Musanze, motos and men in white shoes

We got up early and by 7am we were on the medium size bus of death, the only one to leave the village that day, me bound for Musanze , two hours to the west in the direction of Congo and Catherine back to Kigali. The journey was your typical hysterical, heart pounding, panic inducing, bend swinging, pot-hole bouncing affair. Luckily, we had a seat and I more or less managed to stay on it for the duration, despite the plastic coating that had me sliding violently into the aisle on numerous occasions! It’s strange how when I’m most uncomfortable, I’m suddenly reminded of how free I feel. It’s a feeling I only get when I’m way out of my comfort zone, far off in another country, embracing the madness, watching from outside, knowing I’m now on the inside. It’s the Sri Lanka feeling all over again. At one point I had someone’s large aluminium bowl wedged into my shin, their sharp cornered and heavy bag resting uninvited on my leg, a shell suit jacket (NOT mine) billowing in my face and my hair entwined in another mans bling watch as we careered around corners and I bounced off my seat for the hundredth time. I felt like I’d arrived. It felt strangely good.

Arriving in Musanze, I was supposed to meet with Roisin, a fantastic Irish girl in the same role as me who had also arrived in September. All I can say is that it’s a great testimony to travel and living and working abroad that you can meet a stranger one day and say good bye to a friend the next. We of course talked non stop. There was much discussion about the role of a Methodology Trainer, but we also spent many a moment admiring the countryside around us;  me in total awe, her still in excited appreciation of her surroundings. How could one not be annoyingly smug when surrounded by the dark silhouettes of jagged volcanoes against clear blue skies as they nurture a rolling basin of green green hills and dense banana plantations. I took my first moto (riding pillion on a motorbike) which left me both fearful and exhilarated. What a way to see the country. Beats the drive down Muller Road every morning. The roads of Rwanda have far more eclectic traffic. Women swathed in brightly coloured cloth carry wood and buckets on their head, men in pairs push bikes heavily laden with jerry cans of water, children sit on door steps in blue and mustard school uniforms, the occasional goat on a string trots by, there is an endless stream of people, bicycles and motos all navigating the same potholes and bumps in the road. I fell utterly in love with the region from my first early morning moto journey.



Musanze



Sorgham drying. Apparently it's red at the beginning and then turns black as it dries

The first of possibly many cliched photos. This was taken on demand after leaving a school and before mounting our motos.

We went to see a school and I did my first observation and feedback with Roisin. It gave me the sudden burst of energy I  needed to realise I was excited to get going and no longer anxious about my capacity to do the job. Can’t wait to get my teeth into the role and start working with teachers and doing what I came out here to do. Based upon my first visit to a school in my own district today, I realise I have got my work cut out for me. Some of the teaching was pretty dire, but the teachers are enthusiastic and I hope that with time and perseverance truly effective change can be made.

That evening Roisin and I devoured an entire roast rabbit (we discarded the head, the ears were a little off-putting!) The ibirayee (roasted and crinkle cut potatoes) and thinly sliced onion were amazing. I'm disgusted with my ability to eat so much and to feel so very unstuffed! Weight loss in Africa? Ha, not likely!!!

From Musanze the next afternoon I boarded another bus to Kigali to meet up with Catherine and another volunteer before catching a further bus to Gitarama, further down south (check out the map), where there is a large volunteer community. From there, and other parts of Rwanda, 27 VSO volunteers were all going to converge on Butare, another hour and a half south, for Christine’s birthday. The lasting image from Gitarama was the incredible night sky I experienced. We forget in our light filled cities and towns of the UK quite how many constellations there are. I don’t think I have ever seen a sky so littered with stars. I was practically stumbling over my own feet with my desire to look up when really I should have been looking down at the rutted and rocky red earth under my feet. By day I’m awed by the endless rolling hills, tea plantations, rice paddies, banana palms and lush and fertile slopes, and by night I’m filled with awe all over again by the night skies. I’m very lucky indeed to have found myself in such a beautiful country, especially given how little I knew before I arrived.

