Bacon & Lemon Drizzle Cake

My thoughts are now turning to coming back to the UK on Sunday as well as for a Bill’s breakfast with bacon and lemon drizzle cake in Grange Gardens – anything really as long as it’s not an omelette or a banana!

Leave here on Friday for Kigali and then fly out to London, via Nairobi, on Sunday evening.  Heading up to Ware on Monday, after meeting daughter Jenny in London, for a two week ‘mission’ training course – timing couldn’t be better as will be good to talk though a number of issues that I’m having to deal with here, with people who have gone through similar experiences. Then back in Lewes on 5^th August for a week before heading back out here leaving UK on 12^th August.

Some local colour

Have included a few random photographs from my week – a shot of some rather colourful houses that are going up close to where I live, a lovely old chap who I didn’t realise was behind me watching me take the picture of the rather colourful houses. He almost knocked me out, with the wood he was carrying on his head, when I turned around but he was very happy to have his picture taken. And, some local wildlife – would like to say it was huge but it was quite small really.

Local character

Local wildlife

Still trying to deal with the daily challenges and frustrations – sometimes I deal with them well and sometimes I don’t. I’m trying to understand why I don’t and what it is that makes me get frustrated, impatient and sometimes annoyed. Have always thought of myself as an easy going short of chap with lots of patience and tolerance but I have to say at times here you do need patience in bucket loads to get through the day.

On the other hand, there are moments that make it worthwhile – yesterday I preached at a rural church that is still in the process of being built so we had a sort of open-air service with around 250/300 people.  I confess I am not a trained preacher but I seemed to hit the mark yesterday as had around 60 people come up afterwards to ask for prayer and there was joyful celebration in a way we don’t seem to have at home.  I also have to confess, my preaching did follow a very powerful testimony that moved me to tears and I was sitting there wondering how I was to follow it.

Here in Rwanda, the power of testimony is wonderful.  Since the 1994 genocide, people have been encouraged to share their stories, many as you can imagine horrific, but it is through this sharing that has allowed much healing, reconciliation and forgiveness. I have heard many testimonies over the years and it’s also good when we share too as it shows that us Westerners also have been through problems and difficulties and not so much the easy life many here may think we have.

I had one of the guest house security guards come into my office earlier to thank me as I had helped him sort out problems he was having with headaches and his eyes.  I was able to speak to a UK doctor, who is working here, and she was able to tell him he needed glasses and fortunately, the team who is here with her, was able to kit him out with some sun glasses and some prescription glasses they had brought out with them as well as a hat to keep the sun out of his eyes so he was a very happy man!

Last night going home, I shared a lift in a Land Cruiser, with eight pastors on the way to the house.  I was sitting next to a woman pastor who had a very young baby strapped to her back (as they do in Africa – no posh prams here!), her very young daughter falling asleep half on my lap and half on her's and me sitting there holding an inflated beach-ball (don’t ask!). The thing I’ve noticed here is that when you are being driven anywhere, you never go straight to where you are supposed to be going, you go off somewhere else and they never tell you where you are going.  Usually it’s to go and buy some airtime or drop someone off or pick something up but eventually you get to where you are going if a bit late but that’s all part of the experience of being here.

This will probably be my last post until I am back here on 13^th August.

Land of a Thousand Hills (& Emotions!)

Rwanda is commonly known as the ‘Land of a Thousand Hill’ or ‘Des Milles Collines’ - the name of the hotel in the film Hotel Rwanda.  Yesterday, driving to a very remote parish, Rasano, I felt I drove up and down most of them.  A four hour journey along bone-shaking roads although TB’s 4x4 Toyota, his very good driver and some stunning scenery made it somewhat bearable.

View from Rasano & some of the hills we drove over

Arriving in Rasano, high on a hill, we were met by a large crowd who had come to church as TB was confirming 47 young people and word had gone out a musungu preacher was also coming.  For many, I was the first musungu they had seen so attention was firmly on me rather than on TB. Walking into the church, I was aware that around 250 pairs of eyes were looking at me – quite an intimidating experience as you walked through the church overwhelmed by the heat (must have been around 85 degrees under the corrugated iron roof) and the aroma of having around 250 hot people in there!  I did wonder how I was going to cope with what was going to be at least a two-hour service and thankful that they brought us some water as I had forgotten mine.

All eyes on the musungu visitor

Interesting old face in the congregation

Another four hour drive back to Kamembe, two hours in the dark along unlit roads with lots of people walking - have no idea how they can see anything but guess their eyes are better adjusted to the dark than ours are.

I thought last week’s visit to Kanzu, another remote parish, was quite a challenging drive but yesterday’s certainly beat it. But, there is something wonderful going to these remote churches – the simple buildings with corrugated iron roofs, mud floors, young children crawling and walking around the make-shift platform as TB is in mid-flow and mothers breast feeding their children! It all feels very raw but worship is wonderful (despite yesterday’s loud speaker blaring out to a crowd outside the church) and the opportunity to hear a musungu speaker brings in a few extra people – think TB is going to take “my musungu” (as he affectionately calls me) to a few more churches to get the numbers up.

Come to see the musungu in church

Earlier in the week, I went up to Kigali for a night.  Opportunity to have my first bath in about five weeks (don’t worry I have been taking showers!) and a look in a decent mirror, in decent light to see a much slimmer Jonathan with a mop of wild hair.  Managed to find a hair salon in hotel next door to got a hair cut, much to amusement of Rwandese ladies who were all having their hair done. Without my glasses it was difficult to see what was coming off and tried not to worry about the large chunks of hair on the gown but came out with a not too bad hair-cut and looking a bit more respectable.

My emotions, like the hills, have been up and down this week.  Think a combination of tiredness, had to meet a team from the UK who arrived at midnight on Monday in Kigali and didn’t get to bed until 2am and then early start and six hour drive back to Kamembe on Tuesday, combined with the challenges of being here has kicked-in.  Have to admit there has been some tears (for the first time I’ve been here) this week as well as feelings of frustration, impatience and, at times, anger. However, next moment I can find myself laughing and also humbled by the people here.

I returned late to the house the other evening after getting caught up in a situation at the clinic, where two doctors from the UK are working for a few weeks, when we got into a long discussion with local nurses about the condition of a very sick baby and whether it should stay in the clinic, which has limited hospital facilities, or be taken to the local hospital in town where it could be properly treated.  In the end, we managed to persuade the local nurses to call an ambulance to take the baby to hospital, as the UK doctors were worried that the baby may not last the night.

Getting back to the house, I was desperate just to get in and go to bed when I noticed in the shadows, on the terrace, there were two people waiting for me who turned out to be Christian and Jimmy, two sons of Leocadie (who I mentioned in an earlier post). They had brought me six fresh eggs from their chicken – a thoughtful and generous gift, as I know they need eggs for their family. Had a nice long chat with confident Christian who speaks very good English whilst his brother, Jimmy, sat there rather shyly but it was a lovely end to a trying day.

That was until I discovered a huge spider in the shower tray. Tried to capture it in an empty Blue Band tub but it wasn’t having any of that so, sorry spider lovers, turned the shower on and flushed it down the plug-hole.

I’ve still got a lot to understand here.  Why the Rwandese do things in the way they do and why they don’t do things at all!  Once I’ve understood this, I think things will get easier as I am finding it hard at the moment to progress anything – so many things just get forgotten so I’m trying to introduce a bit more accountability and some musungu ways of doing things. We’ll see!

P.S. The baby taken to the hospital is fine but the two doctors sadly had to tell a mother that her very sick baby, who she had brought to the clinic today, was going to die so high emotions all round.