Milk, Meals, and Madmen in the Road and Church

It’s now been two weeks since the last blog post was written (and three since the last one went up; we’ll gloss over that, however). The last two times I’ve started with an elongated segue from blank page to ludicrosity, penning two Openings (feat. Market and Miss Rwanda); this time I reckon I’ll throw you straight into it. No musings on an obscure topic; no needless meanderings round things you didn’t come here to read about; not a bit, nothing, of tautological repetitions in order to find a way in. Hard stuff, Opening. Most difficult part, by a country mile.

Anyway, I left off on Sunday (the 21^st; how time flies, eh?), the day after the momentous occasion of the Miss Rwanda Final and the trip to Lake Muhazi. Sunday passed in a fairly unobtrusive manner, as Sundays seem wont to do; church, cooking, spot of clothes-washing. It was livened up, though, by a visit from Cynthia’s parents, who swum into view, unlooked-for, like ministering angels of chocolate and pizza, the latter of which is decidedly unavailable in Rwamagana. Sunday took a further few tentative steps off the beaten track of Tradition when we agreed that, to save us all the chore of cooking, we would hold supper in pot-luck fashion, with the team splitting into two and wandering off into the wilds of Rwamagana to hunt down such game as might be found. The game available in the Rwandan urban outback transpired to be a goodly herd of chapattis, a few young samosas (spicy, but incredibly edible- a definite, positive change from the usual Sunday evening fare, cooked as it is by inexperienced hands on a charcoal stove quick to seize upon any such advantage), and a crop of various fruits. This was capable supported by an Undefined Lump purchased at Patrick’s recommendation (it turned out to be a sponge cake), and topped off by the (metaphorical) cherry on our (real) cake, the gift of Pizza from the Prometheus-like Parents of Cynthia.

The day after –Monday, for any readers who struggle with the days of the week; though, if you’re reading this and struggling with that, I don’t know quite h- but I digress- was a school day, and was spent in the manner standard for those who work at a school. We eased our way through a lesson on social studies, and edged confidently through a talk on Health in our coca slot. The afternoon was taken up by various admin activities, and by a talk given by Anaise on hunger and poverty across the world, during which she unleashed a fair battery of statistical craziness. Such as, Europe’s yearly spend on ice cream could give safe water to the world. And furthermore, America’s yearly spend on cosmetics –cosmetics (incidentally, you can tell I’m a boy because I’ve italicised that and not ice cream)- could provide basic education for all. Try them on for size.

On Tuesday, the team went out to build a pair of tippy-taps. Sanitation is, of course, a very large issue, and the vast majority of people, at least in situations similar to those in the Self-Help Groups or child-headed households, have no tap with which to wash their hands after they have visited the latrine. Given that the latrines –we’ll return to this subject- are typically in no great state of cleanliness themselves, it’s important that those who use them are able to wash their hands in a sanitised manner afterwards. Hence the tippy-tap, a cunningly simple way to address the problem, working as follows. First, a small jerry can is taken, and a few holes hammered into the top of the side with a nail.

Ingrid hammering holes in the jerrycan.

The jerry can’s handle is then threaded through a stick, which is itself then nailed between two stakes hammered into the ground, with the jerry can thus suspended between them. A piece of string is attached to the top of the can, and the string is then tied to a piece of wood –a pedal- on the ground.

The finished tippy-tap

People are thus able to wash their hands without touching the source of water, meaning that the spread of diseases is minimised.

Lucy demonstrating the tippy-tap.

Wednesday, being another school day, was spent in the same way as Monday; we taught maths, French and English, then got caught in the rain on the way back. The following day we went to help repair a latrine with a child-headed household forum. I wrote a moment ago that the latrines are often sanitarily dodgy, and this was a case in point. Latrines are no more than a deep hole (deep, deep, deep: when a group of children played daredevil around –and across, spread-eagled- a new hole, I nearly had a heart attack) with a crude building of mud bricks around it, a corrugated roof over, and perhaps a curtain for a door. The hole itself is covered with planks so that the user can sit on them while conducting their business. This latrine had no roof and no door; it also had only small walls, the roofless mud bricks having been greatly eroded by the recent rain. Worst of all, though, the planks across the hole were visibly rotten: several of them were blackened and moulded, with large chunks having fallen away already, and they bent like reeds if the slightest weight was put on them.

The planks over the latrine hole: in a very dodgy situation.

It is worrying to think that many latrines may be in such a condition: the hole, as I have said, is deep, and if somebody were to fall into a partly-filled latrine it would be extremely difficult to escape from the quagmire at the bottom. To address these problems, we started off by building a roof. The metal roof was in transit, and so in the meantime we cut down some trees (Jordon here demonstrating that his macheteing skills have come on in leaps and bounds) and carried them back, one tree slung across the shoulders of two people.

Jordon cutting down a tree

Lucy and Patrick carrying one of the trees

These trees were then cut into shorter poles, which were dug into the four corners of the latrine’s building and tied in a cube-shaped frame between these poles. Onto this frame was then nailed the sheets of corrugated steel, providing a sloping roof to protect against the elements; and, easily as importantly, the rotting planks across the hole were reinforced with the remainder of the poles from the trees.

Nailing the roof onto the frame of poles

This was exhausting for those involved (especially, for most, the carrying of the trees from the copse to the village, a not inconsiderable distance bearing not inconsiderable weight), but it was very good to be able to see the immediate impact –potentially life-saving- we were making in our work.

