Four go wild in Kibungo

February 7th-8th

Sometimes the day’s news seems thin; on other days there’s just so much going on there seems no time to write it down. This weekend has been one of the latter!

On Saturday I’m enjoying my first lie-in for ages. It’s eight o’clock and I can’t sleep because of the noise from traffic, the birds, the day guards and the hairdresser opposite. I text Soraya, who has a training day at Kabgayi, asking her to beep me when she finishes so that I can be ready to go to Kibungo with her. In the meantime I’m planning to stay in bed for another half hour and read.

Soraya phones back straight away to say there doesn’t seem to be anyone there for the training, and that she’s cutting her losses and coming home. And that she’s all packed and ready for the off so that we can go to Kibungo this morning.

Curses! I haven’t even thought about getting ready so soon! So I catapult out of bed and into the shower, have the fastest breakfast in the world and start shoving things into my rucksack.

At which point she texts me again to say sorry, but people have begun to show up so the training’s on after all…….

So Tom and I spend a leisurely morning cleaning up and I’m packing my rucksack and we’re reading newspapers until Soraya finally phones to say she’s ready to leave for Kibungo.

I’ve never been further East than Kabarondo, and never beyond Kayonza in daylight, so it’s nice to see some new scenery, even if I’m jammed in the back of a little matata with my knees up past my ears. The scenery around Kibungo is beautiful. We were both expecting it to be flat and dry and brown, but it is green and hilly. The valleys are wider than here in Muhanga, and the hills lower. There is a general feeling of much more space, and definitely of less pressure on the land. There are much bigger areas of unused land, but at the same time there’s a huge amount of radical terracing to make use of sloping hillsides.

We arrive at Kibungo in the late afternoon and Épi comes to the bus park to meet us. Kibungo is one of those towns which is by-passed by the main road network – the main road from Kigali to Tanzania goes about three km to one side of it, along one hilltop while Kibungo stretch along another ridge perpendicular to the main road. Épi lives at the place where the two roads join. It’s a house owned by the Anglican diocese of Kibungo (Kibungo is the biggest town in the south east corner of Rwanda and the general administrative centre for a very wide tract). They are rebuilding the main bus park and market in Kibungo, and there’s a temporary bus park and market about 500 yards from her house, which is really convenient.

Épi’s house is small but easily manageable. There is a bare earth yard at the back in which she could put some pots of herbs or veg; there’s quite a big front garden with grass, pineapple bushes and poinsettia trees. In a small plot just behind her house there’s a clump of banana trees; we’re not sure whether she can help herself or not. There are houses on each side of Épi’s; when three muzungus arrive at the place they all go aflutter with excitement.

She has a decent sized rectangular living room with electric light and power points, and a reasonable bedroom next door. At the rear of the living room is a lean to with a stick and corrugated iron roof and roughcast walls, which is the second bedroom. It hasn’t been painted and is rather dark, but at least it seems watertight. There is a toilet with proper sit-down loo, and a shower room with reasonably reliable water. Compared to her previous place at Gishanda this is luxury for Épi, and it’s so much easier to get to and from by road. The only problem is that the loo doesn’t have a door, and we all have to be very discreet when using it……. Rwandan planning triumphs again!

Of course there’s no kitchen; there’s a ledge built onto the back wall of the house where you can stand a kerosene stove or charcoal cooker. We decide to cook for ourselves that evening, so we fall into our routine. I get peeling and chopping veg, and make up a Brucey special fruit salad; Soraya gets the stove lit, and Épi finds all the fruit and veg and whatever else we need. It’s a quick way to prepare a meal and we eat well. While we’re cooking we’re joined by Tina who lives about a kilometre up the road, right next to the main road. (Her house shakes when juggernauts drive past on their way to and from the border crossing). She shares a place with Tom, who has gone up to Nyagatare for the evening, so Tina’s at a loose end.

In the middle of all this, workmen arrive with a bed. Épi’s ordered a bed, and has been waiting in all day for it to arrive. It’s a nice, sturdy effort, and just fits perfectly in the spare rom. We already have a mattress for it, so she’s well set up. Also, the new pastor is very pleasant and when Épi tells him that she’s having visitors he offers her a spare mattress for me to use.

