A week in the village (School’s out for summer!)

The summer holiday in Rwanda is usually for about three weeks in August.  However, this year there is a national census taking place and this census is being carried out by primary school teachers.  For the last few months they have undergone much training and this has intensified in recent weeks.  So the school holiday has been extended to almost double its normal length.  In most districts the lack of availability of teachers has meant no training is taking place, but my DEO and her SEOs decided we should give it a try.  And so began 3 weeks of training at 5 locations around the district.



Participants making resources
at Zaza TRC

Previous training I have run has been held at the District office, but it is difficult and expensive to ask teachers to travel here, so we decided we would go out to different bases so it was less difficult for the teachers.  We invited 3 teachers from every school and did a couple of days in each location focussing on Methodology.  This meant the second day was all about making resources from local materials, so it became a little bit “Blue Peter”!

For the first week, Jen came to stay with me so we could run the workshops together.  They went far better than we ever expected and we realised that the new DEO is a great woman and very organised.  We visited a couple of locations nearer to my house.  The second week was roughly half way so we stayed at our respective homes.  For the third week, I went to stay in Zaza – Jen’s village.  It is dry season here and water shortages are very common just now.


The view over Lake Mugesera

Like any good week in the country, it began with a visit to the local pottery.  Bear in mind we were at least an hour from the nearest tarmac road, so fairly remote...the walk to the local pottery took us about two and a half hours.  And it was very, very hot.  And, of course, very, very dusty.  It was a nice walk through the countryside and we went through lots of villages.  In one of them, a group of children were playing in their very own miniature “playhouse” version of their own mud house.  We tried to tell them it was great, but they just ran away screaming and laughing.


Several people came to ask us where we were going and joined us for short parts of our walk.  Eventually, Jen announced we were almost there.  We were so hot by this point that I was delighted.  It was 11:30 and the sun was high in the sky so there was no shade to be had anywhere.  We were directed down the correct path through the crops by a local man who wished us well on our way and arrived at the compound of the Freres of Nyange.  We went inside and one of them was sat under a shade in the courtyard.  He came to greet us and ushered us into a room.  We exchanged pleasantries and he explained everyone else was at mass – this being Sunday an’ all.  He offered us some refreshment and we gratefully accepted.  A few minutes later he arrived with two bottles of pineapple wine and a straw was sticking out of each one.  It was 11:30 on a Sunday and I had spent two hours trudging through the deep dust of Ngoma District, but what could I do...?  I drank it of course.  It would have been rude not to.

Our host kept popping in and out to make sure we were OK and he managed to contact the others to tell them visitors had arrived.  We spent some time looking at our surroundings and the religious pictures on the wall and enjoying the break from the heat of the sun.  By the time we had finished our wine (I have to admit I was quite giggly by this point), the other Freres turned up.  We greeted each other and had a chat for a short while.  Then they showed us around their pottery.  Jen tried out the potters wheel and we looked in their kiln and asked when they would next be firing it up.  Apparently they do it twice a year.  Then we went into a little room that had several pieces of their pottery and we both chose some bits to buy.  I bought a gigantic pottery mug, a lovely little casserole dish, and a vase.  After further conversation, we walked back out of the compound and in true Rwandan style, the Freres walked us along the road a little way.  We had to walk through their pineapple plantation (which was quite vast) and they explained that this is where they grow the pineapples for their wine.  At this point, two of the Freres who had disappeared for a few minutes reappeared with 3 enormous pineapples, which they gave to us as a gift.  Rwandan pineapples are DELICIOUS.  But we did now have to walk home weighed down by our pottery and pineapple and giddy on the effects of pineapple wine.  Such hardships!

We walked part way before giving in to the taxi bikes that kept offering us a lift.  We got a taxi bike for part of the journey and then walked a bit before having to stop at a bar for refreshment.  It was here that our friend Kate came to join us and we had some fantas and water and brochettes.  Eventually we felt galvanised to continue the journey back to Jen’s.  I have never looked such a site – I had a thick layer of orange dust coating my legs up to where my trousers began just below my knees.  I was filthy with grime!  The heat of the day was waning, so the remainder of the journey was not so unbearable.  And then it was home for more liquid refreshment and an evening of rest, ready to start our final week of workshops.

Participants get busy in Kibungo

We ran our next workshop in the Teacher Resource Centre at Zaza TTC and this was great.  It is always nice to be able to show teachers just what you can make out of locally available materials – cardboard, tins, string, paper, bottle tops...and of course...rice sacks!  The teachers made their own copies of the materials we showed them and were pleased to be able to take them home for their own classrooms.  We held another workshop out in one of the further sectors.  We got the sense that not many such events had taken place out here.  As with all the workshops, the teachers were lovely and it was a pleasure to be with them.

Collecting the precious rainwater
(tap in the background was not forthcoming!)

At the end of the first day, the heavens opened and a huge rainstorm began.  There was nothing to do but sit it out.  We could not continue the training as you could not hear anyone speak.  Jen and I were quite glad about the rain as we had just about run out of water supplies as we had been without running water for four days.  However, we were not at home so could not fill up our basins.  After about an hour and a half the storm subsided and we were able to leave as our moto drivers arrived.  We returned to Zaza and checked the tap – still no water!  Thankfully it rained again and we managed to get the basins out and fill them up.

To celebrate we had some waragi and tonic and cooked smores over the charcoal with the materials (Hersheys chocolate, Graham Crackers and marshmallows) Heena had left us before she returned to the States – they were good! 

