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 ......)

Random Musings

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 CATHOLIC CHURCH
Just to clarify something from my last blog (as I have received a few queries) - it wasn't that I hadn't heard about the Ryan Report about the Catholic Church in Ireland, it was just that I had to pretend I hadn't as I really didn't want to talk about it. Thanks to all those who sent articles, weblinks and commiserations on how out of touch I seemed to be!!!

Interestingly enough, the Church or churches in general came up in conversation twice recently in rather unexpected ways. One was when I was talking to Albert (see last blog). Now one of the few things I know about Albert (apart from his having been in prison for fifteen years after the gennocide) is that he is very religious; in fact the only time he leaves his house every day is to go to church. However, at one stage where I mentioned the fact of Rwanda being a very religious country, he suddenly came out with about a five-minute diatribe about how Rwanda's miseries really all started when the first christian missionaries arrived, disrupted the existing stable social order and started Rwanda on the long downward spiral to all the difficulties it suffers today!


And yesterday, still being officeless (as are my Director and chargé) I was using Irene's desk in Antoine's office and we were, of course, talking and not doing any work (Alfred: Antoine is a lovely guy but he DOES like to chat and if Ruairí has to use his office faut de mieux Antoine sees this as an opportunity for an extended English conversation class). The conversation took an unusual turn as Antoine raised the (not at all unusual question) of why I am not married. This took us on an extended tour of marriage, divorce, relationships, children and goodness-knows what else, all in a direct and bluint fashion that would have completely freaked me out back in Ireland.

Antoine is genuinely upset that I do not have children and made the comment 'So they will bury you with charcoal then, eh?' I thought I had misunderstood or that he had used the wrong word in English. But, after taking a few minutes to go through 'charbon' and 'charbon de bois' I realised he did mean 'charcoal'. Apparently the tradition here is that if a man dies without having had any children, a lump of unburnt charcoal is put into the coffin with him, signifying the extinction of his line! Antoine even came over to my desk and patted my left side where he said the charcoal would be placed when I was laid out.

I said that this was an interesting tradition which I hadn't heard of before - Antoine said such beliefs were extremely common. He then went on to tell me - and again this is a very religious and observant Christian - that Rwanda isn't really as Christian a country as it makes itself out to be. Christianity only arrived here in 1900 and spread slowly enough initially, usually by merging with rather than replacing the indigenous beliefs (just like Christianity in Ireland, as I told him). He then started telling me of some of the things people believe, about the afterlife, about how the dead never actually leave us but are always around us watching us and keeping an eye, how they can become malevolent and aggressive if you offend them or if you are not leading your life in an appropriate way. Not having children is apparently a recipe for serious retribution because, having expended their efforts and lives in perpetuating the family line, they do not take kindly to those of us who waste those efforts.


Anyway, it was a really fascinating conversation, which actually made me late for my class for the first time ever (Alfred: not that anyone else had actually turned up by then anyway!) - I've been invited to a wedding on july 11th in Kigali and people tell me this is one way to get an idea of just how traditional Rwandan Christianity really is!


TONGUE TWISTERS
The class I was late for was tongue twisters. I am using these to try and improve their pronunciation and I am amazed at how quickly they can master them - even 'Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry' which I had frankly thought would be next to impossible for a Rwandan, they all managed to get - and repeat - eventually. The toughest one was 'Round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran', partly because the words are so strange (and bloody difficult to explain) but they had no problems with 'She sells sea shells by the sea shore', 'Busy buzzing bumble bees', 'A cheap sheep is cheaper than a cheap ship', 'Fresh fried fish,Fish fresh fried,Fried fish fresh,Fish fried fresh', and even the really difficult one 'Not these things here but those things there'.

The only one that tripped them up - and really badly - was 'Pirates' private property'!! And did they enjoy them!!


THE KNEE
Still no word from the VSO Medical Unit in the UK about what they intend doing about my knee. It is getting really frustrating because I can't make any hard and fast plans for inspections etc if I am likely to disappear off for a few days at any stage. Not that it is very painful or anything, as long as I don't bend it either too much or for too long. But the next sector on the work schedule is Gishubi which is a good distance away and with apparently (I can't wait to see this) the worst roads in the District. Is is also ranked 13th of the 13 sectors in Gisagara for educational attainment so I wanted to tackle it next and see just what the problem is (Alfred: like you can't make an educated guess already!).


