Keza Nerissa

This is one of Soraya's pictures from the night when she and I helped Claude and Immaculee name their baby Keza Nerissa

Education group meeting at Kigali

Tea break. Soraya, Tina, Michael, Moira, Becky and Sheila


Joe listening intently to the conversations going on around us


One of my favourite "people" pictures. Michael, looking relaxed.


Ken looking thoughtful


Chris, Mike and Els

Canada Day - the pictures

Well, we don't have any typical Canadian gear to wear, so Tom decides his stars and stripes shirt is close enough....


Christi won a toy fan as her prize for the most accurate drawing of the Canadian flag.


Tom, Christi and Soraya in the "who can spit melon pips the farthest?" game....


Musical chairs in Becky's lounge


Beth and Tom working out which Jenga stick to remove


Michael and Beth at "Lando's" restaurant; we're listening to live kusic from a Congolese band

Wot no blogs?

I'm back in the UK for three weeks for a family holiday, so there won't be any news from Rwanda until after I've returned to Gitarama on August 9th.

Also, I've been having major problems in getting internet access in Gitarama - the network being down, or power cuts, or the decent modem not being available when I need it. There are loads of pictures waiting to be posted, and all manner of descriptions o the various escapades we've been up to in the past fortnight.
So apologies for the lack of anything new; come backl and join us after Aug 10th!

Why it's important always to have a book to read in Rwanda

July 7th

An almost completely wasted day today. It’s Gacaca; I go to the office but Claude isn’t there, there are no census forms waiting for me, and so there’s nothing to do but write up yesterday’s blog! By the way, I have now been in Rwandan exactly a year and a half!
Back to the flat, because it’s boring at the office with nothing to do, and manage to do a bit of shopping before everything shuts around 8.30. We are having another total shut down, and even the power goes off from about 9.30 until 5 in the afternoon. I think the power cut is deliberate, to discourage people from staying at home and working on their computers, or working behind closed doors. The effect is that I simply can’t get anything done at all. There’s no work to do; I can’t do internetting; I can’t shop for vegetables.
I go up to Tom’s FHI office and buy a load of craft items to bring back home, but that’s about the sum of my productive work today. A few ageseke baskets, some carved wooden ornaments and knick-knack containers, pottery candleholders, beadwork bracelets, and a woven grass bowl. All of these purchases are supporting Tom and Christi’s groups of rural workers, and many of them come from the Cyeza and Shyogwe secteurs within my school district. I also buy three little igitondos. These are the famous traditional Rwandan paintings made of cow dung on a wooden frame, and then painted. They are abstract swirling patterns, or dazzling geometrical shapes. Very simple, but effective. Like a Bridget Reilly painting, but in manure! Most of them are in black and white, but I’ve managed to get three of the more unusual ones in black, white and a reddish brown colour. They’ll make unusual and interesting wall ornaments at home. Usually the igitondo that you see for sale are big – around two feet square – and are very difficult indeed to transport without the edges chipping off the items. But the ones I have bought are much smaller miniatures, yet the craftsmanship and creative ideas are still there.
In the evening the pace of life increases. Tom comes home with not just Nathan, Christi and Beth but also Karen, the new long-term FHI volunteer, Wes, a short term volunteer based in Kigali, and Becky, who is a Kigali based volunteer just coming to the end of her placement in Rwanda. In addition we have young Bruno and his mum, and we feed all of them. We spend a good two hours frantically preparing a feast – a meat stew using beef, sausage and one of our tomato sauces, padded out with a packet taco sauce. If that sounds an odd mix, then I assure you it tastes delicious. Tom fills the biggest pan we have full of rice – and it all gets eaten. I do a big guacamole and a giant coleslaw. We feed Bruno plus ten adults (including the guard). While we’re finishing off the food Soraya, Charlotte and Hayley all pop round to meet everyone, so we end up with the biggest collection of people we’ve ever had in the flat.
It’s been such a frustrating day. I started off with a list of things to do: take a million francs to Gatenzi (couldn’t do that because there were no motos around, even though I walked all the way out to Cyakabiri, around two miles from home, in the mid day heat, trying to find one. And even if I had delivered the money, Imelda wouldn’t have been able to get it into a bank and to safety yesterday and she would have been worried sick at the prospect of all that money in her hands); buy craft items at COPARWA to take home (couldn’t because the co-operative shop closed, but at least was able to do the FHI collection); go vegetable shopping and buy stuff like tea to bring home (limited success because too many shops shut); update the blog (couldn’t because power off all day).
Anyone reading this blog who is thinking of coming to Rwanda, take note: – you will all get days like this which are SO annoying. Last year I used to think Gacaca was a bit of a laugh; that it was nice to have a day when there was a genuine excuse not to work. This year it’s just become a bloody nuisance, and it means that the other days of the week get busier and more stressy.
Sometimes you just have to take the day off and curl up with a book!

