Buying up crafts in Butare

October 2nd

Up early because today’s suddenly become busy. By half past seven I’ve got Amy and Hayley in the lounge; Hayley’s brought Amy round so we can talk about school visits. I give Amy some advice and a lot of computer documents to try and help her hit the ground running down in Kigeme. She won’t be doing school inspections like me, but she’ll certainly be visiting lots of schools. Like Michael at Shyogwe, she’s working for the Anglican diocese and the problem is that most of the information about schools is held in District Offices and not by the diocesan authorities. We talk about how to get round the problem – in her case by working closely with Mans.

Then I waltz down to the internet café – I’ve got blogs and pictures to post and a whole handful of emails to send concerning re-arrangements because of my going home for a fortnight. The emails go off fine; the blog texts too, but the connection’s painfully slow and I can’t send any of the pictures. No matter, they can wait till tomorrow when I go to VSO office in Kigali.

I stride off up to the post office and there is mail for us, including the first ever letter for the little internet business Tom has created to sell his artefacts online. I collect my crash helmet from the District Office – I don’t mind leaving it in the cupboard overnight, but if it’s seen to be lurking there for a fortnight I’m sure that somebody will decide it’s up for grabs and that they are poorer than me and more in need of it (to sell) than me. Everywhere I go with the helmet I get moto drivers pulling up beside me. Word seems to have got round that the big muzungu’s been doing a lot of travelling lately, and they all want to milk this cash cow while it’s around. Sorry chaps, I’m definitely on foot today.

Then I’m off to Butare on a desperately slow matata to the museum; I buy nearly 250 hand made cards from the craft shop there. Nobody seems to mind me buying in such bulk; to me it’s a win-win-win situation. They get my money and my patronage for the card makers (troubled young people who they are trying to get back into constructive society); I get some hand made, beautiful cards, most of which we’ll sell on back in England; and one or another lucky school will get the British profits from the card sales ploughed back into water tanks.

I also buy basketry souvenirs and the biggest diameter drum that will fit in my suitcase. Little Dylan’s going to get a drum for Christmas this year; his mother will either bless me or curse me; I’m not sure which!

By now it’s well into the afternoon and I’m pecking. I’ve done all my business for the day so I can relax. I stroll into Butare town centre and have lunch at the Lebanese supermarket. They do a really excellent tuna salad for only RwF1000 (£1). After that I get the comfy bus back to Gitarama. By the time I’m back, Mans has already invited Amy to meet him to discuss school data for her schools, and Mans has invited Els to replace me at the work planning meeting on 13th – both things I’ve suggested in texts or emails earlier in the day. Man, that feels really satisfying to think things are running like well oiled wheels.

The water in our flat, which has been on-off for two days now (despite the rainy season) decides to go more or less off again; just as Amy asks if she can come round and have a hot shower. The answer, of course, is yes, but the water might only be a trickle. While she’s showering I’m trying to make lists of what I need to take home. Almost no clothes, because I’ve got tons at home. Loads of souvenirs, and my laptop definitely.

The rainy season is worrying yet again. It should be in full swing now, with thunderstorms every afternoon and really heavy downpours to replenish the water table. What we’re getting is the occasional light shower and a few flashes of lightning, but nothing like the heavy rainstorms we had in the spring. If we don’t get a lot more rain than this there’s going to be trouble for the farmers – and that means about 85% of the population here!

Then within five minutes I’ve got Soraya coming round to collect drinking water (their tap’s gone completely dry), and also some teaching materials for her training days next week, and Tom arriving tired out from work. Soraya and Amy stagger back to their house laden down with stuff. They’ve left Hayley cooking dinner for them.

Soraya’s made a real hit with the secteur reps, and Agnès from Cyeza is so pleased with Soraya’s training proposal that within 24 hours she’s contacted all Cyeza schools and told them there’s training this coming Monday and to be there or else. Now, of course, Soraya’s biting her nails to the quick and hoping she’ll be able to carry off the training. I feel rotten that I won’t be there to support her, especially on her first try. Oh well, Soraya’s just as experienced a volunteer now as I am.

