Bubbles! A Fanta-stic week

So, I wrote last time that I might say a bit about the fairly unexpected position of Fanta here in Rwamagana; but that, as I had neither time nor space in the previous post, I would leave it till now. Well, I have plenty of space at the moment -as many blank white pages as I care to have, in fact- and as a way of parachuting into a blog, I reckon Fanta is as good as any other.

We were told, back in Kigali, that Fanta is the drink of choice for almost any occasion here. Forget champagne- Fanta Citron (or Fanta Sprite, or Fanta Coke- ‘Fanta’ is an all-encompassing word for fizzy drinks of any race, creed or denomination) is where it’s at. A wedding isn’t a wedding without the guests being served Fanta; equally, we were given it at the graduation celebration that we attended last week. Children are especially keen on it: while the distinguished old ladies sat sipping it (through a straw- always through a straw) austerely, the children’s faces positively shone with glee, except for the children who had been given Cokes, which are apparently not so well thought of. We spoke in Kigali to somebody who had been on the Rwamagana team a few cycles back, and asked what reaction might be received if one was to take Fanta into school for the children; the answer was that we would probably not survive in the ensuing mob rush. That would have been a relatively noble way to go, however, compared to death by jerry can.

Innocent vs. The Chicken:

Our loyal, and hilarious, guard spots the hapless bird and closes in.

The chicken sprints away. Innocent pursues at close range.

The chicken dodges, but Innocent stays, quite literally, on its tail.

The chicken tries one dodge too many, and Innocent cannily traps it behind a bag of- sticks?

The struggling animal is finally collared.

The proud captor holds aloft his prisoner. Innocent 1, Chicken 0. It's worth adding that he then carried the chicken into the house, bringing as many alarmed squawks from Ingrid as from the bird.

On Thursday the team visited a village a short distance from Rwamagana, with the aim of helping to repair a house. This effort was part of the Child-headed Household project run by AEE, which helps families without parents in their lives. When we arrived, there was a large number of children, ranging from an age of about four to perhaps nineteen; we learnt later that all of them were orphans. Their lives must be very hard: some have been having to take care of their (often several) younger siblings for many years, without any parental support. We all agreed that there was no chance any of us could have taken on that sort of responsibility at seven years old. The children in this village have, apparently without any outside intervention, grouped together to form an association of parentless households. Within this framework they support each other’s families, meaning that when we came to start work on the house, there were already many  older children (and alumni of the group) ready to start work, or preparing the materials used for re-constructing the house, in the knowledge that they will receive similar support if they need it in the future.

We disembarked from our car, and, having watched our driver do his level best to run over a persistent dog with a penchant for tyres, gathered round to be told what was going to happen. It was at this point that we were asked who among us were willing to help collect water. Jade, Ingrid, Anaise and I altruistically volunteered, little knowing what was in store: thus began the lesson. 

The early, happy days -not a care in the world- as we set out to fetch the water. It's worth pointing out that, in that hut towards the right of the frame, a cow was being killed at this moment.

It is a little known fact, that jerry cans have a fierce-burning hatred of humanity, and, for all I know, all life forms in general. When they are empty, and sitting passively without a chance of striking out, they may strike the uninformed observer as a relatively harmless breed; however, to think this may well lead to grave problems further down the line, and it is fortunate indeed that the Green Bananas blog is here to disillusion you. As we walked down to the valley where the water was to be drawn –a distance of perhaps three kilometers- the jerry cans were behaving themselves nicely, and we were in fine spirits: Anaise, in fact, sang a short song about going to fetch water. It did not contain any lyrics apart from ‘We’re going to fetch water!’, but the thought was there, and the jerry cans knew it, and waited.

The bottom of the valley, and the spring from which we drew the water

The bottom of the valley was absolutely beautiful. It was a bit cold, wet, and misty, but beautiful nonetheless; it was in much the same vein as the Lake District on one of its better spring days. The UK volunteers felt quite at home, although the In-Country contingent said it was too cold, wet, and misty. We drew up our water from a small spring, and began to make our way back up the hill, which had, while our back was turned, morphed into a series of small cliff faces. In the first flush of enthusiasm for the task, the jerry cans were restrained; it was only as we began to ascend that their pitiless and vindictive natures were revealed. Jerry cans are many things, but they are not, regardless of appearance, designed to be carried. I shall leave it at that, and only add (sincerely, now) that it is a deeply unfair thing that there are people who daily have to walk that route, and others like it- in many cases (shudder), longer.

I had a battle with a jerry can. I'm not quite sure who won, but I learnt a valuable lesson: a calm, plastic facade can conceal a raging spirit.

When we returned to the village, we found that the house rebuilding task was well under way. At the start of project, the house was falling apart. The walls were coming away in lumps, with great cracks crisscrossing the plaster and mud sides; the back door was alongside a hole so large that one of the children could probably, without much difficulty, have avoided using the door at all. 

