There's volcanoes at the bottom of our garden.....

Sunrise at Kinigi
Sabyinyo from the entrance to Kinigi. The oldest and most eroded of Rwanda's volcanoes.
One of my favourites - a dramatic shot of Vishoke and Mikeno

Karisimbi. By the way, it isn't snow covered - the white section at the summit is just a trick of the light

Karisimbi and Vishoke

Dense growth in the tropical forest just inside the National Park wall. This may look like "virgin jungle" but in fact this was cultivated land up until the late 1960s when people were evicted and the territory added to the national park to increase the "buffer zone" between farming and gorillas. P.S. don't on any account tangle with the stinging nettles here - they're really vicious!

Dead tree at about 3200m, covered in mosses and lichens.

Ornamental papyrus grass in the gardens at Kiningi. This is the first time I've seen papyrus as an ornament; usually you find enormous expanses growing wild in the swamps around the Nyaborongo river.

The volcanoes of Rwanda

This is what you see first thing in the morning at Kinigi. Gahinga on the left; Muhabura (14,000 feet) with wisps of cloud on the right. Two down; four more to go.....
Looking the other way, there are (L to R) Karisimbi, the highest mountain in Rwanda, Vishoke, which we were to climb, and in the background Mikeno which is inside the Congo. You also see the beautifully kept grounds at Kinigi.

About half past eight on a perfect morning, as we're on the run-in to the base of Vishoke. Left to right: Karisimbi, Vishoke, Mikeno.

Crossing the boundary wall to enter the National Park. Watch out for buffalo poo and see if you can smell any gorillas!

A beautiful mid-day shot of Sabyinyo, Gahinga and Muhabura. What looks like steam coming from Muhabura is (unfortunately) just a trail of cloud.

Pahoehoe (ropy lava) on our path. We're walking over the top of an old lava flow, and you can still see the wrinkles the liquid lava made as the outside skin cooled quicker than the runnier stuff inside it. Just like custard, but not as tasty.......

Mid afternoon. The same three volcanoes (Sabyinyo, Gahinga and Muhabura), but now the afternoon's storm is building up. You can see the potato fields on the fertile volcanic soils just outside the boundary wall.

Vesicular trachyte. Nature's version of Aero chocolate bars.

Getting in a lather over lava. Vishoke volcano

November 21-22nd

We’re up early on Friday, but with the benefit of hindsight not early enough, and as the day goes through our timetable slips further and further behind. I don’t realise this while its happening, but sitting here and writing about it a couple of days later I realise that we must have risen nearly an hour later than when I came with Geert, and by the time we actually started to climb the mountain we must have been a full two hours later. (This is why we didn’t all make it to the top. It’s not that we were incapable, just that we would have run out of daylight on the descent. That’s not permissible).

But there’s a silver lining to our tardiness. The weather is clear and fine; the sky is blue, and the views of the volcanoes are just so marvellous I wish I could fix it for ever in my mind. (None of my photos do it justice. The scale of the landscape is just so big; the colours so varied and fresh; the crispness of the air and quietness all round us just makes this place special.

Sabyini, the oldest and most eroded mountain, looms dark green just in front of Kinigi lodge. (Sabyinyo means “teeth” and is an apt name for a peak that resembles the gapped teeth of an old man). To the right, Gahinga and Muhabura are bright green against a pale blue sky studded with pink-tinged clouds. Wisps of cloud trail from Muhabura’s summit – at 14000 feet it is a very serious mountain, and it’s not until you get right up close to I that you realise just how steep it is.

To our left loom Vishoke – today’s climb for us – green all the way to the summit, flat topped, and very much the classic image of a volcano from a child’s drawing book. To its left Karisimbi towers above everything else. On the top is a patch of white, quite distinct from the thin clouds its trailing. At first we think the white might be a patch of frost or even snow reflecting the early sunlight, but it could equally be a structure of some sort. I don’t remember seeing it when I came with Geert in March. Perhaps it is some sort of military observation post to enable the Rwandan army to keep tabs on what’s happening down below in the Congo.

Behind Karisimbi and Vishoke we can see the summit of Mikeno, one of the three big Congolese volcanoes. Nyiragongo and Muxxxxxxxxx, the two very active volcanoes, are hidden behind Karisimbi. But we can see six of the eight peaks all lined up in front of us, all perfectly clear all the way to their summits. That’s a rare sight on any day and after all the traumas of the past few days it just feels so good to be out in the field and getting back to some mountaineering and some practical geology!

We have to report in to the ORTPN (Rwandan National Park Service) headquarters, and I have to but my permit to climb. I’m cheap this time because I have my resident’s green card as proof that I live here. Then after an intolerable wait we pile into Walt’s wagon, with Patience our guide, and set off along the bumpy track to the base of the volcano.

