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.
Boy, what a day! Started well – got some more laundry done while showering and had breakfast. Then I found out that Tina (housemate to be – you need to remember that ‘cos I won’t keep reminding you) got quite ill during the night with a bad stomach. She ended up staying in bed the whole day but was a little better when we got home this evening. This was unfortunate because today was .... SHOPPING DAY! We were all off to the Chinese Supermarket to buy everything we need for our new homes. And, in our case, because there haven’t been any voluinteers there before, everything means everything. In my case, two sets of everything because Tina wasn’t able to come. First I decided to go and change some travellers’ cheques – that took a little while but I must say the Bank of Kigali was nothing like as slow or inefficient as I was led to believe would be the case. I changes $400 into RWF207,000 or so – just as well as you will find out.
Got back to the supermarket to scenes of almost utter chaos. Each volunteer had made a pile on the floor in separate parts of the supermarket with buckets, linen, jerricans, mops, brushes, HUGE piles of toilet paper, and goodness knows what else. I had Tina’s list in one hand and mine in the other, trying to figure out which duplicated items we only needed one of (set of crockery) or both (bed linen). For those of you interested in shopping this is what you buy to set up house in Rwanda (if I can remember it all because it is all still packed away and there were a few impulse purchases!):
2 sets bed linen (each set being 2 sheets 2 pillowcases and one medium blanket)
4 pillows
2 large towels
2 medium towels
4 tea towels
4 cleaning cloths
1 floor brush
1 brush for cleaning dishes
1 pair latex kitchen gloves
1 set of two nail brushes (of which more anon)
1 wok
2 medium saucepans with lids
1 metal steamer thing (you know, the one that opens up like an inside-out cabbage)
1 jug for pouring
1 jug for measuring
1 20-litre jerrican
2 10-litre jerricans
4 sealable tuppaware containers
1 floor brush
1 brush and dustpan
4 dinner plates
4 side plates
4 mugs
4 knives, forks, large spoons and teaspoons
4 small wooden bowls (for eating stir-fry out of)
1 bucket (unfortunately not with lid)
2 small sealable buckets/bins, with lids
1 large and 1 small kitchen knife
1 plastic chopping board (I only found out later they had wooden ones which were far cheaper but I was running out of time at this stage)
1 vegetable peeler
1 wooden spatula
1 wooden spoon
6 drinking glasses
1 metal (unfortunately) teapot
1 thermos flask
1 umbrella
2 bars antibacterial soap
1 large pack toilet rolls
1 bottle opener
I think that’s everything – not absolutely sure. I had brought a can opener (thanks Mammy) and chopsticks from home, as well as a pepper mill and a supply of mixed peppercorns. I can already think of a few things we’ll need (a good plastic basin for washing clothes being the first) but I presume they can be got in Gisagara or Butare. The time pressure was because I got there later than the others and was trying to buy more stuff (obviously) and was then told the pick-up would soon be arriving so I had to hurry up!!
Anyway, all that cost – to my slight amazement – RWF197.400 or about £200 sterling. Now our equipment allowance is RWF100,000 each so that was OK but I hadn’t figured on actually spending it all in one go!! Some of the items were cheap but others were more expensive than at home. Basically anything imported is expensive – the two saucepans were RWF7,000 each, wok RWF15,000, bedlinen RWF17,000 and RWF8,000 respectively, each piece of cutlery RWF800 for a total of RWF12,800 and so on – all (except the wok) more than I would pay at home and this is out of my salary of RWF150,000 per month (which, as I mentioned before, is about three times what a Rwandan secondary teacher would get). Anyway, that’s why we have an equipment grant and thank you VSO for that! They packed all my stuff into two amazing bags (wait till you see the photos - Anime and Winnie-the-Pooh, both in screaming pink) and then we piled all our piles onto a pickup truck. One guy had to ride on the back of the truck to stop kids pinching our stuff as it went through the streets!
