Azizi Life experience

Azizi Life are an organisation (azizilife.com) that exist in order to help develop communities within Rwanda.  They work by providing links for certain communities to share their lives and products with people around the world.  Apart from selling handicrafts, they also offer the opportunity to share a day in the life of one of the communities.  We attended one such day in Muhanga and it provided a real insight into the daily lives of many people in this country.

We were lucky enough to have a later start to our day than the people we were visiting.  We met at the Azizi Life office at 8am and after a brief introduction, we got on a minibus and headed out along some extremely bumpy roads to the village.  After about 20mins we stopped and were directed down the hill.  We followed the path and after a few minutes we were met by a group of women.  We received a very warm and enthusiastic welcome - plenty of hugs and laughter.  We were then divided into two small groups of 4 plus a translator and were taken into the homes of the ladies.  Our host for the day was a lady called Angelique and her husband Vianney.  We began our day together wih a song and a prayer, then it was off to pick up a hoe and head to the plot of land they were cultivating.  The land needed preparing for the new crop that would be planted.  It was hard work, and the sun was shining down on our backs meaning we soon worked up quite a sweat - especially since we had ibitenge (cloth) provided to wear over our own clothes to keep our clothes protected. 


The girls hard at it

We were shown how to use the hoe so that our hits on the ground had greater impact, although I found the technique a little tricky to pick up.  I was much better when it came to learning how to pose on your hoe and take a rest.  After an hour, we had worked our way up the slope and completed the field, so we were allowed to stop.  We were then shown how people might cook food for themselves if they are working a long way from home.  This involved building a small clay oven and lighting some dried vegetation inside, once it gets hot enough you can place potatoes inside.  Then the oven is smashed down into the ground and the potatoes are left to cook in the heat of the earth.  After some time they are ready to eat and apparently quite delicious.  I wonder if this is the reason behind the plumes of smoke I sometimes see on hills in the distance each day?


Lighting a potato fire

Our next activity was the collection of firewood.  We returned our hoes and replaced them with an axe and headed down the slope to a wooded area.  A tree was selected and one of the women began chopping away quite effectively with the axe.  I was called upon to take my turn and managed to hit the same spot about twice and merely did a good job of hacking at the tree.  We all tried our hand and were then shown up by one of the local children, who seemed to have done this before (that's my excuse...).  As we waited for the trunk to be cut into manageable chunks, we were shown how to make a "doughnut" for our heads out of a banana leaf - we could then balance the load on top of this.  Making the doughnut proved harder than carrying the log on our heads!

Look! No hands!

We then collected a scythe and headed off to fetch some grass for the two cows that Angelique and Vianney have living in their house.  This was a relatively easy task and we bundled up the grass, popped the bundle on our heads and walked back to the house. Brown and Black (the cows) seemed pleased with our efforts.  By now it was quite warm and all this activity was making me a little tired, but there was not time to stop - we needed to go and fetch water.  We all picked up a jerry can and walked down a steep and windy path to the well.  We sat around chatting whilst a young child pushed our cans in and out of the flow of water in order to fill them up.  She was able to heft large cans of water that I found heavy, yet she was only 6 years old.  We were amazed by her strength and practical nature compared to what we woyuld expect of a 6yr old at home.  We carried the cans back to the house a bit wearily.  At this point you begin to appreciate why no one in Rwanda feels the need to go for a run every day and why my efforts have so far drawn so many astonished looks - daily living is more than enough physical activity. 

Whilst we waited for lunch to be ready (one of the group stays behind to prepare food whilst the others do the mornings work), we sat on a mat outside the house and shelled some beans which had been hung up outside the house to dry.  This was a therapeutic activity and offered us the chance to talk to the women, who answered all our questions and encouraged the children to sing for us too!  We were quite shocked to learn that no one here eats breakfast - lunch is the first meal of the day, so all of that hard work had been done on an empty stomach.  I don't think I could have managed to do it without breakfast.  We then had what felt like a very well deserved lunch - beans and potatoes and plantain and avocado.  It tasted very good.  After this we were allowed to have a brief lie down on the sleeping mat - I had to try very hard not to fall asleep, but my new friend Alice was making me laugh, so this kept me fairly alert!


Alice's

The afternoon acitivity was much more laid back.  the ladies taught us how to weave some of the products that they make for sale.  We learnt how to make earrings out of sisal fibres.  We paired up so we had one-on-one tuition and Alice quickly showed me how it was done.  She seemed to work much faster and neater than I did, but I got the hang of it and after an hour we had managed to produce a pair of earrings.  The weaving provided us with another opportunity for discussion and there was a lot of chatter and laughter around the mats as we worked and talked together.


The pair of earrings we made!

At the end of the day, we all said our goodbyes and went back up the hill to find our minibus.  We were all exhausted but agreed that it had been an excellent day.  As well as finding out what daily life is like for some people in Rwanda, we learnt new skills and made new friends with the women who welcomed us so warmly into their homes for the day.  Well done to Azizi Life for setting up this kind of cultural tourism - it is a far more interesting and engaging way to learn how other people live and much better then any museum experience or book reading can offer.