more slow days in Gitarama

October 22nd-24th

Three days of essentially down time. I delivered some maths textbooks and past concours exam papers to Raima at Ahazaza primary school. I had a whole morning meeting with Michael and Tinks to work out which of my primary schools, were also his church ones (about ten as it happens), and to decide how we would go about things together. Interestingly, many of Michael’s schools are in remote Nyabinoni in the far north of our district, and therefore very inaccessible. But the Diocese has a car, and we are hatching plans to go there together in the Bishop’s car, him to do the Anglican schools and me to do the others. There are only seven primaries in Nyabinoni, so I reckon he could do his three and me my four schools conformably in a week.

Still no word from Stéphanie on a meeting with the Bishop’s representative to talk about the Shyogwe building project.

So what am I doing with myself at the moment? Staying in theflat most of the time, that’s what. I’m in danger of getting housebound! I’m getting on with writing up Dad’s Tibetan diary; at the moment I have done about a third of it. It’s frustrating – there’s a need for maps to show where he went, but until I can get somewhere with a good internet connection we’ll have to wait. That’s a Christmas Holidays job!

At last one of my English newspapers has arrived, but it’s dated September 26th-Oct 3rd – that’s before I went home. There are at least two more in the system lost somewhere between Kigali and Gitarama.

On Wednesday I went to the Office and collected a whole lot of statistical data to enter on my laptop; it’s not vital work but it gives me a complete breakdown on last year’s results. All this work has taken me hours, and of course I’ll soon have the 2008 results o do al over again. But at least I can say I spent an entire morning working flat out on District work. I called at the post office – a huge parcel for Hayley and a small one for Karen. Karen invited me for tea, and we had a good natter. She’s just got her flight home sorted for November 13th, which is a lot sooner than we had all expected. Tom and I absolutely must have Karen and Christi over for a meal before she goes. Karen wants me to take over conversation sessions with a young Rwandan student on Thursday tea-times, and I feel I can’t refuse her. We met the man; he’s very pleasant, a young student at the local university. His English is reasonable but could be a lot better. I don’t know how good I’ll be at managing a regular appointment; my schedule at the moment seems pretty chaotic. We’ll see. And having agreed to do one session a week, the student immediately asks if we can do three sessions a week…… That’s an example of typical Rwandan thinking.

On Thursday I was woken up at just before five by a series of gunshots, very close, between our flat and the market. I resisted the temptation to go to the window and see what was happening – if someone was taking pot shots in our direction it would be the worst thing I could have done! So I lay in bed and waited, and there were two more shots just after five. Nobody has said anything about them since, but they were definitely gunshots and at that time of the morning they couldn’t have been fireworks or workmen dropping lumps of metal etc. Gitarama seems to be going through an episode of gun-related violence at the moment; a shop was broken into the other night and shots fired, and someone was murdered up by the bus park a week ago.

I think we’re quite safe – the violence is all about Rwandans after other Rwandans. I’m guessing it’s where somebody has got one over on somebody else in a business deal, and the loser is taking it out on the dealer. Some Rwandan thinking is amazingly short term, and you can see it in the way market women deal with you. They are only too happy to swindle you at every opportunity, and think they’re so clever if they do. It never seems to occur to them if that if they swindle you, they’ll lose any subsequent trade from you. I suppose life is so precarious for these people that they just have to live for the day…. Anyway, life is cheap and there’s plenty of people here, so we muzungus just have to adapt to the way of life.

Yesterday I had a really nasty case of Giardia again. Couldn’t sleep much on Thursday night – acute tummy ache, feeling sick without being able to bring anything up, and nasty headache. By breakfast time I was burping rotten eggs and knew what I was going down with. Unfortunately we’d run out of medicine (Tom had the same thing just before I went home at the start of October and used up the last of the tablets we had in stock here). I was due to go down to Butare for an English planning meeting, and it would have been nice to get out of the flat for a day and meet Tiga and some of the others, but there was no way I could travel, let alone make any sensible contribution to the meeting. So I spent all day Friday in bed feeling miserable and sorry for myself, and it wasn’t until evening and Tom came home with some more medicine that things started to look up. As I’m writing this diary it’s Saturday morning and umuganda day, but I’m not well enough to be out there doing heavy manual labour so I’m keeping a low profile, and once again I’m staying indoors all the time. I’ve finished the course of tablets and it certainly seems to be clearing things up, but I won’t be “right” till this evening. At least I can say that yesterday was a pretty cheap day – I didn’t go anywhere, or eat anything, or spend any money at all. Whoopee!