Best thing about today – getting down to Butare and buying up loads of things to bring home. At least I feel as if I’ve achieved something today!

Shyogwe progress at the end of September

All the brickwork has been done except for inserting ventilation bricks.
Stephanie meets Michael, who is succeeding Geert as the VSO based at Shyogwe. This Michael on his very first day at work, and his very first visit to a Rwandan school!

Rear view showing the high-level small windows.

The building work certainly doesn't stop children using the volleyball court immediately behind the block. (But it does give them a good excuse for claiming they didn't hear the bell for the end of playtime....)!

Front view of the new block. I think these rooms are going to be beautiful to work in, and probably the best lit of any in the District.

Shaping a tree trunk for a roof beam.

You can see the enormous length of the roof beams, and how each beam is an entire tree trunk.

Children squirting water into a bucket at the end of playtime so they can cleanse the toilets.

Work resumes on Shyogwe's admin block

Close up of roof timbers.
The roof of the admin building is going on. This will give the school a secure store room, a small staffroom or room for small meetings, and an office for Stephanie, the head teacher. And thank you to Marchwood Primary School, on the edge of the New Forest, for your fundraising for Shyogwe.

Scheming at Shyogwe

October 1st

Today I find it difficult to get motivated.

I decide I need to draw out more money from the bank. That’s no problem, but I also need a new chequebook. In the Rwandan system you have to fill a form attached to your old cheque book when you are given it. Nobody’s explained this to me, and I’m not sure whether I’ve still got eh form at home or whether I’ve chucked it. Back from the bank there’s a nervous few minutes while I ransack my papers – fortunately I still have the piece of paper. I’ll take it in to the bank later. By sheer chance I’m glad I’m going home for a fortnight – it’ll give Rwandan bureaucracy time to send the new chequebook to Gitarama. I can’t imagine it’ll get there quicker than a fortnight!

Then off to Shyogwe to break the news to Stéphanie that work on the building will have to stop. On impulse, I call in at Michael’s house in the village, and find him in. It’s his very first morning on the job in Shyogwe. He’s looking a bit shell-shocked. So he trots off with me down to the primary school and I can introduce him to everyone. Introductions are very important in Rwandan culture – if you’re not introduced formally to everyone, you’ve made a faux pas. His French is good, too, and he and Stéphanie can communicate easily. That’s a relief. I take more pictures of the new building; all the brickwork is done except where the ventilation holes are going to go. Also, I see that they’ve decided to put in little windows high up on the rear wall. I’m happy with that – it’s a nice compromise. It’ll let in light, but the children won’t be distracted by looking out, and thieves will have to climb up about eight feet to try to break in that way.

While Stéphanie and I are talking we have a brainwave. We think there ought to be some sort of contingency fund in the Diocesan budget, and we decide to ask the Bishop to lend us enough cash to finish the building and pay him back when we get the rest of the Randstad money. There’s a slight risk there; if Randstad’s profits are taking a hammering in the global recession then they might not be able to give us the full amount, but we think it’s a risk worth taking. Stéphanie agrees to see the Bish when he’s next around. (He’s off to Europe again some time soon. These senior clergy don’t half get around….).

Michael tells me there’s a very young English girl spending some time working at Shyogwe; I think she’s doing some sort of youth work. Nobody’s told me about her, and I feel guilty if she’s been all on her own out here getting lonely when we could have absorbed her into our muzungu network in the town. So Michael’s going to bring her with him when he comes for the weekly meal on Sunday.

As I leave Shyogwe I see that work has re-started on the school’s admin block. Marchwood School must have raised them some more money. Good for you, Marchwood, because we need to get that building done. It’s really nice to see two separate lots of building work going on in a primary school at the same time – makes you feel that things are beginning to gather pace and improve out here!

