Church, Rwanda style

Sunday Jan 20th

Slept like a log last night – must be relaxing at last. However, slept to soundly that my shoulder is aching like mad and I can barely use my left arm. Thank God I brought diclofenac tablets! Off to church with Tom, to a Presbyterian place near his office. Tin roof, brick walls, mixture of wooden seats and benches. We sat at the back next to a church elder who spoke fluent English and translated the sermon for me (very fiery, all about Moses and the plagues of Egypt). Lots of choirs; children’s choirs from a nearby orphanage; then series of adult choirs including some in harmony. Music mostly from backing CDs; just occasionally live accompaniment from a keyboard. Readings, notices, personal witness – all the expected ingredients. Some things seem random – one of the choir will suddenly get up and belt out a some with everyone tapping to the rhythm. At the start of the service all visitors had to introduce themselves. I tried my best in Kinya-rwanda and was greeted with a storm of applause. A muzungu able to string three or four sentences together made me the talk of the place! Service lasts around three hours (and other churches’ last even longer), but you’re not expected to turn up for the whole thing. WE got there after the first hour, and the church continued to fill for another half hour until it came to sermon time. Three separate offerings boxes, one for people who are tithing, one for the poor, one for the work of the church.

Back from church Tom and I tried for nearly an hour to find BBC world service on my wind-up radio. We failed. Plenty of Kinya-rwanda and Swahili, but no plumy English tones or decent news.

Off to Karen’s for lunch. Karen lives close to the town centre; to get to her place you go through the market, then down a steep dirt lane with a central drain (smelly), covered in dubious planks. We walk on the edge of the planks. Her house is pleasantly eccentric – a courtyard with tap, then a big lounge. The kitchen and store-room are just shells with none of the westernised fittings of our flat. Met Polly again, one of our original six volunteers and someone also doing education management. Our contribution to the lunch is a bowl of jelly and another of Tom’s spectacularly good fruit salad. Excellent lunch (vegetarian), and then long natter with Polly over tactics and trying to find out whether we can do things together in our two areas (she’s based in Ruhango which is the next district south of Muhanga). She’s been messed around so much with her accommodation that she’s decided to move in with Karen and Christi. That’s good for all of us and specially for me as I’ll have someone who knows what they’re doing just round the corner from me!

Karen is the fount of all knowledge and in five minutes has found a working wavelength for BBC world service.

We also meet Geert, a Dutch VSO who is based at Shyogwe just beyond Kabgale. He’s done Kilimanjaro and we talk about the possibility of doing either Karisimbi in April or even Mt Elgon in Uganda before he returns to Holland in the late spring.

In the evening we decide to have a massive food preparation. Spend what seems like hours peeling and chopping veg to make a soup/stock base for use during the week, and after cooking it we leave it overnight to cool before freezing. (We’re almost unique among the VSO contingent in having a freezer and so able to do food in batches). I nip across to the local shop to buy bread and eggs, and we end up having a fry up of chips, omelette and imboga: a Rwandan leaf which tastes like a cross between watercress and spinach. While we’re cooking we listen to BBC world service, but it’s all in Swahili and this time and then becomes full length coverage of one of the opening games in the African football cup. So we never do get any news in English!

Finally have long phone conversation with Teresa. All’s well with the world and I’m quite looking forward to starting work proper, even if it means getting up at 5.45 to be there for 7!

High point of the day – everything – the church service (I’ve wanted to go to an African church), the lunch with friends, the cooking in the evening.
Low point of the day – my aching shoulder.