March 3rd – 7th

This is a long entry because I’m describing all about the camp in one go! I’ve compiled a PowerPoint presentation and I’m sending it in a CD to Teresa. If you are reading this in Bridport, get it from her (allow a month for the post to reach you). This really is a topic where one picture is worth pages of print!

The refugee camp at Gihembe is about a mile outside Byumba. It straddles a bleak hillside with fabulous views but little else to recommend it – that’s why the site was available to use.

The refugees are Congolese, they speak Kinyarwanda and French, and they’re ethnic Tutsis (whatever that may mean). They had been living in the part of Eastern Congo adjacent to Lake Kivu for years and years. Then, in one of the final acts of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the victorious army of Paul Kagame drove the rump of the old Rwandan army and Interahamwe militia out of Rwanda proper and into these parts of the Congolese Republic. The Congo is such a chaotic country that nobody was around to disarm them. These fleeing soldiers were, pretty much without exception, hardened murderers who knew they could never return to their own country. Gacaca courts had already started; they were known and wanted criminals. So they carried on the “good work” of killing and raping and mutilating Tutsis in the Congo. And they’re still there, and still doing it twelve years later, while the U N fiddles around and the various politicians get rich from Congo’s pilfered minerals. And that, to a certain extent, includes us in England.

So a large number of Congolese came to Rwanda, and eighteen thousand are still perched on this bleak hillside, waiting for somebody to create security in their own country so they can return. The camp is owned by UNHCR, but the running of it is contracted out to various bodies. The organisation which had invited us was JRC (the Jesuit Refugee Council). Don’t get the idea that these are fanatical Catholics; at the practical level they are a wide range of people, all very skilled and dedicated, but ranging from agnostics to nuns. Religious differences fade into insignificance in the face of the job needing to be done. By the way, there are at least two other Congolese refugee camps that we know of in Rwanda; there may be others, too.

The camp is divided into 29 “quartiers”, each with its own water standpipes, toilets, and system of civil government. (This matches the Rwandan system of cells and umudugudu to administer neighbourhoods). There is a leader for each quartier, and local police to settle arguments before they escalate.

There is no electricity anywhere in the camp (despite a power line crossing the hill); the camp and pharmacy have generators while some very dodgy cabling gives power to the community hall when required. Water is available at certain times for each quartier and in rationed amounts. Not ideal, but just about adequate. There’s no risk of cholera.

Food is distributed by the UNHCR; each family unit gets 10 kilos each of rice and beans, plus soap, cooking oil and salt. (There’s probably other things as well, but that’s all I can remember from a quick briefing in French). The camp is overseen by MINALOC, a branch of the Rwandan government. They are very touchy about outsiders like us entering the camp, and it’s been a down-to-the-wire job to get official permission actually signed and delivered. We can’t do anything until we’ve been briefed by a jumped up official, who arrives half and hour late and delays the start of our training session. He tells us we’re welcome, but we’re only here to train teachers. We’re not allowed to roam through the camp, and he’s clearly nervous about us having general contact with the refugees. We might give them dangerously raised expectations. Surprisingly, he forgets to forbid us to take pictures, and similarly we forget to check with him….

We eventually get started with our forty teachers. Most are from the camp, but a big minority are from Byumba District schools; training the two groups together has made it easier to get us into the camp. They are a range of ages. A few speak broken English to match my “français cassé”, mostly the secondary teachers. Many men are in shabby suits, obviously from charity handouts, while the women are generally smarter and brighter, especially those in Congolese robes. All are wearing coats against the cold.

Geert and I are on first with “speed dating” and a form of question and answer bingo to break the ice and get everyone talking. But later, when we try to ask them exactly what they need from us, it is heavy going. These people are so used to being told what they must teach that they’ve got no concept of formulating their own training requirements. Back to square one for Polly and I. All her HMI-type documents are going to be way too ethereal; we need to get down to basics of lesson planning and the simplest forms of evaluation!

In the camp, each house contains an average of eight people. There are vast numbers of children, lots of older people, but a conspicuous lack of young men. We think many boys are being recruited to go back into the Congo and fight the self-perpetuating feuds that sustain its endless war. Or perhaps they are slipping away into the rest of Rwanda and working illegally at starvation rates in the towns like Kigali. Who knows? And, if they do know, who cares?

We discover some of the camp’s problems as our week goes on. Sexual harassment and under-age sex is a massive problem in a place where everyone is poor and a girl’s body is a highly marketable commodity. There is little contraception, no abortion. The youngest recorded delivery of a baby is to a girl of ten. Fortunately, HIV is not as rife as you might expect, but it’s definitely there.

