Birthday bash

Lots of you have asked how I celebrated my birthday. Birthdays are not really celebrated here so I kept it quiet from my colleagues and Rwandan friends, but on Friday I took homemade honey cake in for the staff and physio students at the rehab centre. The students were amazed that I knew how to make a cake!! They sang 'happy birthday' to me in French.

On Saturday (my actual birthday) I went into Kigali for the day. It was raining as I was on the taxi but had stopped by the time I arrived. Here they say rain on your wedding day is a blessing, so I think it applies to birthdays too! The rest of the day was warm and sunny - the first time I've been able to wear a summer skirt on my birthday.

My first stop was the post office to collect the post. Sadly there was no post for me, but there was a slip to tell me i had a parcel to collect, exciting, until I discovered you can't collect parcels on Saturdays. boo. I then met up with a group of friends I have made during my time here and had lunch at an Ethiopian restuarant. The food was very nice and they did a buffet of different dishes for us so we could try lots of different things. I spent the afternoon running errands and stocking up at the supermarket before heading home.

I went for a walk just before it got dark and bumped into one of my friends who invited me to his house to greet his family, which in true Rwandan style turned into several glasses of juice and a large plate of food and several hours of chatting. I had to walk home in the dark without a torch, and of course no streetlights, but I made it without falling into the mud pools from the rain!

On Sunday I had a lovely relaxed morning and a long lie in before a delicious lunch with my neighbours. We even had a glass of wine - a real treat!

In the evening we had birthday cake, with candles, and jelly, courtesy of my sister, before our time of fellowship.

I also got some lovely cards, gifts and messages throughout the weekend. A great birthday weekend!

Taking the Taxis

One of the ways of getting a true ‘african’ experience is by taking one of the local minibus taxis- the longer the journey the better! Over the last few weeks I have taken quite a few so I thought I would share a few stories.

The minibuses are licensed to carry 18 passengers, two in the front cab next to the driver, then 4 on each row of seats in the back, and if you are unlucky you get the ‘seat’ which is the gap between the fixed and fold down seats. It’s quite a squash, particularly if anyone has children or luggage with them, and gets very hot and sweaty.

The mentality of the drivers and conductors is a ‘full taxi means more money’. This means they will stop anywhere to pick people up, wait for people sauntering down the road, or reverse to collect them, squashing a few extra people in, and the conductor will get out to round people up to get on the taxi, who I’m sure had no intention of travelling anywhere! This was taken to the extreme last week when I got on a taxi along with about 6 other people on the edge of a town to go to the next town. A bit further along the road we stopped again and picked up a few more people, but as the taxi was not full the driver decided to turn around and drive back into the centre of the town (about 5 mins away) to see if he could find more passengers. Eventually the taxi filled up and we set off again. I’m not convinced the extra fares would have covered the cost of the petrol to make the detour!

To let the driver know you want to get off, you knock on the roof and pay the conductor. The fare depends on how far you have travelled- how they remember who got on where and how much the fare should be, amazes me.

Another time I got an express taxi from Kigali. It was scheduled to leave at 5pm but was sitting in the garage for at least 20 minutes before and slowly filled up with passengers. It left on time but only got 10m up the road before it pulled into a garage and parked up on a hill. The driver got out, pulled out several tools and proceeded to change one of the tyres with a workman from the garage – whilst all the passengers remained sitting inside. Why they hadn’t done it in the time before it was scheduled to leave when there weren’t any passengers on board, I have no idea.

There are many other stories I could tell you…. The locals always find it intriguing when a mzungu is on the taxi and an opportunity to practice their English. I have met some interesting people, and had some good conversations as well as declarations of love and marriage proposals!

Greeting the Gorillas

The next day of our adventure took us to see the gorillas in the volcano national park. We had an early start (but not as early as for going to see the Chimpanzees) to get to the park headquarters where we were allocated the group of Gorillas we were going to see. We were assigned the Umubano group with 5 other americans. The road to the start of the trek was made from lumps of volcanic rock, so very bumpy.