Alexis seems to have become suddenly energised by my work schedule and seems (I repeat the same verb deliberately) really keen to accompany me on all my visits. Maybe I misjudged him. (Alfred: Maybe. Proof of the pudding etc).


CRICKET
Pity to be missing the Twenty20 tournament which is turning out to be a cracker, even if Ireland seem to be falling apart at the seams a bit (Andy and I and Joe and John Simpson and whoever else is interested are hoping to organise a cricket outing to Kigali some weekend where there is a regular cricket league). England played miserably against South Africa yesterday and the online over-by-over commentator tried to relieve the gloom by running a haiku competition based on what was happening on the field. These were the four entries - pretty good, eh! (Alfred: And if you don't know what a haiku is, .... look it up!! I think the last one is the best!).


England are to mouse
as South Africa are to
sadistic kitty


England in despair
South Africa with disdain
hit the winning runs


England are to worms
As South Africa are to
Early morning birds


The haiku, with its
five syllables, seven, five,
knows no boundaries


Off to Kigali for the weekend to say goodbye to Heloise Allan (and her sister Rosie) who is the first of our group to make it (well, almost) to the end of her posting, though she is leaving a little early. Will try and keep in touch!!


RANDOM PICTURES
Some of these I already posted on Facebook, some are from Rwanda, some are just ... random photos!!

Stingray migration, somewhere in the Caribbean I think.

This is Pappy, Hayley Pert's dog. As she is leaving Rwanda soon, he is looking for a home. If you can help .....

The biggest swimming pool in the world (it's in Chile)

A 5 megabyte drive being loaded onto an airplane for delivery in 1957. Yep, 5MB!

Flowers in Mexico or somewhere in the US (I forget). I know it looks like it was photoshopped or something, but this is a real, genuine 100% true photo!

A fire-rainbow

My friends, Marion Woolley and Cathryn Devine, at a Rwandan wedding recently.

Glad we don't have these in Rwanda - coconut crab. Mind you, we don't have rubbish bins either.

Wednesday 10th June 2009

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.


HURRAH!
Chelsea won the FA Cup, Holland beat England in the Twenty20, Ireland qualified for the next round, Maureen O'Sullivan took Tony Gregory's seat, Fianna Fáil got STUFFED in the elections, Joe Higgins got elected to the European Parliament, we're still in with a chance of qualifying for the World Cup, I managed to avoid working on the REAP project, someone sent me FOUR BARS of chocolate, Libertas is no more (Alfred: well ... wait and see. Like smallpox, just when you think it has been eradicated, it pops up again!) .......

BOO!
Green Party got annihilated, Gene Feighery isn't a councillor in Dún Laoghaire any more,
BBC World Service is STILL off the air in Rwanda, BNP got TWO European seats (Alfred: still can't believe that one), Kevin Kilbane screwed us over AGAIN, MTN screwed ME over again (and are still doing it), Kathy Sinnott isn't in the European parliament any more, my knee is definitely not 100%.....


And a Rwandan colleague I was chatting to about religion said he had heard something about a report released about the Catholic Church in Ireland and children's homes and what did I know about it? I said I hadn't heard ...........


RANDOM STUFF
Last night was an interesting experience. Work was nothing special - I designed a new school inspection form for myself and tried to plan a new school inspection schedule but not knowing what is happening with my knee is making that a bit difficult (Alfred: emm, don't think you told your blog readers about the knee thing! Remember, guys, how Ruairí decided to walk around Kigali in the dark talking on his mobile phone in the pitch dark on the night of April 4th? Fell into hole, crocked knee etc - see April/May posts for details. Well, it has flared up again - fine most of the time but hurts like hell if he bends it for more than a few minutes (back of moto, on bus etc). Hoping to head to Nairobi or Kampala for an MRI but still waiting to hear. Just as well he decided NOT to buy that motorbike, eh?). Alexis is all full of piss and vinegar at the moment, talking about a two-week schedule to visit all the schools in the District by doing five a day!!! I told him I usually spend six hours minimum in each school and would spend longer if I didn't have to be back in the District for English classes. His face!