Ups and Downs; Downs and Ups

July 6th

Into the office early. It’s one of those days when there are lots of little things to do and knowing how long everything seems to take here in Rwanda I want to feel in charge of my life. Claude isn’t in the office, so one of my main goals, to get a lot of internetting and blogging done, is thrown out of gear straight away.
But waiting for me under the door are four census returns from my errant secondary schools, so while I wait for the Monday morning team meeting I get cracking on transcribing them. The team meeting never materialises; Innocent, Béatrice and Valérian are all in the office but nobody deputises for Claude. So I don’t know, for example, whether there is another full day of Gacaca tomorrow, and nobody among them has a clue what I’m going to be spending my time doing this week. (Mind you, after Wednesday morning, neither do I).
I spend nearly two hours sorting out the census forms. Each of the four schools has sent the information in a different format. Each has left out chunks of statistics that I’m supposed to collect; each has added other things I don’t need. The secondary figures are a nightmare. There’s almost no point of commonality between all the schools. In some cases they don’t even tell me what their specialisms are in the sixth form – whether, for example, they are teaching humanities, or science or accountancy. I’m just supposed to know. But all the specialisms changed last January and even if I refer back to last year’s forms I can’t be sure I’m accurate. Védaste comes to see if I have the modem and I show him the stupid sheets I’m trying to collate. He laughs, shrugs his shoulders and says, well, we’ll just have to do the best with what we’ve got and tell Claude the problem. We never had so much bother last year; I wonder if they’re messing about because they know they’ve got a muzungu looking at all their figures?
I have a book to give to Raima at Ahazaza and I go to drop it at her house only to find she’s down at the school. Fortunately the school is on my way back home so I go to the school. She receives me like manna from heaven and pours me out her tale of woe about her deputy, whom she has just sacked and she is wondering whether to take court action over some discrepancies of his. She introduces me to a lovely Belgian girl who is spending a month at Ahazaza doing English language teaching with their primary pupils. It is nice to hear a foreigner speaking English with an English accent, as opposed to always hearing American twangs around the place.
Raima is in the middle of a huge building programme, with six classrooms being built for her primary section and a big multi-purpose hall. We go on a tour of the site. The hall will be impressive when it’s finished, and will certainly be in demand for weddings and the like. And, knowing Raima, when it is finished it will be kept in pristine condition and not allowed to gradually deteriorate and fall apart for want of maintenance as is the case with almost every other building here as soon as the builders have left. She shows me a lovely spacious foyer under construction just outside the hall, and I tell her it would make a wonderful place to display pupils’ artwork or the very best schoolwork they can manage.
Raima has an application form for a replacement for the man she’s sacking, and we go through both the job description and his application. He sounds the ideal person for the job, and I agree to come back to the school on Wednesday morning and help her do the formal interview. The ability to speak fluent and correct English is one of the skills she needs, and to have a native English speaker to help on the interview is simply good professional practise. This will be the first time I’ve interviewed someone for a job since I came here. (And isn’t it typical that at the same time as all my colleagues are applying for and being interviewed for jobs for themselves, I’m offering to help do an interview for someone else!).
I realise that the biggest single task for today – changing another big sum of money for Gatenzi’s water tanks – isn’t going to happen unless I pick up all my dollars which I’ve left in the flat. So I have to plod back to the flat (via the bank to order another cheque book – they say it’ll be there in a week but I live in hope. As long as it’s waiting for me when I return from England.).
Just as bad luck will have it I have a long wait for a bus, and then have the slowest drive into Kigali ever. I think the driver is a real “steady Eddy” and either he’s terrified of losing his licence, or he’s on a one-man crusade against the kamikaze driving of every other Atraco driver. The quickest runs into Kigali town centre take just over an hour; this time we take a shade under an hour and a half. And it would happen on a day when I want to get a lot done!
Up to the money changers under the mosque. Here they look askance at my low-denomination dollar bills, despite their being in pristine condition. The exchange rate for bills of under $50 is considerably less than for $100 and $50 notes. (Prospective volunteers please note: if you go to a bank and ask for large sums of dollars, insist on $50 or bigger notes, and don’t accept the ready made-up packs they issue to tourists which have a mixture of values in them. These packs are ideal if you are going to the USA on holiday but they’re not welcomes in East Africa).
I come out of the forex with just under a million dollars hidden in the depths of my bag. It’s a lot less than I’ve changed in the past, but it’s enough to worry me. I go to Simba and meet up with Steve and T. T’s come in to see the hospital and get tests done. She still has raging headaches and is worried in case it is the onset of another bout of malaria. At least she has managed to get her flight changed and is now going home on Thursday, so she’ll be able to get herself checked out in England within a week.
It feels as though we take an age to get served in Simba, but that might just be because I’m feeling a bit under pressure. The Simba salads we order seem to be around 50% slices of onion, and are not as good as in the past. I know I can do better! And it’s time to have a change of venue for eating out with friends in Kigali.
Up to Kimironko and the VSO office on a town bus. At the office I need to use the internet, but the VSO system is down and under repair so once again I’m frustrated. The only option now is to use an internet café in Gitarama, but that will have to wait till Wednesday because tomorrow’s Gacaca and I won’t be home until late tonight. I also want to see Jean-Claude, but he’s not in. I manage to get a new VSO identity card filled out, and leave it on his desk with a message and hope it will be ready the next time I come into town. Tina also needs a replacement ID card because hers has been stolen. However, she needs to sign it and give things like her passport number and expiry date and I can’t do any of that for her. Maybe she can do that before she flies home. I need to see Charlotte to talk about my end of service dates. She’s not in either, but at least I can leave my intentions with Ruth and get her to brief Charlotte when she comes back into the office.
Becky has texted to say she’s got a dodgy stomach today and can’t go to work, and asks me if I’m feeling OK after our meal at Delphine’s yesterday. I’m fine, so either my stomach has become cast iron during the past eighteen months or else it’s something Becky has eaten which has nothing to do with yesterday’s outing. I buy her some crackers and start making tracks home. Once again, I just miss the five o’clock “Horizon” bus and have to hang around in town. I’ve taken a “Jeeves and Wooster” book out of the VSO library and it whiles away the wait for the next bus.
While I’m waiting for the bus I get a text from Soraya. Claude’s brother has died, and she’s with Claude at the reception after the funeral. The brother can’t have been very old – Claude himself is only thirty and even if he’s one of the youngest in the family, his brother can’t have been much more than forty. When Soraya and I went round to his house last week to name Keza we met one of the brothers – working as a children’s rights and women’s rights lawyer at Kibuye. I hope to goodness it wasn’t him, because quite apart from the personal tragedy, Rwandan human rights lawyers are decidedly thin on the ground out here. I send a text condolence to Claude; fortunately I still have on my phone the text he sent me when my dad died last September so I can adapt the language and send him something appropriate in good French.
Back at Gitarama I go to see Becky and give her the crackers. She’s feeling brighter, and Matteo has been out buying vegetables and is preparing the evening meal for them. Even better news is that Leonie has been accepted by Kamonyi District as Education Management Adviser and will be coming in September. Leonie will be doing the same job as me, but in Kamonyi District. She will almost he will almost certainly be living with Becky in her house, so will become part of the Gitarama gang. That’s good news. For one thing, it means she will have a three month overlap with me to help her learn the job, and also an overlap of some weeks with all the Gitarama gang before we start to finish our service here in Rwandan and go back home. There’s going to be an almighty clearout of volunteers at the end of the year, with long-term people like me going home after two years, and one year placements like Hayley finishing as well. It’s going to be even worse than at times last year when I felt as though I was going to be the only VSO left in the area!
Tom’s going to be very late back; he’s been doing training in Kigali and has had to wait for the seven o’clock bus, so won’t be back until well after eight. We have food in the fridge, but I decide to eat out and save the meal we’re prepared until we’re both there to eat it. I nip up to “Green Garden” and I’m just finishing my brochettes when Tom arrives, having taken a moto from the town centre.
It’s been a long and tiring day for both of us, but between us we’ve managed to get a lot done. I’ve failed in everything relating to using the internet, but everything else has gone to plan.
Back at the flat we suddenly realise we’re bone tired, and pile into our beds straight away. We don’t have any bread for tomorrow, and we’re short of vegetables, and tomorrow is Gacaca and everything will be closed after eight o’clock in the morning, but we’ll cope.
That’s the nice thing about being here a long time. You know that you’ll cope, and that there are ways round every problem. And there’ll always be tomorrow, in Africa. What’s the Kinyarwanda for “mañana”?

