Update from Nairobi (well, pictures mostly)

Please note that VSO is in no way responsible for the information and/or comments in this blog. These are purely my own in a personal capacity.

I am now in Nairobi and heading for an MRI on my knee tomorrow (Wednesday). For those who didn’t know, it hasn’t healed up since the accident in April – I still get pain in the shin at night sometimes when I am lying flat but mostly it is pain within the knee when I bend it for any length of time (or even no time at all). Possibly a cartilage problem but the MRI will tell me, I hope. Also hope to catch the Star Trek film while I am here. Hopefully, I won’t need surgery or, if I do, won’t be laid up for too long (Alfred: though he is a bit tickled by the idea of lying in a hospital bed or hotel while recuperating, watching the Ashes, and sending Andy and Thom regular texts to remind them of what they are missing! Be worth having surgery just for the sheer sadistic pleasure ……)


I will do a full update once I know what is happening. Meanwhile, two sets of photos – the first from Alain and Berthe’s farewell dinner at Sole Luna on Friday 26th, the second from Tiga’s (?farewell) barbeque in Butare the following night. Most of the pictures are self-explanatory, apologies for some dust on the lens in some of the party shots.

DINNER AT SOLE LUNA - GOODBYE TO ALAIN AND BERTHE


















Sarah Challoner


















Christina and Berthe

Dinner at Sole Luna

Me and Berthe

Joe and Alain

Alain

Tina Hewing

Berthe and Paula

Marion and Sandra



BARBEQUE AT TIGA'S IN BUTARE (captions are superfluous!)

June 23rd 2009: Bees' Knees

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.

THANKS ANDY!
In response to my Facebook post, Andy Crow suggested I be called 'Ruairí Attenborough'. Thanks Andy - that probably accounts for the swarm of bees that invaded my house this afternoon. This is the SECOND time this has happened - a swarm of bees looking for a des. res. to set up house in and they choose ME! Unfortunately, my supplies of insecticide spray were rather limited this time so I put a rolled-up copy of COMHAR to good use and whacked about a hundred of the buggers to death. I also rang my moto driver and told him to pick me up some insecticide in Butare and drop it in on his way home. (Alfred: as Ruairí writes this, an ant carrying a dead bee is trying to climb UP his curtain. The bee is about twice the size of the ant. Fair play.) When I got home the bees had vanished. Ruairí 2 Bees 0 (see post from earlier this year for details of the previous fixture).


MATTHEW SHARDLAKE RULES!!
If you like historical thrillers, I cannot recommend the Matthew Shardlake series enough (Author: C. J. Sansom). Set in the reign of Henry VIII, amazing stuff.

INTERESTING RWANDAN EVENING
Enock recounted again (but in more detail) surviving the Interahamwe attack on his tour group in the safari park in southern Uganda. Joseph described leaving university to join the RPF with his four brothers in the late 1980s, the disastrous invasion of 1991 when they lost their six senior officers in the first few days and a few of the later events (including the capture of Byumba). All his brothers died in the war, he is the only surviving male member of his family. We had an interesting ten minutes or so analysing the parallels between Kagame and Bonaparte (I am tutoring Joseph for his forthcoming History A-Level examination!).

COMBINATIONS
Mutzig+ red wine = bad combination
Mango waragi + Dairy Milk = good combination
(Alfred: ha ha - wait until he wakes up tomorrow morning at 0530 - it's 2342 now - and see if he still thinks it was a good idea!!!!)

22nd June 2009: Day before my uncle Alexander's birthday!!!

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.

THE BAT
I woke up last night around three o’clock in the morning and heard a rustling sound in my room, coming from the large plastic shopping bag I use to hold my dirty laundry. ‘Oh oh’, I thought, ‘I wonder what that is?’ Given the range of wildlife living in and around my house there were various options, though obviously a mouse or its larger and beefier cousin were the obvious options.

Grabbing the torch from under my pillow, I first tried to see if I could make out what it was without actually leaving the ‘security’ of my mosquito net. No go. Venturing over to the corner, I saw a small animal which I realised was a bat. Given that I have the bat equivalent of the population of Scunthorpe living in my attic, it wasn’t really a surprise that one had eventually ended up down here.