On Friday we taught maths and did a large amount of admin; Saturday whipped by unexpectedly quietly; and then Sunday came round again. This Sunday was not so eventful as the previous one, but our visit to church was unusually memorable. Lucy and Jade were called upon to teach Sunday school to approximately seventy children; and, for those of us still in the church, it was clear that the preacher (who, we were told, had given talks at the previous two services that day as well) had by no means lost his voice. The UK volunteers have had reason to notice that the preaching style in Rwanda, or at least in our part of it, is rather different to the manner of presentation back in Little England. The vast majority of speakers here (secular and religious) do not use notes: they make it up as they go along, perhaps following a pre-considered plan, or, as the case may be, perhaps not. Volume –quantity- of speech is also highly prized, and, coupled with the shunning of notes, this can lead to a great deal of meandering. Padding is liberally employed in order to meet this requirement, with the result being that an enormous number of utterly random parts are shoehorned into every speech: sometimes they drive off from the main course of the narrative at an unexpected tangent, sometimes they ignore this convention and nip in to give a bizarre twist to the plot of the argument by deserting the subject entirely, quite possibly never to return. Comic stories abound in speeches, regardless of the rest of the content: of these, vicars conducting themselves in fashions unbecoming to the Cloth seems to be the most popular option. In addition that type of volume, the other kind (the one measured in decibels; pack a robust piece of kit if you’re hoping to measure any in churches) is treasured as much, if not more, than the first. Lungs of iron are a necessity if one is to be a preacher; and, to aid the natural capacities of their bodies, a good number of preachers also call on testosterone by making themselves bull-mad angry, leading to people bellowing, with bulging eye and bared teeth, the Good News that Jesus died for them.

On Monday morning we visited a local nursery in the hour or so before school began. The children there were extremely cute, rather shy, and eager to do anything involving a football. We started off with a story, and then moved onto songs, beginning with Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.

Telling the story of David and Goliath: Goliath, standing up at the front, later went on to demonstrate his knowledge of Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

We were on safe ground here, we discovered, because one of the children was a keen aficionado of at least the first half, and was happy to take over from me (I was leading) by repeating the titular part, apparently ad infinitum. If we hadn’t stepped in to introduce the altogether trickier concept of the face, she would probably still be there now, tiny hands patting first the shoulders, then the head (she had a tendency to occasionally muddle herself). Then, in the middle of the next song, we were interrupted by a plaintive cry from the middle of the room: ‘My pen! My pen! I’ve lost my pen!’ The song paused while all the children near toddled over to search the surrounding area until one small pen was produced, at which point the poor child was appeased and, clutching his pen, was content to continue. After this we returned to the school, where we taught social studies and a coca session on human trafficking, the latter at Jade’s instigation following on from her structured learning on the subject. In the afternoon Cynthia delivered her structured learning on the effects of climate change upon communities.

The next day we were reunited with the roads of Rwamagana district, and also with our old driver, who had presumably been off on other assignments for the previous few weeks. The roads in Rwamagana are, especially as you get deeper into the countryside and further from the town, a little bumpy; when your transport is piloted by someone with a passion for bumps, however, the divots and little dykes seem to become a whole lot more pronounced. Our car careered from pothole to pothole with the nimble daring of a mountain goat, if that goat weighed two tons and had three legs. Our driver gently stroked the wheel with one hand, the other holding a phone or the remote control for the CD player; he had bought a new CD during a short stop, and his attention was summarily focused on that, the car flirting with cliffs or other wheel-borne lumps of hurtling metal all the meanwhile. Occasionally he would glance up and cackle as we narrowly missed a terrified child or caused a bike to swerve out of our path; we seemed, though, always to dodge at the last minute, our driver having a prodigious knack for getting his eyes back on the road seconds before disaster occurred, and we were thus able to reach our destination in one piece.
Our destination was a house, belonging to a member of another child-headed household forum, which we were to assist in renovating. We first went to fetch water; this was a simple task compared to the previous time some of us had done this, the jerry cans presumably having settled down for a nap shortly before we arrived, and we had no trouble.

Sam, Lucy and Jade admiring the view before heading up the hill with their water

Once this had been done we began on the meat of the trip. We had noticed as we arrived that there was a great pile of large stones at the side of the road; these had to be carried down next to the house, where they could be used as a foundation for the floor or crushed up for a sort of stucco-like plaster. We set ourselves up in a bucket line and began passing the stones along; we carried on like this for a fair while, feeling pretty satisfied with our rate of transport. About midway through this we were interrupted by a truly impressive thunderstorm, and, although we were not at the centre of it (fortunately, at that, because from the sound of the thunderclaps Thor had a bad hangover), and took shelter in the house.

Ingrid, Jade and Sam look out at the rain

It was now that we saw just how few of the stones we had carried: our competent method apparently wasn’t delivering much. After the storm had moved on we got back to the stone removal service, varying our method so that it was harder but more effective.  Once this had been done Anaise, Jordon and I gave a short talk on health.

The pile of stones we had moved: far, far smaller than we felt it had any right to be

The next day, Wednesday, was the monthly day of prayer at our partner organisation, which we attended.  The day after that we returned to the field, this time driven by a more naturally cautious driver, so that we could plant banana trees: little baby ones about twenty centimetres high. Our ICS team worked in pairs with the Self-Help Group, hoeing the ground and mixing the manure with the soil, then hollowing out a small hole with our hands, into which went the little banana plant. After this Ingrid, Jade and Patrick gave talks on health and a sensible diet.

Patrick planting a tiny banana tree

Friday, by an administrative freak, saw us in fact taking no lessons whatsoever, although we were coaching the staff of our partner organisation first thing in the morning. The subject on which we spoke to them was social media, and it was an unqualified success, sparking a great enthusiasm in them for all things Internet.