Meeting up with Cam, Kathy, Tricia, Jerry and briefly Burt again from my orientation group was so good. Familiar faces are very welcome no matter what kind of time you’ve been having. There were many volunteers I’d already met and chatted with from different sessions during our orientation, and it was a great opportunity to make and extend connections in the grand network that is the VSO family. There are some really lovely people out here, and visiting at weekends is practically a volunteer institution. Rwanda is so small, it is possible to travel to most places within the country for the weekend without too much hassle. We talked tailors and tailor disasters, we waited two hours for a meal, giggled in rooms divided by walls that didn’t reach the ceiling, got lost, compared notes, swam and went to bed early from total exhaustion!

The return journey was long and took two buses and a 45 minute moto journey. I was slightly nervous as I didn’t have my VSO (un)limited edition helmet, I hadn’t been on a moto on such bad roads for such an extended amount of time. My driver had pointy white shoes on, kept trying to turn round to talk to me, enjoyed accelerating down hills, took humps and bumps and maximum speed, answered his mobile whilst steering one handed and liked to stop frequently for reasons unexplained! Rain hung ominously in the air, threatening us with huge grey clouds. When it rains, moto journeys become dangerous as the roads become slick with mud and slipping is likely. However, as luck would have it, not only did it not rain, but it hadn’t rained for a number of days and the roads had become very dusty. Catherine and I arrived dishevelled, orange streaked  and with dust in every orifice. The joke about why the muzungu always has dirty feet seemed a little understated when we disembarked. We looked totally mad. I FELT totally mad. The drive had been pretty hairy and I confess I felt terrified almost all the way. I know I’ll get used to it, but that journey had my heart in my throat all the way. The white patent shoes did little to instil faith, but I just kept telling myself that these drivers know every bump and hole in the road and throwing a muzungu off a bike is not ideal for business! I laughed all the way to the house in a slightly hysterical manner. Think it was exhaustions. But happy exhaustion.


This is merely a fraction of the dust damage.


Am feeling a great deal of humble gratitude for the incredible welcome and start I’ve had to my time in Rwanda. I have very much landed on my feet. This is not my usual style, but very grateful for it.

New home, new beginnings

Where to start! In the past four days I have been to five different parts of Rwanda and I’ve been completely breathless from excitement the entire time. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve stopped to take a breath, or come down an octave since leaving Kigali. Rwanda is a stunningly beautiful country and it just gets more and more so the higher you climb. Given I’m at about 3000 meters, you can imagine what views I am greeted by.

The road to my village winds up steeply, zig-zagging backwards and forwards for an hour through lush greenery. On either side of the road, banana plantations rise, hiding neatly behind them small mud brick homesteads. Square after carefully marked out square of corn,  beans and potatoes create a patchwork of different greens. In each piece of the green patchwork bright dots of fabric jump out as women and men work their little piece of land. At first look, you wonder where the people live as the hills are just a carefully farmed endless stretch, but when you look more carefully and follow the red mud paths that wind up and down the hills, you begin to see roof tops peeking out from behind sets of palms. Rwandans, it seems, are deeply private people, and their homesteads are tucked discretely away. The second part of the my journey turns off the main road and climbs steeply up and away for an hour, over pot holes and flat log bridges, passing through little villages of stunned children who can’t resist to call out ‘muzungu’ from every bush and tree and up 3000m to what seems a little bit like the top of the world. I can’t believe I am so lucky to have been placed here. I didn’t know that Rwanda was so green and fertile, and that when it calls itself the land of 1000 hills, it’s actually an understatement!

The furniture arrives in a totally inconspicuous 4x4 toyota. The locals flock.


The front of the house looking out onto the football pitch. Not sure if this is really living like the locals



Furniture delivery

Les poulet!! And my garden and view.



Six chickens splattered with blue paint.



