Rainy days

After 6 weeks of no rain at all, we have finally had some this week.  This has mostly come as huge bursts of rain that saturate the ground and then the sun appears to dry it all up again as if it never happened.  At one school this week, it began to rain at lunchtime.  The teachers had all left the site to get some lunch.  As the sky started to release some drops of rain, I noticed children starting to run on their way to afternoon school.  Slowly the rain got heavier and heavier until it was cascading down in sheets.  The playground emptied and still children were running in to the school grounds from all directions to escape the downpour.  The clouds were swirling and casting a murky gloom over everything – the valley opposite became obscured.  As the children were running in to the grounds I noticed many of them holding on to the waistbands of their clothes so they didn’t fall off as they ran for the dry classrooms.  At a different school during another lunchtime downpour, I saw children running across the field clutching soggy notebooks.

View from a soggy staff room

The rain began as a gentle patter on the tin roof of the staffroom, but it grew louder and thunder began to rumble.  The heat of the morning suddenly disappeared.  As the thunder clapped, children screamed in the classrooms beyond.  The room grew dark and the fresh smells of earth and vegetation drifted in through the openings in the wall. 

Heavier now, the rain began drumming on the roof making conversation or listening to the radio completely impossible.  The thunder continued to crack overhead and the building, usually without electricity, was lit up by bolts of lightning.  Dark corners where spiders and their webs have been unseen and undisturbed for ages are now on display.  The rain continued until it was so loud, I could no longer hear words I was reading silently to myself in the book I had with me.  After an hour it stopped, more children arrived to school.  Teachers returned to the building and lessons started up again.  The sun came out and shone down and within an hour, it was as if it never happened.

But this was just a taste of what was to come...I had arranged to be in Kigali for lunch on Saturday.  I was woken in the early hours by the sound of rain hammering on the roof, then the wind started up.  It howled around the house and when I looked out of the window at 6am, the trees in the garden and along the road were bent double.  Rain was flowing off the ends of the roof and guttering and swirling along the drains which are dug all around the house.  Rain began seeping in at the windows and under the cracks in the doors.  The sound of the rain and wind were deafening.  I couldn’t see how I was going to be able to leave the house.  The electricity had gone, my phone and ipod were out of charge.  I tried to read but the noise was so intense I could not concentrate.  I drifted in and out of sleep.  I decided to do my skipping workout but without the music.  When this was finished I felt able to brave a cold shower and to try to get ready for an escape.  Eventually, at 10am, knowing I was already going to be late for my own lunch party, I left the house.  I was wearing my raincoat and had my umbrella up.  The streets were quiet – and this is market day – usually there is a string of people all the way up and down the road in constant convoy to the market.  I made it to the lorry park with only a small amount of mud splashed up my legs and not too wet as the umbrella had protected me.  I was very grateful that a bus was just pulling in, as there is no shelter to stand under in the temporary bus park.  And finally, only 45mins late I made it to Kigali for a lovely birthday lunch.

However, rainy season definitely appears to be with us again.  There have been more downpours and after the weekend deluge, many of the mud roads I have to travel on to work have big gullies in them, making the ride even more uncomfortable than before!  But here, they just get on with it.  I have seen children come into the staffroom dripping wet, to ask for the scraper so that they can scoop out the rainwater from their classrooms where not only does the rain drip through the ceiling, it also comes in the doors and windows.  The lucky ones have raincoats to put on.  Others – like myself and the Headteacher in the staffroom – just move the desk once the drips start falling.  I suppose it all makes life a little more interesting.

Into the light

One thing I am noticing about Rwanda, is that it is developing so rapidly.  On several occasions, I have stopped with friends to marvel at a new development and found myself asking “What will it be like at the end of our placement?”

In December, I was away from the country so had a few weeks away from Kigali.  When I returned, it was to discover that a new shopping mall had opened in Kigali.  Inside there was a South African clothing chain store; an Apple store; a French cosmetics chain; a “fast food” branch of a local Indian restaurant...and many more.  This seemed like such an example of Western civilisation that I was slightly over-whelmed by it on my first visit!

Since arriving in Rwanda in September, I have watched the steady march of the electricity pylons out into rural areas.  Villages I went to in my first weeks to visit schools, which had no electricity, now have pylons and wires stretching out through the air in all directions and brand spanking new cash power boxes gleam on the outside walls of most houses.

