Maxime and Giudi's wedding

Maxime and Giudi


Dancers....


Singers and drummers




Maxime's worried that his model on the cake looks a bit too "muzungu"-like!


All smiles!




With Kersti at the meal in "Republika"

Final postcards from Gisenyi

Sunset over the Congo - 1


sunset over the Congo - 2


April, my Australian colleague


Tropical lushness at Rubona


Afternoon sun on Kivu

Staring into my suitcase

November 26th

A quiet day today. In the morning there are a lot of letters to write, and I decide to work from home. We’re almost completely out of vegetables and most other food, what with me being away in Gisenyi and Tom up and down to the hospital to see J, so I go to the market and do a big shop-up. What I buy will probably last me until I leave.

I spend the rest of the morning cooking up an enormous batch of vegetable stew, which we can either liquidise for soup, or use as stock to make a base for other meals. From previous experience this system works well, and the cooking is child’s play with Tom’s pressure cooker.

By now its late morning. Soraya is preparing one of her final training sessions before she goes home. April is down at the internet café trying to download the latest iPod software to run on her new machine. She gets half way through when there’s a power cut and she loses the lot. Oh, the joys of going online in Rwanda…. I ring her and she comes round for lunch to sample my cooking.

I start dusting off my rucksack and suitcase; the real goal for today is to start packing, but as soon as I start I realise that there are too many days left before I go, and too many variables, to allow me to make a sensible job. I even think about trying to put all my stuff into two piles (take and leave), but there’s not enough floor space to do that. “Nakibazo”, as they say here, it will all fit in the case and I’ll set aside some time early next week. But with suitcase and rucksack on the floor, and a steadily growing pile of souvenirs by my bedside, it really feels like final days now.

In the afternoon I go to the internet café; power seems reliable and I’m able to get all my messages sent. Karen and Léonie come round to ask me to deal with a problem over mail – the women at the post office seem reluctant to give Karen a parcel which has arrived for her and we can’t put our padlock on the new outside mailbox until Becky comes back from Zanzibar. So tomorrow first thing I’ve got to go to the post office and sort things out.

Then in the evening Soraya and I are out to eat at Claude’s. (Our guard is smirking at me; Soraya is the fourth young woman to come round to my flat today….) There’s some catching up on news to do. Rwanda is starting to resume diplomatic relations with France after two years of bitter hostility; that will make a huge difference here. (But things will never reach their former level of closeness because of the country’s switch to English as its second language). The disturbance in the market yesterday was not over a fight, but to enable a meeting to be held, in the stadium, of all the market traders. All the licensed traders, more likely, because as far as we could see the vast majority of fringe traders were continuing to see as usual and steered well clear of the stadium. The market was closed and locked to prevent any thieving from unmanned stalls, and to force the registered traders to attend. Very Rwanda, that!


Claude fills us in on more details about the “Global Links” exchanges next year. There will be just three Rwandan teachers – Claude and two others yet to be determined – travelling to Scotland; dates yet to be fixed but at the end of May or beginning of June. There is a set budget for the exchanges, and Rwanda is penalised in its links with the north of Scotland because of the extra cost of having to travel from London up to Inverness. If Rwanda had been linked with, say, Essex or Dorset things would possibly have allowed another person to travel. And the Scottish delegation will be in Rwanda at the very end of March. They’ll be here for the last couple of days of the first term, but leave just before Genocide week.

Keza, Claude and Immaculée’s daughter, is growing up fast. She has plenty of teeth, is almost able to stand unaided, is vocalising well and has already learnt to say “papa”. She’s still amazingly well behaved but doesn’t miss a thing. Whatever is happening in the room, she follows it intently. And she’s a born mimic. If we clap or rub our hands, she does the same. If we blink our eyes at her, she blinks back. If we touch our noses, she touches hers. She’s going to be a very bright little thing. She’s much more wary of strangers than last time we saw her, and my glasses unsettle her. So we take pictures but she’s nervous about letting us cuddle her.

Claude’s illness on Tuesday turns out to have been a case of malaria. Now that’s worrying. Claude has lived for 32 years without ever needing to take time off work for illness. So why has he suddenly succumbed to malaria? Soraya and I immediately put it down to the stress of his new job – being the chief of education, health and good governance is a ridiculous workload and I think he is running himself into the ground. Even Claude admits that the job is too big to keep on top of, and that if he doesn’t keep up his major input into education, then Valérian won’t be able to cope with all the work on his own. It’s an untenable situation, but at least all the country’s directors are feeling the same pressure. The degree to which they’re getting stressed out will be down to the level of commitment they put into their work, I suppose. I wish Claude wouldn’t talk to often about finding another job, too – he’s absolutely on top of his game as education director and he’s exactly what Muhanga needs to run the system efficiently. I think our District is beginning to get a good name within Rwanda for being organised, and it would be a shame if Claude left and everything crumbled.

During the meal Claude says a very generous thank you to me for all the things I’ve done during the two years at Gitarama. He’s become a real friend, and I have no doubt that we’ll meet up again at some time in the future. Possibly he’ll come and stay a few days at the end of the Scottish visit in June.

Tomorrow there’s one of the big meetings of all headteachers and Claude wants me to talk to them and give them a summary of my “end of year report” which I wrote for the District. This is also the perfect opportunity to say farewell to all my friends, the headteachers of a hundred and fifty schools scattered among the mountains and valleys of the beautiful part of Africa. Things couldn’t have worked out better if we’d planned them years in advance!

After the meal Soraya and I walk through the empty streets back home – two miles on a cold, starlit night. There’s a ring round the moon, and you would never ever think you were living on the Equator. Soraya’s bundled up in layers of jerseys and a coat, and even I’m glad that we’re walking to keep warm!

Best thing about today – a chance to start thinking back over asll the things I’ve done during the past two years.

A glimpse into our local hospital

November 25th

A very busy day today. This may well have turned out to be my last “working day” in any normal sense of the word. Into the office well before seven. No sign of Claude or the modem. Valérian is there, and I have some files to put on his computer for him. There’s no other work to do; Soraya has a few trainings left but they tend to be at weekends and I can’t share them with her.

At the post office there are a couple of packets for April, one of which contains her new iPod to replace the one which was stolen just after she arrived. Not only that, but she can use the iPod for a lot of her audiology work, so it’s very much one of the tools of her trade and certainly not just an entertainment device.

And there’s more news from the post office. They have installed a new batch of outside post boxes, including ours. This means that we have to fit a lock to it, but when the lock is operational we can access our mail at any hour of day and night. I have a combination padlock on loan to Becky; that will be the ideal one to use. (With so many volunteers using the box, we can’t use keys and we will have to use a combination lock). I take the opportunity to say farewell to the post ladies and explain that Tom is taking over as the “titulaire” for the box. So BP146 will remain the muzungu mail address for the Gitarama gang, especially all the VSOs.

Next I go to the FHI office where I have some artefacts waiting to be picked up to use as presents back home. Tom’s there and I’m able to quickly check my emails on his laptop. In doing so I discover there’s a volunteer coming to Ngororero, the next district over from me in the West of Rwanda, and I’ll send her some info. She’s going to feel very isolated to begin with in Ngororero, and we will be her nearest fellow volunteers.

Back up through the town to one of the little clinics which have sprung up. Here comes the highpoint of my day. I deposit a little pot with a poo sample and wait a few minutes while they analyse it to see what manner of nasties I’m carrying inside me. I’ve convinced myself that I’m going to need deworming, or at least that I’ll have vestiges of amoebae crawling through my guts and multiplying.

To my considerable surprise the technician tells me that he can’t find any evidence of worms, or of amoebae. Apparently my bacteria count is high, but that’s nothing serious and it should adjust itself back to normal when I return home. So my immediate reaction is not one of relief, but rather of doubt – does he know what he’s looking for; has he been thorough? I think a bit more deeply and conclude that I’m just being irrational. He seems to have all the kit; I’ve explained to him exactly what I want him to check for and I’ve no reason to doubt his competence. Certainly it means that I can’t be badly infested with anything nasty or he’d have seen it.

A bit of shopping on the way back to the flat; then it’s about turn and off to Kigali. I’m not staying long in Kigali but I need to draw out money to finish the water tank at Nyarusange. Moira’s in on the project with me, too. I celebrate both getting the money and being “clean” with lunch at BCK, the first time since my family came out last summer. Club sandwich and “thé africain” – how’s that for fusion food? Kigali is hot and stuffy as usual and there’s a storm brewing. I get straight back home, all the way to Kabgayi to see J.