So, arrived after pretty impressive journey to my new home on Wednesday evening. The chickens had laid 14 eggs whilst Catherine (my house mate and colleague who has been here since September) and I had been in Kigali. They weren’t laying when she left. Our guard, Tharsisse was so ecstatic to having laying hens and two muzungus in his care that he practically embraced Catherine in excitement upon our arrival, whilst her and I squealed and counted and squealed some more. The squealing promptly stopped when we realised that despite promises my furniture had not arrived which meant that I would be sleeping on a cold cement floor! Catherine made a curt phone call and low and behold Ikea style furniture arrived (instructions for assembly NOT included) and the locals gathered in fascination.

That night I proudly cooked something that mildly resembled a Spanish frittata with eggs and potatoes and somehow scooped it out of my saucepan with a variety of implements. Needless to say it was delicious and well deserved;  first meal in a new home are somehow always special no matter what they are and a saltless, pepperless, onionless frittata made on a hot plate at the height of my knees was no exception. We ate on our doorstep with our guard as dark fell and sky began to fill with stars. Amazingly, things just got better and better from then on!

One whole week in Rwanda

Last night was the volunteer dinner. This is a big tradition that welcomes the new volunteers to the VSO family and gives us an opportunity to relax, have a beer, watch some traditional dancing, eat huge amounts of carbs and meat and chat to others about their experience of Rwanda and their work so far. However, what it really is is an excuse to show off ones latest tailored creations from recent fabric purchases, and a high fashion shoe comparison workshop. Highly amusing for a bunch of naive and pasty volunteers who know nothing of a tired wardrobe or the confines of village fashion having only been in Rwanda for one week. Most volunteers we met, though absolutely loving their time in the country, had certain cravings after five months (or longer) in Africa. In fact I witnessed a highly entertaining and clandestine black market exchange going on between two volunteers: one girl selling her drink tickets to another girl who was desperate to get her hands on another glass of hard to come-by wine before heading back off the sticks. The negotiations were smooth and quite clearly had occurred before. Desperate times lead to desperate measures! I had good chats with the woman I’m going to be living and working with who has already been in post for the past four months. We’re both waiting with baited breath for the call that tells us that the  chickens that have just arrived have started laying. Fresh eggs are going to be amazing!!!

During the day there was an expo that gave us an insight into the kind of work the Basic Methodology Trainers have been doing. Rice sacks seem to the way forward, using them as we would flip chart paper, and as visual aids. There were some very impressive resources made from recycled goods. It’s going to be interesting work with even more limited resources than Badock’s Wood! Apparently, I’ve got myself (inadvertently) involved in a 1 million bottle top project! My Education Manager (a VSO volunteer) has grand plans to make times tables bottle top strings and distribute them to schools with a set of instructions for each (which I have to make when I arrive in placement). She has calculated that this means we will need 1 million of them. By March! This has  turned me into a scavenging and strange (and oddly competitive) muzungu who grapples around on the floor for discarded tops in bars and on the streets and asks poor confused bar tenders if they will give her the soda tops. They really don’t know what to make of it and I’m yet to learn how to say “I’m going to make maths resources by recycling bottle tops” in Kinyarwanda!

Singing Dancing Prancing

Some of the orientation group I arrived with. The dinner was definitely an occasion to dress up and show off ones wardrobe.

Traditional dancers. The battery in my camera was dieing but the effect is quite ethereal so I'm going to support my artistic effort! We joined the bum wiggling, shoulder shrugging and foot stamping with very little encouragement! It seems the mood took us!