Yesterday afternoon we had a really spectacular thunderstorm, the first really true tropical storm for ages. The lightning was almost continuous, and a lot of it right overhead. Tom was walking home in part of it with his umbrella up, and after one overhead flash he caught a nasty static shock off his umbrella handle. It put the wind up him, I can tell you! The rain was so heavy you could barely see across our road at one point. It flooded in under the front door right up to the lounge, and it worked its way through the metal window frame in my bedroom and pooled on the floor next to my bed. I had to get our squeegee broom and sweep water back out of the front door, but the gutter in our balcony couldn’t absorb it all, and as fast as I swept water out, the stuff came back in again. You could see that the storm was even heavier up in the mountains behind us; I dread to think what conditions would have been like in some of the mud houses low down next to the rivers. I fully expect we’re going to hear of people drowned in their own homes, or of loads of houses destroyed.

The funny thing was that Michael had left his motor bike here at the flat before catching the bus down to Butare, and when he arrived back to collect it the storm was just approaching. “Do you think this lot is coming our way?” he asks me. So I go out onto both balconies and scan the skies. The active storm cell seems to be some way away and it looks as if it’s going to miss us. “No, get going straight away”, I tell him.
I don’t think he would have been all the way home before all hell broke loose; I expect he got absolutely soaked. Poor Michael; I’m so sorry mate. The storm was coming from the south this time (usually they come from the north), and I couldn’t see the horizon far enough to see what was lurking in the skies over the hill behind us.

Tom’s boss has just been in Burundi for three days and says it’s been raining almost continuously there, so perhaps we’ve got the Burundi weather catching up with us.

As soon as the storm broke the sky went so dark we had to have lights on (at barely four in the afternoon), and as usual after the first few lightning strikes the power went off. It then went on and off at intervals for the rest of the night. All this week we’ve had water shortages, either an absolute lack of water or just a dribble coming out of the taps It’s been a game of chance whether we can have a shower in the morning. The only saving grace is that it’s our first-floor water supply which is affected; the tap in the backyard seems to work all the time even if the pressure is low at times. So as long as we keep our jerry cans filled at every opportunity there’s no serious problem; it’s just annoying.

We’ve just had a UN convoy drive past, Argentinean soldiers this time. They’re heading south (i.e. not towards Goma) so I assume they’re either en route to Burundi or they’re going through to Cyangugu and the border down by Bukavu.

Beat thing about these past few days – not a lot. I feel as though I’m marking time. My resource training stuff is at Nyanza and until I can either go and collect it, or get someone to deliver it, I can’t get started. Soraya’s been up in Kigali all week so I’m still not sure whether she wants me to help her with English training and whether she’s got dates all organised. Claude hasn’t said anything definite to either of us about what he wants us to do in terms of English training. And time’s ticking by. Soraya’s back in Gitarama so I can talk to her today or tomorrow. We have to discount Claude for the time being and assume that anything he requires will be in December or January. So I really must shirt myself down to Nyanza and collect the stuff from Ken… Why can’t I summon up any energy for all this?

Gagaca, big time and down days

October 21st

Up early and at the Office by 7.20. I’m trying to be businesslike, and I know that early in the morning is my only chance of catching Claude.

He’s not around at first, so I get on with making a summary report from all the inspections I’ve done. The Rwandans love “SWOT” charts, so I decide that’s what I’ll compile for the schools. (In French they become “AFOM” charts – atouts, faiblesses, opportunités, ménaces). But I’m doing this one in English because I’m lazy, so there!

I’m about half way through when Claude breezes in and welcomes me back. “By the way”, he says, “we need to compile a summary from all your inspections. Not more than a couple of pages”. “Claude”, I reply, “it’s almost done and you can have it on your desk in a couple of hours”. He nearly falls through the floor.

