A fish called Rwanda

2011-03-28T08:59:00.000-07:00

Moving on

2011-03-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

After just over a year of a moderately successful relationship with this blog, I have decided to run it from a different page, which looks much nicer and is much easier to use. It will allow you to subscribe to it and be updated if I post a new blog as well as lots of other nifty things. I also promise to update it more regularly, which shouldn't be a problem if it's as easy to use as Sean says it is... There are lots of interesting things happening out here, so it would be great if you would like to join me.

If you're still interested in reading about my trip, please go to www.afishcalledrwanda.com and sign up to be a subscriber.

Thanks and goodbye blogspot

Plane terrific

2011-02-22T01:40:00.000-08:00

Last Friday saw around 80 boys, 10 ROP staff members, Sean and I making our way to Kigali International Airport for our long-awaited trip to the planes.

The smaller boys have been asking me to arrange a trip to the airport for months and last week we finally managed it. The process was actually a lot easier than I'd expected and we were quickly accepted by the duty manager.

The boys are fascinated by planes and when I give them paper and pencils, I'm often handed back paper covered with drawings of planes or helicopters. We are located a few miles from the end of the airport runway and we often see the planes soaring above us, so maybe that's where the interest comes from.

We told the boys a few days before the trip what we were going to do. The announcement was only slightly marred by the fact when I asked them to guess where we were going, they all thought I had arranged a trip to America.

We were told the boys had to be clean and well behaved on the visit, and they really did us proud. When Sean and I arrived early on Friday morning we found them all lined up and dressed in their very best clothes, with proper leather shoes (instead of their usual foam-ey sandals), which were a very generous Christmas present from some Polish volunteers. They looked great.

The smaller boys were matched up with older ones in a bid to maintain order and we made the 15 minute walk to Kanombe to reach the buses. The boys seemed to enjoy being on a bus as much as being at the airport, and whooped and sang the whole way, heads poking dangerously through windows.

When we reached the airport we had to go through security before being taken out to the planes. We reached a large cargo plane that is now grounded and the boys wandered around happily, as Sean gave them a talk about how aeroplanes work. They seemed surprised at how large it was and tapped away at various parts of it. A helicopter parked nearby was also a source of fascination for them. Then a Kenya Airways plane took off right beside us and the boys were enraptured. (If you want technical details about the planes you might want to look here www.ropstories.org).

We didn't get to go inside an actual plane, which was a huge disappointment for everyone. Apparently to open the door of a plane requires an engine to be turned on, which requires some sort of special procedure to be gone through. But the trip was pretty well loved otherwise.

That afternoon as we sat in one of the back fields watching some of the boys play football, the boys would excitedly point and stare every time a plane went by. So I think they enjoyed the morning.

Newbies

2011-02-12T03:19:00.000-08:00

There's been a shameful lack of blogging on my part of late. Since Sean and I arrived back from the States in January things have been pretty frantic trying to enrol all of our boys in various schools and getting to grips with the 20 or so new boys who joined the Centre over Christmas.

Impromptu drawing session in the office

They are all aged around 10 and under and are quite a handful. I thought that trying to organise our youngest boys during activities and art classes was hard work before this new lot arrived, but it turns out I had no idea how difficult it can be to entertain and keep an eye on dozens on frantic youngsters, all desperate to be included at every step, terrified of being left out and keen to have their creations approved. All without the benefit of a common language, except the regularly used thumbs-up and a smile. I also have to keep a sharp eye on the materials that we're using because things have a habit of disappearing…crayons, scissors and pencil sharpeners seem to be most popular amongst my light-fingered little friends.

Making masks

But despite the hard work, these boys are great. I sometimes hesitate to write on this blog because I do struggle with the things I see and experience here in Rwanda, and I'm wary of making all my entries rather miserable and full of my experiences of "white middle class guilt", as my friend Damian is fond of describing this excursion of mine. But forgetting for a while the sad situations these terribly young boys have come from, and taking them just as they are, they are extremely fun, lively, cheeky, ingenious and witty people to be around. We still have a large number of older boys at the Centre who study at secondary school, but since Christmas it has undoubtedly become a much younger place. It's nice to see the younger boys who have been with us a while, now assuming roles as the wise leaders of this new "small boys gang". The bored youngsters who used to hang around Sean and I as soon as our bicycles pulled up at the gates, no longer need us as they have a whole group of new friends to play with. It's lovely to watch them play football with whatever they can find (plastic bags rolled tightly together, rocks, someone's shoe) or somehow create a card game out of the ragged remains of a no longer full pack of playing cards. There are some quarrels as you'd expect, but largely they look after each other.

Showing off their home-made flags

The youngest boys aren't always so good on hygiene though, and our newest addition to the ROP team has already started to turn this around. We employed Louise as a full-time caretaker in January so that she would be able to keep a close eye on these new, small boys and to teach them how to be clean. Every afternoon a handful of boys can be seen, shirts off, outside her office cleaning themselves with a bucket and soap, diligently going under fingernails and behind ears. After washing they all apply a Vaseline-type cream to keep themselves moisturised before rushing off, heads still shiny from the lotion, to resume their games. She seems to be doing well and we hope that soon the boys will start to see her as a mother figure.

The boys have always had a deep interest in airports and aeroplanes because of the Centre's proximity to the airport. And next week we have arranged a surprise trip for all the boys to visit Kigali airport to see what it looks like close-up, and hopefully see the inside of a plane too. I'll keep you posted.

An attack

2011-01-29T08:54:00.000-08:00

I don't know if the twitching of that man's feet were his dying movements as he lay on the tarmac or if they managed to save him after that, but I know that after I saw them jerking around for a while, he stopped moving completely. And he was silent. Even during the twitching phase, I didn't hear him scream or groan or whimper. He just lay there, the thick, shockingly bright blood slowly oozing out of wounds on his stomach and chest. Before last night I wouldn't have thought the victim of a grenade attack would look like that: I'd think that the wounds would have to be large and gaping and that the victim would be screaming. But there he was, about a minute after the grenade was thrown just lying there, perhaps struggling to take in his last few breaths, perhaps slowly dying.

Some police and bystanders lifted him up awkwardly by his feet and underarms and put him on the backseat of a taxi. He was limp. When they lifted him up small streams of blood trickled away from where he had been lying down the slope. I thought about whether the taxi driver was concerned about his backseat becoming blood stained and whether he would be compensated by someone. I think he probably was and that no he wouldn't be. I stared at the blood running away and wondered if it was still warm. I stared for longer than I should have, another of the nosey bystanders. And I tried for longer than I should have to catch a glimpse of the man in the back of the car. When I eventually did move away, I turned around and saw Sean staring at something behind me. While I had been watching one victim, another – equally limp – had been carried right past me and was being put on the back of a police truck. This one had had his feet bound together with something white, maybe so it would be easier to get him into the truck, or maybe because he was already dead.

There were no ambulances, and stranger still, no noise. The whole experience had started with a huge bang though. One that was too loud and too deep to be anything other than a grenade or maybe a canon. The bus Sean and I were travelling home on at 7pm was just pulling into Giporoso bus station in Remera (the stop nearest to our house) and we were preparing to get off when we heard the bang. A second or two of reflection and I think we both realised that there couldn't be an innocent explanation for the noise. I looked outside the window and saw a woman running away from the direction of the noise, and a few police officers running towards it. But that was it. Everyone else seemed to be carrying on as normal. The bus conductors, feisty as ever, were still trying to usher people on to their buses, and the motorbike taxi drivers were still just sitting there, leaning on their handlebars.

We paid our conductor and, still wondering what had just happened, walked 20 yards or so in the direction of the bang. As we turned the corner things still felt normal: there were cars, buses and pedestrians everywhere as usual, and everyone seemed remarkably calm considering they had escaped the attack by a matter of metres and seconds. And there was still no sign of the grenade, until I spotted the twitching feet.

I found out this morning that two people died and 26 were injured after the grenade was thrown from a motorbike. There have been grenade attacks before in Kigali, but not for months and never one so close to home for me. It's strange to be caught up in such a big event, but for everything other than perhaps a minute of it to have felt so normal. Of course if it had been a few minutes later, if the motorbike had been caught in a bit more traffic, it could have hit us. We were mulling over which bar to go to for dinner and had we decided on Chez Guinness, we would have walked up that road. But it wasn't us, it was someone else who, like us, was probably just on his way home from work on Friday night.

A whole year later

2010-12-22T12:58:00.000-08:00

December was a busy month in Rwanda. We said a teary farewell to Anna and Lou who brought a breath of fresh air to dusty Rwanda, did so much brilliant work with the boys and who were also a huge, lovely slice of home for me.

They also bought a fantastic amount of art materials with them, all donated by art shops in Brighton and Sussex. Here are Kazungu and Amusa showing off a small selection of the goodies. Look at their little faces.

Here they are putting the finishing touches to the ROP logo in the dining room. It looks great and the boys are very proud of it.

And here's Lou being hijacked in the local market by bead-selling ladies

Here we are after painting one of the boys' dormitories

And here we are with some friends

Around eight of our older boys who have completed their secondary education were graduated and we had a big celebration to send them off. This is Katonda, one of the graduated boys, in his flashy sunglasses. There was dancing and a big feast after the ceremony, and, thanks to Anna and Lou, we slaughtered two goats for the boys to eat.

An idea my dad came up with to get the boys using their new-found art skills to make Christmas cards for him went down really well. The boys carefully made their cards using glitter, glue and whatever else they could find and we sent the finished cards back to the UK with Anna and Lou. Dad sent money for each boy who made a card and the day before we left for the States, we had them line up and called them in one-by-one to give them their hard-earned cash. (The first kid is the famous Frank Lampard, and check out Said's homemade sunglasses in the next photo.)

What you can't see in these photos is the mad scrum outside the door of boys who couldn't wait to get their hands on a 500 Rwf note (about 70p), and the boys who strutted around afterwards gleefully showing off their earnings to the boys who rued the day they thought they were too cool to take part in a Christmas card-making project. The younger boys you see here couldn't actually sign their name in the accounting book so just did little squiggles.