So how do you catch a bat? Every time I moved the light it would scuttle with alarming rapidity and, before I could really come up with a coherent plan, it zoomed under the bed and vanished. I lay down and pointed the torch in but could not see it anywhere. So I did the sensible thing – went into bed, tucked the mosquito net in carefully around me and put my earphones in my ears playing Genesis so the bat wouldn’t wake me up again.

No sign of it in the morning either but, during the day, I threw the puzzle open to my Facebook community. Amalia suggested feeding it fruit gums – a tactic I freely admit I hadn’t thought of but was willing to try if I had had any fruit gums, but I didn’t. My cousin Lorcán suggested hitting it with a bat .... right. Then one of my star former pupils, Julia Caldwell, now a qualified vet, suggested a tupperware container to trap it, all the while warning me about bites, rabies shots and other comforting things.

Returning home it was still light so I figured it wasn’t likely to come out until dark, so I concentrated on making dinner and preparing my stuff for my school visit tomorrow. Then, as the pasta was simmering, I glanced into the bedroom (I had left the door open in case the creature was intelligent enough to actually run out and fly back into the attic) and saw it moving in the corner. Quickly I grabbed a tupperware container and tried to catch it but it scuttled behind the chair and disappeared. Where? I figured either it had moved so fast I hadn’t seen it get under the bed ... or it was in my washbag. How do you check a washbag to see if it has a bat in it? (Alfred: Answers on postcard to BP 129, Butare, Rwanda). Very carefully, is the answer. I got my walking stick (Alfred: And yet again we thank Amy and Eric for their generosity and foresight in providing this) and poked the bag, eventually tipping it over onto the floor and stirring out the contents. After about ten minutes it was clear there was no bat.

And then, just as I was contemplating flailing around under the bed with the stick (Alfred: and just as Alexandre was about to finally be unable to restrain his curiouity and come in and see why his mzungu employer was dancing around his bedroom with a torch in one hand and a lunchbox in the other while kicking furniture around) I saw it by the corner of the door. Quick as a flash (sort of) I whacked the lunchbox down on top of Jeremy (as I had started calling him because he reminded me of Jeremy Thorpe – creepy, scuttling around, grey in the face – I don’t know. Anyone out there – other than Andy Crow – actually know who Jeremy Thorpe was? Nah, didn’t think so) slid the lid under and carried him out onto the porch. Alexandre ran over and I handed him the box saying: ‘Mfite agacurama’, possibly the finest phrase in Kinyarwanda I have yet used (‘I have a bat’). He carried it gently over to the fence and tossed it into the neighbouring field and then took the lunchbox away for a really good scrubbing. And I went and ate my pasta.

Callixte sentenced to thirty years in prison for genocide crimes
As I type this, I hear the BBC World Service announce that the former Interior Minister, Callixte , has been sentenced to thirty years for genocide crimes. He was the organiser of the massacre at Kabuye where I attended the genocide memorial ceremony a few weeks ago – it was he who is said to have encouraged the Tutsi refugees to gather on the hill, assuring them they would be safe there while at the same time organising the Interahamwe forces for one of the largest massacres of the entire genocide.

The Knee
Still no word. Getting pissed off at this stage.


Public Holidays and Work Practice changes, Rwandan-style
Both the 1st July and 4th July are public holidays. Apparently the government has just announced they are being amalgamated on the 4th to save money. They also announced this morning a five-hour weekly increase in every public servant’s working hours, from eight to nine hours a day. No one at my office seemed to mind particularly. Seriously. I even spoke to them one-to-one afterwards and none of them seemed to understand why I thought at least some people might object. Every time I think I am getting a handle on this country .....

Tough choices but a nice weekend
Steve and Nidhi had invited everyone to a party in their house in in Kigali which I would have loved to go to but I had already promised South African John that Andy and I would come up to Gikongoro and watch the rugby match with him. So I spent Friday evening with Andy and Tiga (Chineese food and then Andy and I headed up Saturdayand watched the rugby with South African John, his gorgeous dog Shadow and the local chief of police, Francis, who happened to call in. Francis had never seen rugby before and it was hilarious watch him squirm and flinch every time there was a ruck or maul or scrum. A great match, even if the ‘Boks won – can’t wait for the second test.

