Last week I moved into the house
next door – my new ‘home’ for the rest of the time I am here in this part of
Rwanda. I still have this amazing
view over Lake Kivu to the DRC and a garden with avocados, bananas, papaya and
even sugar cane.
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My bedroom in new house
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The experience of moving into this
house has been quite interesting and it feels it has taken me a long time to
get in. After the initial work
that needed doing, I had to get furniture made from a local co-operative
workshop and have taken delivery of some good, solid pieces – not all quite to
the dimensions I wanted but it’s all well made and now looking to use the
workshop to make new furniture for the guest house. I went to Kigali a few weeks back to get a fridge, a gas hob
(two burners but with self-ignition – I was very impressed as it saves me
having to use these dreadful, tiny wax matches that are impossible to strike),
a toaster, kettle and a sandwich maker.
Curtains were made by a local tailor, from brightly coloured African
fabric called ‘Ibitenge’ (actually, made in China!) but have now been sent back
for alterations as too short and made to wrong dimensions. This was partly due to the curtain
poles being placed higher above the window than I wanted. But this is what it’s all about being
here – nothing is really quite straightforward and even trying to buy some cup
hooks in order to hang my mosquito net proved an impossible task!
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Furniture delivery on a back of lorry stopping just in time!
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At least it didn't come flat packed
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Buying mattresses, sheets, towels
and the negotiations that go with it is quite an experience but beaten by the
sight of a man putting all of the items (including a double and single
mattress) on the back of his bicycle and then pushing it up to the house, up a
very steep hill and all for £2.00. Thankfully, they were all there waiting for
me by the time I made it home.
The house is a bit back-to-front
with the sitting room at the back overlooking a wall and bedrooms at front but
a lovely view of the lake to wake up to. The terrace, for cost reasons, has
been added to the side of the house, rather than the front and the Bishop said
“only a muzungu would add a terrace on the side of the house”. I didn’t like to
say that I never see Rwandans sitting in their terraces as they are always
indoors, behind net curtains shutting our all the glorious views!
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| View from the terrace of 'new' house |
With me, into the house, has come
Isaiah a young chap of 21 to work as my house-keeper to clean, wash and iron
clothes, do the garden, shop and cook.
Leaving his Mum, brother and family, he has come from a remote, rural
village to work for a strange muzungu in a muzungu house with strange things
such as toasters and sandwich makers!
The house is large enough for him to have his own room with a shower/wc
and for each of us to have our own space and privacy. It is quite strange to have ‘staff’ and to stop myself from
washing up or ironing a shirt and all those things that I have just done for so
many years. He speaks some English but is here to help me learn more
Kinyarwandan and to be honest it is nice to have someone in the house. I’m learning that Rwandans love their
beans (they call them the African meat) and Isaiah seems quite happy cooking
his rice and beans (sometimes taking two hours each evening) but he has
discovered the delights of toasted sandwiches and French toast with honey. This is not the limit of my cooking
skills I hasten to add.
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| My new member of 'staff" - Isaiah |
Isaiah comes recommended through a
couple I know as it can be a challenge when you have people live in your homes
and I have heard stories of working mothers who employ young girls to look
after their babies, who go home to discover they have gone taking possessions
from the home but, thankfully, not the babies.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve
updated my blog, as I’ve just been busy with work, the house, buying a
flat in Eastbourne (just exchanged contracts and pretty amazed I have done this
4,000 miles away although a little nervous when I did an on-line transfer, of
quite a large amount of money, from my UK account to the solicitor thinking it would
be intercepted and end up in the DRC!), and looking after lots visitors so apologies
for a rather long (and I hope not boring) post.
Sadly, we’ve had more thefts a
couple of weeks ago. Woke up in
the middle of the night, on hearing voices out in the garden, to see the guard
and other guards walking around with torches. I guessed there had been a
problem with intruders but decided not to investigate and in the morning I
discovered that most of my washing, left on the line to dry overnight by
Modeste the guard, was no longer there.
Four good shirts, a pair of trousers and some bed-sheets had all gone –
annoying really as they were clothes that I had liked and had formed my
‘working’ wardrobe here. A cost
inconvenience too and the hassle of replacing them as will probably mean a trip
to Kigali at some point.
Apparently, the thieves had done a
‘sweep’ of houses on Mont Cyangugu where I live. They broke a window in the
Bishop’s house, in his eldest son’s bedroom where he was asleep, shining a
torch in his face. Whilst windows
have bars on here, they are breaking windows so they can reach in and take
things so a reminder that I mustn’t have things too near the window or leave
the keys in the lock which I am in the habit of doing.
A review of security is now needed
particularly as I live behind high walls (with glass on top), big gates, nightlights
and security guards who, sadly, are asleep most of the night and thefts are
still taking place. Another good
reason for having Isaiah here.