We set off through the potato fields, and already we are crossing lava flow after lava flow, and different textures and types of lava. Further out, the lava is porphyritic, with white, circular crystals of something inside the charcoal grey groundmass. (Why didn’t I pay more attention in my mineralogy classes forty years ago?); further up to the volcano you leave the porphyries and the lava become vesicular, with gas holes up to a centimetre across. All of this is so obvious and easy to explain, but for these children it’s the first time they’ve seen it for real. They’re so smart and can remember every definition and technical word, and you can hear the clicks as they match up what they’re seeing to what they’ve read.

We’ve almost crossed all the fields of pyrethrum flowers before it occurs to me that none of these children – nor the other two adults – understand what they are and how they’re used, so that makes another short photo stop and explanation.

Eventually we cross the stone wall which marks the boundary between cultivated land and the National Park. This wall is quite something. It’s made of drystone lava blocks, is about six to eight feet high, and stretches for miles and miles round the base of the volcanoes. It has been an enormous undertaking to build. It is relatively recent, because the original national park started by the Belgians was unfenced, and covered a much smaller area than the present set-up. After Dian Fossey’s murder, when world attention forced the Rwandan Government to get tough on poachers, the area of the park was extended by several hundred metres down the mountainside, and many families lost their homes and lands to the park. The reason for the wall is not so much to keep people out, but to keep animals (especially the dangerous buffalo and all-important gorillas) inside the park boundary. But every now and again they breach the wall, and people wake up in the mornings to find gorillas feasting on their potato plants or buffalo eating their precious cow grass!

Nobody lives within the park; it is the domain of the animals. Not just gorillas, but buffalo, hyenas, leopards, antelope, porcupines, and even elephants if the poachers and guerrillas to our West have left us any. We have three Rwandan soldiers to escort us. They’re not so much to protect us against armed rebels from across the border, but to keep us from harm from wild animals. If we are threatened with a buffalo, their orders are to shoot in the air to scare it away and only to shoot the animal itself as a last resort. In the afternoon we do come very close to some buffalo, and one of our guards is really nervous for our safety. (His name is Grégoire and he proudly shows us his identity card – in Roman and Arabic script – from his service with the Rwandan army in Darfur).

The going is extremely muddy underfoot; much wetter than it was last March. We’re being taken up the mountain a different way, presumably to minimise wear and tear on any one path. We squelch through deep mud, and have bruising encounters with giant stinging nettles. These are quite lethal, but fortunately there is a local equivalent of dock leaves to hand. If you pick the top leaves off giant lobelias they exude copious amounts of milky sap which quickly neutralises the irritation from nettle stings. At one point we have to crawl through a natural tunnel underneath a mass of fallen trees; I keep banging my head against roots above me and I’m glad I’m wearing a hat. At least it reduces the number of creepy-crawlies that fall down my neck….

As happened in March, we come across a giant earthworm which requires lots of photos. There’s plenty of buffalo dung on the path, and much of it very fresh. There are hoof prints of antelope, buffalo, and porcupine (three clawmarks clearly visible), but no fresh gorilla poo. Here and there are patches of delicate pink orchids, and even tinier blue ones looking just like vetch back home. Giant hydrangea trees loom above us, and lobelias twelve feet tall are dotted all around.

Eventually we reach the junction where the path to Dian Fossey’s grave splits from the Vishoke trail. From here on, after a short rest and drink of water, the going is steeper. After another hour we realise that we’re going to run out of time to make it to the summit. Patience says we must turn back at one o’clock. If we all stay together as a group there’s no way we’ll get there. Our two boys and Katie and Bethany are bursting to go on ahead, so we arrange that Patience, one soldier and one porter will go with them and make a dash for the top; the three adults and Cassandra will carry on until 1pm and try to find a good viewpoint on the trail so that we can take pictures. (One of the problems with the Vishoke climb is that you are so surrounded by tall vegetation that you get very little sense of altitude until you’re almost at the summit. All you get on the way up is glimpses in one direction; never a real panorama.

We plod on. I’m disappointed that I certainly won’t reach the summit, but then I’ve already done it once and my feet are hurting already. At the appointed time we make our descent, right down to the park boundary wall, and wait for a bit to give the others time to descend. On the way we pass a gorilla’s sleeping nest, complete with liberal amounts of dung. It’s not a fresh nest because the poo is very dried up and old (oh dear, how sad is this – I’m becoming a connoisseur of gorilla shit!).

We’re in radio contact with the children via their army escort, and we learn that all of them have reached the summit. That’s tremendous; they come back to us absolutely bursting with pride – it’s the highlight of their time in Rwanda so far! Later on we learn that on reaching the top, the four set off round the crater rim and made sure they actually entered the Congolese side before Patience realised what they were up to and summoned them back quickly. This gives Kersti and I a couple of seconds of queasy tummies – how would we explain that we had lost four fifths of our party, them having been arrested for entering the Congo illegally…..

