Wednesday 29th October - Pineapple and ice cream

Eeek it will be November soon and I am only just getting my head around what I am doing here. The good news is that it is finally all falling into place a bit more. Have met Michael several times this week and have also met Bruce and Soraya and we have planned a way forward with the work we are going to do before we both go home for Christmas. We are going to make some resources and hopefully work with a school with the resources and some English teaching.
Although its extremely quiet at this time of year have done several things this week: been into Kigali to sort stuff out, met the Pasteur of my diocese and actually been into my office. You have to walk through a field of pineapples and bananas and then down a dirt track and through another field of sweet potatoes and then down a bit of steep grass to get to the office. But amazingly there is an internet connection there. As there are only 2 other people plus Pasteur Emmanuel and myself and Michael it should be possible to get on it to keep up with e mails once i move there. Michael has a master plan to have keys cut so that we can get in the office and use it for free at the weekends. Good plan!
I do like Shyogwe though. It has a nice peaceful feeling to it – its quite rural but not as poor as Gisagara. It has the feeling of a small village community about it but it is not so isolated from the town. You can walk back to the main road in 1 hour and back to the town in 2 hours. I took a ride on the back of a bicycle back to the road - poor man with me on the back and I only paid him 200RWF ie 20pence. Think he deserved a medal. Then walked back to the house in Giterama – called in every shop on the way to try to buy tuna for dinner but there was none to be had anywhere in the place so had to have eggs.
Thus started the virtual food game – see below.
The highlight of the day today was getting the charcoal stove going without having to fan it. We cook outside in the outhouse using a charcoal stove and it invariably goes dark by the time we have the charcoal going. Its like trying to light a barbecue without the firelighters and then trying to keep it going without the sacrificial sausage! We have to fan it to get the flames going and it takes ages. We always end up cooking by torch light as there is no electricity out there.
But today with a combination of Soraya’s charcoal arranging skills and my skills at making firelighters (to which I am indebted to my grandmother who showed me how when she used to light her coal fire) and a little bit of synchronised fanning, we managed to get it raging. We cooked a moussaka – except that we had to imagine that it had lamb in it because we had no lamb.
Then when we had eaten we had virtual dessert. This game started yesterday when I bought some eggs and I said to Hayley we could have smoked salmon and scrambled eggs but we will have to imagine the smoked salmon. And today for the first time it was actually hot so we had pineapple and ice cream but without the ice cream. So for virtual dessert Hayley had (imaginary) rhubarb crumble and Soraya had (imaginary) chocolate mousse. It has far less calories that ordinary chocolate mousse.
Its strange because I am not craving or missing anything back home but the range of food is so limited. Still its very healthy as it is often direct from the ground to the market to the saucepan.
Also today for the first time we actually had some hot weather. Angela Watt was under the impression that I was going to surprise her and come back in December as a bronzed goddess. But its been the short rainy season and although its always warm in the daytime it is often cloudy and it rains every day. The only way I am going to get brown is if I go rusty.
Though today Hayley and I managed to sit out in the sun – I actually got my legs burned. You have to remember the altitude. We are just below 2000 metres above sea level here and parts of Rwanda around the volcanoes national park goes up to 4000 metres above sea level. Bearing in mind that Everest is 9000 metres thats pretty high up. But it was lovely and hot and we laid outside and pretended we were in Greece. It was another virtual game to imagine we had the swimming pool. Decided we could have a pool party by everyone bringing the bowl they wash their clothes in and having a paddle...... We were obviously getting a little carried away by all this imagination stuff at this stage.

Thursday 30th October

Had hoped to move my furniture but it didn’t happen so went to Kigali instead and met Nidhi. On the way back we got the most fantastic view of the volcanoes in the distance. This area of Rwanda is very hilly and goes into mountains the further west you go. Its really stunningly beautiful and a lovely bus ride just to gaze out of the windows. Because its the rainy season everywhere is very very green at the moment and the markets are well stocked. We keep seeing the occasional thing that we have not seen before. Today we saw sweetcorn.

One thing that is also very noticeable in Rwanda is the number of people. It is the most densely populated country in Africa and it feels like it! It doesn’t matter where you are in any day there are always people around. They are either working in the fields or hanging around outside their houses or walking along the sides of the roads or travelling by bike or bus or moto. But you never ever go anywhere without there being people around.

And there seem to be so many children. Hayley works with the YMCA equivalent and they told her that 47% of the population are 18 or under. The organisation she works with has projects which support orphans and helps them to support themselves as communities. You do see a lot of children and a lot of women carrying them on their backs. How this population is going to continue to feed itself is very difficult to imagine. Most of the population live off the land and every bit of land is already cultivated so it just seems impossible to sustain this level of growth. Its a problem just waiting to happen.

Although it feels like a very safe place to be – you never ever feel worried that anyone is going to harm you in any way the Rwandans are so friendly with us and with one another – there is an obvious difference between hutus and Tutsis but it is never spoken about. When you have been here a while you can recognise the Tutsis and the Hutus. But you never ever mention it or ask a person which they are. Some people tell you when they get to know you and we have heard some pretty grim tales but unless they volunteer the information it is kept quiet. The president is keen to build Rwanda as a united country where everyone is Rwandan but it is a distinctly varied population. There are still gashaka trials going on where people can accuse others of atrocities committed during the genocide and they meet at a local level to decide if the accused people are guilty or not. There was a trial going on right outside our back door the other day and a crowd had gathered to listen so we went past but of course it was all in Kinyarwanda. It has to be difficult though for the Rwandans as it sets neighbour against neighbour 14 years on from the genocide. The longer you live here the more you are aware of an underlying tension which is not threatening to us in any way but is there nevertheless.

We are also aware at the moment of the news across the border at the northern point of lake Kivu where there is conflict between Rwanda and the Congolese and UN troops have been brought in. So far we have not heard anything from the Embassy or Programme office apart from being told not to travel there. Hayley and I noticed a bus to Goma in Kigali but it was definitely empty! Well it would be wouldn’t it.


There is also a very clear divide between the rich and the poor. This is very evident when you go into Kigali and see all the big cars and the people shopping in Akumat. Back in the countryside most of the population would not even be able to afford to get into Kigali to look round never mind buy anything.

So as a volunteer you have to be very conscious that you cannot change the world. I can see a role for myself now that I have got more into my work but I also recognise that whatever I do will be a small drop in the ocean and will only touch the lives of a few people. But it is a great experience living here and seeing and perhaps beginning to understand what life is like here. Even though it has been impossible for me to get started on work as I had hoped, I have become immersed in the culture and the way of life and that in itself has been a great experience.

For example people are always trying to sell us things. They see a white person and they think money. There is a Rwandan price and a muzungu price and we know this so it sort of becomes a big joke between us and the person trying to sell us something. Even when you are sitting on buses people are shoving stuff in through the windows trying to sell you anything from a bag of peanuts to a pair of shoes. And as soon as you say “ni menshi” which means too much they just fall about laughing.

They always laugh at any Kinyarwanda we attempt but then I am not surprised as it is pretty crazy.

I will just finish this by writing out (if I can ) the phrase “Its the 29th of April 1976.
Take a deep breath

Turi ku itariki ya makumyabiri na’ icyenda, ukwezi kwa Mata, umwaka wa’igihumbi maganacyenda minronwirindwi na gatandatu.

On that note I am fairly up to date. We have in country training next week in Kigali. It will be great to meet up with everyone and share stories and experiences but a little boring for the blog I should imagine. I am going to a party this weekend up in the mountains and I will try to take some more photos and try to get them on the blog if i can. It takes ages with the speed of the internet and I never feel like attempting it.