Electricity has been in Kibungo for some time, but this week I have witnessed the digging of incredibly deep holes along one side of the road.  These holes began as rectangles sketched out in the dirt.  The following day, these rectangles had been dug and were up to a meter deep.  By the end of the week they were all getting closer to 2 metres, with the heads of the men digging the holes barely visible as you passed by.  By the next morning a range of branches and warning items had been erected over the holes to alert pedestrians to the deep void that existed (rather a nice touch – I have had many friends fall into deep and dark drainage holes in the streets of Kigali where they are not so kind as to cover them up or warn of their approach!)

I suspected I knew what these holes were for, but I checked with Safari, my moto driver, one evening.  He confirmed that they were for street lights (although, actually, since the word for light is also the word for fever, fire and electricity – who knows??!).  So, street lights will soon arrive in Kibungo.  They will light up the dark streets at night time and probably obscure the beautiful view of the night sky above and eliminate my need for a head torch on the walk to and from St Joe’s in the evenings (unless there is a power cut).  And so development marches on in Rwanda – a country in a hurry.

There’s a rat in me kitchen

For those of you who are concerned that I am having too good a time out here, I shall now tell you a little about the less glamorous side of life.  For the last week or so, I have slept very badly at night.  This is partly because it has been too warm, but that’s another story.  Since I have been awake a lot in the night, I have heard a lot of noises that I believed to belong to something other than the bats in the attic or the lizards that scurry up and down the walls.  I was worried that it could be mice or rats as previous volunteers had warned me that these things did show up every now and then.  However, other than the noises and my paranoia, I did not have any evidence of these nocturnal visitors.

Last night, after one of the more awful journeys back from Kigali (taking four rather than two hours), and whilst feeling very sorry for myself as I have a pretty heavy head cold and the heat is making it feel even more uncomfortable – I was sitting in my lounge watching a tv programme.  A movement caught my eye and  I most definitely saw something running along by the wall near the back door.  Something had come in under the back door, scurried along the wall around the dining room, into the lounge and then down the corridor.  Feeling slightly disgusted by this, I felt I needed to go and investigate.  So I bravely turned on all the lights in the two spare rooms and the bathroom and took my headtorch to search under furniture.  I couldn’t see it anywhere.  I shook out things and prodded and poked, but nothing.

I was convinced that this was more than my usual paranoia, so I went to look out the trap that Stella had shown me she had bought for such occasions.  I went out to see Justin to see if he knew how it worked.  Of course he did.  There followed an entertaining 20minutes whilst Justin and I set a feast for a rat/mouse.  We started with bread, but then he explained they really liked nuts.  I had nuts, so I went and got some.  He attached them to the trap and proceeded to burn them with a lighter so that they were a bit roasted.  At this point I did have to laugh about this carefully prepared feast for the rat/mouse.

With the feast prepared, we left the trap in the corridor, and turned off the lights and closed the door.  Sure enough, a few hours later, when I was lying awake on my summer cold death bed, I heard the sound of the trap in action.  I decided to leave it to the morning to see if it had worked, or if the rodent had escaped it’s fate.  I slowly opened the door to the corridor this morning, almost anticipating a tide of rats running out across my feet or perhaps I would see a load of rats feasting on whatever lay in the trap...there was most definitely a rat in the trap.  It was definitely dead.  It was no time for squeamishness, the rat corpse had to be removed, so I found the dustpan and brush and shoved the trap with rat into it and carried it outside.  I donned my gardening gloves and set to opening the trap over the rubbish heap so that the rat could fall onto it without me needing to touch it.  All the while shuddering with disgust, of course.

I suspect this will not be my only encounter with a dead rat in my trap.  Maybe next time I’ll even take some photos to share with you all.

An ordinary day

So, some of the things I write about on here are exciting little anecdotes that are a little bit out of the ordinary and seem worthy of comment.  Close to the start of my time in Rwanda I did write about practicalities, but how about an average day?  Now that the school term is in full swing and I am working in schools, I feel like I can accurately tell you about this.

My day usually starts at 5am.  This is because I have to do some form of exercise to start my day.  I put on rather a lot of weight since I arrived (school holidays – too much time at home to think about cooking!) and due to the fact I cannot nip down to the shop to buy larger clothes, I need to try and get rid of the excess weight so that my clothes can still be worn!  Some days I run with a local teacher.  This means starting in the dark and running through sunrise.  We usually run for at least half an hour and in this time, it goes from very dark to daylight.  Sometimes the views across the valley are beautiful.  I find the runs hard work but I always feel good afterwards.  If I do not run, I stay in the house and do either a boxercise dvd, a skipping routine or a circuit session.  My nightguard, Justin, is usually still here and I think he must think I am a little bit mad when I start jumping around to my music and kicking and punching...

