously gone to find a mate somewhere who can get the key done. I have no alternative but to sit and wait. It crosses my mind that he might have swanned off with my key, but it wouldn’t be any use to him because he doesn’t know who I am or where I live, and he’s after my money which he won’t get without a copied key.

Thirty minutes later, just as I’m starting to get seriously worried and the light is fading fast and I’m worried about getting the last bus back to Gitarama, he reappears with a copy. The cutting looks as though it might just possibly fit. It’s certainly heaps better than the copy I had made in Gitarama market. So I pay, and have to travel home in a cramped, slow matata instead of the comfortable express bus.

On the way home we have to stop because some woman is refusing to pay the amount the conductor demands, and for fully five minutes there’s a stand up row between this woman and the driver and conductor. Then everyone else starts getting involved, some on one side and some on the other. It’s now dark; we just all want to get home. Because the haranguing is all in Kinyarwanda I don’t know how the situation is resolved; the woman gets off at this point but I can’t tell if it’s where she wanted to be dropped or not.

We finally stagger in to Gitarama. I’m very, very tired. The new key doesn’t work in the lock, and I decide I’m just going to hang on now and wait for the original to arrive in the post. I’ve done my best to get a key cut but the system has defeated me. Tom’s made a lovely meal, and after we’ve eaten we both opt for an early night.

Best thing about today – getting on with this “how to….” Guide.

Worst thing – keys. I hate keys.

Goat legs in Gitarama

January 11th

I wake up feeling odd and realise it’s because I’m using Tom’s “four poster” bed. Épi and Janneau are using my room. Apparently I was too tired and drunk last night to pull down the mosquito net when I crawled into bed (the light bulb had blown and I was thrashing around trying to undress and sort out my sleeping bag by a teeny little torch – not a pretty sight). So I’ve got bitten.

I introduce the others to English style porridge and finally we go to Soraya and Hayley’s to collect and return stuff. Everybody’s saying their fond farewells, and soon I’ve got the flat to myself and get on with making soup. Tomato and lentil is a breeze – I’ve at least got that sorted! I’m almost making myself sick of avocados at lunchtime, but they’re too nice to throw away and won’t last beyond Monday. I’m just getting started on a second batch of (green) soup when Tom arrives, absolutely tired out.

His journey out has been long and traumatic, but at least all his luggage has arrived intact. When he left Gatwick it was so cold that the pilot asked for the plane to be de-iced. Unfortunately every other plane was demanding the same treatment, and as a result his flight missed its slot and was extremely delayed. He missed the onward connection at Brussels. The flights from Brussels to Kigali only leave three times a week, so he was transferred to Ethiopian Airlines. That meant a long wait in Brussels airport, then a flight to Paris, then an even longer wait at Paris. Following this came a long wait at Addis Ababa and by the time he arrived at Kigali it was 32 hours after he checked in at Gatwick.

So Tom arrives at the flat and we have a very quick “catching up” on essentials, after which he puts himself to bed. He even misses the evening muzungu meal, which is most unusual.

I finish making my green soup (cabbage, peppers, imboga, Rwandan celery, potatoes, onions etc) but it comes out really bland and isn’t a success. Unfortunately it’s also amounted to a massive volume of stuff (I’ve nearly filled the freezer with soup). It’ll need things like pasta and some hot spices adding to give it more body. But I assure you it won’t go to waste!

That reminds me, I really must get hold of the VSO Rwandan cookery book – it sure would make things a lot easier.

Tom has brought lots of sauces, tins of meat, and the long promised oven. We’re not sure where to put the oven; at the moment we don’t properly have room for it, but we decide we need to get some shelves put up along part of the kitchen wall. They would virtually solve our storage problems overnight.

Soon its evening and I go to see who’s eating at “Nectar”. As well as Hayley and Soraya we have Marin and Ulrika and Eduardo, the Cuban doctor. And, hey there, Eduardo and Ulrika are an item, arriving and leaving hand in hand. Aah! So the conversation is in a mixture of English, French and Spanish, and the brochettes (cow meat) are among the best I’ve had in Rwanda.

The dinner table conversation ranges widely, including a discussion of offal. The Rwandans love offal because it’s often cheaper than “proper” meat. Eduardo explains that they have a thing about eating stuffed goats’ intestines, for example, which we all think is gross. As a rough generalisation among our friends, the younger the volunteers, the less likely they are to eat meat like hearts or tongues or kidneys. There’s only a few of us who will eat liver in brochettes and we always have to check what we’re given so that people like me can swap with others who can’t stand the texture of liver. This can easily cause offence in Rwanda because liver and heart are some of the most highly prized parts of the goat carcass.

