Monday 8th September: Day Two in Rwanda

Please note that VSO is in no way connected with or responsible for the content, comments and observations in this blog: these are solely my own in a personal capacity.

Slept for nine hours straight (except for ten minutes around six a.m. when I awoke to the most marvellous birdsong outside my window). Other volunteers were woken at six-thirty by the sound of the kitchen staff singing and chanting as they started their work. The other side of the guesthouse woke at five when the Muslim call to prayer sounded out, but I didn’t hear that on my side, just the birds!!

Started the day with a scalding hot shower (no cold water, only hot) and then breakfast (tea, coffee, bread, omelette, nut & chocolate spread on offer) and then we began our Introduction to Rwanda course. We covered a wide range of topics: the country director, Mike Silvey, took us over some basic ground rules, especially on security issues (we have all been issued with new Rwandan SIM cards and phone numbers) – no travel outside the country without telling VSO, no travelling into Burundi or Congo at all, political factors and sensitivities (we are in the middle of a general election at the moment) and a whole load of other stuff. Our reception with the British ambassador is next week instead of this week. Interestingly, in the event of any civil unrest etc, the British embassy will look after all VSO volunteers, regardless of their nationality, which is nice!

First we had a visit to the VSO Programme Office. Quite a lot bigger than I expected, though when you consider how many volunteers VSO has here I shouldn’t have been surprised. We were divided into groups and given a set of questions for which we had to find the answers: this meant exploring the entire building and finding out what each person does to see if they could answer our question! This was good fun, actually, even if we kind of groaned at first at the thought of another typical VSO-type activity. We certainly got to meet all the staff - Amanda, Emilienne, Josiette, Ruth, Amina, Rachel, Jean-Claude, Tharcisse, Shalika, Charlotte, Flavia, Lydia and Enias (think that’s everyone). You’ll be hearing more about some of them later, I’m sure. We had some nice snacks (I am developing a taste for maracuja juice) and then back to the guesthouse.

Even though we had just had snacks, we then had lunch (more on the food later). Then there was a long session on Finance. We are paid an allowance of RWF150,000 per month (€1 = RWF859, so that’s about €175) and VSO also pays for our accommodation. We get an equipment grant of RWF100,000 (€116) to buy our household supplies (the accommodation comes with basic furniture, a kerosene stove, mosquito nets and a water filter but nothing else so you have to buy all your kitchen stuff, bed linen and so on) and some of us have travel allowances (mine is RWF40,000 per month – you can do the Maths from now on!) for hiring motorbike taxis etc. All expenses relating to specific VSO work is also reclaimable. Just to give you an idea, the average secondary school teacher in Rwanda earns around RWF50,000 – 60, 000 (€58-70) per month, one third of what we get.

There was also a lot on how to open bank accounts, change money, visas and identity cards and so on. Rwanda is an incredibly bureaucratic country – one person described it to be as "combining the worst aspects of French and Belgian bureaucracy" which – for anyone who knows either of those countries, is quite a claim!! Oh, and queuing is a relatively new concept here, though some of the larger banks have introduced those automatic ticket machines which has helped!

The final session was on ‘Culture’ – the dos and don’ts of living in Rwanda. The three presenters – Jane (UK), Paula (Enniskillen) and Lydia (Rwanda) pointed out that they had not typed out the briefing document and that they disagreed with some of the things it said! It was funny, because a few months ago in an International Relations class I was teaching in Transition Year in Rathdown School I had the students researching what one would need to know about moving to another country – Olivia, if you are reading this, well done, you were bang on about Rwanda!! Some of the more interesting things: never eat or smoke in public, be careful where you smoke (smoking is relatively rare here anyway, especially outside the capital, mostly because it is too expensive); always greet people – hwhen you arrive at work, you go around and greet EVERYONE individually, every day! People will often keep hold of your hand after a handshake and not let go until they have finished talking to you; women should never whistle; public displays of affection between two male friends or two female friends are fine and common, but never between a man and a woman; people will often take your personal possessions without asking to examine them and then return them (Rwandan people tend to share things and don’t have the same idea of MY stuff as westerners have); always dress smartly for work; avoid talking about politics, the President, the genocide and similar sensitive topics; never use the phrases Tutsi or Hutu – there are only Rwandans now.

