Achievements, discoveries and chick-flops!

Achievements

·         Managed to get caught in a torrential downpour in Kigali with another volunteer. The kind where you are drenched through in two minutes and get slightly hysterical from the experience. There was crashing thunder and a sky filled with flashes of lightening, and to top it off hurtling winds that flung the rain in our faces like buckets of water. Tricia and I were screaming with laughter and hysteria. It turns out it is a poor decision to attempt to walk in a storm in leggings. Not only did I look and feel like a drowned rat but a drowned rat in skin tight lycra who seemed intent on catching rain water in her helmet!!! It took two days for the inside of the helmet to dry and a good few minutes to peel the leggings off once I’d reached dry land! But the moral of the story is, Rwandan don’t let muzungus struggle in the rain. A car stopped right in the middle of the dual carriage way, flung the doors open and demanded that we got in. We didn’t argue. He drove us to our guest house and wished us luck!

·         Baked! On a charcoal stove oven that I made! A proper cake-like banana cake! Very proud moment. Possibly the achievement of the week! We ate it hot from the pan, with a cup of tea, sat on our doorstep in the late afternoon sun.

·         Got 50 Heads to write One Year Action Plans at a series of workshops run by Catherine. Through a mix of French and English, patience, determination, and lots of repetition we will be the first sector to have every school with an Action Plan. 30 more to go over the next three days.

·         Got sunburnt in the same week that I’ve bundled myself up in layers and got caught in a storm. Plenty of opportunities to talk about the weather here!!

·         Got over my heart in mouth motorbike journey fear. Which is good as it’s very hard to be appreciative of amazing views when you think you’re about to topple over the edge of one of Rwanda’s thousand hills.

·         Been taken to very posh hotel for lunch with the sister and for lazy sunbathes round the pool afternoon. Was a very decadent experience, followed by an evening five days later with her in Kigali.

Discoveries

·         I have a food fantasy list that seems to be all about spices. When asked what I’d like to have sent out to me, I replied ‘tumeric and paprika’! It seems most volunteers request chocolate and Heat magazine (if you are considering sending parcels, please DON’T assume I DON’T want chocolate, I do, I just like spices more!)

·         Our chickens like to wear high heels!!! Not only are they intent on being part of the Bottle Top quality control team, but they also want to experiment with their versatility. It seems that bottle tops are not only good for time tables strings (us) and pecking at (them), but also very exciting to trample on when wet with paint. The ridiculous creatures then get them stuck to their feet and spend the next five minutes clopping round like they’re in stilettos until the paint dries and the shiny newly named chick-flops fall off! Our garden is currently strewn with abandoned bottle top/high heels!

·         Living without running water is challenging. We are now on day five of no water. Catherine has decided she is going to refuse to pay our water rates! We are catching rain water in buckets to sluice down the toilet. Unfortunately our domestique wasn’t aware that the muzungus had a plan for the dirty water that had fallen off the roof, and tipped it all away!!! We’re keeping fingers crossed for water tomorrow.

·         If a vehicles acts like it’s going to break down, it probably is. If someone decides that blowing into some part of the engine is going to solve the problem, it probably wont, and if the vehicle breaks down once, it’ll probably break down again. My instinct told me that a mutatu (mini bus) that shudders and lurches in first, and wont accelerate in second or even GO into third, is going nowhere fast...I’m just wondering why my instinct didn’t tell me to get off and catch a different bus! Oh well, lesson learnt!

·         I have nasty large buzzy things that like to sneak their way into my room at night, hurl themselves repetitively at my light, swing round the room at 90 mph, dive bomb my head and collapse to the floor exhausted where they spin round and round on the floor like a strange black and yellow Catherine wheel until I find a book or flip flop to splat them with. And then they crunch. I don’t enjoy this evening ritual.

·         Our local football teams like to formation train. They skip, hop, jump, two step, grapevine and clap their way to fitness in some amazing formations that travel with seamless grace across the football pitch. It’s a little bit like choreographed ice dancing in football kits. Highly amusing and strangely impressive. I watch football from my front yard; I feel the anthropologist observing the local behaviour from her veranda. I just need my gin and tonic now!

Quality control - storage facilities inspection

The beginning of the finishe product ready for a preliminary grand unveiling to the headteachers next Wednesday

A day of things that made me smile

Today has been a day of little things that made me smile.

I lit my charcoal stove today on my own. I confess it did take about 15 matches though in my defence, they were the poorest excuse for matches I have every known; they would strike, but the flame wouldn’t catch on the wood! I had to resort to candle wax and paper, which I considered resourceful if perhaps not very Rwandan. But the result was that I boiled a pot of water for our flasks so we could hot bucket shower later, and then made rice on the dying embers. I even shaved my legs in the left over hot water, sitting on the door step with the sun warming my face and the chickens trying to drink the soap suddy water. It was a pretty idyllic scene.

At dusk, little voices coming up from the house below. I peer over the fence and three sisters and a brother are crowded around the new green school-issue lap tops, singing and recording themselves. They huddle together on a wooden bench whilst white chickens peck around them in the dirt. Suddenly, their laughing faces turn towards me. They notice the muzungu staring down at them (my turn to stare for once!) and they grin shyly, wave and giggling nervously, they continue to sing. One of the sisters, becomes bold and races up the slope to the bottom of my fence and turns the lap top towards the house. Now they are recording me, and the giggles begin again as they capture me on camera. I’m frustrated by my lack of Kinyarwanda, but they recue me with one of their only English phrases and ask ‘What is your name?” It’s engagement and it’s lovely.

Charcoal smoke is in the air and fills my nose. Childrens’ voices travel across the night sky, a cow moo in it’s solitary pens, the crickets start their night orchestra as the football field begins to clear and the last calls from the pitch fade as the darkness drops. Tonight the sky remained clear throughout the evening and the hills were backed by a blue sky. Pillows of white clouds roll in, but the grey tinge does not bring rain; the countryside glows and I breathe in the goodness of the world around me and feel very lucky. Lots of things to make me smile.

Blue Speckled Hens and mud speckled volunteers

Project One Million Bottle Tops begins

Project Bottle Top seems to have become Project Stop the Blue Speckled Hens From Drinking Bleach! The strange chickens are fascinated by the foil wrapped tops and have made numerous attempts to drink from the bowl of bleach we’re washing the bottle tops in. Have spent the morning talking to chickens and cleaning fanta and beer tops for our’ Collect 1 Million by March’ challenge. The stages are as follows

1.       Collect bottle tops by various means included scrabbling round in the dirt in towns, grabbing from unsuspecting confused bartenders and crawling round the floors of restaurants.

2.       Wash in buckets of water and bleach whilst crouching on doorstep every evening and shoeing away bleach-addicted chickens

3.       Dry in sun (it’s rained for three days)

4.       Sort into piles for painting and the rest into colour groups (that’s all one million of them)

5.       Various volunteers, teachers, work men, guards and innocent by-standers join a one day Hammer Holes in Bottle Tops workshop, drink tea and get back ache. Am considering mobilising the chickens.

6.       String onto nylon, knot and singe ends.

7.       Pack into envelopes, write instructions, demonstrate use to teachers and wait for impact.

SIMPLE!

Mmm, tasty bleachy bottle tops. My favourite!