Then we headed off to Butare, collected Tiga and went for .... a Chineese meal!! John brought his domestique and guard as well – neither of them had ever been in a restaurant before in their lives, let alone a Chineese one, and John insisted they had to have Chinese food (Alfred: well, what passes for Chinese food here). And they enjoyed it, though Betty was appalled at how long the food took to arrive. The pièce de resistance was the Chicken and Pineapple which comes served in a scooped-out pineapple. I thought Betty was going to wet herself laughing at that one!!

Nice lazy Sunday and then home.

AMAZON BONANZA!
My Amazon shipment arrived! For some reason, whenever I get Amazon stuff, I have to collect it at 0800 on a Friday morning in the presence of a member of the Rwanda Revenue Authority and open it for him to see. I would’t mind this ordinarily except it never happens to anyone else who gets Amazon, and lots of people do!! This means I have to get up early (0530), be at work for when the work bus arrives and hop on it back to Butare, wait around for 0800 and then get my parcel. Luckily my monthly issue of COMHAR has arrived (Irish-language politics and literature magazine) so I was able to read that to pass the time.

But ... it was so worth it!!! Seven books!! I have already read my first one, the first volume of the Matthew Shardlake series by C. J. Sansom – and it was FANTASTIC!!! And I have now started ‘It’s Our Turn To Eat’, a book about corruption in Kenya which looks equally (if differently) promising! Ah, books! And I have two more Shardlakes, a Ugandan novel, The White Tiger and a Victorian murder mystery !! Heaven! Not to mention that I am actually too busy to read much at the moment! Should last me a long time!

ABSENT FRIENDS
Was on Facebook today and was chatting to Heloise Allan. Sobering to think how many of my colleagues I came with are either gone or about to leave! So a few messages! Rosie and Heloise – miss you guys, hope to see you soon again. Tinks – Jacques sends his special regards and hopes you will visit him someday in his new house down near the Burundi border. Francois and Alexis also say ‘Hello’. Lambert got a job in Kigali with some NGO or other – I can send him your email if you like ..... Alain and Berthe leave this weekend, Suzanne, Ivana and Danielle all left early. Love to you all!

I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER
As my very dear friend Tiga-Rose Nercessian said the other day, given that we only have a finite time on this earth, it’s amazing what people will waste their time doing (neither Andy nor I are really in a position to argue the point on this one). I like these pictures and there are thousands more of them at www.icanhascheezburger.com – mostly cats but other animals too. A great way to waste your time!!!

Work, work, work! And cows .....

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.

(Alfred: Bear in mind that this is the guy who drove everybody - in Rwanda and elsewhere - mad with his complaints of not having anything to do for MONTHS! OK? Just remember that.....). Yeah, yeah but it has been hectic and I have been used to doing what I want to when I want to ... God, that sounds whiny, even to me. I had been hoping to go up to Kigali for the Queen's birthday party in the British Embassy but no such luck. (Alfred: probably just as well - initial reports suggest everyone got completely sozzled on the free wine and security was about as efficient as at an all-night wedding chapel in La Vegas) and now I am hoping my plan to see Andy and John in Gikongoro tomorrow is not going to get screwed up by the training course that is going on (it's on financial management for goodness' sake, what do they need me there for?). It's a real pity as Steve and Nidhi are having a party in their place Saturday but there is no way I can make it. Alain and Berthe are having their farewell do next Friday and Tiga hers on Saturday and it's all I can manage to get to all of those!

Anyway, this is by way of an apology - I'll catch up with the update soon! Meanwhile these are the friends I wandered into in the dead of night on my way to meet Joseph and Enoch for a beer - well, not these exact ones obviously, I nicked this photo off the internet. I was wandering in the pitch dark and heard a funny noise and realised I had wandered into a large group of these cows that were being driven home. Scary moment - they are reasonably placid animals but quite a few people get killed by them every year in accidents all the same. I could hear the herdsmen muttering to each other, wondering what this mad muzungu was doing (it still amazes me how well Rwandans see in the dark. (Alfred: Unfortunately Ruairí was on his way to have a few beers. Had he already had them, we would have found out if the phrase 'a sobering experience' has a scientific basis.)

