Day 9 Kigali Central

On reflection it was a mistake to wear white to catch the bus into the centre. Within minutes a fine dusting of red covered my clothes and hair. 


Kigali is a clean and ordered city, no rubbish, or dogs or vermin, but you can't escape the red earth, it's everywhere. Only the main roads are tarmaced and even they are covered in a fine coating of mud from the daily rains.


Determined to make the most of my free day I'd planned a solo trip into town. I asked Sandrine what she recommended I visit. After a few moments hesitation, "the supermarket", she said "Simba supermarket".  Along with most other busy British women, Tescos is my second home.  I did not, therefore, thrill to this suggestion.


With no street numbers, names or road signs and the absence of my trusty iphone this adventure was, maybe, foolhardy.  All I had to rely on was my innate ability to get lost, anywhere.


It is a small city of a million people and with moments of stepping of the bus I met someone I'd interviewed the day before. "Muraho, Muraho" and the ubiquitous hand shake. The bustling city centre seemed a surprisingly easy place to negotiate.


On every street corner and shop doorway men who might once have traded bananas or rice now profferred airtime cards.  Often in competition with each other. The yellow MTN Tshirts "mobile on the go" jostled  Tigo's blue  "express yourself" tabards, vying for custom.  The posses of young men did not look friendly, but both groups were doing a lively trade.


The tiny privately owned shops selling 'phones and other electrical equipment seemed only to be outnumbered by hairdressers.  


Not wishing to purchase either a 'phone, second hand toaster or have my hair cut I gravitated to the main tourist attraction.  The most expensive supermarket in Rwanda.


To enter this hallowed hall required an airport security check.  The only thing I didn't have to remove were my shoes.  I was scanned and frisked going in, but noticeably not on the way out.  Shoplifting is obviously not the greatest worry.


Piles of plastic shoes lay on the floor next to the meat counter.  Gimcracks and soap higgledy piggledy on the five aisles of shelving. Sweets and clothes and tins and bottles, a pound store really.  Nothing second hand was on sale and there was a toilet,  cafe and cash registers, so yes it was remarkable, in Rwanda.  


Noone in the supermarket had seen a credit card, so all I bought was water. It will be a while before the tourist trade will flourish here. 

Carrots

It's the carrot harvest in Rubayu region, at least one of them. Bags of carrots, as tall as a man, are being pushed on the back of  bicycles along road edge to the carrot market. The warm, wet climate and fertile, black volcanic soil produce up to four carrot harvests a year.  

Food is abundant, but represents cash for the growers, it's their only source of income. 

Markets set up on random plots of land don't seem to generate much custom, but it's the way produce is sold.  Depending on the region and time of year, inpromptu, single variety, vegetable sellers gather together and race out with their wares to any passing car, shouting and thrusting food in at the window. All shopping Rwandan style takes place like this, haggled, seasonal.  You eat what's on offer.

Tea and Coffee plantations operate more orderly methods, as these crops are for the export market. The workers shelter from the frequent downpours under specially built brick canopies. They get paid a wage, it's a reliable income.

The only vegetable not sold in the markets is "muzumgo" - white man's bean.  I didn't eat any in Rwanda, but then I wouldn't, I don't like runner beans

  

Day 8 Walk for Life

The exquisite physical balance which allows Rwandans to effortlessly carry logs, bags and baskets long distances on their heads, would be the envy of any student of yoga here in the West. In the rush to modernise Rwanda I fear governments and NGOs will ignore the things we can learn from a way of life which is all but extinct in Europe.  It might save the NHS a fortune.


The fashion for Bare Foot Running in the US and in Britain is as a direct result of injuries caused by modern 'sprung' trainers. The 'technique' has been rediscovered in remote parts of Africa. It's not rocket science,  Africans go on foot, because its the best way of getting about difficult terrain, they eat plain, unprocessed food because that's what they have and they run in bare feet, because that's all they have.. and they are the fastest in the world. Our bodies have evolved to give us the optimum tools to live in a world without cars, computers or candy.


Rwanda is an agrarian culture, the people work and live off the land.   Thomas Hardy's Wessex springs to mind, even the mud is reminiscent of Tess of the D'urbervilles.  It's a life of hard physical extremes, for sure, but chronic back, hip or knee pain is practically non existent. Without exception Rwandans look younger than their age, move fluidly and with an effortlessness that is more associated with catwalk than roadside. Their feet mould themselves over the mud, while we bounce and jump in the car giving making our spines sore.


Our 'comfortable' existence is tempered by pain of one sort or another, caused by our poor diet and lifestyles.  Of course not all Rwandans eat well, there is poor education about the nutritional benefits various food bring and there is hunger in some of the less fertile regions.  But the food was, until recently pesticide free, it still is all grown or reared in Rwanda and has very little added to it during the cooking process. The only fat is in unpasteurized milk and a little vegetable oil. I have never felt healthier, my body is in detox.