Learning

Just come back from the Genocide memorial  museum but don’t really want to talk about it here. All I want to say is that I was left unable to look at a Rwandan above the age of 17 on the street and not hear in my head the questions what did you do? Where were you when it all happened? What are your stories? What horrors did you endure? What horrors did you inflict? I think there really was far too much to think about to be able to verbally express the impact it left. But this is the land of 1000 smiles and instead I will tell you the story that I hope will endure much longer than the pictures in my head from the memorial museum. As we drive up the red earthed road towards our guest house, I gaze out the window at the people, and notice a boy of about 15, green apple in his hand, school uniform still impeccable. He decides to take advantage of the fact that our bus is struggling even in first gear to make it up the steep hill and takes it upon himself to race the bus. He starts running along side us and I catch his eye. He grins broadly, and picks up the pace, but he’s fighting a losing battle as the bus picks up speed as the road gradually evens out. He drops behind and I put my head out the window and call out “Never going to happen!” to him with an equally broad grin on my face. His smile widens (as if this was possible!) and he slows and then stops. I wave to him as we leave him behind. He waves back and his smile is marked on my mind in a beautiful juxtaposition of events. It certainly is a land of a thousand smiles, and that is the very thing you need to see when you’ve just been faced with such horror and unbelievable destruction.

Days here, before departure day, are very long and full. We start with our two hour Kinyarwanda lesson which is as frustrating as it is fun. Sometimes I take a look around the classroom and can’t help but laugh at the strange sounds we are making in order to try and pronounce a multiple consonant-ed word. We hiss and snort and make all sorts of nasal throaty sounds in the hope that we are actually repeating with some type of accuracy the word our teacher is so desperately trying to teach us. I mean seriously what would  you do with words like mirongwirindwe (20!) or umukorerabuskake (volunteer) or worse still nkomoka mubwongereza (I’m English)! So, I’m learning, but I’m also getting very tongue tied in the process. Being back ‘in school’ and going to class is very strange; I really feel for our teacher sometimes as the poor girl is basically taking and entire class of teachers and head teachers on! A couple of times now we’ve revolted and refused to learn the way she wanted us to, demanding paired work and more learner centred learning!!!

Enough now, my room mate has started snoring again and I can’t concentrate (let alone sleep). At least I’ll have my own room when i get to my placement and the only sound will be the crickets and the rain.

Welcome to the carb mountain and kerosene stoves

So today I finally understood what people were talking about when they referred to the  infamous carb mountain. From left to right dinner consisted of fried potatoes, rice and spaghetti  with some coleslaw and fried fish to break up the stodge. And that was AFTER a lunch of rice, fried plantain and chips. The whole ‘loose weight in Africa’ thing doesn’t seem to be working out all too well! But the food is tasty and there is loads of if, very important for a Walmsley. Talking of Walmsley’s, it seems Ihave a new name; VSO have me down on a particular list as Jennifer Walmsley! Not sure where that one materialised from but watch out for my next identity crisis!

Loved today as it was so full of practical advice. I am now a pro at lighting a kerosene stove, which is a true art given that the matches are just waxed paper and you practically have to set your fingers alight in order just to strike the match. And then there is the possibility of singed eyebrows and setting ones hair on fire, all incidences I managed to avoid on this occasion but which will remain a threat in the first few weeks! We were introduced to the water filtering system which relies upon a large urn like contraption with calcium chalk candles inside through which the water filters.  Just lighting a kerosene stove and discussing water filtration and storage is really helping to adjust our mindset to the slower pace of life we’ll be living and the truth of what it will be like to live in rural areas in Rwanda. Most of us, it seems will have running water and electricity, but these will be intermittent and already we’re being given lots of advice on how to best prepare for this. We have life so easy in the UK;  I’m liking the idea of going back to basics, only buying what I need, getting my kerosene in plastic bottles, preserving water, being practical with what I have. Apparently there are ways to turn your stove into an oven so you can bake break and cakes, and a wooden peg makes a perfect candle holder. So simple, so resourceful.  Quite how the reality of not having things ‘on tap’ (pardon the pun) will affect me is another matter, but so far patience seems to be key. Oh, and always remembering to start cooking before I’m hungry and boil water before I’m thirsty!

