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.
Monday 6th April is the beginning of Rwanda’s Genocide Memorial Week. The vast majority of VSO volunteers chose to leave the country on holiday, for Ethiopia, Zanzibar or – in the case of the vast majority – Uganda. This is the first instalment of my adventures in Uganda.
Thursday 2ndApril and Friday 3rd April
Can’t remember anything about Thursday at this stage. I presume I went to work for a bit, and then went home and packed and got a moto into Butare. Amy had already told me the Motel Ineza was full so we ended up staying in the Igizaza (Alfred: it is SO not spelled that way!). Easily the most uncomfortable bed I have slept on since I came to Rwanda (even Soraya’s floor was marginally more comfortable) and at 0530 the staff started work. There were two of them – one washing dishes outside my bedroom window, the other tidying or something on the other side of the courtyard, so they bellowed conversation at each other continuously. We were catching an early bus anyway so it didn’t get me out of bed MUCH earlier than I had planned anyway. Then, as I was about to leave, a guy appears with a tray with breakfast! We had specifically said we would let them know if we wanted breakfast so I said ‘No thanks’, to the consternation of the poor guy whose face clearly expressed the idea: ’Well what the hell am I going to do with this, then?’ Off to the bus, up to Kigali, bought our bus tickets to Kampala, had lunch in the Blues Café and then checked in in St Paul’s.
(Alfred: don't forget the t-shirts! There has been a huge proliferation of Jesus-related t-shirts in Butare recently: "Jesus saves", "Jesus loves you", "I love Jesus", "Jesus is on your team: are you on His?", "Jesus forever" and many more. However, as Amy and Ruairí were going past Matar, he saw one young girl with a black t-shirt with the striking message: "SATAN SUCKS". Is that a different way of saying the same thing? Or did she fall off the Christian wagon for a bit and is now trying to warn everyone else?)
So far so good. I texted Martine to see if she was free for dinner and she, Marion and I agreed to meet up in Muhima, a really good fish restaurant not far from the centre. I got there literally the same instant a massive thunderstorm broke out and it turned out there were no tables available. Anyway, we waited out the rain and they managed to find us a table and we had wonderful fish – whole grilled tilapia – and roasted potatoes with piri piri (hot chillies). Martine headed off early and Marion and I chatted for a while before she hopped on a moto to head home – the deep cut on the sole of her foot has healed somewhat but is sill very painful.
I headed back up the hill and decided to ring Amy and tell her I was en route to the hotel – she had texted earlier to say that Thom would probably be staying in the extra bed in my room. Anyway, I got through to Amy and said something along the lines of: ‘Hi Amy, Ruairí here. Just ringing to let you know that I am on the way back to the hotel and ... aaaaahhhhhh! Crap!!!! Not again!!!’ I had fallen into an open manhole or drainage ditch or whatever (hard to tell in the pitch dark). This is the third time I’ve done this and the first time was also while I was on the phone in the dark.
Anyway, there I was in what seemed to be a narrow hole about four-and-a-half to five feet deep (my chin was level with the road surface). My phone was still intact (Alfred: a bit typical of the new Ruairí that the very first thing he did was check that his PHONE was OK!), my glasses were still on and the only parts of me that seemed to be injured were my left leg (which I could feel bleeding but hadn’t actually started to hurt yet) and my right elbow which I had skinned quite deeply.
A Rwandan guy across the road had seen me plunge in and he and a friend came over and pulled me out, which as just as well as I can’t imagine how I could have got out on my own. I rang Amy back – she was absolutely hysterical with laughter, having figured out exactly what had happened: partly laughing at my having fallen down a hole YET AGAIN but also at the fact that I had managed to keep on talking about what was happening even as it happened. I asked her to pick up some bandages and antiseptic on her way home (three cheers for Nakumatt 24-hour shopping!) and looked for a moto to take me to St Paul’s.
This was my first inkling that my leg might be a bit more damaged than I realised – when I tried to bend my leg to keep it off the ground as I sat on the moto it was really painful. Anyway, a short trip home, got to my room (Number 38, right near the entrance, thank God!) and checked out the damage. Good news – the fabric of my jeans was not broken so there shouldn’t be any dirt or other nasties in the wound. Bad news – the left leg of my jeans was… well, not quite soaked in blood but there was a lot more of it than I cared for (Alfred: 'a lot more of it than I cared for'? Where does he get these phrases from?). Anyway, I cleaned it up with toilet paper and waited for Amy, Andy, Thom and Eric to arrive.
When they did, I probably looked quite a sight, lying flat on the bed with my leg stretched out, my elbow hanging out over the edge to avoid staining the sheets, and surrounded by mounds of red-stained toilet paper! Thom went rather pale, Eric looked a bit shocked, Andy asked me if I was OK and how it felt and Amy collapsed into hysterical laughter all over again, punctuated with apologies for her apparent heartlessness. Her reaction was probably the most appropriate, to be honest, because the sheer stupidity of it all meant it really was the only thing to do (Alfred: personally, I still haven't stopped laughing).
