Some last views from Gitarama

Pretentious gateways like these are all the rage in the houses of Gitarama's elite. This one controls the entrance to the Lando bar and nightspot, but many private houses have similar gates. They remind me of medieval castles with barbican towers.

A typical quiet sidestreet in the upmarket part of the town. This shot is about 500m from the District Office.

The "Hotel Spendide", set in a leafy part of town near the small stadium. When the Scottish teachers arrive in March they will stay here.


Very few buildings in the town have any form of decoration on their facades, so these lions stand out as being unique.


The little triangular patch of grass near the small stadium; Gitarama's only approximation of a park. Can you see our brand new public clock?




A row of shops; they include tailors, cobblers, a knitting workshop, dressmakers, a stationery shop and the usual alimentation or two.

Keza at One

Keza is Claude and Immaculee's little girl, just one year old and an absolute poppet. Soraya and I went to see them one evening last week.

Daddy's girl!

Look, I've got lots of teeth

Cuddles with mum


Only one year old and toting two mobile phones already!

Maxime and Giudi's wedding

Maxime and Giudi


Dancers....


Singers and drummers




Maxime's worried that his model on the cake looks a bit too "muzungu"-like!


All smiles!




With Kersti at the meal in "Republika"

Final postcards from Gisenyi

Sunset over the Congo - 1


sunset over the Congo - 2


April, my Australian colleague


Tropical lushness at Rubona


Afternoon sun on Kivu

Staring into my suitcase

November 26th

A quiet day today. In the morning there are a lot of letters to write, and I decide to work from home. We’re almost completely out of vegetables and most other food, what with me being away in Gisenyi and Tom up and down to the hospital to see J, so I go to the market and do a big shop-up. What I buy will probably last me until I leave.

I spend the rest of the morning cooking up an enormous batch of vegetable stew, which we can either liquidise for soup, or use as stock to make a base for other meals. From previous experience this system works well, and the cooking is child’s play with Tom’s pressure cooker.

By now its late morning. Soraya is preparing one of her final training sessions before she goes home. April is down at the internet café trying to download the latest iPod software to run on her new machine. She gets half way through when there’s a power cut and she loses the lot. Oh, the joys of going online in Rwanda…. I ring her and she comes round for lunch to sample my cooking.

I start dusting off my rucksack and suitcase; the real goal for today is to start packing, but as soon as I start I realise that there are too many days left before I go, and too many variables, to allow me to make a sensible job. I even think about trying to put all my stuff into two piles (take and leave), but there’s not enough floor space to do that. “Nakibazo”, as they say here, it will all fit in the case and I’ll set aside some time early next week. But with suitcase and rucksack on the floor, and a steadily growing pile of souvenirs by my bedside, it really feels like final days now.

In the afternoon I go to the internet café; power seems reliable and I’m able to get all my messages sent. Karen and Léonie come round to ask me to deal with a problem over mail – the women at the post office seem reluctant to give Karen a parcel which has arrived for her and we can’t put our padlock on the new outside mailbox until Becky comes back from Zanzibar. So tomorrow first thing I’ve got to go to the post office and sort things out.

Then in the evening Soraya and I are out to eat at Claude’s. (Our guard is smirking at me; Soraya is the fourth young woman to come round to my flat today….) There’s some catching up on news to do. Rwanda is starting to resume diplomatic relations with France after two years of bitter hostility; that will make a huge difference here. (But things will never reach their former level of closeness because of the country’s switch to English as its second language). The disturbance in the market yesterday was not over a fight, but to enable a meeting to be held, in the stadium, of all the market traders. All the licensed traders, more likely, because as far as we could see the vast majority of fringe traders were continuing to see as usual and steered well clear of the stadium. The market was closed and locked to prevent any thieving from unmanned stalls, and to force the registered traders to attend. Very Rwanda, that!


Claude fills us in on more details about the “Global Links” exchanges next year. There will be just three Rwandan teachers – Claude and two others yet to be determined – travelling to Scotland; dates yet to be fixed but at the end of May or beginning of June. There is a set budget for the exchanges, and Rwanda is penalised in its links with the north of Scotland because of the extra cost of having to travel from London up to Inverness. If Rwanda had been linked with, say, Essex or Dorset things would possibly have allowed another person to travel. And the Scottish delegation will be in Rwanda at the very end of March. They’ll be here for the last couple of days of the first term, but leave just before Genocide week.