Phisto's Eucharist Party at Rutarabana

July 5th

A lazy morning, opting out of church and sorting out my things at the flat. Becky’s preaching at Mommas, and I decide to give her room.
Just before mid day Tom and Becky come back to the flat. Becky and I are out to a Eucharist party at Rutarabana, the first we’ve been invited to during our time here. It’s a roasting hot day even in Gitarama, and Rutarabana is a long walk out in the countryside. So we decide to take a moto from the town centre. Just as luck would have it, Becky’s moto diver happens to live in Rutarabana village, so we wave hello to his mum who is threshing sorghum at the front of their house as we pass.
When we get to the school at Rutarabana we get off and pay our drivers; the path to Delphine’s place is a little track only accessible on foot. I’ve only ever been there once before, and Becky’s never been there at all, and I’m very pleased with myself that I can remember how to wind up through the field boundaries and hedgerows until we emerge from a canopy of banana trees more or less at the front entrance to their place.
We’re immediately made to feel welcome, and introduced to all the family; endless brothers, sisters, school friends, aunts uncles, grandparents, work colleagues of the dad etc. There’s just one problem: they only speak Kinyarwanda, and we only speak French and English. Only one of the men is reasonably fluent in French; absolutely none of the women speak anything but Kinya. So conversation is limited to greetings, and everything proceeds by gestures. Delphine translates now and then, but as the oldest child she is busy helping in the kitchen and only appears occasionally. She is lovely – very proud that her muzungu friends have come to support her, and at the same time very flustered by our being there.
We go outside to help pass the time until all the guests arrive, and I show Becky the animals and all round the smallholding. All the little piglets which were free ranging everywhere last time I visited have gone except one, which the sow is guarding very closely. She becomes dangerously aggressive if we get close to try to take a picture. The little calf, though, is gorgeous and we feed it chopped up banana leaves while tickling its nose.
We take a lot of pictures of the children too. Phisto, the star of the show, is not here yet; he’s been to his Eucharist at Kabgayi cathedral and is still walking home with various relatives. Dad arrives on a little moto; it’s the first time I’ve met him, and he’s tiny alongside me but very pleasant. We get the impression that they’re very proud of Delphine for having been accepted into the Gitarama muzungu society (she’s met nearly all our gang at one time or another), and the fact that we trust her to work as a domestique in one of our houses, with access to all our possessions etc, shows we rate her. She’s also earning a very decent wage from Becky and that’s being put away to go towards her eventually university fees, (we hope).
Delphine shows us the little bedroom she shares with her sister Clarisse, who has just returned from boarding school down in Ruhango District. In a corner of the bedroom is a huge stone pot full of homemade sorghum beer. I’ve never tasted this stuff (we’ve always been warned off it), but she tells us to try it while it lasts. So we suck some of the beer up through straws from the common pot. It’s quite an experience. The beer is lumpy and gritty; it’s like a thick stew which you chew as much as you drink. I’d never in a million years go out and buy some, but I’m really pleased I’ve had the chance to experiment with it under controlled conditions! It doesn’t taste anything like ordinary beer. It is earthy on the palate; you can tell that it’s alcoholic. It’s slightly vinegary; I don’t really know how to describe it. Definitely an acquired taste!
Becky and I have agreed that, while we have no specific present to give to Phisto, the most useful and acceptable gift to the family will be cash to help pay for all the entertainment today. So as discreetly as we can, we give Delphine two envelopes with cash in them. We don’t want all the neighbours to see we’re giving money, and especially we don’t want them to see that we’ve given 5000 francs each. Five thousand is more than a week’s income for an average rural family, and we know that with eight children, all of whom are being put through secondary school, Delphine’s family need every penny they can earn. And all of them seem to work hard, and work well together with each other, too.
Back in the living room, rows and rows of wooden benches are filling with guests as neighbours arrive. Every arrival means a formal greeting and handshake and “muraho neza”; “amakuru? – ni meza” greeting. We have been given another homemade drink - strawberry juice, made from the family’s strawberries. It’s wonderful stuff – thick, syrupy and more-ish. Quite the opposite to the sorghum beer.
Phisto and his escort of grannies and aunts and uncles arrives, and takes the seat of honour with his dad and the dad’s parents. Granddad walks with a stick and is delighted to be able to welcome muzungus into the house. The dad formally introduces everyone to us; that takes a good ten minutes and I can’t remember any of the names for more than a few seconds. We then stand up and introduce ourselves. Delphine has been translating for her dad, and I can see him really proud that his little girl can talk to the muzungus, if not in their own language (her English isn’t yet up to it yet), at least in French so we can understand what’s going on. Becky and I introduce ourselves in Kinyarwanda; we can only manage two or three sentences each but it’s enough. We get a thunderous round of applause for having tried in their language. The ice has been broken, and we feel we are being welcomed as honorary members of the family and friends.
Out comes more to drink; this time it’s the dreaded “urwagwa” – home brewed banana beer. This is the stuff which is made by digging a hole in the ground, lining it with banana leaves, then filling it with overripe bananas and leaving them to ferment under a pile of soil for a week or so. Of course, they give me some to try in a glass. It tastes unbelievably foul, but after a while it’s so foul that your mouth just gets anaesthetised to the taste. I make Becky take a couple of sips; we both pull faces and the room erupts at the muzungus trying to cope with the rough beer. Becky, in an inspired move, tells them that Bruce actually likes the beer despite pulling faces. Delphine is sent straight away to fetch more, and I end up with a glassful. I try to sip delicately while wondering if I could lose some of it through the window (No chance). Urwagwa makes vinegar taste bland. It is yellowish brown, the colour of Bailey’s, but that’s where any resemblance ends. It isn’t gritty and chewy, like the sorghum beer, but there is a scum of bits of banana leaf and whatever floating on the top. At the bottom of you glass a thick yellow sediment collects. The beer is bitingly acid and very, very strong. I hope to god I don’t get made to drink loads of this stuff and then get sent out into the blazing sun….
Meanwhile a big calabash is being passed round, full or urwagwa, and also one of the yellow cooking oil containers, also full of the stuff. Men and women alike drink it, sipping it through a single, communal straw. Honestly, if tonight my stomach survives the onslaught of strawberry juice, sorghum beer and banana hooch, all made with unfiltered water and god knows what else, it’ll prove my innards have well and truly adapted to rural Africa!
At this point there’s a big commotion. A local man, clearly not quite right in the head, comes into the room. He’s dressed in filthy rags, with a jacket that is virtually disintegrating as we look at it. He announces that he is hungry and thirsty and wants food. He sees us, and speaks to us in English. Goodness knows what his story is (and I wonder if he is someone who has been traumatised by things that happened fifteen years ago here). He is obviously an educated man, well known and tolerated in the village; nobody makes a fuss but they sit him down and make him welcome.
Meanwhile the girls and their friends have been out of sight for a while; now they come in with plates of food. Within three or four minutes, forty odd people have been served. It’s a very impressive piece of organisation. We have rice with a peanut sauce, beans, cabbage and carrot mix, and peas, and chips. In rural Rwanda food is taken extremely seriously; there’s a long winded grace before anyone touches the food, but as soon as the grace ends all conversation stops and the serious business of eating begins. Within a couple of minutes every plate has been polished clean, and Becky and I, despite being among the first to be served, are almost the last to finish. Our gatecrasher friend is fed and given banana beer; all the time he’s eating he speaks in English. Not directly to Becky and I, but to the room in general. They can’t understand a word he’s saying; I wonder if they even know he’s speaking English. Next time I see Delphine I’ll try to find out something about him.
The sorghum beer is brought out into the lounge, and a bundle of bamboo straws put into the neck of the pot. These straws are about three feet long and reach right down to the sludge at the bottom of the pot. You can’t drink the beer without dredging up some of the sludge, trust me!
In turns we are called up to drink the beer; it is part of the sharing and brotherhood process and to refuse would be a serious slight to the family. So we take our turn and everyone’s happy that we join in. At the same time they’re very understanding that all this is new to us and that we’re not quite sure what we ought to do. After a few mouthfuls I’m beginning to feel definitely mellow.
So we go outside for some air. It is a seriously hot day and with forty people in the room it is getting unbearable. We take pictures of a lot of the children, and then we decide we’ll take our leave and leave the family to themselves (and, no doubt, to talk about us).
The Dad tries to persuade us to stay longer. The ceremony and partying will go on for a long time, and we don’t want them to feel constrained by our being there. At the same time we don’t want to seem rude, or to give offense. So we explain that Becky is going off to visit schools early tomorrow (which happens to be true), and that she hasn’t a clue about how to get home, so Bruce needs to go home with her. There’s a lot of token toing and froing with them asking us to stay and us saying we really must leave. Eventually we leave, and make sure we say our thanks to parents and grandparents and to everyone in general.
Delphine comes with us down to the edge of the village, at which point I tell her we know the rest of the way home and she’s to go back to the party. “Knowing the way home” is not quite true; I’m not sure of the first mile, and as it happens we take one wrong turning. When I realise we’re heading towards the far side of the valley I gaily set off down a side track which looks promising. The track gets smaller and smaller, and we end up traipsing through somebody’s farmyard. The whole family are sitting out enjoying the Sunday sunshine, and you can imagine the looks on their faces when not just one, but two muzungus suddenly appear walking towards them. We explain where we’re going and they direct us through their fields and through a patch of woodland, down a steep, stony slope until we regain our proper path.
There’s this problem with roads and tracks in Rwanda – there are no signs anywhere, and people are constantly trying to find shortcuts. So when Delphine brought me along this route last time we followed any number of little cutoffs and short cuts that went alongside people’s houses, and there’s no way I can remember all of them three months later!
Back at the flat, via the brickfields and past the stadium where we’re mobbed by children from an orphanage and not allowed to pass until we’ve hugged and cuddled every single one, I have a quick shower and we set off for the muzungu meal. The Tear Fund volunteers who have been based in Gitarama for a while return to England on Friday, so this is their last chance to meet up with us. We end up as a group of about two dozen; easily the largest group of muzungus seen in Nectar, and it takes forever to get served.
After all my afternoon drinking, sinking a bottle of Primus now feels rather tame.
And I haven’t told you the best of it. When I get home I find that Delphine and her dad have been at my rucksack. When Becky told them that I liked urwagwa they must have decided she was telling the truth. Hidden down in the back of the rucksack is a small cooking oil bottle, neatly stoppered, and filled with urwagwa. I have my very own stash of banana beer to bring home for my Dorset friends to try.
What a wonderful experience this afternoon has been, and isn’t it lovely to be made so welcome by a family which I barely know! Come to think of it, I’ve had a marvellous few days since last Thursday. You could take the last four days’ blogs and put them forward as a perfect example of what the VSO experience is all about. I know that I haven’ done much work in terms of going to schools, but from the point of view of experiencing other cultures, and getting along with all sorts of other people, it has been absolutely perfect. Africa rocks!

