Rwandan adventure – chickens in the kitchen, goats in the lounge
We ventured to the Eastern Province of Rwanda, right over the right hand side of the map, near the border of Tanzania to the east and Uganda to the north. In fact the borders were just over the hills nearby.
The family we are staying with wanted us to see their grandmother, Flomina, who is in her 80s, but as she can’t read or write, and does not have a birth certificate no-one is sure how old she really is. Her husband died some time ago – he was some years older than her - he had married before, but had divorced his previous wife because they had no children. Flomina was more reproductive and had six children, though one had died.
She had been living in Musanze in the north west of the country but has now moved to live with her eldest daughter Joyce in the north east. Joyce, whose husband was killed in the genocide, and who has no children of her own, has lost her mind. She is like many here who have been totally traumatised by the war. When we arrived she was swaying and nearly falling and our host’s son, Bright, 22, said: ”She is drunk.” But his mother swiftly corrected him and said she was sick. In the Rwandan press there is much talk of improving psycho-social services for the many people in the country still suffering psychological trauma 17 years after the genocide when nearly 1m people died in 100 days. Joyce kept going into her bedroom, just a curtained area off the main sitting room, and talking to herself. I felt quite sad for her. Apparently if she attended church there might be some help available but she refuses to go and seems to be caught in a loop of self-destruction, not of her own making.
The night before our visit east we were already staying in Kigali, the capital, in the middle of country, for the British High Commissioner’s Royal Wedding Reception, and Venny, our host in Musanze, and her son Bright, said they would meet us there the next morning to travel to see grandmother. Before leaving their home they said they would be getting the 7am bus and would be in the capital by 8.30am to meet us. We set the alarm for an early breakfast, but at 7.15am whilst I was in the shower, my phone rang and she said they were already there, but the next bus to the north east would be 11am. As it was umunga day there was no traffic between 9am and 11am.
Now Umunga day is the last Saturday of the month where all Rwandans have to give two hours to the country tidy up public spaces, be it outside their own homes or public roundabouts in the city centre. No traffic moves and all the shops are closed.
Most people here do not own a phone and have to go to a street phone on a table in the road and pay for so many minutes, so communication was a problem. We brought out two mobile phones for them that friends had donated but there is nowhere in their own town they can get them unlocked. No ‘technician’ locally seems to be able to manage it. We can try in Kigali, but if WE do it we will be charged umuzunga price.
After some confusion as to where we should be meeting, and two unnecessary taxi journeys, we met up for the 4 hour journey east.
On the bus out to the grandmother’s we had to change and get another local bus, where they squeezed so many people in, some standing with their heads and shoulders bent over other passengers, all crushed in like sardines. This is generally illegal in the more developed parts of the country, but they seem to get away with it in the more sparsely populated east. Because she had umuzungas with her they took us further than necessary along the rural road and demanded another 400 francs – 40p, saying that as she had white foreigners with her they would pay. “They are cheating us,” she said as she dropped the coins into conductor’s hand.
We then walked some way back down the road carrying our bags until we got to a small path in the undergrowth on the side of the road. We walked down the stony track between scrubby grass and could see no houses anywhere. I wondered just how many miles we were going to walk, as people here just walk and walk everywhere – they have no option. We saw a half built house on the left that Venny’s brother was building for her mother and then rounded the corner and saw another small house with a hedged compound and an old woman standing in the doorway.
As there had been no communication since the day before to Joyce’s mobile phone, she did not really think we were coming, and as it was no so late in the day – about 5pm. She also thought that as she was so poor no umuzungas would want to visit her. She was a lovely little old lady, with a black wrinkled face and sparkling eyes, wearing the traditional wrap around long skirt and draped fabric top over a pink jumper with a swathe of material around her head. She flung her arms around me and started laughing. She clung to me for ages. Then she did the same to Mike. She was so happy we had come all this way to see her. Her daughter Venny had not been to visit since October 2010 because she could not afford the fare. She had not even visited at Christmas, because, as she said, with 7 of them in the family it was too expensive for the 140 mile journey. Had we realised we would have gladly paid for all of them to visit on this occasion, but as is the case in this country communication is a problem and people are too polite and proud to admit they do not have the money.
When the grandmother was living in Musanze we would send out money now and then to help her and her six grandchildren via Bright and the Shyira Trust (www.shyiratrust.org) with which she would buy soap and give ‘pocket money’ to the children as they were all in school and no-one was earning. We would also send little gifts like clothing and jewellery. Venny at this time was living in Uganda with another sister trying to earn some money to send back home.
At the grandmother’s, in the village of Nyarupfubire in Umutara District. this was the real Africa in the raw that I wanted to see. And raw it was. We were welcomed into the little house, which was basically one room with a tin roof, sectioned off with half walls and curtains into two bedrooms, a small sitting room straight off the front door, small windows with a piece of net curtain over, a battered red velvet sofa and two red velvet chairs that had definitely seen better days, and another room by the back door for storage and eating.
Hanging up on the rough walls in one corner of the back room were gourds in which they had put milk from their three beautiful African cows that sported magnificent long horns. Each day the gourds are shaken and cheese is made. On the ground were smaller gourds in which they stored milk they had obtained from the cows and boiled.