We tentatively opened the ROP library up to the boys for the first time. The first day went remarkably well, with boys sitting quietly drawing, reading or helping each other to learn English. It was a really nice thing to see.

Anna and Lou bought balloons for the boys on their last day, which led to much joy and then disappointment when they all popped.

As a reward and an incentive for the future, we took the highest achieving boys in each school class out for lunch in town. It was a fairly standard Rwandan buffet restaurant but the boys rarely, if ever, have the opportunity to eat this kind of food and they were very excited. We all got the bus together before filing into the restaurant. We had told the boys to be as smart as possible, so they all borrowed clothes from each other so that each boy had on a smart shirt and looked his very best. They lined up to get their food before tucking in. They all behaved extremely well and I was proud of them.

This is Emmanuel, he's aged about 10/11. He only joined the Centre about four months ago and hadn't been to school before but he is already the top of his class. He's very popular around the Centre and is a lively, cheeky little thing (despite his sad background where he saw his father murder his mother in their house). Because of that he seems much older than his years and I can't help but think of him as a mini-adult. But when we took him out of the context of the orphanage and I saw his little legs swinging on his too-large chair and him struggling to use his knife and fork, it suddenly struck me just how young and vulnerable he is.

The boys were also treated to a Fanta each and a chocolate bar, a huge treat. This anecdote will tell you a lot about the boys at the Centre: most of them didn't eat their chocolate bars right away, but took them back to the Centre to share with their friends so they could all sample this new taste.

This is a storm brewing, as seen from a roof-top bar we like to go to

And this is a picture of two boys who have really made a big impact on me.

Amahoro Island

2010-11-26T03:25:00.000-08:00

Because we thought we deserved a treat and in a bid to show Anna and Lou some of Rwanda's spectacular scenery, we took a weekend trip to Amahoro Island in Lake Kivu without flatmate, Cat. Amahoro means peace in Kinyarwanda and this teeny, tiny island in the middle of a fantastically serene and beautiful lake, was peaceful indeed.

About a 20-minute boat ride from the town of Kibuye, Amahoro is nestled in between around five other islands, one of which is called Napolean's hat because of its symmetry and shape.

When we stepped off the boat onto the golden sand there was one other tourist there having a drink. But she quickly left and we had the island to ourselves for two whole days, apart from the occasional visiting boat and a baptism which took place on Sunday afternoon (!).

We slept in small tents, played badminton, ate fresh fish, drank beer and played cards and spotted all kinds of animals on the island and in its waters, from otters (both dead and alive) to tarantulas (I think anyway) and the most colourful birds I've ever seen in my life. Then some kids who live on the island lent us their surf board and we spent hours trying to stand on it and dive off, while also getting pretty sunburnt backs in the process.

Drinking stones

2010-11-26T02:48:00.000-08:00

I've written before about how difficult and sad I can find it working with these boys. Although I am regularly amazed by how well some of them have dealt with their difficult circumstances and by what strong, clever, witty, warm men they have become in spite of it all, sometimes it's impossible not to be saddened by their situations, especially when they are clearly still traumatised themselves.

The ROP cares for boys from the age of around four up to 21 and while I'm sure the older boys struggle too, it's the younger ones who often seem to be more obviously hopeless about their lives. I've written about one particular boy before, who can just make me double up with sadness when I think about him. He's always quiet and is usually on his own, but is always attentive, helpful and interested. Not long ago I was sitting with him and one of the older boys who speaks very good English and who was translating for us. Quickly the conversation got on to how this youngster feels hopeless about his life now, his future and his ability to ever be happy. He never knew his father and his mother was a prostitute. He says that every day he would ask who his father was, and his mother would tell him it was whichever man was in the house that night. She died when he was young and he took to the streets. It doesn't help his situation that he is being badly bullied at the moment for having a large head.

It was the first time I saw this little kid cry – he's usually very good at controlling his emotions. He kept saying that there is no one in the world who cares about him, who cares about whether he is crying or not, who cares if he lives or dies. And it's hard to tell a small child with no family and few friends that this isn't the case. I told him that I cared about him, that Sean did, and the rest of the staff at the Centre did, but he answered that none of us will be there forever and that we all have our own families to care about and who care about us. And of course he's right. There's no way around that.

He is only aged about 10 but he has been talking about killing himself by drinking stones. Apparently this is a common suicide technique here – drinking small stones with water – and I can't imagine what a slow, painful death that would be. The staff are now all aware of this and hopefully will be able to give him extra care and attention. I just can't imagine how a child who is so young could be expected to deal with such feelings of abandonment and isolation. But as some of the older boys can show, it's not impossible for people like this boy – and those who have been through even more traumatic events – to survive and even thrive. It's just a shame that the funding situation of our organisation means that there is no chance for us to employ therapists to help them through their problems.

Since that day, this kid has been spending a lot of time with one of the newer intakes, who is around the same age. Anna interviewed them both separately for her research and they both said that each other are the people they feel closest to and most secure with in the world. So I am really hoping that this new relationship will help both boys through what I hope is the hardest time in their lives. If they can just keep their heads down, and make the most of the education on offer to them, there's no reason they shouldn't go on to great things.

Long time!

2010-11-26T02:47:00.000-08:00

Hello there. Long time! Sorry about that, it's been a busy time for me out here. My friends Anna and Lou have been here for the last month, and because I'm off to New Mexico in a couple of weeks, there are loads of things to sort out at the Centre before we leave. But I thought it was about time to let you know about some of things that have been happening around here.

This feels like ages ago now, but I covered the launch of a new canopy walkway, high up in the trees of Nyungwe rainforest. It was one of the better press trips I've been on, although definitely the most terrifying (apart from that one with the drug dealers in Brixton.)

We also organised some more football matches between the Rwandan Orphans Project (ROP) where I now volunteer my time, and Centre Marembo, the much smaller centre for street children that I worked at last time round. We've had three matches now and each one has ended in a draw, which the boys find very frustrating. I quite like it though, because I find it hard to know which team to support at these matches. The ROP boys have weekly training sessions with a professional coach, and are kitted out with proper uniforms and boots, while the Centre Marembo boys often have to borrow trainers to play in and rarely get to practise together, so really I suppose I'm always rooting for them. I always go for the underdog as my friend Sian once pointed out. Anyway this is really just an excuse to show you some photos of the beautiful boys.

Anna and Lou arrived with huge boxes of art supplies which they had managed to get some art shops in Brighton to donate to the project. It made the tiny art box I had been using before their arrival, seem rather insignificant. I will write more fully about the art work we've been doing with the ROP boys in another post, but here are some photos of the afternoon we spent with the Centre Marembo boys. We made sock puppets, drew aeroplanes and Lou was roped into doing an on-the-spot portrait of Didier, which actually looked pretty amazing.

A few weeks ago the ROP boys were asked to take part in a cultural learning day run by a nearby museum. The museum is actually the former home of late former President Juvenal Habyarimana and is a fascinating place to visit in its own right. But for two days it was being used as a school for around 60 boys to learn the traditions and cultures of their country. Because so many of the boys don't have families and many haven't had much schooling either, it's not uncommon for them not to know a lot about their heritage, so this was an absolutely fantastic event for them. They were split into groups and each learnt a different skill – traditional Rwandan Intore dancing, drumming, cooking, drawing and the art of debating. I've written more about the day in a blog post on www.ropstories.org but here are some photos .

Frank Lampard

2010-10-14T01:59:00.000-07:00

Spending time at the orphanage has been fascinating and great fun. It's really easy to form bonds with the boys, even the ones who don't speak English, just by playing catch with them, reading books to them, teaching them silly games (thumb wars, hand-clapping games) and sitting in their dorm room trying to figure out the rules to a card game they play.

There are two female teachers at the primary school (which is joined to the orphanage) but otherwise the boys don't really have a lot of contact with women. I spend most of my time with the younger boys for some reason, maybe because they're easy to entertain, and they seem to respond well to my clumsy attempts to join in with them.

One of the first days I spent at the orphanage this time round I played catch with a young boy called Emmanuel. He's really cute and has a funny rubber face.

(Here with his new t-shirt)

He joined the orphanage about six weeks ago after being found on the street with two friends by the Director of the Centre, Celestin. The group survived by sleeping in sewers at night and begging during the day. Celestin took all three of the boys to the Centre but after a few days they decided to run away, having been brought new clothes and being given lots of food. They were encouraged to come back and did, but again ran away. Emmanuel eventually asked if he could return a third time but the Director felt that his reserves of goodwill had been used up and said if Emmanuel wanted to come back he had to make his own way there. Which he did. He walked about three miles from Kisimenti to where the Centre is located on the outskirts of town in Kanombe, and he's been there ever since.

He has settled in extremely well. His cheeky charm and the animated way he talks with his hands and face, means even the simplest of conversations with him is very funny. The other two boys have never been back. So that day we were playing catch, it started raining hard and we were getting soaked and muddy but didn't really mind. By the end of it I was pretty mucky and my white shirt and sandal-ed feet were covered in mud. Knowing I could go home to a hot shower I didn't mind, but as I got ready to leave Emmanuel came running out of his dorm room with his spare t-shirt (most boys at the Centre only have two outfits, both of which are quite tatty). He bent down and started wiping the mud off my dirty feet with his little t shirt. I tried to protest but he looked like he really wanted to do it, and I ended up feeling like it was his way of showing affection for me.

Another kid who I've spent a lot of time with is Samuel.

(He always wears his shirt buttoned to the top)

He's very quiet but hardworking and he seems to really love the art classes I've been running. I suspected his English might be quite good because he is very bright, but he never spoke a word of it to me, until yesterday. And it turns out he is good. I think it took him a few weeks to feel comfortable enough with me to try speaking it. I hope we can help him even get better.