But for the kids themselves it just made things even better. First they are driven to the border of Uganda and peer into the Ugandan night; less than twenty hours later they’ve actually entered Congolese territory. For Katie, whose dad is one of the security bosses at the US embassy, it’s an especial bit of daring defiance!

They’ve taken lots of photos of the crater because (unusually) there is no cloud inside it and the views are sharp. We decide that we are going to make a website all about the volcanoes and link it to the official KICS school website – this will be a nice technical challenge for them and consolidate all their geology. It also makes it less of an indulgence for Kersti and I to have had our expenses paid for the privilege of taking only five students!

We take lots of pictures of ropy lava, and I manage to find some lovely hexagonal mineral crystals in some of the lava blocks being used as field boundaries. I think they are tourmaline, but my mineralogy is so old and rusty I’m half guessing. It could just as well be hornblende or something much more ordinary. Also, there are some blocks of lava where you can see a clear gradation in the size of gas vesicles from tiny pinprick holes near the outer edge to over a centimetre across in the centre of the sample. All good geology for everyone! And yes, I know I’m a saddo to get enthused over the distribution of holes in a rock. But there you go….. The lava is trachyte (similar to basalt), and if you know what you’re looking for and look hard enough you can see just about every feature you need to make children understand how volcanoes work. In particular, everyone who comes here sees the six or eight main named volcanoes and they think that’s all there is. But we know better. By the end of the day my students can recognise literally dozens of little vents and fumaroles on the sides of the main volcanoes; many half eroded away, but plain as a pikestaff when you’ve “got your eye in”. The geology of these volcanoes is complicated and fascinating; I’ve done as much reading up in advance as I can and it’s paying off. I know, too, that I’ve got five children who are looking at rocks in a different way as a result of today!

Back at the car we rattle off down the track back to Kinigi. The afternoon storm is brewing up; we’re all constantly taking pictures as the patterns of cloud and shade creep across the volcanoes – you could take the same shot ten times in a day and every time the shot would look different, and every time it would be just as interesting.

Finally the storm breaks and thunder crashes round the peaks. We see lots of lightning, but the rain is all on the Ugandan side of the mountains. While I’m taking photos I meet a couple of Ugandan teenage girls who are also staying in Kinigi; they beg me to take their pictures, and so I do, with a promise that I’ll email the prints to them.

Our original plan is to have a geology “summing up” lesson after we’ve showered and before we eat, but we’re all too tired. There’s only one working shower, so it takes us about 90 minutes to all get scrubbed! The Kinigi staff whisk our filthy boots away to clean them – they come back good as new, except that somewhere coming down the lava blocks Kersti has lost half of the entire sole of one of hers!

Once more, by the time we’ve finished eating we’re all knackered, and just fall into our beds. One good thing about Kinigi is that we’re high up and don’t need either mosquito nets or sprays of deet.

Best thing about today – the views; being on the mountain; the views; not being stuck in Gitarama; the views!

Worst thing about today – my feet are aching…………….

Rwandan driving test

Heloise looking very competent. She passed.
Tom just about to stall and fail. You can see some of the crowds of spectators, and the two traffic police examiners in their black uniforms. The building in the background is Amahoro Stadium - the Rwandan equivalent of Wembly.

the singing toilets

November 20th

Up early and into Kigali. I’m not sure exactly where we are doing this moto test, and nobody has thought to text me to let me know. So far all the training has been up in Kicukiro, so that’s where I go first. But when I arrive there’s nobody around, so I try phoning some of the others; when I eventually get through to one of them I’m told the test is at the Amahoro stadium, some way away in Remera.

So I have to catch a moto across town, through the rush hour traffic. One of the big green Onatracom buses has broken down, full of passengers, right on one of the busiest junctions in town. The police are directing traffic, but every moto driver reckons he can do better, and to say its complete chaos would be the understatement of the year. Every time a gap of more than about a metre opens, a fleet of motos tries to squeeze through – in both directions – and I see more near misses in five minutes than I usually do in a month! It occurs to me that the Rwandan driving tests ought to include some way of measuring people’s patience in traffic jams – given this morning’s evidence the roads would be empty because everyone would fail!