Night disturbances seem to a bit
of a theme at the moment. I had discovered, some months back, that the wife of
Andre, my night guard, was having a baby – their seventh child. The government are trying to encourage
families to have fewer children as they cannot afford school fees and medical
insurance as well as clothes and food but Bishop Nathan says without
electricity and television what else is for them to do in the evening! At first, I thought Andre was telling
me that his cow was expecting until I realised he was talking about Madame, his
wife. Anyway one evening this week, I was going down to the guest house for a
surprise birthday celebration for Boniface, whose wife was coming all the way
from Kigali, after work, to surprise him – they are newly married so still very
keen! Just before leaving the
house Andre was talking loudly on his phone (he doesn’t do quiet) and I worked
out, with my limited Kinyarwandan and gesturing signs of a large stomach and
rocking baby, that his wife needed to go to hospital in town – they live along
the lake some two hours walk from the house.
As it was dark, and a taxi had
come to take me to the guesthouse, I offered to give Andre a lift to the
guesthouse and he was going to get a moto (motor bike taxi) to his house. Having called Emmanuel, the guest house
manager, from the taxi to help translate I had this hilarious journey with
Alexi the taxi driver shouting out of the window trying to find a moto driver
and Andre and I having conversations with Emmanuel in English and Kinyarwandan.
I discovered that Andre was planning to go by moto to the house (along rough
mud tracks) and then take his heavily pregnant wife on another moto to the
hospital! I asked Alexi if he
could take them but he had other commitments and arriving at the guest house I
wondered if I should take the Diocesan Land Cruiser, that was there and drive
Andre to his house and take his wife to the hospital but the thought of her
giving birth in the back of the vehicle was something I could not have coped
with. Thankfully, Andre said a moto would be fine – I wonder if his wife thought
so too!
At around 3am the following night,
I was woken up by Andre again shouting very loudly on the phone and got up to
discover his wife, who had been sent back home from the hospital, had given
birth to a baby boy at their house. I worked out that the ‘umwana’ (baby) was
an umuhungu (a boy) – his second son. When I asked him a couple of days later
the name of the baby it took him a while to remember but told me that it
something like “Praise God” (in Kinyarwanda) – babies are often named after an
event or situation or to thank God and then they give them a Christian name
later.
From a birth to two deaths. People seem
to die here at quite a frequency. Bit of a morbid one to write about but that
is the reality of life here.
People die suddenly, often without any known symptoms or cause – they
are buried the day later and that’s it.
They die young too – the other week a friend of the Bishop, who was 46,
suddenly died leaving a wife and children and then last weekend an ex-teacher
from the school next to the guest house died in Uganda with no illness, symptoms
and again leaving a wife and children.
Driving to the south of Rwanda on
Sunday afternoon, with some friends, we passed a woman who had been knocked
down and killed in the road.
Driving past (there was nothing we could have done had we stopped)
someone pulled back a cloth that was covering her, revealing her face and then
we saw a large pool of blood under the body. A shocking and haunting image but explaining the situation
to a Rwandan friend later it hardly provoked a reaction.
I mentioned in my last blog post that
I had visited a man who was very ill in hospital. Sadly, Mastac died a few days later
- he was transferred to receive treatment in another hospital some three hours
away but news came through that he had died. I went to the funeral, my first experience of a burial (as
they refer to them here) joining family and friends as they were leaving the
house with the coffin on a back of a truck, loaded with people and someone
holding up a large photograph of Mastac and another holding a large cross. We followed in a taxi whilst others
walked to a hill on the opposite side of some fields to the burial ground.
There were some 200 who had
gathered for the burial I suspect some were spectators rather than mourners. There was, at the beginning, respectful
silence with none of the usual interruptions of the mobile phone – looking
around I couldn’t see anyone on or checking their phones, a rare sight in
Rwanda! Some men went down into
the grave to help lower the coffin and then everyone started singing and when I
commented to Enid, from the guest house, how lovely the singing was she said
“Africans sing at every occasion” and she was right. A number of men then helped to put the earth back onto the
grave and once full, women then decorated it with leaves and flowers. It was
somehow beautiful in its simplicity and wonderful that so many people had taken
part – Mastac was laid to rest in the hills of Rwanda overlooking his home.
I have mentioned before that my
days here are all so different as are the situations I find myself in. A talent show one day and then an
attendee at a burial on another and a hospital visit the next. I went again to
visit the young mother with the sick baby. She was being transferred to a hospital in Huye, a three-hour
journey away, but did not have money to pay off the hospital fees and the funds
needed for treatment at the other hospital. Although she has medical insurance, she still had to pay 10%
of the costs so with funds available from the Diocese Clinic, donated by a team
that came next year, I was able to pay off the fees and also give her money for
Huye. I have just heard that the
baby had a CT scan and has been diagnosed with water on the brain or
‘Hydrocephalus’ (as I discovered when looking on the internet). I don’t think the doctors are very
optimistic and now waiting to see if they will transfer mother and baby again
to Kigali to see a specialist or send her back to the hospital here. It all seems a hopeless situation and
it’s a big challenge here to find out the information needed to make a decision
on something.