He’s off to visit and inspect a secondary school; I would have liked to come with him but now isn’t the best time to ask; I need to finish this report. In the event it doesn’t take long. You either have to go into lots and lots of detail, which makes it too long, or you keep it as short as possible, which is what I’m doing. It’ll certainly act as a useful conversation starter with all sorts of people. And what I’m pleased about is that I’ve been able to find a lot of strengths as well as plenty of weaknesses.

At this point I decide to think a bit more widely and compile a list of simple suggestions for things which wouldn’t be expensive but which could make a dramatic impact on the education process here. For example, if the District budget could include a “minor works” allowance which schools could bid for in order to complete small improvements, it would give them a feeling that there is money worth bidding for and they could be less fatalistic and raise their sights. Even better if we are able to say we’ll do 50-50 match funding with any sums the school has raised through parents. There doesn’t seem to be any funding of this kind that I can see in the existing budget and I think it would make a big difference.

Another idea is to pair off heads within secteurs, especially heads of “successful schools” with heads of “struggling schools”, or new heads with very experienced ones. The costs would be practically zero (maybe a tiny travel allowance). And we need to have some sorts of “school awards” scheme like there used to be in England to recognise schools which have been successful in various categories. And then publicise the successful schools so that they feel valued. What about a “roll of honour” in various categories in the District Office foyer so that good schools get a blast of recognition? And nicely printed certificates for them to hang in the schools themselves.

I really don’t know how much the District is going to be receptive to new ideas like these, but they’re worth trying out. I also need to talk to some of my VSO colleagues and do a bit of brainstorming with them to get more ideas. Friday will be a good opportunity because there’s an English skills workshop at Butare which I’m going to.

While I’m in the office Stéphanie appears from Shyogwe, to I’m saved a trip out there. The building hasn’t yet come to a halt, but they’re down to a handful of workers. The roof timbers are either done or in the course of being done, but there isn’t enough money for tiles. Either she hasn’t yet talked to the Bishop about a loan from Diocesan funds, or she has and he’s prevaricating. She wants to set up a meeting with herself, me and Rev Gasana who manages things in the Bishop’s absence. That should happen later this week or early next, and will give me another chance to take some photos of the work.

I decide to work at home in the afternoon. As I leave the Office I realise that it’s another Gacaca today, but this one seems to be being taken extremely seriously. The Post Office and Bank are shut, so is the bus park. Just about every single shop is closed. Even the market is completely shut up. So most of the other things on my “to do” list are relegated for a while.

Back at the flat I heat up some soup and invite Hayley round for lunch. She’s also at a loose end because her YWCA office closes on Gacaca days (the District Office never closes, and with my key I can go in and work at any time I choose). Hayley confirms that Isadora has stopped working for the YWCA and is now acting as a P A for a UNICEF bigwig in Kigali. There’s a replacement already working; the funny thing is that both Isadora and her replacement are Serbians. The odds on that happening even her in Rwanda are remote in the extreme! I also catch up on more gossip – Tina from Kibungo has been taken into the King Faisal hospital with a stomach problem. That’s pretty tough after only a month and a half here. Apparently she’s better now and back home, but it’s given her a real fright.

Now usually on Gacaca days everything swings back into action by 2pm at the latest, but today all businesses are still closed even at 4pm. I decide to go for a walk and see if anything in the market is open on the way home. I go down the hill past Cathie and Elson’s house, and loop back to the town centre. All the shops, without exception, are still closed. Even the eating places are closed. But there’s a small section of the market trading, so I’m able to buy lots of veg.

I’m bored and under-employed, so I decide to do a cook-up. I make my usual massive lentil and veg soup with just about everything chucked in – onions, peppers, imboga, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, spuds. It all stews down nicely in about 2 hours on a very low heat. Tom’s acquired a bag of “bacon bits” from somewhere and I’ve grated cheese because we’ve got masses of cheese this week. It ends up a really thick potage and is unbelievably filling. Before I go to bed I make up two boxes of soup - so that’s two more good meals for 2 people – and there’s a bit left over for tomorrow’s lunch for me.