Staff coaching: one of the staff reads out a success story she had written during a short workshop

We filled the time thus opened to us with several trips to the market and then, in the afternoon, an eagerly-awaited visit to a small cafe a little up our road. Earlier in the week some of us -particularly Lucy- had been much taken by the sight of a pair of old men strolling into this establishment and requesting a donut and a pint of milk, the latter served in an old-fashioned pint glass like a small, dimpled barrel of glass with a handle. Being informed that this milk was fermented did not deter us, and we headed to the cafe determined to enjoy this unheard of delicacy; the ICVs equally keen on seeing how we took it. The milk itself was stored in a medium-sized yellow jerrycan in the cafe’s fridge; we communicated our desire for it by pointing first at it and then at the coveted pint glasses (despite the fact that there wasn’t enough milk for us each to have a pint of it; this wish greatly amused the proprietress). The milk was then poured oozingly into the glasses. It had the consistency of yogurt and a potent smell, which we figured fitted the bill nicely. When we tried it we discovered that, unusually for milk in our experience, it was mildly fizzing. In supermarkets in the UK you find little bottles of ‘live’ milk; the contents of those bottles is child’s play compared to this beige gloop. What we had in our glasses was Frankenstein’s milk: it was as live as milk can be without requiring the use of a forceful spoon to keep it confined to its container.

An as-yet untouched tankard of 'milk', sitting next to some doughnuts.

Jordon, Patrick, Jade and Cynthia clink glasses shortly before falling on their milk.

It also had a strong suggestion of sausage. We discussed this, and came to the conclusion that it was probably due to the fact that the jerrycan in which it was kept held cooking oil previous to this employment. In wine terms, this milk was ‘Full-Bodied; Slightly Sparkling; With a Hint of Sausage’: it was so full-bodied, we realised, that the sugar -ladled in heavily to combat the Hint of Sausage- sat in a little heap on the surface, refusing to make the plunge to the pale depths below. The milk was accompanied by a donut, an object dense enough to make David’s sling-stone look like a sponge. All in all, it was a fantastic Experience.

On the way back we took some photos, much to the bemusement of passers-by.

So, that's what we've done in the past week! Just one week left- a truly bizarre thought. We'll try to do as much as we can in this last week, and any prayers or words of encouragement are, as ever, very gratefully received.

The Miss Rwanda Final, amongst other things

Well, the long-awaited day –the Miss Rwanda final- has been and gone; and, despite the somewhat flippant subject, especially when compared to everything else that we’ve done over the past week, it seems appropriate to start this update with a blow-by-blow account of how the whole thing happened. After all, it is the single event that has dominated the minds of at least half the group for a sizeable amount of our time here.

The evening was scheduled to start at six pm. We are now experienced, or more experienced, in the vagaries of timing in Rwanda; however, despite all warnings to the contrary, I think it is fair to say that most of the UK contingent expected the competition to commence within, say, half an hour of the promised time. It didn’t quite. The program itself began at 7:30, when the channel announced it in excitable tones and we were shown a large room in a hotel (for this room thanks was given to the hotel by the presenter at least once every twenty minutes for the next four hours), in which were a number of tables; around them people were milling uncertainly. Every now and then a waiter or guest would bustle past the camera and the screen would go black for a moment. After a few minutes of this, a loud voice picked up declaring that the 2015 Miss Rwanda contest was now underway, and announcing that the fifteen beautiful ladies would be entering our field of vision in the immediate future. This they did, but only after five minutes further camera time for the waiters and the assembled diners at their tables, most of whom seemed to be mutely picking away at their canapés or quietly sipping whatever was in their glasses.

The vow of silence was temporarily forgotten when the potential Misses themselves walked on; each faction in the audience cheered for their preferred candidate. They were dressed almost perfectly homogenously, each contestant wearing a strange orange-yellow-coat and a tight black vest, with hairstyles similarly uniform. As each name was called out, its owner tripped onto the stage: oddly, though, the cameraman seemed to have little interest in this, and would often cut away to show instead an elderly person of unidentifiable gender who sang throughout the initial introductions. In this way Anaise, Ingrid and Jordon were denied an early glimpse of Balbine, the crowd favourite for the title. Once they had made it onto the stage, the girls took up an identical shop-mannequin type pose for a while; they then took it in turns to flounce downstage (some experiencing momentary difficulties due to the enormous heels they all wore), where they loosened their orange-and-yellow coats before giving a sort of shudder in their tight black vests, after which they left to go and get changed. Most looked fairly unenthusiastic about this part, and some distinctly embarrassed.

A Candidate (I don't know who); I think she's presenting one of the traditional items. Sorry for the photo quality

To plug the gap between events, the two hosts for the evening strode onto the stage, at which point the audience once again mislaid their vocal chords. These hosts were, to wit, one very capable, charismatic woman, and a small energetic man called Arthur. It was apparently (presumably; it may just be that they hadn’t rehearsed, but that seems an absurd idea) Arthur’s job to cut across the hostess whenever she was building up some momentum, and to regale the audience with desperately poor jokes once this had been accomplished. The jokes varied in content (from the racist to the sexist), if not in style (all were delivered in a manner suggesting that these were the funniest quips ever created by men, and that he was well aware of this fact); they were, however, universally met with all-consuming blankness by the audience. Arthur would’ve found a better reception if he had been regaling the attendees of a funeral for a dear and much-loved Departed. After a couple of hijackings the hostess managed to squash Arthur for long enough to announce a ‘documentary’, at which point Arthur broke back in again to declare that we’d be told all about what had happened during the contestants’ ‘boot camp’ of the past two weeks, (we were told nothing of the sort; and, so far as I remember, we saw no more of Arthur for the rest of the evening).

The documentary met with some technical issues (at one stage resulting in the audience being shown the technician’s screen background; he has a very pleasant-looking family), and then after a pause –filled by a panpipe rendition of Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You- it got working. The ‘documentary’ transpired to be a conversation between a former Miss Rwanda and an unknown Chap; he began by asking her such questions as ‘What would you like to be in the future?’ (‘A fashion designer and actress; a strong woman’) before reaching the end of his script, at which point he clutched at a few straws (‘How would you define strong?’) to break up the increasingly large pools of silence. The TV audience was shown all this by having the camera, which had previously shown us just waiters and the tongue-tied table-people, zoomed in a bit more on the screen in the hotel room.

