Beyond Kigali

Since my arrival in Rwanda, I have mostly been stayed in the Eastern Province and have not ventured further than Kigali.  So, with a two week break from my own training, I decided it was time to go to see some fellow volunteers.  My first port of call was to see Mary over near Lake Kivu, in the west.  The furniture was being delivered to her Teacher Resource Centre (TRC) so I volunteered to help her get rid of the old stuff and put in the new stuff.  Mary is a 2hr drive from Kigali.  We met up in the capital and travelled out together.  It was a very scenic journey and the town Mary lives in, about 15km from the Lake is lovely with a lively market and several bars which serve delicious brochettes and potatoes.  After much movement of furniture, we retired for a cup of tea and then to the local bar for some food.  I have to say, the brochettes really were delicious and far superior to the ones I can get where I live.  Next day, we visited Kibuye (Karongi) on the shores of Lake Kivu.  The sun was shining brightly when we arrived, so we went for a scenic walk around the town and along by the Lake.  Everything looked lush and green, it really was beautiful.  We stopped off at a Church with a memorial to mark the events of 1994. 

It was a peaceful place to sit for a while and it had the most beautiful stained glass windows. We continued on into the town.  We stopped at a small beach on the edge of the lake and had a drink whilst admiring the view.

Then we continued on to a hotel/conference centre and stopped for lunch.  We had our books with us, so spent a bit of time reading whilst we waited for the food to arrive, and plenty of time looking out over the Lake too.  It felt a bit like being in the Italian Lakes.  The weather was beautiful and the scenery was superb, it is definitely somewhere I want to go back to and I think any visitors to the country would be impressed by it.  Mary and I sauntered back to the bus via the market and purchased some cloth in there. 

Last week, I had arranged to go and shadow Isy, who was running workshops in her district.  We had all heard that she lived in a far off place, but I really had my eyes opened to how lucky I am in my placement.  I set off at 7:30 one morning.  I got a bus at 8am and it took 2hrs to Kigali and then another half hour across town to the main bus park.  I then managed to be incredibly lucky and get straight on a bus bound for Huye (formerly known as Butare).  This journey took nearly 2 and a half hours.  On arrival in Huye, I went to buy my ticket for the next leg of the journey.  I had a long wait and I really was hungry, so I had some lunch and then a wander around town.  I then boarded the next bus.  unfortunately this was a small bus and I had a large bag, so it had to sit on my lap for the journey.  This journey was on dirt roads so it was, to say the least, uncomfortably bumpy.  After 2 and a half hours, the bus arrived in the village of Munini – the end of the route.  I had rung Isy in advance, so she had sent her moto driver to meet me.  It was then a 30min moto journey to Isy’s house.  So, I eventually arrived at 5:30 in the evening.  It was getting dark, but I could see that it really was a very beautiful part of the world that I had arrived in.  Isy has no electricity or running water, but she did make a reviving cup of tea, for which I was very grateful.  We also had a lovely meal which had been cooked earlier in the day – rice, chips and a stew.  It was very tasty.  Before it got very dark, Isy (who had 2 other volunteers visiting at the same time!), Jo, Mark and I set off for the nearest village, which was about a 15min walk away.  We went to a bar for a drink.  We had a lovely chat and eventually walked back with the help of our torches and got ready for bed.

The next morning, we were up early to get ready for the training session.  Motos arrived at 8am and the four of us set off in convoy – much to the delight of everyone we passed.  FOUR abazungu!  The school where the training was being carried out was a 30min journey away and a small part of this we had to walk as the road had got wet in the rain and was impassable by moto.  We had a great morning of training – discussing the importance of visual aids and how to use them effectively.  The last part of the session was when teachers got a chance to make their own rice sack visual aids.  In the afternoon, we returned to Isy’s and went for lunch at the local bar.  We had some very tasty brochettes and potatoes.  Then Mark and Jo headed for the bus to return to their respective placements.

Isy and I decided we would go for a walk to explore the valley near her, so we set off down the hillside.  The hills are really endless here and as with much of the country, they are covered in lush green vegetation.  On our way down the steep and very narrow track, we passed many people on their way up with jerry cans of water.  We discovered at the end of the descent, that they had filled them up from a stream that ran along the valley floor.  To reach the stream, you had to cross an area of swampy land that had many pools of stagnant water.  Once over the other side of the valley, we started to look for a way up to Isy’s house.  This was quite fun and we tried out several narrow tracks before finding the right ones.  In some places, we were a bit lost, but we just had to ask any of the children trailing us which way to go and they pointed us in the right direction.  Then it started to rain – we had been watching the rain approach across the hills, so were prepared and donned our raincoats.  Another local child then guided us back towards the road so our walk home would be easier.  However, the rain quickly passed and we continued on our walk, stopping to greet many of the locals and explaining we were walking to look at the hills (we received plenty of laughs after saying this).  Once back at the house, we had a cup of tea and ate the food that had been prepared for dinner.  As darkness arrived, we decided we would make use of the charge on my laptop to watch a film (it is very hard for Isy to charge her laptop and telephone as she does not have electricity and most of the schools she goes to don’t either.  However, electricity pylons were on their way towards her house and she may soon be able to connect to it.  We decided upon a film and settled down to watch it.  Unfortunately 5mins before the end of the film, the battery ran out and we could not see the conclusion to the film.  How frustrating!  So we went to bed instead and read our books for a while.