We arrive at the main gates of Amahoro, but there’s still no sign of the others, and obviously I’ve come to the wrong place. Fortunately the guards on duty twig where I should be and send me off again with my grumbling moto driver to the official testing ground. This is just behind the stadium, a flat space where half of Kigali is queuing up to do their car test. There is no sign of any moto training. The car test consists of driving very slowly round a circuit, and lots of ultra slow speed manoeuvring into absolutely tiny parking spaces, and slaloming round cones. Just what is it with these Rwandans and the idea of driving around cones? There doesn’t seem to be any part of the test which involves driving into the city traffic and showing road sense, or emergency stops etc, or of showing that people have the right temperament to drive in a crowded city..

Once again, I can’t find my other VSO trainees, so I have to phone them. It turns out that the moto tests are in another field round the back of the car test circuit. I find I can see them, but can’t work out how to get to them – there’s a high fence between the car circuit and the moto field. Eventually I have to walk up the road, go round the back of a police station and Islamic school (madrassah – they’re all inside busily trying to learn English. I get some very funny looks, so I say “hello” in my best English accent and hurry past before they can nab me to help with the holiday school). There’s a hedge, a gap in the hedge and a piece of broken fence, and hey presto I’ve reached the rest of my VSO trainees.

None of this has put me in the right frame of mind for doing a test. I’m even more thrown to discover that the others pretty well all defied the lock down yesterday and came into Kigali, and they all managed to spend the entire afternoon practising for this test. I’m now the least prepared, and least competent pf any of them. I’m absolutely furious. I had a phone message specifically telling me not to come to Kigali and that the practise session was cancelled – but nobody else seems to have been sent that message. I’ve missed a whole afternoon of intensive practise which would have made all the difference in my skill and confidence levels.

We spend about an hour between us doing last minute manoeuvres. I improve a lot, but I’m certainly not ready to do the test. Then the police arrive and the official test begins. We very soon attract a crowd of more than a hundred onlookers. Driving tests here are always a public spectacle; to watch muzungus having a go is irresistible, and within seconds bystanders are phoning their friends to come and watch the fun. The police are friendly, but formal. The cones are measured to within a millimetre. We are having the test made easy for us; if we can only prove we can drive through the line of cones in both directions, we will be judged to have passed. We’re allowed one mistake only, and a second chance.

Since VSO submitted the original list of names there have been several changes of candidate, and Els and Hayley are substitutes for two other people. The police refuse outright to accept substitutes, and Enias, who has come to support us, spends the rest of the morning in negotiations with Kigali traffic police headquarters to try to persuade them to allow the girls to have a go. (The situation still isn’t resolved by the time I eventually leave in disgust).

One of the funniest moments comes when the police say that if we don’t want to wear our crash helmets to do the test, that’s fine with them. So on the one hand there’s VSO foaming at the mouth if so much as ride pillion without our skid lids; on the other hand here are the actual traffic police saying that as far as they’re concerned helmets are an optional extra. Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up!

Needless to say I’m not in the best frame of mind to do the test. I’m put off by all the spectators, and I do some of the most rubbish driving since I first sat on a bike. No chance. Ruairi passes first go, but is the only one to do so. The police set the cones further apart to give us more of a chance, and this time another three succeed. But by the end of the morning, of the nine of us, two have been refused permission to do the test, and three of us are definite failures. Two of the failures are Andy and Tom who have motor bikes for their PHARE project work. It is likely they’ll now be banned from using their bikes, and exactly how much of their VSO work they will be able to do is in question.

The police have been very kind to us – they’ve given all of us two goes to do the test (which they were not bound to do), and at the finish they even say they’ll pass us if we can show we can do one line of six cones. It’s no good; I know that today I just won’t be able to manage more than two or three without either stalling or putting my foot on the ground. It’s simply not going to happen for me on this occasion.

We also discover that from now on VSO is insisting on volunteers doing a full English motor cycle driving test before they come here because the rules on bikes are being tightened up.

I leave the others to it; I need to get to Kersti’s school ready for the volcanoes trip. I’m feeling really deflated and angry; with myself for being so incompetent on the bike, and with everyone else for making such a screw up of our only chance to do the test. Too little time to practise.

It’s a ridiculous situation to be in. I can’t ride a bike till I’ve done the test. I can’t do the test till I’ve had a lot more practise on a bike. I can’t do practise on a bike because nobody will let me ride one till I’ve done the test. It’s a Kafka-esque situation to be in.

Oh well, I’ll just have to carry on hiring motos at their exorbitant charges and VSO will just have to carry on reimbursing me. And when I’ve used up my RwF40,000 travel allowance for a month, I’ll just have to stop travelling out to schools to inspect them or to do training in them.

As I’m walking disconsolately back to VSO Programme Office to dump my helmet I realise that yet again I’ve caught the sun badly while we’ve been doing our testing. I bump into Alicia and Amanda who are sauntering through Remera; they have no idea that the moto test has been going on. Alicia is finishing her service as a VSO and going home in just a few days; Amanda will stay until the end of January. But at least I’ve been able to say goodbye to Alicia; her farewell party coincides with this volcanoes trip I’m about to do.