After this interview, a troupe of traditional drummers came on. They were dressed in leopard-skin togas, which they had to keep hitching up as they fell down, and they drummed for an interminable length of time. Once their piece had finished a pair of singers sang the Miss Rwanda theme, a song with endearingly naff lyrics (‘Remember that your skin is African, your smile- Rwandan; your catwalk- fantastic, your brain- Rwandan’) and enough unexpected pauses to equip an orchestra for life. This was followed by perhaps ten minutes of waiting before the Misses returned to the stage, now clothed in ‘traditional’ garb. We haven’t seen any of it in Rwamagana so far –perhaps they’re not traditional enough- and, personally, it’s not the kind of clothes I would choose to wear, at least not in the temperature we have at the moment. The dresses were extremely skimpy, with cut-away backs and tasselled mini-skirts; they must have been very cold in Traditional times. The camera-work also took a bit of a tumble at this point: there was an accidental up-skirt shot before cutting hastily away, as well as several blurry close-ups of ankles.

The Leopardskin-Toga Drummers, drumming in their leopardskin togas. Very much sorry for photo quality

Each contestant was carrying a traditional item (mats, pottery, a bow), which they put down before resuming the plastic poses and stretched grins exhibited earlier. The main part of this stage was made up of the judges asking the contestants why it was that they had chosen their particular traditional item. To get up to the bit of the stage from which the questions were answered, the girls were forced to walk- and I say forced for a reason, because almost to a woman they went at a pace slow enough to make snails look over their shoulder in disgust as they sprinted past. Apparently walking slowly demonstrates nobility. This makes sense, in a way: time is money, and if you have the time to walk at a speed more normally associated with those suffering from acute arthritis, you presumably also have plenty of money. Indeed, one contestant –the strongly-supported Balbine- was roundly criticised by the judges when she went at a mere amble rather than a sedated sloth’s stroll. Once the questions about the traditional items had finished, the fifteen girls started to do a traditional dance, with varying degrees of confidence.

Following straight on from this was the Question Round so beloved by this sort of thing, in which the contestants have to answer, well, questions. These were addressed to them by a judge with the air of a strict headmistress; she had a pair of spectacles on the end of her nose over which she peered sternly, and she insisted on asking each contestant, moments after they had been boomingly announced by the presenter, to remind her of their name and, in some cases, the spelling. The questions ranged quite wildly in difficulty, from the classic ‘What would winning this competition mean to you?’ to, immediately after, ‘What problems do young girls face in modern Rwanda, and what policies ought the government to implement in order to address them?’ The answers also varied in quality –although, in fairness, there were no head-in-hands-inducing howlers- from five-minute, three-point manifestoes on the state of Youth in the country to, in response to ‘What is the government’s 20-20 program?’ (a flagship project by the Rwandan government), ‘The 20-20 program is a program set up by the government for the benefit of the country’.

After this came two Nigerians who declared themselves determined to introduce the ‘Shuffi Dance’ (which is, they said, ‘sweeping the country back home’) to Rwanda. The pair was made up of a) a gangsta-looking man in full tracksuits and baseball cap, who bounded around the stage bent double, and b) a woman dressed in a red shirt and high black boots, with nothing in between. This duo called upon the leopardskin toga-drummers to come up and dance the Shuffi, which they did with some reluctance, apparently not having been forewarned. After a bit of prompting from offstage, the woman then borrowed one of the leopardskin togas to reinforce the clothes around her midriff, before turning her attention to the challenge of getting the drummers to do the Shuffi. For several minutes the drummers gamely attempted the Shuffi, but then they returned themselves to safe territory. Some of them went off and got their drums while others started up some traditional Rwandan dancing, at which point the two Nigerians recognised a lost cause and ushered them off; the drummers beat themselves a gentle tempo and slowly wound their way back to their seats. After this I gave up and went to bed, so I can’t comment on later proceedings. The whole thing, though, only finished at midnight; Patrick’s chosen Miss carried off the crown.

SO, that was all very exciting. It was, however, on Saturday, and before that there were, obviously, another seven days. The previous Saturday we had the chance to attend a Rwandan wedding, which was a very interesting event for all the UKers (we especially liked how the bride and groom gave each other ‘gifts’ of songs during the ceremony); and on Sunday we went to church and cooked as usual.

On Monday we resumed our nascent teaching careers, giving lessons in Social Studies (on the weather and climate) and on nutrition. While we were there, one of the students commented to Lucy that she was hungry; Lucy replied that she was, too, before asking whether or not she’d had breakfast. The answer to this was that she had not, and that she had not had supper the day before. Her family, she said, has ‘run out of food’, and so she had come to school having not eaten for at least eighteen hours. Hearing things like this puts into perspective what the school is doing here, and what it is that we are a part of: many of the students walk for an hour to get for school, some on an empty stomach, and Centre for Champions is here to try and give those same students a better chance in life.

Patrick speaking at the Self-Help Group meeting

The next day was eventful. In the morning Olivier, from Tearfund head office in Kigali, came to visit; after that Sam gave a lesson on corruption before we headed to the Field. Our visit to the Field for that day was attending the weekly meeting of a Self-Help Group, at which they put the money they save each week into the collective pot, return and take out short-term loans to catalyse entrepreneurship, and discuss plans for the future. When we left in the car, it was beginning to rain; by the time we were halfway there, we were well into flash-flood territory, and stuck behind a convoy of five enormous lorries bound for Tanzania. We could barely see ten metres ahead of the car in the deluge, but this clearly did not faze the lorry-drivers, who continued to jockey each other at high speeds around bends treacherous at the best of times, but downright insane given the weather conditions. We arrived at the SHG meeting-house in one piece, despite the perils of the near-suicidal instincts of the lorry drivers and the shallow river bed (an ex-mud track) down which we travelled. At the house we found a tiny room into which we crammed ourselves (over two dozen, squashed in like sardines). This room was decorated, very unexpectedly, by three large posters. One was of rappers from about twenty years ago, but it is with the other two that we are primarily concerned. The first showed Jennifer Lopez sitting down, with a large bunch of fluorescent tulips photoshopped in front of her, and a tiger lying on its back, paws in the air, on a chaise-longue. The caption read ‘Happiness is not something you postpone for the future, it’s something you design for the present.’ The other, even more weirdly, showed a mirror image of a Korean child, cross-eyed, wearing a Santa outfit and with fists raised. Above it floated a bee with a wand, with a caption of ‘Baby’ in neon colours. Quite how that came to be there is anybody’s guess, but it surprised us, at least.