I then shower.  I usually check the water pressure when I first get up.  If the pressure is good, I will plug in the water heater so that I can have a shower.  If it is weak, I boil two kettles of water and mix this with some cold water in the bath.  I then have my breakfast – porridge with milk (I can now get low fat milk – hurray!), honey roasted cashews and bananas.  I never used to like porridge, but I really love this.  If I have run out of milk, I use milk powder and water (which is not quite as good).  I usually try to make a small snack for lunch at this time.

My moto driver (Safari) arrives between 7am and 7:30 depending on where we are going.  We always greet each other with a handshake and an exchange of pleasantries.  This is all carried out on the side of the road outside my gate with an audience.  People always stop and stare when I exit my gate.  Usually there are children on their way to Kibungo A school and a few of them will greet me with “Good morning! How. Are. You?”  Then Safari and I fly off into the day on the bike.

A bumpy ride later, we arrive at whichever school I am working in (I have a two week timetable).  I start by greeting the Head Teacher (although sometimes they will be attending a meeting at the District Office).  Then I go to the staffroom and I begin working with whichever teacher I am meeting that day.  Lessons are 40mins long in primary school.  So, we have 40mins to plan the lesson and make resources, and then we go and teach the lesson together.  We have to go vuba, vuba!  I repeat this process three times during the day (I usually work with two teachers in the morning and one in the afternoon). 

Lunchtime is always a little tricky.  Some teachers go home.  In some schools there is food provided.  But often, there is nothing.  In one school, the Head Teacher discretely leaves her office so that I can eat a sandwich.  I feel so guilty about the fact I am eating that I usually only have a small (and often stale) piece of bread with whatever I could find to make it taste more palatable – cheese, cheese spread, peanut butter or chocolate spread!  I gulp down water too.

Usually there are children peering through the door and the window all through lunchtime even though they should be at home as they are probably morning students, so their day is finished!  Sometimes I feel a little over-whelmed as hundreds of children will greet me and I get a little bored of answering the same two questions from each one of them (“how are you?” and “what is your name?”).  Today, I was visiting an area where another VSO volunteer lives, so I went to visit them for lunch.  I was accompanied for the 5min walk by about a hundred children.

After lunch, I plan and teach another lesson and then I set up my timetable for my next visit.  At afternoon break I start a workshop.  These are short workshops on subjects such as; why plan a lesson, how to make and use visual aids, how to use the new English curriculum and so on...  A small group of teachers will attend.  As teachers get to know me better, they open up more and we have some discussion.  Sometimes the teachers find this hard as I ask them to speak in English as much as possible.  But they are all eager to try and sometimes we have a lot of fun.  Although it is hard to be funny when there is a language barrier (but, you know me – I manage!).

Once the workshop is over, I have about 15mins to tie up loose ends and say goodbye to everyone.  Then I go off to meet Safari who will have arrived to collect me.  It can take up to an hour to get home (goodness knows how much this will increase to once rainy season begins and the dirt roads become a slithering mass of mud).  Two evenings a week I get home with about 5mins to spare before my Kinyarwanda teacher, Elie, arrives.  This gives me enough time to remove my dusty waterproof and leggings (which I wear to stop myself from turning orange during the journey!) and wash my hands.  Then we have a one hour lesson.  My Kinyarwanda is slowly improving but I have a long way to go.  I enjoy using it and find I get a lovely reception when I do.  In the market I often get extra food and today, I stopped at a bar on my way home to buy a coke for this evening and had a conversation with many locals who were in there.  As I left, one of the older men gave me God’s blessings.

Once my lesson is over, I cook my dinner.  This is usually pasta or rice with some kind of sauce or curry.  My fridge means that I can cook a large amount and then store it safely – this has made a huge difference!  I greet Justin when he arrives to work and we have a short chat and I get him a drink as he has usually cycled 20km to get here (up very steep roads).  Then I tend to chill out and watch some tv or films on my laptop.  Bedtime tends to happen between 8 and 9pm and I like to read for an hour, although sometimes my eyes are so tired I do not last that long!