Keza, Claude and Immaculée’s daughter, is growing up fast. She has plenty of teeth, is almost able to stand unaided, is vocalising well and has already learnt to say “papa”. She’s still amazingly well behaved but doesn’t miss a thing. Whatever is happening in the room, she follows it intently. And she’s a born mimic. If we clap or rub our hands, she does the same. If we blink our eyes at her, she blinks back. If we touch our noses, she touches hers. She’s going to be a very bright little thing. She’s much more wary of strangers than last time we saw her, and my glasses unsettle her. So we take pictures but she’s nervous about letting us cuddle her.

Claude’s illness on Tuesday turns out to have been a case of malaria. Now that’s worrying. Claude has lived for 32 years without ever needing to take time off work for illness. So why has he suddenly succumbed to malaria? Soraya and I immediately put it down to the stress of his new job – being the chief of education, health and good governance is a ridiculous workload and I think he is running himself into the ground. Even Claude admits that the job is too big to keep on top of, and that if he doesn’t keep up his major input into education, then Valérian won’t be able to cope with all the work on his own. It’s an untenable situation, but at least all the country’s directors are feeling the same pressure. The degree to which they’re getting stressed out will be down to the level of commitment they put into their work, I suppose. I wish Claude wouldn’t talk to often about finding another job, too – he’s absolutely on top of his game as education director and he’s exactly what Muhanga needs to run the system efficiently. I think our District is beginning to get a good name within Rwanda for being organised, and it would be a shame if Claude left and everything crumbled.

During the meal Claude says a very generous thank you to me for all the things I’ve done during the two years at Gitarama. He’s become a real friend, and I have no doubt that we’ll meet up again at some time in the future. Possibly he’ll come and stay a few days at the end of the Scottish visit in June.

Tomorrow there’s one of the big meetings of all headteachers and Claude wants me to talk to them and give them a summary of my “end of year report” which I wrote for the District. This is also the perfect opportunity to say farewell to all my friends, the headteachers of a hundred and fifty schools scattered among the mountains and valleys of the beautiful part of Africa. Things couldn’t have worked out better if we’d planned them years in advance!

After the meal Soraya and I walk through the empty streets back home – two miles on a cold, starlit night. There’s a ring round the moon, and you would never ever think you were living on the Equator. Soraya’s bundled up in layers of jerseys and a coat, and even I’m glad that we’re walking to keep warm!

Best thing about today – a chance to start thinking back over asll the things I’ve done during the past two years.

A glimpse into our local hospital

November 25th

A very busy day today. This may well have turned out to be my last “working day” in any normal sense of the word. Into the office well before seven. No sign of Claude or the modem. Valérian is there, and I have some files to put on his computer for him. There’s no other work to do; Soraya has a few trainings left but they tend to be at weekends and I can’t share them with her.

At the post office there are a couple of packets for April, one of which contains her new iPod to replace the one which was stolen just after she arrived. Not only that, but she can use the iPod for a lot of her audiology work, so it’s very much one of the tools of her trade and certainly not just an entertainment device.

And there’s more news from the post office. They have installed a new batch of outside post boxes, including ours. This means that we have to fit a lock to it, but when the lock is operational we can access our mail at any hour of day and night. I have a combination padlock on loan to Becky; that will be the ideal one to use. (With so many volunteers using the box, we can’t use keys and we will have to use a combination lock). I take the opportunity to say farewell to the post ladies and explain that Tom is taking over as the “titulaire” for the box. So BP146 will remain the muzungu mail address for the Gitarama gang, especially all the VSOs.

Next I go to the FHI office where I have some artefacts waiting to be picked up to use as presents back home. Tom’s there and I’m able to quickly check my emails on his laptop. In doing so I discover there’s a volunteer coming to Ngororero, the next district over from me in the West of Rwanda, and I’ll send her some info. She’s going to feel very isolated to begin with in Ngororero, and we will be her nearest fellow volunteers.

