Rwandan plant life

The green grass, the red soil, the white aid trucks of Kigali.












So that's where my land has gone....all rivers have the colour of the surrounding soil.












An avocado tree.













A very beautiful tree - but what kind?













A very large cactus

Living in Rwanda

Social Planning Rwandan style. A whole village gets together, makes a map of the village and decides jointly which are the most vulnerable households. Takes two days every year.











Rotary International collecting for the FIRST public library in Rwanda - in a location far from inhabited areas of Kigali .... The country could do with an Andrew Carnegie.

















Rural scene













Centre of Butare















The mountains of Rwanda, laced with fields and terraces, from the bottom of the valley to the tops of the mountains

People in Rwanda

Ladies on the way to a wedding.














Le petit Confiance et son grand ami (avec le Tshirt contre le polio)













Le petit Josef













Girl at the bus stop, inspecting the musungu on the bus














People inspecting old shoes from Europe. Let's hope the baby in the pink wrap is a girl. (Photo taken with wrong focal setting)

Final thoughts on Rwanda

Some lovely moments:

• seeing a tiny boy playing with a ball made from a blown up plastic bag; seeing other small boys play with hoops and circles
  
• mixing with and talking to many 'ordinary' Rwandans
• hearing about the lack of corruption and the considerable (and seeming successful efforts to rebuild the Rwandan society)
• finding that my French, when pushed, is not so bad
  

Some moments of contemplation:

• the number of malnourished and/or begging children
• the lack of old people
• seeing the gacaca (people's courts) doling out justice
  
• hearing people talk about 'forgiveness' and 'reconciliation', even during a gacaca trial so the perpetrator is not sent to prison, less than 13 years after the worst massacres in the country's history

Gacaca - or The Road to Forgiveness

This week the genocide has been much in the news in Rwanda and elsewhere since about 9000 genocide convicts are being released during the course of the week. On a trip to the countryside today I asked my driver how people felt about this. He said that people knew that they had to move on and that they had to forgive the murders for what they had done - otherwise the country would never develop. That is some tough approach to take for the relatives of the victims. Whereas in Germany after the war almost new Jews were left to face the murderers of their relatives, in Rwanda they will face them every day. The point of the gacaca is that the courts would otherwise have been completely overwhelmed after the genocide. Each village has two trained mediators who I think play a pivotal role. There's a jury (limited in number? I don't know), and I am not sure if there is a judge as well (there are large posters about gacaca everywhere).

At the same time, the gacaca (pronounced gachacha) courts are continuing. These are community courts where the community tries and judges people accused of genocide acts. As we drove into Butare, my driver found it very quiet and said 'I think there is a gacaca going on'. And indeed this was the case. We could not see it, but we heard about it from other people. All shops were closed because the whole community judges (they vote on it).

On the way back we passed right through another gacaca court, in a village, where the prisoners in their pink uniforms and some of the crowd were on one side of the road, and the rest of the crowd were on the other side, listening.

I am told that it is illegal in Rwanda to talk about race, and also about the genocide (in a particular way, presumably, since the word otherwise peppers every second conversation); it's also not appreciated to criticize the president. Having said that, it seems that the president, still a very lean fellow compared to other African presidents, is a very decent guy. For example, when he came to power, some of his relatives came to power, too, in different jobs. But when they abused this, he fired them. Then there are all those stories involving selling off of unnecessary government property such as those cars and those fancy lakeside homes. Someone described it as a benign dictatorship, and maybe that's what the country needs.

There is a secret service everywhere, down to village level, who checks whether people talk about these sorts of things.

It is time that children paid back to parents

A letter to the editor of the New Times (Rwanda):

'It is said that a family is complete with children. So what happens when you have the children back home and there is no house help? It is now holidays they are supposed to ease the workload on your shoulders.

Helping parents should not be regarded as a punishment but a fun to look forward to. In the past, it used to be a kinship obligation.

Cleaning around the house, helping at the shop or shamba will make you appreciate nature and learn how to work.

When children are at home it is time for the house maids and mothers to rest. Watching movies and strolling to town should be the last thing in any holiday maker's mind. Parents toil to get your school fees and other necessities. They really want you to be the source of their strength and not to become a disgrace.

