Me and President Kagame....

Feb 1st

Up at 5.30; prancing around pretty well naked in the bedroom with curtains open (it’s barely light and we’re not overlooked), then notice about a dozen troops up in the Fatima monument with binoculars and sniper rifles. Oops! We’re definitely overlooked this morning! Hastily draw curtains until decent! I should have known; it’s the President’s visit for Heroes Day and Gitarama is under lockdown.

By 7a.m. Tom and I have been to Karen’s house to collect Christi and some Rwandan friends and we’re in a huge queue to get through security checks outside the big stadium. Rwandans have no concept of queuing; if you make a line they’ll form another one alongside it and just try to barge through. Forty minutes later and we’re in the stadium sitting on concrete walls, but centrally and with a good view of proceedings. Just along from us is Michaela, my German salsa partner, and a whole bunch of children from the orphanage.

For three hours we sit as the sun gets hotter and hotter and the stadium fills with virtually the entire population of the town. There must be forty thousand people in the place and less than a dozen white faces. We’re entertained by acrobats (tremendous), karate and judo squads (when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all), but best of all by the fabulous Intore drummers and dancers. The drums are massive – about 3-4 feet tall and 2 feet across, with a satisfying heavy sound. The drummers are colourfully dressed, and as they play they make choreographed moves so it’s a really slick performance. They’d go down a storm at a WOMAD festival!

The dancers, men and women, imitate the shape of Rwandan cow horns with their arms. Most of the dances are quite slow and stately, and they’re facing away from us at a distance of about a hundred yards, so they’re difficult to photograph. However, I’ve got some half-decent snaps in case I don’t get to see them again.

Then there’s half an hour of singing with a huge crowd of a couple of thousand people who, I think, are this year’s “heroes”. I haven’t been able to work out what qualifies you to be a hero; they’re certainly ordinary-looking men and women from the whole age range. As they’re doing their thing, the VIP stand fills. (In Rwanda the more senior your status, the later you’re allowed to arrive for a function. On the other hand, if you’re too late and arrive after the President, you won’t get in and you’ve committed a social gaffe. We had been told to be there by seven o’clock or else….).

Promptly at eleven the whole crowd rises to its feet as the Presidential motorcade sweeps in. When “PK” is seated there is the usual series of speeches, including the minister for culture who cracks several jokes in Kinya-rwanda and gets the crowd suitably warmed up for the boss. Every time he pauses for breath there’s a salvo from the drummers.

President Kagame speaks for about twenty minutes, including a thank you to all the foreign aid and development workers in the country, and a reminder to the Rwandans that they must learn to stand on their own two feet without everlasting Western aid. More drumming and dancing, much more frantic this time with the men sporting huge head dresses and spears. Then “PK” comes across the stadium and does a lap to meet the crowd. There’s no shaking hands (big wire fence and seriously armed guards between him and us), but he seems genuinely pleased at the turnout and there’s absolutely no doubting his popularity among the people. We’re sat just behind dozens of girls from the Islamic secondary school, not veiled but with headscarves, and they shout and wave as if PK was topping the charts.

Back to the flat via Karen’s, where we rehydrate with tea, and then home carrying a spare armchair. We now have a full complement of four. Cooked lunch, then we veg out for the afternoon. It feels like Sunday, but there’s the whole weekend ahead.

Tom goes out in the evening and I’m at a loose end: everyone else I know is either in Kigali or otherwise occupied the weekend. I’d hoped to be able to get away from Gitarama but it’s not to be. So I use the time to go over a load of documents on school inspection from the District Office. Some are in English, some in French but it’s basically the same check list of things in each. Nobody has told me about them, and it means that on this week’s inspection there were a lot of things we didn’t check.

Never mind, we’re on a learning curve, as they say. Mine must be pretty close to vertical! But the check list is pretty idealistic – for example, it’s asking me to check how far the primary schools have got in computer education when I know for a fact that virtually none of them have electricity!

High points of the day – seeing the Pres (I suppose); the Intore dancers and drummers
Low point – feeling stuck in Gitarama for a weekend when I could/should have been off gadding around Rwanda.