Escape to the City

City colour

Arrived yesterday for a few days in Kigali – feel like the country boy coming, all wide-eyed into the big city.  Have come to see friends, Rob, Jan, Ian and Mary from Lewes who are here, in Rwanda, for a few weeks.

The longer I am in Rwanda, I am learning more about my ‘tiredness and time to have a break from Kamembe threshold’ so having a few days here, and seeing friends, is very timely.  Also discovering the joy of having hand delivered ‘goody-bags’ from home containing all sorts of things including shortbread, chocolate, marmalade, DVDs of some of the great US TV series that I never seem to had time to watch when I was in the UK, interdents (those little brushes for cleaning your teeth) and light bulbs!  And, cards too – something lovely about getting hand-written cards from home.

City dawn

Opened my bedroom door yesterday morning to discover English newspapers left there by Ian and Mary – first ones I have seen since coming back here, from the UK, after my break at beginning of August. Muesli for breakfast, a cappuccino and chocolate croissant, at Café Bourbon as well as a pizza in an Italian restaurant have all made me feel very satisfied.

I have been having a busy few weeks hence the gap in writing my blog. My work at the guesthouse continues to be varied and at moment battling with trying to put together 22 new staff job descriptions, contracts both in English and Kinyarwandan and taking into account the Rwandese Labour Laws.  I am also trying to introduce a personnel policy, implement a renovation programme across 14 of the 20 rooms and the dining room, keep an eye on the building progress of the new guesthouse annexe next door (took me two hours to fully understand what was actually being built after pouring over plans that didn’t make much sense), taking 3 English lessons a week for the staff, support the implementation of a micro-finance project, arrange visits from the UK for church and mission groups/visitors, set-up links between Rwandese and UK Schools, trying to arrange a cow to be donated to an island and trying to look at how the guest house can buy 1000 chickens, for the Diocese farm, so that we can get a regular supply of eggs and I can have my fried eggs for breakfast.

Despite the workload, I am enjoying it. I’m finding I’m drawing on all my years of work and business experience and the skills, that at time never seemed to be that appreciated or valued at home but here, even though I don’t get paid for what I do, the difference I feel I am able to make is all worth it.  Not just in my day-to-day work but also in other ways I am able to support people through preaching, listening when I have some late night visitors at the house who want to talk about problems they are facing.

No two days are the same. The other week I went for a meeting to the neighbouring Diocese of Kigeme, a two and half drive through the Nyungwe Forest.  Quite a hard journey when you do it once in a day but even harder when you do it twice but coming back the sun was going down, in some places we were above cloud level daily so quite breathtaking. The public buses that come down each day, from Kigali, drive through the forest at quite a fast speed, despite the twists and turns in the roads, the ascents and descents and the potholes  – not easy if you suffer from travel sickness and I hear that some of the Rwandese passengers throw up and even start to cry as the journey through the forest goes on and on and they fear going to this strange land on the other side.

Driving back from Kigeme through Nyungwe

I am also experiencing the extremes of Rwandese hospitality – from the good to the bad. When the rains come, you don’t always get a lot of warning and the other Saturday, I got caught in town when the heavens opened and the couple of Rwandans I was with ran for cover into someone’s house.  We ended up sitting in a rather dark but large sitting room with sofas and armchairs and when my eyes had adjusted to the light, I noticed a man sitting on one of the sofas. I assumed, the people I was with, knew the family but they didn’t – it’s just what you do here, run into a stranger’s house for shelter!

Can you imagine this happening in the UK?  You’d be lucky if someone opened up their door let alone let you in and if they did you’d need to have CRB check. Bernadette, one of the Rwandans I was with, then lay on one of the sofas and went to sleep and it didn’t take long for all the children to appear and the elderly grandmother brought in to see the muzungu in their sitting room.  Once it stopped raining, we just upped and went - a wonderful example of Rwandese hospitality.

At the other end of the scale, I have just started the process of applying for my work/permit visa – have just over four weeks before my permitted time of being allowed here for 3 months comes to an end.  Admit I have started the process rather late and after my visit to the local Immigration Office, earlier this week, I am wishing I should have started it earlier.

The immigration website says it only takes 5 days so I was thinking that was fine except when I visited the office and was faced with bureaucracy and officialdom at its worse, I know the application process is going to take much longer. Admitting I had been here since May, although with a three week break to return the UK in the summer, I was accused of working illegally and was told I would have to pay fine of RWF200k (around £200). I was then told my police clearance papers were out of date and that I needed to produce certificates for my educational qualifications taken nearly 40 years ago.  I can just about remember what ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels I got, let alone what grades I got and not even sure if I still have the certificates and, if I do, they are likely to be in boxes in storage in the UK.

Patronising, condescending, unfriendly, officious are some of the words that came to mind but I thought I was very restrained, stayed calm and patient and realised, had I been in this situation when I first arrived in Rwanda, I probably would have stuck two fingers up at them, walked out of the office and got the first plane home.

Anyway, the process continues and I need to spend the next few days re-writing my CV, compiling a very nice application letter and making sure I have everything in place so that the application can be processed although it may involve coming back to Kigali to get it sorted. Not sure what happens if I don’t get the visa/permit in place by 12^th November (deadline date) – may have to come home for a while, go to Uganda for a time or pay a fine.  Calling on support from people here to help me go through the process so watch this space.

Early morning at Peace Guest House

Following a lull in the heavy rains, these are now back. My stays for a few days in the week at the guesthouse, to avoid the evening heavy rains and a difficult walk home, allow me to attend a staff worship session at 7am each morning. All the staff meet to worship and pray before the day – they have lovely voices accompanied by an African drum, someone knocking together two pieces of wood and shaking some metal boxes that make the sound of maracas. I find it humbling that they come together and share some of their problems – sickness, difficulties in the family and on days, when the guesthouse is quiet, they pray for guests and then give thanks when guests start to arrive. They make me feel really welcome and always expect the ‘General Manager’ to say something and I love the sense of togetherness that we have in the morning slot irrespective of our roles and positions.

I continue to learn about the Rwandese every day as much as I try to learn more about myself.  Yes, I still have moments of frustration but I am getting much better of dealing with these and just learn to be more patient.  The reality is that everything just takes longer – going to the bank and waiting in the queue although sometimes the muzungu gets preferential treatment and is taken to the front of the queue which people don’t seem to mind about although I am the first to speak out if I see someone queue jumping.  Trying to buy electricity is an effort, particularly when you realise the meter has almost run out despite recently topping it with enough money to run the national grid only to discover the network is down and you have to wait for a few hours before they text you the code to tap into your meter.

Anyway, enjoying the city experience, meeting both my muzungu and Rwandese friends as well as seeing Enock, a lovely Ugandan young guy, who came to spend a year in Lewes a while back. City life is so different from the poorer rural areas that you could be in two different countries. The desire for designer brands is growing here, evident by a lady sitting in front of me in church this morning with a rather large Prada handbag. A few years ago, global brands were virtually non-existent here but today they are a sign of growing wealth and prosperity here in Kigali – hard to reconcile with some of the very poor people and families I come across in the southwest of the country.

Sign of development in Kigali

On Tuesday, will leave the city and start the five-hour drive back through the forest to that strange, but lovely land beyond that has become my home.