Finally I want to introduce Frank Lampard. He is one of three new boys to join the Centre last week. Celestin found Frank and two of his friends – all aged six – sleeping under a truck. He spoke to them for a while and then asked if they would like to join the orphanage. They said yes and he took them on a bus out to the Centre. Celestin said that the boys asked if he needed help paying for the bus and offered him 100 Rwf (about 10p) they had saved up between them. He told them that he had enough money so they asked if they could buy sweets instead.

The three of them had all been on the streets for years – one since he was aged just three when his parents died – and had been sniffing glue regularly. When they arrived they were hyper, running all over the place with wide-eyes, but they have calmed down now and seem to have settled in well. When Sean and I went to the Centre the morning after they arrived, they were all proudly lifting up their t-shirts to show off their bellies, huge with food for the first time in who knows how long. Then Celestin went to the market and got them some new clothes because they had arrived in rags. He laid them all out on the floor and called the boys up one at a time to choose which t-shirts and shorts they wanted. The first name called was "Frank Lampard" and up stepped this kid.

It turns out that he actually has another surname but prefers to be known by the footballer's name instead. Anyway, this is the clothing ritual that happens with all new arrivals and it was quite a sight. All these tiny kids unable to contain themselves or wait their turn to choose their new clothes, then running around in their new outfits, puffing their chests out, proudly showing them off to the other boys.

Here they are in their new outfits

I'll write more about the work I've been doing at the Centre soon, but for now I just wanted to introduce some of the boys to you.

Avocadoes - welcome back

2010-10-04T05:37:00.000-07:00

So here I am back in Kigali. How did that happen? Who knows. But here I am, sitting under the shade of an avocado tree wondering if it's true what someone told me yesterday, that if one fell off the tree in the right way and hit you at the correct angle, that it could kill you. I guess if it does, you'll never know anyway. Maybe I should add something in to my will asking that any unfinished blogs be posted in the event of my death. What a way to go, people wouldn't be able to help laughing when they heard about your death. No one wants that, except maybe Malcolm Hardy.

It feels good to be back, with the usual, strongly-felt caveats of missing people at home. Kigali is as hot as ever, but at least this time we have some rain to cool things down. I dread the day when the rainy season will end. Since I was last here the country has been through a prolonged election campaign and has re-elected President Paul Kagame with a surprisingly low 93 per cent of the vote. The city looks more developed every time I look at the skyline and those huge half-built buildings with the wonky-looking wooden scaffolding look closer and closer to being finished. The whities in their sparkling 4x4s still roar down the cobbled roads taking their kids to expensive international schools, leaving the locals walking to the bus stop spluttering in their wake.

Something that definitely hasn't changed is the genuinely overpowering feeling of guilt and powerlessness which seems to follow me round and eat me up here. It hit me powerfully the first time I arrived in Kigali and it never really left, and it feels even more strong this time round. It's hard seeing kids as young as six living on the street, knowing that they sleep in sewers at night and face the kinds of brutalities and lack of safety that most adults never have to go through. But it's even harder spending time with the luckier ones, who have managed to make it into an orphanage, and seeing the probable hopelessness of their future lives. (I really hope I'm wrong about this.) I've been spending time at the orphanage that Sean works at in Kanombe, a quiet area of the city, out of town, towards the airport. One small kid has struck me in particular. He's only 10 or so and he doesn't speak much English. But he is an amazingly sweet, caring, hardworking, shy little thing. I've done a few art classes with the younger boys and he will be straight there if I drop something to pick it up, or to take the rubbish out of my hands and put it in the bin, or to fetch the very sick, infected baby calf in his arms – seemingly not minding about its seriously diseased bum touching him – so that it can receive it's injection. He is much quieter than the other boys, but much more diligent, attentive and knowing, always asking if he can carry out chores that need doing. But it hit me yesterday that however hard this boy works, however kind and good he is to those around him, however much he fixes problems that others haven't even noticed exist, he is unlikely to ever have a decent job or make much money. There is a government scholarship scheme for university here but the requirements are tough. What about those kids that are – like me – not exceptionally intelligent but bright enough to want to carry on learning, and who are unlikely to reach the levels set for scholarship?

I don’t mean to imply that you need education and money to be happy and I hope that all these kids find happiness somewhere, but it's such a tough start in life that it's virtually impossible to lift yourself out of. He is lucky to be at the orphanage, where he has a bed, food, schooling and access to a football pitch, volleyball court and all sorts of other things street kids dream of, but their funds aren't limitless and even that has to end some day. At the very latest, he will have to leave when he finishes school. I'm sure its been said a million times by people touched by the things they see in developing countries, but if I were one of these boys I would feel incredibly angry that just by dint of where I was born, I was facing that life.

People often say "you can't change the world" and "at least you're doing a small bit to help them" and while those statements are both patently true, they don't take away from the sadness of it all and the fact that it's not enough. No one is doing enough to help these people, who I'm sure are in every country in the world. But then who can? I'm not sure that there's a politician in the world who could change all this, even if they wanted to. I know that's why you have to work on helping people from the ground up with things like micro finance and I guess I need to focus on seeking out organisations that do that kind of thing.

So this has obviously got a bit deep and miserable for a "welcome back!" post – sorry about that. But these are the thoughts that I always find myself returning to, and I'm unable to effectively process them in my head. That boy I told you about earlier – the other day all the boys were cleaning their dorm room and he was putting his stuff back by the bed he shares with another boy. Everything he owns in the whole world half-filled a small plastic bag. He tucked it away behind another boy's bigger bag, maybe to try and give it a bit more protection from whatever might happen to possessions in a room shared by 40 former street boys. I don't know why I'm telling you that really, but it's things like that which break my heart on a daily basis here.

Before I make myself too miserable with all this, here is a photo of a pineapple growing in our back garden.

And of the remains of a fish head I was served at a buffet in Remera last week.

Lessons learned

2010-08-06T04:15:00.000-07:00

Lessons learned

Don't eat seafood in a land-locked country
Never put liquid soap on your hands before checking the water is running
Never get on a moto with a fat driver unless willing to do the splits
Don't turn up early for anything, even a wedding, unless you have a book to read
Don't go to a restaurant if you're hungry or in a hurry
Don't assume the power will be on, or the water running, when you wake up
Don't plan to do more than two things in any one day
Don't trust the management of five star hotels to be honest and trustworthy
Get your fee confirmed in writing before doing any work
Hide your illicit plastic bags deep in your luggage when entering Rwanda

Jobs Offered

Helping to run a department in the Rwandan civil service
Newsreader on a Kigali radio station
Giving sex education to boys at an orphanage
Editor of an in-flight magazine

Things I missed

Newsnight
Jon Stewart and the Daily Show
red wine
fish
hot water
newspapers
the Sunday routine of lounging around, having breakfast and reading good (and bad) newspapers
trains
Marmite
libraries

London feels new

2010-08-06T03:57:00.000-07:00

IT'S an odd feeling coming back to a city that I know really well and that I have lived in for pretty much my whole life, and to see it all so differently. I had obviously prepared myself for everything to be different when I left London for Rwanda, but I didn't really expect to have to adjust coming home. The first thing that was strange was just how many white people are here. They're everywhere. I guess going straight from the heart of East Africa to a small Surrey village to visit my granny after getting off the flight was always going to be a contrast. And hearing them talk about water shortages meaning their lawn was brown and dry, elicited less sympathy from me than had I not just spent six months in a country where small children queue for hours each morning to collect water from a central tap.

It was also striking just how ordered and calm everything is here. People obey traffic regulations, there aren't potholes everywhere and the roads are all neatly tarmac-ed and dust-free. By the time I left Kigali, in the middle of the dry season, I couldn't walk from my house to the main road to get a bus without being choked by dust and it was impossible/pointless to wear any of my white clothes or to even try to keep my feet clean.

(Mine and Sean's corpse feet)

Other things I've noticed:
-you occasionally see low-denomination coins lying on the street in London, this never happens in Rwanda
-how vast and overwhelming (and chilly) supermarkets in the UK are
-how nice it is not to have to do battle with a couple of hills to make even the shortest journey. But I do miss the vista of wherever you are in the city, seeing Kigali surrounded on all sides by huge, rolling hills
-how expensive beer is! And yesterday I actually spent £4.50 (about 5,000 Rwf) on a sandwich in central London. I couldn't believe it
-just how much I resented the mosquito net routine every night: turning out the light, using a headlamp to make it back to my bed, diligently tucking in the mosquito net into the bed frame, spending a few minutes doing the check-over to make sure no mozzies had snuck in. As if having to clean my teeth every night wasn’t a chore enough. It still feels like a blissful luxury just to get into bed each night
-how well-dressed people are here and just how much money we all spend on clothes, shoes and looking good
-how friendly people are in Rwanda and how we're quite a bit less sociable here. People you sit next to on buses don't say hello and if you're walking at the same pace as someone on a street, you don't automatically start up a conversation with them. When I first arrived in Rwanda, I found this habit annoying, but when you loosen up a bit and realise it's all friendly and that it's actually a good way of making friends, it becomes a really pleasant thing
-how lucky I am to have such a lovely and supportive family and group of friends who are constantly interested in what I've been doing and in what life is like in that part of the world, and who seem to be trying to get rid of me back to Rwanda again
-how the things I thought I missed the most about life in the UK – hot water, interesting food, late-night bars – aren't that great after all and you can live without them quite easily
-how much clutter and rubbish is in my room. Having lived out of two bags for six months I've realised I probably don't need all the toiletries, trinkets, books and clothes that currently fill my room
-and how having lost parents to a brutal genocide, living a dreadfully tough life on the streets or in refugee camps for years and not being able to go to school, are not necessarily a barrier to being a bright, happy and successful person.

I guess to anyone who has lived in a "developing" country before, these things will be obvious and old-hat, and I hope it doesn't sound like I'm knocking the UK because what we have here is absolutely great. The boys I met in my time in Rwanda simply could not believe I lived in a country where unemployed, sick and elderly people were given money by the state to survive, and they had a hard time understanding the NHS too. But these are just some of the things that I've been thinking about in my first week back and I thought I better write them down before I forgot.