The obesity epidemic sweeping like a tidal wave through developed countries has left Rwandan untouched. Let's imagine a snapshot of some average Londoners and average Rwandans, which look healthier? No question, the Rwandans. 

School

The walls of the biology classroom had some charts hung on them, but there was very little else to indicate it was a science laboratory.  But I was the one about to have the education, and it didn't require teaching aids. 


Overhead a broken ceiling, smashed by soldiers searching for children hiding in the roof, remained unmended 18 years after the Genocide. Empty wooden desks and a blackboard reminded me it was the school holidays, despite the swarm of teenagers outside. I was on a tour of a school  with the Headmaster to learn about facilities and curriculum, when we were accosted by a soldier. 


My answers to the second interrogation of the day were getting better,  I remembered to use the word 'misssionary' and to hide my camera. The Headmaster was visible frightened and kept repeating "Missionary, missionary" "London, London" two words which have currency here. With 95% of the population active church goers, there is still much mission work going on. A concept I thought had all but died out, is alive and flourishing and accepted as normal.  It was easier to stomach the word than the gun, so I played along.


Three weeks previously, long after my visit had been arranged, the school had been requisitioned by the government for a compulsory 'citizenship' programme for teenagers. Under heavily armed guard these youngsters learned to be Rwandans rather than Hutus or tutsi, about the community work for the good of the country and implicitly that power comes through the gun. 


It doesn't matter how much biology, mathematics or chemistry you learn, if an enquiring mind is stamped out by the authorities, how can anyone become a good citizen?

Deepest Darkest Africa

It's hard to get anyone to say a bad word about the government.  A trip to the border with The Congo explains why.  The wooden shacks in The Congo shanty town clustered around the border post are in sharp contrast to the Rwandan tarmac , which ends abruptly at the barrier, turning into a sea of mud rather than a road on the other side. 


Keen to get a photograph of this stark contrast I hopped out of the car. "Is it OK to take a photo?" I asked my colleagues, their answer did not accord with that of the heavily armed soldiers, who quickly surrounded me.  I was interrogated by a well spoken and smartly dressed 'civilian', who with charm in his voice, forcibly grabbed my camera and deleted photographs. His eyes were as steely as the gun of his body guard, cocked towards me.  It was the beginning of a day that was to open my eyes to the darker side of Rwandan life.


Why, when the Democratic Republic of Congo is so rich with its abundant wealth of minerals, did it seem so much poorer, I asked Antoine.  "It's badly managed, it's corrupted" he replied.
I looked anew at the regular brick structures I was becoming familiar with, painted in the same earthen palette, the neat tea plantations and the blue and bright shiny corrugated iron roofs of the Rwandan landscape.  Here the government is in control, from the colour of the paint, to the planning regs. Dissent is not tolerated. It leads to a well regulated and ordered society, which I imagine, is preferable to the horrors of Genocide. 


The remains of the Hutu army are harboured by the Congo.  Living in dense tropical forests, they make insurgencies into Rwanda disturbing the fragile peace with continuing violence.  In Britain we prize individual freedoms, freedom of the press and free speech as rights to fight for.  Here violence breeds violence and the  'peace' is defended at all costs. What are a few photographs when your family has been hacked to death?


The darling of western governments Rwanda's regime is reluctant treat a white woman badly, I was lucky.  Others have been less fortunate, but then they are Rwandans. I imagine if I'd been imprisoned for asking too many questions and taking too many photographs you'd probably hear about it. Would the world's press even bother to report the story if the same happened to a Rwandan? No, they.., you.., you're not interested, its just another Banana Republic and not one you can buy nice clothes in.

Day 7 A hole in the ground

Well, it was always going to happen. I've been to my fair share of festivals and camping holidays, so washing in bowls of cold water I take in my stride. But here on the edge of Lake Kivu, with it's luxury lakeside hotels, my hopes for a flushing toilet ran high. I was to be disappointed. Porcelain lavatories exist in most middle class city homes and public places. They are often, unfortunately, padlocked. Requesting a key via 'the boy' can be time consuming, not to mention embarrassing, especially if you need a translator. Once you've achieved your goal, the toilets rarely flush and require a bowl of water to sloosh everything away.


Waking to the sounds of Rwanadan music at 4am this morning did not predispose me to like it. I do however, it makes me feel alive and it's impossible to ignore. In my snug room in Gisenyi Friends Guest House I did not get up and dance, but stayed in bed enjoying the warmth if the approaching day.