I have another load of photos now to blog, and I spend the afternoon writing email messages to various people. Finally I set to preparing geology notes for Kersti’s earth science class at the American School. Their textbook is really good – all embracing, but I think it’s at university first year level rather than “A” level. So I tell Kersti, for example, not to get too involved in mineralogy. If you don’t have mineral samples in front of you it’s pretty pointless. Stick to the rocks and earthquakes and volcanoes which Rwanda does so well!

Tom comes in and we cook up a storm – we make a huge tomato base which will last us two days, and a kind of potato and cheese cake with lots of onions and other veg in it. Very solid and filling; very good for us.

Best thing about today – I’m glad I’ve made time to go out to Shyogwe and at least let them know the money isn’t coming any day soon. If the Bishop can lend us money it’s a win-win situation: the school will have new classrooms ready for the spring term, and the church will get its money back when Randstad delivers the goods!

Eid ul Fitr

September 30th

I sleep badly; partly it’s the news from home, partly I’ve got a cold from the journey out to Muhazi yesterday, partly it’s because I got too much sun trying to hitch home from Muhazi, and partly because I’m dehydrated.

At half past five I get a text asking me if I’m coming to Musange school tomorrow (Wednesday). This is puzzling, and it takes a couple of minutes to sink in. Then I realise what’s going on. They must have declared Eid ul Fitr for today (Tuesday). So we have a public holiday today. It was announced, so I’m told, at around 4 in the morning. All schools, banks and public buildings are closed; most shops stay open; at the market it’s business as usual. By six o’clock there are a lot fewer people out on the streets. Can you imagine, in England, the chaos and protests that would ensure if the August or May Day Bank Holiday dates were kept vague until four o’clock in the morning! But that’s how things work here and you just have to be flexible and adapt to it.

Around ten percent of Rwandans are Moslem; for them Eid is the high point of the year. It’s like our Christmas Day. The privations of Ramadan – fasting during daylight hours – have come to an end, and the day is one of wearing bright new clothes, eating till you burst, visiting friends and relations, and going to the mosque at some point in the day. The whole point about the timing is that Eid isn’t announced until you have seen the first glimpse of the new moon which marks the end of the lunar month of fasting. In a way I think it’s nice that in Rwanda they take their faith so literally that they really do stay up all night and watch the stars to catch the very first look at the moon.

My plans are now thrown totally into confusion. I was intending to inspect a school, today, and then call time and prepare to fly home for dad’s funeral. But I can’t inspect today – all schools are shut (though I notice that in many cases their year six pupils are going in to revise for their concours exams.

So while I’m cooking porridge and buttering bread I’m sending endless texts to undo all the arrangements for the next few days. I have to contact three other schools to say I won’t be visiting them. I have to let Claude, my boss, know what’s happening and formally ask permission to go home for a couple of weeks. I have to let VSO know for the same reason. I have to put off Amy who is due to come up from the south and shadow my school visits on Thursday and Friday. I have to text Christi to say I won’t be able to organise a birthday party for Tom on Friday evening. I have to text Soraya to say I won’t be able to do the English speaking and essay writing day with her on Saturday, and suggest she asks Els to help her instead. Then there’s Shyogwe school to talk to about the building project, and Gikomero school to go to and take pictures for a second Dutch project. And Mike and Charlotte are coming down to talk to the primary school heads about NAHT short term placements next week. So nothing much going on, then, to have to reschedule!

I set off at about half past eight with an electric hob to deliver to a teacher at the Ahazaza school. It’s Cathie’s old hob and she’s promised it to one of their staff. He’s never bothered to ask for it until a few days ago; meanwhile we’ve found it really useful for keeping food warm and we’ve been secretly hoping this man would forget about it. Ahazaza is shut for the day, of course, but the caretaker is there and lets me in. He doesn’t speak anything else but Kinyarwanda so we have a comic couple of minutes while I explain in sign language why I’m trying to deliver a stove to Raina’s office in the school.

