Mushubati Mountain and Hyachinth's family

I set off for the hamlet of Gifumba, remembering to take my camera as I met a woman there last week, Hyacinth, who asked me to bring my camera next time to take her picture. 

I walked past Hyacinth’s house, thinking I’d walk part-way up Mushubati, the biggest hillside you can see from Gitarama, and call in on my way back, but her son Felicien was just coming out as I walked past so he invited me in.  I said hello to Hyacinth and we agreed I’d continue my walk and call in on my way back.  Felicien offered to accompany me. 

We walked up the valley, followed the stream to its source and then cut steeply up through an area where people were panning with plastic bowls for minerals.  There was no longer a path to follow.  Felicien was a real gentleman, giving me a hand up when I needed it, greeting people as we went and explaining why the strange white woman wanted to go up the hillside.  We reached the summit, where we met a track through an alpine-feeling area of sparsely growing pine trees which slowly took us back down to Gifumba by a route Felicien sometimes uses to take their two one-year-old cows up to pasture.

Back at their house one of Felicien’s brothers was preparing a marrow and a cabbage for their meal.  Hyacinth soon turned up along with her husband and another of Felicien’s brothers.  Those five make up the household.  The three brothers are all in their twenties.  There is another brother and two sisters who live elsewhere now, one of the sisters being a secondary school teacher with two children of her own.

I brought out my camera and asked each person’s permission to take their photo.  Here’s the vegetable-chopping brother with his mother Hyacinth behind him:

On the table is the flat woven dish on which he chopped the vegetables, as we would use a chopping board.  The locally made table and several uncomfortable locally made chairs form the only furniture in this, the family’s living room.  The room is rather less than 2 metres by 4 metres.  The family, like most Rwandans, is Catholic and on the wall are a picture of Jesus, Mary and Joseph; partly overlapping it a second picture of Jesus and Mary; and a framed photograph of the daughter who is a teacher.  Hard to see on the wall behind Hyacinth are pictures of the last and current popes, just next to the small high shuttered window which is the only window in the room.  The door is open in daytime so there is plenty of light in the room.  The floor is of fired bricks, now worn and some of them a bit out of place. 

Hyacinth is barefoot both inside the house and when she goes out.  The rest of the family all wear shoes of one sort or another e.g. Felicien wore flip flops to take me up the mountain.  Flip flops are the most common footwear here but people wear all sorts of second hand shoes bought in the market, or else go barefoot.

Here is vegetable-chopping brother again after I gave him permission to smile:

Most of the rooms in the house are built round a small central courtyard:  the living room, the kitchen, the cow-shed, and a bedroom.  You pass through the living room to get to what I guess are another two bedrooms.

Here is the third brother:

You can see the wooden lintel over the door where the mud facing over the unfired home-made bricks has eroded.

Here are Hyacinth and her husband posing in the courtyard:

Felicien wanted to be photographed at his bedroom door.  Notice the tee-shirt urging the world’s rich nations not to forget their promises to the poor:

Then before I could stop him, he whipped off the tee-shirt for a photo of his torso.  Here instead for public viewing is my favourite photo of him but girls, if you want to see more of a well-brought-up subsistence farmer, just let me know.

Felicien doesn’t have much prospect of becoming more than a subsistence farmer.  He completed secondary school but his grades were too low for university.  He is allowed to retake his exams.  However, his schooling was all in French and the language of teaching has just switched to English.  So if he retook his exams, he would have to do so in English and has no chance of improving his grades in that language. 

Felicien offered to go and buy me a Fanta.  As a Fanta costs 250 or 300Rwf and a labourer’s daily pay is 500 to 1,000Rwf, I offered to pay for drinks, hoping that wasn’t impolite.  Felicien accepted a 1,000Rwf note, went off carrying a plastic container and was soon back with a Fanta for me and the plastic container filled with banana beer.  Felicien tried to lever the lid off the Fanta against the table edge but finally resorted to using his teeth, despite my protestations.  Everyone else shared the banana beer.

Father showed me a piece of paper on which was written the daughter-who-is-a teacher’s mobile phone number.  I put it into my phone and suggested we give her a ring.  Felicien spoke to her first, then I spoke to her in English, then both her parents spoke to her.  Hyacinth said wistfully she wished she had a phone so she could keep in touch with her daughter (though she only lives 4km away).  Father said it felt like a ‘fete’.  Oh, by the way, they all speak pretty good French.  Hyacinth used to be house-keeper for a Belgian family and everyone learnt it in school.