Next to our 'hole in the ground' flourishing the black volcanic soil flourishes a vegetable plot. Cabbages, squash and bananas grow with unseemly abandon. The children change the sound track. Songs from the Glee cast. I ask Sandrine who her favourite artists are."Rhianna, Beonyce, Justin Bieber". In the blink of an eye she is no longer Hutu, Tutsi or even Rwandan, but that inexplicable and very exclusive tribe of 14 year old girls the world over.

Land of a 1000 hills

There's a reason Rwanda is known as the Switzerland of Africa and this afternoon I discovered why.


Following the partly constructed road to Uganda five of us; three teenage boys, Antoine and myself, squashed bags into every corner and took the old salon car into the misty misty hills.


As we spluttered higher into the mountains, a patchwork of fields opened up. Squares of bananas, beans and sugar cane clung to the steep slopes, while avocado, papaya and mango trees lined the road side. Storks, cranes and ibis picked though pools at the bottom of waterfalls.  I said I'd never seen an avocado tree and one of the boys sniggered..


Children running along the side of the road benefitted from our trade as we bought bags of shelled peas for supper. And the sweetest of pineapples were chosen from underneath an umbrella as we stood inside a cloud. It's easy to see why one of the rarest of animals in the world, should make this it's home. We'd reached Muzane, where in the forest above the town, roam the Mountain Gorillas.


It was also the home of Antoine's wife, Annunica and their 4 children. For the first time that night I heard Antoine story. Every Rwandan has one. But Antoine is my friend, he is the same age and we have much in common, but I didn't flee Genocide with a 4 day old baby in my arms. 


Antoine's story will be published in a separate article.

Womens Rights?

A young female Vice Mayor introduced 'The President of the Parliament, 'Jean Damascene Ntawukuliryayo. Admist a heavily armed and blue clad police force, the new cabinet led the crowd in rousing patriotic singing.  I was squeezed in right beside the militia, an honorary man for the day.

The jovial president congratulated us on our tree planting and introduced us to some very young men and women senators. A true politician, he listed  the government plans for it's new term in office. "A campaign for women's rights is being promoted". I listened to the translation with eagerness, this being an issue close to my heart.

"Ït is not normal to beat a woman" he announced to gales of laughter,

  "The man is too aggressive and women are always kind, A woman is in the home with the children and a man has to protect her and take care of the woman. We can love the woman and everything with come. A man must be involved in women's rights".

My jaw draws open.....Women's Rights.......but not as we know them......

 

Day 5 Umuganda

David Cameron, eat your heart out.  Umuganda is Big Society on a scale you could only dream of.

Once a month on a Saturday morning the country stops for two hours. No buses run, no shops are open and everyone congregates to do compulsory community work.

The roads are swept of mud, rubbish is picked up and vegetation is kept in trim.  Sometimes  a building project is undertaken. It certainly keeps everywhere looking very neat. ":People like it" Baptiste, an English speaking, teacher told me.

I muddied my hands in an Umuganda which was a mass tree planting.  36,000 trees were planted on a hillside that morning, two of them were mine. PIck axes  randomly hacked at the ground to made holes.  The ground was unprepared and the trees were often close together. Noone could tell me what the trees were which were being planted. 


I'd heard on the television that similar plantings resulted in many trees dying from lack of water. In a new initiative the government has introduced a follow up scheme to replant where trees die.

Rwanda has been chosen as an environment beacon amongst African States to achieve widespread tree planting. Whether this method gets results it remains to be seen. 

Were the people happy in their work? The drumming and singing suggested a party atmosphere.  Putting on a brave face was a Belgian woman.  "Whose land is it?" I asked, "It belongs to us, the B'hais' she said.  "Did you have a choice about the planting?"  looking down at the ground she replied Ï don't think so".

A cup of tea

Like many English people, the thing I miss most when abroad is a cup of tea.

I'm late for my lift this morning.  My driver, who has other jobs to do, waits for me.  I find myself rushed into a 7am breakfast, which I know I don't want.  Dried bread rolls out of a packet and ícayayi cy 'amata - milky tea.  This drink is so far removed from a cup of English breakfast tea as it is possible to imagine.  Served in plastic mugs, the slightly brown boiled milk is poured out of a kettle and tastes rather like, well.. boiled milk.

After the obligatory hand washing, we queue in front of tureens of stewed bananas, spinach, peas, beans and meat, which may or may not be goat. The food is ladled high onto plastic plates topped with 'sauce'.  It's not difficult to get your five a day, but vast quantities are eaten to get enough protein.

Rwandan hospitality rarely includes being offered tea or any drink.  With the generous  meals we eat, both in homes and cafes, Coke and Fanta are offered as a standard alternative to milky tea. I drink the sugary caffine laden drink which my body craves. I hear the fizz of my teeth decaying with every meal.

Put the kettle on, I'll be home soon.