Hundreds of children are heads of households. The youngest, we were told, is a child of eleven who is looking after two younger siblings. One older child copes with a total of eleven siblings, presumably from two or more women but by the same father. How on earth can these children cope with feeding and budgeting? They have to leave lessons mid-morning to go home and cook food for their brothers and sisters. In England a situation like this would cause a scandal. Here in Gihembe it’s just part of life.

Every other child has a runny nose, or some kind of patchy skin disease on their scalp. A few of the adults have a skin condition which gives them huge pale blotches; they’re very upsetting to look at and the women almost always have their faces covered with shawls.

There are around three hundred people with physical or mental handicap known to the nun who tries to co-ordinate care. There seems to be little rehabilitation. Handicapped children do not go to school; they just sit at home (getting our Rwandan and Congolese colleagues switched into “inclusion” turned out to be one of our most successful initiatives during the week).

Violence is never far under the surface. Usually its violence born out of despair, from frustration, from boredom, from envy of someone who has just a smidgeon more than you have. You hear people banging on walls with sticks. Stone throwing is common, both at people, and at things. On our last day, the JRS minibus had a brick through a window. There was no real reason for this, just an act of frustration by someone who knows they’ll never stand the remotest chance of owning a car themselves.

In the centre of the camp is the multi-purpose hall; this is used for meetings and occasionally they show films. Opposite it stands the church, a low building with the same mud walls and poles-and-canvas roof as the rest of the camp. But inside the church the walls have been rendered and lovingly painted in bright colours with scenes from the Bible. It’s one touch of colour in a bleak environment. In front of the altar stand three Intoré drums to accompany the singing. The church is always packed. I’d have loved to go to a service.

The refugee houses are made with mud walls; sticks are woven and tied into a framework which is then plastered with mud. The roofs are supported on tree-branch poles, with canvas sheets stretched tightly across. These roofs are never completely water tight, especially when you consider the violence and volume of tropical storms. Similarly the walls quickly become so damp that they crumble visibly as you stand and watch. The floors are of beaten earth. Water runs in under the doors. There are no windows, just wooden shutters fixed with bent nails. If you close the shutters, you are in virtual darkness. In a heavy storm the whole camp comes to a halt (as did any attempt at training, and even our dinner on one day). The noise of rain on canvas drowns any conversation (never mind a lesson). You can’t fix anything like pictures or textiles on these mud walls. You feel that if you stay in the hut long enough, it will dissolve around you – it’s very disconcerting.

There are almost no trees (gone for firewood years ago) save for some eucalypts recently planted for shade, and the odd banana tree closely guarded in an odd corner next to someone’s house. There’s no grass. All paths are bare earth – dusty and gritty when it’s dry; impassable when it rains. Storm drains are up to a foot deep, yet we saw them filled to capacity within an hour.

There are a few big open spaces, like town squares, where people can gather, but they just seem to emphasize the general bleakness. At intervals there are hoardings exhorting people to treat women with respect, to take precautions against HIV/AIDS etc. In any place where a few blades of grass are intact there will be goats tethered. There are no dogs or cats. There are certainly rats; I saw one.

Every few yards there are canvas toilet blocks. These are pit latrines; they’re not as bad as they could be, but at the same time you try not to use them if you can avoid it!

The primary school is enormous. 84 classrooms; 4500 children; the biggest in Rwanda. It stretches up a hillside on endless terraces of mud huts. There is no playground. The camp secondary school is hidden behind a corrugated iron fence; presumably it contains things that might be worth stealing (as opposed to the primary which, after school hours, is simply empty huts).

The huts have no chimneys. We took photos in the kitchen hut next to where we were working. It had rained, and they had been forced to close the door to keep water from running through the entire hut. As a result the whole building, with three big charcoal fires, was full of smoke. It really did look like something from a Breughel painting. And yet Annette, the “logisticienne” (quartermaster), was always immaculately dressed, and the “cuisinières” were unfailingly cheerful. I really don’t know how they manage it. And they were so efficient, too.

Space is at a premium in the camp. Its buildings extend right up to the perimeter. It gives a claustrophobic feeling which is emphasized by the spacious layout of Byumba, clearly visible on the adjacent mountaintop, and the breathtakingly beautiful mountain scenery of this part of Rwanda. Lines of washing stretch haphazardly from hut to hut; they, more than anything else, seem to evoke the hopelessness and “permanent transience” of this place.