Anyway, I disinfected the wounds, wrapped them in bandages and figured I’d be OK in the morning to head off to Kampala. There only seemed to be one bad wound, just below the left kneecap, so I packed the crepe over that and then wrapped the whole thing up to make sure I didn’t stain the sheets.
Saturday 4th April
Woke up, and took off the bandages. This wasn’t easy as, being crepe bandages, they had stuck to the wounds. I realised immediately that Kampala was not on, at least not that day – it was to be the A&E at King Faisal Hospital. In the cold light of day the other wounds didn’t look too bad but the wound under the kneecap was actually much deeper than I had realised and was still bleeding, not heavily but steadily. The whole thing also really hurt like hell, especially if I tried to bend my left leg at all. So I told Amy and Eric to head off without me and tried to figure out what to do.
What if the hospital were to say there is something wrong, like a fracture or something and I have to stay in Kigali? It was Saturday and the following week was Genocide Memorial Week so I had no idea if the banks would be open or not: so priority one was not the hospital, it was a bank to get money. So I went out to the man road and hailed a moto. Getting on the moto made me realise just what bad shape my leg was in but it was only a two-minute ride to the Bank of Kigali to change my travellers’ cheques.
Or so I thought (Alfred: This is a good one - made me laugh almost as hard as his falling into the hole did!). We got to the Bank of Kigali, slowed for a second, but then accelerated in a completely different direction. I thought he was bringing me round the back or something to avoid the steps (unlikely) but then we headed away from the bank altogether. I shouted at him and then banged on his helmet with my fist (lightly, I hasten to add). He stopped and said: ’Do you want to take a chance?’ At this stage all I could think of was the pain my knee was in so I said, in what might best be described as a rather brusque tone of voice: ‘I just want to go to the f****** Bank of Kigali!” He said he knew somewhere that did a much better rate of exchange. I explained that I had travellers’ cheques and that the Bank of Kigali was the ONLY place in Kigali that changed them.
Figuring that I had got my point across, we headed off again but again in a completely different direction. This time I attracted his attention by butting him in the back of his head/helmet with my own. I made it clear, using a forceful and pithy range of Anglo-Saxon terminology (he was Anglophone rather than Francophone so I’m pretty sure he got the gist) that I wanted to go to the Bank of Kigali RIGHT NOW OR ELSE! (The ‘or else, of course, didn’t carry the implication that I would walk there myself). Rather sullenly, he turned the bike around and eventually dropped me about twenty metres from the bank. Of all the days for this to happen!!
I slowly climbed up to the second floor and sat on a couch waiting for my turn. I was joined by two Scandinavian girls working as medical volunteers in Rwanda. They asked me how I was, emphasised that going to the hospital was essential but also informed me, to my slight alarm, that it would be too late to get the wound stitched as stitches could only be inserted up to six hours after an accident!
I got my travellers’ cheques changed and then went to Nakumatt where there is a pharmacy and supermarket. Loaded up on disinfectant, bandages, sterile crepe compresses and Elastoplast but the one thing I couldn’t get were those shiny-surfaced bandages that don’t stick to wounds. I have some at home in Gisagara but didn’t bring them with me!
I rang my Education Manager Charlotte to tell her what had happened and ask if there was anything I needed for the hospital (ID etc). She was really helpful and told me to call her if I needed anything at all (Alfred: and she called and texted back at various stages to make sure everything was OK - thanks Charlotte!). Then a taxi to King Faisal Hospital. At this stage my leg might as well have been in plaster for all that I was able to bend it so getting into the taxi was a hoot!
When you arrive at King Faisal Hospital, the A&E department is not really as clearly signposted as one might expect an A&E department to be! I tramped around for a bit, finding myself in a waste disposal facility at one stage (Alfred: I'm glad he decided to spare you the details of that!), and totally unchallenged by anyone at all. However, when I did find it everything was very efficient and quick. First the triage nurse took all my details, blood pressure and temperature, checked the bandages and took me to a treatment room. Then the doctor and nurse arrived. His name was Andrew (never got the nurse’s name) and had trained in Tanzania.