No-one is going to laugh at you when you sweep the compound or wash clothes. Instead, they will go praising you. If one can flash back, a girl would get respect for her hard work, not for lousing or roaming the city or village. Years back it was weird to see a grown woman doing any kind of heavy work like fetching water. Even if she did not have kids, the neighbours would help.

Visiting friends is not bad, but most friends you visit are not good. Anyway, why do you not do some work home then you visit them later. Once a week is ok. Once you over do it even the parent of your friend will think its who teaches their child bad manners.

Practice makes perfect. There is no secondary school that will teach you how to cook or how to clean the dishes. So, better try it at home, it will be easy for you in future, when there is no one to do it for you.

It is not only girls to help the parents, but boys, too.

Staying at your rich auntie in the city won't change the status of the home in the village. Your identity will not change either. Remember your mother spends all her time on the farm to raise money for your upkeep, so you owe her a lot.

Dear mothers, it's you to sent a good example for them. If you are hard working and organised they are likely to follow your way. If the house maid is the answer to everything in the home then be ready for the embarassment. You will have to shoulder every responsibility until you die. Remember a good kid is for the father and a bad one is for the mother. It is better you train them than regretting all their lives why you had to be their mother.

No mother will not be happy if she/he is helped.

Even the house maid will get time to visit her family. It will be a relief for your parents; they will even save their money they are supposed to be payment for the house help all the time she will be away.

Habibah Uwera'

(sic sic sic for spelling and grammar). One hopes she does not have teenage children who would be trying to crawl into a deep hole while we speak!

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The earth was moving for me

In bed yesterday morning around 4 am I suddenly felt my bed shake. I thought 'earthquake'; then I thought, my neighbours are having sex - jeez, are the walls thin in this hotel or not? They have small children, and I suppose one needs to grab these opportunities....And anyway, Africa does not do earthquakes.

Turns out that my colleagues on the other side of the hallway felt it, too. It was a little earthquake all right, and took place in Congo - see here.

Must say, though, that the earth was the fastest thing that has ever moved in the Kigali Novotel. The waiting staff in the restaurant, apart from delightful young Celestin today, although they seem to be running about, appear to wear blinkers while they do so. The fact that the restaurant has only one or two menus to go around, also does not help! However, this seems to be generally the case in Rwandan restaurants (and GTZ is thinking of getting together with a local entrepreneur to start a hotel training school - not a minute too soon). This is why all restaurants have a buffet - it saves cooking to order....The food is great, but it would be nice if it was on the plate, too! And seeing the buffet menus are much the same every day one does fancy a change now and again.

The restaurant staff is still faster than the internet - which we are paying for. Just now I have been waiting and paying for 30 minutes for a page to open. It makes it almost impossible to do work in the hotel.

Chatted to the boss today. Only found out recently that the company is closely connected with a university (most universities have consultancy companies these days, it's how they make their money, and from foreign students). Apparently in the early days their work had been exclusively to produce studies on this, that and the other, paid for by various organisations. Recently the market had changed, he continued ...and I added 'and now you need to do work, too?'. Oooops. The combination of people doing studies, and those doing 'real work' is a pretty powerful one, mixing a wide range of information with 'getting your hands dirty' experience.

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Rwandan names

People in Rwanda have the most wonderful first names, usually francophone:
Pacifique (a waitress in a hotel)
Placide (a waiter - maybe not totally appropriate from a customer service point of view)
Confiance (a small boy in an old sweater)
Esperance (someone's wife)
Seraphine (a lady working in a hospital)
Prosper (a waiter)
Fidele (a chap looking after a part of social assistance)

Imagine calling your four babies 'Placide', 'Calme', 'Heureux' and 'Fidele'. Would be nice if 'nomen est omen'.

Bonjour, Musungu - or the Pied Piper

Trip to Butare today. Modes of transport:

• feet
• local minibus
• public bus to Butare
• long-distance minibus
• moto-taxi

Had decided to try and see, hear, smell, feel and taste life in Rwanda today. A change from the slightly reverse aquarium approach of yesterday, I did it all by ordinary public transport. I love public transport and think that everyone should use it - it's a point of social solidarity - use it or lose it, sort of thing. This applies more in Europe, including Lithuania, but in any case it is also much much cheaper than having or hiring a car. And one gets an idea of what life is like for ordinary people.