 

Felicien went off to change into a fresh shirt and trousers and then said it was time to go.  Vegetable-chopping brother went off to the kitchen to cook - he would be cooking on charcoal or wood - no electricity or running water in houses like these.  Father cut two big marrows for me though I asked if I could just take the small one, which pretty much filled my backpack.  Felicien accompanied me back to Gitarama, carrying my backpack for me, and then went off to see some friends.  I took the marrow home to photograph:

What Rwanda does well

Here are some of the ways in which Rwanda out-shines the UK:

·         The proportion of female MPs is 56% compared with 22% in the UK. 

·         Plastic bags are banned.

·         Umuganda – this is the practice of community volunteering on the last Saturday morning of the month.  Everyone turns out and clears ditches, builds an extra classroom for a school, or whatever needs doing.  This is followed by a community meeting and announcements.  Eat your heart out, Cameron.

·         The enthusiasm and discipline of children in school

·         Rwandans’ hard working nature, stoicism and cheerfulness

Transport

I have now tried out several modes of transport in Rwanda. 

The buses vary from cramped mini-buses to more comfortable buses a bit like a scaled-down coach.  Buses have fold-down seats in the aisles to accommodate extra passengers.  Some leave to a schedule, and are usually on time e.g. there are buses to Kigali from Gitarama leaving every 15 minutes.  I’d say the service is considerably more punctual than in the UK and the cost is only 900 (90p) for the one hour journey.  Some buses wait until full before setting off – this can take up to two hours.

Motos are motorbike taxis.  Some are licensed, in which case the driver wears his licence number on a vest.  (I say ‘his’; I have seen hundreds of moto drivers and all male, though a friend of a friend had a lift with a female moto driver in Kigali.)  In Kigali you must negotiate the price before starting the journey but in Gitarama it’s always 200 (20p) in the town or 300 if you are going just outside.  Drivers carry a spare helmet (If going on a longer journey, maybe 45 minutes along a dirt road to visit a school, VSO volunteers will use the helmet they brought from the UK)  The helmets look as if they’ve seen quite a bit of mileage and would fit the head of a giant.  The first time I put one on, I tried to adjust the strap, with the aid of the driver.  The second one I used had the strap knotted so no adjustment was possible.  If you say ‘Genda buhoro buhoro’, the driver will oblige by driving slowly.  It is impolite to put your arms round the driver’s waist so balance is of the essence once you come off the tar road onto dirt roads.

Moto drivers do not limit themselves to one passenger:  I have seen one transporting two children, one in front of him and the other behind, neither wearing helmets.  I also saw one balancing his passenger’s large suitcase on his handlebars before setting off.  Transporting a passenger while wedging a large gas canister between the driver’s legs is another favourite.  You see, people who would normally walk will pay the cost of a moto if it means getting home their sack of animal feed or whatever.

Bicycle taxis.  Some places you are more likely to find a bicycle taxi.  I have used them along the dirt road from Kabgayi to Shyogwe.  It’s 2.5km and costs 200 (20p).  I feel rather lazy but do it if rain is threatening and I want to get to my destination before a deluge.

Lake Kivu (second part – hot springs)

From the market, we walked to some hot springs bubbling up on the edge of the lake:

People take advantage of the hot water to do their washing:

And even to cook potatoes!

Here is some video of the water bubbling up in one place:

And another video clip of potatoes cooking.  The voices are a mixture of local people speaking Ikinyarwanda, Michael speaking English, and Juliet speaking to the locals in Ikinyarwanda and to Michael in English and French.

We carried on walking past the springs.  Here are some of the world’s finest coffee beans:

And here you see a mixture of common crops growing:  beans, coffee and bananas:

It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a dugout:

Back to the guest house for an afternoon dozing on the beach:

Followed by some traditional dancing.  In the background, you can see the couple who own the guest house:  a Rwandan woman in beautiful boubous and her Dutch husband.

Michael captured one of the dancers in mid-air:

And here are two of them, stamping hard in bare feet on a floor consisting of crushed lava:

While Juliet and I enjoy dessert:

Lake Kivu (first part - fishermen)

Just back from a night at Kibuye on Lake Kivu.  We took a boat to an island with just one building, a restaurant, on it.  We ordered lunch, knowing it was likely to take 2-3 hours to materialise (never go hungry to a Rwandan restaurant) then had a swim.  Vanessa and I swam right round the island.  I guess it took us about 45 minutes.   

