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!