First I hiked down the road a bit, and then caught a local minibus to the bus station (about 20 US cents). Minibuses work on the principle of 100 per cent occupancy, so they like to replace descending passengers with new ones - which sometimes means a little wait.

At the bus station I found a semi-large, airy bus going to Butare, with 3-seater seats on one side, and 2 seater seats on the other side. 2 US dollars for the 133 km trip. This bus might have had a schedule, but in any case it had a formal ticketing system (which we had to hand back on leaving the bus - why?? to make sure there were no bodies left behind?).

The passengers were a mixture of people, many young men, some families, few older people (there are not many old people in Rwanda). I was perched on the edge of a 3-seater, next to a lovely, but quiet young man. I was also, all day, the only white person on the transport. A very smart young mother of a toddler and a baby of about 6 -8 months was busy dealing with her children. On the three-hour journey to Butare the infant often needed to be settled, and out would come the breast. Not in that delicate European way of hiding it under a sweater with just the necessary bit poking out, but a proud and prominent brown breast, for everyone to see and for the baby to appreciate. Occasionally, while feeding, she would change seats, popping over to some startled men (not all that startled, actually). Other times, when she was dealing with the older child, she would just hand the baby to the person nearest to her, who would then entertain it, with the young men nearby also participating.

My young man departed, I finally managed to put both buttocks on the seat, and another lady appeared beside me with a small boy (who later turned out to be a girl; most children have shaven heads). The child was totally startled to find herself next to a white person (a musungu), and every time we exchanged glances she burst into a huge grin. As did her mum (or granny? she seemed that bit older). These children are gorgeous! To pay her fare, the mother/granny had to dig deeply into her wrap, and finally procured a tiny twist of fabric, into which was knotted her money. That was not enough, so she dug into her bag, pulled out another large bit of fabric, into a corner of which were knotted some more coins. (We foreigners never seem to see coins - are they only for poor people paying very small amounts?)

Then another baby behind me became unsettled; her mother obviously did not have milk on tap as the first lady; various people made various suggestions, but to no avail. Finally the mum bought some milk from the lads in front of me (for possibly more than half a dollar?) and the baby settled down. By that time a conversation was raging across the whole of the front of the bus, including what seemed some cutting comments to the milk 'seller'; was he profiteering? The other mum again proudly whipped out her large and productive breast....

Some people at one of the stops did indeed shout into the bus 'Bonjour, musungu'. Everyone laughed!

Butare, is, it seems, quite a small place. We were dropped off at the edge of town, near a stadium, and then I just walked, following the long trail of people into the town; luckily there were some trees by the roadside, providing at least some shade. Suddenly found myself in front of the Copabu shop, that run by the GTZ funded cooperative making crafts. It was closed - Sunday!

The Ibis hotel opposite does not appear to be part of the big Ibis chain, which is probably a good thing, but it is very convenient for the coffee, and a quick regroup. I asked about a genocide memorial that I had heard about, (miles away), the market (closed on Sunday) and a money exchange bureau (next door), but without the market there was no great need to change money....

Wandered off along the road, and spotted a huge church in the middle of a lot of new buildings. Heard some singing and turned towards it, when I spotted a tree I had wanted to photograph (with lots of beautiful red flowers - one day I will upload the photos). A small boy called 'Confiance' came and spoke to me - he was about 7; he was a lovely wee boy. Another boy appeared and I managed to take a photo of both (and give them each a bit of money, seems only fair).

Popped into the church, just at the end of mass (it was catholic), and got into the last hymn, though people started leaving rapidly during the final hymn. It was a huge barn-like structure, with hundreds and hundreds of seats, all of whom were taken. The last hymn was accompanied by clapping in rather an interesting rhythm (which I noted, but am not going to reproduce in words).