Goodbye Kigali

2010-07-30T11:43:00.001-07:00

I should have written before I left Kigali but I had a busy last few days, tying up loose ends and saying goodbye to people. So now that I've had my second hot bath in six months, got used to late summer evenings and the lack of mosquitoes, cleaned the last of Rwanda's dust off me and endured travelling on delayed flight after delayed flight which ended with me filling in a lost luggage form for my two suitcases at Heathrow this morning, I thought I should say a farewell.

Really I want to thank everyone that made my life in Rwanda so lovely, bright and interesting. From the random people who gave me lifts when I was caught in a downpour; to the children who ran across the road just to hold my white hand and bid me good morning, even though it was evening; and the ever-patient staff at various hotels and cafes around the city who didn't mind me abusing their internet for hours on end while slowly drinking a pot of African tea. To the nuns at my beloved home at Centre Christus; and the guards on the gate who we had to bribe to let us in after 11pm; to the people with huge smiles who would stop and talk to me as I waited to cross the road, telling me how glad they were to have visitors to their country and asking me to pass on their best wishes to my family.

Most of all I want to say thank you to the three people who made my whole time in East Africa a constant round of laughter, fun, good food and insightful conversation – my flatmates at Centre Christus: Sean, Florah and Carol/Caz/Caroline/Caro. (Pictured here with Carol's friend Christine.)

By the end we spent pretty much all of our time together and I hope they all know how much I love and care about them and how grateful I am to them for giving me such a great time and for making me feel so at home. One of them stands out more than most (you know who you are) and gets extra special thanks.

There were all sorts of other people from the six months I spent in Rwanda who I want to thank for making it so fun. The massage-loving David Gasirabo, who started out as a colleague but quickly became a great friend and my go-to man on any Rwandan question.

Dicken Marshall who I met in my first few days in the country at the British embassy, and who was a constant source of fun, good conversation and dancing. His buddy Jean-Prime who helped Florah and I out a lot in the early days.

Jess Engerbretson, a radio journalist from Washington, who became a firm friend and who is a really interesting girl.

Steph Ogden who I spent many lovely months living with, having great conversations and laughs with and who I hope to see again one day. Her pal Nick who I lived with for a month who is a great guy and makes some of the best scones I've ever tasted. A journalist called Collin who helped me out a lot and showed Florah and I great hospitality. The lovely German boys. And the fun, funny and brilliant Claire.

And everyone else who helped me out or was just lovely to me: Hannah, Christine, Nicolette, Diane, Jamie, Rosemary, Katy, Maia, Celestin, Tom, Donnah, David II, Michael, Amir, Gloria, David III and the staff at my favourite Indian restaurant!

The boys at Umungongo House where I spent a lot of time have left an awfully big impression on me, and it's strange adjusting to life back in London when I've seen just how these former street-boys live. I'm really proud of them all for doing so well in their end of year exams despite what they've been through and I have high hopes for their futures. I want to thank them for being so welcoming and open with me and for all the fun we had, especially at the football tournament Sean organised a few weeks before I left.

The staff at that place work wonders and were so welcoming to me, especially Esdras, Jean Pierre and Odille.

It's a big old cheesey cliché, but in my limited experience people in Africa are so welcoming, friendly and will want to just come up and talk to you wherever you might be. It makes for a really beautiful atmosphere and that is something that I will really miss.I hope I make it back there soon.

Black stars

2010-07-09T03:54:00.000-07:00

As well as being the name of my favourite Radiohead song (nearly), this is also the name of the Ghanaian football team. Last Friday night they were the only African team still in the World Cup and all of Rwanda (and I suspect Africa) was rooting for them. We went to Carwash, a bar down in one of Kigali's valleys, to watch the match.
It was a very frustrating match, as you can see

Immediately after the Uruguay handball people were pretty angry. But after the match was over and we headed to another bar, the mood was very different. I thought people might be a bit subdued, but the bar was packed with people carrying the Ghanaian flag, and I think they were just happy that the team had got that far. There was a conga-line around the bar behind the flag and Carol managed to steal a Ghana hat.

Shop for Rwanda

2010-07-09T03:30:00.000-07:00

Centre Marembo, a charity I've been involved with, is a really worthy cause. Last week I helped run their stall at Novotel hotel, one of Kigali's richer hotels, and we took 30,000 Rwandan francs in one day (around £35) which is pretty good.

This is our beautiful, colourful stall full of goods handmade by vulnerable young people.

The profits from all the products go back into the centre and help support a household of 30 former street boys, as well as providing an income for the vulnerable young people who make the goods.

Everything is very, very reasonably priced, so if anyone is in the market for some authentic, handmade Rwandan goods, let me know and I can bring some home with me. Or if you would like to see some close-ups of something I can take some photos. You can also see some of the products on www.shop4rwanda.com

We sell:

Colourful hand-woven bowls

Handmade earrings

Necklaces made from recycled beads, created out of last year's calendars

Really lovely cards, handmade out of banana leaves and glue made from cassava

Placemats

Traditional woven Rwandan Agaseke pots (these are the ones with the funny but elegant lids you can see in the left of the photo)

Dolls and stuffed animals (elephants, giraffes and rabbits I think)

An assortment of bags, purses, pencil cases and make-up bags

Twice a week, all the youths at the centre get together to meet up, have lessons and discuss various topics. Before they get going, they all stand in the yard chanting and dancing. They don't really do it justice, but here are some snaps.

No spitting please

2010-07-09T03:23:00.000-07:00

This is where I have been spending much of the last two weeks – a beautiful swimming pool in the posh area of Nyarutarama.

I don't think I'll ever be able to swim in Ladywell pool again without thinking about the happy, sunny days I've spent here. (That's not to say Ladywell isn't great – Save Ladywell Baths!)

But really, this post was just an excuse to show you two photos.

This is possibly my favourite photo of my Kenyan friend Carol, wearing my goggles

And I like this sign

Ben

2010-07-09T01:08:00.000-07:00

All buses in Kigali are emblazoned with something or other - the badly-spelt names of English footballer players and managers, L'il Wayne, "T-BAG", "Thanks God" or "Htanks God" as I saw yesterday. But I've seen this Ben bus around quite a lot lately.

But when I saw what was on the back it freaked me out a bit

Not only does it have your name on the front Ben, but it has his your initials on the back.

I actually took the Ben bus home yesterday, and it's one of the more pimped-out buses I've been on - fancy seat covers and banging music. I'd expect nothing less.

UMVA

2010-07-01T01:19:00.000-07:00

I realise I've been a bit slack on posts for the last few months. I think bad internet connection and regular, lengthy power cuts, coupled with the fact that I've very much settled into, and am really enjoying my life out here, has meant that I haven't managed to find the time to do it.

But that doesn't mean I don't have loads of interesting stuff to tell you! (Whoever you are – this is all so one-sided.)

I'm still teaching English but have dispensed with all pretence of them being proper lessons – I basically pick a topic and we sit and discuss it for a couple of hours. But they're learning some vocab, and all about England (I think I'm unintentionally but slowly putting them off the idea of it being some kind of beautiful oasis that's full of millionaires, since I've emphasised the dirtiness, the high cost of living and the fact that we have homosexuals...) and I get to hear about Rwandan life. They were intrigued by the tube and were in awe of the London Eye. They liked the look of a Sunday roast, but I couldn't quite articulate what a Yorkshire pudding was (you try it – it sounds disgusting). They wanted to know what we think of Tony Blair in England (HA!) and whether the Queen has any actual power. And they liked the idea that people have pet dogs (rare here) and that we have parks to walk them in (rare too).

I've also been teaching them songs – so far Blowing in the Wind and The Cure's Friday I'm In Love. I'm not sure if the subtleties of Blowing in the Wind quite made it through the translation but maybe it will stay with them, and Friday I'm in Love, was enjoyed but also brought out some anger – "that is ridiculous, if you really love someone, you would love them every day of the week". But my attempts at musical education have clearly failed because next week they have requested Westlife.

I think I may now have visited all of Rwanda's national parks:

- Volcanoes with Megan to pay a visit to the Kwitonda family of gorillas, 2,600m high up in the mountains.

- Nyungwe rainforest with Florah and her visiting friend Jamie for a couple of treks and some well fun overnight camping (made more fun by a dinner of doughnuts and a huge bottle of red wine, and funner still by seeing loads of mountain monkeys around our tent in the morning).

And Akagera national park, which borders Tanzania and is home to Rwanda's exotic animals.

This was a brilliant trip, despite being attacked by some seriously aggressive and persistent horse flies. Six of us hired a huge safari truck with a removeable roof, packed it full of picnic food, wine and a crate of trusty Primus beer and headed off to camp overnight in the park.

We made the mistake of doing the safari trip the wrong way around, because we drank far too much around the campfire (and did too many quiz questions) and then had to wake up at sunrise to head off for a day's very bumpy drive around the park to look for animals.

But it was worth it – in the end the animal haul included giraffes, baboons, zebras, hippos, antelope and some beautiful birds.

Last week I also visited the Ugandan capital, Kampala, and went white-water rafting on the Nile, which I'll save for another post.

Other than that I've learnt how to make chapatti and ricotta cheese

And been watching the world cup with my lovely housemates. Here is a new friend Carol and I made at Carwash at the England v Germany match - his name is Kevin

And finally, here is a lovely photo of Sean wearing my trusty headlamp and reading a trashy Ugandan newspaper (on the front page: "I caught my man bonking his mum".)

*Umva is one of the best and most commonly used Kinyarwanda words, it means "listen".

Cattle do nicely

2010-07-01T00:38:00.000-07:00

Like in India, cows are very important culturally in Rwanda. Unlike in

India

, people still eat them here. Mainly in the form of kebabs called brochette, which you get in every single bar in Rwanda and which are very tasty indeed.

Milk has been a big part of the culture here for centuries – traditionally cows are thought of like mothers because even if you don't have a mother, the cow will feed you. The Rwandan national dance is based on the cow and they are always given as dowries at weddings.