I get a moto to Kersti’s school and enter a whole new world. KICS (Kigali International Christian School) is a brand new, American funded place which puts almost any English school to shame. Its facilities are just as good as Beaminster’s. It is, of course, a private school, and pupil numbers are tiny by our standards. Many of the pupils are Americans, from the Embassy or business or NGO communities, but there are also a lot of Rwandans. (One of the boys on our trip turns out to be the son of the senior surgeon at the King Faisal hospital). I’m able to put the moto exam behind me and concentrate on supporting Kersti.

We only have five children on this trip, and three adults – myself, Kersti and Walt, who is the father of one of the girls on the trip. We are going to Ruhengeri in Walt’s camper wagon, a huge American vehicle which has been imported into Rwanda following the US practise of not hiring cars locally but shipping peoples’ own cars in from the states.

We pile all our kit in and set off. The kids are simply delightful. All are sixteen or older. All are very sharp, extremely well travelled around the globe, but almost none of them ever seem to travel much out of Kigali while here in Rwanda. (The American children, like their parents, tend to be here for a two or three year tour of duty after which they’ll move on to some exotic location. Cue surreal statements like “we had to do special keep fit training for our sponsored cycle ride when we were in Mongolia two years ago” – and said as if it was the kind of normal experience that all teenagers took part in).

At the village of Base we stop to buy some food and to use the “singing toilets”. These are a famous Rwandan institution. As you enter the loo there’s a sort of electronic tune which plays. The tune is quirky and unrecognisable as any music I’ve ever heard of, but there’s no doubt that the loo sings to you as you enter it! The loos are unusual, to put it mildly! Two women’s cubicles and two men’s side by side in the same room – a unisex arrangement. There’s a sink with soap but no water, but an air hand dryer which actually works – the only one I’ve ever found in the country. There’s a shower cubicle also within the toilet room: this seems a weird place to put a shower but I’ve come across it before somewhere else in Rwanda. And opposite the women’s cubicles are two urinals, so that as our girls are leaving they are treated to the sight of men in full flow. Cue much squeaking and giggling…..

We have a good run to Ruhengeri and we are amazingly lucky with the weather. The views are pin sharp and the volcanoes look fabulous. Épi, and Teresa and co – I apologise to you. I should have made you come to Ruhengeri at this time of year rather than July. In July you could barely see the outline of a single mountain; today the view is perfect, with all the dust washed out of the air. The whole place is magic!

We get into Ruhengeri town and stop for a cup of tea and a rest at the Hotel Muhabura (the same place I stayed at when I did the volcanoes in March with Geert and Jan). Then we set off to find Kinigi, our guest house, which is right next door to the ORTPN headquarters. By now it’s pitch dark, and starting to rain. In the darkness we find our first turning but miss the second, and drive for miles and miles along a good tarmac road. I’m sure we’re going wrong, but I’ve only been here once before and I can’t recognise any landmarks. Outside the windows it’s totally black; barely a single light coming from any buildings to help us.

Kersti’s doing the navigating for this section, and I don’t want to embarrass her in front of her children, so I keep quiet. But eventually we come to a gate across the road, and realise we’ve driven all the way to the Uganda border! It’s both tragic and very funny at the same time! We turn round (the border is closed from sunset to sunrise; there is nobody around at all and just a couple of lorries parked up waiting for tomorrow to cross into Rwanda). Miles and miles of retracking our route ensue, and we eventually find our proper road within a few hundred yards of Ruhengeri. Happily it’s a quick and easy run to Kinigi, and when we get there the people are welcoming. Poor old Kersti – she’s going to take a long time to live down the excursion to Uganda. But Ian, one of our five students, is half Ugandan and is chuffed to bits that he’s been to within a couple of yards of his home country!

Kinigi is a beautiful place to stay, even if you’re not planning to climb the volcanoes or see the gorillas. The views are simply wonderful (I’m going to post some pictures taken from the grounds of the lodge). The organisation which runs it is dedicated to putting money into the rehabilitation of women and vulnerable children in this area, and it’s one of these happy combinations of good quality accommodation at a reasonable price, and supporting a worthwhile cause into the bargain. I’d certainly come here in the future and not to the Hotel Muhabura.

Some of the children are almost too tired to eat at this stage; we shovel down spaghetti in a mushroom sauce and tumble into bed. We’re in two dorms; this is the night I discover that Walt snores continuously, and that the two boys wake up at the very break of dawn…..

