Dossing around in Kigali

Feb 22nd

Off to Kigali on the 8.30 bus. I’m getting used to this run and every time I see so much more around me. There’s coffee orchards all over the place, and a washing plant – how the hell did I manage to miss them in the past? And for the first couple of miles, while we’re still in Muhanga district, I’m suddenly noticing the signs towards all “my” primary schools. I feel a paternal pride towards them – silly, isn’t it!

At Kigali I go to the expensive UTC shopping centre – muzungu magnet – and buy a couple of cakes as presents for Marion. Decide that cake is welcomed universally while not everyone drinks. Turns out to be a good decision.

Then decide it’s time I got a grip on myself and get Kigali city centre sorted out. So I explore the crowded central shopping area. It’s remarkably muzungu-free. I compare exchange rates at forex houses but they’re all offering 780 to the Euro. I change 50 euros to give me a reserve for my birthday which I know is going to be too expensive to manage from my VSO allowance. That still gives me another 50 euros for emergencies.

I locate the Chinese bazaar (For a place so big it’s remarkably tucked away) and go on a shopping spree. New frying pan to replace this stupid one without a handle which ruins our pancakes…..; new tea towels because we’ve burnt holes in the existing ones. More candles; some drinking glasses for when we have visitors (can’t let the side down, now can we?) and a second blanket for me because it’s been so cold this week I’ve been waking up in the night shivering. Perhaps continental drift has speeded up during the past six weeks and Rwanda has been shunted somewhere just south of the Scilly Isles….

Toddle off to VSO on the town bus and go to my education managers’ meeting. There’s quite a crowd of us now – about nine at the meeting and at least 3 unable to attend. Some useful ideas. I’m the only person being pushed towards inspecting as opposed to advising, and we discuss strategies to make head teachers feel less threatened and defensive when they know I’m coming. And to stop them going off sick, too. We get a nice lunch served at the Programme Office; I make sure I give plenty of compliments to Clémence, the cook. Always keep on the right side of anyone who can give you food. Should be number one in the VSO Volunteer Handbook!

After the meeting I talk to Kersti who’s organising the Gihembe refugee camp week. End up feeling a lot clearer on my role (Polly and I are doing the monitoring and evaluation section. It’ll be Polly’s last week in Rwanda; at the end of the week she’s off back home and her ten week placement will be all over. Can’t believe time is going so quickly. That’s a fifth of my entire year here, too)! It’s going to be a mad ten days; Friday there’s another education meeting in Kigali; then Saturday night it’s Kersti’s 30th birthday and I don’t want to miss it ‘cos the music should be good; then Sunday we meet at UTC at 1600 for transport on to Byumba and the refugee camp.

Byumba is one of the most beautiful parts of Rwanda (lakes, tea plantations, hills and more hills; it’s very close to the Ugandan border too) and I must admit I want to go just to gawp at the scenery! But how on earth am I going to manage two nights on peoples’ floors in Kigali? Can’t impose on Marion twice…..

To my huge surprise I manage to get an hour and a half undisturbed on the internet in the office and get a lot done (but not nearly everything I needed). At the very least I manage to post this week’s blogs so that if I’m unable to get in tomorrow I will have something to say for myself.

Find Marion’s house, where I’m crashing for the night. (Marion was on one of my training courses before I came to Rwanda and is the only person here who I’d met before arrival). Her house is comical, a circular folly about 5 minutes from our Programme Office. The roof is thatched, not with reeds of straw but with bundles of sticks. The ceilings are of wicker work, like Somerset osier. Outside her front door there are two wooden pillars with the symbols of just about every single world religion carved into them. Yin-yang is cheek by jowl with a Mogen David, and a Hindu swastika virtually runs into an Egyptian hieroglyph. There’s a little hut for the guard; that, too, is perfectly circular and thatched. It looks like a miniature African hut, but built of bricks. Whoever created this house was seriously eccentric. Only one room in the entire place is rectangular; every other one has curved walls. It’s like living in an oasthouse. Actually, it’s quite nice. It’s comfortable, relatively quiet and private, and Marion makes me welcome. She’s just taken on three tiny kittens, which are not quite housetrained, and they set to savaging the strings and straps of my rucksack with a vengeance.

We fall on one of my cakes, then go to the Indian supermarket across the road to buy things for her birthday party the following night. I’m not going to be able to stay for the party because I’m double-booked this weekend. Back in Gitarama Cathie is running a training course all weekend for 24 primary teachers, with Antonia and Ann-Meik and various others helping her, and I’ve promised to be there for Saturday afternoon. I’m already feeling guilty about missing the Friday evening session, but I reason that with umuganda on Saturday there’s no way I’d be able to get back early so I might as well enjoy staying in Kigali overnight, have a good natter with Marion, go out for a meal and get back to Gitarama and work as and when.

That’s how we eventually wind up at Sola Luna restaurant, THE best Italian in Rwanda. They do thin crust pizza to die for, and I have a Rwandan special with tomato, onion and smoked tilapia fish topping. It goes down a treat. And beer for the first time in about a fortnight, too. Is there no end to my loose living?

Discover that Marion’s gently into paganism (which is a hoot considering she’s got just about every religious symbol there is, carved into her front porch), and we compare notes on being a volunteer in Kigali as opposed to up country Gitarama. Marion’s a specialist signer for profoundly deaf people; it’s an amazingly complicated and specialist vocation and I admire her skills. She’s trying to standardise the signing used in Rwanda (it has grown up randomly over the years and with considerable differences between practice in the main towns) but is hampered by not being able to speak French. She’s having to get stuck into her Kinya-rwanda and I suddenly realise that there are actually four languages being used in this place – Kinya, French, English, and signing.

Back at her cottage we sample Ugandan gin (not at all bad) before shooing the blasted kittens into a back room and crashing for the night.

Best thing about today – feeling that I’m getting to know my way around Kigali town centre.
Worst thing about today – does my rucksack really whiff of cat pee or am I imaging it?