To be fair, Alexis has either never done or never had the chance to do (depending on how you want to phrase it) a school inspection so it will be an interesting experience for us both. However, it is great that he has finally bitten the bullet and opted to join me - one of my main aims (and a vital one if the changes I hope to bring about here are going to be sustainable) is to train both him and Francois in doing this so it will continue after I leave. After all, there is no guarantee that I will be replaced when I leave.

Anyway, I headed home after a good English class. Eight (Alfred: Wow! A whole eight people? Hold me up .....) people came today, which is a record for the new set of classes. We had great fun with tongue twisters and they promised to get me to try a few next class. However, they were annoyed that I had forgotten to bring my cheese grater into class as I had promised following my hilarious attempts to explain and mime what grating cheese was!!!

Anyway, I got home around five, sterilised ten litres of water (the local water seems to have gone a bit cloudy the last few weeks) and then decided to head out and look for some bread so I could have some for dinner AND breakfast (Alfred: the thought of a cheeky little beer was also somewhere in the back of his head). As I passed Albert's place, he was standing outside in his fleece and asked if he could accompany me on my walk and I ended up inviting him for a beer. My neighbour Albert is 62, spent fifteen years in prison after the genocide (his wife and eldest son are still inside and I have never really been able to ascertain whether anyone thinks they were innocent or not or, indeed, whether Albert himself was guilty or not). He only ever leaves the house to go to mass so it was a big surprise when he asked to walk with me and an even bigger one when he accepted my offer to go for a beer (he had had me around to his house one evening for beer and a chat so I did feel I ought to reciprocate).

Anyway, it slowly dawned on me (Alfred: he's quick, is our lad!) that this was the first time in seventeen years he had gone out for a drink and he wasn't sure he could remember what the routine was. I had to order for him and invite him to start drinking. He kept on looking around him with a very puzzled air but then started to talk about what it had been like since coming out of prison - how much of his French he felt had disappeared because he never spoke it in prison, the embarrassment of not having a wife to look after the house for him and having to rely on one of his daughters to look after him and his own mother (who is now 88). And, of course, constantly over and over again, heavy heavy hints being dropped as to how I should help him out financially.

Now, as I explained before, friendships in Africa are very much an economic investment. Not always but often. And, in Albert's case, he made it clear that he was very glad to have me as a friend (and his wife in prison was even happier as this was the first friend he had made since leaving prison) and to have someone who would talk to him and occasionally visit him. But he was also very insistent that, as a friend, it was my responsibility to help him financially if it was within my power. So - and for ALL kinds of different reasons - I am going to have to think carefully how to handle this one. I like Albert but, if he actually did any of the things that people usually get locked up for fifteen years for, there are probably better ways to spend any spare cash I might have. And, like many others here, I am getting SO tired of EVERYONE asking me for money or other things all the time. It seems to have got a lot worse recently, quite suddenly (Alfred: or else he is just getting more sensitive to it as his patience gets worn down), even kids on the street who had stopped doing it have started up again. And ... well, maybe writing about this the day after isn't good timing; I need a while go think this one through.

(Alfred: Actually, I don't know if this is true or not, but there is said to be a radio programme in Kinyarwandan to tell children how to behave properly towards muzungus. Of course the programme features lots of examples of the kind of things the children are NOT supposed to say and this is what they are copying. Sounds plausible, both in terms of explaining the sudden appearances of phrases in English we hadn't heard before ('Give me my money'; What have you brought me today?') and reflecting the kind of thinking that goes into teaching methodology here).

Anyway, a few other random things. Still waiting for my amazon.com order with increasing impatience. Got a great parcel from a friend at school with soups and chocolate (Alfred: we now have enough soup to sink a battleship - or, preferably, float one - but chocolate is ALWAYS welcome!!! Any spare supplies out there just ship them straight to BP 129, Butare, Rwanda. Any if anyone sends any orange-flavoured dark chocolate - that's MINE!). Finished reading 'The Poisonwood Bible' for the second time and boy! is it a different read once you have actually been to Africa! Anyone out there who hasn't read it, I recommend it wholeheartedly!!

MTN have decided to screw up my life again by upgrading their internet subscriptions ervice which emans I can't recharge my modem at the moment. Luckily the wireless service at work has suddenly improved out of all recognition but it does mean I am having to do my internet, blog, Facebook etc at work which I usually avoid doing! But the increased speed means I am uploading loads of photos today so enjoy.


