Monday 29th September: Day Twenty-Three 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.

Went down to the ‘bus station’ (gare de l’autobus) with Tina – it’s basically a flat piece of ground with buses scattered everywhere. She headed off for Gikongoro and I headed off to find an optician to fix Tina’s glasses. This led me on an expedition to every street in town (including a huge chunk of Butare down the road that I didn’t even know existed!) but no luck. I knew I had seen an optician at some stage but just couldn’t remember where. Still, I got a look at the entire town for the first time.

One good discovery was Butare’s only bookshop – Caritas – which also does stationery and religious goods. I bought a French-Kinyarwandan-French dictionary and also a French translation of a novel by Michael Dibdin to encourage my progress.

Back to the cybercafe and the owner said his brother might know of a house that would be suitable for us. Problem is it is big (5 bedrooms) and the rent would be about RWF200,000 per month. I figure the District is allowing RWF80,000 so, even if they spring for a bit more, VSO would have to take up the slack (which is a possibility but we’d have to wait and see). I did get the feeling RWF200,000 was a starting price and I might get them down to RWF150,000, which only leaves how to bridge the gap between that price and what the District is willing to pay. Still, that was some good news of sorts. Caught up on the news of the US elections and the ongoing financial crisis (am now getting BBC World Service loud and clear so news is not a problem!).

Back to the hotel (there really is very little to do in Butare if you don’t have a home to operate from) but my heart quailed at the idea of spending another couple of hours in my room. I did settle down to work long enough to write my short speech for tomorrow but then I bundled together my French and Kinyarwandan books and headed to the Hotel Igasaza for a quiet beer and to do some work. I also texted Jacques to ask him to drop my French grammar book into Francois and texted Francois to warn him of this and ask if we could meet up tonight briefly (I know the provincial governor is inspecting and auditing their offices today so they may be too up-to-their-ears to remember).

At the hotel, there was a woman sitting on her own at a table drinking, which is a rare sight here (I certainly hadn’t seen it before). She spent her time roaring incoherently into a mobile phone or shouting comments at the various tables of men dotted around the room. Occasionally a man would bring her a drink or join her at the table for a short while but she was on her own most of the time. At first I had presumed – to be honest – she was a prostitute as she was rather flashily dressed and made up and I couldn’t think of any other explanation, but that didn’t seem to be the case. At one stage she noticed me buried in my books and started shouting something about ‘M. le Professeur’ but I decided discretion was the better part of valour and pretended I didn’t hear!

I gather men sitting in bars reading and writing is not the norm here as everyone seemed fascinated by what I was up to but too polite to just come right over and ask. I went out to the loo at one stage and when I came back there was a swirl of people all sitting down simultaneously – I presume they had rushed over to my table to see what all the stuff was and then zoomed back to their seats when they saw me coming back! What they made of my lists of Kinyarwandan verbs in the infinitive and imperative with Irish translations goodness knows!

I also got a phone call from Charlotte Phillips who is the Education Program manager asking how things were going. She told me she had just been talking to Tina so I figured she had already got an earful and there was no point in my labouring the point – I’ll be able to make my feelings about the preparations for our placement clear when I am back in Kigali for our second in-country training. I told her about the cybercafe guy’s house and that maybe I could bargain them down so she said to just make finding somewhere suitable the absolute priority and take it from there. I also asked her (again) to check if I could take my motorbike lessons here in Butare. The important thing is to find somewhere to live so we can start working – we can sort out the blame-game later!!

Back to the hotel for supper and one more beer. Pascal came over to apologise for not being able to eat with me tonight but he was entertaining friends! He also reminded me to bring back the VSO Rwandan Cookbook from Gisagara as he wanted to go through the recipes. I noticed checking my phone that, although I had sent the text messages at around 1300, they actually didn’t get sent until 1800 – obviously something wrong with the network and no way Francois or Jacques would have got the messages in time. Anyway, work tomorrow so early to bed.

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.