The next morning we were to go and do another training session.  We started to get ready, but the weather had turned from being a beautiful clear and sunny day the day before, to being very cloudy with quite limited visibility.  The surrounding hills were invisible – in fact it was almost hard to see the latrine at the end of Isy’s garden.  Then the rain began – I had just managed to get a wash in the shed outside before it really started to bucket down.  The rain did not stop until after 11am.  The training was due to start at 9am, but as it was raining, the motos had not come.  They cannot get through on the roads when it rains hard.  We sat around reading and drinking tea and hoping the sky might clear.  Unfortunately it rained for the entire time the training session was meant to last, but we eventually had a short break in the rain and managed to get to Munini in order to get a bus to Huye.  The moto ride to Munini was a bit hairy – the roads were muddy and sticky in places and we had to walk a hill as it was not possible for the moto to get up it.  I was so relieved to be able to get the bus to Huye as I knew what a long journey home it was and I was hoping to break it in Kigali.  By this time, the rain had started up again, so we were very lucky to leave when we did – otherwise I would have been there for at least another day!  Enormous respect to Isy who has been in her placement for a year and has one more left.  Despite the difficulties, she has done an excellent job and really seems to be a part of the community.  I now realise just how lucky I am to have electricity and water (most of the time) and tarmac roads for some of my journeys!

Practicalities

There are many things I had not really thought through before moving to Rwanda and some of the realities have made me think that I will view life quite differently upon return to the UK (we’ll see how long that lasts!).

At the start of each day I have a shower.  Well...I say shower.  I was using the shower as it was for the first few weeks – this meant subjecting my body to an icy chute of water that tumbled full pelt out of the shower head (no spray cap to soften it!).  My asthma soon began to object to this, so for the sake of avoiding illness, I now get up and boil a kettle of water.  I fill a jug three quarters of the way from the shower, top up with hot water and then wash in the shower tray.  I use about four jugs of water max (Mum and Dad - imagine the units I save!).  Nothing like the amount I would have used at home!  If the water is not working (as it wasn’t this morning) I make use of the water I have stored around the house.  I keep two large buckets of water in the bathroom, one in the kitchen, and I also have two jerry cans of water and a huge plastic bin full.  I have to remember to top these up once the water comes back on if I have taken water from them, otherwise I could find myself without water.

This task complete, I get dressed and then wander to the kitchen.  I switch on the hotplate and hope that I have electricity (it quite often goes off if it rains!).  I am normally in luck, so I make some porridge.  A couple of spoons of Quaker oats and either “real” (UHT) milk, or some milk powder and water.  I also chop in a few bananas and maybe some nuts, raisins and honey.  I also make a cup of tea.  This all takes a lot more time than my usual bowl of cereal and glass of juice back home.

At this point I am usually about ready to go to work, so I tend to be out for the whole day.  Upon return, I again hope there will be electricity.  It frequently goes off at about 5:30-6 as I suppose there must be a surge in demand.  If I am home early, I try to cook my dinner before this happens.  Without an oven, dinner is always something cooked on the hotplate – pasta and sauce, chilli, curry or some such delight.  I am becoming quite creative with the cooking though, so do not go hungry.  Once I have cooked my dinner, I fill up two large saucepans with water (unless there is no water, in which case I cannot do this).  I then set the pans of water on the hotplate and wait for it to boil.  It can take about an hour.  The water needs to be at a rolling boil for about three minutes.  I lift the pans off once they are done and set them on the floor.  They will cool by the morning and then I can pour them into my water filter.

The water filter is a huge stainless steel contraption with two sections.  Water is poured into the top half and inside there are 5 chalk “candles” (pillars).  The water filters through these and into the bottom half.  The bottom half has a tap so you can get the water out.  Because the candles filter out all the impurities – seems to be a lot of rust! – they have to be cleaned every so often.  This involves taking the filter apart and carefully unscrewing the candles.  I have to boil a pan of water before I do this.  I then plunge the candles in one at a time and scrub them with a brush reserved for this task.  Soap cannot be used.  Then the whole thing is put back together again.  Usually the first batch of water through the candles has to be discarded as it tastes too chalky.  On the whole I am not bothered by the taste of the water – I drink it quite happily.