VISIT TO NYANZA

I headed up to Nyanza for a day a few weekends ago when Joe Walk was visiting Butare. The two of us went up with Tiga and Andy and it was a really, really nice day, one of the nicest since I came here. The pictures are kind of in reverse chronological order but that doesn't really matter and I may have to make up some of the captions as I can't really remember exactly what was in which hut!! (Alfred: msot of the pictures don't need captions anyway, to be honest, so stop fussing!)





You see a lot of these lilies around the place - really pretty but slightly creepy!

Andy and Tiga

Hmmm - I used this as my Facebook profile picture and got a LOT of flak! (Alfred: Well, he did ask people to suggest captions for the picture! Prize to Katya Beshkmelnitsky for pointing out how the shirt pattern matches the background!)

Beer containers and woven ... dividers? mats? They serve as curtains basically to divide up the interior space of the huts.

Royal hut and (I think) beer containers.

Containers for milk (small) and for making butter (large). Always displayed prominently as a sign of wealth.

Joe, Andy and Tiga at the entrance; also, our guide for the day (see a close-up of her hair later in this blog).

Courtyard of the Royal Palace. To be honest, it is a bit underwhelming if you are expecting an African version of Versailles but it was probably quite the show at the time once the Belgians finished building it for him.

Rather strange Art Deco type carpet on the left. On the right is the Museum of Modern Art, perched on an adjoining hill. I'm told it's not great but I am still intrigued.....

HAIR

I just LOVE Rwandan women's hair styles - the most amazingly beautiful braids ever. Here are a few snaps I took here and there, most snatched rather hurridly or cropped from much larger photos so excuse the quality

Ignacienne here (on the right) has the simple cropped hair that you don't see that often with adults in my district, more on schoolgirls. Clothilde on the left has the heavy, thick braids that I notice quite a few of the older women wearing. But I do love the colours woven into the braids, especially the guide in the Royal Palace of Nyanza with the orange (second picture).

Alfred: final note from me. Anyone who copied Ruairí's cabbage stir-fry recipe from Facebook - try not to be sharing a bedroom with anyone who is tempted to try it! Or else have it for lunch and go for a long walk in the open air .......... Trust me on this one ... and I don't even have lungs!!!

1994

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.

There’s a guy I work with in the district, nice guy, don’t get to see him often because, like most of the workers, he lives in Butare and I am one of the few living in the village itself. But when I was walking back to my hotel last night in Butare around ten o’clock, I saw him coming out of the Faucon and we went for a drink and a chat. His English is reasonable (and he can always switch to French if he is stuck) and he likes to have the chance to speak it, but what he wanted to tell me was his story about the genocide.

He grew up in an area called Bugesera, possibly the most unpleasant corner of Rwanda – hot, dusty, not very fertile and, in the 1950s, ridden with tsetse flies and wild animals. In 1959 large numbers of Tutsi families were driven out from where they lived and forced to go and live in Bugesera, his parents among them (this is actually the very first time a Rwandan has used either the word ‘Hutu’ or ‘Tutsi’ to me). The attacks continued all the time they lived in Bugesera – his vivid childhood memory is of one of his parents always staying awake through the night to watch out for those who might attack the house.

He was the sixth in a family of nine, and was in secondary school in 1994 when the genocide happened. Five of his siblings – four sisters and a brother – and his two parents were killed, he and two brothers and a sister escaped. ‘It was just pure chance’ he said ‘where each of us happened to be on that day’. His father had actually got away but headed back to the house to get some food when he was attacked by men with machetes and bows-and-arrows. They left him for dead but he lived long enough to be brought to hospital where his son visited him before he died. When he asked his father who had attacked him, his father refused to tell him. ‘He told me that, as a Christian, it would be wrong to tell me something that would make me hate, so he died without telling me.’

A few years later, his sister, who had witnessed the attack, told him who the guilty man was and they went to the authorities and he was put on trial but released for lack of evidence. The court said there could not have been any eyewitnesses because the accused man would have killed them too if they had been there. The man continued to live in the village – my friend saw him almost every day. He used to lie awake wondering how he could get justice, or revenge, but the man died a few years ago so now there is nothing they can do.

