In praise of Edisa and Gatete

Edisa has been my houseworker since the beginning of April and she is amazing. I will surely miss her. Every day I return from work at lunchtime to a hot meal cooked from raw ingredients – there’s no Dolmio sauce or ready meals or even a microwave here! If I want any particular fruit or veg from the local shops I just leave a list for her in the morning and by the time I get home they are all there. She will even go to the market in the next town for me too. I do have to write the list in Kinyarwanda though. My clothes washing is done by hand and hung on the line to dry and is usually ready in 24hrs – delayed only by the weather!

No matter how hard I try to straighten my bed covers in the morning, she always does it 10 times better for me and keeps the red dust or mud at bay. Oh and her homemade bread and chapati’s are delicious.

I do provide her with entertainment when I try to communicate with her in Kinyarwanda. It gives her a good laugh but she does help and corrects me and we usually understand each other in the end!

Gatete is the gardener but his abilities are extended far beyond tending to the garden. He makes sure the water filters and barrels in the house are full and clears the rain gutters. He even cleaned the inside of the rain harvester out when it was empty in the dry season. He guts and fillets the fish when Edisa buys it from the fishermen who come to the door. He’s repainted the longdrop and kitchen walls, helped fix bicycle pumps and kept me in good supply of eggs and papaya.

In the garden he cuts the grass by hand with a machete, keeps the front yard weed free, clean and swept – very important in Rwandan culture, and looks after the vegetable patch. I bought some seeds for him in April and since then he brings deliveries of the results to the door….green peppers, chilly peppers, lettuce, aubergine, carrots, parsley and papaya.

I think adjusting to independent living in the UK will be a challenge.

Karambo

I was invited to spend the night at a place at the other end of lake Muhazi with some friends on Friday. We set off from Kigali on the tarmac road heading north. After about half an hour we turned off onto the 17km of dirt road to our destination. Except in several places it wasn’t a dirt road, it was a mud pool. Despite being in a 4x4 we skidded and bounced and splashed our way through large sections of deep mud. The car ended up sideways across the road at least 2 if not 3 times!

Fortunately the road was wide and we were not half way up a steep sided hill like the road the Shyira, although the lake was below us. We arrived on an adrenaline high and the car covered in mud, but the scenery was stunning and very peaceful so we soon relaxed. We spent the evening enjoying the view and quiet, chatting and playing cards and the following morning exploring the area and relaxing. The road had dried out considerably by the time we made our return journey on Saturday so the trip wasn’t half as exciting!

Customer care and communication

I arrived at the airport for my return flight to Rwanda to discover the flight schedule had been changed and I was now due to fly 24 hours later although no one had told me. I was told the change was ‘better for everyone’ and ‘the good news is you will arrive at the same time tomorrow’. Fortunately I returned the relatives I had stayed with and rearranged my plans for the following day.

Hippos and Crocs

After the wedding we had a couple of days in St Lucia on the Elephant Coast in a UNSESCO world heritage site. We were told it was one of the safest places in South Africa and it was fine to walk around the town at night but there was a high possibility of meeting a hippo or leopard wandering the streets too!

We spent one day driving through the game park and being beaten by the waves of the Indian Ocean. We saw a few different animals including buffalo and monkeys but no leopards. Afterwards we went on a boat trip along the estuary where we saw loads of hippos and some crocodiles. The hippos hung around in large groups with the younger ones near the middle. One of the crocs was huge and apparently they can move from water to land at 70kph! A couple of fish eagles were keeping watch over the river and we were treated to an African sunset on our return to the jetty.

Wedding with Warthogs

The wedding took place on a private game reserve about an hour out of the city. While we were there we were taken on a game drive and saw lots of different African animals including zebra, impala, wildebeast, giraffe, kudu, mongoose, ostriches, hippos and rhinos. The rhinos were grazing outside our lodge as we had a picnic lunch.

The setting of the wedding was beautiful. It was held in a small chapel with seating outside with a small lake nearby and amazing views across the countryside and the weather was perfect. As the photos were being taken a couple of warthogs came trotting past and others were hanging around in the background to see what was going on!

We were entertained by a group of Zulu dancers and had a delicious meal and good speeches then we danced the night away.

Clapham Grand

The hen night started at a country club on another residential estate. The bride to be was dressed as Tinkerbell, the bridesmaids as fairies and everyone else had outfits with flowers on and garlands around their necks. It was a relaxed evening of food and drink and getting to know some of the other guests. The party then progressed into the centre of Durban to ‘ The Clapham Grand’! the Londoners amongst us were very confused! During the evening there was a dance competition with some interesting moves, and a very good beatboxer. It was a fun night.

Cockroach Crushing

We stayed at a lovely B&B just north of Durban. When the others checked in they saw a huge cockroach, and I’m talking at least 6cm in length with wings, on the bathroom ceiling but as it was sitting quietly not moving and minding it’s own business they named it Colin and left it.

After collecting me from the airport we took what should have been a short detour to a country club on an exclusive estate to deliver some wine but it took us a while to find the correct entrance and convince the security guard to let us in. Then we returned to the B&B. As we were sitting and chatting we suddenly saw a cockroach scuttling very quickly across the floor and under the bed. The next couple of hours would have been very entertaining for anyone watching us as it was spent checking behind and under every piece of furniture in the room and chasing any cockroaches we found. At first we tried to capture them in a glass but they were too quick and we soon decided if we let them outside they would find their way back in so the only answer was to kill them. It was left to me to give them a good whack with a flipflop then flush them down the toilet. I think we disposed of about 6 in the end.

Later we found out they are commonplace in even the cleanest of places to that part of the world.

Destination South Africa

Last week I went to South Africa for a friend’s wedding. I spent a week with a couple of other friends from university seeing the sights and sounds of Durban and KwaZulu Natal. We had quite a few adventures along the way.