Rwandans don't tend to like it if you badmouth milk, as I found out once. I was made to drink a pint-and-a-half of it, still warm from the cow (urghh) on a field trip. It didn't go down very well and I may have expressed myself a little too freely. Won't do that again.

There are cows everywhere in

Rwanda

, including outside my room right now. These are the traditional Rwandan cows, called Ankole, they have the beautiful, big horns.

But they are not very productive milk-wise so they are being bred with foreign Fresian cows, which produce a lot more milk.

Rwanda

apparently doesn't yet have the capacity to process all the milk it produces each day, but they are building more factories to cope with it all and will soon start making things like curd, cheese and ice cream which you don't get much of here at the moment.

Deep heat

2010-06-30T23:57:00.000-07:00

Rwanda is well into its twice-yearly dry season and Kigali is HOT.

It hasn't rained for weeks, the little grass the city has is starting to go brown, and the roads which aren't tarmac-ed (which is most of them) are covered in a haze of red dust, which gets in your nose, your eyes and your mouth. It's even worse when a car drives past, bumping along and plopping down into all the potholes, sending even more dry dust swirling into the air. It also makes it impossible to keep your feet anywhere near clean and I've been having to give myself special lower-leg showers twice a day.

It's nice to be able to leave your washing out without worrying about rain (shit, yes, I am officially old) and there are fewer mosquitoes about, but it would be nice if we could have just a light shower to get rid of some of the dust (we used to have them twice-daily). On the plus side it's making me look more tanned.

Missing elephant feet

2010-06-23T06:38:00.000-07:00

I went to a museum with Sean the other day and there were a couple of weird/interesting things that stood out. Probably the most obscene was a table made of elephant feet.

We were visiting the former President of Rwanda's palace, which is in Kanombe, one of Kigali's quieter suburbs (and happens to be very near Sean's orphanage). It was built by President Habyarimana in the 1970s and contained some very strange things.

President Habyarimana was flying home from a conference in Tanzania on April 6 1994 when his plane was shot down as it came into land at Kigali airport. The President's body and most of the plane actually landed in his garden, which is close to the airport, and his kids were apparently in the garden when the crash happened. I don't think it has ever been established beyond doubt who shot down the plane, but it was this event which sparked off the genocide, which got under full swing the next day.

The house and garden are now a museum which you can visit and it's a strange mix of opulent décor and cheap mdf-style furniture.

Sadly we weren't allowed to take any photos inside the house (although we did manage to get some Cheers-style shots in some of the President's outside bars) but these are some of the best bits:

-the staircase that leads up from the main reception area to the first floor is pretty impressive, if a little 70s and dated-looking now. Each step had a sensor to alert the family to intruders.

-a secret gun cupboard only accessible by pushing the wall in the right spot

-a hair salon

-a massage room, situated just next door to the witchcraft room

-a private Catholic chapel

-swimming pool, tennis courts and in-house nightclub (complete with a shower)

-a bathroom with his'n'hers toilets placed next to each other on a raised ledge. (The first lady had a much bigger room containing her bath, while the President had to squidge into a tiny hallway for his shower)

-a large outdoor snake pit for the President's massive python, complete with its own swimming pool (at least 10 ft long). The snake apparently escaped the compound after the plane crash and hasn't been seen since

-an outdoor wardrobe which looked more like a small aircraft hangar

-oh yes and the elephant-feet table. This was really quite gross. The base of the table was made up of two huge elephant feet, complete with toenails and wrinkly skin, while the table-top was covered in the animal's skin. It had pride of place in the President's bedroom. Elephants used to roam in Rwanda not too long ago (and some people say they are still in the country's national parks) and I wonder if this one was native to Rwanda. I also wonder what the President did with the other two feet.

I had a go on the Presidential swing set, and this is barman Sean

Just quickly

2010-06-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to upload this photo quickly because it's brilliant. I like how the panorama setting has distorted all our faces.

It was taken by Florah's friend Jamie when we were in Akagera national park in our massive truck.

Gecko superstar

2010-06-11T06:54:00.000-07:00

It finally happened, the thing I've been dreading the most.

Living here you have to get used to geckos absolutely everywhere in the house, but they're fairly harmless and they eat flies so that's all fine. But a little too frequently I spot one without a tail and I fret about whether I was the one to chop it off in a closing door or whether it got into a fight with another gecko or a rat or a monkey.

But what has really worried me, ever since I arrived, was the day I would be presented with just a wispy, scale-ey, decaying gecko tail lying in my room, waiting for me to do something about it. When it did happen the other day, I kept thinking it may spring into life on its own, like I saw in a film once, and slink its way over to its missing body. It wasn't as bad as all that, I just brushed it into the garden with a broom. But I can't get the creepy image of that ghostly, slightly curved, grey/white, tapered and until recently, living, tail out of my head.

"Traditionally, finding a gecko tail means something," said my Kenyan flatmate, "but I can't remember what." (I think she meant good luck dad).

A burnt out case

2010-05-31T03:03:00.000-07:00

In the last few weeks I have largely been:

Attending a Rwandan wedding

Taking photos of myself in my bathroom (Dad – can you see me, you and Spot in this photo?)

Visiting Nyungwe national rainforest

This is our guide, Robert Mugabe

We did a whole day's trekking and camped overnight. We had a campfire, showered with the bugs and got through two litres of red wine. We saw monkeys outside our tent in the morning.

Watching the sunrise from my bedroom

Trying to deter mosquitoes, with little effect

Doing crosswords in the garden

Having a drink with Sean

Jambo Burundi!

2010-05-18T08:23:00.000-07:00

SO what feels like six months ago, I went on a little trip to

Burundi

. Partly to renew my visa (as you have to every three months) and partly because I wanted to visit

Burundi

This time last year I never, ever would have guessed that I would be visiting somewhere as far away, exotic-sounding and, until recently, as politically unstable as Burundi. But it's one of Rwanda's closest neighbours and it's a very lively little country so it seemed like a good idea to visit.

After a six-hour bus ride south, and for $20 at the border, I and two of my flatmates arrived in the capital, Bujumbura.

Much of Burundi looks like Rwanda – I think at one stage they were one country – it is very hilly and green. Here are some kids hitching a free ride up a hill.

But there are subtle differences – the lack of terracing on the hills in Burundi is noticeable, but maybe just to a geek like me (I've been learning all about agriculture in the region – see post below). And as you approach the capital from the hills, it opens out into this huge, wide, open plain, and you can see Lake Tanganyika (the second deepest lake in the world, I recently learnt from Trivial Pursuit).

Rwanda

has very few (any?) big open plains.

Apparently Burundians are very similar to Rwandans too – both populations are historically made up of Hutu and Tutsi and they speak a very similar language, Kirundi and Kinyarwandan. Considering how geographically and culturally close the two countries are, it's strange how different they seem. Bujumbura seems almost European. It's a proper city – albeit a faded one – with streets full of buildings and infrastructure. It sounds strange but Kigali has never felt like a complete city. There is large-scale development, but only pockets of it, and there are parts of town without any development at all. Much as I love it, it doesn't feel very joined-up as a city. Whereas Bujumbura feels like the kind of slightly dilapidated old city you might find in France.

Burundi also has far fewer white people than Kigali but you feel a lot less conspicuous. In Kigali, you can't walk more than a few metres without hearing the word "mzungu" (white person) muttered at you as you walk past, or shouted at you from across the street. It's not generally menacing, but it is a constant reminder that you stick out and will never be able to blend into the city. Even those that don't say anything often stare very obviously at you until you are out of sight. Whereas in Burundi, it feels like people are just busy getting on with their own thing and have no interest in you and your poxy white skin,

It was only a couple of years ago that warring political groups in the country signed up to a weapons amnesty and the Foreign Office still recommends that you do not travel overnight to Burundi because there is a risk of banditry (don't worry granny). But Bujumbura itself seems very safe and we were lucky to have a Burundian friend to show us around.

The first day we arrived we headed straight for Lake Tanganyika.

We were told about the risk of crocodiles and a nasty disease called bilharzia (where little snails sit in your organs for months until bursting out – or something) but it's hard to resist swimming when presented with a beautiful lake, with choppy, warm waves.

We swam for ages and made friends with some local boys who taught us how to play their version of volleyball.

We were still splashing around as it got dark, when men with guns came over and rather alarmingly told us to get out because that's when the crocs come out. But it wasn't the crocs I had to worry about – walking back to the hotel I was absolutely massacred by mosquitoes. I'm still bearing the scars today.

In other animal news, that weekend I also saw a HIPPO! It was swimming in the same lake we had been and we saw it doggy paddling over to shore to eat some greenery. Then my friend Prime mentioned that a few weeks ago one of the lake's hippos had killed a small child. They look so friendly but they are vicious.

The rest of the weekend was spent swimming, avoiding the rain, drinking beer, eating fruit and playing cards.

And someone speared Sean as he slept

I left on the Sunday on my own and endured a painful bus ride home. Burundians don't appear to travel light and every passenger seemed to have at least three large suitcases each, so all of the bus' windows and doors were piled high with them, meaning the man who's job it was to pack it all in had to climb out of a window after completing the job, before filling the space he had left with another bag. Not a great start for someone with mild claustrophobia.

Things got worse when we ran into the first of three lively political marches that were to significantly slow the journey down.

Knowing about the recent turbulent political history of the country, it was alarming and mildly terrifying to round a corner in the bus and be met by thousands of people jogging towards you while shouting, jeering and waving placards. When they started shaking the bus I was tempted to put my English sim card into my phone and start texting my goodbyes, but then I saw the huge grins on the faces of the protestors and saw the little photos they were all holding up – of the man they want to be president in this year's elections – and calmed down a bit. Then it became fun to watch them all going by and we saw two more large rallies as we drove back to Kigali.

ps. Jambo means "hello" in Swahili, and "Jambo Burundi!" is printed across the curtains in my room

Sorry

2010-05-01T03:22:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of postings lately, but I've had a friend visiting from England.