Strolling out I was approached by a man in his best years (my age) who introduced himself as an agronomist at the local university, and we had a very wide-ranging conversation, largely in French. He knew quite a bit of Scottish history, including Mary Stewart, and then we talked about life in general, like the genocide, poverty, Euro-goats (goats apparently are not in the Rwandan culture, but it is difficult to feed cows on the tiny plots people have), his experiments on turning bananas, cassava and sweet potatoes into flour, participatory research, the real square kilometrage of Rwanda (including the sides of the mountains) and so on. We wandered along to an elderly blind beggar who my new friend gave some money to, as did I, and the beggar recited the Confiteor ('I believe') in Latin (it might have been the shortened version..). My friend had some theories about reincarnation, and wondered whether either the beggar or his parents had sinned in an earlier life. Then we discussed the link between Elias the prophet, who I understood, had murdered 450 people, and Jezebel, who had some link to him. Later, the theory was that Elias came back as John the Baptist, and Jezebel as Herod, and so Herod had JTB decapitated. Mind you, I don't know how anyone in Rwanda can take the word 'decapitate' in their mouth these days. The conversation was a small strain on me, because it took place in the scorching sunshine, and I kept glancing longingly at the large trees and their shade nearby....

We parted and I had another stroll round Butare, saw the hospital and also what I think was the children's hospital where the parents and children were sitting in the garden. Some people think it is a terrible burden for people with sick relatives to come to the hospital and care for their relatives...undoubtedly it does take people away from income producing work, but then everywhere at least parents are encouraged to stay with their children. I know that even in Lithuania adult patients also benefit considerably from the care provided by their relatives or friends, since the nurses don't always do it. And in many countries, other than Africa, hospitals don't provide food either (eg Armenia, and I am sure all those other countries at the bottom of the former Soviet Union).

Found the Copabu shop open; glad I had not come specially to do a major shop... it was full of masks and lots of carvings etc which I really really don't like...but found a little something for some more social solidarity. A group of French speakers who were having lunch at the same time as I were approached by a local souvenir seller and one of the guys bought a huge fertility doll (wooden statue with swollen belly). If I had been his wife and he had brought that home to me, I would have thrown him out and the doll after him!

Strolled back to the place where the buses left and found a space in a long-distance minibus, in the expectation that it would be faster. Well, neither was it faster, nor was there more space, on the contrary. The ceiling was also closer to my head than I might have preferred. Four people were packed into each row, possibly made for three. In our backrow there was an unknown guy, then Elie with his gorgeous nephew Josef, aged almost 7, and on my other side Seraphine, who worked at a hospital in a catholic town half-way to Kigali. We had a series of long conversations covering poverty, Eurogoats, climate change, the Iraq war, genetically modified food, the ubudehe system (of identifying the poorest in a village; not sure that many better-off people have heard much about it), Rwandan family structures (Seraphine had grown up in an adoptive family; family structures have been complicated since the genocide, what with 1.3 million orphans in a population of 8 million). Elie was a law student, and quizzed me about people's rights in my country ('too many' I should have said). Poor little Josef -when I tried to take his picture (to email to Seraphine) he refused to smile, on account of his missing front teeth - he even clapped his hand in front of his mouth! Unfortunately he was really black, and, as we know, non-smiling black faces really really do not show up well on photos. Then we got him to smile, and all was well. Watch this space! They were all really, really lovely people.

Bursting out of the minibus after 3 hours of cramped sitting I decided to start walking back to the hotel (about 5-7 km). Some young men in the street gave me a bit of bother, but I shook them off quickly (literally), and then found myself being followed by four children, rather further than I think they should have followed me. They did not look like street children to me, so I gave them no money. Finally, when we got into a posher area, they returned to where they had come from - but it had been a long time that I heard the 'slap, slap' of their flip flops. Passed the first public library to be built in Rwanda (read that again 'the first public library in Rwanda' in 2007)! The Rotary Club is sponsoring it, and it has temporarily arrested its development. Its location is another marvel of non-consultation and consideration - it's in an area far from the average Rwandan's home, in a street that not many people have reason to pass. You'd want to be determined.

For the last km or two home I took a moto-taxi - a motorbike, just to add to my collection of public transport. It was great! Now my face resembles a very ripe tomato.

I would not have missed this trip for the world! It was wonderful, absolutely brilliant - one really needs to get stuck into life, and get involved with real people who have nothing to prove to foreigners one way or another.

Nearly in Congo!

Out in the countryside today; slightly in an ex-patty way, with a car and a driver, but it was cheap enough for the three of us, and on a first trip one wants to sus things out.

We went off to Gisenyi, close to the Congo border - in fact we took a look at the border to Congo, and more....