J is in the hospital at Kabgayi and will be there several more days. The details are not for a public blog, but she’s going to need all the support we can muster, and I’m cursing the fact that this has happened just when I’m about to leave. The timing couldn’t possibly be worse in so many ways. She’s become a very close friend and it really hurts to be on the point of leaving when a friend is damaged and needing support.

What depresses me further is how bleak the hospital is. Tom explains to me that they are desperately short of money – the volume of patients is so great, and the amount of funding they get to buy drugs and equipment is so low, that conditions are appalling. P has just come back from Uganda and apparently had to smuggle quantities of drugs into Rwanda just to keep the hospital going. They have used up all their credit with local pharmacies, who will no longer supply the hospital without cash up front. It’s a desperate situation. There’s no catering in the hospital; if you are an inpatient it is expected that your family will effectively camp at the place and bring a charcoal stove to cook all your meals. Doctors and nurses are in short supply, overworked, and can’t cope with complicated cases. For specialist care you have to transfer to the King Faisal hospital in Kigali, but that is very expensive and way beyond the means of almost any Rwandans. Honestly, before any English person reading this ever criticises our NHS again, they ought to come and spend a day at Kabgayi.

Back at the flat I write up some notes from yesterday’s Global Links meeting and I’m just about to go shopping when the heavens open and it pours for an hour. By then its dark and Tom’s home, soaked through.

All day long there has been trouble in the market. I don’t know what’s happening; perhaps there has been a major fight between stallholders. The police have weighed in and closed the market down, but all that means is that the women have set up stalls all along the side of the main road. They’re not going anywhere until they’ve sold their produce. It’s absolute chaos trying to get through the town. All late afternoon there seem to be gangs of men hanging around in groups; there’s lots of shouting and you get the feeling that it wouldn’t take much to start a riot. None of the tension is directed against muzungus and we’re safe unless we’re unlucky enough to get caught in crossfire, but it’s unsettling.

Because of this we decide to cook a meal from left overs, and as usual we dine in style. It’s my turn to cook tomorrow and by then I’m sure the market will be back to usual.

It’s been a busy day. Best thing – discovering that I’m in good health after two whole years of living in equatorial Africa and doing a lot of eating out.

Worst thing – J is in a desperate place both physically and psychologically. The physical side is short term; she will come home by the time I leave unless there are major complications. The emotional side is going to take years to heal and will need lots of love from everyone around her. Life in Rwanda is harsh; early deaths are common and if they threaten someone close to you it hits you like a thunderbolt. (Fortunately J seems to be getting stronger each day, but the sooner she’s out og Kabgayi and back home, the better).

November 24th

To anyone who has just discovered my blog it must seem that being a VSO is a sort of permanent paid holiday. Not so. It’s just that I’m at the very end of my placement; I’m also in the situation where it’s the school holidays, so I can’t visit schools, and all my office work has been completed. So I’m spending my time doing some travelling and saying my goodbyes to various people.

Today finds me waking up in the men’s dorm at the Presbyterian Guest House in Gisenyi. I’ve come up with April, an Australian VSO, to get away from Gitarama for a bit and to have a last look at Gisenyi before I leave. We had intended to go to Lake Ruhondo, an extravagantly beautiful lake hidden away in the hills of northern Rwanda. Unfortunately the only accommodation there is a church guest house, and this weekend it is closed to the general public because they are running a retreat until next Friday. So it’s Gisenyi for us, not that Gisenyi should ever be thought of as a second best choice. It’s one of my all-time favourite places in Rwanda.

We have spent a lazy Monday swimming in Lake Kivu, eating well and doing the sights. The Congo looks peaceful and affluent (appearances are so deceiving!), and watched a fabulous sunset over the Congolese side of the rift valley. Nyiragongo volcano is steaming well, and the red glow from its lava lake against the night time clouds is just as spectacular as ever. Lots of buildings in Gisenyi are being demolished and it feels as if they are planning major improvements. If only these would extend to the roads – dusty, sharp edged lava stones which tear your shoes to shreds.

All this has been rudely interrupted by a phone call from Claude past on Monday night. He’s not feeling well and there’s a big meeting tomorrow of the people involved in our Global Links project. He wants me to deputise for him, and to be at Gitarama for 9.30 on Tuesday morning. I have to explain that I’m up in Gisenyi; I’ll get back as quickly as I can but it will take me most of the morning. He agrees to that, but it means we have to leave Gisenyi on the first available bus and clatter back to Gitarama like a couple of naughty schoolchildren.

“Global Links” is a DFID and British Council supported programme (VSO are also heavily involved) which links schools in three countries. In our case there are three schools in Lilongwe, Malawi, three in Muhanga District in Gitarama, and three in the far north of Scotland (one in Nairn, one in Inverness and one on a Hebridean island). The plan is for the Scottish group to visit Rwanda in march, and the Rwandans to return the visit in the summer. The meeting is to see what progress has been made in establishing links so far, and to work through everybody’s expectations of how the links will operate and what they’re for. (This is crucial for the Rwandans; global links don’t work if there’s a donor-recipient relationship, with one country using the link as a vehicle to ask for financial aid all the time). There has to be equity in expectations. The problems lie with language, and the physical difficulties of communication. Gahogo primary, one of our three, still doesn’t have a laptop. It has electricity, but will not have a modem in the foreseeable future, so any internet linking will have to be done through one of the café’s in town.

The meeting goes right through until half past five. I’m unshaven, and wearing tee shirt and jeans – not exactly the formal wear which I’ve been so conscientious in trying to present myself throughout my placement. Claude comes in for the afternoon session; ill or not I’m as always impressed by his grasp of details and his speed of thinking. This guy is definitely going places.

Fortunately we are fed at lunchtime, because in the evening it is Charlotte’s last night before she flies home at the end of her service in Gitarama. We all pack into “Orion” and wait ages for brochettes from a waiter who behaves as if he’s a stand in come off the street. You want cutlery? – OK, I’ll bring cutlery for one. You want salt? OK, I’ll see if I can find some. You want serviettes? OK. I’ll see if there are any. And so on.

Our numbers are thinning rapidly. Moira back home for Christmas; also Christi. Charlotte finished and gone. Me about to go. Nathan going home soon. Becky on Zanzibar. Michael going home for Christmas on the same plane as me.

I’m glad I was able to take part in the Global Links day. Even though it won’t concern me – I’ll be long gone and finished before any visits take place – it’s nice to know what’s being planned. If only Inverness was not so far away from my part of Dorset (it must be about 900k; about as far away as you can get within the British isles) I might be able to help by giving the Scottish group some idea of what they can expect in Rwanda.

We’re also going to miss Charlotte. The clothes, the diet, the sense of fun, the couch surfers…. Lots of happy memories. VSO is such a transient experience – when you sign up you think that two years is a ridiculously long piece of your life to be committing to Africa. In reality it’s all far too short. And you seem to spend all your time either getting to know new arrivals, or saying farewells to friends you’ve just got to know.

Wedding in the time of umuganda

November 21st

Today is G’s wedding, and today’s blog gives you an insight into the fraught world of trying to plan anything in advance here in Rwanda.

G and M have been planning their wedding for months and months, and have all the arrangements in hand, all the bookings made. They are going to have the civil ceremony at the district office, followed by a reception in the grounds of St Paul centre in the middle of Kigali. Everything’s ready for the big day. Then, about three days before the wedding day, an official rings them to say that the government has decided there will be a complete shutdown on Saturday morning because it’s part of tree planting week, and that all public buildings must be closed for the morning. It’s too late to rearrange things, so they decide they’ll postpone the civil wedding until the office reopens after twelve, and the guests will just have to hang around a while before the reception starts. OK, here we’re used to “African time” and people would be content to wait a while. Next, a couple of hours before the wedding, they are rung again to say that the office staff have some function to go to in the afternoon, so the wedding will have to be at twelve sharp. By this time everyone needed for the wedding itself has been contacted to put them off until half past twelve, and because of the transport shut down they won’t be able to start making their way to the district office until after twelve, when public transport resumes and the police stop blockading all the roads in the town centre. So they say to the office staff they will stick with twelve thirty, and explain why. At twelve o’clock they are rung again by the office, demanding to know why aren’t they there, and saying that the officials are waiting for them and unless they get here immediately they’ll lose their slot for the wedding….. But eventually the ceremony happens at half past twelve. But not exactly the relaxed run up we would have wished them

Meanwhile, prompt on twelve, a massive rainstorm and thunder has broken out over Kigali, there is torrential rain and everybody is pinned down for two hours until the rain eases off. Nobody travels in heavy rain; it’s a perfectly acceptable excuse for lateness. Meanwhile the dancers have all arrived for the reception and are hanging around St Paul’s.