Then back to the guesthouse for lunch (it was incredibly hot and we were all tired and dehydrated from rushing around, plus a little shell-shocked at how expensive things ahd turned out to be). Lunch was fine and then I just had time for a quick shower (well, when I say shower, the cold water trickled out of the tap and I threw it over myself but it was still refreshing and made it possible for people to sit beside me in comfort). Tina had fallen asleep and seemed to be getting better, so we left her and Marjoulaine and Danielle and headed off for the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre.
We spent three hours here and I’m not sure how to go about describing it. In one way, it wasn’t dissimilar to many other exhibitions I have been to – the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC springs to mind, or Dachau. It was very well presented, beautifully mounted and lit (apart from a ten-minute power cut) and very detailed about exactly what happened both before and during the Genocide. It had some particularly heartbreaking displays on children and orphans and some of the video testimonies were quite hard to watch.
And then it strikes you that all the people you see around – the staff at the centre, the people you can see on the streets and on the banana farm across the valley, all the people you are going to work with for the next two years – actually experienced all of this quite recently, some of them as victims but far more of them as perpetrators. There are a large number of mass graves in the grounds of the centre with a total of 258,000 people buried in them – those are just victims from Kigali itself.
Anyway, there are pictures below to give an idea. I might come back to this a bit later in another blog once things have sunk in a bit more!
A very subdued bus ride back to the guesthouse and we got there around 5.50 and were expecting to see the British Ambassador at 6.15 for a security briefing (this was supposed to be last week but got cancelled). I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it but thought, what the hell, given that the British Embassy takes responsibility for all VSO volunteers regardless of their nationality I might as well. His name is Nick Cannon and he is relatively new here and he gave a really superb presentation on the history and culture of Rwanda, the genocide, its effects on Rwanda today, the present political climate (including the elections), a variety of tips on dos and don’ts in Rwanda and briefings on the security situation in neighbouring regions. He also spoke about Rwanda’s long-term plans and hopes and the enormous challenges it faces for the future. It was both fascinating and useful and he was extremely candid about botht the positive and more negatives aspects of both the present situation and the possible future scenarios. All in all, an hour well spent. He also told us that there is a pub in the British Embassy (called – by someone with a genius for names – The Goat & Gorilla) and as long as we tell them we are coming we are welcome any Thursday night (which is when it opens).
Then supper, then typing this. No one seems to have gone out tonight, don’t think anyone is in the mood.
Got back to the supermarket to scenes of almost utter chaos. Each volunteer had made a pile on the floor in separate parts of the supermarket with buckets, linen, jerricans, mops, brushes, HUGE piles of toilet paper, and goodness knows what else. I had Tina’s list in one hand and mine in the other, trying to figure out which duplicated items we only needed one of (set of crockery) or both (bed linen). For those of you interested in shopping this is what you buy to set up house in Rwanda (if I can remember it all because it is all still packed away and there were a few impulse purchases!):
2 sets bed linen (each set being 2 sheets 2 pillowcases and one medium blanket)
4 pillows
2 large towels
2 medium towels
4 tea towels
4 cleaning cloths
1 floor brush
1 brush for cleaning dishes
1 pair latex kitchen gloves
1 set of two nail brushes (of which more anon)
1 wok
2 medium saucepans with lids
1 metal steamer thing (you know, the one that opens up like an inside-out cabbage)
1 jug for pouring
1 jug for measuring
1 20-litre jerrican
2 10-litre jerricans
4 sealable tuppaware containers
1 floor brush
1 brush and dustpan
4 dinner plates
4 side plates
4 mugs
4 knives, forks, large spoons and teaspoons
4 small wooden bowls (for eating stir-fry out of)
1 bucket (unfortunately not with lid)
2 small sealable buckets/bins, with lids
1 large and 1 small kitchen knife
1 plastic chopping board (I only found out later they had wooden ones which were far cheaper but I was running out of time at this stage)
1 vegetable peeler
1 wooden spatula
1 wooden spoon
6 drinking glasses
1 metal (unfortunately) teapot
1 thermos flask
1 umbrella
2 bars antibacterial soap
1 large pack toilet rolls
1 bottle opener
I think that’s everything – not absolutely sure. I had brought a can opener (thanks Mammy) and chopsticks from home, as well as a pepper mill and a supply of mixed peppercorns. I can already think of a few things we’ll need (a good plastic basin for washing clothes being the first) but I presume they can be got in Gisagara or Butare. The time pressure was because I got there later than the others and was trying to buy more stuff (obviously) and was then told the pick-up would soon be arriving so I had to hurry up!!