But there's lots to say. As Ben pointed out, I've been to Burundi; I went Gorilla trekking on Thursday; and I've met all sorts of interesting people with my new job (the mother of conjoined twins last week) so I will get it all written and posted as soon as I can.

In the meantime, here's a gorilla!

Obligatory tourist shot, plus free Goretex plug

Monkey sighting

2010-04-19T07:07:00.000-07:00

By some strange twist of fate, just after writing that last blog I saw the monkey! It was sitting on the fence right outside my room as I was tapping away on my computer. As I looked up it loped off, with its long tail trailing through the grass. Next time I will get a photo.

Centre Christus

2010-04-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

For the past month I've been living in a Jesuit compound in Kigali. I haven't converted or anything, they just have a nice 4-bed house situated in beautiful, calm, lush compound for rent at a very cheap price (the whole house costs little more to rent monthly than my single room cost at the last place). The house is set back at the rear of the compound, away from the nuns' quarters and we only really see them to say hello to, although I've been warned that they are all-seeing and know everything that goes on here.

The house + rainbow

We have a lovely large garden, which plays host to the compound's cows and I've often been woken up early in the morning by the sound of contented munching outside my window.

Rumour has it there is a monkey in the grounds as well, but I've yet to see it. A friend claims he saw a monkey tail disappearing up a tree once but no further sightings have been reported. We have an avocado tree outside the front door and a tree tomato tree outside the kitchen. (I'd never heard of tree tomatoes before coming to Rwanda – they are a slightly bitter fruit which are very popular here). There is a mango tree tantalising close but just out of reach in the compound's fenced-off fruit-and-veg growing area.

Cows plus avocado tree

I share with three other people – Florah, another English volunteer; Sean, a Texan who volunteers at an orphanage; and American Emily who has only just moved in and I'm not entirely sure what she does yet. Here are Sean and Florah outside the house.

It took us three weeks to sort it out, but we now nearly have a fully-functioning house. The fridge and camping-style gas stove arrived last week and I'm trying to remember how to cook again. A pirate banner I bought to celebrate Florah's birthday has brightened up the living room and most importantly, we have board games. Trouble is, we bought the ultra-difficult "Globe Trotter" edition of Trivial Pursuit and it turns out I'm pretty rubbish at geography, but I was able to guess that the city Billie Piper and Chris Evans got married in was Las Vegas.

Here are some photos from Florah's birthday party and the cake that Steph, our brilliant former flatmate, improvised rather spectacularly.

The compound is right opposite the city's Amahoro stadium (meaning "peace"), where the UN HQ was based during the genocide and where thousands of people sheltered before being rescued by the RPA. Here's a photo of a load of school girls walking past it, taken rather badly from the bus. But I really like their uniforms – very stylish and quite Margaret Howell I think.

It's nice being surround by so many trees and so much greenery because there is very little in the way of open space or parks in Kigali, but being so close to nature does come with some problems. Sometimes my room is like a zoo – full of lizards, frogs, moths, mosquitoes and other unidentified flying things. I used to feel quite protected and smug when I was all tucked into my mosquito net before bed – I could hear the mosquitoes' distinctive and persistent buzz around my head but knew they couldn't get in – but now it is full of holes and I'm less confident.

I'm really happy in this house, despite the lack of hot water, the weird smelly toilet, the noisy bar at the rear of the compound and the frequent power and water blackouts. We have a healthy stock of buy-one-get-one-free gin from the supermarket; a regular supply of fresh fruit and veg from the nearby market and all the compound staff who regularly come to the house are extremely nice – the lady who cleans always brings me the same bed linen because I once said how much I liked the rose design on one of them. I'm hoping I will be able to stay here until I leave Kigali.

View from my room

Ps. Here's a photo of a dead bird I saw on the way to work a few weeks ago

If you knew me and you knew yourself you wouldn't have killed me

2010-04-08T23:51:00.001-07:00

There were a few bulky plastic bags at the back of the church I visited on April 6, so I peered inside one. The one I chose was as normal a plastic bag as you can imagine. I think it was from an American jeans shop. When I looked into it I saw a smart navy-blue pinstripe suit. As I tried to make out whether the muddied, torn material inside comprised a whole suit, my eyes realised they were looking at three teeth, and then the jaw bone they were attached to, within the folds of the material.

Quickly after that I saw a leg bone and an arm bone and some other bones whose one-time purpose in the body I couldn't make out.

I looked in another bag – this one a USAID rice sack – and it was full of arm and leg bones. I didn't look in any more plastic bags.

I was in a church in a town called Nyamata where on April 11 1994 around 10,000 people were killed with grenades and machetes by government militias and local people. The bags at the back of the church contained the remains of some of those killed in surrounding areas during the 100 days of genocide that year. They had recently been discovered and were in the bags waiting to be cleaned and buried.

I've been thinking about the man who died in that suit. I wonder whether he prepared for his death by donning his Sunday best, what became of his other teeth and what he would think if he knew a girl from Lewisham was looking at his remains in a plastic bag 16 years on. I don't think he would like it and I'm sorry that I did look.

It's impossible not to think about death in this country in this month.

April 7 was the first day of the 1994 genocide and Rwanda shuts down to mourn. All shops and bars close, memorials are held across the country and people mourn publically. Seeing as death is inescapable I decided to get a headstart and visited two of

Rwanda

's more moving memorials the day before it all started.

The church at Nyamata is filled with the clothes of all 10,000 people who died there – thousands and thousands of shirts, dresses, socks and trousers piled on church pews. They start to blur into one after a while – just a muddy pile of tatty clothes, pulled from a mass grave where the murderers tried to cover up what they had done. But occasionally as I walked around the small brick building, something caught my eye that made it all very real again – the leg harness without the leg that should have been inside of it; a nice checked shirt; a pair of purple knickers; the waistband of a pair of trousers that seemed so familiar to me it twisted my heart to think of them in such an unfamiliar situation.

There were also a few bits of spine bone visible in some of the piles. The clothes had brought out an acute sadness in me – some of is escaping from the corners of my eyes - but seeing the bones replaced that feeling with raw anger.

The feelings of sadness and hopelessness, however, returned when the guide told me the story of the woman whose body is buried in the church crypt. She was violated in her home in Nyamata in a quite staggering way in front of her three children, before being killed. The guide told me that simple sentence – "they put a stick from her vagina up to her head" – without any preamble. I couldn't stop a pathetic whimper escaping from my mouth and all I could really do then was turn away from her towards the sun. She is a relative of someone who died at the church and didn't need to see a stranger's sadness.

There's a lot more to say about the memorial at Nyamata: the rows and rows of skulls neatly lined up in the cold underground crypt, some with clean machete cuts right though them; the weird feeling of being alone underground with so many coffins, bones and tormented souls; how you feel scared being down there until you realise that fear is nothing compared to the terror the people inside the church felt in the three days before their deaths; and whether it's right to keep the bones of these victims preserved like this.

But I think that's enough sadness for one day. I will write about the strange, moving thing that is the Rwandan Genocide Memorial day another time.

Home sweet home

2010-04-05T05:08:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I visited the boys at Umugongo House again. I lent them my laptop so they could watch a Jackie Chan film. They don't speak English but they love just watching the action.

My flatmate Steph very kindly offered to let the boys borrow her brililant camera to see what kind of photos they would come up with of their home. These are some of the results.

Shoes

Neighbours

Lunch

Remains of lunch

The kitchen

The resulting photos are not bad at all. I'm slowly interviewing each of the boys to learn about their life stories and how they ended up at Umugongo House. I'm hoping to eventually compile them in some kind of book or article, and would like to use the boys' photos to accompany it.

Keep the aspidistra flying

2010-04-01T03:06:00.001-07:00

I've realised there's an awful lot about everyday life in this city I haven't talked about here, so here are some of the interesting things I've learnt:

How it's touchingly normal for men to walk down the road holding hands and hugging each other – I was so close to getting a photo of two policemen holding hands the other day, but they turned around at just the wrong moment.

But how when married couples walk down the street, the woman tends to walk a few feet behind her husband.

People who sell chickens do so by tying six live birds together by their feet and resting them on the pavement for people to look at.

Most Rwandans are unable to distinguish the letters "L" and "R" from each other. Which makes a lesson where the word "election" comes up a bit awkward.

You can buy a passionfruit for about 5p.

People don't whistle to get each other's attention, they hiss.

Although there is no NHS here, treatment for HIV and AIDS sufferers is met by the government.

That I have to kill at least four mosquitoes in my room every night – often filled with what I assume is my own blood – before I can go to sleep.

No home can honestly claim to have hot water.

That it is unusual not to have staff, or "house girls" as they are known. A bare minimum seems to be someone to wash your clothes, clean, cook and guard your house.

That everything takes longer here – Rwandan time! People are often late, don't turn up to appointments and constantly answer their phones in meetings, having let their garish ringtones blare out for as long as possible.

The heat, hills, not being able to clean your teeth with tap water, lack of washing machines and having to shower using a bucket of cold water all make normal daily activities that much more of a chore.

That while you are tracking the movements of one mosquito in order to murder it, another will be biting your ankle.

People love a buffet lunch

How when you say "Hi" to people they always say "I am fine". I always want to teach them to wait until I say "How are you?" but have yet to manage it

Most people I've met seem to get up between 5-6am.

There is more of a drug and alcohol problem than people let on.

Kigali is the land of a "milles collines" or a thousand hills. And I have to walk up and down about half of them every bloody day, in the baking sun.

Milles Collines is also the name of a posh hotel in the city, made famous by the film Hotel Rwanda, where the owner Paul Rusesabagina is supposed to have sheltered thousands of Tutsi and saved their lives. There is now something of a war between Rusesabagina (who now lives in

Belgium

) and the Rwandan government, who say he inflated his story for his own gain and is profiting from the genocide.

It is also the name of the Radio Station that encouraged the massacre of Tutsi during the genocide.