In the evening we both watch videos; I’m working my way through “West Wing” series 4 and enjoying every minute of it. I’m rationing myself to 2 episodes a night!

The hairdresser opposite us is playing his radio at even louder volume, especially early morning and late in the evening. He’s starting at about 5.50 in the morning which is a bit much.

Best thing about today – getting my report done for Claude; transcribing another three days of dad’s diary; listening to Congolese music on my iPod all afternoon and being able to hear it perfectly because Gacaca means the hairdresser’s sound system has been switched off!

Worst thing – it’s going to be a fair period of “down time” until either Soraya tells me when she wants me to help with her trainings, or until I’m able to do my own resource making ones. Hey ho; not how I want things to be but you just have to be philosophical about it and not feel guilty. More time to read, to transcribe the diary…

catching up on the Kigali news

October 20th

Up to the bank and lo and behold my new cheque book has arrived. I must remember for future reference that it seems to take at least 10 days to get a new book through the system. I have a cheque already written out from before I left for home; it gives me enough money to pay my debts (RwF20,000 to Tom for a replacement flash drive and 15,000 for Janine’s wages) but not enough to do any shopping. I’ll have to go back to the bank again tomorrow!

Off to Kigali on the bus; in my diary I have written down a meeting with Mike at the Programme Office to do some thinking about the future of our education provision.

Rwanda has turned green during the fortnight I’ve been away. The rains have been intermittent; showers rather than torrential downpours, but it’s enough to enable farmers to plant their second crops of the year, and everywhere there are newly planted fields with the plants just starting to grow well. Everyone gets very excited at one point in the journey and they all peer out of the windows. A car has come off the road on a bend on one of the hills and is lying badly crushed in a ravine. Yet another casualty. And I bet the immediate cause of the accident was trying to overtake one of these huge lorries which crawl at snail’s pace both up and down the hills. They crawl up because they’re overloaded; they crawl down because they daren’t trust their brakes. The entire road is either hilly or twisty or both, so overtaking is like Russian roulette. You either have a bus driver like ours this morning who plays safe, tags along behind the lorries and takes ages to get to Kigali, or you have the reckless racing drivers who overtake on blind bends and trust to luck and oncoming drivers’ co-operation to avoid calamity.

Gitarama is cool and breezy when I leave it; by the time I get to Kigali it is hot and humid. So what’s new?!

At the Programme Office I discover that the meeting I’ve come to take part in has already taken place. Mike brought the date forward and it happened while I was back in England. He’s apologetic; there’s been no opportunity to contact me since I returned to Rwanda at the weekend. Mike makes me welcome and briefs me on the main points of the meeting, and everything seems reasonable. We have a conversation about the Government’s pronouncement on English as the medium of instruction. There have been noises from MINEDUC about VSO doing a lot of the training, but nothing formal or definite yet. In any case, we’re not in a position to suddenly flood the country with volunteers, and the need would be so great that to have any impact we would need one volunteer per secteur. That would mean an extra ten volunteers for Muhanga district alone – and Muhanga is one of thirty districts across this little country. So whatever we do will have to be selective and highly focussed. We could train the trainers – train Rwandans who then go out and train other Rwandans. That’s the theory, but in reality by the time the training has been passed on through two or three cycles, it gets very diluted. You should hear people in classrooms trying to use songs which they’ve obviously learnt at second or third hand!

I go to see Charlotte and thank her again for making the flight arrangements to get me home. She briefs me on the meetings she and Mike had in my district with the prospective head teacher trainees. (This was our plan to base two short-term NAHT English primary heads with Rwandan colleagues who need help with administration and planning and general encouragement). Things seem to be looking good. There are 4 identified placements nationally in Rwanda, two with me in the south and two in the east. The NAHT has approved three heads for funding for the placement, and the fourth place will be an ordinary short-term volunteer who has been a head or deputy and has plenty of school management experience. I’m not sure whether I’ll get the two heads or one head and one volunteer. Whatever happens, it means I’ll have a supporting and mentoring role for these English heads until they find their feet. That will increase the VSOs in Gitarama to six, even allowing for Karen’s leaving at the end of the year. We’ll be by far the biggest cluster of VSO outside Kigali. I’m assuming that VSO will have to sort out accommodation for these volunteers; you can’t rely on the Districts. If they’re both women, there’s a chance they could stay with Soraya. Alternatively, Christi’s just signed a contract on a new place for her (for when Karen leaves); no doubt she’d welcome some company and half her rent money for a few months!