KIGALI CAROUSING, CROSS-COUNTRY BUS DRIVING AND WHAT IS IT WITH THE SERVICE IN CHINESE RESTAURANTS IN BUTARE?

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.

KIGALI CAROUSING

It must be a side-effect of being out ‘in the bush’ (Alfred: Gross over-exaggeration – apologies to George W. Bush – ‘in the bush’ indeed!) but I seem to be having an increasingly wild social life whenever I get up to Kigali! This time started off with Heloise Allan’s farewell do. I had had one of those infuriating days which make you wonder what the hell you are doing here at all!! I had told my boss that I needed to bring the contracts for the new volunteer up to Kigali on Friday and reminded him every day, including the (not very realistic) threat that she might be allocated to another District if we didn’t put down on paper that we wanted her. So there I am on Friday and my boss has got the mayor to sign the first contract (acceptance contract saying the District approve her coming), forgot about the second one (agreement between the District and VSO re payments, employment conditions etc) and the mayor decided he wanted to leave the third (contract between the volunteer and the District) until she was here. And he had forgotten to get the top sheet stamped, without which it has no validity.

I said I was going home to get my things and, when the moto driver arrived, I would swing by the office to pick up the stamped paper. I went home, ate and packed and came back. He seemed to have completely forgotten in the space of 45 minutes what he was supposed to do. He ran to the secretary’s office where the stamp is kept – she had gone to lunch! So he told me to stay put, jumped on his moto and drove off, arriving back in ten minutes with the unfortunate secretary on the back who had been dragged away from her lunch to do this for me. She wasn’t happy but she’s a smart cookie and I figure she remembers that my boss actually spent most of the morning in her office and had never bothered to do it when he actually had the opportunity. (Alfred: Unnecessary detail, you might think? And you might be right – but every volunteer here can give you at least three or four such stories PER WEEK of their entire stay here, so it’s probably worth it!).

This meant that by the time I got to Butare I was running very late, so I stopped at the first bus station I saw – HORIZON, a company I don’t usually use simply because they are at the other end of town – and got a ticket for 1530, which already meant I wasn’t going to get to Kigali in time to visit the {program Office. Then, as we left Kigali, we came upon a massive road accident – two lorries and a petrol tanker had come to grief about five kilometres north of Butare. It must have just happened as there were relatively few vehicles backed up on each side, which left us uncomfortably close to a leaking petrol tanker, as far as I was concerned. The police were there looking on and a group of men (possibly from the tanker) were throwing rocks and stones at a crowd of children and adults who were trying to gather petrol from the leaking tanker with jerrycans. I could hear the sound of ambulance sirens in the distance so presumably in the midst of all this were injured or dead drivers and passengers.

So, our driver decided that this wasn’t going to get cleared in a hurry so he did a U-turn, drove back about a kilometre and then headed off into the countryside, presumably to find some way round the blockage. Well, you need to have travelled on bad rural Rwandan roads to fully appreciate the bravery/lunacy/determination of a driver who takes a large 30-seater bus on one of them! We trundled along, passengers bouncing all over the place, me getting walloped from time to time by an extremely well-endowed lady on my right in a manner some men might have actually found enjoyable and stimulating but quite frankly my concentration was on not losing teeth or cracking ribs.

Occasionally the bus driver would pull over and ask some bemused local for the right direction (Alfred: One is reminded of the old Irish joke where the tourist asks the local the way to Tralee and he replies: ‘Well, if I were you I wouldn’t start from here’) – as far as I could see they just pointed in some random direction and off we sped again (Alfred: Yes, ‘sped’, the right word to describe what the driver was doing but the WRONG thing to be actually doing on these roads). Eventually the bouncing around got so bad that everyone just started cracking up laughing, with various people looking around to see how the muzungu was coping. Meanwhile, children, goats and pigs stood stock still and stared at the huge white bus bouncing along roads that I am pretty sure few if any vehicles had ever travelled on before!