A different kind of orphanage

2010-03-27T05:04:00.000-07:00

This week I went to visit a very different kind of orphanage to the "Youth Village" I saw a few weeks ago.
This one is based in Nyabugogo on the outer edge of Kigali and houses 100 boys. It's been here for 12 years. My new flatmate - Texan Sean - has been volunteering there since January so I decided to have a look.

The place is run-down with just five working lightbulbs in the whole place (there was one before Sean arrived but he and one of the boys wired up the building). It's based in a warehouse that was never finished being built and is completely open to the elements.

100 boys live here and an additional 140 boys and girls come to the building every day to attend a the primary school. In stark contrast to the Youth Village, this place runs on $7,000 a month, which includes rent, teachers' salaries, clothes, food and medical treatment for the boys, as well as some extras like travel home for the boys to see their families.

This is where they cook for 100 boys. They tend to eat porridge, beans, flourmeal and sometimes rice and occasionally vegetables

This is where the boys sleep - two to a mattress

And this is one of the classrooms

This is the toilet block

Sean in his office

This is the kids lining up at 7.30am before class

And this is the quilting group - a group of secondary school boys make beautiful patchwork quilts for sale here and in the US

And here is a kid in a fetching leopard-print waistcoat - a recent donation from a US church group

All the money for the running of the orphanage comes from private donors in the US - people who donate $10-50 a month. It started off as a church-funded orphanage but is now run without any religious links.
They currently don't have the facilities to look after street girls too, but they hope to move into a new building across town next week and will have more room and the possibility of taking in girls as well.

All the children are meant to be orphans but they are currently looking into 12 kids who's families may have bribed a previous dodgy supervisor to get them into the orphange in order to have free schooling and food.

This is a very different kind of orphanage to the huge, plush village I saw last week. And although the facilities are by no means perfect, the orphans aren't isolated from their communities here and are encouraged to contribute to their society.

Snap happy

2010-03-27T03:58:00.000-07:00

Umugongo House is a project the charity Centre Marembo runs where 30 former street children, many of them orphans, are put in a big house together in Kigali where they are fed, clothed, looked after and put through school.

Some of the younger boys turned up at the office the other day after school, bored and looking for entertainment. I gave them my Ipod, my camera and some books (Tin Tin and a football book). These are some of the snaps they came up with.

Mr President

2010-03-27T03:36:00.000-07:00

On Tuesdays I've been doing some ad-hoc English lesson to three classes of varying abilites. There are about 60 of them in total - mainly boys but there are about six girls. It's hard work, sometimes even just trying to make out what their blank faces staring up at me are trying to say.

But with the more advanced lot I've taken to just having discussions with them, to improve their confidence, vocab and pronunciation.

Last week I asked them to tell me about their country - it's past, politics, whether they are fond of it, if they think it "punches above its weight" in international reputation for a nation the size of Wales.

Then I asked them what they would do if they were President for a day. First the question was met with practical answers like "Teacher, it's very difficult to implement any changes in just one day." But when they got the hang of it, there were some really interesting answers:

"I would make everyone Christian"

"I would continue on the good track our President has us on with development and tourism" x 8 students

"I would allow opposition political parties to be present in our country" *

"I would give more support to young people because if we don't sort out the youth problem in Rwanda it will be hard for our country to prosper"

"I would ban all political parties so we only have one - there are too many and it would make life simpler" *

"I would make sure my family were well provided for and had enough money" (this was met by howls of "corrupt president!" from the rest of the class)

"I would give small loans to everyone who wanted to set up a business to encourage enterprise and reduce poverty"

(*Techinically there are opposition parties in Rwanda but President Paul Kagame's ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front is the only real one in practice.)

The next week we were talking about Rwanda's culture and how it has changed since the 1994 genocide (quite a lot it turns out - people no longer drink alcohol at weddings, according to one student) and the conversation turned to religion. Rwanda is an overwhelmingly Christian country, so if you're not a believer, it's a topic best avoided.

But the inevitable happened and they asked me to explain as best I could why I don't believe in God, and how I explain the presence of trees, animals and the universe if they weren't created by him. They asked if I believed in Satan and howled with disbelief when I said I didn't think there was such a thing as an afterlife. They've asked me to provide them with a book explaining evolution and the big bang theory so they can try to understand how people can believe there isn't a creator, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea.

Look at this

2010-03-17T03:53:00.001-07:00

Pretty beans soaking in my kitchen

Burundian feast - hidden under these lids was a delightful treat. Which I didn't think to take a photo of. Greedy.

Still not dead. This morning at 5am, I heard it practising it's cock-a-doodle-do. It wasn't doing the full thing, just different bits of it, like it was trying to perfect one chorus of a song.

Nice view, but I'm leaving this house on Sunday to move into a church compound with a load of nuns. I hope they try to convert me.

Goat brochette-preparing table at a seedy bar - looks pretty un-hygienic, but not as bad as their stinky toilet

Beautiful, scary-hairy baby. Poor thing kept getting its head knocked about by the bus door

Market goodies being bus-ed to Kigali

A village of orphaned children

2010-03-17T02:14:00.000-07:00

On Monday I visited a very strange place - a village made up entirely of orphaned children.

It was set up by an American Jewish organisation with strong links to Israel and is called the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village. I visited because an American guy who volunteers there visited my centre and invited me and a colleague along to see what they do.

It's about an hour outside Kigali and is immediately striking because of its size and the fact they have chosen a completely different architectural style to the rest of the country.

They recruit their children by asking every district in Rwanda to pick their five most destitute orphans (some have one parent, but most have none). They go round to the childrens' homes to check that their tales of poverty are true, before scooping them up and bringing them here, to live together in a strange, isolated village with other orphans.

They bought the land off some Rwandan people who were living there and the entire "village" cost about $9million to build. There are houses for 250 children (this will increase to 500) and lots of Rwandan and Israeli staff and volunteers.

The scale of the place is vast - it sits a top a beautiful hillside with striking views of a lake

It features a farm which will soon be able to sustain the entire village, and a school.

The facilities are incredible - fully-kitted out computer rooms

clean modern houses for the boys with Western-style bathrooms; top-of-the-range science labs

a huge library; Saturday night movie screenings; an industrial-sized kitchen - here are the beans for that night's dinner for 250 children

and here is a chef making fresh passionfruit juice

and they are even building an amphitheatre

I'm sure the children here will have a much better chance in life because of the generosity of the billionaire who set this place up, but it still seems an odd idea to put all these orphans of the genocide in one place, away from the rest of society and any real external influences.

The founders claim there is no religious element to the schooling or village and it is just about helping Rwanda's orphans.

It seems there is little chance of all these children getting into university, and I wonder what will happen to the ones who's expectations have been significantly raised by going to this school for four years before being dumped back into the real world.

Some photos

2010-03-06T00:10:00.000-08:00

Condoms are everywhere in Kigali. This huge government advert is right next to my house and there are similar ones all over town.

These album cover-style adverts are actually for condoms too.

Here is a selection of Rwandan condoms

I'm pretty sure that's Nicole Kidman.

We went to have a look at Umugongo House last week - the building where 35 former street boys are being housed and put through school by Centre Marembo I'm working with.

And on the way we met this brilliant chap who followed us around.

Something about his dirty, torn clown suit - with a big hole for his belly to poke through - was very sad but very funny. What you can't really see here are the pom poms hangning off the front and the ruffle around the neck.

This was my first, belated, taste of a Kigali market, in the Kimironko district

and all the delicious stuff I bought.

And this is the source of my misery every morning at 6am. I'm hoping it's going to be slaughtered soon. It's actually saying "cock-a-doodle-do" in this photo.

And this is Kigali's Parliament building, which is about 5 minutes from my house. They haven't repaired all the shell holes from when it was attacked during the genocide.

This is the 'cool' district of Kigali - called Nyamirambo - where all the clothes and music shops are. It was very muddy after a whole day of rain and this is Florah struggling through it.

And this is my favourite t-shirt so far.

Wait til I show you the pimped-up buses that go to Nyamirambo, and the crazy God slogans that are on all the cars - "Thanks GOD!"

And this is the really talented singer and inanga player who I've just written an article on (sadly not my photo - this was done by a professional)

Mobbed

2010-02-26T06:07:00.001-08:00

This is what happened when we drove to a market outside Kigali to pick up some vegetables

W(e)ave machine

2010-02-26T01:59:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday I was taken to Gitarama to visit the weaving group who make baskets for my charity, which are sold around Kigali and in the UK (www.shop4rwanda.com).

It was a two hour drive to the tiny village high in the hills above Gitarama, and at least 40 minutes on a winding, bumpy dirt-track with planks of wood acting as bridges across the streams.

We were very lucky to have the use of a 4x4 because otherwise we would have to have walked an hour-and-a-half up this track to reach the weavers, as they have to do when they travel to Kigali, often with a baby on back.

This was my first time out of Kigali and as you can see the countryside is beautiful – each hill is covered in a mist and has platforms dug into it to allow farmers to make the most of every bit of land.

There are also thousands and thousands of banana trees.

The weavers are all vulnerable young people who used to work at Centre Marembo, where they were taught how to weave. They have since set up their own co-operative in their home village. They sit in this tiny hut five days a week weaving.

They make around £50 a month between five of them, which is apparently a good wage here, and allows them to buy all the food they need.

The baskets sell for between £4-6 depending on the size, and it takes at least a day to make each one. It doesn't seem fair really.
They are made from a plant similar to aloe vera.

Geeky picture coming up, but I love this pink

Bully

2010-02-26T01:52:00.000-08:00

Quite often when I leave the centre I work at, there are some cows and bulls just milling around outside. I'm not sure why because we are in the middle of a city with no fields or grass nearby to speak of. But here are is a photo anyway. Is this a cow or a bull?

In Rwanda cows are very highly prized. Prospective husbands must give their new family as many cows as they can afford before being able to take a daughter's hand in marriage, and the Rwandan national dance is based around the cow.

New house, new house!