The bizarre pair of posters

The meeting itself, however, was inspiring. The Self-Help Group has transformed their lives, taking them from utmost poverty to a situation that is relatively flush with comfort. Those who started with nothing now have houses, cows, goats, and a steady income of both food and money, as well as the self-esteem that–many of them stressed this- they were enormously lacking before. The group members shared with us their stories, and told us of how far they had come (which, like speaking with the hungry school-child, was hugely affirming of the projects we are working with), and then Ingrid, Patrick and Lucy gave talks on entrepreneurship, budgeting and sensible use of money. On the way back it was discovered that the river-bed down which we had travelled had reverted to a swamp, leading to a couple of exciting moments in which the car was perpendicular to the side of the road (where there is –as everywhere in Rwanda- a deep ditch for drainage) and threatening to leave the road behind altogether.

MUGIRANEZA Patrick meets another MUGIRANEZA Patrick. The first name (that is to say, the capitalised one) is the equivalent of the surname; it's chosen by the parents when their child is seven days old. Patrick met this small child on the way to our friend's house, and, on discovering that the child shared both his names, immediately became friends. The child conducted most of the conversation upside down.

On Wednesday we continued giving lessons, teaching Maths, English and French (the latter two new to us); in the afternoon we went to visit a friend in the community. She had prepared for us a vast amount of maize, and Rwandan visiting customs make it a matter of disrespect not to finish what is given to you as a guest. Our willpower, and the size of our stomachs, were therefore tested to the utmost extreme: the ICS motto is ‘Challenge Yourself To Change Your World’, but I for one hope that the part of the world that needs changing is never again one containing a large quantity of maize.

The Dreaded Maize

She had some chicks, to which we fed a bit of the leftover maize. They were very cute.

Photo of the team with our friend. You can't see much of the backdrop, but it was exceptionally stunning.

There are, I think, challenges and Challenges, and this was one of the second type. It was, though, fantastic to go and see her: she’s quite a character, and the view from her house, furthermore, is first class beautiful. That afternoon there was also a match between Sunrise and another Rwandan team in the First Division, on the same sports pitch where we play with the students. The crowd, of roughly a thousand, was vocal in their support, including two blokes with vuvuzelas who seemed to think that keeping up a constant cacophony was some sort of public service, and one chap with a whistle, on which he played the ‘final whistle’ notes for about twenty minutes straight. Sunrise won 3-0, and at the end there was a pitch invasion with traditional dancing, and the star player was paraded on shoulders.

Sunrise 3, Other Team 0: a view of the game minus the blare of vuvuzelas

On Thursday we attended another SHG meeting, this time without surprising posters, downpours and tiny rooms; they conducted their normal transactions of loans and communal money (this group saved two hundred francs each every week), shared with us some of their stories, and we (Sam, Patrick and Jordon) gave talks on the same topic as before.

Jordon giving a talk to the SHG

Friday saw yet more rain, in phenomenal, Noah-and-the-Ark quantities. We (Anaise, Patrick, Cynthia and I) gave a maths lesson, shouting over the bullet-like sound of the rain on the metal roof; the others had been intending to visit Verdi-Ann, the headmistress of Centre for Champions who until now has been on maternity leave, but were forced to postpone the trip until the afternoon, when it cleared up and resumed normal service of sun. 

The pitch at Centre for Champions, during rain: swamped.

The same pitch, a few hours later: quite different, with a happy game of football taking place

The Rwandan soil and sun, in fact, proved so able to cope with water that we were even able to play a match on the pitch (which in the morning had more closely resembled a lake than an area of grass intended for sports) in the afternoon against another local charity. This was a very fun occasion, and it was good to meet up with our counterparts, some of whom had worked for AEE (our partner charity) before moving. We won three nil, after which there was the traditional celebratory Fanta.

The celebratory Fanta

On Saturday we went to Lake Muhazi, one of the largest bodies of water in Rwanda. To get there, we had our first ride thus far on the bus-taxis. Bus-taxis have two maxims. The first is, thou shalt not stop. This is a rule to be applied in all circumstances except when flagged down, at which pass it changes to thou mayst stop, but only after thou hast travelled an extra twenty metres, at least; at all times, regardless of circumstance, the Horn must be sounding. If a granny is crossing the road, it is assumed that she will recover her youth for long enough to scurry out of the way; if another driver is at risk of a collision, it is assumed that he will see reason and allow the bus-taxi to carry on without deviation. The second maxim is a scientific one, and one that has not yet diffused to the wider intellectual community. It is, the number of people that may be fitted into a given space –that space being a bus-taxi- is never finite. As a result of this principle, the risk of knocks, greatly increased by the first maxim, is easily annulled: when six people are occupying seats intended for three, there is simply no room in which to knock, and one cannot move to knock oneself anyway. 

A bus-taxi looming up out of the morning mist: a sight to strike fear into the hearts of all who behold it

Lake Muhazi, though, was beautiful, and the entire thing was well worth it- four of us went on a boat ride, and Anaise, Cynthia and Ingrid were happy to find that the Miss Rwanda ‘boot camp’ stage was being shown, meaning Arthur’s broken promise later on wasn’t so egregious as it might have been. That evening there was the Final itself; about that, though, plenty enough has been said.