Canada Day

July 4th

An excellent day today. First of all a nice lie-in at AEE, followed by their pancakes and honey breakfast. Some more photo swapping with the girls, and then off back to Gitarama. July 4th is Liberation Day in Rwanda; the powers that be are making it more of a holiday than Independence Day. We know the long distance buses aren’t running until afternoon, but we suspect the local matatas and sardine-tin buses to Gitarama will still be on the road. (How many Rwandans will be able to resist earning some money, even on a public holiday?). Poor Joe is stranded in Kigali for another night; he booked by phone a ticket on a bus to Cyangugu, only to be told this morning that the bus wasn’t running after all. Oops!
Just as we thought, there are loads of buses on the road. The official bus stations are all closed, so what happens is the buses pull on to garage forecourts or anywhere else where they are off the road, while they load up. (The traffic police here are fanatical about enforcing the rule that vehicles are not allowed to stop on the carriageway except in case of dire emergency).
I get down to Nyabogogo bus depot, and I’m left at yet another garage next door to it. I just miss one matata to Gitarama, but that means I’m the first passenger to board the next one and I get the most comfortable seat, in the front. It only takes twenty minutes or so before we’re on our way. And even though it’s a public holiday and there are fewer buses than usual, the convoyeur is still charging the same fare as usual to Gitarama. A couple of huge black and white herons circle over us as we leave the Nyabogogo terminal; the heat is building up and its always good to feel that in one hour I will be in the fresher air of Muhanga!
Back home at the flat there’s a quick turnaround and we’re off to Becky’s house for Canada Day celebrations (postponed from last weekend. The actual date of Canada Day is July 1st). Tom’s wearing a USA flag tee-shirt brought to him by Christi’s family when they visited last year. It’s not quite appropriate for Canada but we’re all wearing little Canadian flag badges that Becky gave us with our invitations.
Unfortunately Tina is ill again and won’t be coming, but Épi and Janneau will arrive later in the evening. At Becky’s the front gate has been decorated with chalk; she has enlisted the help of all the local children to get this done, and it looks very effective.
We spend the afternoon on games. I manage to win at skittles (lots of practise in Dorset pubs might have helped me there); we also play volleyball with water filled balloons (messy), do blindfold games in Becky’s front garden, music chairs and so on. It’s great fun. Becky has provided prizes for all the winners; I manage to win some yellow plastic ducks for the skittles. (Anyone reading this with a connection to my church in Bradpole will understand immediately just how appropriate yellow plastic ducks are for me!!).
By mid afternoon the local children can hear all the laughter, and climb trees just outside the house so that they can see over the gate and watch what the muzungus are doing.
We also play some inappropriate and ad-hoc games: Christi went to the Independence Day party at the American Embassy in Kigali yesterday and she has brought back with her a couple of water melons. We eat these and have impromptu pip-spitting sessions on Becky’s front porch. I am pleased to report that Tom can spit for England….
We all do badly in the general knowledge test on Canada – well, how many Canadian prime ministers can you name?; and would you have known that the national sport is lacrosse? Jenga blocks are eaiser; Becky has a “truth or dare” version where every time you pick a block you have to do something. “What would be your nightmare date for an evening?”; or “stand up and sing a verse of a song”, for example. Highlight of the game is when Christi has to rub noses with Soraya. Beth and I have to swap an item of clothing; she decides we’ll exchange watches and we stay with each other’s timepiece for the rest of the evening, much to the amusement of anyone who hasn’t seen the game.
Eventually we gather up and go to Christi’s house, just down the road, to wait for her while she heats up some food for her guard. Meanwhile we’re entertained by little Bruno, who models Moirta’s sunglasses and Soraya’s hat for us, not to mention another of the garish wigs we keep finding in Gitarama.
Then we go to Lando’s the upmarket eating place in town. As its Liberation day there’s a party atmosphere there. A live band is playing, Congolese style, and the music is really good. So is our food – succulent beef brochettes and spicy fish ones, too. Then we’re dancing with the Rwandans to live music and generally enjoying ourselves until late.
What a lovely way to spend Liberation Day!