2010-02-26T01:46:00.001-08:00

I've moved into a new house with English volunteer Florah, American Steph, who works for a clean water charity, and American Nick, who is setting up software for Unicef out here.

The house is owned by a government minister (as the house manager very proudly told us) and as you can see it looks very nice.

It even has a basketball hoop

I have my own bedroom, we have (occasional) hot running water and a large family of 3+ inch cockroaches living in the downstairs toilet. Luckily we have another toilet.

We are now moving into rainy season here in Kigali, which means torrential downpours complete with fierce thunder and lightning that last at least two hours, most days. A day after we moved in we realised the roof of our new fancy house isn't waterproof and each day my room fills with two large puddles and the constant sound of drip-dripping.

Diplomatic incident

2010-02-26T01:41:00.001-08:00

President Sarkozy visited Kigali on Thursday and his motorcade nearly ran me over.
I came out of Centre Marembo onto this normally busy road

but it was eerily quiet, like a beach just before a tsunami. There was no traffic in either direction, and none of the normal sounds of Kigali - the tinny exhausts of the city's motos and relentless tooting of horns – were there.
Then as I crossed the road a huge parade of black 4x4s with tinted windows came roaring over the hill, clearly not willing to stop for a lowly mazunga (white person) like me, so I ran for my life. About five 4x4s in, was a swish Mercedes carrying Mr Sarkozy and a number of flapping French flags. I didn't have time to gesture my disappointment at his lack of manners.

About five minutes later normal Kigali traffic life resumed and I was able to get on a crowded sweaty bus.

A sad reality of this bright, modern city

2010-02-21T03:07:00.000-08:00

Nine people live in the tiny concrete house that is opposite the very middle class home I'm staying in. Until Friday it was ten, but the grandmother - who was in her 40s - died that day. She left behind her daughter and eight grandchildren.

I wondered why there were crowds of people sitting outside the house when I returned home late on Friday night.
They were singing around a bonfire and it turns out this is a Rwandan tradition when someone passes away.
Neighbours and friends go round to pay their respects and make a donation to the funeral fees and to help the family cope with life afterwards.

The grandmother died of an AIDS related illness, which doesn't bode well for the rest of the family. She was also the only family member that had a job.

Kigali is a bustling, modern city with new hotels, fancy apartments and businesses springing up all over the place. Cranes are ubiquitous and will be in the background of any city photo.
But the poverty here is still immense. This one sad story is happening just a few hundred yards away from the tarmac-ed road that houses the British and American Embassies.

Bombs away

2010-02-21T02:07:00.000-08:00

There were three grenade attacks in Kigali centre on Friday night - at an international bus station, restaurant and somewhere else. Three people died. Bit scary really so I rang the British embassy's emergency number to see what the advice was.

Me: "I was wondering if you knew any more about last night's bombs?"

Embassy staff: “What? Oh the bombs. Yeah my friend told me something about that. What happened?

Me: “I don’t know, that’s why I’m calling you.

Embassy staff: “Oh right, ok. Well, I think it’s fine.

Me: “Is it safe to go into town?

Embassy staff: "I haven’t heard that it’s not safe. My friend told me he went into town earlier and he didn’t mention it wasn’t safe.”

The British Embassy – good at hosting drinks receptions, not at disseminating crucial information.

So then we rang the US Embassy’s emergency number. We didn't even have to put on a bad American accent to be told lots of people were avoiding town that night, so we cancelled our trip to see Avatar.

No one seems sure if the attacks are linked to this summer's general election or if it is some kind of personal dispute, but I'm trying not to think about it.

Beadiful

2010-02-21T01:44:00.000-08:00

This is the bead group that runs from Centre Marembo.

There are about five people involved - all 'vulnerable youth' - who go round collecting last years' calendars from businesses around Kigali. They cut them into small tapered pieces and roll them up to make beads, which are then varnished and put on threads. They get paid for each bead they make.

These girls sniggered at my attempt to make a bead, but now I'm their English teacher so I can have the last laugh.

Meat free

2010-02-21T01:31:00.000-08:00

I broke with six months of not eating meat to try this

- a goat brochette, which is much-loved in Rwanda. I feel pretty bad about it and I really have failed at the first hurdle. But it tasted so good!

Househunting

2010-02-15T07:44:00.000-08:00

I’ve found that a good way to see the city is through house-hunting, and it also teaches you a lot about the people who live here (the ones who are rich enough to have a spare room).

There was the extremely butch lady with the guard dog and her far-far-older Swedish husband, who had rabbit skins hanging on their living room walls and a huge collection of poor American rom coms.

Then the incredibly camp Frederic (or Fred Eric) who had a house high in the hills with a spectacular view of the city and a garden full of avocadoes, limes and figs. He had his own Mercedes so didn’t think to tell us the walk to his house from the bus stop was a 20-minute hike up a near-vertical hill. So thanks for the pink neck and shoulders Fred Eric.

It was a bit too far out of town for me and I’m not sure I could put up with Fred Eric’s double-entendres, but he did put on a lovely brunch with passion fruit, pineapple, tree tomatoes (strange sweet tomatoes that are more fruity than normal ones) and avocadoes.
There I met Nasser, an Iranian academic from Milton Keynes who is teaching at Kigali university. He had the kind of thick, neat moustache that must make drinking milk a pain.

Then there was glamorous Annette’s mansion. I really badly want to live there – the rooms are huge and beautiful, the water hot and running, the garden bigger than you could possibly use and each bedroom had its own balcony. All for $200US a month.
But to get anywhere you could have to take a 15-minute bicycle-taxi ride to the main road, then two buses from there, which isn’t really feasible.

So the search goes on. It’s amazing how many places don’t have running water and can still charge $300 a month.

Tray bien

2010-02-15T07:41:00.000-08:00

Today Florah and I were walking to the bus stop past one of the fancier hotels when we saw a waiters’ convention where they were all competing to see who was the best at carrying three drinks on a tray through a sort-of assault course.

They actually stopped traffic on the main road to allow these guys in their bow-ties and waistcoats to sprint cross the road, trays aloft.

Some managed to stay cool during the task, but others were clearly going too fast and there was a telling trickle of liquid running down the middle of the road. One young man, said “I failed”, as he walked past us empty-handed and head bowed.

Goat and Gorilla

2010-02-15T07:40:00.000-08:00

We were taken for drinks at the British embassy on Thursday night. They have a weekly night there called Goat and Gorilla where you can buy cheap drinks and brochette (a kebab-type thing). Disconcertingly there was a big picture of Tony Blair behind the bar – predictably with a pint-in-hand - from when he visited a few years ago.

We met lots of lovely people, including two British guys who are here trying to set up an international music festival so “people have something else to think of when they hear the word Rwanda”.

We went out with them the following night for a tour of the city’s hotspots, which they wanted to check out ahead of organising their Camden Crawl-style festival.
We visited the Car Wash bar, which is situated in a car wash and had a reggae-version of Will Young’s Evergreen on loop, and a Chinese bar with lots of prostitutes outside.
Then on to the Sky Hotel in one of the rougher parts of town. They didn’t seem keen to have so many white people going in but eventually let us have a drink.
The best by far was Black and White bar, where live bands play in front of a crowd. The dancing there was absolutely incredible, like nothing I've seen before. The men seem to dance like a different animal each – insects or birds – and there was lots of wriggling, crawling and Russian-style low kicks.

Maribelle

2010-02-15T07:31:00.000-08:00

Me and another English volunteer are staying with Nicolette – the lady who runs the centre for street kids I will be working at – and her three-year-old daughter Maribelle.

Maribelle is intensely cute but also crazy and takes great interest in everything in our room – but especially things like shampoo and toothpaste which she will spray everywhere. She also has no interest in keeping things like mobiles and laptops in good working order and happily walks all over them.

The bathroom we use doesn’t have running water so we shower using a bucket filled with water from the tap outside.
It also doesn’t have a door that closes and Marribelle is in the habit of walking in while we’re on the toilet or showering awkwardly, and refusing to leave without negotiations that can last some time. She is also pretty great though and is a good source of cuddles when I’m homesick.

These are our exotic pets

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The food here has been surprisingly bland so far. Lots of beans, rice, chips and plantain-that-tastes-like-potato, and everything seems to come with the same funny sauce. People don’t seem to cook with spices, chilli or even garlic. Saying that, we haven’t been out to eat yet and the “house girl”, Janette does her best.
Considering she is paid just £14 a month and cooks, cleans, washes clothes and childminds seven days a week, I think she does amazingly well.

But hopefully I’ll be moving out soon, either with a family or into a shared house with some other ex-pats. All houses seem to come with staff – security and house girl – and it doesn’t feel very nice to be waited on by very poor people all the time. But it’s scary how quickly you get used to having your clothes washed and ironed and dinner waiting when you arrive home.

Innaction

2010-02-09T11:03:00.000-08:00

This exciting trip to Rwanda started with a three-hour queue at Heathrow before being told the flight wasn't cancelled but just "delayed" overnight by more than 12 hours.
Still at least the hundreds of us Kenya Airways passengers got to sample the Park Inn hotel near the airport (they've cleverly called the gym there "Innaction".)

Because we weren't proper guests, we had to eat separately from normal people seated in the normal restaurant and we were shepherded into a huge conference room where we helped ourselves to a buffet.

Although it STRICTLY DOES NOT INCLUDE DRINKS, the buffet did boast a bowl full of cornichon so that helped things along, but otherwise it was a fairly dreary night with a brutal 4.15am wake up call.

Still I marvel at Kenya Airways' bullish attitude in refusing to apologise for, or explain anything along the way. Not many people can scoff with such nasal intensity as their Nairobi airport staff (who are chattering away in front of me right now) did when I asked about compensation.

But I've only got another two hours of Nairobi airport left then I'm off to Kigali via Burundi on another Kenya Airways flight. What could possibly go wrong? I hope I don't have to face another night without cleaning my teeth because I ate loads of Percy Pigs on the plane (thanks Claud) and I can feel them rotting my teeth.