Last weekend I was on Lake Kivu too, spending two nights at a fishing village near Gisenyi, right by the DRC border, with another VSO volunteer, Michael, and a Rwandan teacher friend of his, Juliet.  It was a beautiful guest house with many flowering plants which attracted colourful birds.

We watched the fishermen go out at dusk and return again in the morning.  They fish in sets of three boats, connected by poles, along which they manage to walk between the boats, even at sea.  The middle boat has lights to attract the fish.  Each boat has a boom front and back for attaching the nets.  Here they are on their return, still in the distance:

And closer in:

Closer still:

We could hear the fishermen singing as they paddled.  You can just hear them on this video:

They offload the fish to their womenfolk, who do the selling.  Here’s the market, which is actually just the shore-line where the boats come in:

The fish are only a few centimetres long; I’m told this is because of the methane which occurs naturally in the lake.  They make a delicious snack, deep-fried in batter, and you eat them head and tail included.

International Women's Day

There was some confusion about whether Women’s Day was a holiday here.  The same confusion as on election days.  General Secretary went off without clarifying.  She was going to Goma in DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) to show solidarity with the women there living in a conflict zone.  I learnt too late to arrange to accompany her that another member of staff was going to help build a house for a poor woman; women building while the men cooked for them for once. 

So I went to Shyogwe, a village an hour and a half’s walk away, and Michael took me round the school.  I ended up teaching anatomy to a class of maybe eighty children.  They were mostly about nine years old though some were older as you repeat years at school here until you pass them.  I was confident on the cardio-vascular system and the musculo-skeletal system, but when they started telling me about the ear, they knew more than I did, at least in terms of naming the pinna, cochlea and so on.  The curriculum requires them to memorise huge amounts of information, much of it not taught in the UK until pupils are several years older.  In addition, the children have to contend with having ikinyarwanda as their first language, having been taught in French until two years ago, and since then being taught in English, though still with French textbooks.  And that is by teachers who themselves have ikinyarwanda as their first language, have taught in French until two years ago, and now teach in English.  We finished with some singing, including ‘If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands etc’ and ‘Head, shoulders, knees and toes etc’.  It is a government priority to encourage girls to study science – not traditionally considered suitable for girls here – so quite by chance I did end up doing my bit for Women’s Day.

Later Michael took me to a hill which is the site of the palace of the king who was grandfather to the current Rwandan king – who lives in exile in the US.  It is a hill with a 360 degree view, a place where you feel you can see all of Rwanda, hill after hill far into the distance; a place where it is easy to see why this country is known as the land of a thousand hills.  There were outcrops of a granite-like stone on the top, some of them with rows of little circular depressions.  They say the king of Rwanda played a game here involving placing stones in the depressions and moving them in turn according to some set of rules.  A young woman had followed us up the hill.  She picked up some stones and distributed them in some of the depressions, then asked her friend to play with her.  I couldn’t fathom the game at all, though she was definitely the more confident player.  When the game was over she smiled up at us, pleased to have shown us a part of Rwandan history.

On the walk back, we came across much evidence of the drinking of banana beer which follows celebrations of days such as Women’s Day.  Several times women wished me ‘Happy Women’s Day’.

'What do you miss?'

I phoned Jenny in England and she asked me what I missed.  I couldn’t think of anything really, but said ‘Radio 4’.  The truth is I don’t miss anything or anyone, perhaps because I know I am only here till July.  Also, I have so many home comforts compared with most people here, and even compared with volunteers in more remote areas.  I have water and electric most of the time, I have a secure house surrounded by a wall with a gate that locks, I can buy a wide variety of food.  In more remote areas, some volunteers lack water and electricity, and can buy only a limited range of foods e.g. tomatoes, onions, beans, one type of fruit, oil, rice, though they can travel to somewhere bigger on Saturdays.

The people I miss are all dead.  I think of my father often and miss him.  I guess I am still grieving as he died only 15 months ago.  I think of my mother and Dave too, though less often now.

Apart from them, it is only anonymity that I miss.  In Africa’s most densely populated country, with very few white people, I have never managed to walk more than a few metres, even outside the town, without being stared at or talked to.

It is people like Jenny I admire, and the volunteers here in their twenties who have committed to live in remote parts of Rwanda for two years.  Jenny went to Zimbabwe straight from school to teach maths for two years to classes of sixty pupils, living in a mud hut and having to do her cooking and laundry outside in full view of curious neighbours.