Have I adjusted

Have I adjusted?

Nation wide “congés” or holidays are announced the night before on the 10 o’clock news. I, like many Rwandans do not have a radio in which case I might not hear there is a day off. This week was particularly interesting: Monday night it was decided that primary schools would be closed because of “Toussaint”. My office made it a late start day, but most people came in to work.Today, Wed.Nov. 2, it was decided at around 4pm that tomorrow is a holiday because it is the end of Ramadan. I believe Friday is a holiday because of national tree planting. There is something deeply disturbing and foreign about this. Imagine the chaos and control at the top when these decisions are made last minute. More serious, is the lack of support and recognition to people who are organized and want to get things done. I am not yet considering myself in this last group. However, the work ethic here often leaves to be desired and these surprise moves do no allow people to plan their lives.

Power outages at 7 pm just when you have started to cook – are a real pain!

Matches, used in great quantity are of poor quality and break with sparks flying.

Candles, also used in great quantity are of poor quality also. Something I will stock up on when in a developed country.

Rwandans cannot distinguish between r and l. A bit like the Chinese!

When greeting and talking a Rwandan will hold your hand all the while and emit sounds of ayyyye, ayyyye, in acknowledgement of what you are saying.

Children continue to be heart-warmingly genuine in their greetings and curiosity.

Many of these children are being exploited: carrying inordinately heavy loads of wood, vegetables, jerry cans of water on their heads. These same children are also the ones who are kept out of school to perform this child labour. I would be reassured if as many tall, strong youths were doing the same lugging around. On the contrary, these youths lounge about aimlessly with little to do.

Absenteeism, amongst teachers and principals especially, is alarming if I compare it to home. However, in any emergency ranging from not being paid to having a sick family member, the nearest bank or hospital or health unit is probably 2 hours walking one way.

The following account will require your patience and imagination and you should feel some affinity with digging and plants in order to appreciate my puzzlement.
The road cleaners/fixer uppers: these have sprouted these last weeks since the rains have started. Imagine very hard surfaced, rutted, sand or dirt roads. They are so hard they feel like stone sometimes and roots and stones are deeply imbedded and protruding. When it rains this becomes a thin layer of treacherous “slither” as no road is flat for longer than 20 metres. Anyway, the mixed company of cleaners , (men, women, children of all ages) equipped with the rwandan hoe, scrape earth from the side of the hill adjacent to the road and use this earth to cover the road. At the same time they deepen the ditch between hillside and road for the rainwaters. The hillside from which the road has been dug out can range from 10-20 ft or more and there are often trees growing on the edge of these hillsides. With the scraping of the grassy hillside, the bared earth and roots of the trees become exposed, ready for the attack of erosion caused by the deluges. Eventually the trees die. I have not yet figured out what the best way to improve roads would be. Once graded and paved, they stay in good condition because there is no frost but grading and paving is not in the cards for the province of Gikongoro, except for the road running to the Congo which passes through this province and on the outside of this town.

I have adjusted; don’t worry! I believe I am fairly resigned to the above, although the plight and future of many children are of great concern. More on that another time!

Morning Routine

Have I spoken in detail about my morning routine? My alarm goes at 5:30 and I am usually up by 5:45. It seems early but I rarely turn off the light after 10 pm because most evenings there is no power, causing my eyes to tire and quickly removing the pleasures of a whole evening of reading. On my kitchen table are two large thermoses with hot water prepared by Claudine the previous afternoon. I take one of them to fill a small plastic tub, which I take to the bathroom and set in the bathtub. Yes, I do have a full-length bathtub, but no running hot water to put in it! I then sponge bath standing in the bathtub. (Do I miss a lengthy hot shower? YES! Alternatively, on mornings when I feel so inclined, I will first light the kerosene stove and heat some water for porridge and coffee and put on the computer with my yoga CD. Thirty minutes of yoga followed by sit-ups make me feel virtuous and give my body a good kick-start. Breakfast can be porridge made with Kenyan instant oats and milk powder made by Nestlé. I add either honey or sugar. Sometimes I have bread with a soft-boiled egg or old bread that I attempt to toast in the frying pan, with jam. Coffee requires some of the freshly boiled water or hot water out of the thermos. I put coffee in a little stainless steel pot I bought here and pour the boiling water over it. After a few moments, through a fine sieve, I pour the coffee mixture from the pot into the cup, which usually has some powdered milk in it. This coffee I have grown to tolerate, but it is not up to the quality I would like. Next trip out of the country, I will get a filter holder and bring some filters. I also need to change the coffee, but have decided to finish this big package, as it was really expensive. I will sit at the table in the living room, in front of the window and have breakfast. I may play some music on the computer, but usually I listen to the birds singing. If I am lucky, I can see the outline of a volcano which must be at least 100km away. At this time I also set the small mirror on the table and look at my face, checking for (re)sprouting of facial hair and possibly applying some make-up and brushing my hair. I am planning to buy a large mirror and fasten it to a wall where I might have a maximum of natural light. At about this time I hear the clanging of the gong for the school cafeteria and it is 6:45. I collect my trusty computer bag, (the one I bought when Havergal first gave us laptops), and possibly a backpack if I am doing school visits, and head off to the diocese office. This walk takes about 10 minutes at most. I arrive at about 7.05 and leave my bags in the office, grab my 2 Bibles to join in the Morning Prayer session. (one Bible is Kinyarwanda, the other English). We spent most of October reading Jeremiah and have just started Revelations. People take turns leading the reading and we usually start with singing a hymn. These hymns are mostly African with great rhythms and harmonies. After the reading there is discussion as to the interpretation: Lessons to be learned? Good examples? Bad examples? This is followed by requests for prayers and then the prayer, always in flowing Kinyarwanda. At the closing of the time together, people bring up items of interest related to people or work. By 7:45 or 8 we are all ready to start work. So far, I have not had many days that I spend at the office. School visits on the back of the motorbike have taken up a lot of my time. When in the office, I am at the computer writing observations, making notes, and writing letters. Making phone calls is something I would like to do more of, but the phone is locked for outgoing calls and I have to specially ask to use it.
More on the rest of my day later.