Cynthia, Anaise and Ingrid, delighted to find Miss Rwanda waiting for them

Lake Muhazi: beautiful. The President's house, in fact, is on the far edge of the lake.

Jade, Lucy, Patrick and Jordon, shortly before (or after?) heading out onto the lake in a boat.

Miss Rwanda's Bright Orange Banana Gardens

So, it’s now been two weeks since the last blog post (apologies for the gap; things have got rather more hectic). What’s changed? Well, there is one thing- apparent to anybody with eyes. In fact, it’s probably even apparent to creatures with mere photo-receptive patches of skin, like those of the near-blind deep-sea fish (animals that have seen no colours but the lures of predators): we have discovered the market’s ability to make us clothes, and have not shied away from the brighter fabrics. Some of them are very bright indeed. Among the more luminescent weaves are those of Jordon’s new shorts, which are probably capable of giving a demure maiden aunt or shy and retiring grandmother a minor fainting fit at thirty paces. Or, for that matter, capable of giving a canny deep-sea fish a heart attack on the spot- compared to the radiance of Jordon’s chosen orange, a predator fish’s lure is pretty feeble.

Rwamagana Market

The market is a fantastic place. There is a bizarrely comprehensive range of clothes: you can, of course, have a tailor-made set of traditional African garb, but you could also, if you were so inclined, emerge from the market kitted out in a shell-suit, Red Nose Day 2013 wear, or regalia from any of a good dozen of the globe’s golf clubs.  Equally, you could also buy tennis balls (bounce sold separately), or a large framed hologram of a family of tigers. As a place to visit, it’s fascinating. It is constantly full of people, from those frantically dashing from one place to another, to children whose sole aim in life seems to be to ambush a muzungu when unawares. The one exception to this state of perpetual motion is at lunchtime, when the rush of the lifeblood of people thronging the market’s veins and alleys ebbs down to a dull murmur, and it’s nigh-on impossible to find an Arsenal shirt because all the little shops are shut. I was able to get my Arsenal shirt when we returned to the market on Saturday; I learnt, on that day, just how bad I am at bartering. Having been told that haggling is the way forwards, the conversation went something like this:

Customer: ‘How much is that Arsenal shirt?’

Shopkeeper: ‘Six thousand’.

Customer: ‘Three?’

Shopkeeper: ‘No, six’.

Customer: ‘Sorry, I didn’t speak very loudly- Three?’

Shopkeeper: ‘No, six.’ - With a slightly bemused look

Customer: ‘Ah. Four?’

Shopkeeper: ‘No, six. Six is best price.’

Customer: ‘Four?’

Shopkeeper, finally realising he is dealing with an idiot, reduces the price to five thousand out of sympathy.

One person not rubbish at bartering –who is, in fact an unstoppable grandmaster of the art- is a brilliant seamstress that we have found, and upon whose guidance we now rely wholeheartedly. Jordon had had his eye on a pink, white and black fabric (to the general disgust of Ingrid, Anaise and Cynthia, for whom pink is a colour to be worn only by girls); the cost, however, had been raised to a ‘muzungu price’ of eight thousand francs (rather than the standard three). Jordon mentioned this regretfully to our helpful seamstress, resulting in a scene like this:

Enter SEAMSTRESS, mouth pursed, head shaking, disapproving tutting under breath. Strong, confident steps.

Seamstress: ‘I hear that this cloth is being sold at eight thousand francs a piece?’

Shopkeeper: ‘Ah. Yes.’- Aware that his hour has come; slightly nervous.

Seamstress: With fierce gaze: ‘But the usual price is three thousand.’

Shopkeeper: ‘Ah. True. Well, how about three thousand, five hundred?’

Seamstress: ‘Three thousand is the usual cost, I think.’

SHOPKEEPER concedes defeat, privately glad to have got off so lightly.

The week (and, really, this blog, because that was a massive detour) began on Monday. Monday, it transpired, was a day off. We didn’t know about this until eight thirty the night before, because whether or not people went to work on that day is up to the President’s discretion, and His Excellency  is apparently a bit indecisive. The reason behind this public holiday is Hero’s Day, on which Rwandans remember all those that have given their lives for the country. By the end of the day, though, we all considered it a very apt name. It didn’t begin especially well. At four in the morning, one of the chickens in the house next door realised that it was, after all, promising to be a fine day, and that it might be nice to take a stroll over the wall before it all got too busy. So far, so good. At this point, though, it set up an almighty clucking, waking up everybody whose room was at the front of the house. Quite what its motives were in making this noise, we do not know; it may have been especially charitable, wishing to show us a pleasant sunrise. If this was its aim, it met with success, for Jordon went out to reason with it. Seeing Jordon coming, it took a fancy to the roof, which it used as a pulpit from which it could attempt to alert those still sleeping to the benefits of an early start. The day continued in a similarly challenging vein: Cristophe, our dear cook, had malaria, and was very clearly extremely unwell. As a result of this, we were cooking, which always elevates the tension a bit; in addition, there was no electricity, and hence no water for showering or drinking. But, all things considered, we pulled through it in remarkably good order.

This is a chicken. It is not the chicken; we don't have a photo of that radical preacher. But it'll do as a stand-in.

On Tuesday, we headed back to the Field in order to build a pair of drying stands on which crockery could be dried without providing a breeding ground for malevolent microorganisms. This was all done without a great deal of difficulty: we dug holes in the ground with machetes, slotted the thicker bits of wood in, and then lined the thinner bits over the top of the square that this made. Having done this, we secured them with hammer and nails. There were lots of things that needed nailing, so we all got the chance to use a hammer to our hearts’ content; some discovered that they had a talent unknown up until this point, and others realised that, when it comes to nailing things down, their heart is contented rather easily. We all agreed that is was very satisfying to be able to see that the work we had done was having a clear and immediate impact; in addition, it was also good to return to Harriet’s house, which was the one that we had repaired the week before, and to have a bit of continuity in our helping.