When the family – or what was left of it – moved back to Bugesera they found that the local council had built social housing on their farmland. They were given other land in compensation, land abandoned by people who had fled to the Congo after the genocide. However, a few years later they returned and demanded their land back. They said to my friend: ‘ Remember how many people we killed when we didn’t even have an excuse to kill them. With you, we have a good excuse.’ So they went to the council and asked to have their land allocation changed again and now they only have a small piece of land but he still hopes to do something with it someday.

He and his siblings were raised by a grandaunt and a second cousin in Bugesera, all that survives of their family. One brother is a military officer, one a moto driver, his sister is a psychologist who works on trauma counselling in Kibungo but still comes back to Butare every weekend and he works with me in Gisagara District Council. Tomorrow he is going to Bugesera where he will meet the rest of his siblings at a ceremony for interring a body recently found in his home area.

He seemed both glad to talk but at the same time found it very difficult (having to translate almost everything into English probably didn’t help) – we kept breaking off to talk about football or beer or holidays before he would return to the narrative of his life. He is still haunted by memories but also by a feeling that the injustices are perpetuated. He feels that people often fear or resent him as a genocide survivor, for the assistance he got from the state, for the knowledge he might carry of who the guilty are, or just the plain guilt of those who survived the genocide unscathed who know what happened to his family and are uncomfortable with it.

He is a really nice guy, friendly and outgoing, the first Rwandan to hug me (which came as a bit of a surprise at the time, to be honest) and almost, though not completely, lacking in bitterness and resentment of what has happened to him. I suspect this won’t be the last such conversation we will be having.

June 5th 2009 - Day Two Hundred and Seventy-Two 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.

All across Rwanda since the national genocide memorial day in early April, individual sectors have been holding their own commemorations, each one on the day the killings started in that particular sector. The commemorations are spread over one hundred days, which is all the time it took to kill an estimated 800,000 people.

The genocide memorial centre for my sector, Ndora, is in a place called Kabuye, about three kilometres from where I live. It is a really beautiful spot, perched on top of a hill with a number of other higher hills around it on all sides. On the 1st June 1994 thousands of refugees, almost all of them Tutsis, were frantically trying to find a place of safety from the Interahamwe. They were told that this hill was a safe place and almost forty thousand men, women and children gathered there over the next two days.

In fact the hill had been chosen because it was a perfect killing ground. Surrounded by higher hills and with a good network of roads leading to it from all directions, it was a location the killers could access and encircle without too much difficulty.

On the 3rd of June, having decided that as many of the refugees had gathered as were likely to be around, the attacks started. Military units stationed on the hills surrounding used mortars and machine guns to fire into the enormous crowd gathered on Kabuye. Then, from all directions, bands of men armed with machetes encircled the hill and began moving slowly up, checking the bodies and finishing off anyone who was either injured or had escaped the mortars and machine-gun bullets. Many of those who had survived were children whose parents had covered them with their own bodies when the firing began – some of those who had the presence of mind to lie still were overlooked, covered as they were with the blood of their fathers or mothers. Most were not so lucky.

Killing is tiring work – as the day wore on, the interahamwe began to get clumsy and careless. Some of those they tried to kill with machete blows to the head were only stunned and wounded but not killed. Eventually, thinking they had killed everyone there, they went back home.

The mass grave in Kabuye today has 50,027 bodies in it, some gathered from the surrounding countryside but most of them the bodies of those killed on Kabuye hill on June 3rd 1994. Every year, any bodies that have been discovered in the sector since the last ceremony are brought along and buried as part of the commemoration.

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On Wednesday morning I dressed up in my best suit and tie, not quite sure what was the appropriate dress code, and headed for work a little later than usual. I had no idea where the genocide memorial was or what exactly the format of the day was going to be but I figured people would gather at the office first, and I was right. There were about twelve or fourteen people there, all dressed up in their finest (glad I had made the right decision) and most of them sporting something purple, the colour of mourning – ribbons, scarves, sashes, hairbands, whatever. We headed off towards Kabuye around eight o’clock and I got a lift on Vincent’s moto (I’m back on the stick since my knee started acting up again so they didn’t want me to walk and I didn’t want to tell them that walking was fine, it was having to bend my knee on the back of a moto that was the problem!). It was only a few minutes there and most of the rest of the staff were already there setting up the awnings, laying out chairs and benches and designing big ribbony-thingies in purple and white to decorate everything. Bellancille designed me a nice thin purple ribbon in a spiral design for my lapel!