The journey took about 3-4 hours, given that on the way there we had a cup of coffee at Ruhengeri, the departure centre for the trips to visit the gorillas (at a breathtaking 400 USD per person, soon increasing beyond 600 USD) - never be in a hurry with meals, and even a cup of coffee in Rwanda! Mostly the road was good, apart from one village, where it was just mud and very slow to get along....

My impressions:

• The main form of transport are feet; the vast majority of people, probably we saw thousands today, walk along that road, often carrying a variety of items on their heads, including crops, shopping bags, water canisters, and even backpacks, despite the fact that the straps are hanging down in front of their face. Perhaps if all your life you have carried things on your head, the leaning forward approach to carrying a backpack is a bit hard on the back?

• On their backs many women, and even quite small girls, carry the babies. This is of course extremely practical, and looks so sweet. The baby gently drools into the carrier's blouse, and looks either right or left - turning the little head is really hard. The little brown feet look out on either side of mum. So far I have only heard one of these wee mites cry.
  

• The next most common form of transport are bicycles. I don't for one moment believe that they have gears. All are equipped with a soft padded seat on the carrier for taking one or two other people along. And they are pedalling uphill like crazy, with or without passengers.

Then there are a few motorbikes.

Followed by minibuses, and the occasionnal big bus.

Some lorries also travel along this road.

Finally there are private cars. I doubt if the numbers we saw on this 300 km road trip, once we left Kigali, reached double figures.

There is, therefore, serious poverty. Most houses were built from mud bricks, though particularly in the urban centre also brick houses existed. I doubt if in the countryside any private houses had electricity, and of course no water. So people of all ages, even small children, were on their way to fetch water, often from rivers because the public standpipes are chargeable (at 1 RWF per litre; the annual poverty line is 90,000 RWF; imagine how much water a family of 5 people would use in the course of the year). Someone used semitransparent water containers which suggested that the water collected is far from clear.

Most people were wearing shoes, often plastic flip flops, but about 20% or so had no shoes. A colleague had reported that in the same area a year ago some men were wearing rags of women's clothes; I could not see anyone like that this year. For the last week we have been discussing in the project how to identify the most vulnerable people in the society; this trip suggested to me at least that the clothing a person wears could be a good indicator (common sense really...) - some children in particular had clothes which were the same colour as the dust around them, suggesting that they cannot change them to wash them.

Some men were wearing smart pink suits with shorts, whilst working in a hospital garden. Turns out that these are prisoners. This explains why yesterday, when I saw a long long line of these near a market, a lot of people turned and stared. Stupid question of the day - I asked the driver, whose uncle runs the prisons in Rwanda, whether there were many people in prison in the country (thinking of the UK prisons crisis). 'Of course', he said, 'the genocide'.

Talking of which, the World Bank Office has a memorial for the 13 staff members who 'disappeared' during the genocide. Hacked to death, presumably. Very moving. Other memorial sites have the skulls and bones of 10,000, if not 100,000 victims...

The agriculture mainly focused on small plots. Data suggest that the average plot size is less than half a hectare (about an acre) which often contains the house people live in. There is a policy of concentration, though, whereby people are moved into a village centre, freeing their plots for cultivation (by themselves and those, on whose ex-plots their new houses stand?). I noticed that people in different villages seem to grow much the same crops; some villages were banana villages, others had potatoes, yet others had something buried deeply under raised earth. I wonder what this does to a subsistence level econonomy where people have not much income other than what they grow. Would it be better to grow a mixture of crops? I don't know. What was very noticeable, though, was the fact that many plots were stuck on almost vertically ascending hillsides, right up to the top of the hills. They were all terraced, more or less well, and some were growing some bushes along every terrace which might stabilise it more - those these bushes looked a little scrawny. But if there is a field empty of crops, and it rains heavily I am not sure that much of the field would remain. The colour of some of the rivers suggested the same.