Close to our rooms there are training workshops for carpentry, sewing, knitting and catering. Not all of these are running, but certainly we spoke to the carpenters and tailors. The refugees are not allowed to work outside the camp; there’s a constant tension in that if conditions are made too tolerable in the camp, the Rwandan authorities fear the people won’t want to leave. But until there is peace in Congo, an educated, employed refugee population would present far less of a civil threat than the current situation. And, of course, there’s never enough money for training. And the money which they do get is usually tied to certain conditions at the whim of donors, which mean that a project is started then, just when it’s well established, the funding dries up and the project stops. Outside our training rooms was a little brick structure like a miniature bandstand. It’s no real use. It was built as a bricklaying project to train refugees. Then the money stopped….. The latest development is a series of training courses for electricians.

Ironically, there is a problem at Gihembe with very poor Rwandans from Byumba and district trying to get themselves into the camp for its free food rations and free education. What a world we live in!

There are busy markets at both entrances to the camp, though quite what the Congolese are using to buy food is beyond me. I think the worst problem must be boredom. There’s nothing to do, nowhere to go. The arrival of one of the camp minibuses is an event for everyone to come and watch. When eight or nine muzungus get out, it’s the talk of the camp.

Our hostel in Byumba is just far enough away from the camp to let our systems recover from the emotional assault each day. We can see the huts in the distance from our front gate. But behind our wall there is an immaculate, peaceful garden. Roses and snapdragons vie with strawberries for space beneath lemon, fig and apple trees. The scent of lemon blossom fills the early morning air.

However, just before dawn each morning, as we lie in bed in Byumba, we are woken up by the sound of singing. Then heavy boots thudding on the tarmac road beyond our wall. On the last morning Polly and I get up and sneak out of the side gate in our pyjamas to see what’s happening. Its groups of militia – police? Army? Illegal refugee forces? – Who knows? Two groups of about 30 young men, all in tee shirts and camouflage trousers. They’re doing a fitness run, singing as they go. After a few minutes they return. Shadowy figures, mainly women on their way to the fields, turn and watch from under trees or deep within doorways. But we find the performance sinister. The previous night we have watched the film “Shooting Dogs” about the genocide. And saw how groups of fit young men, like those running in front of us, butchered at least 800,000 people. Every one of us has the same thought – that, in another time, these men could have been coming for us. To kill us. This is Rwanda, where nothing is quite as it seems and everything has a recent history.

As for our training course, we think it went well. The Congolese seemed pleased; there’s no doubt they’ve learned an enormous amount in one week. They’ve all gone back to their schools with action plans which seem achievable, and Irena and Kersti are both on hand for advice and to keep a check on things. In particular, we’ve got the ball rolling for inclusion, and also for promoting positive behaviour management. The “materneles” and Key Stage 1 classes will be doing a lot more singing of nursery rhymes in English, and the secondaries are going to try our techniques for making learning less passive and more participative. The secondaries, too, have taken on the idea of planning lessons in terms of objectives (knowledge, understanding, skills) and they also know how to do a fair and thorough evaluation of a colleague’s lesson in order to give helpful feedback. We decide we might come back and do a follow up session with these people rather than spread ourselves thinly by trying to cover all three known camps across the country.

We’ve had a fabulous week. It’s been so amazingly good to be working with other VSOs all the time. Everyone has a particular speciality. The French Canadians (including three Quebecois) have been invaluable as translators. Geert and Kest left after Wednesday because Kest had to fly home to Holland. Other VSOs came up to join us, some for a day, others for longer. In the evenings we met other people – Jenny from Uganda who is part of the Gihembe management team. Yaya from Liberia who helps administer the Kibuye refugee camp; both are friends of Irena. And Meg, born in Rwanda to missionary parents and now herself a third generation missionary. She’s just about to retire to Birmingham. All such interesting people and so lively.

And what of me, personally? I stand on the back porch of the hostel and look across to the volcanoes. I look at the evening light down the green, terraced slopes between here and the refugee camp and have to pinch myself to believe that all this really has just happened. As always with VSO, new friends and new links. I discover that Irena likes much of the same music as me, and we spend an entire evening comparing notes on West African and Cape Verde music. Yaya has tried to put stuff on my iPod but either the machine has broken down or else his computer has fried the operating system. A serious glitch but not insuperable.

But what about my attempts to train Rwandan and Congolese teachers? My French is so bad it’s made many people laugh, but annoyed one or two. I’ve survived, and I’ve coped with teaching nursery professionals from a different educational system and in a foreign language. There’s no doubt it’s been one of the hardest challenges of my professional teaching career. And I’m so proud I’ve been able to do it on this cold mountaintop full of people made destitute by the cruelty of others.

There’s nothing more to say, except that when I get back to Gitarama on Friday I’m so wound up that I stay up till one in the morning compiling a power point about the camp. It’s as if I’ve got to do this task to get Gihembe out of my emotional system and start to resume whatever passes for a more normal VSO life.