Usually I am lucky and have electricity in the evenings, but this is not always so.  I make sure I keep my laptop charged so that if there is no electricity I can at least watch a film.  I also keep my headtorch handy after 6pm (when it goes dark) just in case there is a sudden loss of electricity.  There are no streetlights here anyway, but once all of the surrounding houses are plunged into darkness, it becomes REALLY dark.  If I go out after 6pm, I take my headtorch, although my eyes are becoming quite used to the dark!  If electricity is gone all evening, I make use of my back up – I have a kerosene stove.  This requires filling with kerosene and then I have to light the wicks and put the guard on it before I begin cooking.  It is quite efficient, but the fumes can be a bit over-powering, so I prefer to cook outside if it is not raining, or with the backdoor open if it is raining – although this means the mosquitoes come in.  I also have a charcoal stove, but I am hopeless at lighting this...

As I cook, I separate out my rubbish.  I thought I was quite good at this in the UK – I always sorted everything for recycling.  There is no refuse collection service here – you arrange your own disposal.  I have a collection of buckets with lids in my kitchen and bedroom.  I put food waste in one for the compost.  Things that will burn go in a separate bucket to be burnt by my night guard.  The ash is then put on the compost heap.  Empty tins (I don’t really have many of these as most of my food is fresh from the market), I collect and take to a man on the market (along with glass bottles).  He makes small kerosene lamps out of the cans and glass bottles are sold as rolling pins.  If I buy a bottle of fanta or beer from the shop, I have to return the bottles as they are re-used.  There is a deposit charged for this purpose.  Anything else – plastic, foil etc – I put into a paper bag and save up for a trip to Kigali where I put it in a bin (they collect refuse there).  Some of it I cut up into small strips to make shiny things to scare the birds away from the vegetable patch!

Having to dispose of your own rubbish really makes you think about what you use.  There are no plastic bags in Rwanda, so I do not amass a cupboard of them like at home.  My vegetables do not come in plastic, polystyrene or tin trays.  They are purchased in piles which have been carefully counted out by the market sellers.  I take my own bags to put my produce in...a special bag reserved for the potatoes as they are very dirty...several bags for everything else.  And I buy things in order from the heaviest to lightest so that my tomatoes are not all squashed.  I always reserve the end section of my bag for the pineapple I buy as it is both heavy and awkward!   I always carry a small paper bag so that I can stop at the local shop on my walk back from town to buy some eggs.  And – if I am very lucky – they might have a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate.  No such luck today.

Asthma – as mentioned earlier – is another thing I have to think about.  With the exception of the irritation of the cold shower – I have mostly been well.  I have tried running and it is hard work as I am at altitude, but I am staying in good health on the whole.  The VSO Medical Unit had to agree to me coming out with a medical condition.  I came with a stash of inhalers to keep me going.  I thought I would be able to buy replacements here.  I can’t believe I cannot.  My inhalers have to be sent from the UK.  This is not as easy as putting them in the post.  Because of the containers they are in, they cannot go in the hold so they have to be brought in person.  This means I need to be ultra-organised and make sure I order them well in advance so that any staff travelling back and forth can bring them.  Other medication appears to be readily available and you can buy most things in the local pharmacy.  I came with a good supply of vitamins, so I make sure I take them as my diet, although healthy, is lacking in many things – notably meat and dairy products.

I’m sure there are other quirks and peculiarities that I could tell you about, but these are the ones I can think of for now.

Views from a bus window

Children playing; people cultivating land; children hoeing; women bent over fires; men, women and children carrying loads on their heads; goats chewing plants; cows seeking shelter; people stopping on the street to greet each other; women sweeping yards; goats sitting on logs; babies crawling; men fixing gates; children swinging on poles; women sewing; church groups moved out to the shade of a tree; dimly lit rooms; children hanging from signs; people sitting outside homes talking; children watching; smoke curling; birds swooping; sun shining; rain clouds forming; boys pushing heavily loaded bicycles; people sitting in the shade; children hopping; people sleeping; clothes laid out to dry on bushes, trees and grass; the shadow of a cloud passing across a hill; a congregation spilling out of church; sun glinting off a roof-top; children spinning tyres; men carrying jerry cans of water; rich red earth and lush green vegetation; endless hills and endless valleys.

Holidays = training

As of this week, Primary Schools are on holiday in Rwanda (this is the end of academic year holiday).  In just over one week, Group Scolaire students and Secondary Schools will have joined in, but for now they are busy with National Exams, which students have to sit at the end of each year in order to decide if they can progress to the next school year.