Outside there was the traditional separate kitchen with an open fire in a brick built hole, with firewood collected from the nearby forest laid in the corner. An aluminium pot stood over the fire in which they were boiling fresh cow’s milk for our welcome. Now I take my tea and coffee black and Mike takes his with skimmed milk. The thought of full cream milk turned my stomach, and later Venny told us her mother was concerned because it was customary to offer visitors milk or beer on arrival. So, we had refused the milk and had not been offered beer. But home-made sorghum or banana beer is not advised in the guide book, so perhaps it was best we were not offered it. We had our water bottles and stuck to that. As they had so little food in the house, Venny said we had to give Bright £5 to go to the nearest trading centre some way away to get some food, which we willingly did. She did not explain that the food was just for us and not for all of them, as her brother’s daughter was cooking maize and cassava for their supper. Again, lack of communication. Then it started pouring down, and it got heavier and heavier and we could not even hear ourselves speak due to the cacophony of rain on the roof. It was literally raining stair-rods! When it eased up it was nearly dark and Bright got a lift on the back of the ‘cow’ boy’s bike to get some food, returning with bread, that is always sweet here, some tins of pilchards, and loads of bananas. We also had eggs from the many hens that kept coming in and out of the lounge and pecking at our muddy trainers.
There was no electricity in the house, but as the locals do here, they had rigged up a torch bulb in an empty plastic water bottle, with a wire leading to a pack of batteries all cellotaped together. The very dim light hardly lit the room at all and in the gloom we made pilchard sandwiches, peeled our eggs and bananas and washed it down with water. To sleep they put the furniture cushions on the floor of the tiny sitting room and brought out a foam mattress, some fresh sheets, and a warm coverlet. We had forgotten our mozzy net and sprayed ourselves silly with DEET, and hoped they would not find a little space we had missed! We were also concerned that the little cat they had that hid behind the sofa might have fleas!
Then we wanted the loo!!!! The loo was a small wattle and daub latrine in the corner of the compound and in the dark it was not something I relished using, but when in Rwanda........................
We stumbled over the hard undulating rock surface to a building lurking in the corner and shone the torch inside. There we saw a hole in the ground supported by two logs embedded into the soil – and loads of flies. Feeling faint-hearted I gave this a miss and pee-d into the soil at the side of the structure, followed by Mike, who could also not face this dark hole of Calcutta. But in the daylight, desperate, after breakfast, I have to admit I was proud of myself to actually do the deed as the Rwandese do. Another first chalked up!!
During the day goats kept by the family for milk kept coming in and out of the back room chased by two little grandchildren who also lived the house. The goats were lovely, but obviously feel they should live in the house and not their brick built shelter next to the kitchen. The tiny children dressed in grubby clothes were obviously used to shoo-ing the goats out, and also used sticks to shoo the three calves the family had out of the compound when they strayed in from the fields they owned.
During the genocide the family had to walk to Uganda, taking their cattle with them along the main road to the border where they lived in refugee camps. After the war when they returned, the Rwandan government gave each family a parcel of land. And in this country, where parents have many children, they help each other out and often children live with aunties and grandparents, but as Venny said, the children also keep the grandmother company as it is so isolated it can be lonely where they are.
In the compound there was a traditional round house, where the family once lived before the new house was built. Originally it had a traditional grass roof, but is now covered with plastic held down by bits of wood. The Rwandan government has banned all round houses as it does not give the impression of a developing country, and particularly banned grass roofs though they keep the rain out better as they can be repaired easily with more grass. I felt that the government was demolishing cultural tradition as we in the UK did in the 60s, tearing down old, interesting, buildings and replacing them with concrete monstrosities.
At one time parents and the younger children lived in one round house and the older children in others nearby, as the family had done in refugee camps in Uganda. We looked inside, and there was a bed one side, used by the ‘cow boy’ and the other side was the ‘living area’. His few sparse clothes were flung over a beam. The whole space was smaller than most UK living rooms. However people managed with families is amazing, though, of course, cooking was generally done outside. There was a traditional musical instrument hanging up made of a bow of wood, some taut wire strung between each end, like an archer’s bow, on which hung near one end, a gourd. This was strummed to make music in the old days, the gourd resonating a sound, and people would dance to amuse themselves.
Washing in such a place was out of the question, so we just used wet-wipes, thankfully brought from home. There is so much dust and mud you never feel clean. Dishes are washed with water from a pipe in the compound and placed on a raised wooden slatted structure to dry in the sun.
The water pipe was supplied by a brother who works for the water authority, though soon all villagers will be supplied with a water pipe. Otherwise they have to walk miles with jerry cans to buy water from a stand pipe or pay a boy to collect water for them. We see boys all the time with their bikes piled up with jerry cans of water that they push up and down dale, and wonder at their strength of muscle and will.
As the time came to leave Bright got a lift on the cow boy’s bike to the trading centre to buy bus tickets so we could flag down the bus on the road nearby and be sure of a seat. Another brother had cycled some way from over the hill to see us, and we all walked through the fields to the road, sitting in the hot sun until the bus was seen in the distance. Whilst waiting villagers would stop and hold out their hand, saying, Muramutse, or good morning, to greet us. They are so friendly here and though they stare at us umusungas, are really welcoming. The journey back on two buses was long and tiring, but I would not have missed this experience for the world.
I WAS AWAKE FOR MY OPERATION!
(Sun 04/03)
Me and Sir Jimmy Savile
(Thu 03/11)
What not to wear!!!
(Wed 15/06)
Rwandan adventure Our sponsored child
(Mon 06/06)
Rwandan Adventure - Lunch Was Alive!
(Mon 23/05)