The hole next to the back door.

These holes were filled up with a lattice of sticks, which were then used to support the damp mud first pressed, then hurled, against it. By throwing the mud, it compresses against the walls already in place; if you try to press it in, it sticks to your hand, and doesn't get properly compacted, and pulls away the mud that is already happily lodged.

The frame of sticks, which would then support the mud with which the walls were rebuilt.

Throwing mud against the walls

Inside the house, the floors and walls were being repaired and flattened. The parts of the walls where previous layers of mud compression had fallen off were repaired, and the completed whole was then daubed with layers of thin plaster. This plaster was made from a watery mixture of sand, manure, and ash, and was used for aesthetic purposes, as well as to reinforce the mud and make it less likely to crack and fragment.

The cow, provider of manure for the cement

On the floors, the same compound -in a less water based formula- was used as a sort of cement, making sure that the ground was level, and with a good layer between feet and mud. 

Spreading the floor with the sand, manure and ash cement

This was done for practical purposes: there is a type of fly known as the chigoe flea, or ‘jigger’, that leaps onto feet and, burrowing under the nail, lays eggs which distend and swell the foot. I highly recommend against googling for images, although if you do, you’ll at least know why it was necessary to jigger-proof the house. For purposes of appearance, the walls were then given a thick red stripe of about two feet in height. 

The red band (on the wall), coloured by red clay

This red colouring was made from clay dust mixed with water; the clay was located roughly twenty feet below the surface, and was only reached when toilets were being dug. We noted, with some incredulity and highly impressed, the way in which all the materials being used were those which lay readily available: the mud and sand are, obviously, to be found anywhere, but the clay comes from the displaced toilet mud, the ash from the cooking fire, and the manure from the cow out back. From these scant resources (plus a metal sheet for a roof, presumably from AEE), a house can be built. After we had finished repairing the house, Jade and Jordon gave a talk on the parable of the houses built on sand and rock, and the parallels between the building of a house and the construction of one’s life.

Cynthia and Anaise with their clay-stained hands after painting the red stripe.

After we had finished with the mud, we used some of the dry red clay dust to get it off our hands.

The next day was spent at the Centre for Champions, where there was a pre-start-of-term celebration. The staff there were expecting around eight hundred children and parents, but in the event were greeted by many more (the exact number is unknown, but it looked like A Lot). We only found out about the celebration, and the need for our attendance, approximately half an hour before it began; we only discovered just how many people there were when Lucy was told that she would be required to give a speech in a short while, which she handled very well. It was a very long ceremony -over four hours- and the sun was extremely hot. There were a great many speeches in Kinyarwanda, and as many dances and songs as there were guest singers (and there were many singers).

Lucy delivering her talk (on the intrinsic and unchangeable value of a person), in front of well over eight hundred listeners

Saturday passed in a relaxed fashion, and Sunday much the same. We went to the International Church Service at the local ADEPR church, as we did on the first Sunday in Rwamagana, and some of the team (with the exceptions of Anaise, Cynthia, and myself) helped in the children’s group, teaching a few Sunday school classics and the hokey-kokey, which went down an absolute storm. At lunchtime and supper, we renewed our relationship with the charcoal stoves (Sunday is Christophe’s day off; goodness knows he deserves it) and Anaise and Cynthia proved to themselves that they can cook, after all.

This lump is what was left of a blob called cassava bread. It has the appearance and texture of bleached play-dough, but none of the flavour; it is, in fact, carbohydrates for those who do not like the taste of carbohydrates, or food for those who would rather not put their taste-buds to any inconvenience. Lucy hazarded that it tasted of 'warm water and glue'; despite all this, it was actually quite moresome. It was impossible not to hope that the next bit might have actually taste of something; anyway, it went quite well with sauce.

Monday was the first day of the term at Centre for Champions, meaning that the catch-up students (who were deprived the opportunity of education earlier in their lives, and so now sprint the seven-year Rwandan curriculum in three years) were now at the school. The teachers said that many of the expected pupils did not come. I suspect this has something to do with the oft-mentioned African Time: it does not seem highly improbable that this method of keeping time might result in children coming to school at least a day late. At this point, there was no timetable, so it was hard to know quite what shall be expected of us in terms of lessons; however, we sorted through our formidable arsenal of games to find those which might be appreciated, and prepared some lessons in English, learning as we did so just how hard it is to teach your native language. The vagaries of pronouns are all well and good, but they are definitely more easily absorbed over time than taught. Upon our return, we fraternised a bit with the monkeys; they habitually saunter along our wall on the off-chance that Christophe has left them anything to eat. This results in the odd bit of banana peel or clump of rice on the nearby rooftops.

The friendly monkey enjoying a banana, watched by a crow considering whether or not to mug him.