Best thing about today – the singing toilets; in fact everything about coming here to Kinigi

Worst thing about today – everything about the moto exam

Under Lock Down

November 19th

It’s Demonstration Day. The whole of Rwanda is being ordered to attend stage-managed protestations of fury at the arrest of Rose Kabuye in Germany. While the official bile is being vented at the E U in general and Germany and France in particular, there’s considered a very real risk that people will take the opportunity to have a go at any muzungu they see in the street. It’s not just that we might get stoned, or spat on, or beaten up; there’s a real risk of robbery and worse. We’d be daft to take the risk. Here in Gitarama we think the protests will only last for the morning, and that it will be safe to venture out cautiously after about 2pm. All the Kigali volunteers are being warned to stay out of sight the entire day.

So as VSOs we’re under strict orders to stay indoors and keep a low profile. Tom, on the other hand, is off to work as usual; he will be in the FHI office behind closed curtains and as long as he doesn’t venture out onto the street he should have no problem. I don’t have that option – my District Office will be closed, and all the other things I want to do – go to an internet café, go to Kigali and do moto practise, go shopping – all involve going out onto the street. So I’m confined to the flat, bored, and frustrated because there’s so much I need to get done and so little time to do it.

It’s interesting – I’ve heard absolutely nothing from the District Office about today. Nobody at all has said anything to me about today’s fun and games; nobody has warned me that as muzungus Soraya and I could be at risk and need to take precautions. We could have left home this morning and got murdered on our way to work. They really are shocking at any form of pastoral care of their volunteers! But that’s nothing – Els texts to ask what time our moto practise is starting in Kigali, and the wording of her message indicates she doesn’t even know the protest is taking place! I send her a quick reply before she can set off and come to any harm.

8.30. Tom has been instructed to make sure he’s off the streets by 8.00. The bakery opposite and the hairdresser have been certainly operating as usual from 6.00 until 8.00; from then on all the businesses visible from the flat began to shut up shop. There’s a heavy police presence to make sure they obey. The District pick-up truck is circulating round the town broadcasting exhortations to come to the big stadium.

At 9.00, while I’m doing my ironing, a procession comes down the middle of the road from Kabgayi; hundreds of young men (I think they’re probably students from the university). Lots of placards, some in French and some in English (“Rwanda deserves peace, too”. Not sure exactly how that ties in to the arrest of a Government minister for possible crimes against humanity). There’s now no traffic at all going along the main road, so it has become a pedestrian highway.

10.00 – I can hear a lot of loud amplified shouting and speeches coming from the stadium. I can’t make out anything of what’s being said. I’m glad Karen’s back in England and that Christi’s at work; their house is more or less directly along the approach road to the stadium. When this little lot finishes there’ll be literally thousands of fired up, indignant Rwandans marching past their front door. Hayley and Soraya and Tinks live barely a hundred yards from the stadium; I text them to make sure they’re OK and laying low.

Our guards have spread a blanket on the front lawn and are sitting watching the world go by – it’s like a bank holiday atmosphere. There’s a few pedestrians walking in both directions along the main road, but in general the town is quiet as a mouse. Hayley texts to see if I’m OK and to confirm we’re on for our bike test tomorrow. We’ll need to get the 700 bus at the very latest; possibly the 6.30.

11.00 there’s two traffic policemen outside our front door, on the pavement. They’re stopping all traffic in both directions and asking them why they’re on the road and not at the protests. It really is a massively orchestrated protest campaign. The guards downstairs have their radio on now, it’s tuned in to one of the local stations and is broadcasting what sounds like a live transmission. I don’t know whether its coming from Kigali or from Gitarama but it’s the usual shouted indignation. The only vehicles the police are letting through unmolested are the big international buses going from Bujumbura to Kampala.

It’s a worrying thought how closely the sounds from these dangerous political speeches match the sounds from the hellfire-and-damnation sermons we hear from the local churches on Sundays.

12.00 we’ve got a little helicopter doing circles over the town centre; I assume it’s the police or security people checking up on us. It might possibly be the newspapers taking photos, but I think nearly all the press coverage of today will be Kigali-based. Low flying aircraft of any sort are so rare here that all the pedestrians outside the flat have stopped to watch the plane. Oops, it’s just done a very low pass almost directly overhead. I’m well tucked in from the windows; nobody could possible see me, even from the helicopter.