The start of the walk was through fields being cultivated by the locals. Then we entered the national park by climbing over a dry stone wall. The first part through the forest was on paths but we soon left them and started burrowing through the undergrowth, led by a man with a machete. After a pretty much vertical climb up a slippery slope we met the trackers who had been following the group. They said the gorillas were just around the corner, but it seemed they had already moved on in search of food. We continued walking and a few minutes later came across the Black Back (adolescent male) of the group sitting on the path. He seemed quite ok with our presence and stayed where he was. Our group began to move around him, keeping our distance until he decided to get up and continue walking down the hill towards me – a rather alarming experience. (The protocol is that you should not be closer than 7m to them but the Gorillas are not told this!) We continued down the hill and came across other members of the group – apparently each gorilla has a distinctive nose print which helps with recognition. We saw a mother with a baby on her back munching some leaves, then the Silver Back (the leader of the group). He was sitting in the bushes looking very relaxed, reaching around him and grabbing leaves to eat. After a while he got up and moved on and the rest of the group followed him. The Black Back tended to hang around at the back – behaving a bit like a rebellious teenager and then walking across the ‘path’ we were following, splitting our group up. I had a few close encounters. The guides communicated with the gorillas by grunting at them – apparently this was to tell them we were not a threat. At times it felt they were more of a threat to us although we were assured they weren’t. We got to spend an hour with the gorillas. They made us work for it as they kept getting up and moving on but it was amazing to see them so close up in their natural habitat and their interactions with each other.

Gisenyi

Visits from my sister and friend meant an excuse to see some more of the country. This time the town of Gisenyi was on the agenda. It is situated at the northern end of lake Kivu in the West of the country and very close to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Our first day was spent exploring the town and market then heading to the beach for an afternoon relaxing and swimming. In the evening we were taken to see the border, which appeared to be a bit of plastic tape. The next day we went to a nearby peninsular to some hot springs – random warm pools of bubbling water caused by methane gas from volcanic activity, and for lunch at a restaurant in a beautiful setting (courtesy of my parent's tour guide who happened to be in the same place). The landscape of the area was beautiful, steep sided hills rising from the lake.

Digging ditches

Internet access has not been particularly reliable or fast since I have been here but that may all be about to change. There is a programme to provide internet access to all the schools and public buildings (I think) which means laying new fibre optic cables around the whole country. In the UK this would be done by a few people with a lot of machinery, but here it is done very differently.

Firstly the ground was scored with 2 parallel lines measured by pieces of rope. A few days later a team of men arrived with pick axes, shovels and hoes and began digging a ditch. There was one man every 3 to 5m and within 2 days a ditch about 1.5m deep had been dug from the tarmac road, up the hill and to the hospital. Apparently the men dug through anything they came across including our water pipes and the foundations to the hospital. Next the cables were laid, again by hand. This time the men walked with the cables over their shoulders about 10m apart along the length of the trench they had dug. The following day groups of women arrived and filled the ditch in again with the dirt they had dug out.

The workers all stayed in large camps by the side of the road, in home made tents made from plastic sheeting and cooking of wood fires for the few days they were working in the area, then moved onto the next place.

Choir adventures 19.9.10

Today I went on a trip with the church choir to another parish in the diocese. I was told to be at the church at 7am and to my surprise, when I arrived just after there were other people there already. I was then ‘dressed’ in traditional Rwandan dress and the choir’s smart uniform. The minibus arrived just before 8am and we set off, singing all the way. After we had driven for an hour on the dirt roads it became apparent that no one had been to the parish before and no one quite knew where it was but after asking a few locals and a few short detours we arrived at the church. We were early, so were invited to the pastors house before the service and were greeted by an endless stream of members of his family.

The service started at 10am by which time a large crowd of children and adults had gathered – I think word that a mzungu had arrived had got around. My gardener, who is also in the choir, preached and the whole service lasted for 4 hours. Fortunately I had a translator otherwise I’m sure the low narrow benches would have felt ever harder by the end. Afterwards I was swarmed by children who wanted to touch my skin and hair and practice their English on me. We shared a meal with some of the locals and the Rwandan customs of lots of speeches, introductions and more singing.

We set off on our return journey at about 4.30pm, giving various people lifts to nearby communities and stopping to collect a sack of Cassava roots which was given to the choir as a gift. After about 20 minutes we hit a large dip in the road and there was a loud bang. We stopped and the driver and a few of the men got out to look underneath. After a few minutes of looking and discussion, they decided there wasn’t a problem so piled back into the minibus and we set off again. Immediately it was apparent that the was still a problem as there was a loud rattling from under the back seats, so we stopped again. This time the driver put some overalls on and crawled underneath. He emerged pulling the exhaust with him. He then proceeded to bend it even more so that it would fit under one of the seats. We continued on our journey home, singing again, as if nothing had happened.