Saturday 20th September: Day Fourteen 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.

An entire weekend with nothing to do – it really feels like an empty void waiting to be filled. I actually woke at 6.00 but lounged around in bed until about 8.30 either dozng or reading The Name of the Rose: haven’t done that since I was on college! Nice cold shower which got at least some of the red dust off me (more on that anon). We decided to use some of the water from the filter to make tea and see if the chalkiness came through. When Ephraim brought the tea it was deep black and did taste rather of chalk (though it later transpired that Ephraim may have made the tea by boiling the water with the teabags already in them). Anyway, I suspect we will not be using the filters grom now on: the water has to be sterilised anyway and then straining it through fine muslin seems to do the trick (thank you Mammy!). Bread, peanut butter and tomatoes for breakfast. Tina wrote some letters and also did some research in her guide book on likely places to stay in Butare (!), I did some French grammar and then we took our courage in our hands and set off for the market!

Oh boy – that was an experience. We rapidly acquired an entourage of about 50-60 young children, all laughing and roaring, asking us our names but mostly shouting ‘Bonjour’ and shrieking with laughter when we answered in Kinyarwandan, but all quite friendly and only one or two asked us for money and even then in a rather half-hearted way that indicated they knew it wasn’t really going to happen (except for one – there’s always one – an older girl of about 14 who must have asked me about ten times and followed us all around the entire marketplace – ah well). When we got to the actual marketplace itself, the adults seemed to be more spooked by us than the children! The market was interesting (no pics I’m afraid, wasn’t sure how people would react) – divided into different sections for food, clothes, grain and rice, and shoes (so many shoes, everywhere you go there are people selling shoes). We caused absolutely havoc as we tried to go up and down the aisles followed by this throng. We bought tomatoes, rice and shallots. Tina did most of the bargaining and did pretty well: it’s tough remembering these insanely long numbers when you are in the middle of a shrieking throng that roars with laughter every time you try and pronounce a word (though they were more likely laughing at the prices we were prepared to pay!). We almost bought a large bag of rice for RWF600 thinking it was RWF160 (maganatandatu as opposed to ijanatandatu). (Later edit: actually RWF600 for a kilo of rice turns out to be a fair price, rice is expensive here).

However, while occasionally irritating, the atmosphere was very friendly and accommodating and the adults certainly got used to us very quickly. If ever they kids got a little too close or irritating, Tina would turn around and do her special Primary School ‘oya’ (which means ‘no!’) with immediate effect. And when we got near our gate, we turned and said Murabeho! – they all replied and stayed on the street, didn’t come near the gate or the fence. So much for the sense of privacy not being observed in Rwanda (or maybe it’s because it is the District house we are in, I’m not sure).

We had figured that on being the major part of the day. We would cook the rice later (or rather get Ephraim to do so) and lix in the tomatoes, shallots and a green pepper we already had for a rice salad with sardines on the side and that would be that for the day. Then Ephraim came running in talking excitedly about something or other that was going on. Eventually we deduced there was a rally coming through the village! We had seen a lot of people climbing trees all right and wondered what was up. We waited for about an hour outside our gate and suddenly they came – not bikes as we expected but big proper rally cars, mostly Subarus, roaring past as ferocious speeds to the intense enjoyment of all. The whole thing took about two hours and most of the rest of the village got a chance to get a good look at us. Then a load of kids got me to take a movie clip of them and play it back to them. This caused such hilarity a bigger group formed and threatened to spill out onto the race track so a policeman came along with a switch and, while being careful to neither catch me with it or look me in the eye, began tapping the kids on their behinds to drive them further away from the road before they caused an accident. A bit embarrassing really – I should have been a little more conscious of safety!!

Anyway, we went back and got started on dinner (it was actually getting dark – you forget that you need to plan your meals before it’s dark if you don’t have proper light). Choice of drinks was: unfiltered water (Gisagara vintage), filtered water (VSO vintage with added calcium carbonate), filtered water (SteriPen and muslin vintage) and bottled water (Butare vintage). Then, just as we figured that was it for the night and we had settled down to our first game of candlelit Scrabble, Ephraim reappeared very excited and dragged us down to the village – apparently the cars were coming back for a night-time drive-through. We walked through the entire length of the village in the pitch dark but the place was completely alive. One or two houses had kerosene lamps but most places were completely dark but there were hundreds and hundreds of people gathered. It was quite a sight in the darkness as the cars roared through one by one, ten in total. Again, very friendly crowd, curius but not intrusive. I think Ephraim is getting a kick out of bringing us around and is being asked loads of questions about us (picture of Ephraim to follow).

PS: Our inaugural Scrabble game ended in a tie – 273 each.

Thank you very much to all those who have supported my ongoing fundraising effort. I will be continuing my fundraising for VSO for a few more months so, if you would like to contribute, please go to www.mycharity.ie/event/ruairi.