So far I’ve learnt that candles will be an essential, Rwandan matches are too short and flimsy, water will be stored in various and multiple containers all over my house, the domestique will prefer to use a charcoal stove, flasks are a great way of creating myself a back up shower and when I ask for kerosene I will be asked if I want petrol.

Another thing I’ve discovered today is that it isn’t acceptable to eat or drink on the street or in public as it is considered to be showing off what you have, and anything you have you are supposed to share. I’ve also discovered that a parent chooses their child’s surname based upon the situation into which they were born , so surnames can translate as son of god or struggle, or something else that reflects a wish or feeling.  Makes tracing a family tree pretty interesting I’d have thought!

I signed my work contract today so I’m now fully committed, though I guess I really was that already. Also had my first Rwandan beer in my first Rwandan bar. So a significant day of mile stones J

The learning process has started and it’s steep but scenic!

Feet down in Africa

Hello Africa

I’m here. And after all the planning and list making and phone calls and anticipation and endless comments on packing dilemmas, being here doesn’t even feel that strange. The sun is warm, feet are flip-flopped, and the earth is red. From chaos and turmoil to relative calm and rest, this is the beginning.

The flight was comfortable, and straight forward and got me here, which is basically the whole point! We were over fed and well watered and I don’t think I’ve ever passed out into so many intense open-mouthed embarrassing drooling airplane sleeps before. But I guess severe sleep deprivation will do that to you! We arrived to a welcome of flowers and smiles after about eight hours of flying. It was overwhelming in a beautiful way, the I-can’t-stop- grinning-but- if- I- grin- too- much-I- might- start- crying- sort- of- way!

For the next ten days the group of 23 intrepid volunteers will stay in Kigali. Our timetable and training starts tomorrow, early! We’ll have our Kinyarwanda lessons (which is apparently pronounced Chinyargwanda ) which will probably have me mildly hysterical as the words are stupidly long and full of consonants and we’ll be properly orientated and filled with fear and excitement in equal measures. We’re being over fed and well looked after. It’s a nice start, but we’re probably being lulled into a slightly false sense of security.

Today we’re were taken into Kigali to give us a basic tour and set us up with modems, credit, Rwanda Francs and allow us to feel like we’d actually arrived in Rwanda, having arrived at night fall and promptly eaten and gone to sleep! The city is clean and calm (relatively speaking) and it felt surprisingly un-hassley and friendly.

We’ve all got a good feeling about this country already. It’s quite possible we’ve landed on our feet. Let’s see what happens come next Wednesday.

Quote of the day “It’s fine to be quirky, but eccentric is borderline!”

The lists grow longer!

So finally I've committed to blogging! Setting this up was a much harder task than I thought and frustrating on my stubborn computer, but hopefully the writing part will be a lot easier.
So a week to go! That sounds very strange on the tongue. The planning stage has taken so long I almost forgot there was a 'going away' part at all. And now it's almost upon me, I'm not sure which emotion to feel first. Hence concentrating on the list making (closely followed by the panicking) - number one on the list being Learn Kinyarwanda in one week (!), followed by deflea cat, change name on gas bill, cancel phone contract, choose jewellery for taking (very important) and work out how to take a two year supply of underwear, bug spray, shampoo and moisturiser with a baggage allowance of 2 x 23kgs! Of course instead of attending to the important task of packing up my life, I've procrastinated by spending hours editing my blog!

My room is a packing nightmare, the charity shop is fairing well from me, but I've run out of storage boxes and have discovered that even though I consider myself a fine and professional packer * this task is even too big for me. Time to be ruthless. What's the word for that in Kinyarwanda? Right, back to the packing. No excuses now.


* This was decided after copious heated car-loading debates with my sister's boyfriend. His idea of 'packing' for summer festivals would always leave me uncomfortably wedged between djembe drums, duvets and a weekend of beer and food in the back of a 15 year old nissan micra. I would always insist on repacking; he would get offended. It always ended in tears. He has since sold me the car and has confessed that I am the best car packer he knows.