Getting lost in the countryside

Apr 10th

At quarter to five there’s a hammering outside my window. Takes a while to come to, then I realise the din is coming from the school next door. (The “school bell” in most Rwandan schools is an old car wheel centre, hit with a metal bar). At five o’clock there’s lots of talking noise and feet noise as hundreds of reluctant primary teachers are taken off for their morning run. I think they’re making them run round and round the track inside the recreation centre just above us on our hill. Épi sleeps with ear plugs, so misses all this commotion.

It’s a dull, wet morning with heavy showers. Mist is down over all the hills, and it’s clearly not worth going outside until the weather improves. Soraya comes down to join us from Caroline’s house, and we chat until mid morning when the sky is clearing and we feel we can risk going out for a walk.

Samira’s described a circular walk and we decide to try to follow it. We descend down into a little valley; the road seems to be slipping down the hillside and there’s a huge chasm alongside it. If you fell into it at night you’d break a leg and nobody would know you were there! Good job we don’t have to pass this way to get to and from town! After a little log bridge we wind up and up and round and round the hillsides. At every bend there are impressive views across to misty mountains; in the far distance we can see the beginnings of Nyungwe forest like a green bedspread over hundreds of peaks. It’s so quiet – no traffic noise; just the yellings of children excite that muzungus have visited their little plot of Rwanda. Some are shy, some demand money or sweets. Most adults stop working in their fields to stare at us. And, I have to say, we must look like one of those politically correct photos you get in Government publicity blurbs. There’s me as the white man, Soraya as the Asiatic woman, and Épi as the black person. Gender balance, age range – we tick all the boxes! Perhaps we ought to pose for VSO and get us some more money.

At some point along the way I’m sure we miss a turning, and we go deeper and deeper into the countryside. No matter; quite apart from the view, there’s lots to see. Coffee trees with berries turning ripe, a goatherd and his flock of ten plus a suspicious dog which I swear was looking longingly at our ankles. Little houses lost among their bananeraie. Big pieces of mica along the path, so that I could split them into thin layers and show children how you can have a rock which is both flexible and transparent. (Yes, it’s that boring geologist in me again). We end up with a flock of twenty or so children crowding round us; then some of the men come across from the huts and want to know if there is a market for the mica and whether they could sell it. You can almost see the dollar signs swirling round their heads….. Sorry guys, there’s no market value in muddy mica that I’m aware of.

Eventually, after getting conflicting directions to the village we’re aiming for, we decide to call it a day and return home. We’ve just passed through a hamlet, very poor and remote, and the biggest building turns out to be a bar. You can smell the alcohol from twenty paces outside it. We think its banana beer, and some of the men are already (late morning) looking decidedly glazed, so it’s time to beat a hasty retreat and get the girls out of range of unpredictable Rwandan drunks.

It’s a long walk back home, but at least it isn’t raining. The distant views are wonderful, but it’s too dark to get good pictures (the ones I’ve taken on my camera’s “landscape” setting seem to have a greenish tinge to them as if there was mould on the camera lens). We still have around a dozen children following us – proof if it were ever needed at how rare muzungus are in these parts, and how dull life must be if three strangers passing by can excite so much interest!

Back at Tigas we finish off the last of the food Épi and I brought up from Butare, then while the girls have some time out together I go up to Gikongoro to see if any shops are open and to take some pictures from the post office hill. Well, nothing’s open, but the views are superb. The post office sits on the top of a conical hill just above Samira’s house. It’s a circular building with 360 views, and has a huge transmitter mast towering over it. It’s also the district office (like where I work) for Nyamagabe District. Outside one door there are five brand new Chinese bicycles (“Flying Pigeon”); I ask the guard who they are for and he tells me that they’re for the district staff. I assume he’s pulling my leg and make some flip comment about how on earth people are going to use them with their three gears on these enormous hills. He just looks at me as if I’m stupid, and it dawns on me that, yes, they really do expect their people to slog up and down hills on these heavy machines. Rather them than me, that’s what I say!

In the evening we mooch back up to the guesthouse for supper; after all our walking we’re starving hungry so we have an enormous meal. We can’t get through all the ibirayi (jacket potatoes), so I wrap a couple in serviettes and stow them in my rucksack. It’s just not done to leave food on your plate in a country where people go hungry.

We escort Soraya safely past the aimless group of men and youths in the town centre, then leave her to go home and we return down the hill to our place. On the way, children ask us where is “shinwa”. Shinwa is the Kinyarwanda version of “Chinois” (“Chinese” in French); just as we get fed up with being called muzungu, Soraya gets “shinwa” all day, every day. Rwandans have met Chinese engineers who have built many of the country’s roads, but instead of being respected as hard working and intelligent aid workers they are treated as something of a joke. I can see how this must really get on Soraya’s nerves. In any case, she’s a Philippina, not a Chinese (But that’s far too fine a distinction for people who’ve little idea what lies outside their own district in Rwanda, never mind in another continent). What I think is so funny about all this stereotyping is that Épi also gets called muzungu even though, to me, she is black.

It’s been a good day – a long walk or two or three; plenty of time to talk. We’ve each learned a lot about each others’ families and situations; it’s brought us close. I count myself so luck to be posted to a country where communication (for most of us) is easy and we can readily meet up for a bit of R and R. Épi tells us a lot about her family’s history during the genocide and after. It’s her private history so it’s not for this blog, but the more she tells us, the more poignant is the contrast between one of the loveliest pieces of land on this entire planet, and the stupid, senseless, vicious, pointless cruelty of so many of its ordinary people when they’re brainwashed by evil men. When you think what this country could have achieved given wise and humane leadership, it makes you want to weep.

Two things, though, we’ve definitely agreed on. One is that we MUST have a return group weekend at Kibuye, probably sometime in June, just before the teachers get bogged down in exams. The other is that we must go to visit the far south east of Rwanda while there is a big group of volunteers there and accommodation will be straightforward. We must pin down a date for the Kibuye trip during the training week just looming.

Both Épi and I also want to have a look at Cyangugu in the extreme South West at some time, and also Gisenyi in the far North West (where her family lived in another age, before people started hating each other for no good reason). Well, I’ve got at least nine months left to go wandering, and more if I stay a second year.

Best thing about today – just chillin’ with two beautiful girls.
Worst thing – nothing. You mean, I’m being paid to enjoy myself like this…..