I’m short of money, but the bank’s shut. The post office is shut. The District Office is open but virtually nobody’s there; at least I can drop off some papers and get them out of the flat.

Charlotte has told me to come in to Kigali to talk. On the way in to Kigali every little village mosque is humming with activity. The second prayers of the day have just ended and the paths around the mosques are jammed with happy people. For the little children it’s especially exciting. In a country where the majority of people wear tatty, stained, charity shop jumble sale clothes, the Moslems are immaculate in gleaming white and brilliant reds and greens. The women in particular look impossibly graceful and sophisticated. Everyone is smiling, chattering. It’s their day and they are going to make the most of it!

In the VSO office there’s only Charlotte and Mike of the staff, but Soraya’s there preparing for her training sessions, and Marion has a meeting scheduled which is going ahead despite the holiday.

Things fall into place quickly. Soraya tells me that not only has Els immediately agreed to come in my place to help her on Saturday, but that one of the new arrival VSOs, Tina, is coming up from Butare to help too. Now that’s what I call co-operation and covering for each other, and it’s the sort of thing that makes working here so much easier. Tina’s finding herself at a loose end, like we all do when we first arrive, and coming up to Rongi with two experienced Vols will be the best sort of induction possible.

Charlotte tells me they’re organising flights for me to go home on compassionate leave, and we’ll know the details within 48 hours. I’m to drop in later in the week to collect tickets. My phone is overflowing with messages of sympathy and support from absolutely everyone. Word gets round very quickly in the VSO family!

I meet Michael, the new VSO at Shyogwe (Geert’s replacement at long last) who has just arrived and is being collected by Diocesan staff and taken to his cottage this afternoon. We have a good chat about work; I ask him to lay off Muhanga schools for a fortnight until I can talk to him; he’s got other schools in Ruhango and Nyanza districts within his diocese and the Ruhango ones aren’t covered by any other VSO so they’re the best ones to start work in. It’s nice to meet him at last. He’s a retired primary school headteacher; a very different person from Geert. I give him all the Gitarama gang’s phone numbers and make sure he’s invited to the Sunday night meals at Nectar. Soraya’s in the room, too, so there will be at least one face he’ll recognise when he comes this Sunday. I, of course, will be back in England.

I send emails to various people. Sue Crook, whose blog I read before I came out here and who went home earlier in the summer, has just put her wedding photos on line. She’s another volunteer who has married a Rwandan, and it seems so funny to see people who I associate with jeans and teeshirts looking absolutely immaculate in their wedding clothes!

In the afternoon I go to the town centre to see if the travel agent is open so that I can pay for my Christmas flight home, but unfortunately it is one of the half of all businesses which are shut. No matter, I can sort things out when I come through at the end of the week to go home.

Back home after another stuffy, drowsy journey on the bus. What is it with these new buses? – nobody can keep awake in them. It’s not just me. Everybody’s lolling around in their seats, heads drooping onto bags or onto their neighbour’s shoulders.

At Gitarama Tom texts to say he’s eating out with Bish, the latest FHI intern to arrive in Gitarama. We meet up at the Petit Jardin for brochettes and ibirayi – some of the best we’ve had for a very long time. Bish is an interesting person; a Kenyan, and both well read and acutely clever.

I have to admit that I’m glad to be off the school inspection visits treadmill for the time being, but I’m sad I won’t be able to make my target of 40 inspections. By the time I return from England the window of opportunity for inspections will be over until January. Never mind, I’ve done more than most!

Very odd and unsettling sort of day today. Not one to enjoy.