Finishing the "How To...." guides

July 3rd
Today I discover that the food at AEE is really good. Not just the breakfasts, with unlimited pancakes, honey and coffee, but also the main meals with fried fish and nice salads. We eat well today!
The day consists of more VSO meetings, this time looking at what we are going to put in our new five year development plan to be submitted to the Rwandan government as well as VSO international. We elect new members to the education steering group. Since I only have five months to go, and the election term runs for a year, I come off the committee along with almost everyone else and we elect new people. It seems really funny to be giving up responsibilities; I feel as though I’ve only just got going. In some ways even a two year placement isn’t long enough to make a real difference on VSO!
In the afternoon we go through my amendments to the “Ho to do things….” Guide for education managers. It’s a difficult document to get right. On the one hand we are writing for incoming volunteers, and your language needs to be informal, but VSO wants to submit the whole guide to MINEDUC for its approval. This makes an enormous difference. Some bureaucrat will go through it and carp and reject anything which suggests that things in the country are anything but rosy or perfect. And yet our guide doesn’t make sense unless we “tell it as it is” to new volunteers.
So what we decide is that my version will do fine, with a few minor adjustments, but that Charlotte will edit it and try to make sure the wording is acceptable to Rwandan officials. I’m relieved, because it has been a tricky document to compile and now all my responsibilities are finished. And it will be something I leave as a legacy to incoming volunteers.
We seem to be fated with this particular document. When we first compiled it in January the education system here was in total upheaval, with all the changes to the primary school curriculum and organisation. Now, as we finish the “final version” (ha ha!), the entire system of local administration is about to be changed. It is quite likely that next term we might all get recalled to write a third draft to reflect the change in emphasis from education management at District level to Secteur level. Watch this space!
What is good about Rwanda is that at least the government is dynamic and very active in changing things. There are other countries where VSO works where there is such apathy and inertia at central Government level that nothing ever changes from decade to decade. But it would be nice to have, say, three years when the Rwandan system consolidates and everyone evaluates how successful all the recent changes have been before plunging into yet more upheaval.
Our meetings finish in the late afternoon and a big bunch of us decides we’ll eat up at Sole Luna. It’s a long time since I had the best pizzas in town! So a dozen or more people converge on the restaurant. Joe goes on ahead; he’s a table tennis player and is meeting some of the big wigs of table tennis here in Rwanda to try to set something up in Nyamasheke. That neatly sums up what VSOs do – here is someone my own age who is fit enough and energetic enough to want to set up a sports facility in his District, and has the commitment and vision to start coaching youngsters on his own. He makes me feel a lazy saddo! As we’re walking to Sole Luna we get an elderly lady, not quite all there, who seems to attach herself to our group of muzungus. I think she feels safe walking with us. She mutters a lot, and is wearing thick socks but no shoes. Her clothes are in rages, with holes and rents all over the place. Half way up to the restaurant she suddenly takes off her wrap; she doesn’t seem to be wearing anything under it and her modesty is only saved by the long tee shirt she’s wearing. To say it draws attention from the hundreds of Rwandans we pass is an understatement. (There are five of us walking up in a group – me, Tina, Moira, Amalia, Michael).
Eventually a police truck comes to a halt alongside us and she is snatched by the police and bundled very roughly into the vehicle. It’s no way to treat someone who is mentally ill, but this is a poor country and there almost simply isn’t anywhere else to put her. She’s get slung in a police cell for the night while they try to find a church or charity to take her in. We all just hope they don’t beat the living daylights out of her in the process.
Our meal at Sola Luna is wonderful. We all make a point of ordering different pizzas, and then slice them up and share them so that no two slices are the same. I can’t think of a better way to eat on a warm, fine Kigali evening. The city lights come on around us, and another group of volunteers, this time Americans from the school in Nyamata, come to eat near us.
At the end of the meal we have the usual discussion as to where we’re going on to next. Many people want to go into town; others want to go back to the AEE guest house. My decision is made for me. One of the gang is not feeling well, and we need to get her home. With Joe and Michael I start to walk her (it’s all downhill from Sole Luna to AEE, even if it is a long way). Before we reach the VSO office she doesn’t feel well again, so we get a taxi and make sure she’s home safe.
Its funny – the longer I stay here the less fussed I seem to get about going clubbing and staying up late. I’ve done it, “ticked the box” as it were; and back at the guest house I start to write emails to Cathie and various other volunteers. Today I’ve also done a lot of photo sharing with the other volunteers. I think I now have some 4500 pictures of my time here. So if you don’t want to be bored, never ask me when I come home to show you photos of my time here….
Today’s been a good day. We work well as a group; there are few if any rough edges, and we have done some good work in terms of finalising the “How To….” Guide. And to end the day with a shared pizza is about as good as it gets here.