It’s nice to see Tina, and we spend hours planning all sorts of adventures. She wants to come with the three of us on our Uganda trip in April, and if that all goes well we’re thinking of all four going to Zanzibar at some time later in the year, perhaps in November at the end of the school term. Meanwhile, I suggest we all go to Rusumo tomorrow and have a look at the place and the waterfalls there. None of the other girls have been, so we agree on an early start. We walk Tina home; there’s a bar quite close to her house with has a bad reputation and while she’s probably safer here than in London, we don’t want to take any chances. Besides, it’s a balmy night and here, as opposed to Gitarama, you can see the stars and hear a deafening noise from frogs and crickets everywhere you walk. On the way back Épi goes to collect the spare mattress from the pastor, and Soraya and I mooch through the pitch dark lane to her house, navigating by moonlight through puddles of dubious smelling water and slaloming past local lads on their way to and from bars or visiting each other in their houses.

Épi’s house is almost opposite a secondary school, and there’s a big transmitter tower about a hundred yards away, so it’s probably the easiest place in Kibungo to find. Just as we get back Épi arrives on a moto with the mattress tied in a roll behind her – looks really comical. We talk about house furnishings; what this little house needs is a paint party where a gang of us descend one weekend and slap new coats of paint on the living room, bedrooms and anywhere else we can reach. It would transform the place.

We get sorted and bed down for the night. Épi’s taking on a local girl (vetted by the Diocese) as housemaid, and she will sleep in the spare bedroom when she eventually arrives. For now, Soraya is using Épi’s bed; Épi is trying out the new bed for the maid, and I’m on a mattress on the living room floor. It’s funny trying to get to sleep in somewhere totally silent.

(The arrangement with the domestique is really sensible – Épi will have her living in during the week, and on those weekends when she’s away in Kigali so that house is guarded at all times. On the other hand, if Épi is staying in Kibungo at weekends, and is having visitors, the domestique will go back to her family’s house in the town).

In the morning we meet up with Tina at the bus park and get overcharged on the matata to Rusumo (it’s a Sunday morning and there isn’t a great choice of transport, so we can’t tell the convoyeur where to go and jump on an alternative bus). The road to Rusumo is beautiful. Compared to Muhanga, the roads are very straight, and the surface is pretty good. The hillsides are terraced for the most part, but here and there are still big expanses of land which seems to be completely unused. This is the only part of Rwanda where there is scope to absorb extra population. The valley bottoms have been drained of their swamps and are intensively farmed for rice. Most of the plots are just being planted out; the water glints in the paddies and every plot has a tiny corner with brilliantly green young rice plants ready for transplanting. Rice really is the most amazingly vivid green colour when it’s young. On one bare hilltop there seems to be a resettlement camp for returning refugees. Houses are being built; there are organised canvas clad toilet blocks, but the people are living in tents or makeshift shelters while they build mud-block houses alongside.

In places there are dense stands of pine trees giving the place an almost Mediterranean feel. It’s a long way from Kibungo to Rusumo, well over an hour in the bus, and yet you only pass through a handful of big villages. One of them is where Joe and Sonya are based; they are a long, long way from Kigali, but having the main road on their doorstep makes everything manageable.

Eventually we reach Rusumo. It’s quite an anticlimax, really. There’s a long, winding descent down into a big valley, and we can see the Akagera River in the distance so we know we’re almost there. We can’t see any waterfalls. There are funny little conical hills around, and we can see where the river is heading straight through a lump of high ground. But that’s about all.

We’re expecting Rusumo to be a big town like Gisenyi or Kibungo, but when we get there we find there’s almost nothing to see. The bus seems to drop us quite arbitrarily at a roadside stop in the middle of nowhere. We have to be told to get off the bus because we’re all convinced there must be some bigger stop a few miles further on.

A group of transport lorries are parked up in a field; one has a prominent “Manchester United” badge, obviously its owner’s pride and joy. There’s a ticket office for a bus company in the middle of a maize field; I don’t think Onatracom has many services operating out of Rusumo!

Down at the border itself we come right next to the river. It’s chocolate brown and there are great clumps of weed floating down from the lakes higher up its course. Two men are swimming across it from Rwanda into Tanzania. We’re not sure whether they’re just having a swim, or smuggling stuff across the border. We assume the river is crocodile free; there’s quite a strong current even on the quietest stretch of water.

The road is jammed with lorries waiting to cross into Tanzania, and lorries that have just made it across the border bridge. There are a slew of bars, cafes, forex moneychangers; the usual stuff at frontiers. But compared to the Congolese borders at Gisenyi and Cyangugu this place is so, so relaxed! The border itself is a big metal bridge, built exactly next to the main waterfall. It is perfect for taking pictures. We hear the waterfall long before we see it. A troupe of baboons is playing next to the bridge, and a bored looking Rwanda policeman stands next to the barrier pole. We amble up to him, all smiles and politeness, and ask if we can go on to the bridge to take pictures. We’re fully expecting to be turned back, but the situation is so relaxed that he just waves us through. (By contrast, when I was at Cyangugu with Tu Chi we nearly got into trouble for insisting that we only wanted to take a few picture and not smuggle ourselves into the DRC…).