Hayley’s dog dines on goat legs. These have so little meat on them that she is given them virtually free by local meat stalls, and they come with fur and hooves still on them. I think they get boiled up for the dog, but I’m sure its Théogène, the guard, who gets the grisly job of preparing the food! Anyway, they make the dog’s breath so foul it’s virtually unbearable. A pity, because Pappy is all over every visitor wanting attention….. Honestly, who would keep a dog?

We also talk about salsa dancing; Marin has given up doing salsa lessons because so few people were bothering to come. I feel very guilty at this, because I really enjoyed the session I went to and would like to do some more. It would be really good to do it with a crowd of the other volunteers, and it would have transformed Hayley’s party if we had thought to get Marin to come. Marin’s prepared to do more sessions if we can guarantee sufficient dancers. I’m filing that info away for future use. There’s my birthday coming up soon; if we don’t do a joint venture with the Irish crowd then I’m minded to do a spicy salsa evening. It would work!

In just two days, since I arrived home, they’ve built a mobile phone mast about a hundred yards behind the flat. Four men, climbing up and down the mast with minimal safety gear (though at least one of them was wearing a safety harness). Over the muzungu meal all is revealed. At last we have competition for the telephone company MTN who have had a virtual monopoly of the market for years. Now Rwandatel is challenging them, and price war has started (when you buy MTN phone credit you get so many Francs worth of “bonus time”). The new mast behind us will be a Rwandatel installation.

A side effect of all this fun is that a lot of Rwandans are going over to Rwandatel because they are making cheap deals to break into the market. It means now that we can’t guarantee that any phone number for a school will still be valid. As I’m only here for another year I think I’ll stick with MTN and enjoy the extra credit while it lasts. In the two days since I got back I’ve already made far more calls and texts than during the entire time I spent in England.

Early-ish to bed tonight because I’ve got an early start in the morning!

Best thing about today – cooking, feeling at home and at ease back in Africa.

Party time

January 10th

Hooray – its Saturday and I can be self indulgent without feeling guilty! Today is Hayley’s birthday party, and I’m helping with the catering. Fired by my culinary successes over the past couple of days, I have offered to provide avocadoes and a salsa to accompany them. I also want to make a batch of soup and restock the freezer in the flat, which Tom has completely cleaned out and is lying empty and bare in the kitchen.

So I traipse round the market; this year I’m quite enjoying the process. I get a spectacularly good deal on avocadoes – 10 for 300 Francs (30p), and beautiful tomatoes, onions and greens. The Saturday morning market is absolutely jam packed; you can hardly move through the unofficial section and to get from one end to the other you find yourself treading on a carpet of discarded carrot tops, outer leaves of cabbages, and squished bananas.

Back at the flat I slice and chop for over an hour and finally have a Tupperware box full of salsa. The party is a lunch time affair extending on through the afternoon until everyone drops. It’s lovely to meet all the gang – virtually everyone who either has stayed in Rwanda over the Christmas holiday, or who has already arrived back. Cue a massive gossip fest punctuated with warm fanta and cold beer. Pappy, the dog, is overwhelmed by all the visitors and is a nightmare to keep away from “sampling” the food.

But the mast amazing topic of conversation is about the primary education system here. The whole primary system is being changed with effect from Monday Jan 12th. Every single primary class will be in “double vacation” – in other words, children will only have a half-day at school, attending mornings one week and afternoons the subsequent week. All teaching will be done by subject specialists, with every primary teacher required to offer two specialisms. (Bear in mind that this is to be done by some teachers who didn’t even manage to finish secondary school themselves, so “specialist” is a very relative concept). French disappears as a medium of teaching – it will all be done in Kinyarwanda and English. The humanities – history, geography, social studies, civics, religion – are hugely downgraded. The emphasis is on maths, science, Kinyarwanda and English (and, of course, ICT in an education system largely without computers of electricity).

And why? – to free up teachers and classrooms to accommodate the “nine years’ basic education”. What it amounts to is that Rwanda has decided to extend primary schooling from six to nine years, and reduce secondary schooling to the three upper years. The expectation is that everybody will do nine year’s schooling (a huge improvement over present performance), and only a small minority will need to go on to secondary and from secondary to higher education.