Grrrrrrillas!

I have finally been to see the Mountain Gorillas of Rwanda.  Something I have been looking at doing for the last 10 years.  So, being a resident of Rwanda it seemed a shame not to take advantage of the half price permit fee.  Also, prices went up on 1^st June so we bought our permits before that in order to get them at the old rate.

We set off for Kinigi guesthouse outside the park the night before our trek was due and found ourselves just a few metres from the Park HQ and start of the trek.  We arrived at the Volcanoes National Park HQ before 7am.  There was a display of Intorre dancing taking place and the area was buzzing.  Treks up the volcanoes, visits to Golden Monkeys and visits to the Gorillas all set off from here.  We had our own driver in our group (thank you, Becky!) and we had heard we would need to attend a briefing for drivers.  This is also where groups are assigned, so we were keen to not miss it.  We had discussed our preference the night before and decided that an “easy” walk was not for us, but we were unsure if we were up for a “hard” walk, so we wanted a “moderate” group.  Of course, all this relies on the gorillas being in an easy or moderate distance of the Park HQ.

We managed to shove Becky into the scrum of drivers (mostly from safari companies – so well used to the protocol here) and from the quick fire Kinyarwanda we could hear and the look on her face, we realised we had no idea what was happening.  Drivers began gesticulating and Becky worked out this was to do with numbers, so she shoved four fingers in the air to indicate how many of us there were.  Each family of gorillas is assigned 8 people, so numbers are important.  The organiser looked at her and said “good group”   “No! No!” we cried – “That sounds bad – we are not good, we need an easy walk”.  All the other drivers laughed at us.  We were in the good group.  They assured us we would be OK and told us where to wait.  Then we were introduced to Francois, our guide for the day and he took us off for a briefing.

Francois has been doing this for 31yrs.  Before her death, he was friends with Dian Fossey for 5 years.  He is a very knowledgeable man and very entertaining.  He gave us a talk about the family we would visit – Titus.  A group of ten gorillas and they have a 3 month old baby in the group, which was recently named Desire at the gorilla naming ceremony held each year.  We were told the walk was maybe one or two hours. 

After a quick vehicle inspection (and much laughter from the male guides that this mad group of women was going to drive themselves), we were led off on a drive for about 20mins.  We then parked up on a hillside and began our walk.  At first we passed through terraced hillsides and by many homes.  At some of them, groups of children stopped to say hello and a few even had dance routines ready for us.  It was all quite festive.  There was a lot of conversation over the radio between Francois and the trackers up on the volcano.  After about 45mins we reached the base of the trackers and a couple of guards with guns joined our group.  We then crossed the wall into the jungle.  It was so dense!  Our guides had to slash the vegetation with a machete to make some semblance of a path and we pushed our way through.  There had been elephants and buffalo in the area, so we had to keep a watch out for them.  Further discussion with the trackers revealed the gorillas did not want to be found too easily and they seemed to be constantly on the move. 

Eventually, after more than 3 hours, we met a group of trackers in a clearing.  This was exciting!  It meant we were with 100m of the gorillas.  We had to leave all our bags with the trackers and were then led through a mass of vegetation and suddenly fell into a small clearing and there, right in front of us, just 2 metres away, was a family of gorillas.  I was surprised by how exciting and emotional this made me feel.  Francois quickly began to communicate with the silverback, who indicated he was ok with us being there and we were ushered into line formation along the edge of the clearing.  The gorillas were napping – so this is a good time to visit as they are not moving too much.  The Silverback continued to communicate with Francois and did a little bit of leaping around to show us how ferocious he could be then he sat down and made some happy noises.  We just watched.  Completely enthralled by these animals, who look so much like us.  The baby was clambering over his Mum.  Some of them just looked at us quizzically, others just stared through one open eye, before dozily closing it again and having another nap. 

After about 25mins, there was movement and the gorillas moved back into the undergrowth of the surrounding jungle.  We followed at a distance and it was at this point I found myself about a metre and a half from the silverback.  He was just munching on the foliage.  I started to video him and then, he decided to jump up and run towards me.  I tucked my head in and got as small as I could.  He wasn’t after me, he just ran the other side of the tree from where I was, but boy did he come close!  We continued to watch them move around – sometimes coming really close to us.

An hour with gorillas goes quickly, but it was a totally magical hour and was fascinating to sit and watch them in their habitat.  The stop watch chimed and the hour was up and we had to go.  The gorilla groups are only visited by a maximum of 8 people each day for a maximum of one hour.  The National Park appear to be conserving their environment well and the number of Mountain Gorillas has really grown in recent years.

For anyone thinking of doing it, I would whole-heartedly recommend it.  Not only was the hour we spent with the gorillas a memorable and beautiful one, but also the walk through the jungle was exciting and hard work – making the visit more rewarding.  Rwanda uses the money from gorilla visits to protect the environment they live in and it seems to be a really worthwhile thing to do.  It is a shame that most people who come as tourists to Rwanda only do so to fly in and rush up to Musanze for a one day visit before flying out again.  Rwanda has so much more to offer.  One of the best things about this country is the people.  To leave without having experienced the people of Rwanda is a sad thing.  My hope is, that one day soon, tourism will develop a little more in this country so more people are encouraged to travel around.  There are guest houses in every small town and the bus network is very good and quite cheap, so it would be an excellent place for any backpacker.