I’ve gone in to Kigali very early to beat the bus shutdown, but find myself with three hours and nothing to do until life resumes at twelve. Police are everywhere manning roadblocks and turning people away from the city centre. Even if you’re not actually planting trees (and I don’t see any being planted all day), they have orders to prevent normal life continuing in the capital. I have to walk all the way up from Nyabugogo to the town centre, which is a long, hot, sweaty distance, three kilometres, uphill all the way, on a sticky morning. I go to St Paul to see if I can book a room for the night, but the reception is closed, and stays closed for the entire day. I’ve decided St Paul’s is a waste of time if you try to get a room on a Saturday.

Fortunately I meet Eric, who has come up the night before and managed to get a room at St Paul’s, and we go to see a friend of his to pass the time until the shutdown ends. The friend is a woman living in one of the very poor areas of town. She has a five year old daughter, Joie. The woman’s home is tiny – two rented rooms, about ten feet by eight feet each. There is electricity but no water. There is almost no furniture and few possessions. The woman was about to move elsewhere, had all her possessions boxed up ready for the move – and was then robbed. Thieves took her mattress, clothes, even some of the little girl’s toys. All the houses in this part of Kigali are so on top of each other and so intertwined that it’s inconceivable that someone could carry off a mattress and not be seen. I think it must have been somebody local. So much for community solidarity. The destitute are robbing the poor.

We just get back to St Paul’s before the storm breaks, and shelter in the Economat – the supermarket and café attached to the big catholic church next door. While we’re sheltering we’re found by Nick who tells us the wedding reception is expected to start at 2.30. By now it’s already close to 2 and we know full well what it’ll be at least 3 before people venture out after the rain and get themselves in position for the reception. We both need to use an internet café, so we race up into the town centre, where everything has reopened and business proceeds as usual. So I find myself sending emails home two hours after I’m supposed to be at a wedding reception….

We get back to St Paul’s for three, and people are gathering. Catherine is a maid of honour, also Polly; both are in formal Rwandan robes. M’s family (Rwandans) are sitting to one side, a solid mass of people. We’re on G’s side, and the gathering is much thinner. There’s a handful of VSOs – Kersti, myself and Eric, Épi (who shared a house with G all last year) and G’s mum who has come all the way from Canada. It’s her first visit to Rwanda; she arrived here about six days before her daughter’s wedding.

The reception finally starts around four o’clock. And it’s wonderful. G looks stunning in a simple white dress with lots of gold decoration. M can’t keep the grin off his face the entire afternoon. They look absolutely right for each other, and I’m so pleased that everything seems to be coming right for them. The dancers are superb; the speeches mercifully short and most of them translated into English for us; we are fed very well indeed, and because most of this is happening in daylight we all get some good pictures. By the time we have cut the cake and given presents, though, it’s dark.

I still haven’t got anywhere to spend the night. The reception at St Paul’s has never opened. I had intended to get the last bus back to Gitarama, but by the time the reception has finished it’s too late. Fortunately Kersti and Nick come to my rescue, as usual, and offer me a bed at their place for the night. But meanwhile I’ve left my backpack safely locked away in Eric’s room, and he and Becky are off to Zanzibar early tomorrow morning. Things are getting complicated.

After the reception we gather up the wedding cakes, presents etc and pile everyone into two cars, and set off for the Serena Kigali hotel. Kersti, Nick and Catherine have clubbed together to book a room for the newlyweds on their wedding night. This particular wing of the hotel has only been open a fortnight, and the room is opulent beyond belief. Outside there is the heated swimming pool. Glass lifts swish up and down between the floors. The ground plan of their room is about the same size as the flat I share with Tom. The bed could easily sleep three or four people without being cramped. There are eight of us in the room and it doesn’t even feel remotely crowded.

The maids of honour change out of their robes into something more practical and we go round to Republika, one of the best restaurants in town. Here we have a really super buffet meal –so two big meals today in a very short time, and sit and chat until nearly midnight. Then it’s time for the bride and groom to leave; Nick and Kersti’s car is being used as the runabout to ferry people around the town. We also pile into the car for a second run and leave, the youngsters off to Cadillac to club the night away; the old stagers (i.e. the over 30s) back home to get some sleep.

It’s been a crazy, crazy day, but the wedding was lovely and despite all the interruptions – officialdom, rain, lack of transport etc – everything has gone to plan.

G and M will stay in Rwanda until next November, by which time we hope M will be given a Canadian visa. By next Christmas we hope they will be in Canada and that everything will go well for them.

The key to organising a major event such as a wedding in Rwanda is to allow lots of time between the various parts of the affair, to expect delays and last minute frustrations, and to be patient.

Human shuttlecock

November 18th

There’s still no word from Paulin as to whether the student teacher mentor training at Kavumu is taking place or not, so I have to assume it’s on. I get there, and I’m just walking up the steps to the staffroom, when I receive a message from Paulin saying the training has been postponed till January. So I won’t be involved in doing it after all. Well, I’m pleased I don’t have to hang around till ten o’clock this morning to discover there’s nothing to do here. I have a “plan B” for the day because I had a feeling this was going to happen.

So I go back on the bus to the town centre, and Gatete who is passing on his moto takes me for free up to the Akarere. He has some form to hand in there and get signed, so it’s not totally altruistic on his behalf, but it’s certainly a very nice gesture.

In the office I sort out some documents and get another blog, the final one of the Zanzibar holiday, ready to send. Meanwhile I’ve booked a ticket to Kigali on the ten o’clock bus, and off I go.

On the way, as we leave Gitarama, I notice there seem to be a lot more traffic police about than usual. Then, some way further on, there seem to be an unusually large number of people waiting at the road side. We just get round a sharp bend and onto a relatively straight stretch of road when the police pull us over, and suddenly there’s loads of motor bikes and sirens and flashing lights. It’s the “Tour De Rwanda” cycle race again, and from the raised seats in the bus we all get a grandstand view. There must some sixty riders, many of whom are muzungus. (I’m later told that many international professional cyclists are using the Rwanda tour as a training ground ready for the Tour de France and other better known events). As happened last year, I don’t have my camera with me, so I don’t take any pictures. However, unknown to me Soraya is also on her way to Kigali in the previous bus; she is better organised than I am and takes some pictures which I’m posting for you.

So it’s an exciting run in to Kigali today. At the VSO office I return DVDs and books, and give Charlotte the l.ist of furniture and other equipment VSO needs to arrange to pick up from Tom’s flat when I’ve gone. That’s another two boxes ticked off on my pre-departure list!

There are several other volunteers in the office, some, like Els, are getting ready to go to Zanzibar as their end of service holiday; others are just working. I meet up with Eric and we go together to the Ministry of Justice to hand in our papers for police clearance. For once the office isn’t too busy, and they tell us to come back later in the afternoon. Now that’s a turn up for the books – to get any official document the same day is most unusual!

For the rest of the middle of the day I post blogs, check emails and generally do boring things. I send my ideas for the mentor training to both Paulin and Moira, hoping they might be able to improve on it and adapt it for their January training day. At least they’ll have a starting point to knock around!

Having picked up my police clearance documents in the afternoon I head into the town centre. It’s been threatening to rain heavily all day; it comes on a few drops and everyone runs for cover, but then the sun comes out again and normal life resumes. My purpose in the town centre is to change a large amount of money for a third water tank, this time at Nyarusange School. Time is running out for me and I need to move quickly. When I leave the forex I have nearly 2 million francs in my bag, and I feel vulnerable. I had it in mind to do some shopping, but decide with all this money I’d better get back home as fast as possible. So it’s back to Gitarama on the next bus.

Back home I recount the money and stash it away. The situation is complicated. The tank will cost 2.67 million francs. I have told the school that we will provide 2.5 million, and the head has pledged to get his parents to find the extra 167000 francs (no easy task in a poverty stricken secteur, but at least if they have had to stump up some of the money they will feel more of an ownership of the tank and my plan is that ownership will make them look after it). Then Moira has some money left from her community in Bray which she will contribute, but I don’t know how much. It’s certainly less than the 600000 francs the project still needs. So I’m going to have to send her an email and find out how much she’s putting in. What a shame she’s had to go back home just at this time.

I think the best thing will be for me to draw out all the remaining 600000 so that I know that all the project money is in the school’s bank account before I leave, and sort out the Irish contribution privately with Moira. That’ll make for a lot of emails flying around, but I’m up against a deadline of two weeks’ time and there are many other things to get done between now and then. I’ll be in Kigali for Giudi’s wedding on Saturday so I hope I can draw the rest of the money providing the banks are open.