Then there was an hour to suppertime – eight of the volunteers walked up to a local pub (all women volunteers actually). I got started on this blog update on my laptop though I am not sure when I will get to an Intenet cafe to upload it! Then – big surprise. The Irish ambassador in Uganda texted to say he was flying in tomorrow and was taking all the Irish volunteers out to dinner tomorrow evening (preceded by a few drinks)! Cool, though I felt a little guilty that the others won’t be coming, especially as the British Embassy is so kind as to take us all under its wing. I gather we will be invited to a little celebration for the Queen’s birthday later in the year or whenever so I suggested I could toast her health in Irish as a thank you for her patronage – probably the first time that that will ever have been done!!

Then was supper and again some went off to the pub while I settled down with Joe to get out blog entries finished before the memories left us. Gentle rain this evening has cooled things down nicely and Joe showed me and a few others his Powerpoint of his VSO posting in Guyana which was really spectacular (he has one shot of a rainforest sunrise which I must get from him and post here).

OBSERVATIONS: there is a fantastic blog I mentioned in a previous post by a volunteer called Bruce Upton which I highly recommend to all of you. He finishes each entry with a ‘Best Thing about this Day’ and ‘Worst Thing about this Day’ comment which is a really good idea. As I feel I can’t be too much of a copycat (though imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Bruce!) I will put an Observation item at the end of posts where I feel I have anything particular to comment upon other than the actual events!

OBSERVATION 1: I am getting a little scared about my French. The area I will be working in is almost devoid of English and, short of learning Kinyarwandan in record time (not really feasible) I will be operating almost completely in French. So, I have asked some of the volunteers (including my roommate Joe) to only speak to me in French from now on. That’ll give me eleven days or so to get up and running, enough to get by for the first few weeks. Apparently, at almost every meeting or whatever I attend for the first few months I will be expected to make a short speech or address on whatever the topic in hand is, or else just about myself. A bit scary but maybe that is the spur is needed. And I can always email Agnès or Héléne for advice!

OBSERVATION 2: food (my favourite topic). We eat so much here! Big buffet things and you can stuff yourself. However, after only two days, I am beginning to recognise that it is the same kind of dishes and foodstuffs recurring but it is really nice. Surprise one is the amount of fish – I had though there wouldn’t be any as Rwanda is so far from the sea but there are lots of lakes and fish is very popular. There are nice vegetable dishes with peas and green beans particularly common, pasta, potatoes (usually chips or mashed), and salads of cucumber and other unidentifiable vegetables, including an incredibly mild sweet white onion which is really nice. You drink water or Fanta (Fanta is a generic word for all soft drinks – ornage, lemon, Coke or Sprite mainly). The guesthouse is ‘dry’ so no alcohol allowed which is probably just as well given our tiredness and the heat.

But one major disappointment: the entire last section of our orientation folder is the VSO RWANDAN COOKBOOK 2008. I had promised various people that I would write the first Rwandan cookbook for VSO volunteers and now I can’t! Mind you, it was just a bit presumptious of me to assume no-one had ever done this before (apparently the first version came out in 2003!). Anyway, to all those to whom I had promised a copy, you will have to make do with the recipes I try and any new ones I come up with!!

OBSERVATION 3: This is a great bunch of people. A good mixture of nationalities and tempraments and (so far at least) we all seem to be getting along. Tina and I seem to be on the same wavelength about lots of things so I think sharing a house is going to be fine. And I am really glad that I am sharing with someone – many of the volunteers are heading off into individual palcements, some in areas where VSO has never operated, which is somewhat intimidating. Having the two of us also makes it a lot cheaper equipping the house as we only need one of everything between us. Plus she has fluent French and plays Scrabble!!! What more could one ask for!!