Education meeting in Kigali

July 2nd

Today is busy; I have a VSO Education Meeting all day, and various things to get done before I leave. Fortunately the VSO meeting starts in the late morning. I have Raima’s query about her school census to sort out, so I try to be at the office for seven. Claude is there and immediately asks me for the names of all he schools whose census papers haven’t reached me. I do him a list but explain that I’ve already contacted each school on the list, and that many have promised me the stuff straight away, but somehow it doesn’t seem to arrive. Let’s hope that I’ve soon got all the material and can do the analysis before the end of term next Friday. At all costs I don’t want this work hanging over me when I go home in a fortnight’s time.
Raima’s school census paper just happens to be missing. The only one I can’t put my hands on. Fancy that. I go through every single census return from every secteur, but Ahazaza school’s has mysteriously disappeared. I have all the actual data on my laptop, so the physical presence of the paper form is no longer important, but what Raima really wants to know is the date the form was sent in, whether anyone signed it acting on her behalf (she was on leave in Europe at the time), and whether the papers have the official school stamp. All I can give her is the approximate date the papers were sent to the District. When I ring Raima to tell her, she informs me that she is definitely going to dismiss her deputy as a result of a whole series of incidents, and look for a replacement. There’s all sorts of issues associated with this situation that I can’t write about on a public blog. Just let me say that to someone like me coming from an English background, the machinations and goings on this saga reveals are like something out of a soap opera. There are plots, anonymous tip offs, clashes of ambition plus the more predictable financial misadventures. “East Enders” eat your heart out….
Mugabo, the head of Mata tronc commun section, comes into the office and gives me a flash drive full of photos of his wedding, a couple of years ago. Ninety of them, to be exact. He wants me to send them to him as emails so that he can load the things on his computer. I try to tell him that 90 pictures is far too many to send in emails, but he insists. “Why not let me burn them onto a disk for you?” I say to him. No, that won’t do – his computer is too old and decrepit to read a CD. (This is a common problem in Rwanda where every computer is second hand and rarely in proper working order). I really can’t fathom out why he doesn’t just load the flash onto his computer, but he’s adamant he wants me to send him the pictures as emails. I think he probably wants to forward some or all of them to other friends or relatives. I tell him I’m going to Kigali and won’t be able to do anything till I get the District modem next week, and he’s content. I suppose I’ll have to send these pictures in an unending stream of emails, four or five pictures at a time. It’s not a productive use of my time, but if I’ve got a lot of down time next week it’ll keep me occupied. I won’t be too distraught if I can’t get all his material sent.
By the time I get away from the office it’s much later than I intend. There’s almost no post for anyone, which is a relief because the last thing I want is to be carrying parcels around all weekend for various volunteers. I’m desperate to get to the bank, and when I arrive there my luck’s in because there’s almost no queue. I can’t believe this, especially because it’s the day after a Gacaca followed by a public holiday! Within five minutes I’m done and sorted and on my way to the “Horizon” bus depot. Soraya is also taking the nine o’clock bus, and we can talk as we travel.
At Kigali she wants to do some shopping while I get a local bus to Remera and then walk down to AEE Kabeza where we are meeting and staying. It’s going to be a hot day; already in mid morning you can feel the Kigali heat building up. In Gitarama it was definitely fleece weather; here you need to put on sun cream.
The meeting at VSO is all about fitting volunteers into placements, and how we negotiate placements with the Rwandan partners. It’s interesting enough, I suppose, but during the afternoon I’m half listening to what we’re doing but at the same time starting to make a list of the things I ought to be covering in my hand-over notes to whoever succeeds me at Gitarama next year.
Succession notes are tricky. If you know for certain there’s an end-on replacement, then you can make the notes really detailed and specific. But there’s absolutely no guarantee of an end-on replacement. Mans left Nyamagabe last January and won’t be replaced this September because there’s a dispute between VSO and the District about exactly what sort of person they want. It will be at very least a whole year before a new volunteer can start there. So In my notes I have to try to envisage somebody carrying on a year after I’ve gone. You wouldn’t believe how much can change in a year, and trying to think about what is really going to be relevant in a year’s time is not easy. The second thing is that we know there is going to be a dramatic restructuring of local administration imminently, with details announced during this July. The emphasis will move away from admin at District level to admin at secteur level. So all I know about the structure of the District; who is who, where information is kept, and so on, may well be completely changed. In fact, it is likely to change before I even go home. I think the best course is to write my succession notes as things stand at the present, especially if I feel in the mood to do the writing this next week or so, and I’ll have to adjust and review again before I finally go home.
Succession notes are interesting, though, because when I consider that I had almost nothing to go on at all when I arrived here in 2008, it shows just how much information you absorb about the place and the job. If I include everything that I ‘m thinking of doing, my successor will almost have too much information. You can sometimes have so much to read about a new job that you can’t take it all in – you need to be in the job for a month or so, and then read through the stuff when you’ve learnt more of a context in which to fit it.
The food at AEE is very good; fish especially so. It’s the third or fourth time I’ve stayed here but only the first time I’ve eaten. Usually I’m stumbling back here in the small hours after a heavy night somewhere else….
In the evening Becky, Tina and I go out to get some fresh air and buy phone credit, and then go on to the Hilltop bar, right next to the airport, for a drink and chat. Some of the others are going salsa dancing. I’d like to go, but the salsa is at Gikondo which is right across the far side of town and I’m not at all sure how to get there. A Rwandan acquaintance of one of us is flying out of Kigali tonight; there’s a hilarious few minutes when he texts us from the plane to say he’s about to take off, and then again to say they’ve found a technical fault with the plane and his flight is being delayed. We text him back to say the fault is probably because he’s using his mobile phone…. Eventually the plane is off safely, and we watch it climbing away over Kibungo and Akagera and across the border into Tanzania. Both Tina and I are flying home soon, and in a few days that’ll be us away home for the summer.
Today’s best bit of gossip comes from Nyamata. The executive secretary, director of education, and the director of infrastructure are all under arrest or in prison, and there’s virtually nobody to run the education service in the District. What has happened is that there has been a building programme, and for whatever reason the buildings have been but up so shoddily that they are deemed physically dangerous. Kigali ordered that the builder should not be paid, but the District went ahead and paid him. Why they should pay him in direct defiance of Kigali, I have no knowledge. (I’ve got no idea whether there the builder is related to any of the officers or whether there are backhanders involved, or whether somebody is getting a rake off from using substandard materials). Anyway, retribution from Kigali is swift and dramatic. They seem to have arrested everyone whose signature and stamp is on any of the documents concerned with the building programme, and the buildings in question have already been bulldozed to the ground. Just imagine that – completely new buildings being smashed, while the poor pupils continue in their mud brick apologies for classrooms, and the tronc commun kids scratch their heads and wonder if anyone is going to provide them with facilities for next year! Poor Els has nobody to answer to at the moment. Funnily enough, as she says, it’s amazing that the local system seems to be working just as well as usual even with all the top brass locked up! Makes you wonder!
Tina and I don’t feel like going to bed when we return from the bar, so we sit outside in the warm moonlight and put the world to rights for an hour or so. AEE is awkwardly situated; it’s right on the edge of town, but it makes it really quiet and pleasant late at night. Kigali’s lights stretch out for miles in front of us, and for once we are away from continuous pop music blaring from tinny speakers, from constant car horns beeping, and from the permanent din of men shouting and women chattering. African towns are noisy places, probably because the countryside is so quiet that you can hear your own heart beating. At times the noise is exciting; it folds you into it and you welcome it. At other times you just long for quiet. Well, here on the edge of Kigali we find out quiet under a massive avocado tree and talk about what we’re going to do after we finish our VSO placements.