In a further complication to life it seems that somebody has decided to make umuganda this coming Saturday to align it with national tree planting week. I’m not doing a blog entry for November 17th, but on that day all the district office staff, including Claude, were sporting natty teeshirts and off to plant trees in Shyogwe. Why Shyogwe? – easy to answer – the illegal brick making that’s been going on there has resulted in large-scale felling of trees without the authorities’ permission, and the damage is being put right to teach everyone a lesson (and stop any erosion that hasn’t already taken place). Claude’s name is prominent in today’s “New Times” with a picture of somebody’s backside as they bend over to plant saplings. According to the government everyone in the country is supposed to plant three trees this week – that’s up to 30 million trees.

So umuganda this Saturday will pose problems for me – not only might the bank not be open, but also we might have trouble getting to Kigali for the wedding. I think we’ll have to leave Gitarama really early – before eight o’clock – to be sure of arriving. It just shows that even when you think you’ve got everything here planned down to the last detail, someone in Government changes everything to suit their political agenda and everyone is thrown into confusion.

In the evening we all go round to Becky’s. Not only is it April’s birthday but it’s also Becky’s big day. The girls have made us a feast with “chapizzas” – pizza toppings on a chapatti base – and very nice they are too. Tom’s brought fresh bread from Kigali and I come with a whole cheese and biscuits to go with it. The evening is livened up with power cuts, but that helps when Becky has to blow out her candles. Sneaky Christi has put two of the re-igniting ones in with the others and by the time Becky has finally blown them all out the candle is almost down to cake level!

The original idea was to show a film, but what with power cuts, Piet being very late arriving with the digital projector because he’s had another series of days with 30 eye procedures per day (how on earth does he manage to keep that up?), and many of us are really tired and feeling the strain at the moment. So we play silly games like “Humdinger” and set off home relatively early.

It’s been another good day overall, and for any potential VSO reading this it’s a classic example of how you always have to have a “plan B” for the day and just shrug and get on with the alternatives when your intended programme falls apart.

Best thing about today – getting police clearance done in one day.

Preventable hospital infections

I've been asked to publicise this website giving information about how to prevent hospital based infections such as MRSA. I take no responsibility for the contents of the site, but it seems a worthy cause.
Follow this link:
http://haiwatchnews.com

The "Tour de Rwanda"

Soraya's pictures snatched through the windows of the bus en route to Kigali

Bikes and chapizzas

November 18th

There’s still no word from Paulin as to whether the student teacher mentor training at Kavumu is taking place or not, so I have to assume it’s on. I get there, and I’m just walking up the steps to the staffroom, when I receive a message from Paulin saying the training has been postponed till January. So I won’t be involved in doing it after all. Well, I’m pleased I don’t have to hang around till ten o’clock this morning to discover there’s nothing to do here. I have a “plan B” for the day because I had a feeling this was going to happen.

So I go back on the bus to the town centre, and Gatete who is passing on his moto takes me for free up to the Akarere. He has some form to hand in there and get signed, so it’s not totally altruistic on his behalf, but it’s certainly a very nice gesture.

In the office I sort out some documents and get another blog, the final one of the Zanzibar holiday, ready to send. Meanwhile I’ve booked a ticket to Kigali on the ten o’clock bus, and off I go.

On the way, as we leave Gitarama, I notice there seem to be a lot more traffic police about than usual. Then, some way further on, there seem to be an unusually large number of people waiting at the road side. We just get round a sharp bend and onto a relatively straight stretch of road when the police pull us over, and suddenly there’s loads of motor bikes and sirens and flashing lights. It’s the “Tour De Rwanda” cycle race again, and from the raised seats in the bus we all get a grandstand view. There must some sixty riders, many of whom are muzungus. (I’m later told that many international professional cyclists are using the Rwanda tour as a training ground ready for the Tour de France and other better known events). As happened last year, I don’t have my camera with me, so I don’t take any pictures. However, unknown to me Soraya is also on her way to Kigali in the previous bus; she is better organised than I am and takes some pictures which I’m posting for you.

So it’s an exciting run in to Kigali today. At the VSO office I return DVDs and books, and give Charlotte the l.ist of furniture and other equipment VSO needs to arrange to pick up from Tom’s flat when I’ve gone. That’s another two boxes ticked off on my pre-departure list!

There are several other volunteers in the office, some, like Els, are getting ready to go to Zanzibar as their end of service holiday; others are just working. I meet up with Eric and we go together to the Ministry of Justice to hand in our papers for police clearance. For once the office isn’t too busy, and they tell us to come back later in the afternoon. Now that’s a turn up for the books – to get any official document the same day is most unusual!

For the rest of the middle of the day I post blogs, check emails and generally do boring things. I send my ideas for the mentor training to both Paulin and Moira, hoping they might be able to improve on it and adapt it for their January training day. At least they’ll have a starting point to knock around!

Having picked up my police clearance documents in the afternoon I head into the town centre. It’s been threatening to rain heavily all day; it comes on a few drops and everyone runs for cover, but then the sun comes out again and normal life resumes. My purpose in the town centre is to change a large amount of money for a third water tank, this time at Nyarusange School. Time is running out for me and I need to move quickly. When I leave the forex I have nearly 2 million francs in my bag, and I feel vulnerable. I had it in mind to do some shopping, but decide with all this money I’d better get back home as fast as possible. So it’s back to Gitarama on the next bus.

Back home I recount the money and stash it away. The situation is complicated. The tank will cost 2.67 million francs. I have told the school that we will provide 2.5 million, and the head has pledged to get his parents to find the extra 167000 francs (no easy task in a poverty stricken secteur, but at least if they have had to stump up some of the money they will feel more of an ownership of the tank and my plan is that ownership will make them look after it). Then Moira has some money left from her community in Bray which she will contribute, but I don’t know how much. It’s certainly less than the 600000 francs the project still needs. So I’m going to have to send her an email and find out how much she’s putting in. What a shame she’s had to go back home just at this time.

I think the best thing will be for me to draw out all the remaining 600000 so that I know that all the project money is in the school’s bank account before I leave, and sort out the Irish contribution privately with Moira. That’ll make for a lot of emails flying around, but I’m up against a deadline of two weeks’ time and there are many other things to get done between now and then. I’ll be in Kigali for Giudi’s wedding on Saturday so I hope I can draw the rest of the money providing the banks are open.

In a further complication to life it seems that somebody has decided to make umuganda this coming Saturday to align it with national tree planting week. I’m not doing a blog entry for November 17th, but on that day all the district office staff, including Claude, were sporting natty teeshirts and off to plant trees in Shyogwe. Why Shyogwe? – easy to answer – the illegal brick making that’s been going on there has resulted in large-scale felling of trees without the authorities’ permission, and the damage is being put right to teach everyone a lesson (and stop any erosion that hasn’t already taken place). Claude’s name is prominent in today’s “New Times” with a picture of somebody’s backside as they bend over to plant saplings. According to the government everyone in the country is supposed to plant three trees this week – that’s up to 30 million trees.

So umuganda this Saturday will pose problems for me – not only might the bank not be open, but also we might have trouble getting to Kigali for the wedding. I think we’ll have to leave Gitarama really early – before eight o’clock – to be sure of arriving. It just shows that even when you think you’ve got everything here planned down to the last detail, someone in Government changes everything to suit their political agenda and everyone is thrown into confusion.

In the evening we all go round to Becky’s. Not only is it April’s birthday but it’s also Becky’s big day. The girls have made us a feast with “chapizzas” – pizza toppings on a chapatti base – and very nice they are too. Tom’s brought fresh bread from Kigali and I come with a whole cheese and biscuits to go with it. The evening is livened up with power cuts, but that helps when Becky has to blow out her candles. Sneaky Christi has put two of the re-igniting ones in with the others and by the time Becky has finally blown them all out the candle is almost down to cake level!

The original idea was to show a film, but what with power cuts, Piet being very late arriving with the digital projector because he’s had another series of days with 30 eye procedures per day (how on earth does he manage to keep that up?), and many of us are really tired and feeling the strain at the moment. So we play silly games like “Humdinger” and set off home relatively early.

It’s been another good day overall, and for any potential VSO reading this it’s a classic example of how you always have to have a “plan B” for the day and just shrug and get on with the alternatives when your intended programme falls apart.

Best thing about today – getting police clearance done in one day.

Reliving Zanzibar through writing

November 15th

I’m up early and get stuck into writing up my Zanzibar blogs. Not going to church today; there’s too much to do at the flat. Each day’s write up is like a small essay; even with notes I made during the trip it seems to take forever to explain all the things we saw and did. When you’re travelling you live life much more intensely than back at home, and when you’re writing for people who were not there with you it is even harder; you have to put everything in context and explain the background.

Tom was really ill last night; didn’t properly get off to sleep to 4 and not awake again till mid day, so it’s very much a “morning after the night before” scenario.