All very laudable, but the whole process is being rushed. The headteachers have got to cope with writing timetables – something they’ve never done before. There is going to be wholesale redeployment of teachers between schools. Nobody has thought through the day to day problems involved. The classroom teachers must only be barely aware of any of these changes, yet they’ll be pitched straight into them on Monday morning.

As for me, I will be in Kigali all week. I’m already very late to make a contribution to the VSO district officers teaching manual, due for completion by next Friday, and Mans has told me he wants to see me at Kigali on Monday. This will be very convenient because I’ve other business to do in the town.

So, as you can see, it may well be Hayley’s birthday party but there’s a lot of business being done as well.

In the middle of proceedings I go up to the market again with Soraya, to a stall keeper who cuts keys. Soraya has used him successfully, and I want to get my front door key copied so I can give the original back to Janine. In Rwanda the system is that they don’t seem to use key blanks; they take an existing redundant key and recut it. And the re-cutting is done with saws, chisels and files. The cutting is done by women balancing the “blank” in their laps; it’s about as crude a system as you can imagine. I hold no great hopes for the resulting key working, and sure enough, when I try to use it, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t even come close to matching the original. In fact, it opens the latch of the door and leaves the lock untouched.

I could go back and complain, but now that I definitely have to go to Kigali on Monday I decide I’ll try to find a “proper” key cutter there; someone who has a machine and uses a virgin blank of metal. Such places must exist in the capital, surely to goodness!

It’s nice to catch up with Han and Mans at the party; they have formally finished working and are getting ready to leave for Holland. After a few beers we play “twister” in the front yard, and eventually there is the customary crowd of Rwandans peering over the wall to see how muzungus enjoy themselves. Théogène, the house guard, is nearly wetting himself. Jean, Jane’s boyfriend, is the undisputed champion of Twister; he’s so flexible I reckon he must be almost double jointed. And Épi finally arrives with Janneau who also proves expert at twister.

Hayley has had a guitar made for her in Gitarama prison and has just collected it. It needs tuning, but proves almost impossible to tune and keep in tune. So when I go home to try out that wretched door key, I pick up a spectacles repair kit (one of the lenses has fallen out of somebody’s glasses), a tuning fork and my pliers, and we spend a few minutes trying to get this guitar usable. Eventually we have to give up.

At some point in the evening we go to the “Petit Jardin” for beers, and about twelve of us are sitting talking. We end up the only people in the place, so we can be as loud as we like and it doesn’t matter. Hayley is regaling us with tales of her somewhat less than successful stint as an officer cadet while at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and has us in stitches.

There’s also the hilarious story of the girls at Kibuye over the New Year holiday. They go for a swim across the lake. In the middle of the lake somebody paddles up to them in a canoe. They think he’s come to check up on them and see if they want assistance, so they acknowledge him. But the idiot makes the usual reflex action on seeing a muzungu and asks them for money. They’re wearing their swimming costumes in the middle of a lake….. This is a public blog so I can’t repeat what the girls said to him, but I think you can imagine….

We leave the bar at midnight; a few less hardy souls have opted out and gone home to sleep, but ten of us swagger through a deserted Gitarama main street in search of night life. We go to “Delta”, Gitarama’s only nightspot. And it’s closed. Even the supposed brothel at the back seems to have shut for the night. Not to be deterred, some of the gang ask any locals still on the streets whether there is anywhere to dance at this time of night. We get some very funny looks and even stranger offers, but the short answer is that all is shut except for a few backstreet bars which at this time of night would be pretty dodgy places to visit for Europeans. The entire town centre is deserted – I’ve never seen the town so quiet. The girls are singing away as we echo through the deserted market, but this is Rwanda and everybody is busy watching everybody else, so I’m sure it will be all round town tomorrow that the place was taken over by a bunch of drunken muzungus!

So it’s back to Soraya’s and Hayley’s house. The hardened party-goers have an hour or so of board games before succumbing; but this old fogy, plus Épi and Janneau, who are staying with me, call it a night and head home.

Bedst thing about today – pretty well everything. A really nice way to spend a Saturday.

Worst thing – I still haven’t got my bloody key cut!

Rain, frustration, shopping....

January 9th

Wake up to steady, continuous rain and a cold shower on a cold morning. In fact, a cold night altogether. I only put one blanket on my bed yesterday; within thirty minutes I was up fetching a second blanket and even then I had the shakes for a while. I must have been more tired than I thought!