OK, so what’s all this about? Rose Kabuye is one of Kagame’s closest aides, and has been with him since the early 1990s. A French judge has accused about nine senior Rwandan government officials, including Kabuye and the President himself, of being directly involved in the decision to shoot down the former President’s jet in 1994. This killed the presidents of both Rwanda and Burundi, and was the spark which ignited the genocide. The implication is that the shooting was a deliberate act, sanctioned at the very highest level, by Kagame. (Up to now nobody has known for sure who ordered the firing of the three missiles. Some accuse the French, most accuse the Hutu-led regime of the time, worried that the president was going to agree to some sort of peace initiative which would prevent their carefully laid plans for a “final solution” to Tutsi hegemony in Rwanda). Quite why Kagame, as a Tutsi, should issue an order which he could have predicted would lead to a mass slaughter of his own people is not clear, but this is what the French Judge is implying. It is highly ironic, because you can argue that Kagame and his aides are guilty of precipitating the very genocide that they claim the credit for stopping. Instead of the saviours of Rwanda, they would become the guilty ones, more guilty than almost any of the wretched people now serving life imprisonment in Rwanda itself or in Tanzania for the extremely serious cases.

The Judge issued an international warrant, and any E U country is bound to arrest any of these nine people if they visit it. If Rose Kabuye had come to London instead of Frankfurt we would have been duty bound to arrest her, and all the venom would be targeted on we British in the country. (We would have been hoiked out in an emergency evacuation just like the Kenyan volunteers were in January).

What makes the case more complicated is that, as a serving Cabinet Minister (she’s Kagame’s Minister of Protocol), Kabuye is entitled to diplomatic immunity whenever she travels abroad on diplomatic business. All she had to do in Frankfurt was to say that there had been an error and she was here as a diplomat, even if she only performed one single short diplomatic function during a mainly private trip. Tom and I can’t believe someone as experienced as Kabuye would allow herself to be put into this situation of being arrested by mistake; there must be a purpose behind it.

So we think this is all a calculated affair. We think that of the nine accused, either she is the one with the least evidence against her, or that she is considered the most expendable of the nine if she really does end up in prison. We think Kagame wants to see her come to trial (despite all the froth that is being broadcast) and that he wants to see what evidence the French have. If she is found guilty she will appeal to the international court of justice, and the case could go on for years. If she is found not guilty it will suggest that the French Judge doesn’t have sufficient evidence against any of the nine. In which case the accusations will have to be dropped, and Kagame’s reputation is not only vindicated but strengthened. He will be totally unassailable. It’s a high risk strategy for sure.

Meanwhile a Rwandan commission has issued arrest warrants for a group of thirty-or-so French army officers who were sent to Rwanda by the French as peace keepers in 1994. They were involved in “Operation Turquoise”, which was the French plan to create a “safe haven” in the south of Rwanda and to keep the warring sides apart. This was a disastrous miscalculation; it led tens of thousands of Hutu murderers escape into Burundi and the Congo, and it prolonged the period of mass killings of Tutsis by Hutus behind the French lines, protected from Kagame’s RPF army who had flushed them out of every other corner of Rwanda.

The official line here is that France is hopeless hypocritical in seeking the arrest of Rwandans while protecting its own army officers. It’s seen as a Colonial gesture in which black Africans are held to be worth so much less than white Europeans. And the rest of the west, especially all the Europeans, are seen to be siding with France. Only the Americans are seen as truly independent in the entire affair, and yet it was their refusal to intervene in any meaningful way in 1994 that allowed the genocide to proceed.

12.20 Pick up trucks driving by filled with men chanting patriotic songs, just like before the government elections a couple of month ago.

12.30 the demonstration in the stadium is over. Hundreds and hundreds of people are streaming past my flat towards Gahogo and Kabgayi. This is the most dangerous time of all for me, because many people know two muzungus live here, and if they’re full of righteous indignation then now is when we’ll get windows smashed or unwelcome visitors. I’ve locked the door just in case. But at the moment it’s just people walking quietly by; there’s no noise or chanting; there’s no organised protest. It’s more or less lunchtime and they’ve got other things on their minds.

So life goes on here. The daily rainstorm is on its way; there are dense clouds towards Kigali. There are women going to the market with baskets of vegetables on their heads. The hairdresser has just started playing loud music again. Traffic is starting to come up and down the road. Our next door neighbour is digging his garden.

In the afternoon I go shopping, and manage to get to the internet cafe with Soraya. The evening is spent cooking and getting my stuff up together for the next few days.

Constant changes of plan

November 17th

This morning I feel tired and it’s an effort to get ready and out of the flat by half past six. Claude’s in the office but just about to leave for Kigali, so I’m able to congratulate him on his fatherhood. But then Claude takes his computer modem with him so I’m stuck without internet all day.

Evalde comes in to the office and I’m able to at least positively confirm my Rugengabari training on December 1st. Nyarusange is also definitely on for November 26th, but Muhanga must be rescheduled. There’s a massive computer training course going on at the moment. All very well, but I can’t see how this fits into a district where hardly a single primary school has a computer in it. Do the secteurs know something I don’t? Is Kigali about to shower us all with solar panels and laptops? If it is, you can bet your bottom dollar they won’t be German products….. (see below)

I work hard at finding things to do with my District Office English classes; I’ve got John Robert, my journalism student, coming round to the flat this afternoon for a lesson and I’ll try out some of the District material on him!

