The Place To Be.


My house is busting at the seams. You may remember that right back in the beginning (almost 6 months ago now!) that I hated the fact that I was all alone in a big house on the hill, opposite the prison. I was far from the village centre and had three rooms in the house that I just never went in. This house is beautiful – windswept and cold, but it’s actually a lot better than brash, burning heat or humidity that hangs on you like boiling mud.

In January everything changed. Number 1 arrival came in the form of a French girl, Morgane. Now this is good for several reasons (we’re talking tactics here, let’s not be pussyfooting around and saying it’s nice to have ‘company’). As a French girl, she has a French mother. Now, as we all know the French believe that their cuisine is 'tellement extraordinaire', that McDonalds in Paris attended a cordon bleu course before serving up his patties. This also means that her mother rates Rwandese cuisine just slightly above British cooking – and so regularly sends food packages to her daughter who cannot be coping without her snails.

On a serious note, it is very nice to have company!

Then a young lad came a knocking. He’s been accepted into the secondary school just down the road from me, which is a pretty good school. Only problem is that they accepted him on condition that he was an ‘external’ pupil – that he didn’t stay in the dorms. Here, every secondary school is a boarding school because kids are divided and shuffled and separated and allotted schools depending on their grades. So, seeing as I live in a big old house with an out house he came asking. So Valence now lives in a room out the back of my house. He’s 22 and brought me three eggs the other day to say thank you! Very sweet (I accidentally then broke one of them immediately. Heartless and cruel. Or just clumsy?).

Then two days later a friend of his also joined the gang. He’d been asked to leave the dormitories because there was not enough space for him. He’d been sleeping 3 to a single mattress so I couldn’t exactly turn him away. I think he’s 21 (yes, people finish school here very late because they often go a couple of years where they can’t get the money to pay school fees, or maybe they failed and retook the year or had to stop because the parents died so they looked after the young ones until they were old enough to look after themselves and then they return).

Then today I find out that my landlord has just been sent to prison. Any of you who have spoken to me will know how much I hated this guy anyway. He was a really sleazy guy, and used to grab me by the arm in a ‘friendly’ way but he was so strong I remember thinking that there is no way that any woman could stand up to him. Anyway he was accused last week in the local genocide courts and is now in prison awaiting his trial. I’ve been told it’s serious, which could be a 25 year stint.

It really is all go. Work is extremely busy at the moment because I’m coordinating the project in the whole of the district as well as writing a manual on sex education, reproductive health, personal and social health, decision making, human rights and HIV to be used in Rwandese secondary schools. Oh, and then my project manager quit two days ago. Leaving the entire project in my hands and the hands of another volunteer Merryl who lives on the opposite side of the country to me, coordinating a completely different district.

So everything is busy busy, but it is a challenge. I am absolutely heartbroken Andrew is leaving because he is probably my best Rwandan friend, and an absolute star - the only person who gets things done on the project. But it is a challenge, so I have to do it. Get over it, start again, take on more responsibilities. (Yes this may sound like my own personal pep-talk. I still haven’t quite figured out how we’re going to cope!)

So that is me now up to date with today, but I still have things to report back on from the last few weeks...