In Gisenyi we treated ourselves to lunch at the Kivu Sun Hotel, a very nice indeed hotel by the lakeside. Again a little ex-patty, with rich Rwandan clients and what looked like soldiers on R&R from the nearby Congo. (The UN is heavily involved there - we saw a truckload of Arabic-looking soldiers), and not far from the border there is a small refugee camp. The lunch was delicious, the hotel, belonging to the Serena chain, the poshest (international) chain in Rwanda, a delight. Though again you would not wish to be in a hurry! Weird moment during lunch when suddenly the theme tune of 'All Creatures great and small' was played. Sometimes it is a shame having colleagues who cannot appreciate this cultural moment of what should be British togetherness.

After 3 hours of lunching I decided to go for a swim. Not having my cozzy in Georgia, here I had to improvise (in the poshest hotel for miles around). My running shorts, and my 4 USD Tshirt did just fine, though, trudging bra-less through the assembled guests, I collected a few odd looks....I spent over 20 minutes swimming in the quite warm water far out from the hotel, perhaps even crossing the border to Congo in the water, and returning supported by a gentle swell from the odd passing boat. Very pleasant indeed. I have now swum as close to the equator as I am likely to get!

We had seen the Congo border a little earlier - a rather rudimentary with an unguarded strip of no man's land on which someone had even built a very posh house. Gomma, on the other side of the border, looked impressive. Gisenyi, on this side, was the quietest place we had seen during the trip. Another laudable point in favour of the Rwandan government - it used to own many of the lakeside villas for its ministers etc, until some years ago it decided to auction them off. They really seem to be committed to cutting unnecessary costs.

In fact, while we lunched, our driver popped over to Gomma to pick up some brakepads, to replace the one we had lost on the way over....

On the way back we again passed the village with the terrible roads. The problem is that the village children can run along the car and ask for money. Two tiny girls, with matching water containers tied to their waist, skipped alongside - until one disappeared into the ditch beside the road. But in next to no time, up popped her little head and on she skipped. Another little boy, aged six, said 'hello' in English, and 'my name is...', before asking for money. What is one to do? It felt very artificial in that car, looking at people like in a reverse zoo....Again one or two children had those malnutrition extended stomachs - though at least one of them was amongst those skipping along. I wonder what causes this bloating and how can it be made to disappear? Strangely all three children were relatively well dressed (for village life).

Crowd Control Rwandan Style

This project I am working on is big, nay huge, on research. All information and data received are interrogated, questioned, queried, set against other research, triangulated .... you name it! But of course, to get a great outcome, so we should!!

So, entirely in the interests of research, and having a meeting-free afternoon, I decided to go and participant observe a local market, the Nyabugogo market, about 5-10 km from the hotel. I took a particular interest in the clothing market....Very interesting indeed. You wish to know what happens to the clothes you give to Oxfam or others? Here they appear in huge, huge bundles, all scrunched up together. Imagine your laundry basket and multiply it by 100 (though they seemed to be clean, at least!). Some people were seen picking through this stuff, but there seemed to be not very great interest. But of course this is much cheaper than the traditional African fabrics, which I could not resist during my research ... though the prices I paid were probably considerably higher than the prices for Rwandans.

Earlier in the day, near the UN offices I suddenly had some Tshirts thrust in my face. Much to the vendor's surprise I took an interest (having been looking for that running T-shirt - it takes forever to dry washed clothes here). The price offered was 3000 RWF (about 6 US dollars), but then my Rwandan colleague came along, wrinkled his delightful nose and said that 1,000 was more than enough.... Eventually we agreed on 2,000. It was probably second-hand, from Germany ('Pizza-man - Und essen macht Spass'), but for running it's fine. A great improvement on the new Tshirts I had been offered for 18,000 RWF. Had I waited a little longer for my trip to the market I could have saved even more.

Anyway. Near the market there was a bit of a promotion/performance sponsored by the local mobile phone company. When I passed it, a number of guys were doing an endurance test on how long they could remain in a semi-crouching position. The roadside and verandas on a nearby shopping centre were packed. The roadside unpacked itself very quickly, though, when a couple of policemen, one no taller than 1.5 m, started moving people off the road - and especially when they started applying their batons liberally. Wow! At that time I had moved out of the way, but gee.

Also spotted the first malnourished child there, with a hugely extended belly. That's Rwanda.