So we scamper onto the bridge and take loads of photos. It’s really hot now, but there’s a strong spray coming up to the bridge from the boiling waters below which is cool and refreshing. The water is the colour of milk chocolate, and I can now see exactly what Védaste was writing about in his master’s thesis – tonnes and tonnes of Rwanda’s best topsoil is being washed away downstream beneath our feet.

At some point a sackload of plastic sandals has been tipped or fallen into the river; they’re caught in an eddy right under the bridge and green and blue sandals swirl endlessly round and round in the vortex.

There is one main fall, and a series of rapids above and below it. The falls are not excessively high or wide, but the river is flowing high at the moment (we’ve inadvertently come at probably the best time of year to see it), and the force and speed of the water is very impressive. There’s no way you could shoot this fall in a raft or canoe.

Downstream a man is fishing with a round net on a long pole; the water is so opaque there’s no way he can see any fish down there; he’s just swirling the net around in the hope that an unlucky fish will get washed into his net by the current. In all the time we watch him, he doesn’t manage to catch anything!

When a juggernaut crosses the bridge the whole thing sways and creaks. A steady trickle of pedestrians is crossing in both directions, too. There are a few private cars and NGO vehicles, but there crossing is not busy and it just feels very pleasantly relaxed. Downstream of the bridge the river enters a gorge, and there’s a dramatic change in the scenery. (And a few miles further on the land will flatten out just as dramatically as the river enters the Akagera National park with dozens of lakes and swamps). Somewhere here is the point where the new railway line from Isaka to Kigali will, cross the river; I imaging they will build a railway bridge alongside this existing one. That’ll be a pity because it’ll spoil the view from the road bridge. That’s another reason why we’re lucky we’ve come here at the right time!

We take pictures upstream and downstream; photos of ourselves on the bridge; photos of lorries crossing it; photos of the baboons who are sitting next to the barrier pole as if they’ve been trained to wait for permission before going from one country into the other.

Eventually we decide we’ve had enough, and adjourn past our friendly policeman to a bar. It’s barely mid-day and we’ve already “done” Rusumo. (If we decide to go overland to Tanzania and Zanzibar, as some VSOs have done, we will have to walk across the bridge and try to find a matata on the Tanzanian side to take us along to the nearest town and a “proper” bus further east. That can take a long time and will take some thought)!

By now it has clouded up and the mid-day storm is arriving. Once again, just by luck we’ve even been fortunate in arriving early in the morning. We sit out the storm in the matata while we wait for it to leave; my only regret of the whole episode is that it’s raining too smartly to be able to take pictures out of the matata windows.

Back in Kibungo we explore Tina’s house (bigger than Épi’s, but it had rats when they moved in which wasn’t very pretty). Tina has a very lovely valley view out of her back yard; I take some pictures but just now the sun’s now at the wrong angle and I hope I’ll come back here again and take some more.

In the late afternoon we take a bus up into the middle of Kibungo and drift back on foot to Épi’s place. On the way we pass a bar which doubles as a sauna and massage saloon. That’s really unusual for Rwanda, and especially in a place as provincial as Kibungo. We’re all sure it must be some sort of sleazy joint or brothel, but as we’re all together we decide to have a look. (Just in case it’s legitimate, not just in case it….. oh, you know what I mean!). To our amazement it turns out to be a real, proper sauna and massage establishment with a delightful young owner.

This puts an even better gloss on Kibungo. Soraya and I are really getting to like this town more and more. If we do return for a painting party at Épi’s we’ll combine it with a sauna and massage, especially if we can negotiate to have the whole place to ourselves…..

In the evening we decide to eat out; it’s already quite late and the only place open is the most expensive joint in town. Its pleasant, but the service is slow. When out brochettes and ibirayi arrive we find that some of the brochettes are zingalo – goat intestines wound into a coil and threaded on the skewer. Now as you can imagine, some of the girls are not too keen on goat guts, especially at RwF 1000 apiece, so muggins gets to enjoy this culinary high point of Rwandan cuisine. I can report that they’re not unpleasant; not even chewy, but I can’t say that I’d squeak with delight if I saw them again.