I’ve primed my phone to remind me about all the things I need to do today, but because of the rain I’m running late. While I wait for the rain to stop I do some more sorting out of stuff, then I’m off to Hayley at the YWCA to borrow her internet connection and send a mail to Teresa to let her know I’m back safe and to send on my keys. I also try to post yesterday’s blog but the system won’t let me. I wonder if it’s because I’m using my new laptop and there’s something about windows vista that the blogging software doesn’t like! Hey ho, that’s yet another little conundrum to solve this weekend.

By the time I’ve finished at the YWCA Janine’s at the flat waiting to be let in to clean it. I rush back, and let her in, then charge off on a moto to the prison. Why the prison? Because it’s supposed to be the best place in Gitarama to get keys cut. I know, this sounds really daft, but just think about it. A place full of petty criminals – it’s the obvious place to look for expertise in things like making copies of keys.

At the prison they’re very willing to cut me a key, and they they’d be able to do it quickly and cheaply. Unfortunately they need a second key to adapt into a copy of the first, and that’s precisely what I don’t have, so they can’t really help me. I call it a day for keys and decide I need to go back into Kigali tomorrow morning and get it all done properly. I seem to remember there’s a key cutting place in the town centre very close to the bus station.

There’s nothing for me at the post office – God knows what’s happening to our newspapers once again.

At the District Office Claude isn’t there; he’s off to a meeting at the ministry in Kigali. Innocent is around and welcomes me. I want tthis year’s primary exam results (i.e. from the exams which were sat last October) to start working on. Guess what – they’re not around. Neither electronic nor paper versions. The only person who might help me is Béatrice, and she’s off work today. Innocent looks all round for me, but in the end we don’t even know whether they have come, and someone has got them, or whether they’ve not even arrived yet. So other than letting them know I’m back in Rwanda, it’s a pretty pointless visit to the office. I can’t do any proper work, and can’t even talk to Claude about using the motor bike.

So back to the flat and a shop up around the market. At least I have no excuse for not getting caught up on all domestic affairs. Then at the market I find the main covered section is closing early, presumably for some sort of market traders’ meeting. Happily there are enough traders on the fringes to get all I need.

Honestly, it’s turning into a day of small victories and big defeats! – can’t upload a blog; there’s no post; also no exam results to analyse, I can’t get the big bulk amounts of veg that I need to make a batch of soup, I can’t find the piece of paper with Emmanuelle’s phone number on. So I fall back on cooking and decide I’m going to eat well today and enjoy myself. Soup making is becoming my favourite way of venting frustration on contrary days! I play my ipod on the external speakers, and there’s Congolese rumba to drown out the hairdresser opposite.

For lunch I have the most gorgeous, creamy avocado with a home made salsa accompaniment (onion, garlic, green pepper, fresh tomatoes), plus a knob of cheddar cheese. Now that’s a healthy and delicious meal, so I feel full and virtuous.

In the afternoon I cook a batch of peanuts to use as snacks when visitors arrive (Hayley and Soraya are coming round this evening).

For evening meal I make an experimental concoction with yellow lentils and a rich tomato sauce, with carrots so fresh they smell as if they were only pulled a couple of hours ago. It looks revolting, but tastes great and is pretty wholesome. But, I have to admit, it’s a very far cry from the things I have been eating back in England over the past month!

Soraya fills me in on all her wanderings since we last saw each other (a whole five weeks ago, which is a long time here). Hayley tells us about the interview she had with Radio Bristol on New Year’s Eve – they wanted to interview Bristol people who were working abroad on New Year’s Eve, and via VSO London they contacted her. She was at Kibuye, and the interviewer was staggered to find that here in Rwanda we are usually in bed and asleep by ten o’clock, so that staying up for midnight is a very special occasion.

Soraya was playing badminton all New Year’s Eve, and losing every match she played with her Philippine friends, but enjoyed a good social life all through the holidays.

So how was my first working day in 2009? Pretty well a non-starter in terms of “making a difference”, I’m afraid. Bang go all my carefully prepared plans to launch into work with a flourish as soon as I get back. But I mustn’t grumble. I suppose I need a quiet day to finish adjusting back to Rwandan pace and style. Everything else will get done in due course.

I’m looking forward to meeting more of the gang at Hayley’s birthday bash tomorrow. Tiga’s back, Els is coming, also Han and Mans who are leaving for good at the end of the month. In fact, I think tomorrow might be their final “public appearance” before they go on a holiday en route to home in Utrecht.