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Local Production

Had a meeting with GTZ today, the German development organisation (one of them). They do some very interesting projects in some far flung corners of Rwanda, where cooperatives of women make different types of products, for the local market, and now increasingly for the export market; which means using non-toxic colours etc. GTZ has helped them to really improve the quality of their output, and supported the development of local cooperatives and a union of cooperatives. The system is very close to self-financing, and now some of the cooperatives even act as consultants to potential cooperatives in neighbouring countries. A website, www.rwanda-art.com, has also been developed. One of their products, a kind of wall decorative panel, called imigongo, is made from cow dung. It is specifically Rwandan (as are all their designs) and they are trying to trademark the name.



They have also become involved with trade fairs, including Import Shop Berlin, which will next take place from 7 - 11 November (for those of you who live in Berlin). They are also looking for designers to help them make even more creative use of their outputs.....About 1300 women are involved, with a monthly income similar to that of a teacher, which is considerably more than they had before (in Rwanda, unlike in the less reformed countries of the former Soviet Union, teacher's salaries are not below the poverty line). Sounds like a grand project, and it exemplifies the idea that social protection is not about handouts, but about improving people's lives permanently. A woman who has money has power - and when she has money, the family has money. If a man has money...let's not go into that.



Near the World Food Programme office I am sure I saw a lady getting about on leg stumps (genocide victim, presumably). In the town, too, you see some people with leg prosthethes. The number of genocide escapees, as they are called in French, is quite considerable and the government has a fund that spends considerable amounts supporting them. As it should.



Another nice story is that of the government cars. Until a year or two ago, the government provided cars for ministers, and maybe top officials. Then it found that ministers had up to 7 cars in their domestic garage(s). A radical rethink lead to the introduction of a system whereby the government helps ministers (and top officials?) to buy their own cars, and gives them some money for petrol and maintenance. The car owner will have the car for five years. If he needs a driver, he pays for that himself. It has saved a huge amount of government money, and also briefly created an income when the government sold off all those cars, though one or two were too expensive for the local market. Only the president and the two speakers of parliament now have government cars. What a progressive government!

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Crashing through a hedge

Out running at six this morning, I took a different turn and went along the roads behind and below the hotel. The main roads in Kigali are very nice - but immediately behind the hotel they were just mud roads in an area which was quite far from slums. There were lots of individual houses, some expensive ones behind big fences - many of those owned by different NGOs - and smaller, more basic ones without fences, often up well trodden paths. It must be very dirty when it rains, as it did yesterday afternoon. The water supply did not seem that good - many people walked about with jerrycans.



I ran along and along and along the road, until suddenly it finished, but there were a few planks across a little ravine. Found myself in a large patch of rough ground, crossed it and found that it seemed to be surrounded by big walls. But hey, wasn't there a gap in a hedge, and what looked like a road beyond? I popped through the hedge and found myself in someone's garden (or, well, the metre or so of land surrounding the house). Shot through the garden and out into the street. This was just a path, with a ravine of about a metre deep going down one side of it, and the pedestrians clinging onto the very uneven ground on the other side. At least the ravine did not seem to contain sewage - it was more like a rainwater drain. You would not want to be disabled and live at the bottom of that hill!

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Dining in the garden

Not sure what time of year it is here, just south of the Equator, but it's balmy - with temperatures of around 20 to 25 degrees or so. Warm enough to have breakfast and dinner in the hotel garden! The mosquitoes seem to be keeping a low profile, thankfully.

First day's work was very interesting, with chats with a range of donors. Different donors have different attitudes, and sometimes one feels that the recipient country suffers a lot for the money it receives; price to pay, I suppose. Most donors though are genuinely interested and only too willing to help. There is much willingness to develop structures and systems, though it also seems that the different donors (who contribute 75% of the existing social protection budget) do not commmunicate much with each other - but this is entirely normal and happens everywhere, even within the same ministry in the same European or other country.

Kigali is set on a series of hills, and we kept having to duck from one hill to the other hill. In the evening I went out to buy a simcard for the phone, what with my own not working (I am hoping someone will tell me my number soon....). When I changed some money, the bank provided a variety of notes - finally arriving at the 100 francs notes. it looked like it had been buried in the red soil! Torn, filthy, dark brown notes (originally beige) - seems that this is the most commonly used banknote (worth about 20 US cents). Interesting what you find out from changing money.