Our main problem was that the hill is quite steep, so the plastic garden chairs we were lining up had a tendency to tip over backwards even without anyone sitting in them. These were the seats for the dignitaries, including government ministers, judges, senators, members of parliament and goodness knows who else. We were off to one side and therefore our seats being along the side of the slope were actually a lot safer and more comfortable, but the last thing we wanted was for the Minister of Culture to fall flat on the back of his head on an occasion like this! (Alfred: Well, on any occasion, I would hope). We also got the altar set up and a few benches were placed perpendicular to the altar.

When the lorry with the coffins arrived, I realised what the benches were for. There were two coffins, each accompanied by a host of friends and family members and they carried the coffins over to the benches and laid them down in front of the altar. Each of them was wrapped in a large purple and white shroud with bouquets of flowers just like we would have at a funeral back home in Ireland.

By now the crowd was beginning to assemble, posh people in the seats, everyone else just milling around trying to find a spot wherever they could. Five of my colleagues were acting as protocol hostesses, guiding people to seats and evicting people of lesser rank if needs be to accommodate someone more important who had arrived late. Glad I didn’t have their job as there was a huge crowd, very few seats and the more important someone was (or thought they were), the later they tended to arrive, as far as I could see.

The two celebrants arrived and I realised it was to be a Catholic Mass and not some kind of ecumenical affair. The priest I know from the local church was carrying something I had only ever seen in World War Two films before, a big stainless steel chaplain’s box with VALISE CHAPELLE stamped on it. Out of this he took his robes, a golden chalice, two plastic sandwich boxes full of hosts and a bottle of what looked like cooking oil but which turned out to hold the altar wine.

Mass started at 1000, about an hour late (not bad for Rwanda) and I immediately noticed something strange, at least strange to me. Only the Catholics took any part in the ceremony at all – at least I presume that those people who sat and read their books or played with their mobile phones for the hour or so the mass took were doing so because they weren’t Catholics. I suspect I committed a bit of a faux pas when it came to the sign of peace. First I hugged Antoine, my friend, who was sitting beside me (that’s a Rwandan hug, touch each side of the head to the other person’s head and then touch foreheads – gently!) and then I turned and shook hands with the pastor who was sitting on my right. He seemed greatly surprised when I held out my hand but shook it anyway with a little smile while everyone else sitting around grinned and nudged each other (Alfred:yep, got that one right, definitely were not supposed to do that – it’s the nudging each other that gives it away).

The other slightly unusual bit was the raising of the host and chalice. I was expecting either someone somewhere to ring a bell or else for there to be complete silence but what happens here is that people clap, slowly, for as long as the host or chalice are held in the air. (Alfred: he had actually seen this before when he went to mass for St Philippe Neri Day but had obviously forgotten about it).

About halfway through the mass another lorry arrived with another coffin, so the first two were pushed together to make space for the third. I noticed that this one had a name, Ntitizabiba I think, painted on the cross. But the other two didn’t, so who were the people accompanying those coffins? Local people from where the bodies were found? People who had lost relatives and hoped or feared that these were their remains? Or just people who didn’t want the dead to be left unaccompanied on their last journey?

After the mass we were supposed to have speeches and then finish with the burial ceremony but for some reason they decided to do the burial immediately. The head priest (Alfred: he’s called a .... bishop, I think) sprayed holy water over the coffins with a little bundle of twigs and then big groups of men and women came to carry the coffins up the hill to be interred. And then I heard a most extraordinary sound – it reminded me of being on holidays in the Aran Islands as a young boy with my grandparents. There was a big rusty gate that led into a nearby field and, when you opened it quickly, it let out this appalling shriek as if the metal was actually being torn apart. I was looking all around for the source of the noise when I heard it again and saw a number of Red Cross workers walking towards a corner of the crowd. It was a young woman, probably in her early twenties – she was lying flat on the ground with her arms and legs jerking and spasming wildly in all directions and letting out these incredible, inhuman screams. They got louder and louder and seemed to be coming so close together I couldn’t see how she had time to draw breath. The Red Cross workers picked her up and held her over their heads to take her away so that the flailing arms and legs wouldn’t hit them.