E P Muhazi

Sixty children crammed into a room not much bigger than your lounge. No desks - they're trying to write on their knees. And to day there's no teacher either. The woman in the white blouse is Emmanuelie, the headteacher, who is trying to set them some work so that she can talk to me.
Is this a cowshed? No, it's two classrooms, housing a total of well over 200 children. Welcome to classes 1 and 2 at Muhazi. On the left is class 2, with 40 children in the morning and another 40 in the afternoons. On the right is class 1 with 60 children in each session. No desks, no furniture, no glass in the windows; you can see daylight through holes in both walls and roof. Precious few books. Welcome to rural Rwanda!

Two classrooms have been partially refurbished. The roof is new and leak-proof. The walls are better but desperately need replastering before the autumn rains dissolve the mid bricks. Alkso, these rooms have proper desks for the children and a modicum of storage.

These are the two best rooms at Muhazi. They're new, built of brick, and light years away from the primitive conditions of years 1 and 2. If you look at these four pictures, all from the same school, it summarises perfectly the range of conditions of school classrooms here in Rwanda.

the riddle of Muhazi Primary School

September 29th

Back to work again. We none of us yet know whether Eid ul Fitr and its public holiday are going to be on Tuesday or Wednesday. It looks like Wednesday; I have Charlotte texting me from Kigali asking when we can rearrange our meeting with primary heads. Hayley wants to know the phone numbers for Home St Jean in Kibuye. Amy wants to know how she goes about claiming transport costs. It’s all very well being the fount of all wisdom here, but I’m fast running out of credit on my phone!

At seven o’clock this morning I still haven’t got any school to visit today, but I’m determined that I’m not going to be beaten and text Muhazi school. (Muhazi is this funny place which certainly exists as a school but doesn’t appear in any of the league tables).

Of course, there’s no reply. Up at the District Office I get Claude to ring for me. And of course, he can’t get through. From 8 till about 10 the whole telephone system seems to go down. Too many phones; too much profit taking by MTN and not enough investment in new capacity.

I decide I’m going to visit the school on the off chance. At least Claude and Innocent know where it is. You take the main road to Mushubati and head off towards Kibuye on the tarmac road. You go down an endless hill – nearly 4km of constant descent – and end up in a little valley surrounded by high hills on one side and the lower slopes of Mt Mushubati on the other. That’s where it is. Hooray; it means that since there’s no uphill driving I can go there on a little moto. I only pay him RwF500; it would have been about 1500 for one of the big machines.

Fortunately the school has got my message and is expecting me. Well, more or less. The 1ère teacher is off sick and has been for a fortnight so nobody is teaching her class. The 6ème are doing end to end tests ready for the concours this time next month. So there’s not much point in visiting them either. The head doesn’t have an office, or a store room. A lot of the discussion we have to have takes place outside in the shade of a tree.

Muhazi has three blocks of two classrooms. It’s a small school – less than 400 children. Two rooms are brick built, with covered passage ways and very pleasant too. To are in “semi-dur” and just about acceptable. But the 1ère and 2ème rooms are awful. Too small, and with walls in such poor condition that you can see daylight through them in places. Even in the good rooms you can see daylight through gaps in the roof tiles. I’m writing this blog during an afternoon rainstorm; those poor children at Muhazi must be having to constantly move their desks to get out of the way of drips from the roof and rain blown through holes in the walls. It’s just not good enough.

These two awful classrooms look as if they’ve been extended from some sort of barn – a couple of extra courses of mud bricks to give more height, and internal partition walls knocked down. There’s bits of mud brick projecting out into the room; the interior walls are only half plastered so there’s really nowhere to hang pictures. The floor’s just earth, and uneven. The “furniture” is just like at Busekera – mud brick benches with either banana leaf mats to protect your clothes, or thin laths of wood polished to a glassy smoothness by scores of little wriggling bottoms. Honestly, I doubt whether Health and safety would allow you to keep animals in these conditions in England.

Muhazi is an Anglican school, like Shyogwe and Gikomero, and the Anglicans always seem to be terminally short of money to invest in new buildings.