Jane is holding a planning meeting with all the PHARE volunteers at the office, and they seem to be extremely efficient and well organised. (The PHARE volunteers are the youngsters doing HIV/AIDS education in two districts). I check all my emails; it’s funny because there are a lot that I’m expecting but haven’t arrived, and various random ones have turned up from all sort of people. There’s a nice long mail from Cathie and Elson; I’ll write them a reply this evening.

In the afternoon I head back to Gitarama. There’s nothing more to do in Kigali. It hasn’t been an entirely wasted trip because I’ve been able to catch upon some important official stuff from Mike and Charlotte, and it’s helping me get my mind focussed on what I need to be doing for the next few weeks before I go home for Christmas.

Back at Gitarama there’s no post (why not? - there must be at least two newspapers waiting for me somewhere in the postal system). I go to the District Office to show my face and see if Soraya’s there. Claude’s not in, but Innocent welcomes me back. Soraya’s not there either. It turns out her meeting was postponed, so she’s taken herself off to Kigali to plan her training sessions; I think she might be staying over with her Philippine friends in town. In the office there’s a huge stack of rice sacks ready for our training sessions. It seems that Mans got VSO office organised and they not only located the sacks but bought them on our behalf and distributed them. Soraya had to lug some 600 sacks from the VSO pick-up truck into the office. No wonder she’s telling me I owe her a fanta or two!

The road works outside the District Office are finished; we have a brand new road surface, albeit covered with loose chippings. Every time a car goes by you can hear the clink of bits of chippings bouncing off metal drain covers.

I walk the length of Gitarama past our flat to Hayley’s office at the YWCA because there’s a postcard for her from Devon that’s arrived at VSO, and discover that she’s not there either – she’s also apparently gone to Kigali for the day. So Tinks must be looking after her puppy. (Tinks is Tina, one of the new batch of September volunteers. There are two Tinas and a Christina, so it all got very confusing, and this particular Tina is called by her family pet name. She’s living with Soraya and Hayley and working with Michael in the Shyogwe Diocese schools as a primary trainer. So she and Michael are working in the same roles as Soraya and I). When Cerys, the short-term church placement girl leaves at the end of the year, we plan for Tinks to move into her cottage next door to Michael. That’ll just happen to free up another room chez Soraya for one of the two NAHT people. I don’t know where we’ll put the second one – perhaps with Christi.

Back at the flat I wonder what to do – I’ve assumed I’d spend the afternoon planning training sessions with Soraya. Instead I start transcribing my Dad’s expedition diary from his Tibet trip.

(In April and May 1945 my dad was stationed in north east India. He had some leave due, but was not able to spend it back in England because the war against Japan was still in full swing. So he and three friends organised an expedition on foot across the Himalaya Mountains to Tibet. He didn’t have a camera, but kept a detailed diary which has miraculously survived and which I have found among his papers after his funeral. I’m going to transcribe it and put it on line. I just think it’s amazing that he was able to do this trip. He had a childhood in extreme poverty and was not able to do any travelling until he joined the army. He left school at 12 with minimal education. Yet the diary is detailed; the writing is lively, vivid and well informed, and even now, more than 60 years on, it comes across as an audacious project. I’m absolutely in awe of his achievement. I haven’t seen or read any of this material for more than fifty years but I can remember my mother reading it to my sister and I, day by day, as we curled up in bed with her on winter mornings. We must have been about seven or eight years old at the time. I wonder if it was hearing these exploits that’s given me my sense of adventure and the urge to go to distant places.)