I won’t say that people didn’t pay any attention – many looked upset and a few started to cry gently – but it was obviously something people were used to seeing and everything carried on as normal while she was being taken away. This happened again four times during the afternoon, each time the same pattern and each time the same inhuman screams filling the air. Antoine explained to me that many of the people attending were actually survivors of the massacre and he pointed out to me various people with deep wounds in their heads from where the machete blows had failed to kill them.

Later, amidst the speeches, two survivors spoke about what had happened. They spoke calmly and clearly (albeit in Kinyarwandan so I had no idea what they were saying but this wasn’t really something I could ask Antoine to translate for me) and people listened equally calmly and attentively without any great show of emotion. However, someone then read a poem they had composed for the occasion and that is when the floodgates opened for many people. Interestingly, when Antoine had been translating the programme of events for me earlier, he had predicted that this would happen. He said poetry for Rwandans has a very special significance and he knew this would be the point at which many people would break down.

And so they did. All around me people were crying, mostly quietly, with streams of tears running down their faces and dripping onto their laps. Some were sobbing, a few cried out and shouted for a little while and then subsided into their chairs. And, eventually, they all stopped and dried their faces and went back to ... normal, I suppose.

The final speech was by the Minister of Culture and, while I didn’t understand a word of it, it was a fantastic speech. He started off solemnly as all of them did, but as he went on, his tone lightened. As he came near the end he managed to get the crowd laughing a few times, so when we finished, the mood had brightened appreciably and people left ... well, maybe not happy but certainly in a better frame of mind than they had been a little while earlier.

Antoine and I waited for the dignitaries to disperse and then we started making our way out. As we went past the mass grave (a huge concrete structure with big iron doors leading down into a vast underground chamber) the friends and families af those being interred were going down into the grave to bid a last farewell. Antoine asked if I wanted to go down and see and beckoned me towards the doorway. I said I really didn’t think it would be appropriate but then some of the relatives or friends or whoever they were of the dead also waved at me and asked me to join them.

I really had no idea what to expect and, in fact, it wasn’t anything like what I might have expected. It was just a room with coffins in it – each one draped in purple and white and covered in flowers. The end wall was covered with a big purple and white hanging sheet and behind that were the other 50,000 people that had already been interred here. Having already walked the length of the garve, I had a pretty good idea of the size of the room. Fifty thousand bodies? I’ve been in Lansdowne Road when it has been full, that’s fifty thousand people. I tried to imagine that many people dead, that many people all crammed into this small space, about the size of two or three classrooms. And then I thought of what the hill I had been sitting on must have been like after the massacre, layers upon layers of dead and dying people stacked like firewood, though not as neatly.

I’m not a particularly emotional person, as my friends and family know. But, standing in that room, I could feel those 50,000 people next to me, I could hear them, I almost felt I could reach out and touch them. And I have been in Rwanda long enough and made enough friends here to know what they were like – in my mind I see the women with their fabulously braided hair and shockingly-coloured print dresses, the men with their eclectic t-shirt slogans and plastic sandals or long pointed shoes, the children with their shaved heads dressed in their khaki or blue school uniforms because that is often the only clothes they have – I could see Francois and Antoine and Gaudence and Bellancille and Alexis and Sylvestre and Alexandre and Irène ..... And I could see everyone I know back in Ireland, my students, my family, my friends, my neighbours ...

I have been here for nine months now, to the day and, at the risk of using a rather fanciful image it is as if the idea of the genocide, the reality of it has suddenly been born inside my head. For years I gave classes about it, read books, watched films and documentaries and even while here in Rwanda discussed it dispassionately with survivors and those who were abroad while their families were murdered. But today I looked around me at the people I work with who have become my friends, at the children who wave to me on the way to work, at the old women who shriek with laughter every time one of them has the courage to say ‘Hello’ to me, at the teenagers who get such a kick out of bumping knuckles with me (which is probably something people of my age are NOT supposed to do, judging by the hilarity it causes) – and I imagined them all dead, hacked to pieces and left to die on a beautiful Rwandan hillside in the sun. And not just them but 800,000 of them, ordinary men, women and children.

And then everyone went home. As I passed people on the road they were laughing and joking, back into their normal lives. I thought it strange at first but then realised that everyone in Rwanda lives with this every day of their lives: you have to choose a time to lay down the burden of everyday life so as to lament and let out the agony, and then you pick the burden right up again and continue on.