Anyway, all that cost – to my slight amazement – RWF197.400 or about £200 sterling. Now our equipment allowance is RWF100,000 each so that was OK but I hadn’t figured on actually spending it all in one go!! Some of the items were cheap but others were more expensive than at home. Basically anything imported is expensive – the two saucepans were RWF7,000 each, wok RWF15,000, bedlinen RWF17,000 and RWF8,000 respectively, each piece of cutlery RWF800 for a total of RWF12,800 and so on – all (except the wok) more than I would pay at home and this is out of my salary of RWF150,000 per month (which, as I mentioned before, is about three times what a Rwandan secondary teacher would get). Anyway, that’s why we have an equipment grant and thank you VSO for that! They packed all my stuff into two amazing bags (wait till you see the photos - Anime and Winnie-the-Pooh, both in screaming pink) and then we piled all our piles onto a pickup truck. One guy had to ride on the back of the truck to stop kids pinching our stuff as it went through the streets!
Then back to the guesthouse for lunch (it was incredibly hot and we were all tired and dehydrated from rushing around, plus a little shell-shocked at how expensive things ahd turned out to be). Lunch was fine and then I just had time for a quick shower (well, when I say shower, the cold water trickled out of the tap and I threw it over myself but it was still refreshing and made it possible for people to sit beside me in comfort). Tina had fallen asleep and seemed to be getting better, so we left her and Marjoulaine and Danielle and headed off for the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre.
We spent three hours here and I’m not sure how to go about describing it. In one way, it wasn’t dissimilar to many other exhibitions I have been to – the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC springs to mind, or Dachau. It was very well presented, beautifully mounted and lit (apart from a ten-minute power cut) and very detailed about exactly what happened both before and during the Genocide. It had some particularly heartbreaking displays on children and orphans and some of the video testimonies were quite hard to watch.
And then it strikes you that all the people you see around – the staff at the centre, the people you can see on the streets and on the banana farm across the valley, all the people you are going to work with for the next two years – actually experienced all of this quite recently, some of them as victims but far more of them as perpetrators. There are a large number of mass graves in the grounds of the centre with a total of 258,000 people buried in them – those are just victims from Kigali itself.
Anyway, there are pictures below to give an idea. I might come back to this a bit later in another blog once things have sunk in a bit more!
A very subdued bus ride back to the guesthouse and we got there around 5.50 and were expecting to see the British Ambassador at 6.15 for a security briefing (this was supposed to be last week but got cancelled). I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it but thought, what the hell, given that the British Embassy takes responsibility for all VSO volunteers regardless of their nationality I might as well. His name is Nick Cannon and he is relatively new here and he gave a really superb presentation on the history and culture of Rwanda, the genocide, its effects on Rwanda today, the present political climate (including the elections), a variety of tips on dos and don’ts in Rwanda and briefings on the security situation in neighbouring regions. He also spoke about Rwanda’s long-term plans and hopes and the enormous challenges it faces for the future. It was both fascinating and useful and he was extremely candid about botht the positive and more negatives aspects of both the present situation and the possible future scenarios. All in all, an hour well spent. He also told us that there is a pub in the British Embassy (called – by someone with a genius for names – The Goat & Gorilla) and as long as we tell them we are coming we are welcome any Thursday night (which is when it opens).
Then supper, then typing this. No one seems to have gone out tonight, don’t think anyone is in the mood.
Can't seem t get captions: pictures are
Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre
A wreath we laid on a mass grave
The current mass grave in which bodies that are still being found are placed
More mass graves
A sign that speaks for itself
1 comment:
Thats some list.... what do you do for bags for carrying stuff there...do you have to pay for them like here? Hope Tina has fully recovered. Keep in touch, Jennifer. X
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