Tom rings to say he thinks he’s got a dose of giardia, so I dig out my remaining course of tablets for him. We cobble together an evening meal of rice with a sauce made of sardines, peppers, tomatoes, onions and garlic. It’s filling and very welcome – I’ve only had a slab of pizza from Ndoli’s supermarket since breakfast time! We’re already starting to make serious inroads in the stash of chocolate I brought back from England…

One extra thing I’ve been able to do today is sort out some more music on my ipod. Most of the Congolese music I got from Cathie has needed a bit more organising to make it easier to find on my ipod, and the result is really excellent. I just love this music; I’ve been plugged in to it on both journeys to and from Kigali. But through the good headphones in the quiet of late evening it sounds just tops!

Last thing I do is make a list of all the stuff that needs doing in the next couple of days. If I don’t do this I know that I’ll just drift for a week and waste time. Here’s my list:
See Claude and find out what he wants me to do
Write up my summary report after all my school inspection visits
Go to a tailors and get my new shirt made up – wider and slightly looser than the last one and preferably with some decoration on it
Go to the bank and get financially comfortable again
Do a big shop up because we’re running out of just about everything
Touch base with Michael from Shyogwe over our shared schools
Plan my resource-making training and arrange to collect my stuff which at the moment is still with Mans in Gasarenda
Take some more photos – I seem to have stopped doing any photography at the moment
Go back out to Shyogwe and see what is happening to the buildings since I was last there
Talk work with Soraya and see how much she needs me to help with her English language trainings

So not much to do, then!

Best thing about today – catching up on things, getting a feeling for priorities

Worst thing about today – despite all the above, it doesn’t feel “right” if I haven’t been out and about and visited a school or done something concrete like that!

Back in Gitarama

October 19th

I’m back! A welcoming party to meet me at the airport – Kersti, Nick and Irene. Supper at Sole Luna – pizza and cold beer after a long flight. Marion and Cathryn are also there with us, and on a nearby table about half of the September arrival VSOs. Oh dear, that means Paula’s party must have been rather thin on the ground! What a drag – the social whirl here in Rwanda is such that we can’t fit all the events in……..

I start catching up on all the news and gossip. Paula’s definitely taking over Kersti’s old job at Byumba – hooray, that’s a good volunteer and a good placement. Marion’s missing cat has been found, but unfortunately it had been run over and killed. Hayley’s got a puppy at Gitarama. Various thrills and spills with people and their relationships…. Enough to keep us chatting till well after even o’clock.

Two key political developments are the main issues of conversation. The rebels fighting in Congo have come very close indeed to the Rwandan border. They are active in the Congolese section of the volcanoes national park, so much so that the Congolese park rangers have had to be withdrawn. While many gorillas have moved across to the safety of the Rwandan side, there are reports of gorilla meat being on sale in Goma and the surrounding area. The Rwandan army is out in force along the border, and a hot war could break out very close to Gisenyi. On the other hand, it’s tempting to see what general Nkunda’s doing as fighting a proxy war on Rwanda’s behalf in the Congo, and it would be in neither his nor Rwanda’s best interests for them to come into direct conflict. We’re all safe here in Kigali and Gitarama, but it’s a tense situation and needs careful watching. There’s absolutely no chance of any of us getting permission to cross the border to visit Goma at any time in the foreseeable future.

The second thing in the news is the Rwandan Government’s decree that from 2010 English will replace French as the main medium of instruction in schools, and be the main language of local government and administration. We all know the problem here – there is an acute shortage of English teachers, and English language skills are woefully inadequate across all parts of the country. With 50 VSOs in place, all of whom are either Anglophone or fluent in English, we are in a prime position to be commandeered to spearhead the drive to English. On one hand this could give us enormous influence in the country; on the other hand it could mean we are exploited to the limit during our time here. We’re going to need some good advice and careful planning to cope with the situation. Apparently Claude’s been trying to email me; I can guess that it’s about changing my job description to that of being an English teacher-trainer!

But these are tomorrow’s problems. Right now it’s ten o’clock in the morning and a lazy start to Sunday; Kersti and I take the dog out for a walk and we have brunch using some English cheddar cheese that I’ve brought out for her. Toasted cheddar sandwiches, then Rwandan peanut butter and jam…. Yes, folks, the circus is definitely back in town!