We walk Tina home and then drift across the taxi park and up the slope to Épi’s place. Faustine, the domestique, has arrived with her stuff and already set to work washing up and cleaning. This creates a logistical problem; there are only three places for people to sleep and now we have four people. I offer to go and sleep on a siofa at Tina’s but we decide it’s better to send Faustine home on a moto and tell her to come back tomorrow. She’s quite happy with the arrangement, and we pay her moto fare. She only lives just up in the town and she can leave all her possession in the bedroom ready for tomorrow.

It’s been a really lovely day, and we all feel relaxed and happy. Épi’s getting anxious about work in the morning; we need to be up and away by half past seven.

The fight against AIDS

Here's a little extract from today's "New Times" newspaper which gives you a perfect examnple of the day to day problems we face here in trying to reduce the incidence of HIV. You're fighting against traditional beliefs and especially men's insecurity - they're desperately afraid that they'll be shown as "weak" if they test positive, so they prefer not to be tested. Ignorance is bliss.......

It's a particularly typical Rwandan slant on the situation that in the last paragraph you notice that the Police chief and director of medical services appears to be the same person. So no potential conflicts of interest over confidentiality here, then......

KAYONZA — Men in the Kayonza district are shunning voluntary HIV testing, which is proving to be an impediment to the fight against the HIV/AIDs scourge.
Technical assistant, for the District Aids Control Commission (DACC), Edouard Muhima Luhayisha, further revealed that despite the fact that Saturdays had been set aside for the testing of couples at specified centres, only women turned up for testing.

These women are sent back for their reluctant husbands, and often they themselves don’t return, but instead choose to go to other health centres where they don’t have to be accompanied by their husbands.

Apart from shunning the tests, health officials say men normally blame their spouses whenever they test positive. This year’s theme for the fight against HIV/Aids focuses on testing of couples.

According to Muhima, men claim they know their HIV status from the results of their partner’s test, which is wrong because there are cases of discordant couples where only one partner is infected.

“It is funny sometimes they assume that a woman’s results would automatically be similar to theirs. And when a woman tests negative, her husband blames her for infecting him,” Muhima explains.

According to the November-December 2008 HIV test results in the district, of the 22,962 couples tested, 262 couples tested positive, while 424 were found to be discordant couples.

Muhima says they have embarked on a sensitisation campaign to bring men on board, warning that women could lose heart in the exercise if their husbands remain reluctant. He is however optimistic that the campaign is bearing fruit as more people have started going for testing and counselling.

“The campaign also involves encouraging married partners to remain faithful to each other,” he concludes.

Meanwhile, the Assistant Commissioner of Police and Director of Medical Services, Dr. Wilson Rubanzaha calls on couples to report cases of infidelity. Addressing residents on health issues recently, he advised married couples to be faithful to their partners and urged infected couples to use condoms to avoid re-infection.

What I find interesting is that the infection rate is so low - 486 positive results in 22962 couples is only 2.1% which is remarkably low for sub-sharan Africa. So is it the case that the only people who turn up for testing are those who are pretty sure they'll test negative?

Postcards from the Far East (Rusumo and Kibungo)

Double click on each photo to enlarge to full screen size.

Soraya lights the kerosene stove to cook our evening meal. This is the backyard of Epi's house in Kibungo
The front view of Epi's house. We're just setting off for Rusumo.

This is the Onatracom bus company ticket office at Rusumo. Probably not the busiest route in Rwanda.....

The Akagera River just before it reaches the falls. Far side is Tanzania; this side is Rwanda. This water has started off in Nyungwe forest in the far south of Rwanda; travelled north all round the edges of my District of Muhanga, then back down past Kigali to the swamps in the far south of Rwanda, and is now heading back north and eventually into Lake Victoria. When it leaves Lake Victoria it will be better known as the White Nile, the longest river in the world. OK, that's the end of the geography lesson..... We saw people swimming across from Rwa to Tnz; not sure whether they were smuggling or just swimming. Let's hope the current is too strong for crocodiles!

The river just below the falls. It's a really deep gorge. Somewhere here is where the new railway line from Tanzania to Kigali will cross the river.

The falls are very impressive just now, at the end of the rainy season. But with reference to something I put in the blog last week, just look how much soil is being carried down in this water.....

As usual, we're a very international bunch. Tina is German, Epi is Canadian; Soraya is Phillipina

Even the baboons seem to obey the "stop" signs at the boundary gates!

After a hard morning's tourism we need a cold fanta. A pity the waitress nearly chopped Epi out of the picture...

Looking across into Tanzania.

The landscape around Kibungo is really pretty, and Soraya and I both enjoyed it. The valleys are wider and the hills lower than here where I live in Muhanga. It's also much greener than we were expecting.

A key day in Gitarama....