Unlike in England, school holidays here are not necessarily a time for rest and relaxation.  Teachers are expected to be available for training during the break.  Last year much of this training was focused on providing English language training, and it was assumed that this would be delivered again this holiday, but so far we do not think it will.  So that means that there is much time for us to deliver other training sessions that schools in our districts have requested.  Here in Ngoma District, Denis and I attended a Head Teacher meeting two weeks ago to find out what they wanted.  English language came up, as did using visual aids and active methodologies.

Upon further discussion with our DEO (District Education Officer), Denis and I discovered that there may be a mentor scheme launched in schools in the near future.  FWe were keen to seize upon this idea and we decided to develop a training session that targeted potential mentors.  So it was that we found ourselves delivering training this week to at least one teacher from every Primary School and Group Scolaire in the District.  We had booked the Petite Salle at the District Office and had photocopied our resources, procured a blackboard from the local church and were raring to go.  We returned from our meetings at VSO in Kigali on Monday evening to a flurry of text messages and phone calls – did we know that Tuesday was now going to be a holiday?  We did not know this, so tried to discover more, only no-one seemed certain if it would be a holiday or not.  We decided to go ahead and see what happened.  We arrived early to set up on Tuesday and contrary to all my expectations that people may not turn up, or if they did they would arrive very late, there were already two participants waiting in the room.  A whole hour early!  They helped us set up the room and slowly participants began to arrive.  We were expecting 30, but by 9:30 we had 19, which we decided was good all things considered, so we started our training session.  For the session on Wednesday, we had an excellent turn-out of 35 out of 36.

We began with a session on classroom language and polite use of English.  Because of the differences in language, sometimes children can sound quite abrupt, or demand things, so we taught participants some of the preferred phrases and language of request in English – for example saying “may I borrow” rather than “give me”.  We then moved on to a model lesson on the importance of trees (P4 Science curriculum).  In this session, I had to get participants to be my students and we spent about one hour modelling reading, writing, listening and speaking skills and a variety of active methods for the lesson.  Some of these things seemed like small things, but in the feedback at the end it was interesting to hear teachers state which aspects they wanted to take back and ensure they used in their own lessons.  One of these was giving students thinking time.  But, I suppose, as I pointed out, as teachers we are sometimes a little afraid of thinking time...if students do not immediately shout out the answers we are looking for, we get a bit worried we have not taught the content. I explained that what I have seen so far in Rwandan schools, is that some students are so enthusiastic and shout the answers out straight away, so that others never get the chance to think through answers themselves.  So it is good to enforce a minute of silence – or more- in order to allow students to think independently.  We also played a sentence jumble game.  I have seen my students in the UK get enthusiastic about these, but doing this activity with the groups of teachers was hilarious!  The competitive spirit was well and truly alive.  I had people elbowing others out of the way to get to me first, queue jumping to be the first in line to show me a sentence in order to get the next...everyone wanted to win!  So many teachers said in their feedback that they wanted to do this when they returned to their schools.  I hope they do, because if their students enjoy it half as much as they did, there will be lots of happy, active students out there!

Explaining the sentence jumble game

We completed our training session with the use of visual aids.  There are an increasing number of visual aids in classrooms in Rwanda.  Most schools now have sets of textbooks and posters and more, but there is not a great deal of training provided on how best to use these, so they often just end up as something to look at or be presented to students.  In groups, we had teachers come up with a list of suggestions for ways to use the rice sack posters to help students learn.  We encouraged participants to think beyond the obvious and consider a range of subject areas.  They had some great ideas and this was really encouraging.  For example, we had one poster of a home in a compound.  In the compound were a family and each of them were doing a different job – pruning plants, cutting trees, sweeping, cutting grass, clearing manure, burning rubbish.  We had a huge range of suggestions – it could be used in English to teach tenses by describing the actions in the picture in past, present simple, present continuous, future...it could be used in English to do some creative writing by writing a story about one or more of the people in the picture; it could be used in Social Studies to teach about the need for hygienic activities around the home, or the importance for caring for the environment, or about gender equality; the list of ideas went on and it was great to see that these teachers had many ideas and were thinking creatively.  Once we got going, the ideas were just flowing and we came up with long lists of ideas for six posters.  This was another useful thing that teachers felt they could make good use of back in school and that they would try to think more creatively about how to use the visual aids they had.

These teachers are going to help myself and Denis deliver two more weeks of training at the end of November/beginning of December.  They will support us and present sections if they feel confident enough to do so.  The hope is that, once we leave at the end of our placements, we will have left behind a core of people who will continue mentoring and advising teachers in the district so that our work becomes sustainable.  It has been a busy but productive couple of days and I look forward to working with the participants we have met.