April comes round in the afternoon with our dishes which we left at her place yesterday. We chat about possibly going down to Bujumbura next week – she is at a loose end and if I can get all my final chores done I’ll have some days free. Failing that we might go up to Lake Burera which is one of the places I really regret not visiting yet in Rwanda.

I go to try to send some emails and post some blogs, but everywhere is closed – unusual because Sunday afternoon is usually a busy time for them.

At the muzungu meal there are only seven of us, yet it still takes the best part of two hours to get served. I really can’t understand why everything seems to take so long. I order goat stew (kumumdera); it turns out they don’t have that so I get a cow brochette instead with no explanation. We’re all fed up with the waiting. Next week Charlotte will have gone, then it’ll be my final weekend, so the numbers are dwindling fast.

Back to the flat and try to catch up on some more writing before bed. I’m also listening to some of the music from Helen’s iPod. Stuff which I should have listened to years ago but somehow never made the time – Portishead; Ben Harper and an outfit I’ve never heard of called Badila. Some I like, some I don’t, but I’m never going to get another chance to access to so much music.

Best thing about today – reliving our Zanzibar trip as I write it up. It’s like going there all over again.

April and Helen's party

November 14th

A very lazy Saturday today. Tom gives me a bunch of DVDs from home including a whole series of Torchwood and a three part Doctor Who mini-saga. I start the day with all sorts of expectations of writing up the Zanzibar trip, but in the end I spend most of the day watching videos – and feel much more relaxed at the end of it! There’s something about Doctor Who which is quintessentially English, and I think Russell T Davies’s imagination and the gee whiz special effects are unbeatable.

I also spend a long time sorting through papers in the flat, making a pile of stuff to go to VSO office in Kigali and others to go to the District Office to wait for Ken to arrive. I’m almost at the point where I could start stuffing things into my suitcase and it’s nice to feel on top of events. If I can carry on like this I’ll have a couple of days when I could do some more visits before I leave Rwanda.

This evening is April and Helen’s party. We have to bring pot luck food and dress in bad taste. The latter is relatively straightforward. My shorts are droopy where I’ve lost so much weight. If I wear socks with sandals and pull them half way up my legs it will look spectacularly bad taste. I find my most “square” shirt to complete the outfit with my baseball cap. I suppose I look like an elderly rap star on a (very) bad night, but it’ll do. Tom wears his USA shirt, saying that to many people America is the height of bad taste. A bit of a cop out in my book!

We make separate forays out to buy ingredients for our food offerings. Tom makes a juicy salsa and mini bread pizzas. I experiment. We have a tin of condensed milk lurking in our cupboard, close to its “best by” date. There’s a recipe in my VSO cookbook for banoffee pie, and that’s what I make. The worst part is that I have to boil the milk, in its tin, for two hours to convert it into toffee. But (I’m really bragging here) the final result is wonderful. I had no idea that banoffee pie would be so easy to make.

We meet Soraya and Léonie just as we’re setting off, and Nathan too, and we descend on the girls’ house. Most of Helen and April’s batch of volunteers have come, as well as established friends like Ruairi and Martine. The French and Irish contingent leave after a while to watch the football (France beats Ireland, much to the chagrin of the emerald volunteers). We dance away the night. By the end of the party Tom is plastered and dancing with April and most of the food has gone.

We lurch unsteadily on foot through the lanes up to the main road at well past one in the morning. All the moto drivers have gone home, but at the plateau there’s somebody washing a car – in the middle of the night! It’s been a great party.

Oh dear - back into the real world at last!

November 13th

Into the office fairly early, but I miss Claude and with him I miss the internet modem. I spend the morning writing up my final placement report for VSO. This is the last of the formal documents I need to produce. When its done all that remains is some procedural stuff like getting police clearance and personal stuff like buying last minute souvenirs.

By late morning I’ve written emails to all sorts of people and been to the internet café in town to do all my business there. Unfortunately there are a couple of messages I don’t have time to deal with; they can wait till Monday.

In the afternoon I work at the flat and one of the things I do is try to plan for next week. If all goes well I can most of my remaining business done by the weekend; that’ll give me a relaxed final week to say my goodbyes to people.

In the evening we cook and watch videos. For once we decide not to go out for Friday night because there’s a big party tomorrow. Tom’s tired from work and I’m still getting over the Zanzibar trip. My stomach is still delicate; I don’t think I’ve got a bug, it’s just that three days of virtually constant travel and meals at funny times are catching up with me.

In which we spend our second day on a bus

November 12th

So now we’re sitting in the coach through our second dawn. The road seems endless. Outside the scenery is getting greener and hillier as we approach the Rwandan frontier. Armed soldiers stop us and hitch a ride to their duty post somewhere close to the border. Crops are being planted and in some places early planting are already sprouting in flushes of green. Life continues; there will be a good harvest in a few months. It’s a marked contrast to the landscape deep within Tanzania where, despite all the rain and standing water, the land still looks parched and unproductive. I’m so fortunate to have spent my two years in a place as green and fertile as Rwanda. We’re finished with baobabs now, we’re beyond the donkey carts.

In the bus they crank up the music to a ridiculously loud level. After a while the driver puts on a compilation of Congolese stuff and lets it cycle through about three times; at least I like the music even if the volume is almost painful. We ask them to turn it down, but after a few seconds somebody else decides to turn it up. We don’t want to get into a game where they can feel they’re baiting us or controlling us, so we endure it for a while and then look for clothes to stuff in front of the loudspeakers in the rear of the bus. At that point they turn the volume down a fraction and keep it down.

The floor of the bus is rolling in litter; there are no bins so everybody either throws their rubbish out of the window or onto the floor. At the last stop before the border a lad comes onto the bus selling peanuts; they’re just off the oven and almost too hot to hold. We stuff ourselves silly with them for about 50p a time!

As we get within a few miles of the border the land becomes seriously hilly. Our bus labours up the hills in low gear, then charges down the other side. It’s all a marked contrast to the flat, hell-for-leather progress of yesterday evening. The downhill sections right on the border are notoriously dangerous and many, many lorries have come to grief here. Drivers overtired and waiting to rest at the border have frequently misjudged these hills, and simply run off the road wherever there are bends. There are rumble strips everywhere and graphic signs warning everyone to slow down.

At Rusomo our personal formalities are done very quickly (after all, the bus is only half full), but we have to wait more than two hours for the coach to come through. I know the luggage compartments are probably stuffed with sacks of rice etc, but it still seems an inordinately long time. If people want to increase trade and promote free movement of people and goods within the East African community they’re going to have to speed up the bureaucracy at these frontiers. I think of the borders within Benelux countries which are usually unmanned; you just drive through without stopping…

We drink tea, fill our stomachs with heavy pancakes and wait, and wait. The waterfall is even better than on the outbound trip; Rwanda has had a lot of rain while we’ve been away. But nothing can hide the feeling of depression as we leave the relaxed atmosphere of Tanzania and enter the more opaque ambiance of Rwanda. Within seconds of crossing the bridge we’ve had “muzungu” yelled at us and been asked for money.

Eventually we embark and move on. The speed limits in Rwanda are enforced rigorously and the driver is taking no chances, so our progress back towards Kigali is sedate, to put it mildly. We pass Épi’s house at Kibungo; the easiest thing would be for her to get out here but we tried to contact Jeannot in Kigali and we don’t know if he’ll be waiting for her there, so we decide to carry on in the bus.

By the time we reach Nyabugogo we’ve been on the road for 35 hours – easily the longest bus journey I’ve ever made. It’s not been physically difficult – even in the ordinary seats there’s plenty of legroom. The stops every four hours or so mean you never get seriously uncomfortable. The secret with eating and drinking is to have plenty of water and sip frequently rather than swig masses at any one time. Eating also is better if done little and often, but in truth if you’re not exercising and in tropical; heat you don’t need to eat lots. The worst problem is toileting, especially during long segments between stops or where the toilets are so disgusting as to be unusable. People simply disappear into the nearest bush, and if there’s an emergency the bus will usually stop for you; it’s just a case of having to have the nerve to go and tell the driver you need to stop NOW!

I get the first bus back to Gitarama. Tom’s already at the flat and very surprised to see me; my phone battery has gone flat and I’m also out of credit so I haven’t been able to warn him I’m coming home. The evening I spend unpacking my festering kit and generally getting sorted out. I download my photos and find I have some really nice ones; tomorrow I’ll get Soraya’s and exchange with mine and between us we’ll have around 400 pictures of this adventure.

Despite all the dozing on the bus I find I’m tired and I sleep well, but my stomach is very unsettled and I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to do tomorrow. Irregular meal times seem to wreak havoc with my system!