 There are two monkeys in Rwamagana, a black one and a smaller gold one; the gold one is as friendly as you might hope for in a monkey, and I fed him a banana from my hand, but the black one Has A History Of Biting and a shifty, cantankerous look to him.

On Tuesday, we visited to a kindergarten attached to the banana plantation we visited a week before. After the frankly exhausting fieldwork on Thursday, AEE staff had suggested that today’s trip would be considerably more tiring, so it was pleasant news to hear of the rather different activity. The kindergarten is one of several that has been set up by Cluster Level Associations (groups of Self Help Groups) to provide care for the children and free up the parents: it was paid for and built almost entirely by the members of the CLA, with AEE, our partner organisation, only providing the concrete that set the foundations. There were approximately thirty children, all very young, and with wildly varying levels of confidence and ability in English. 

The team with the children at the kindergarten.

We attempted to teach them ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’, but found that this sudden tsunami of new vocabulary left them swamped. We then -optimistically, considering the difficulties encountered in ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’- moved onto Simon Says, which left them completely baffled. We resorted to the classic Sunday school song ‘Be Bold, Be Strong’; the accompanying actions, after some encouragement, were widely enjoyed, and towards the end the majority were singing along. We also told the stories of Noah and Joseph, considering these to be among the more dramatic and accessible out of those that we knew. These were met with tepidity by and large, but Noah’s name was shouted enthusiastically enough.

Sunsets here are incredibly quick affairs; however, due to the fact that there tends to be either thick cloud cover or none, they aren't normally very spectacular. This was one of the better ones; the entire video was about twenty minutes in real time.

The next day, we went to Center for Champions as normal, in order to prepare a detailed report on the events of the previous Friday (the pre-start-of-term celebration). While we were starting this, the headmaster came in and asked us whether there were any volunteers for a maths lessons that morning. Four of us –Jordon, Anaise, myself (if any of my maths teachers have died, they would have been rotating like a drill bit at this point at the idea of my giving a lesson in their own subject) and Ingrid- stepped forwards, and we readied a detailed lesson plan with a range of topics. 

The maths lesson: fifty-six pupils.

In the event, it wasn't needed: the pupils (there were fifty-six in the class; not a bad number for our first ever lesson) were just entering Primary Five, and so were starting many new topics; in addition, they were returning from a mammoth three-month holiday, meaning that they were rather rusty. We gave them a short revision exercise at the start of the lesson, but it ended up needing the whole eighty minutes to go through, meaning that the angles and algebra will have to wait for another day.

AEE work with USAID to provide the schoolchildren with exercise books. This is, of course, excellent: it does, however, have an amusing side-effect. All the books have something on the cover (in this case, a picture of the Dutch national football team of about six years ago, underneath a rather incongruous 'I Love Rwanda' declaration); many of them didn't match the person that received them: some of the girls, for instance, had Transformers books, while several large boys had Jessica Alba and Miley Cyrus, which they looked a little embarrassed by.

On Thursday, we were taken to another kindergarten. Unlike Tuesday’s one, this nursery was a privately-funded school, meaning that they had far more resources, and that many of the pupils could speak very good English for their age. There were three classes, and so we divided up the team: Lucy and Ingrid took the lowest, youngest class (the headmistress insisted on calling them ‘the babies’, and vowed that they ‘know nothing’; they were, in addition, the largest class); Anaise and I took the second class (there were just eight in it, and they spoke reasonable English, although not so well as the top class; and it was lovely); and Jordon, Jade, Patrick and Cynthia took the top class, many of whom could speak relatively excellent English. The lowest class were taught basic greetings (‘hello’; ‘goodbye’, and the like), colours, and ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’. Anaise and I also taught ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ to the second class; we tried to teach the various parts of the body as well, but struggled due to the fact that they didn't connect the actions and words of the song with their bodies. We then ambitiously branched out into basic maths and the alphabet, and there lost their attention pretty much completely. The top class, who really knew quite an impressive amount, were introduced to ‘they’re’, ‘their’ and ‘there’, which they already knew, and some lengthy counting. After lessons, we brought all the classes together for some songs, mass hokey-kokey, and bubbles; they absolutely loved all of it, and their delight in the bubbles cannot be expressed by words, which was great.

The parachute, and related games, went down well (albeit with a side serving of chaos)

The hokey-kokey was also met with enormous fun; they loved it.

Finally, the bubbles. I'm not sure it is humanly possible for a person to take more joy from anything than they did from those bubbles. It was incredible fun!

Some of us started giving piggy-backs to let the smaller children reach the bubbles; I hadn't anticipated (although I should have!) that there would be an enormous and continuing demand for 'rides', even after the bubbles had been put away.

So all in all, this was really a brilliant week. Thank you many, many times to all who have been praying or sending supportive messages: it's very encouraging!