The best description of the process is efficient, thorough, and extremely painful. The wound under my kneecap was very deep and Andrew expressed amazement that such a deep wound could have been produced without tearing the fabric of my jeans. He and the nurse spent a while looking at the jeans, doubtlessly checking the label for future reference (Alfred: again, a big thanks to the people at NEXT in the Dundrum Shopping Centre – the two pairs of jeans Ruairí bought there before he left have been absolutely fantastic – three falls, one motorbike crash and various other instances of assorted abuse and still not a mark on them!). Anyway, all the wounds had to be THOROUGHLY cleaned out, twice, to make sure there were no foreign bodies, dirt etc in them. I laughed loudly all through (which I always find preferable to screaming and it works just as well) which slightly puzzled the nurse. She said it was OK to cry if I needed to as my wife wasn’t there. When I said I didn’t have a wife, both she and the doctor froze to the spot, stared at each other and then at me and said as co-ordinatedly as if they were with the Dublin Chamber Choir: “YOU DON”T HAVE A WIFE?” (Alfred: more like a Christmas panto to be honest)
Well, it certainly served to take everyone’s mind off the gory matter in hand. So, for the three thousand, six hundred and seventy-third time since my arrival, I explained that a) I was single/divorced b) I didn’t have any children that I knew of c) I didn’t know if I would marry (again) d) that it was all up to God to decide anyway.
(Alfred: Point d) is a crucial one in these conversations: if you stop at c) there will inevitably be a protracted ongoing discussion of the matter. Dragging the Supreme Deity into matters, however, has a remarkably calming effect.)
However, the nurse asked me if I would ever consider marrying a Rwandan woman. I replied that no one can control who they fall in love with and if God decided I was to love a Rwandan then that is how it would be. She said she was still single and looking for a husband and would appreciate being added to my list when (note the ‘when’, not ‘if’) the time came for me to choose a wife.
(Alfred: Ruairí's friends and family back home will doubtless have noticed the frequency with which he has started bringing God into his conversations here in Rwanda. Is this just cultural adaptation or .......)
All of this acted as a wonderful distraction from the awful things Dr Andrew was doing to my leg. Having cleaned out the wounds to his satisfaction, he was now packing them with some browny-purple stuff (Alfred: it was either iodine or sulphuric acid, judging by the effect it had on Ruairí) and then started on my elbow which I had completely forgotten about. Meanwhile, I was pondering the nurse’s request to be added to my list. Why a list? And why didn’t she want to be first? Was she presuming I would be turned down by many women and therefore needed a number of options? Or was it a positive indication of the number of women she thought might be interested in my proposal?
Anyway, by now the doctor had finished. He then wrote me a prescription for some painkillers: I read it and said ‘Ibuprofen’? He said, ‘Yes, I am giving you this for three reasons. One is it is cheap; the second is it is an anti-inflammatory to reduce the swelling and the third is you are Irish.’ ‘Irish?’ I said. ‘Yes’, he replied, ‘you can still drink alcohol while taking Ibuprofen’. Obviously, medical training in Tanzania is pretty comprehensive (or else he had some Irish lecturers).
Anyway, that was that. He said there was no medical reason for me not to head off to Kampala but I might want to give my leg a little while to recover before undertaking a nine-hour bus journey! And off I staggered, no payment required as they had my name registered as a VSO volunteer on the hospital database. Moto back to the Nakumatt pharmacy for the ibuprofen and then I slowly limped back down the hill to St Paul’s.
Then I began to realise that a certain element of shock must be setting in as I suddenly saw Steve McFadden (fellow VSO volunteer) appear beside me. I knew for a fact that Steve had gone to Ethiopia and there was no way he could be in Kigali. But he was – he was off the next day. So I went with him for a much-needed beer (collecting Andy on the way who was recovering from a mind-numbingly boring session on somethingorother) and then off to lie down. I had already decided in my mind that heading to Kampala the next day was not on – maybe Monday morning at the earliest.
Sunday 5th April
Thom (who was still sharing my room) and I got up latish and headed to the Bourbon Café for breakfast. He was expecting his parents to arrive later that day but then he got a message to say their plane had had to abort its take-off in Addis Ababa because of birds on the runway (Alfred: images of leaves on railway tracks come to mind) – lots of ambulances and fire brigades and exciting stuff like that. Anyway, all the tyres and brake systems now had to be rechecked so their ETA was a matter of guesswork at this stage!
Most of the rest of the day was taken up with getting a moto (painful!) to the bus station in Nyamagogo to get my ticket to Kampala, then to an Internet café for general surfing and see how Manchester United and Aston Villa were doing (Alfred: who is this Macheda kid anyway?). I had rung Marion earlier – she was with a guy called Ben Pollitt who had been a VSO volunteer here in 2000-2001 and had set up the Kivu Writers group. He was back looking for a school to set up a partnership with for his own school in Lewisham. Very interesting guy, it was great to be able to meet him after hearing so much about him from others. Sonya and Paula and Ozzie Christine also turned up out of nowhere so it was a jolly evening!! Then off to bed and get ready for Kampala!!
ALFRED: TUNE IN FOR THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE OF RUAIRÍ’S TRIP TO KAMPALA WHERE HE ACTUALLY REACHES KAMPALA!
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