In which we start a thirty five hour bus journey

Wednesday November 11th

I’m woken up by the night watchman at half past four and I’m showered and ready before five o’clock – before even the morning call to prayer has sounded over the sleeping city. The morning is cool, a few puffy clouds dot the sky but even in the middle of Dar you can see a skyful of stars. When the girls are ready we get a taxi out to Ubungo bus terminal. In the city centre the roads are almost deserted, but even in the ten minutes or so that we take to get to Ubunbo the place comes alive. By the time we arrive dawn has well and truly broken, the matatas are jostling each other up and down the road, and Ubungo is a heaving mass of peop[le, cars, taxis and muses.

For some reason known only to Tanzanians they have arranged that just about every long distance bus leaves at the same time – six o’clock in the morning. So whether you’re going to Mtwara in the far south, to Mbeya near Lake Nyasa, to Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika or in our case to Kiugali, everyone is trying to find their bus. Even sores, just before six all the buses try to pull away to get ahead of the queue, then wait, blocking the exit, for their final passengers to arrive. The result is mayhem – even the local bus terminal in Kampala is orderly compared to this shambles. Instead of a six o’clock departure it is well after half past six before we’ve travelled the few hundred yards out of the terminal and onto the main road. The dual carriageway is blocked by traffic trying to get in and out of the bus terminal. Everyone seems convinced that if they just edge that bit close to each other they’ll be able to spot a gap and get through. Everything is assertiveness and testosterone fuelled. The result is gridlock. Of course there’s not a policeman in sight, and where are traffic lights when you need them? Not here, that’s for sure.

We have ordinary seats on the bus. The legroom is adequate (just); it’s a lot more generous than you get on a charter flight but will be a tough call for a very long journey. Let’s hope there are the same numbers of leg stretching stops as on the outward run. We can’t see very much out of the windows, and the scenery on this first leg of the journey isn’t anything to write home about, so we doze all the way to Morogoro. Here there isn’t time to get out of the bus. We fill up with extra passengers so that every seat is taken. We buy rolex omelettes in foil boxes through the bus window and eat out first meal of the day at about ten in the morning.

Four hours later we arrive at Dodoma; this time we have a half hour stop and get some exercise. We buy more food; by the time we leave we realise that two greasy omelettes in one morning isn’t such a great idea and my stomach keeps reminding me of the fact for the rest of the journey home.

This time we are able to see something of Dodoma. The new government buildings are suitably impressive, but the town feels very spaced out and the kind of place you’d need a car to be able to live in. I wonder how many of the people who are forced to live and work here can afford to run a car?

As we leave Dodoma the sky clouds over. It is cool – excellent for us on our journey. All the passengers are either dozing or glued to the Nigerian soaps on TV. We pass the same blocky mountains again as on our outward trip (well, they wouldn’t have run away, would they), and pass from them to the dry savannah. Soon we blow a tyre in the middle of the bush and lose another half hour while the crew change it. With the slow departure from Ubungo we’re now a good hour behind schedule.

Eventually we reach the long stretch of earth road between Dodoma and Singida. By now it is raining intermittently, and there are large pools of water over the countryside, evidence of heavy rain in the past few days. (We later learn that the drought has broken here with a vengeance; while we are on the bus there is a major landslide up in the far north of the country with an entire hillside giving way under the weight of rain soaked earth, and lots of casualties). The earth road becomes slippery and treacherous to drive on; the bus slows to jogging pace, sliding and slaloming from one side of the carriageway to the other. It is difficult to hold a line and steer accurately, and we have some close brushes with articulated lorries coming the other way. At one point a huge wagon lies completely on its side. Goodness knows how anyone’s going to get it back up again. The ground is like porridge. In places there are shallow lakes and we begin to understand why on the outward journey we crossed bridges and culverts where there seemed to be no evidence of running water anywhere around.

Late in the afternoon we reach Singida. By now we’re all jaded with the journey; Tanzania is losing its appeal and we all just want to get home. People leave the bus, others join. After Singida we have more heavy rain, but at least we are on a proper road.

During this journey I have been sitting next to a middle aged Tanzanian who speaks good English (he’s reading an English novel). He’s on his first visit to Rwanda but is buying all sorts of things through the bus window at every opportunity. Sandals, a walking stick, a big flagon of cooking oil, a woven basket to put everything in. His main concern is whether the puddles of rainwater we’re ploughing through will have seeped into the coach’s luggage compartment and ruined the clothes in his suitcase. Other people are coming on board wish massive sacks of rice. These get laid out along the gangway like a carpet. Tanzanian rice is much cheaper than in Rwanda (a lot of our rice comes from Tanz) and people are stocking up on cheaper items like oil, rice and similar before we cross the border. So many people have disembarked by this time that the bus is only half full, and to my joy I see that the entire back seat is empty. I can lie down along it, raise my feet and try to sleep.

Unfortunately the driver uses the next stretch of road, and the night-time lack of policemen, to try to catch up on his schedule. We race along the road at full speed. We have to slow down for the big speed bumps, but the driver just ignores the smaller ones. That’s OK for the folk in front of the bus, but the bounce effect is magnified the further back you are sitting. I’m at the extreme rear. Every time we go over one of these bumps I get catapulted into the air and land with a jolt back onto the uneven seat. It’s exciting for a while but means I don’t get properly off to sleep.

Somewhere, perhaps at Nzega, we stop for a longer break. It’s still raining heavily outside, so there’s no point in getting off. I make myself as comfortable as I can on my back seat and try to snatch a few hours dozing. In Dar es Salaam I’ve torn out a small map of the country from a tourist magazine. We have been travelling for eighteen hours already, and we’re still a long way from the border at Rusumo.

Best thing about today – I always enjoy travelling because I like to watch the changing scenery. But this particular journey is something of an ordeal. It’s not that it has been uncomfortable, far from it – I’ve had worse experiences on far shorter plane journeys – but we’re tired and rather deflated after our precipitous exit from Zanzibar, and all we want to do is be back in Rwanda.

Pictures for November 10th

Four dubious characters seen hanging around in Stone Town...


Typical Zanzibari menu.


The Kendwa beach guest houses seen from sea.


Last look at the sea at Kendwa.

In which we find ourselves catapulted back to the mainland faster than expected…

November 10th

Yet another dawn swim; and our final indolent breakfast on the beach. The weather is different today; the sky is overcast and threatening and there’s a gusty wind. The waves are too big to make swimming easy. We think there’s probably going to be rain before mid day. The girls are having a lie in; Épi had a bad night with mosquitoes; Soraya is peeling all over her shoulders from where she caught the sun on the cycle ride. On the other hand, keeping our hut door wide open gave me enough ventilation and the best night’s sleep for days. (I’d set a booby trap in the shadows of the doorway just in case someone was tempted to try to steal from us during the night. In the event it was me, of course, who knocked the stuff over with a large clatter as I stumbled out of bed in the morning). Good job it didn’t wake the girls!

Épi and Soraya are desperate to come back to Zanzibar next year; I wonder if there’s a possibility that Tina might be back in Rwanda and able to travel with them? We put off leaving until the very last minute; Simon the patron owes Épi some change and we have to virtually twist his arm behind his back to get it before we finally say our farewells.

Leaving our departure till mid morning turns out not to have been our best move. The rain clouds have moved on and the sun is at full strength. Épi’s foot is still giving her trouble and she isn’t really up to a long walk with full pack up to the bus stop on the main road. On the other hand the prices being asked for taxi rides back to Stone Town are just crazy. So we compromise. One of the taxis is keen to get back to Stone Town and we make a deal with him to take us just up to the daladala stop. So for one mile we ride in armchairs, in air conditioned luxury, with tinted windows. We all gain; the money we give will certainly pay for petrol for their journey to Stone Town, and we’ve avoided a real slog to the main road.

Our luck is in and there’s a daladala waiting for us at the stop. It’s not too overcrowded but has an unusually low roof. I have difficulty in positioning myself so that I’m not constantly banging my head against the ceiling. There are two teenage Muslim girls sitting next to me and opposite me; they are in fits as I continually get bumped up and down against the ceiling. We have the usual variety of passengers and baggage; women going to market; tradesmen clattering their tools in the middle of the gangway as they take a ride to their next call out; mothers with crying babies.

We arrive at Creek Road bus station in the hottest part of the day and make straight for Flamingo Hotel. We’ve booked rooms there and the plan is to go souvenir shopping this afternoon and tomorrow morning before catching the 1230 ferry back to Dar es Salaam.