February 6th

Another lovely, cool, fresh morning and a delight to be going to work at half past six. Up by the little stadium a little girl breaks free from her mum and comes charging into my arms for a lift and swing round. How often do you get a chance to make somebody’s day before seven o’clock in the morning?!

Christi and Jean-Claude come to see Valérian again, and J-Cs offered a place at Gitarama primary school Tronc Commun section. That’s as good as he can hope for, and I salute Christi for her perseverance. It’s more than I would have done. I try phoning both Shyogwe and Gitarama primary schools to arrange visits for today, but both Shyogwe and Nyamabuye secteurs seem to have arranged follow-up meetings after the big district meeting on Wednesday. I assume the other secteurs will be doing the same thing, too. This means all my plans for today are in ruins, and I can’t visit any more schools. Never mind, I’m getting them lined up for next week.

I borrow Claude’s modem and catch up with virus checkers, email, blog etc. While I’m doing that I print off the translated Social Studies stuff I’ve so far done (a quarter of one book, and there are three books in all. I doubt if I’ll do more than half of each of them, at least for the time being). While I’m printing Ernestine comes in from Kivomo and asks me to print something off for her, using my laptop. She’s only got two viruses on her flash, which is something of a record low number these days! When she sees the Social Studies stuff she begs me to put it on her flash drive, but I tell her to hang on till I’ve got some more done, and that I’ll come and inspect her school next week. (Hers is the only school in Muhanga secteur at which I haven’t got round to doing a proper inspection).

I go through some power point slides for Joe in Nyamasheke; we quite often email stuff to colleagues and ask them to proof it or look through it for pitfalls. Joe has done a super job and my reward for going through it is that I now have it on my laptop to use as and when I want to!

Claude is absolutely besieged in his office; I’m not sure whether its students looking for places in secondary schools, or parents complaining about why their children weren’t selected for secondary schools, or new teachers looking for jobs, or new assistant heads waiting to be taken out to their schools, or a combination of all these. It’s like Piccadilly Circus in our office, too. I grab Béatrice and show her the lists of contact details on the wall and explain to her that “t.b.c.” next to a school means that I haven’t been able to check whether the head teacher is still in place or whether he/she has changed phone number, and can she do the spadework for me because it will be so much easier for her as a Kinyarwanda speaker? In return, I tell her she won’t need to do her own list of details because this one will do for everybody. Oh, and that I also need her to find out the names and contact details for these new assistant heads who are popping up like mushrooms all over the place.

At that point I decide the best thing for today is to escape back to the flat and get cracking on some more textbook translation for Gatenzi and other local schools.

On the way I call in at the post office and, hey presto, my packet of keys has arrived. The post mistress stands back as I punch the air and blow her a kiss. (The security guard’s not sure whether this muzungu has finally lost it or is just showing off. And he’s got a baton about four feet long; every time he stands up he all but trips over it).
There’s also a paper for Hayley, but none for me.

I zip back to the office, shoulder my way through the even bigger throng of callers who are by now filling the entire corridor and collecting in the entrance hall, and try the spare office key in the lock. It actually works – that key cutter in Bridport has done a good job. It means that Soraya will have her own key, and then when we eventually leave Claude will have to spare keys to either give to our successors or to do with as he pleases. Innocent, too, heaves a sigh of relief that he’s not the only keyholder any longer. We’ve all been dreading him being ill or forgetting his key, because in that case the entire education department would be unable to get into work and be stuck in the corridors like a load of plonkers.

So its back to the flat and a hard graft morning translating stuff into English. It’s a fascinating exercise; it is by far the longest piece of translation work I’ve ever done, and even though the subject matter is familiar there are all sorts of shades of meaning to contend with. Do I do an exact translation (which won’t flow well in English) or do I do a loose translation into the kinds of phrases English people would actually use (and risk bringing in vocabulary which is too advanced for the teachers, never mind the pupils)? The answer is a combination of both these things. My dictionary gets more use today than in all the rest of the time I’ve been here, but even so there are many words not in it and other words which are ambiguous. (“beau-père” can mean father in law or step father; “égouts” can mean stinky sewage or just waste washing up water. Translating, as I soon learn, is not as precise as you think it should be).

What comes across loud and clear is just how much the government is using these new primary textbooks to indoctrinate children into its view of orthodoxy. The thing reads very strongly about their duties and responsibilities but is much less prolific about their rights.

The spare key for the flat doesn’t fit, which is a pity, but not crucial. A 50-50 success rate on a foreign pattern key isn’t bad going, and the key which we really needed a spare copy of is the one which works. I’m really lucky!