Lost keys and squashed eggs

January 8th 2009-01-08

Well, I’m back “home” in Gitarama. And, yes, it does really and truly feel like coming home. Mind you, so does Bridport also feel home, so I’ve become a person with two homes. As I whiz through the streets of Kigali I realise I know every corner, every street I pass, and on the hour long bus ride to Gitarama I knew every bend, every place where the bus coughed its way through the gears and ground up to a summit only to plunge giddily down, so fast that there would be no way its brakes could hold it in an emergency.

It is a day of mixed fortune. On the down side, I manage to leave my Rwandan key set in Dorset – I return to Rwanda having no house key, office key, or the little key to the secure section in my wardrobe. That’s because I always work from lists, and I’m using the same list that I had last year when I first arrived and had no keys to worry about. I first realise this about three hours into the flight. The bedroom key is no problem; I have a duplicate and rarely lock the door. The house key can be got round because Janine has a key for when she comes to clean, and provided she is around in Gitarama I can get her to come and open up for me. The wardrobe lock is weak and I can spring it with a knife blade. The office key is the main problem, but Claude has his own key and we’ll have to arrange to get another one cut. And as soon as possible I’ll get Teresa to post me out the originals.

Also on the down side I manage to completely squash a caramel cream egg inside my brand new rucksack (on its first day of use). At Heathrow they scan your bags with the laptop inside. At Addis Ababa they make you take the laptop out (in some cases they insist on you switching the thing on to prove it hasn’t had the works taken out and replaced by explosives). As I put the laptop back in the bag, with an impatient queue behind me, I forget that I bought four eggs and the computer ends up sitting on top of one of them. That takes a good fifteen minutes to clean once I’m in the flat. Fortunately I have wrapped the laptop in bubble wrap, so no mucky filling has reached the new computer.

On the good side, I rendezvous with Janine for the house key, and clean all traces of goo off the rucksack. I get the gas and electricity switched back on, and there’s water running in the taps. I can’t believe how much chocolate I’ve brought this time – Bourneville bars, mars bars, kit kats, cream eggs – there’s a good 3 kilos of chocolate in my stuff.

The flight has been flawless and more or less to time. I’ve had a good chance to look at Ethiopia from the air, and I’m mighty glad I chose Rwanda (I was given a choice of Rwanda or Ethiopia and this is the main reason why I have chosen to fly via Addis at Christmas). Ethiopia is in the middle of its dry season, with three more months to go, and it is already uniformly brown and dusty. There is a thick layer of haze in the morning air; by nine o’clock individual mountains close to Addis are no longer visible through the muck. It just looks hot, forlorn, uninviting, especially from the air.

As you fly from Addis to Kigali you expect a gradual transition from brown to green, from sun drenched to cloudy and equatorial. But the change is really quite abrupt. Within five minutes the sky goes from clear to full of dotted cumulus, and in a few more minutes it’s a solid mass of cloud with towering summits reaching even above our cruising height of about 26000 feet. And then, when I’m hoping to look down and see the volcanoes and give a cheeky wave to the odd gorilla and spit on the odd guerrilla, we’re actually flying inside the clouds and its raining. As you sink through the clouds on your final approach to Kigali you are met by a carpet of deep green vegetation, with neat little villages and four-square houses. Rwanda looks welcoming and civilised. Welcome home indeed!

We leave London on January 7th, which is not only the exact anniversary of my first flight to Rwanda, but is also the Ethiopian Christmas Day. Our plane is decked with garlands, and the cabin crew are in a good mood. By being one of the very first people to check in at Heathrow I have a perfect seat – loads and loads of legroom, and I’m able to fly in absolute comfort. I like the food on the Ethiopian flights, too – succulent chicken and lots of interesting spices.

The day has started freezing cold, and Teresa taken me to Dorchester to pick up the coach; I’ve been swaddled in hat, gloves, scarf, and the thickest coat I own. (These, of course, are all to leave in the car). By the time I reach Kigali I’m down to a short sleeve shirt and I still feel as though I’m walking fully dressed in a sauna. It’s a pretty extreme difference in temperature.

Because the weather in England has been atrocious everyone flying has arrived early, and all of us are hanging around Terminal three for hours and hours trying to find something interesting to read or do. The plaza outside the terminal has been decorated with blue lights, but the terminal entrance has deep mauve lighting which is eye catching, but rather overwhelms all Christmas decorations.