The weather is stifling hot and alternating cloudy with thunder showers, and burning sun in between. I lug my stuff up to the bus stop (thank God I only have 20k in my suitcase), and we wedge it into a taxi bus into the town centre. The first bus doesn’t want to know, so we have to ask specially when the next one arrives. He charges me RwF300 – that’s a fare and a half, which seems reasonable. There’s plenty of room on the big bus to Gitarama but they try to charge me RwF1000 for my case. That’s more than my own fare and I know they’re having me on. I refuse to pay anything at all and eventually he backs down. (I later discover that it is quite normal to charge up to 200 for suitcases; I assume this guy was a bit mortified when I called his bluff over 1000 and didn’t dare ask for the regular amount. Serve him right!). Inside the bus it’s unbearably hot while we wait to leave. Sweat’s pouring off me and I’m just sitting still. My poor suitcase – it’s got chocolate and cheese inside it, and I wonder if they’ll be reduced to a gooey mess by the time we reach home.

I have to say, it really does feel like going home when I reach Gitarama. It’s a long plod up the hill to the flat, but once there I can unload and collapse on the bed for a couple of hours.

Showered, changed, shaved – I’m ready to go and meet the gang for Sunday evening meal. There’s loads of us – me and Tom, Karen and Christi, Soraya and Hayley and Tinks (Tina) who is staying with them because her accommodation at Gisagara still hasn’t materialised. There’s Ulrike, and Michael and Cerys from Shyogwe. The only regulars missing are the two Italian teenagers. Lots more gossip over omelettes and mélange. Claude, like most of the District Officers, has pounced on the VSOs in the light of the recent pronouncements from Kigali, and it looks as though I might be commandeered to do solid English training for the rest of my time here as VSO. They might even commandeer us for the Easter holidays and devote another itorero to English language training. And Claude also wants us to run an after-hours English club at the District Office. Plenty to think about here!

The rice sacks have arrived; Mans and Ken got VSO Kigali onto the job apparently. Soraya says she had to lug 700 sacks into the District Office. It’ll be a nuisance if we find we’re too busy with English training to be able to use them properly!

Best thing about today – it’s good to be back. I’ve enjoyed being home in England – all the comforts, the family, the food, catching up with people. But I’ve missed a lot of Africa too. The noise and bustle, the colours, the vibrancy, the “buzz”. I’m looking forward to getting back to work here. And in six weeks I’ll be trotting off home to Dorset again for Christmas. Life is good!

Ernest Noel Upton 1916 - 2008

New Year's Eve 2007, aged 91 and still going strong!
Two "pin up" images from the war

Dad (standing) as a boy in Brighton, around 1926

Pause

From now until October 19th I'm in England on compassionate leave for Dad's funeral, so I won't be blogging. Normal service resumes after October 20th. Please be patient!

Tom's birthday bash

October 3rd

Up and off to Kigali today. First port of call is the travel agent to pay for my flights home at Christmas. Hooray! – the amount in Euros is within my cash stash so I’m able to walk out with my ticket in my sweaty palm, and enough Euros left to be able to change some for ready cash to buy more souvenirs, and still have an emergency reserve in the flat.

While I’m waiting for them to process my ticket I drift over to Blues Café and meet Ruth, one of the new people who were at Giudhi’s party last weekend. I thought Ruth was Rwandan, but she turns out to be from Sierra Leone. She’s a fascinating person, doing a high powered consultancy job here in Kigali. She’s a classic example of the new breed of highly educated, work driven, dynamic Africans that this place so needs. What really surprises me is that she says she gets constantly stared at by Rwandans who perceive that she’s “different”. Now that’s amazing. I can understand how I stick out like a sore thumb here, but to all of us Europeans Ruth is just as black and just as African as any of the Rwandans or Congolese here. I can’t for the life of me work out how they can tell at sight that she’s not “one of them”. And she finds all the attention just as distracting and wearing as we do.

Up to the VSO office next, and I collect my plane ticket for tomorrow. Suddenly I’ve got the best part of £2000 worth of tickets on me and I’m terrified they’re going to fall out of my rucksack! I’ve some stuff to hand in to Mike from Soraya, and then I go upstairs to send my blogs.