Waterless!

June 30th

Today the water situation has got even worse. There’s no water at the standpipe at the bottom of the stairs. But we don’t find this out until we’ve used most of our water stored in buckets and jerry cans for flushing the loo, showering, and doing last night’s washing up. The SORAS houseboy gets us a jerry can full from somewhere, and all of a sudden we’re on real emergency situation. No more washing; we’ll just have to stink. Water for drinking is the only priority.
Tom thinks that the workmen digging up the main road to lay fibre optic cables have gone through our water main, and this seems to be borne out by a fountain of water coming from one of the trenches and a mob of workmen standing staring morosely at it, with expressions as if to say “who decided to put water pipes under the pavement?”
I go up to the office to meet Étienne, the head of Cyicaro, who is supposed to be giving me his census returns en route for Kigali. (Everything’s supposed to be closed today because of Gacaca). I get there at 7.15 and wait until 8.00, and Étienne doesn’t show. The office is open, and plenty of people are coming and going. The formal Gacaca starts at 8.00, and at that time everyone is supposed to leave their desks and take themselves off to the big stadium for the court case.
I walk back home; I get as far as the bus park when my phone rings. It’s Étienne ringing to say he’s running late and it’ll be a while yet before he makes it to the office. I say I’m not going back there, and he’s to stick the papers under my office door.
Back at the flat there’s not a lot to do. If people would only be businesslike and meet deadlines I’d have tons of things I could be doing. But this is Rwanda, and priorities are different. I read a lot, and make a stab at a summary of the schools I’ve visited this term and what I’ve learned from them about the state of things in Muhanga. The section on problems and difficulties is longer than the one on things which are going well.
In the afternoon I start preparing food. Tonight is film night at Becky’s. I’ve no sooner reminded people when Moira texts to say we can’t have the digital projector because its needed at the College today. For the rest of the afternoon the film night is off, then on again, and I use a lot of phone credit trying to work out who’s coming. I make a bean salad, and some coleslaw to take.
I text Jeanne, the head teacher from Nyabisindu, to see if she wants to come and meet the muzungus. She doesn’t reply, but then in Rwanda that might mean nothing more than she’s trying to save money, or has run out of phone credit!
Raima rings me with yet another “problem” at Ahazaza school, this time involving wrong information put on their school census form and someone doing a lot of suspect photocopying while she was in Europe. We chat for a while and I promise to go and look in the Office tomorrow and see when her census papers were returned, and who by, and whether this person had put the official school stamp on them.
Eventually it is film night. Charlotte is back from Nairobi, but very tired and not up to coming. Likewise Christi is pooped after a very taxing few days. Jeanne doesn’t show either, nor Soraya. So we are me, Tom, Beth, Becky and Nathan. A small, select group. At least we have loads of food, and good stuff to, and we eat like kings. We watch “Goonies”, a typical Spielberg film with just about every cliché you can imagine from Errol Flynn to Indiana Jones. But good to just veg out and watch of an evening. I discover that, like me, Beth is a hockey player.
The only down side to the evening is returning to a waterless house, and the thought of having a pile of smelly washing up to do in the morning. Why can’t this country get its water supplies sorted out? We pay enough for our water bills….

Waterless!

June 30th

Today the water situation has got even worse. There’s no water at the standpipe at the bottom of the stairs. But we don’t find this out until we’ve used most of our water stored in buckets and jerry cans for flushing the loo, showering, and doing last night’s washing up. The SORAS houseboy gets us a jerry can full from somewhere, and all of a sudden we’re on real emergency situation. No more washing; we’ll just have to stink. Water for drinking is the only priority.
Tom thinks that the workmen digging up the main road to lay fibre optic cables have gone through our water main, and this seems to be borne out by a fountain of water coming from one of the trenches and a mob of workmen standing staring morosely at it, with expressions as if to say “who decided to put water pipes under the pavement?”
I go up to the office to meet Étienne, the head of Cyicaro, who is supposed to be giving me his census returns en route for Kigali. (Everything’s supposed to be closed today because of Gacaca). I get there at 7.15 and wait until 8.00, and Étienne doesn’t show. The office is open, and plenty of people are coming and going. The formal Gacaca starts at 8.00, and at that time everyone is supposed to leave their desks and take themselves off to the big stadium for the court case.
I walk back home; I get as far as the bus park when my phone rings. It’s Étienne ringing to say he’s running late and it’ll be a while yet before he makes it to the office. I say I’m not going back there, and he’s to stick the papers under my office door.
Back at the flat there’s not a lot to do. If people would only be businesslike and meet deadlines I’d have tons of things I could be doing. But this is Rwanda, and priorities are different. I read a lot, and make a stab at a summary of the schools I’ve visited this term and what I’ve learned from them about the state of things in Muhanga. The section on problems and difficulties is longer than the one on things which are going well.
In the afternoon I start preparing food. Tonight is film night at Becky’s. I’ve no sooner reminded people when Moira texts to say we can’t have the digital projector because its needed at the College today. For the rest of the afternoon the film night is off, then on again, and I use a lot of phone credit trying to work out who’s coming. I make a bean salad, and some coleslaw to take.
I text Jeanne, the head teacher from Nyabisindu, to see if she wants to come and meet the muzungus. She doesn’t reply, but then in Rwanda that might mean nothing more than she’s trying to save money, or has run out of phone credit!
Raima rings me with yet another “problem” at Ahazaza school, this time involving wrong information put on their school census form and someone doing a lot of suspect photocopying while she was in Europe. We chat for a while and I promise to go and look in the Office tomorrow and see when her census papers were returned, and who by, and whether this person had put the official school stamp on them.
Eventually it is film night. Charlotte is back from Nairobi, but very tired and not up to coming. Likewise Christi is pooped after a very taxing few days. Jeanne doesn’t show either, nor Soraya. So we are me, Tom, Beth, Becky and Nathan. A small, select group. At least we have loads of food, and good stuff to, and we eat like kings. We watch “Goonies”, a typical Spielberg film with just about every cliché you can imagine from Errol Flynn to Indiana Jones. But good to just veg out and watch of an evening. I discover that, like me, Beth is a hockey player.
The only down side to the evening is returning to a waterless house, and the thought of having a pile of smelly washing up to do in the morning. Why can’t this country get its water supplies sorted out? We pay enough for our water bills….