I take a cold shower, do some laundry ready for the journey home, and get changed. We ring the bus company just to check seats and times for our departure from Dar on Thursday. PANIC! We are told that we have been misinformed; the buses to Kigali leave on Wednesdays and Saturdays. This throws us. Do we have time to get back to the mainland today and catch the bus at 0600 tomorrow, or will we have to stay on the island till Saturday’s departure? We have a hurried discussion. We’d prefer not to have to wait until Saturday. But getting off the island today means we have to find another ferry back to Dar, find a hotel room for the night, and book and pay for seats on Wednesday’s bus. If any of these arrangements falls down, we’re stuck till the weekend.
By now it’s two o’clock. We leave Épi in the hotel room and Soraya and I quick march to the ferry terminal. Here we find that there are three different ferry companies operating to Dar. The night boat doesn’t get in till 0600 and is therefore too late to connect with our bus. The only chance of getting back is to catch the fast ferry leaving in around one hour’s time. I have to buy new tickets for all of us. (That gives us an extra problem in that we’ll have to try to get refunds on our original return tickets at Dar, but if the ferry booking office closes early then we’ve had it…)

We race back to the hotel, pack our things, and explain our predicament to Alif, the manager. Predeictably, in the urgency and confusion I take several wrong turns and by the time I make it back to our room we only have a bare 30 minutes before the ferry is due to leave. Worse than that, I have soaking wet washing to pack into my rucksack.To our amazement he doesn’t bat an eyelid, and doesn’t ask for any payment for the room we’ve occupied for a couple of hours! We’re about to discover more of the kindness of strangers, too.

We catch a taxi to the harbour, fuming at all the delays and hold ups in Creek Road’s chaotic traffic; the actual entrance is blocked off because another ferry has just docked and the entire place is streaming with passengers and papasi. We barge into the ferry terminal and heave a sigh of relief when we see that our boat hasn’t even started boarding yet. We have the emigration formalities to complete, and eventually take our seats in a very old catamaran. Fortunately we leave slightly late. At least we have resolved the first problem, that of getting back to Dar es Salaam today.

The ferry is very fast, very bumpy, and nowhere near as pleasant as the outbound one. (So to any VSOs reading this, it really definitely is best to get the slower ferry). When we reach Dar we make a beeline for the “Flying Horse” ferry office to get our refunds. Joy of joys, it is still open – just! Our friend Bashir is on the point of closing for the day. He remembers us and waves us into his little office. He’s wearing a neck brace where he’s damaged his neck from spending all day being stooped in front of a computer or a ticket sales window. He couldn’t have been more helpful if he tried. This man is truly a friend to us. We get a full refund without anything being deducted for his administration time. On a whim I ask him if he can ring the bus company and confirm our seats for tomorrow morning – he does so, even though it involves at least three separate phone calls.

“Where are you staying tonight?” he asks (a man from the bus company, Salim, will be bringing our tickets round to us later in the evening and will require payment; we need to tell him where we’re staying so he can find us). We say to Bashir that we’re staying at the Holiday Hotel – we aren’t; we haven’t got as far as making a booking. There didn’t seem to be any point until we knew we’d be able to get to Dar. And on top of everything else my phone battery has died, and I’ve got the only phone between us. Stressy or what?!

Bashir insists on driving us to the hotel; we wait a few minutes while he locks his office (involving three padlocks and a massive, heavy, steel security door), and duly drops us off at the hotel.

Again, if any VSO is reading this and intending to travel to Zanzibar by ferry, please patronise “Flying Horse” and give our greetings to Bashir. I think he’s going to remember us for a while!

Dar es Salaam is experiencing a city wide power cut; the entire hotel is in darkness and they’re fiddling around for ages trying to get their emergency generator working. They’ve closed the security gate at the main entrance, which in itself is up two flights of stairs over shops. It’s not the most auspicious welcome to a hotel but in our nerve-jangling state it’s enough for us that we have rooms for the night.

So far so good – fery back to Dar, refunds on original tickets, and hotel room found. All we need now is to have the bus tickets in our hands and we can relax. We go out for a meal (“Jambo Hotel” again, because we know the food is good and it’s close to our hotel). I have to leave messages with the Holiday hotel staff in case Salim comes to find us while we’re eating. He doesn’t. The girls are tired and take themselves off to bed; I decide to have another shower. Why hasn’t Salim come with our tickets – after all our luck this afternoon are we going to be bounced off the bus at the last minute?

While I’m actually in the shower there a lot of banging on my room door opposite; Salim certainly chooses his times to arrive! He has come up trumps; we have three tickets all in a line together on the bus. I have to wake up the girls to pay him, but we are happy now that the last main piece in our jigsaw has fallen into place. We have arranged wake up calls with the hotel, and asked them to find us a taxi for half past five in the morning to take us to the airport.

We can’t believe that this is still the same day that saw us start with a dawn swim, east breakfast on a paradise beach, and laze away the morning back at Kendwa.

On the other hand, it shows how experienced we’re getting as travellers and as “Africa hands” that we can take the initiative and change plans so effectively. I think in situations like this you make your own luck, but I want to salute three good people – Alif, Bashir and Salim – who went out of their way to accommodate and be helpful to three total strangers. It restores your faith in people!

Pictures for November 9th

Street scenes in Nungwi village.




The village centre of Nungwi.


Beach babes.


The lighthouse at Ras Nungwi.


The beach at Ras Nungwi.


A series of pictures to show you different stages in the building of dhows at Nungwi.



Using a bow drill - surprisingly fast and efficient!






Raising the sail on our dhow.


Captain of my very own dhow.


The beach at Kendwa in hot afternoon sun.


Feeding seaweed to turtles.




Beau Geste cuddles a green turtle.


That's how blue the sea was.

In which we have a day of dhows

November 9th

Before the girls are up I go for a dawn swim. The water is decidedly cool, but the visibility is amazingly clear and for most of the time I’m the only person in the water. The tide is fully in – I’ve been woken up by the crash of waves on the beach – and at high tide it’s almost impossible to encounter a sea urchin even if you intended to, so I’m not worried.

This morning is bright and sunny. While we’re breakfasting there are white sails dotted all along the horizon like a row of jewels. Some are almost out of sight beyond Tumbatu Island, others are setting off with divers or snorkelers or going fishing.

Épi draw my attention to what looks like a piece of black masking tape on the top of my mosquito net. We look close and find that it’s a giant millipede, a good six inches long and about an inch in circumference. The thing isn’t venomous but we decide to put it out in the garden. As I write this I’m kicking myself that none of us thought to take a photo – it is easily the biggest millipede we’re ever seen.

We decide to have an active day today; it’s our last full day on the beach. We agree to go up to Nungwi at the northern tip of Zanzibar, about three miles up the road. It’s the most overdeveloped touristy spot in the whole of Zanzibar, but it’s in the guidebook and it’s the end of the road so we want to be able to say we’ve been there. Épi’s still having trouble with her foot, and it’s blisteringly hot, so we wonder about taking a private taxi. They want 10,000 for a ride that costs 200 in a daladala. No way!

In Kendwa village we see about hiring bikes, but the amount they want per day - $15 – is more than we’re paying for our accommodation and the women isn’t interested in trying to cut us a deal. So no way again!

So we plod up the long mile to the main road. As we walk we pass Muslim women from the village; they’re plaiting coconut leaf fibres into strips to make baskets or other goods while they’re walking. They’re so adept they can weave, walk, and talk to each other all at the same time. Everywhere there are children; here they are starting to get used to tourists and a few of them ask us for money. It’s more or less the only time we get pestered during our entire holiday. Just near the junction there’s an enormous baobab tree with candy stores in its shade. We wait there a few minutes for our bus, munching sugary peanut treats, and within ten minutes we’re in the middle of Nungwi.

Having got off the bus we make for the turtle sanctuary more to escape the hustlers than for any other reason. Nungwi is the same dusty, sandy, coral stone type of place as Bwejuu, but it very much divided into two parts. Along the beach are the lines of luxury apartments, walled off, security guarded and exclusive. The village proper is ramshackle but, as the “Rough Guide” accurately put it, seems to go on its own traditional way and manages to largely ignore the tourist development alongside it. Chickens scatter as we pass. There are no other animals visible, and no dovecots as at Bwejuu. There are just a few tourists in the streets, and the locals greet us politely as we saunter through their lives.

The turtles are right at the extreme tip of the island, and therefore at the extreme north of Zanzibar proper. Next to the sanctuary is the squat lighthouse, a series of cubes one on top of another, each slightly smaller than the one below, rather like a Chinese pagoda. The proper name for the headland is Ras Nungwi. There is also a lighthouse at the tip of Tumbatu Island which we can see from our beach at Kendwa, but I don’t think the light is working – every night I’ve looked to see it shining and every night I’ve been disappointed.