I make up some posters and put them up round the Office; Soraya won’t be able to do any of her language classes this term because next Monday she goes away for a whole month on the MINEDUC training for Rwandan teachers. I think she might be the only VSO involved. She’s a brave girl. So I’m flying the flag for language lesson on my own.

During the morning I manage to get access to a computer with a working printer so I can print out my teaching materials, and lo and behold there’s a photocopier working in one of the other offices in the building, so I can get multiple copies done of the necessary sheets. I turn on all my charm and manage to get everything I need done. I have brought in duplicating paper in case they refuse to use their own stocks, but the guy waves my paper away and just gets on with the job. Hooray – I’m all set up for my District Office training next Monday!

By now its late morning and I’m running out of useful things to do. At this point Kersti rings to tell me not to come to Kigali this evening. Tomorrow (Wednesday) there are going to be huge demonstrations about the Rose Kabuye arrest all over Kigali, and the Americans are warning every muzungu to stay off the streets. The Rwandans don’t know how to identify Germans from other Westerners and we don’t want any of us to be caught out by mistake. I hear that in the last demonstrations some Europeans or Americans took part to show solidarity with the Rwandan government, but were beaten up by other people in the course of the affair.

This demonstration is a nuisance – will my day of moto training be able to take place? I text Charlotte in the Programme Office and ask for instructions. It appears I’ve caught them by surprise; she eventually says she thinks it will be OK and I’m to come in first thing in the morning.

Innocent asks me to help him sort out some cartons of French text books that need parcelling up and delivering out to the secteurs; the books are in Gitarama Primary School and we charge off there in a hired pick up truck. The “some cartons” turns out to be an entire classroom stacked with boxes of books – French, Maths, Social Studies, Civics (teacher guides only) and some English reading books. Also there are some newspapers sponsored by one of the local banks giving primary children a basic financial awareness. Of course, the cartons have been dumped in this classroom in any old order; there are boxes of Maths books mixed in with boxes of Social Studies; there are teacher guides mixed in with pupil books; there are year 1 boxes cheek by jowl with the other year groups.

We decide we need to first sort everything out by subject and year group; only then can we start dividing the stuff up by secteur. It takes us a good 40 minutes – and that’s Innocent giving the orders and four of us sweating with heavy boxes – before we have done the sorting. It takes us another hour and a half to sort out the allocations for five secteurs, and load them into pick up trucks ready for delivery.

Meanwhile it is looking increasingly stormy outside, and not all the trucks seem to have any sort of tarpaulin to cover these books. Lord knows what will happen if it comes on a deluge during the journey out to the secteurs.

Several secteur reps are here – Gaston from Nyarusange, and our friend Sylvère from Nyabinoni. I tell him to say hello from us to everyone in Nyabinoni and especially to Jean-Damascène.

It’s half past one before we ride back to the Office, four of us clinging on for dear life in the rear of a pick up truck. I’m absolutely starving, and Soraya (who I’ve left guarding all our stuff) is rattling too.

In the afternoon I get first a text from VSO saying the demonstrations tomorrow are going to be really big, and advising us not to come into town, and advising those living in Kigali to stay indoors all day. Them, as I’m walking home, there’s a phone call specifically cancelling our moto training. That’s a real blow. I’ve been banking on tomorrow as an intensive driving day if I’m to have any chance whatsoever of passing the exam. I’ll have been an entire week without setting foot on a moto – I stand absolutely no chance!

John Robert is three quarters of an hour late arriving for his lesson; the power has gone off and by the time we finish it’s almost dark. I won’t be able to see him again before the New Year because I’ll be out in the secteurs next week, so I wish him a Happy Christmas. It seems funny to be doing that before the end of November.

Outside its thundering and raining hard; it’s almost dark, and there’s mot a lot of food in the flat. I had assumed I would be off to Kersti’s in Kigali tonight, so neither Tom nor I have been out to get fresh veg. Fortunately when Tom comes in we find we have enough from the stash of goodies his recent visitors brought him to make another unconventional but very tasty meal. And pud is half a Mars bar each – how degenerate is that!

Tom’s been out with Christi on the FHI moto; he’s given her some practise riding on dirt roads with him on the pillion. Christi’s managed very well, but still she’s dumped Tom twice off the back of the bike. He’s tired and bruised tonight.

Best thing about today – finally getting something definite in train about the District Office English classes.

Worst thing about today – no moto training tomorrow. And it really feels as if everything – motos, the Geology field trip, my resources training, the District Office English lessons – is going to be crammed into a period of about eight days. I’ll be so tired at the end of it I’ll barely be able to pack my bags to go home!