However, to give the driver his due, we did find the main road again and headed off towards Kigali on a completely deserted road. The driver then showed his true mettle by being determined to make up all the lost time and get to Kigali by 1800. And he pretty much did, which is really scary – it normally takes 2h15m to get from Butare to Kigali, we had lost thirty minutes across country and we got to Kigali only ten minutes late. Insane driving!

Anyway, Nidhi had texted me earlier to say she had arrived back from India and I headed off to her place to drop my stuff. Steve, who shares the house with Nidhi, was celebrating his birthday by attending an eight-hour planning meeting for the twelve-hour AGM his organisation was holding the next day (Alfred: There’s a man who knows how to part-eey!!). I arranged to meet up with Nidhi in Torrero’s later where a live band were playing and headed off to find Heloise in Kisimenti, pausing en route to buy coffee (for me an Steve), bread (me) and bananas (Nidhi) for the following morning’s breakfast.

Heloise and a big crowd of others had gathered in La Planete (the pictures will tell the story). The main excitement was the bill which I volunteered to sort out (Alfred: he has started to do this recently, why does he want the pain? Always a bloody nightmare!) Alfred may have a point there and this one was a doozy. The bill was RWF82,000 and once everyone had paid up we had almost RWF50,000! This always happens as there is just one big bill at the end and people have been coming and going all night. Anyway, an extra whip around and Heloise between them took care of the difference so it was OK but Alfred’s right, I gotta stop volunteering to do this!

Eric O'Flynn & Amy Parker; Ken Franklin talking to Cathryn Devine, Chris Harvey, Tiga and Andy in the background

Bruce Upton; Heloise and Rosie saying their goodbyes (Alfred: it being FAR too much trouble for Ruairí to actually put these photos in some sort of rough chronological order!)

Tina Hewing; from right to left - Amy, Eric, Heloise, the friend of Heloise's who ordered the goat liver brochette and a young English guy who had been made publicity officer for the Rwandan Film Festival three days previously (Alfred: the festival was starting the next day and none of us around the table had heard of it! Ruairí can't remember his name but he was a really nice guy and remarkable cheerful and upbeat under the circumstances!)

Thom Lee, Andy Crow (Alfred: or 'Andrew' as Ruairí has started calling him for some inexplicable reason), Hayley Pert; Heloise and friends.

Thom, Andy and Heloise, with and without friend.

Rosie Allan, back in one piece from Tanzania. (Alfred: Are all the Allans this nice? You feel it is a bit like The Picture of Dorian Grey - there must be some horrible Allan hidden away in an attic somewhere to compensate for them all!). Tiga, Chris, Ken, Thom (Tiga definitely NOT interested in what is going on)

I then went for a quick drink with Cathryn Devine and Ken (see picture) across the road (they used to share a house in Nyanza and wanted to catch up on old times) and then I headed back into town to see Nidhi in Torrero’s.

And this is where the night got really interesting! There was really good live music in Torrero’s and a few more people I knew – Marion was there (Alfred: and, and , and .... I can hardly bring myself to say it .... she wasn’t drinking!! Antibiotics, the poor love. And she kept on saying how well she felt since she had stopped drinking and smoking and ... hmmm, actually, making quite a lot of sense now that I think back over it... OK, forget I even started saying all this) and Irina and Nidhi and a guy called Luke with a complicated love-life that we all got involved in discussing and an Indian girl called Kelpa who had the most incredible Shirley Temple American accent. It was a great night, apart from my decision to switch from Mutzig (lager) to red wine. At the time it made sense, that’s all I can say.

We stayed there until around 0430, chatting to two members of The Kigali Boys, one of Rwanda’s hottest groups at the moment. Then we went to hang out at the mall. OK, Kigali’s version of hanging out at the mall which is going to the only 24-hour supermarket in the country, buying stuff and then hanging around the area outside it eating/drinking what you just bought. Corn chips and Mutzig in my case (Alfred: It’s an adaptation of the VSO sandwich idea – Mutzig on each side, red wine in the middle). However, Nidhi had enough sense to decide it was time to call it a night and Alex (of the Kigali Boys) dropped us home in his taxi. I think it really made Steve’s birthday to have us arrive in at 0600 on the anniversary of his birth, giggling and loudly telling each other to be quiet while slamming every door in the house!