Went for a run in the morning. Even at 6.15 lots of people were about, walking to school or to work. There seemed to be no problem with a middle-aged woman with very white legs cavorting about Kigali - I ran along a main road, then turned into a very posh residential area - where the 'boy' and the maid were already hard at work attending to the outside of the houses. Then the neighbourhood abruptly turned into a poorer area with smaller houses not behind high walls (though with brick walls and tin roofs, so it was still a very long way away from 'slums').

Was writing this sitting outside a cafe near the UN offices. They do some lovely samosas, either with a meat filling or a vegetable filling (both mildly spicy). It's really very pleasant here, but life must be really tough - though the poverty rate of 60% is not that different of the poverty rate of Armenia a few years ago. Everywhere there are lots of people selling things on a tiny scale, like phone cards, handbags, newspapers - people are milling about everywhere... some people, but relatively few, openly begging, and fairly assertively so.

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Rwanda

A long stop at Nairobi allowed me to explore that airport. I was very surprised - I thought a country with many tourists would have had a nice modern airport. But it seems not - this is an old 70s or so concrete building - lots and lots of concrete from which one can hardly look out - the small window slots are not transparent. Though I suppose in a hot country one should not have Northern European expectations of acres and acres of glass!

There is no electronic system that tells you which gate to go to. In fact, the 14 gates are not always even labelled, so you have to ask to find right gate. I am told this is one of the better African airports. And of course Kenya does not usually get help for infrastructure from the EU.

Unlike Rwanda which seems to have benefited a lot from EU aid at a first glance - at least in terms of road building (which is, of course, also a form of nation-building).

Kigali can only be described as a lush, verdant city with intense green, set off by the red earth which is everywhere even though the roads in my part of the town are tarmaced.. No sign of drought here, today - though other parts of the country do suffer from drought at times, or alternatively landslips and erosion due to excessive rain. The temperature is very pleasant - a bit chilly once it got dark, but perfect for Africa!

So last night, Sunday evening, we were sitting by the poolside in Kigali, just like in the book....Although an AIDS conference is in town, the poolside was surprisingly deserted; apart from us, and some groups of apparent 'working girls' hardly anyone was there. It's not difficult to imagine the situation by the poolside in 1994 during the genocide; though I find it hard to believe that people hiding in the hotel did not see what was going on outside - the hotel overlooks at least one busy road (albeit the area being overlooked does not seem densely populated).

Went out a little this morning, into a small scale commercial area which even at 7 am was already busy, people walking about standing about chatting calling for a phone (and a man with a phone in his hand comes running along and acts as a mobile phone booth). The shops were still shut and I could not change any money. Would like to tip some people some time and also make small local purchases, but a 100 dollar bill is not really convenient for that.

Not sure if we will be able to stay in this hotel today; it was fully booked for the conference (the Global Fund) and we only just managed to get two rooms for last night.....

My African Adventure

...is already beginning. A week ago we found out that our hotel had just cancelled our booking. Great. We asked someone for help who did not really respond...until after several proddings today when they booked us into a hotel which another person described as not far off appalling. Found that out at around 4 pm this afternoon Georgian time, 12 hours before my departure.....

A lot of frantic phoning around has got us a hotel for the first night, the famous Milles Collines of 'Hotel Rwanda' fame (though the film was not shot there), and we'll see after that. The problem is that on Monday and Tuesday the Global Fund has a big AIDS conference which takes up all the nice hotel rooms in Kigali. It will be interesting to see if the prostitutes will be busy - they should not really be, given the topic of the conference...

Yesterday I thought I should check the situation re ATMs, or bankomats, since I usually travel without cash but with a card. Wasn't it lucky that I checked? Found out that there are no ATMs accepting international cards. So rushed round Tbilisi yesterday milking cash machines for those expensive hotels....then this evening looked at the dollars I got and found that quite a few of them are pre-2000, which are not popular in Rwanda....It's a pain travelling with lots of cash!

Some statistics .... population is 8.1 million in a country half the size of Lithuania. GDP per person is 230 USD per year; half the children under 5 are malnourished, 20% of them don't even reach their fifth birthday...90% of the population lives off agriculture, often at subsistence level.... and so on and so on. So they are looking for a social protection policy, we are told, which will address the poorest 2.5%, about 1 or 2 families in a village of 100 families. Mostly donor-funded, that is.