Back up through the town to one of the little clinics which have sprung up. Here comes the highpoint of my day. I deposit a little pot with a poo sample and wait a few minutes while they analyse it to see what manner of nasties I’m carrying inside me. I’ve convinced myself that I’m going to need deworming, or at least that I’ll have vestiges of amoebae crawling through my guts and multiplying.

To my considerable surprise the technician tells me that he can’t find any evidence of worms, or of amoebae. Apparently my bacteria count is high, but that’s nothing serious and it should adjust itself back to normal when I return home. So my immediate reaction is not one of relief, but rather of doubt – does he know what he’s looking for; has he been thorough? I think a bit more deeply and conclude that I’m just being irrational. He seems to have all the kit; I’ve explained to him exactly what I want him to check for and I’ve no reason to doubt his competence. Certainly it means that I can’t be badly infested with anything nasty or he’d have seen it.

A bit of shopping on the way back to the flat; then it’s about turn and off to Kigali. I’m not staying long in Kigali but I need to draw out money to finish the water tank at Nyarusange. Moira’s in on the project with me, too. I celebrate both getting the money and being “clean” with lunch at BCK, the first time since my family came out last summer. Club sandwich and “thé africain” – how’s that for fusion food? Kigali is hot and stuffy as usual and there’s a storm brewing. I get straight back home, all the way to Kabgayi to see J.

J is in the hospital at Kabgayi and will be there several more days. The details are not for a public blog, but she’s going to need all the support we can muster, and I’m cursing the fact that this has happened just when I’m about to leave. The timing couldn’t possibly be worse in so many ways. She’s become a very close friend and it really hurts to be on the point of leaving when a friend is damaged and needing support.

What depresses me further is how bleak the hospital is. Tom explains to me that they are desperately short of money – the volume of patients is so great, and the amount of funding they get to buy drugs and equipment is so low, that conditions are appalling. P has just come back from Uganda and apparently had to smuggle quantities of drugs into Rwanda just to keep the hospital going. They have used up all their credit with local pharmacies, who will no longer supply the hospital without cash up front. It’s a desperate situation. There’s no catering in the hospital; if you are an inpatient it is expected that your family will effectively camp at the place and bring a charcoal stove to cook all your meals. Doctors and nurses are in short supply, overworked, and can’t cope with complicated cases. For specialist care you have to transfer to the King Faisal hospital in Kigali, but that is very expensive and way beyond the means of almost any Rwandans. Honestly, before any English person reading this ever criticises our NHS again, they ought to come and spend a day at Kabgayi.

Back at the flat I write up some notes from yesterday’s Global Links meeting and I’m just about to go shopping when the heavens open and it pours for an hour. By then its dark and Tom’s home, soaked through.

All day long there has been trouble in the market. I don’t know what’s happening; perhaps there has been a major fight between stallholders. The police have weighed in and closed the market down, but all that means is that the women have set up stalls all along the side of the main road. They’re not going anywhere until they’ve sold their produce. It’s absolute chaos trying to get through the town. All late afternoon there seem to be gangs of men hanging around in groups; there’s lots of shouting and you get the feeling that it wouldn’t take much to start a riot. None of the tension is directed against muzungus and we’re safe unless we’re unlucky enough to get caught in crossfire, but it’s unsettling.

Because of this we decide to cook a meal from left overs, and as usual we dine in style. It’s my turn to cook tomorrow and by then I’m sure the market will be back to usual.

It’s been a busy day. Best thing – discovering that I’m in good health after two whole years of living in equatorial Africa and doing a lot of eating out.

Worst thing – J is in a desperate place both physically and psychologically. The physical side is short term; she will come home by the time I leave unless there are major complications. The emotional side is going to take years to heal and will need lots of love from everyone around her. Life in Rwanda is harsh; early deaths are common and if they threaten someone close to you it hits you like a thunderbolt. (Fortunately J seems to be getting stronger each day, but the sooner she’s out og Kabgayi and back home, the better).

November 24th

To anyone who has just discovered my blog it must seem that being a VSO is a sort of permanent paid holiday. Not so. It’s just that I’m at the very end of my placement; I’m also in the situation where it’s the school holidays, so I can’t visit schools, and all my office work has been completed. So I’m spending my time doing some travelling and saying my goodbyes to various people.