Entertaining by candle light

June 29th

A lousy start to the morning. We’re completely out of water; normally even during shortages it comes on during the night and at least the toilet cistern fills, also the shower reservoir. Today we have nothing. To make things worse, our bucket and jerry cans are just about empty, so first thing in the dawn light I’m traipsing up and down the outside stairs to fill all our water holders from the tap. Luckily, the guard hasn’t connected up the hose to start watering his precious flower plants. If he had done so he’d have got a tongue lashing from me – I’m in just the grouchy mood to let fly at him! Meanwhile some of yesterday’s food has stuck well onto our pots and pans. The starter motor in our kitchen strip light isn’t working properly, so it’s a couple of minutes fiddling around to get it to come on.
All of which means I’m a bit late for work and Claude is ringing me while I’m walking up the road, saying where am I because he’s about to start the department meeting. Two department meetings in two successive weeks? I’ll never keep up the pace! We say what we’ve done last week and what we hope to get done this week: in my case the termly report for Claude, finalise secondary census forms etc).
Claude comes out with this week’s little homily, which is “remember that time costs money”. Be here and be working. OK, but in the next breath he tells us that tomorrow is yet another whole day of Gacaca and the office will be closed. Muzungus are not required to attend; we can work from home, but all the office staff are required to go to the stadium and listen to the court case. If they’re not there the day will be deemed to have been taken as one of their annual leave days. Wednesday is Independence Day, and yet another public holiday (it’s the day Rwandan became formally independent from Belgium). With our VSO meeting on Thursday and Friday it means I’ll only do 1 day in the office this week. Time might be money, but at the moment we have rather a lot of “down time”.
Valérian gives me some attendance lists from education meetings over the past couple of months so that I can check out head teachers’ phone numbers. At last I’m able to update my complete list for the district. There are still a few primary schools where I cannot confirm the name of the head and his/her phone number, but all the secondary schools are accurate and I have the only exact copy in the District. I never realised until last night just how even such a simple thing as my contact list makes life so much simpler for everyone else in the office.
I spend the morning fiddling around and filling in some forms. Els has given Soraya her old laptop and we take it to Cecille, the ICT person, to have the internet programme put on. Unfortunately it’s not so simple, and in the end Ceci spends most of the day working on the computer. But eventually she gets it finished, and Soraya, at long, long last, has her own laptop to use.
I give Claude a list of my movements till departure – holiday dates for going home in the summer; probable Zanzibar dates and my end of service date. Already my leaving Rwanda has come forward twice; I now think I’ll be finishing on December 2nd and flying on the third. I want to fly Brussels Airlines to Gatwick even if I have to pay the difference between Brussels and the cheapest route. I also calculate that there are only about a dozen free weekends between now and my departure, and I still have several places in Rwanda which I want to visit. Starting this weekend in Nyamasheke, and continuing as soon as I come back here in August with a trip out to Nyagatare.
Soraya and I meet up with Moira and Kerry in “Tranquillité” for lunch and then we go back to the office. I buy a whole lot of phone credit and spend most of the afternoon trying to contact errant secondary schools. Béatrice, our part time secretary, is in today, and I discover that Nyabikenke school has given her the census details on a flash drive. Béatrice has loaded them onto her computer, but now she can’t find them. Most of the schools are narked that I’m asking them to send me an extra copy, but at least they have kept their own copy and can simply make me a Photostat. But ETEKA, the technical school out at Kabgayi, says it has not kept a copy of the census form, and therefore we have lost the only copy. Honestly, there are times when I want to bang my head against the wall here! One head is coming through Gitarama tomorrow morning on his way to a meeting in Kigali. Because the office is closed for Gacaca I will have to lurk outside it and he will give me the stuff as he passes. Yeah, right! I’ll make sure I’m here but we’ll see if the stuff materialises!
Back home there’s still no water in our taps, but at least there is water downstairs. I’ve done a shop up at the market in the hope that we have enough food to last us through tonight (guests of Tom coming), tomorrow (Gacaca all day) and Wednesday (public holiday – Independence Day). We’ll see.
Just as Tom and I are setting to with the cooking, an almighty storm breaks out. It’s been threatening to rain for days now, and when the storm arrives it’s a biggie! The power goes off and comes back about three times. Each time we light candles and get out our torches. Finally the lights go out and stay out. So we’re entertaining three guests and cooking for six without running water and by candle light. Who says we’re not enterprising?!
I find that after you’ve been using candles for half an hour or so, your eyes adjust to the amount of light and you see things better. Cooking is not a problem; washing up is something else! We dine in style tonight; Tom has intended to do a shepherd’s pie, but we don’t have enough meat for six so we pad it out with our tomato base. I do a juicy coleslaw with raisins and a dash of curry powder; we have iced water to drink with a hint of orange, and finish off a batch of fruit salad. Our visitors are Beth, the FH intern, Christi, and Dawn, who is here on a short visit to FHI and will be returning to America on Thursday.
All the while we’re cooking the storm is raging outside. We have our first rain for over three weeks; very much needed, but in such quantities that it will flood and cause damage to crops. (I hope it fills my water tank at Cyeza school; what a pity the Gatenzi tank isn’t installed yet. On a roof the size of Gatenzi’s it would fill the tank in fifteen minutes!). The lightning is wonderful; it’s one of the rare times we have a proper tropical storm with continuous lightning. It is like a lightshow outside our windows, with flashes coming from many different sections of the sky. The entire atmosphere seems to be on fire. There’s rarely any lightning close enough to make us jump; it’s high level stuff up in the clouds, and it goes on and on until well after eleven o’clock.
The rain has been so heavy that Tom has to fetch and carry our guests in the FH pick-up truck, and just walking from our steps round to the front of the house is enough to get you properly wet.
During the conversation we talk about the craft co-operative out at Nsanga in Rugendabari secteur. This is going great guns. It’s a group of women weaving big, flat baskets (fruit bowl style); they’re really organised and enterprising to the point where they’ve just bought a plot of land from the government and are (by themselves) building a workshop to do their weaving in, and intending to use the rest of the ground to produce vegetables to sell. It’s the classic case of where you give people some money to get themselves set up and once they’ve tasted success they’re up and running and don’t need any more handouts. It’s just the kind of thing the government loves to publicise and dangle in front of the rest of the country as a carrot – “if these people can do this thing, then so can the rest of you”. FHI is doing some quite extraordinarily effective work with these women’s groups up-country.
When our guests leave we still have no electricity, and it’s time for bed. Just at that moment, while I’m in my pyjamas and with a candle to light me to bed, the electricity returns. It’s time to do the washing up, but with very little water you just can’t get things properly clean. Everything has a film of starchy muck on it.
Into bed and I sleep with the curtains open; the free light show is still flashing and banging until well into the night, and there is more heavy rain in the early hours. I’m so pleased that at least the flowers and shrubs, by now beginning to wilt and droop, will have been freshened up.
Worst thing about today – I hate being without water. I used to think power cuts were the worst privations here, but I’m learning that you can live without electricity. Not having water for washing, doing the dishes, and for the toilet – well, that’s an altogether lower level of deprivation. When I get back to England I’m going to turn on a tap and just stare at the endless supply of water coming through it!