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.