Despite all this, the teacher is kind and efficient and carries off her lesson as if she was in the best room in Rwanda. I’ve been given the best furniture in the room to sit on. It’s a wonky stool (from the teacher’s table), cracked across the middle of the seat so that I have to sit very still so as not to damage myself.

The school has virtually no gardens, is not fenced, and it just looks forlorn. I think of how lovely some of the other little schools have been; it makes you want to weep for these little kids. It’s another desperately poor area; you can tell by the lack of shoes and the rags some of these little ones are wearing.

Muhazi does have two things going for it. One is that it has the best ratio of toilets to pupils of any public school I’ve yet seen. And it stands at the confluence of two permanent streams. (One of which is the river Tereza). There is no tap, or water tank, of course – children have to go down to the river at the start of each day and fill jerry cans, one for each classroom. Bet that’s fun in the mud and slime of the rainy season!

There is a maternelle, and as at Remera there are two parents sweating buckets in the hot sun digging foundations. Then I make an amazing discovery. In the woods a few metres from the school is a massive brick building the size of an aircraft hangar. It’s huge. Before the 1994 troubles it was a factory producing bottled spring water from a source high up on Mt Mushubati; the very same water that’s flowing past the school every day. The idea was to sell the bottles water to the elite of Kigali. The business failed; the factory was looted, shot up, bombed during the genocide, but it’s so solidly built that it’s still standing. Inside it, lost among acres of space, are thirty little tots on tiny little wooden stools with a bendy blackboard propped against the wall. It’s Muhazi’s nursery school.

The sad thing is that at the moment they’ve got a brick built, waterproof barn with acres of indoor play space. When the parents finish building their new maternelle they’ll have a cramped mud-brick hut with low roof, little light and absolutely no play space. If it were me. I’d want to hang on to the old factory for as long as I could.

I watch three lessons. In two of them the children sing songs at the start and finish, and it’s obvious their teachers have come to the training session Cathie and I ran at Mata. Also there’s one of our rice sack wall posters up in a room.

The children are polite and curious; one of the 4ème lads takes me over during break time and insists I come and have a look at his room. It’s one of the better rooms in the school and all the children who use it are so proud of it. The little ones look jealously through the door at us.
I finish my inspection. I’ve decided that since Muhazi is right next to the main road I’ll hitch a lift home and save VSO some more money. I start walking with one of the teachers who’s going home for his lunch. We walk for a good three kilometres, all uphill, in the full heat of mid-day, and not a single usable vehicle comes past us at all. Eventually, just as I’m approaching the Mushubati junction, a Chinese lorry stops for me. It’s one of the road engineers, and he’s going all the way to the District Office. He even speaks some English. My luck with lifts is still holding!

I can’t say it’s a fast run. Every few hundred yards he’s stopping to chase up or give orders to groups of workmen. They all goggle at the muzungu in the cab; they think that the Englishman is supervising the Chinese man who is supervising the Africans. I think that’s really funny and do nothing to put then right!

Eventually we reach the office and I’m able to get home and write up my report before the next lot of rain starts.

Best thing about today – solving the riddle of Muhazi. The reason it doesn’t appear in any league tables is because it’s a relatively new school and this current 6ème is the first in the school’s history. So I’m able to tell the kids I want at least 12 of the 28 of them, and preferably 16 of them, to be sure they pass their test. That would put Muhazi in the top quartile of Muhanga schools and would really put the wind up some of the very big, complacent primaries!

Late evening everything changes. I get a phone call to say my dad has died suddenly this afternoon. So tomorrow I must start unpicking everything I’ve been arranging and get an air ticket home pronto. I’m so pleased that I was able to get him photos of Rwanda so he could see what I was up to, and “meet” all the people I’m working with. He’s been able to read blogs that I’ve sent, and I’ve been able to have a phone call with him while I’ve been here. He’s been so supportive and so proud of everyone who’s giving up years of their time to volunteer out here.