Nailing down the slats on the drying stand.

The team with a successfully completed drying stand.

Wednesday brought with it another maths lesson, which was dispatched with ease by the crack team of Lucy, Jade, Cynthia and Jordon. Maths is turning out to be surprisingly easy to teach; we had expected it to be probably the toughest, but the subject has a certain logic to it which English appears to lack. The ways in which a verb slots into a sentence are many and diverse, and all equally inexplicable; the ways in which one set of digits is added to another, however, are reassuringly smaller in number.

Jade and Cynthia helping pupils out with their maths.

On Thursday, we returned to the Field, visiting another kindergarten. It’s just across the road from Harriet’s house, and so some of us had already had a look inside: it’s a primary school run on the same basis as the first kindergarten that we’d visited. That is to say, it was set up by the local Self-Help Group to give their children a better start, and as such, it was far less well-equipped than the private kindergarten that we’d visited the previous Thursday. There was one classroom –without a door- in which there were desks donated by AEE. 

A group of pupils, one in the throes of a full-blown existential crisis, sits on the desks provided to the kindergarten by AEE. I should add that we did have better photos, but I find this one too funny not to be shared with the wider world.

While we were teaching, several children poked their heads into the classroom repeatedly. They were initially too nervous to stay if we looked at them; after a bit, though, they grew bold enough to just stand and look in. This wasn't welcomed by the kindergarten children, many of whom objected strongly to their presence at the window.

Apart from those desks, there was nothing to help the solitary teacher to educate her fifty-odd charges; the floor of the classroom was made of mud, and outside the classroom, in the adjacent room and ‘lobby’-type area, the ground was covered in large chunks of rubble, over which the smaller children stumbled as they walked. 

The doorway to the kindergarten's classroom; to the left hand side is another room, apparently not currently in use. The rubble floor stands out.

It was, as I’ve already remarked, painfully different to the private kindergarten a short distance away: it is worth remembering, though, just how far it’s come, and from what origins, especially given how short a time it’s been there. In fact, the distance it, and the Cluster Level Association behind it, has travelled is very heartening, even while there are naturally difficulties still to be surmounted. While we were there, we taught the children some English (mostly through the use of songs), and told them some stories before going outside with a parachute and bubbles, which elicited the same rapturous response we’d met with at the previous kindergarten.

Children playing with the parachute. They absolutely loved this; when they parachute went on the ground, they all dived on it like it was a rug, and when it was lifted up, they sprinted under it and danced around like delighted dervishes.

Bubbles, it seems, are about the best thing you can give to a child.

The following day, it all got a bit more full-on. That morning, we were asked to help write a comprehensive annual report of one of the partner organisation’s projects, and to write up the work plan for the organisation- right away. Lucy and Sam stayed at the office headquarters to start on this, while the rest of the team headed down to Centre for Champions, where they finalised the timetable and discussed other school projects that could be started up in the near future. In the afternoon, we gave staff coaching to the combined AEE staff of the headquarters and Centre for Champions. We first gave a comprehension session using a scene from The King’s Speech to teach them English, and then gave a seminar in using social media, focusing on how to improve their Facebook page, which is currently largely devoted to office rental. The session on The King’s Speech proved a bit tricky, due in part to the accent and stutter of Colin Firth, and in part to a speaker not behaving as expected. The talk on social media, however, was met with enthusiasm; in fact, we’ve had a request for an encore.

On Saturday Patrick fell ill, and went to the hospital with Lucy for far too long (‘The queues, the queues!’, as Conrad might have written); he left for Kigali on Sunday to receive treatment there. We had been planning to visit the ‘beach resort’ of the nearby Lake Muhazi on Saturday, but with Patrick’s illness and the continuing need to power on through the annual report this was put on hold for the time being. On Sunday, we led both the children’s and the main service at the ADEPR’s international church: Jordon gave a talk on drugs and the grace of God to the adults, while Anaise, Ingrid and Sam told stories to the children.

Monday came with several more lessons. The first was Social Science, an amalgamation of History, Geography, and some Politics. We –Jade, Cynthia, Anaise and I- were teaching geography, and went at it with gusto. We covered the uses of hills and rivers (hills: rain, rocks, fertile soil; rivers: transport, fish, water- yes, we are now experts), before lurching off the syllabus into the far more interesting realms of volcanoes, plate tectonics, and erosion. This effectively derailed the lesson (they had a seemingly endless reserve of questions on the topic- among which, brilliantly, was ‘Does a pebble ever grow?’), but also made it much better fun for both teachers and teachees. After geography Lucy, Ingrid and Jordon took ‘Coca’, a sort of general studies slot which we can fill as we see fit with useful info. That Monday, Coca was on the topic of drugs- first a lively debate on the pros and cons of drug-taking, and then a period during which the audience listened with rapt attention while Jordon told them of his own history with drugs.

Football, with the Premier Division team practising in the background.

In the afternoon, Jordon and I returned to Centre for Champions to take a sports session. We had several difficulties in getting started. We had been under the impression that we had the entire school pitch, and so had been expecting to play a competitive match of some sort; upon arrival, however, we discovered that a) very few people had turned up for sports, and b) the local Premier Division team had the use of half the pitch on Monday afternoons. That was not a typo: the local Premier Division team –the equivalent, I think, of Stoke or Sunderland: 'mid-table mediocrity for the win!'- uses the school pitch on arranged days. I suspect that if Stoke or Sunderland were forced to time-share a rather beaten-up patch of sandy grass for their training, their Premier League days would be even more closely numbered than they are at present. Having claimed our bit of pitch, we then proceeded to puncture the ball, continuing after borrowing the adjacent kindergarten’s football. We started off with some doubles football; as we played, more and more people came to join, so that by the end we had twenty and were able to play a match. Anyway, it was good fun, and it was also great to get to know the students a bit better, because it’s difficult to build up relationships in class.