I’m joined by Hayley and Charlotte for lunch. At Tranquillité there are two other separate groups of muzungus who we’ve never seen before; one pair turns out to be visiting from Kigali. Not tourists, surely – there’s nothing for tourists to do in Gitarama; it’s the least touristy place in Rwanda!

In the afternoon I go to the bank and have to wait an hour and a half before I’m served. The place is packed; I’ve caught it at the wrong time but I need money for my weekend travels. Everybody else is waiting the same length of time, too. They are either paying electricity and water bills, or paying in school fees. Part way through the afternoon there’s a sharp thunderstorm and power cut and the lights are off, then on, then back off, and finally back on. Everybody groans when the lights go off, because we’re fully expecting the bank to close for the day as it doesn’t seem to have back up batteries or a generator. Fortunately business continues at its usual snail like pace. I tell you, can you imagine having to queue for ninety minutes in HSBC or Lloyds? According to the “New Times” there’s been huge complaints in Gisenyi (it always seems to be Gisenyi these days) where the entire place has been without power for two days and the banks have been shut, and local businesses are up in arms.

By the way, the water shortage last week seems to have been cause by Strabag contractors building the new road from Ruhengeri to Gisenyi. Apparently they cut through a water main. But hang on, if you cut through a water main supplying an entire town, wouldn’t you notice? Wouldn’t there be water flooding all over your construction machinery? And wouldn’t you phone Electrogaz to tell them, so they could turn the water off and come and fix the problem straight away? Well no, this is Rwanda and nothing happens quickly. There’s too many forms to fill in and get stamped first, and if the official holding the stamp is away on leave then you’re screwed!

And guess who’s responsible for Gisenyi’s electricity – our beloved Electrogaz again. There’s a hydro station in Gisenyi, dammit – they can’t blame lightning strikes on miles of pylons, can they…….? You only need about two miles of wires to reach the furthest parts of the place!

Back at the flat I finish to the half way point of one of the Social Studies text books. My eyes are hurting and my neck’s aching from being hunched over the computer, so I’m not doing any more today. There’s easily a whole term’s work translated and I’ll find a way of getting it to Imelda at Gatenzi next week.

Tom comes home tired out and we decide to eat out. There’s a new rooftop cafe Gitarama (oh, the sophistication of this place), and we dine on good brochettes and crunchy ibirayi. Unfortunately the afternoon thunderstorm decides to pay us an evening visit as well, and we’ve just about finished eating when we have to quickly decamp under shelter. Never mind, it’s been a good day and despite everything I feel I’ve got some good work done.

Best thing about today – getting my keys back. It’s the weekend – hooray!
Worst thing – feeling I’m slipping behind on school visits.

Jane, the most gorgeous headteacher in Rwanda...

February 5th

I manage to get the modem off Claude today; he’s preoccupied with a group of three head teachers just arriving to work in Muhanga. Now this starts ringing alarm bells. Firstly, Nicole and I have been talking about whether we should offer to do some INSET for newly appointed heads, because there doesn’t seem to be anything doing at official level, at least not here in the district. Secondly, there seem to be far too many new heads; there are no schools that I’m aware of which don’t have anybody in post. I think we might be going into something new, a system where the primary schools extending into nine years’ basic education are being renamed “groupes scolaires” and have an assistant head as well as an overall head. The assistant head is probably going to be someone straight from university, reasonably fluent in English, and responsible for the tronc commun section of the school.

My list of contact numbers is printed off and stuck on the office wall for anyone to use; I’ve made it clear that it’s an interim version until we clarify some missing details. And if we really are having a lot of assistant heads appointed, then they ought to be added to the list. The trouble is, as always, trying to pin Claude down on the specifics. I’ve already asked him if we’re going out to inspect Remera school this afternoon (one of our poorest performers). On Tuesday he was definite about coming with me; today he says he is too busy and that we’ll have to put it off to next Tuesday. I don’t mind because I haven’t rung the school yet, but I bet there’ll be some other good reason for delaying when we come to next Tuesday.

At half past eight I walk down the road to inspect Nyabisindu, one of our nearest schools. I’m expecting to find Florent, the secteur rep, in his office. Instead I find some gorgeous looking young girl. She’s introduced to me. She’s Jane (I think I’ve got that right; it’s a very unusual name for a Rwandan woman and sounds too westernised to be true). Jane is one of these assistant heads. She’s straight out of university, competent in English, and very, very pleasant. She’s also the same age as my youngest daughter, and here she is trying to run a school of just under a thousand pupils. Florent’s there as well, but I never quite get to the bottom of who’s responsible for what. Jane’s been in post for just two days, and I’m the first official visitor she’s had. She's dressed like a model and has a figure to die for. Just about the complete opposite of the "traditional African ladies" who occupy a lot of the other positions....