I have been expecting to meet Épi on the London flight, but she isn’t there. Instead, as we’re waiting for our Addis to Kigali leg, I meet Chris, who’s a “retired” VSO with her own house in Kigali (we met and sat next to each other on the homeward flight). And, sure enough, Épi is at the terminal at Kigali. But she hasn’t come to welcome me; she’s trying to find two of her suitcases which have vanished in transit between London and Kigali. And her third case has arrived, but has been ransacked and anything valuable removed from it. Two days she’s been waiting, and the bags still haven’t arrived.

Fortunately all my luggage is intact, and the huge amount of cash raised by church and choir and schools in West Dorset has arrived safely. Phew! Lost keys are just a minor irritation for me by comparison with Épi’s troubles – she has only the clothes she’s wearing!.

Even better, Chris is being met at the airport by a friend with a car, and they agree to take me to the town centre which saves me a taxi fare. Within twenty minutes I’m on a “Horizon” bus and on the road to Kigali. During the last few days there has been much talk in the Rwandan press about fuel shortages in Gitarama, and companies putting fares up to three times the normal level. But it’s all been resolved, and I get from the airport to my flat for just 70p.

During the afternoon I unpack, sterilise my water filter, and generally try to settle down into “Rwandan mode”. I text Hayley, and she comes round to collect some things I have brought out for her, and to share the gossip.

There has been a huge Gacaca while I’ve been away; a case so horrific that virtually the entire town was summoned to the stadium to observe justice in progress. Someone is accused of burying an entire family alive at Shyogwe. The court concludes that the evidence indicates there is indeed a case to answer, but that the case is so serious the accused will have to stand trial in Arusha (Tanzania) before the highest level of justice.

The petrol crisis was caused by the Government in Kigali trying to force down fuel prices to reflect cheaper oil from abroad. But apparently the Gitarama area garages had just taken delivery of massive amounts of fuel at the older, higher prices, and were set to lose money if they followed the Government line. So they simply locked their pumps and refused to sell until the Government relented. At one stage everyone was rationed to RwF5000 worth, which doesn’t last one day on a thirsty 4x4 behemoth on these dirt roads!

Épi has finished working as a science teacher at Gishanda, and will be doing her second year at Kibungo. Kibungo is on the main road to Tanzania; it’s a town in its own right and much more like “civilisation” than where she’s been all last year. However, it has been decided that she will be doing two days a week teaching English in secondary schools in Kibungo, and three days working as primary teacher trainer. She’s not worried about the latter, but Épi is a secondary science specialist, and a Francophone Canadian, so she’s apprehensive, to put it mildly, about being asked to do two days’ English a week. And none of this was discussed with her over the Christmas holidays…..

Piet, the Belgian eye-doctor, has had a second bout of malaria, which is bad news. Soraya is up in Kigali at the moment writing teacher training materials for the Government’s big push on English teaching due to be launched across the whole of Rwanda in the spring. Good for Soraya; sounds as if she’s mixing with the influential people.

Hayley and I are the only two volunteers in Gitarama at the moment. Tom comes on the 10th, as does Tiga; Tinks on 13th, Christi on 29th and Michael – who knows! Tinks and I decide to go out for a meal. I have no veg in the flat; it’s my anniversary and her birthday, so we whoop it up with a special omelette and plenty of Primus beer.

During all this there’s a flurry of texts to and from colleagues; Kersti’s had a great time in Zanzibar with Nick, but while they’ve been away Janneau has borrowed their car and crashed it….. Els has just arrived back from chilly Birmingham. By the end of today I’ve done more texting in a couple of hours than during the entire month I was at home. Just shows you how much we rely on texts to communicate with each other here.

VSO in Kigali is in economising mode because of the unfavourable exchange rate between the pound and the Rwandan franc, so all the training for the new batch of volunteers will be done by Kigali-based people who won’t need accommodating. So Els and I, among others, are redundant this time. On the plus side there’s a “family meal” coming up for us to meet all the newbies and get to know them.

Its been very wet this week in Rwanda, and as I sit writing this at half past nine I feel really tired. I am noticing the altitude – walking home from “Nectar” with Hayley I was gasping as I tried to keep up with her. The air feels heavy and so humid compared with Bridport.

Finally, everyone has welcomed me back, from Athanasie in the bakery to everyone at “Nectar”. Even the girl in the Horizon ticket office remembered me. That’s a nice, comforting feeling as I start out on my second year as a VSO.