The turtles are in a small lagoon completely enclosed by walls of natural coral rock. Seawater seeps in through fissures in the coral and the water level rises and falls with the tides. But at least the water is circulating and therefore keeping clean. There are lots of turtles, all but one are green turtles and the biggest are truly enormous. We feed them with seaweed. We are allowed to handle baby turtles and even some adolescents; picking up even a medium turtle you realise their weight; the biggest ones would need two or three people to lift. The turtles have no fear of humans and come willingly to be fed. They heave themselves one on top of another to get at our hands extending seaweed to them; those at the bottom of the heap get submerged but don’t seem bothered. (In any case, how would we know if a turtle was expressing emotion?)

On a more macabre note there’s an entire whale skeleton and a pile of dolphin skulls. In 2006 some 450 dolphins washed up on the beaches around here one night and were dead by morning. The stench must have been unbearable.

In yet another part there are two big pythons found in the forests of central Zanzibar. I had no idea that the island contained any snakes at all; these things are pretty big and I wouldn’t like to meet one in the wild. Fortunately these two have just had their feed (of rats) and are sleepy and docile.

We collect Épi who has decided to sit out the turtles and rest her foot under a shady tree. She’s discovered a very young kitten, and all of us are being chased (?) slowly across the sand by furry yellow and black caterpillars. They have long bristles which sting if they touch you, so we have to keep checking how far they have advanced. (Honestly, I can’t believe I’m writing about being chased by caterpillars….).

Eventually after taking pictures of the sea and the enormous collection of boats anchored in the bay at Ras Nungwi, we set off round the shore. Nungwi is famous for dhow building and I want to see how its done and get some pictures. I’m not disappointed. There must be more than a dozen boats in all stages of construction from just keel, stem and sternpost, to the finishing touches. The boats are flush built, and caulked with cotton wool from the mainland. The shipwrights are incredibly skilful – they use no plans, use no rulers, and use no power tools. I watch one of them drilling holes with a bow saw. Others are fitting a small piece of wood to close a gap between two planks; the wood has been cut by eye and fits perfectly.

We talk to one of the shipwrights. He is a fourth generation builder. He tells us it takes a team of four men about a month and a half to build one of the smaller dhows. Some boats are made to order, others are speculative ventures. Fortunately at the moment there seems no shortage of demand for the boats and there must be at least a dozen teams of builders, some working, others resting under tarpaulins on piles of wood shavings.

The hulls are made of inch thick mahogany planks. On the beach there are frames where dozens of planks are seasoning before being used. Also further round on the beach are tangled piles of curved tree limbs. There are being kept to use for the ribs of boats; each tree branch will make one particular rib and its natural curvature will give the boat enormous strength. It is reassuring to see such genuine craftsmanship in action. One of my lasting memories is seeing the keel of one boat just being started – a single thick plank, marked out with chalk, and along each side of the keel a tapered slot being cut to accept the lowest of the hull planks. The slot was being cut with an adze, and yet the line the workman was making was so sharp and fine that you couldn’t have done any better with an electric router.

Further round the beach we find fisherman mending nets, and curious little huts, about twenty feet long but only four or five feet high, where nets and floats are being stored before use. Yet other people are repairing crab baskets shaped rather like cows’ feet.

At the edge of Nungwi village is a fish market recently rebuilt by the Japanese; the smell is pungent but there are no fish being sold when we descend on it and every slab is occupied by a Zanzibari relining in the shade. In fact everywhere we go there are people recumbent under trees, sleeping out the heat of the day.

There is no order to Nungwi village, and navigating your way round the houses, even with a map, is a hit and miss affair. We eventually come out into the village centre with a supermarket and a huge open area which in England would be a village green but at Nungwi is a sunbaked sandy sprawl. It is paralysingly hot outside and we’re wilting fast. We decide it would be a good idea to see if we can get a ride home in a boat.

Finding our way to the beach is no great problem, but there isn’t any sort of water bus. We start to walk along the beach (you can easily walk from Nungwi to Kendwa at low tide), but after a while we are warned by one of the locals that the tide is already too far in at the next headland. I’m sceptical at first, but after a few more yards we can see that he’s right. And where we’re walking we’re wading through heavy seaweed and there could easily be more sea urchins mixed up with the sand and weed.

One of the locals offers to take us in his boat, and we haggle until we have a fair price. I’m expecting a little motor boat, but to my joy we find we’re being taken home in a lovely dhow. And not only that, we have the entire boat to ourselves. There’s three crew, and three of us passengers. Best of all, they don’t use the engine but put the sail up straight away. The sail is old, patched to the “n”th degree, and tattered in places, but it works. I am able to watch as the sail is hoisted; I’ve never been in a boat with a lateen sail and I’m fascinated at how flexible and complicated the system is. It makes an English dinghy seem child’s play. Finally they offer me the tiller, and I’m able to sail us all the way home. Yay folks, I’m sailing a dhow through the Indian Ocean. How cool is that! Épi and Soraya look horrified at the thought of my steering, but Soraya goes up onto the upper deck and takes lots of pictures.

What a wonderful experience. The sea is such an intense blue it doesn’t look real (check out the pictures for today); we have breeze aplenty, and for the first time at Kendwa we’re well away from the crowds. Life is good. One of the classic excursions here in the north of Zanzibar is to do a dhow cruise at sunset. Well we don’t have the sunset but we have the dhow to ourselves and I’m able to experiment and see how close to the wind I can take her…..

Tina, my love, you’d do anything for this sort of experience. Like we said in our emails, you have just GOT to get yourself out to Zanzibar as soon as you can!

The boat is surprisingly heavy to steer, but when I manage to catch the wind perfectly we simply fly along. We cruise right past the posh resorts, right past our guest house and then cut back while we drop the sail. The dhow deposits us right on the beach opposite our favourite bar; we get envious looks from beach walkers as we scramble ashore trying to keep cameras from falling into the water. From the sea you get a completely different perspective of the built up part of Kendwa. The trip feels all too short but for me it was the crowning experience of the entire holiday. The sound of the wind ruffling the edges of the sail, the noised of the water as the boat cuts through it; the occasional creaks from the hull planking, but most of all the quiet and solitude of being alone out on the water – it’s a great feeling.

Back on the beach Épi and I go for another swim, keeping well clear of any bits which don’t have pure sand on the bottom. Meanwhile Rachael has texted to say that she and Andy are on their way north and will hook up with us for the evening. They don’t seem to arrive despite our waiting for them, and by early evening we are all starving so we decide to mooch up to the Kijiji café again. As we’re strolling through the sand Rachael and Andy spot us; they’ve been looking for us but not able to find us among the jumble of beach bars and development.

We eat together, then saunter back to Les T de P and drink beers on the beach while we talk and watch the lightning flickering over the African mainland.

Andy regales us with stories of his trip to Kampala at Easter. We met him on the Ssese Islands but never got to hear the full story of his escapades. His bus journey from Kigali to Uganda we certainly eventful. The big bus, slipping on wet roads, went off the road twice and the second time was left leaning at a 45 degree angle and unable to move with assistance. The woman sitting next to him had been repeatedly travel sick, vomiting into a plastic bag which she hung up next to the seat ready for further use. Andy has us in stitches describing being bounced off the road and trying to claw his way to safety with a bag of someone else’s vomit ricocheting off his head….. (not funny, you say – well, it’s the way he tells them…). Eventually the bus company had to hire local matatas to take Andy and the other passengers on to Kampala. Then he and Dan got robbed and mugged in Kampala. Next he describes the experience we’ve all had of being in a matata in Rwanda and wanting the window open to get fresh air and reduce the smell of unwashed bodies, while someone behind you tries to slam the window through your arm to close it. Andy describes keeping his arm through the window and the silly person behind continually chopping the glass into his arm until Andy loses his cool and turns round and bellows at the person to shut up. The entire complement of passengers goes quiet in nervous giggles at the sight of a muzungu losing his temper. But it worked; he had his open window and the satisfaction of letting off steam. We can’t be culturally super sensitive all the time!

Some Germans at the table next to us take their candle and try to have a tide fight. It’s a moonless night tonight and it feels very dark. For lighting we have just one candle in a bed of sand inside a water bottle with its top cut off, and as we’re sitting in the middle of the beach there’s no other light around us at all. There’s a big power cut in progress; the upmarket resorts have generators but Les T de P has to make do with candles. The night is inky black. It only takes a power cut to push even Kendwa back to rural Africa at its most uncompromising!

Eventually we realise we’re all weary and decide to call it a day. Rachael and Andy will have to negotiate a price for a taxi back to Nungwi where they’re staying; they’ll do well to get below 20,000 as opposed to our 200 in the daladala.