Saturday 16 November 2013

Is it November?





November garden

Sitting here, out on the terrace, on a sunny and warm November morning.  Modeste, the guard, is doing one of his mega-cleans of the house so I have been banished from the house outside with all the furniture.

Apart from the distant sounds of the choir from the Catholic Church, rehearsing under a tree outside the church, I can hear them singing ‘Gloria in Excelsis Deo’, this is the only thing that lets me know it is November and Christmas is approaching.

Flowers in the garden are in full bloom again and I have two trees teeming with mangoes that everyone is desperate to come in and take, once they have ripened in a couple of weeks.  Not being seasonal here, as it is in the UK, you don’t really get a sense of what month it is other than looking at the diary or calendar. I’m not missing the commercialism of Christmas and, apart from seeing some street vendor selling some gaudy 'Joy to the World' poster (I resisted buying it), there’s no sign it’s going to be December in a couple of weeks.

Mango tree or so I've been told - I'm a city boy!
My visa/work permit saga continues.  Have lost track of the number of times I have been to the Immigration Office, here and in Kigali, think it is around 8 times with each visit resulting in a request to produce more letters and paperwork.  Latest request is for me to produce all my ‘O’ and ‘A’ level certificates from my exams I took in 1973 – 1975 that I don’t have. For some reason, I had kept all the paper slips which, in those days of old, they used to send you to notify you of your passes and failures - yes, I had a few. These were in a box in the attic of my friends, Richard and Prilla in Lewes, who are very kindly looking after some bits for me and Richard managed to find them, scan them and email them out.  However, the IO didn’t want to accept them but we have managed to get them stamped and signed by the District Office which proves they are originals, even though they are not, and now they have gone back to Kigali with all the paperwork and my passport will come back next Friday either with a visa/permit or a request for more documentation.

If Kigali insist on me producing original certificates then I am, as they say, "stuffed" and I might be home for Christmas. You can only get duplicates if you have lost them in a fire or had them stolen in which case you have to produce police and insurance reports and I'm not sure if they accept a Certified Statement.

My permitted time, to be here in Rwanda, ran out last Sunday but as my application is in the system they can’t say I am here illegally so I’m not expecting, hopefully, for a knock on the door to be faced with some guys in police uniform.

As a welcome break from all the stress that this process has caused, I’m sure I will be able to laugh about it afterwards, last weekend I went with a couple of friends of the Bishop to show them some of the beautiful countryside and scenery we have in this area.  On Saturday, we drove south to the town of Bugarama famous for its hot springs and huge rice plains.  Afterwards, we drove down towards the Burundi border passing right next to the DRC – stopping by the roadside, we were able to look down across the Rusizi River, that flows into Lake Kivu, across into the vastness of the DRC with plains and mountains in the distance.  This huge country stretches all the way from the middle of Africa to the Atlantic Ocean.

Bugarama with rice plains and hills of Burundi

Another 1km drive, you turn the corner and there is Burundi opening up in front of you so you have this opportunity to experience 3 African Countries within a few minutes of each other.  The border crossing has just been built with brand new buildings, smart offices with computers, printers, shiny floor tiles (loads of kids were sliding across it as if it was a giant skating rink) and is, so we were told, a model for all the border crossings that will be in Rwanda on the borders of Burundi, DRC, Uganda and Tanzania.  Another example of how things are moving on here – wish they would do something to move on the visa application process.

Overlooking Ruzisi River and the DRC
Sunday we drove in the other direction to the Nyungwe Forest and a taste of luxury at the Nyungwe Forest Lodge Hotel that I had visited some months earlier with the Bishop.  It was a damp day but they had open fires, comfortable sofas and lots of books to read so we had a bit of a lazy Sunday afternoon and a nice lunch too – soup to start with proper bread rolls and butter!

The beauty of the Nyungwe Forest

I’ve asked Christian, a young lad who acts as my translator and guide, to give me Kinyarwanda lessons so we are going to start these this afternoon. He speaks very good English and has a two month break from school as students are now on their long holiday so we are going to spend a couple of hours each Saturday afternoon trying to improve my Kinyarwandan. I want to be able to try and engage in some proper conversations or, at least, try to make myself be understood.

Work at the guest house continues to keep me busy. Today is my first day off for a couple of weeks so a combination of not having had much time off and the stress of the visa application process had made me feel pretty exhausted.  Have planned a weekend away in a couple of weeks – going to Gahini located to the east of Rwanda, overlooking Lake Muhazi which has very different scenery to this area around Lake Kivu.  I’m visiting a South African couple who have been there, as missionaries, for some years and who I met when I came out in May – they are also good friends of Richard and Prilla who, themselves, lived in Gahini for 10 years in the 70’s and they are the reason for why I am here today.

As it will be a seven-hour drive by road, I am debating whether to get the bus to Kigali – a five-hour, fast drive or the more costly option of flying up to Kigali in thirty minutes and then a two-hour drive to Gahini.  I have to confess, I’ve not been on a public bus since I’ve been in Rwanda as, in the times I’ve been up and down to Kigali, I’ve either flown or been given a lift. 

I’ve decided I need to have these ‘treats’ from time to time, and not to feel guilty about it, and to be able to escape from here for a while.  It does feel, being here, that you are in a bubble and having to go through the forest, when you drive to Kigali which takes about an hour a half, makes you feel a bit cut off from the rest of Rwanda sometimes.

Life continues to have its challenges and frustrations. Sometimes I do feel this conflict that goes on between the Muzungu way of doing things and the Rwandese way that does, if I am honest, cause me some inner turmoil from time to time.  There’s a lot of process and administration involved in everything (as I am discovering from my visa application) and yesterday I had to get 4 cheques signed, for the guest house, by the Diocese and I worked out, with all the requisition forms and payment request forms and the cheques that needed signing by three people, including me, we ended up having 36 signatures!

It was then off to the bank to pay the monthly VAT and PAYE – 15th of each month is the deadline date for all these payments and if you miss it you are heavily fined by the RRA (Rwanda Revenue Authority) with no questions asked.  Arriving at the bank, I discovered they were having network problems and couldn’t process the payments so, in between a another visit to the Immigration Office, stopping off at the guest house, visits back to the bank, staff lunch breaks, the payments were finally made in the afternoon at which point I decided to call it a day and headed to the house. It would  have just been my luck in trying to make these payments for the first time, they are usually done by Boniface in the guest house who looks after all the finances, I managed to get a fine for late payment.  And, they are quite large fines. I suppose the good thing is that being an unpaid volunteer, the Diocese couldn't deduct it from my salary!

If my visa is approved next week, then I have plans to have some work done on a house next door and move in by the end of the year.  Will be nice to create a ‘home’ whilst I am in Rwanda and to furnish it (you can get furniture made quite cheaply here) and to use of some of the lovely colourful African crafts - all those things that work here but never look quite right when you get them home. It will also be good to put some of my energy into a more practical and creative project.

I’ve spoken (or written) too soon about it being sunny and warm as it is now chucking it down and I've got to walk to town to get some shopping. Getting rains most days now and we are well and truly in the wet season but still get moments of sunshine and warmth.  Modeste has just sprayed the house with some foul smelling insect repellant so I think I’m stuck out on the terrace for a bit longer.