I visited again the lady with HIV
as the Diocese/guest house had given her a ‘gift’ of the salary she was being
paid - around £20.00 per month so
we gave her £100.00. Sadly, the Diocese doesn’t want to guarantee her any more
money so I have told her I will find the money from somewhere so she can
continue to pay for her carers.
Last week I said goodbye to the
final visitors from my church. Since arriving back in Rwanda, following my break in the UK in April,
there have been many visitors including Barbara, Anne and Peter out here to
teach English at a secondary school next to the guesthouse. Last weekend, I was
visited by Christopher who is working in Kigali for five months and his parents
who have come out to see him for a holiday. On Saturday, we visited the Nyungwe Forest to do a canopy
walk – made you feel like “I’m a Celebrity Get me Out of Here” but an amazing
feat of engineering to build a structure like this in the heart of an African
mountain forest. It was high and it did swing but great fun to do.
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| The Nyungwe Canopy Walk |
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| Stepping out |
On Sunday, I drove them down to
Bugarama in the south of Rwanda, a large, hot valley with rice fields, a large
cement factory and hot springs. Having driven past the lady who had been killed
on the road, it was good to have some light relief including the sight of
Christopher’s Dad, also called Chris, taking a dip in the hot springs much to
the amusement of some Rwandans who come to swim and bathe in what, in places,
is extremely hot water. Chris did come out of the water looking well boiled.
Driving back, along a very rough
track through a rice field, the silencer of the car decided to drop off – not
the best of places to breakdown but Chris was soon under the car with some shoelaces
to tie it back on. By this time a
large crowd had gathered, as it does when anything happens here and at the
sight of the bazungu getting slightly hysterical about their situation.
We were passed by a small bus,
with some American ladies onboard who happened to be staying at the guest house
but even though I think they recognised us, they drove straight past without
stopping. We were able to get the
car going, followed them as we wanted them to take back Christopher’s Mum and
Peter to lighten the load in the car and Chris decided to leap out of the car -
another funny moment, with him running past them frantically waving until
they eventually stopped.
They had been nicknamed, by Peter,
the ‘Santa Barbara Babes’ and we discovered, following them, that their number
place started with RAC making us all laugh as we had joked, after we had broken
down, about calling the RAC to come and get us. Thankfully, we made it back to
the guesthouse and the car was repaired the following morning to allow Christopher
and his Mum and Dad to return to Kigali.
The staff at the guesthouse love
having guests and visitors and particularly, in the case of Barbara and Anne
when they are stay for a long time. They became very attached to Barbara and
Anne, in the two months they were there, and it was lovely to see them take
either by the hand to help them up and down the steep stairs and slopes that
connect the rooms. Poor Anne, even at the end, still huffed and puffed up and
down the stairs, often taking a seat to catch her breath and I loved the way
she would come to breakfast wearing an apron, so not to get food down her
dress, looking as if she was running a tea-shop. Left at the guesthouse, until last Monday, was Peter who had joined
Barbara and Anne a few weeks ago but had his last week of teaching sabotaged by
two public holidays (Independence Day and Liberation Day) – here, the
government only announce the night before, on the radio, whether the following
day is actually going to be a holiday so trying to plan anything is really
difficult. Unfortunately, for Peter, they announced that the two days would be
official holidays, with schools closed, so he lost two days of teaching.
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| Barbara, they're behind you! |
Barbara, Anne and Peter had come
challenging times teaching English but they also had some joyful moments. Anne
decided to arrange a “Jill Barham’s Got Talent” competition for the secondary
school students and around 50 took part – singers, dancers, catwalk models,
poetry tellers and even a karate demonstration. I had been invited to be one of
the judges and our role was not to pick a winner but to give constructive
feedback to all the participants – the other judges decided I should be the one
that spoke so found myself standing up in front of around 600 students and
teachers. This is something that I
would have hated doing some years back but I seem to be able to take it all in
my stride now as you have to be ready here to stand up and make a speech with
no warning.
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| Jill Barham's Got Talent |
Finally, this week the muzungu really lost his cool! A combination of
tiredness, frustrations, misunderstandings and bad communications made me boil
over and walk out of the guesthouse in a strop. I think it highlighted that, at times, it is difficult to
work cross-culturally and there's no getting away from the fact the we are very different in the way we communicate, the
way we do things, the way we keep time and all sorts of other things. I am pleased to report that all is fine
now and out of these moments comes learning’s and, hopefully, a better
understanding of how we need to work together to help and serve those people in
real need.