We do the usual stuff about how the school’s coping with all the changes. I ask to visit some lessons. I’d like to see social studies and “General Paper”, but I’m always being steered away from them towards Maths, Science or English. I know the reason – there aren’t any textbooks in English and they’re terrified of criticism because they’re either having to teach in French or, worse, they’re not teaching anything at all. It says so much for the Rwandan state of mind that they’d rather not teach a class, and risk having discipline trouble, than just get on with it and run the risk of being accused of teaching the wrong thing or doing it in the wrong language. Nobody is willing to go out on a limb. Nobody’s willing to use their initiative. There’s no creativity, no lateral thinking. Everyone’s waiting for Kigali to dot the ”I”s and cross the “T”s and tell them exactly what to do. It’s driving me nuts!

I see a good maths lesson with yr 4. The teacher is competent and her English is good. Children sidle up to her and whisper to her in Kinyarwanda if they don’t understand something, but she’s having none of it and tells them to speak in English or go back and sit down. So they have to try their English, which is good.

I join the same class after break for English. This teacher, Judith, has them doing group work which is an excellent thing, but all her instructions are in Kinyarwanda and for an English lesson there’s just far too much Kinya being spoken in the classroom. At the end of the lesson the children are getting all the work right, and I’m more than a bit suspicious that this is yet another one of these re-runs of a lesson she’s already given them. Hmm! How do I grade that lesson?

Back at the office Emmanuelle comes in; she shows me a report she’s written in English on some training her secteur did earlier in January. I correct and smooth the language, and then realise that I’ve scribbled over her official copy for the mayor, so I offer to type it up for her. She jumps at the offer, so I spend half an hour doing it and she goes off all smiles with four top copies in English so good that the chargé will think a miracle has happened during a week’s training course!

In the afternoon I plan to visit Shyogwe; I have money to give to Stéphanie and I want to visit some of her classes. But unfortunately I can’t get through to her on her phone, and I’m not going all the way out there on the off chance. Instead, I have a siesta (I’m beginning to get run down with all these early mornings and late nights), and start translating Social Science work for year 4 at Gatenzi and anywhere else that needs it.

Well, it’s nearly ten o’clock at night again and I’m a quarter of the way through one book out of three that need translating. I’m very tired and I’m calling it a day. Thank God it’s Friday tomorrow!

Best thing about today – meeting some bright, enthusiastic new young heads – four of them so far.

Worst thing – nothing really; it’s just that at the moment there seems to be so much work to do! And I really ought to get talking to Claude about training for these new heads.

The headline in the "New Times" today is that Electrogaz have fixed the water problems at Gisenyi so people no longer need to draw water from the lake. Can't have all this negative publicity interfering with their grand plans, now can we? It wouldn't fit Rwanda's "onwards and upwards" image to have people dying of cholera.....

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall during some phone calls between the President's office and Electrogaz headquarters!

Pictures from Hayley's birthday bash

This is pappy, Hayley's dog, being held by Theogene, the guard and houseboy.

Twister is very popular here. While Soraya watches and Theogene tries to keep Pappy from taking part, Amy does the splits and Andy ponders his next move.

We were still doing twister by moonlight.....

A meeting lasting seven hours

February 4th

Yesterday was the most beautiful morning; today is cold and grey. I don’t even break a sweat on the long walk to the office. Christi’s just in front of me; I’ve arranged for her to see Valérian, the chargé, because she wants to talk to him about an assisted school place for one of the local boys she is mentoring.

In the office I work hard on the contact list of headteachers; by nine o’clock I’ve done all I can and yet there are lots of gaps where we haven’t seen heads since the start of term. I’ve learnt from experience that you can’t take anything on trust here; every single thing needs to be pinned down! You can bet your bottom dollar that some of the missing ones have new people or new numbers. But when I eventually finish it means I’ll soon have the only accurate list of school contacts in the entire District. As soon as I fill in the rest of the gaps I’ll get copies to everyone; not least Claude and Valérian.

One thing I discover today is that the selection criteria both for children going as boarders into tronc commun schools, and for the sixth form in secondary schools, varies by gender. Boys have to score fewer than 13 points to be accepted; girls are taken at up to 15 into tronc commun. (Remember that the lower the points total, the brighter you are). Boys and girls have to have less than 44 and 37 respectively to be accepted into upper secondary. It’s nice to see positive discrimination intended to increase the throughput of girls, but I wonder how the boys who are just outside the cut-off point feel about the process. There’s an awful lot of appealing going on against decisions, and Muhanga has had to defend itself against a throng of angry parents who apparently were blockading the Office while I was out at Kivumu school last Friday afternoon. The whole issue made it into the “New Times”, and Claude is quoted as saying he’d sort things out a.s.a.p. So that explains why Valérian was despatched to Kigali all day yesterday!