Now while I was on the bus coming in to Kigali I had a text message from Soraya, and as I fished my phone out of my trousers I heard something fall to the floor. I thought it was my comb, but my comb was still there so I thought I must have been imagining things.

It turns out that what fell to the floor, and is now lost for ever, is my flash drive with all sorts of data on it. So no blogging for me today! Serves me right; must remember in future always to have flash drive either in breast pocket or in my rucksack.

Fortunately there is nothing on the flash drive which isn’t backed up on my laptop, so I haven’t lost any data, and also nothing which is sensitive or can be used to trace who I am or where I live. But it’s annoying.

As chance would have it, one of Tom’s work colleagues is selling 16gig flash drives for RwF20,000 which is seriously cheap for that amount of memory. So I quickly text Tom to ask him to get me one!

Soraya’s feeling stressed to the limit with her training courses about to start, and has asked me to buy her some comfort food, so that’s what I do – Pringles and crisps! There’s no point in hanging round the VSO office now that I’ve got my tickets, and as it happens the internet connection is down so even if I had my flash I still wouldn’t be able to send any messages. Frustrating or what!

Back into town, changing money underneath the mosque (God and Mammon obviously have an understanding here in Kigali), and a bus back home.

In Gitarama I stop off at the craft centre and buy yet more goodies to bring home – the lovely Rwandan nested baskets with conical tops which are absolutely typical of this country’s cultural tradition. I also get a big circular banana-leaf notice board as a birthday present for Tom. It might encourage him to decorate his room! As I walk home with this huge banana creation tucked under my arm, and thunder getting ominously close all around me, I bump into Janine. She’s bought Tom a picture for his birthday. And why? – because she, too is fed up with his room looking like a temporary hostel and she wants to encourage him to decorate it. So sorry, Tom; no pressure, really………

In the evening it’s Tom’s birthday “do” up at Landos. Christi has made the usual chocolate birthday cake for him. Now Landos is this new restaurant-cum-bar-cum nightclub which charges Kigali prices but certainly adds a touch of glam to Gitarama. Tonight there’s a comedian and a live band. We know about the comedian because apparently he came down from Kigali on the same bus as Tom this afternoon.

Soraya has a huge houseful. The new VSOs were planning to go to Kibuye this weekend, like my group did after a couple of weeks. But they’ve decided at the last minute that it’s not worth going for just one night so they’re going to stay with Hayley at Soraya’s She’s got at least eight visitors! We offer cushions and floor space, but they’re not needed as things turn out. (But when I leave for home tomorrow I’m making up my bed with clean sheets so tat one of two of them can use my room in the flat and have a comfortable night’s sleep)!

The band turns out to be a Congolese style soukous band, and they’re very good, too. We’re sitting out under the stars until we realise we’re all shivering with cold, and adjourn inside the bar where the music is loud (as opposed to ear shattering), and we can talk and listen to it at the same time. Lots of Rwandan men are dancing, either on their own or in pairs (no cultural undertones with that at all), but very few women. Two men are pushing and shoving each other; we can’t decide whether they’re jostling for floor space to show off to the women or whether there’s a real fight developing. The band’s lead singer moves in to separate them and they end up strutting their stuff competitively at opposite ends of the dance floor.

Its gone midnight when we all decide to drift home. Bish is with us (Tom’s new Kenyan FHI intern), and he offers to walk Janine to her house which saves Tom and I a job. So we walk all the girls and new lads home through the town centre, across the market (very sinister at night with skeletal stalls and thousands of dark corners where muggers could be hiding), and up to the transmitter which guards her house. Even at this time of night the street children are huddled in miserably cold groups around the market. Lorries deliver all through the night, and these boys are always trying to scrounge money, food, drink or drugs from the drivers as they unload.

Best thing about today – getting my tickets home. My enormous pile of Rwandan crafts which I have to somehow pack into my case so that they don’t break or rattle or cause mayhem at airport security.

Worst thing – losing my big flash drive. But never mind, the replacement one is eight times as powerful.