When we returned from football Anaise, Cynthia and Ingrid were in a state of great excitement after finding out that there was a ‘Miss Rwanda Day’ on at a nearby café. Extrapolating from our test group of Anaise, Cynthia and Ingrid, the Miss Rwanda contest is the highlight of the year for most Rwandan girls: it is, at any rate, viewed with a level of passion and commitment inversely proportional to that of Miss UK. Rwandan viewers can –and do- vote for their favourite candidate once a day; all candidates other than the one chosen to be supported are the object of continual scorn and derision. In the initial stages, for instance, it was agreed upon that several were ‘destroying Kigali’ by taking part, although quite how they were razing the capital was not explained. Anyway, we had been looking forward to watching the semi-final on Saturday, only to find that our television’s aerial was defective; when it was discovered that the semi-final was being repeated in pomp in this café, Anaise, Cynthia, Ingrid and Jordon hot-footed it.

Anaise and Cynthia running to tell the rest of the team about the Miss Rwanda Day: testament to the passion it inspires.

On Tuesday 10^th, we were in the field again, this time at a banana plantation in the middle of nowhere. Rwanda is famously called ‘The Land of a Thousand Hills’, and, having been crammed in the back of a car bouncing up and down what felt like the majority of these hills (along tracks that seemed determined to emulate on a smaller scale that over which they wound), we can confirm that this is for a reason. Patrick says Rwanda actually has a thousand and one hills; at present we cannot confirm or deny this claim, but if all the country is as densely populated by hills as the part we travelled on the way to the banana plantation, I reckon it must have several orders of magnitude more. Once we arrived at the plantation we marvelled at the view for a bit (hills may not make for comfortable travelling, but they definitely pull their weight in the scenery department) before starting on the field itself. 

The view from the plantation's hill. It was just starting to rain -heavily- as we were driving away.

The banana trees, which had been planted several months ago, were still small and stunted; this was because there was a large amount of other plant life sharing their space and nutrients, and so with hoe on hand we fell on the intruding cocktail of cassava plants, maize stalks and assorted small weeds. 

A line of Hoers.

As before, our hoeing ability left something to be desired, but it did at least amuse the Self-Help Group members. After breaking up a goodly amount of soil and root systems, and having accumulated a satisfactory collection of blisters, we held what turned out to be a seminar on family planning. 

These two laughed at me constantly while hoeing. The guy on the right also asked some rather tricky questions during the discussion on family planning.

The sizes of families is something that concerns our partner organisation, and so they asked us to give a talk on it; the SHG members had quite a lot of questions, some clearly matters of great concern to them, and it was a very interesting discussion. 

The discussion on family planning.

That evening we had a celebration for Anaise’s birthday, the gifts to her including a beautiful drawing of jiggers dancing on floating green bananas in a sea of African Tea, with a backdrop of a mountain of grated cheese: all of Anaise’s favourite things, in fact, and a piece of art that is sure to be a great inspiration to her for years to come.

It's apparently a Rwandan tradition for a birthday to be celebrated by large quantities of water (symbolising blessings) poured over the head. We entered into this idea with enthusiasm, leaving Anaise quite wet.

Anaise 'Happy Birthday Jolly [a nickname, due to the fact that she laughs all the time]' cake. 

Wednesday was the partner organisation’s monthly day of prayer and discussion, which we also attended (along, in fact, with Vestine and Deo, two in-country volunteers from Lucy’s previous team, who arrived unexpectedly to general surprise and happiness). This was also interesting in its own way, with some heated argument over the meanings of certain passages (the place of judgement in our lives, for instance, occupied an hour or so of heavy debate), and a large amount of dancing and clapping.

On Thursday –yesterday- we returned to the Field, this time going to build a kitchen garden. The day was very hot, and kitchen gardens require a lot of effort –hoeing, digging, hammering, macheteing (apparently this isn’t a word), and transporting manure- so it was extremely tiring. 

Jordon tried his hand at sharpening stakes with a machete. It's a lot harder than it looks.

In addition, Lucy and Apolone (the Associate Field Coordinator of the partner organisation) had to go and advise a member of the community on a sensitive issue, which took some time: by the time we left, we were a) experts in cracking maize corn off its cob to be made into flour (a slightly more restful alternative to hammering, macheteing etc.) and b) exhausted. 

Pushing corn off the maize cobs, so that it could be ground up and made into flour.

Artistic shot of somebody (Anaise?) cracking corn.

Ingrid hammering stakes into the ground; the stakes were then covered by a plastic-type bag, which kept the soil in to form layers of raised garden, allowing nutrients stored in the centre to be efficiently distributed.

The team standing with the finished kitchen garden; it'll allow the Self-Help Group members to have a more rounded, balanced diet, and the fact that they've taken part in making one will give them the knowledge to go away and repeat the process for themselves.

In the afternoon Patrick, Ingrid and I went up to the office to help process some of the partner organisation’s paperwork; when we returned, candles were once again burning in the dining room (a power cut, not a Lady and the Tramp re-enactment), and much of the household was rather stressed out by the absence of charcoal, a substance crucial to the making of fires and hence edible food. The man who had been commissioned to bring charcoal from the market at around three o’clock didn’t, in the end, make it to the house until approximately nine- and even then, only after being shouted at down the phone for most of the intervening hours, demonstrating that even African Time can be stretched too far.

Well, that was very long, but then, the past two weeks have contained rather a lot. All prayers and encouraging contact are, as ever, very welcome!