I haven’t arranged a school visit today, and just as well. There’s another one of these big meetings of all the District heads in the Cultural Centre. It’s due to start at 9; by ten o’clock most people are on their way, me and Nicole included. I’ve been showing Nicole how to get photocopying done here (i.e. go to the reprographics room and discover that as usual either the machine’s broken down or there’s no paper. Then systematically go into every department’s office – environment, legal, surveying, agriculture etc etc until you find a working machine. Look important, play the muzungu card and wait your turn on the machine. Works a treat…… usually!).

As we’re getting started on the meeting the sky grows darker and darker; a storm is on the way. Item 2 on our agenda is my powerpoint on the exam results, and I’m slated to talk to the assembled throng. Well, it’s actually a crowd rather than throng, because most of the northern secteur heads aren’t there. I think the storm must have come down from the north and made travel impossible – how many heads would have braved the sort of seven hour journey Soraya and I had up to Nyabinoni last term…?)

Just as we get up to do the power point there are two big flashes of lightning…… and the power goes off, and stays off for the next four hours. So no powerpoint. I have to stand up with my notes and talk. The rest of the meeting is in Kinyarwanda, but Claude has told them that from now on all meetings will be in English. He’s also told them to switch off their mobile phones, too, but after a few minutes they most of them secretly switch them on again. Every so often a head teacher will appear to crouch down as if in prayer; he or she has set the ring tone to vibrate and is busily resolving who knows what problem instead of listening to the Vice Mayor.

The meeting covers all sorts of major topics – exam results, the laptop computers being provided for schools, the need for extra teachers to make timetables work, safety issues and insurance for children in schools. Every so often Claude translates a key phrase for me, but I find thatI get sleepy when I’m just sitting listening to a torrent of words in a language I don’t understand. It’s a major effort not to yawn all the time.

We don’t stop for lunch; all we get is a bottle of fanta. You wouldn’t believe it was possible to cause so much noise and disruption in a meeting by bringing round bottles of fizzy drinks.

And it’s so cold! I’m sitting still on the Equator; I’ve got goose pimples all up my arms. I’m in with all my friends – Emmannuellie is next to me; Iphigénie and Christine are in front; Stéphanie and Goretti are close by. Emmannuelle whispers to say she thought muzungus never felt the cold because they had hairy arms. I kick her.

I’m thinking of all the things I could be doing instead of sitting out this meeting. I send Nicole home after four hours; I need to stay because right at the start I asked a whole group of heads, if they were present, to see me at the end so I can check contact details. So I’m caught. We eventually pack up at just after five.

Emmanuellie wants to talk to me; it turns out that she wants financial sponsorship for a degree course she’s doing. She’s got to re-sit a year to improve her grades, but can’t get financial support for re-sits from the District, and has spent most of her savings on Chantal’s wedding. (That’s almost certainly true; it’s the way Rwanda works). I tell her I’ll email home and see if any of my contacts in Bridport are willing to help. She’s a good, hard working head (her school is ranked 5th out of 94 in the district in the exams), and she deserves a break. She’s running a school, and bringing up two teenage boys on her own; her husband died not long after the youngest was born so she’s not had an easy life.

Back home I make a thick soup. Tom texts to say that he’s had a frantic day and didn’t get to eat until four in the afternoon, so won’t want an evening meal. I just cook for myself and the guard.

Soraya comes round in the evening to stash some food in our fridge, and while she’s here I manage at last to get through to Épiphanie on the phone and within a couple of minutes we’ve arranged to go and see her this weekend. Yay; at last I’m going to start getting to know the East of Rwanda.

Good things about today – getting the contact list almost done; getting a weekend away organised.

Bad things about today – boring meetings; wasted time; and even when it’s a friend asking, I hate being approached by people for money. My keys have STILL not come.

Oh, and P.S. – I think I’ve found the ideal school for the Elizabethans’ water tank. It’s Bilingaga primary, the one in the middle of the banana fields. The school’s had six new classrooms built last term, so there’s plenty of new roofs. It has no water at present. It’s in Cyeza, one of the poorest of all my areas, so it ticks all the boxes in terms of need. It’s the next school over from Bwirika which was the original candidate. Sometime soon I’ll go and see Abel, the head, and start talking seriously to him.