So, not surprisingly, Saturday got off to a slow start. I eventually stirred into action around 1100 to wave Nidhi goodbye as she headed off to meet the other seven who were heading to Nyungwe forest with her (or being picked up en route) for chimpanzee trekking . Steve had headed off for his AGM so I wandered into town and ... can’t really remember to be honest. I know Steve met up with me at 1715 at Blues Cafe but before that I don’t really recall. I remember spending a while on the Internet and I must have had breakfast/lunch at some stage ..... ah well.

I do remember meeting Chris Harvey at some stage and I think it was in Simba, and I was with Steve? Or was I? Oh dear, this isn’t good. Definitely need to cut back on th’ould Mutzig ...

My memory kicks in properly again around 1930 when Steve met me at Blues Cafe on his way to do a radio interview (Alfred: Excuse me, ANOTHER radio interview!) about his involvement in the Rwandan music scene. Steve has been playing with a local band (he plays a traditional West African drum) and has already had a few concerts. On July 4th he will be playing for President Kagame as part of the Independence Day celebrations!! There’s posh for you. We did the interview (despite a power-cut) and then headed off to find something to eat.

Now you would think that 2130 on a Saturday night in a capital city, it would not be unreasonable to expect to find at least ONE place still serving food in the city centre. Not in Kigali. Ballymena on a Sunday morning would have more social appeal to it than this place! Every place we went to had stopped serving. One place did tell us that a restaurant called Chez Resto served food 24 hours a day, briefly raising our hopes, but then added ‘but not on Saturdays or Sundays’. WTF? You can get an omelette at 0400 on a Wednesday but nothing on a Saturday night? Eventually we gave up and went to Nakumat 24-hour supermarket and bought sausages and rolls and went home. Steve fried up the sausages with onions and we ate them around midnight with some beer.

Around 0400 that morning my stomach went on strike, which is hardly surprising given the abuse it had been taking – spicy German sausages at midnight after a day with little or no food was the final straw. I woke to find I had ballooned up like a patient with severe malnutrition and confidently expected to find myself drifting up towards the ceiling at any moment! Eventually I got back to sleep and didn’t actually get up until nearly midday. I hung around for a bit listening to Steve practising on the drums and then headed off to get the bus to Butare. En route there, Nidhi texted to say she was staying over there in the Ineza so I decided to do the same.

Nidhi was doing a wonderful John Wayne imitation when I met her, due to extreme soreness in her legs and thighs from having tramped all over Nyungwe Forest looking for chimpanzees - due to a mix-up over accommodation they had had to spend the night in Gikongoro which is miles away and then set off at 0200 to be there in time for the 0530 trek! Six hours of trekking and they saw 2 chimpanzees (Alfred: Hey, some people walk all day and don’t see any at all!). Anyway, we went for a Chinese meal and Andy joined us a little later. Later still, Ozzie Charlotte and her friend Sarah who is here on holiday also joined us, having gone on from Nyungwe to visit the genocide memorial at Murambi (Alfred: more about that some other time – maybe; underground mass graves is one thing but I’m not sure Ruairí has quite worked up the courage to visit Murambi yet).

It was a nice evening but the service was woeful, abysmal, disgraceful, awful (take the synonym of your choice)- there only seemed to be one person on duty and I suspect he was the owner or manager because he spent all his time drinking beer in a little alcove and had to be summoned whenever we wanted anything. A large group of Americans that had come in after us eventually gave up and left without their food. So would we, to be honest, except that Nidhi and I had actually eaten as we got their much earlier, Andy was in the process of eating and we weren’t going to vanish off and leave Charlotte and Sarah! The food was fine (given that 90% of the things on the menu were not available) and they had good tofu of all things (no beef, no chicken, only pork for the carnivores).

And so to bed - needed to be up at 0530 Monday to get a moto to Gisagara for the 0700 meeting.

Alfred: stay tuned for the next episode - killer cows, friendly soldiers, Showaddywaddy revivalists, the mysteries of Rwandan proverbs and how Ruairí has volunteered to teach someone the equivalent of the entire A-Level history course in four months!!! Plus an update on the knee ('Nairobi here we come' - or probably just him, to be honest, I never get to go anywhere ......)