Today finds me waking up in the men’s dorm at the Presbyterian Guest House in Gisenyi. I’ve come up with April, an Australian VSO, to get away from Gitarama for a bit and to have a last look at Gisenyi before I leave. We had intended to go to Lake Ruhondo, an extravagantly beautiful lake hidden away in the hills of northern Rwanda. Unfortunately the only accommodation there is a church guest house, and this weekend it is closed to the general public because they are running a retreat until next Friday. So it’s Gisenyi for us, not that Gisenyi should ever be thought of as a second best choice. It’s one of my all-time favourite places in Rwanda.

We have spent a lazy Monday swimming in Lake Kivu, eating well and doing the sights. The Congo looks peaceful and affluent (appearances are so deceiving!), and watched a fabulous sunset over the Congolese side of the rift valley. Nyiragongo volcano is steaming well, and the red glow from its lava lake against the night time clouds is just as spectacular as ever. Lots of buildings in Gisenyi are being demolished and it feels as if they are planning major improvements. If only these would extend to the roads – dusty, sharp edged lava stones which tear your shoes to shreds.

All this has been rudely interrupted by a phone call from Claude past on Monday night. He’s not feeling well and there’s a big meeting tomorrow of the people involved in our Global Links project. He wants me to deputise for him, and to be at Gitarama for 9.30 on Tuesday morning. I have to explain that I’m up in Gisenyi; I’ll get back as quickly as I can but it will take me most of the morning. He agrees to that, but it means we have to leave Gisenyi on the first available bus and clatter back to Gitarama like a couple of naughty schoolchildren.

“Global Links” is a DFID and British Council supported programme (VSO are also heavily involved) which links schools in three countries. In our case there are three schools in Lilongwe, Malawi, three in Muhanga District in Gitarama, and three in the far north of Scotland (one in Nairn, one in Inverness and one on a Hebridean island). The plan is for the Scottish group to visit Rwanda in march, and the Rwandans to return the visit in the summer. The meeting is to see what progress has been made in establishing links so far, and to work through everybody’s expectations of how the links will operate and what they’re for. (This is crucial for the Rwandans; global links don’t work if there’s a donor-recipient relationship, with one country using the link as a vehicle to ask for financial aid all the time). There has to be equity in expectations. The problems lie with language, and the physical difficulties of communication. Gahogo primary, one of our three, still doesn’t have a laptop. It has electricity, but will not have a modem in the foreseeable future, so any internet linking will have to be done through one of the café’s in town.

The meeting goes right through until half past five. I’m unshaven, and wearing tee shirt and jeans – not exactly the formal wear which I’ve been so conscientious in trying to present myself throughout my placement. Claude comes in for the afternoon session; ill or not I’m as always impressed by his grasp of details and his speed of thinking. This guy is definitely going places.

Fortunately we are fed at lunchtime, because in the evening it is Charlotte’s last night before she flies home at the end of her service in Gitarama. We all pack into “Orion” and wait ages for brochettes from a waiter who behaves as if he’s a stand in come off the street. You want cutlery? – OK, I’ll bring cutlery for one. You want salt? OK, I’ll see if I can find some. You want serviettes? OK. I’ll see if there are any. And so on.

Our numbers are thinning rapidly. Moira back home for Christmas; also Christi. Charlotte finished and gone. Me about to go. Nathan going home soon. Becky on Zanzibar. Michael going home for Christmas on the same plane as me.

I’m glad I was able to take part in the Global Links day. Even though it won’t concern me – I’ll be long gone and finished before any visits take place – it’s nice to know what’s being planned. If only Inverness was not so far away from my part of Dorset (it must be about 900k; about as far away as you can get within the British isles) I might be able to help by giving the Scottish group some idea of what they can expect in Rwanda.

We’re also going to miss Charlotte. The clothes, the diet, the sense of fun, the couch surfers…. Lots of happy memories. VSO is such a transient experience – when you sign up you think that two years is a ridiculously long piece of your life to be committing to Africa. In reality it’s all far too short. And you seem to spend all your time either getting to know new arrivals, or saying farewells to friends you’ve just got to know.