Three purchases

It has become my custom to buy seeds in Kigali for all my groups. I tell them I bought these seeds in Rwanda, but for those in the other provinces Kigali is a long way off. I had previously noticed a small 'Agrotec' on the outskirts of Ruhengeri, but everybody said it had very little stock and I had never checked. This time I noticed permanent new premises on the main road in the centre of town. Yesterday's group were very keen to have more seeds than I had with me, and I told them I would send some. Then it occurred to me that if I bought locally they would find it easier to buy for themselves in future.

So first stop on the way to Burera on Saturday morning, driven by Antoine (who would also be my translator, in general converting English to Kinyarwanda and Kinyarwanda to French), was the new Agrotec. The sole assistant declared himself to be 'bi-langue' but I continued my usual practice of dealing mostly in French when it's a matter of plant names: that works because many names in Kinyarwanda are derived from French. As I do in Kigali, I asked permission to go behind the counter and look in the boxes of packets. I found almost everything I wanted, all priced at 10rf (about 1p) more than in Kigali because of transport costs. The only thing they didn't have was beetroot – a pity because I'd been extolling its virtues yesterday and everybody wanted some. I stocked up, and we set off.

As we left Agrotec, I checked that there would be somewhere to buy a sack for planting. I was carrying scissors and an empty plastic bottle, so I had everything else I would need. We'll get it along the way, Antoine said. At a place where the road runs through the middle of a village, he stopped and spoke to a young man at the side of the road. Sometimes – indeed, often – he is greeting somebody he knows, especially here, so close to his childhood home. But no, he was enquiring after a sack. I handed over 500rf, the smallest note. After a couple of minutes the young man returned with two sacks. But they were for 100kg, and would take too long to fill in the workshop. We set off again.

At the next village another young man was beckoned over. This one shouted our request. Several people on both sides of the road made suggestions. He set off up a side alley and came back with one used 50kg sack and one new 100kg one. That would do.
Taken from my seat in the car, with a little solar lamp for Antoine charging inside the windscreen. This is the main road to Uganda.

We continued to Rugarama, where I have now done one workshop for the teachers in the friends school and two for the women of the church. I felt a twinge of disappointment when Antoine pulled into the friends compound. The women from the lakeside village would come up to here, he said.

But he was wrong. The women were waiting in their own church. We picked up a passenger, turned off the tarmacked road and drove through the market of covered stalls surrounded with open air traders. A rectangle of basket chairs woven of reeds caught my eye. We'd spent the previous night in a little house newly rented by Antoine's wife, who is working in Ruhengeri again after a period of illness, and although all was newly painted there was little furniture. How much do those chairs cost, I asked, as we drove past. Around 1000rf (about £1.10 or $1.90). I'd like to buy one for your wife.

If you go yourself the price will be inflated, said Antoine. Our passenger (whose name and occupation I didn't learn) went to enquire while Antoine turned the car. He came back with a price of 1,500. OK, I said. I went to pay. 2,000 was asked. To me that's still ridiculously cheap, but on the whole I am advised not to pay a white person's premium. 1,500 was accepted and the chair loaded into the car. I hope Annunciate enjoys sitting in it as much as I enjoyed its sight and smell. I do wonder what might be living in it.

Sometimes I can hardly believe the beauty of the vistas that unfold as we bump along

Here is the church that was our destination, with the pastor's office at the back. We were told the power was solar, but I had no opportunity to investigate becasue we left in a hurry ahead of threatened rain that would make the road impassable for several hours.

New schedule

(Written and posted on Friday 21st)


Up till now, my programme has been almost as posted before I left England. From Sunday onwards it changes.

I said that working two 6-day weeks with only a single day in between was too much. The logic in the proposed arrangement was that I could stay in or near Ruhengeri (now renamed Musanze), where I am now, to do all the work here on one visit.

When the first meeting to discuss my programme was held, David Bucura had suggested that I could propose dropping one 2-day workshop, in a remote location, to make some space for rearrangement. The proposal was accepted.

So now I am to go back to Kigali on Saturday evening. Sunday will be free there, as usual, apart from the moral obligation to go to church. On Monday I have a planning meeting with the Discipling for Development (D4D) trainers, and time to go down town to stock up on seeds and cash. The latter has become much easier since the installation of cash dispensing machines at branches of two banks – yesterday I could draw cash here in Ruhengeri, relieving me of the embarrassment of having brought too little for this week's work.

Tuesday and Wednesday next week will be with the Batwa at Kageyo, near Kayonza, leaving on Monday afternoon. On Thursday I go to Gahanga to see what Gaudence has done with £100 I sent for a pilot vegetable garden project; on Friday I work with the women there – probably on new/old technologies for cooking and storing food. Saturday is free, and on Sunday afternoon 3 of us come back to this Logement Karisimbi, where I have stayed overnight, for the remaining 6 days' work with the Batwa.

That leaves my final week. Monday and Tuesday (or perhaps Tues and Weds) with D4D – another mixed group, with experienced regional trainers and local church members new to the work and the concept. On Thursday the postponed visit to Cally Alles, a tea grower interested in better methods of cooking. On Friday, planting the garden at the Friends Church at Gasharu – I have commissioned 100 moringa seedlings for a hedge, but so far the boundary fence is not up so everything is liable to get eaten by passing goats, as has happened to the hard-won macadamia tree. If the fence is up in time, I will also buy some fruit trees.
....................................................................................



I'm told that pictures of people with mountains in the background are nice, so here's one from Thursday morning, as we waited for the participants to gather. The women laughed at my vitamin D therapy.

On waking...

...I realise that last night's rather hasty post may have invited a wrong conclusion. I was not saying - and I don't think - that local officials or anybody else should be influenced by my priorities. My point was that the man didn't appear to listen at all, only to deliver his on-message message. Not only a Rwandan failing, of course, but one that is consistent with the whole tone of this and many other governments.

An official visit

(Written Weds 19 Oct)

On Tuesday morning, at the far end of a 20 minute moto ride up and along a rocky road, three of us dismounted and were dusted down by our drivers.
Despite low cloud, the views along the way were spectacular

I was to spend two and a half days working with a church group; Jean Baptiste was my translator; David Bucura had driven us from Kigali on Monday afternoon and had business nearby with an inter-church pastors' forum – I think he said they were to receive a gift of two cows. He had come to greet the pastor and introduce me. Bucura with some early arrivals outside the Friends Church (Eglise Evangelique des Amis au Rwanda) at Mutura

For both men, as for Augustin (whose brother-in-law was one of the pastors who welcomed us at the guest house), this is their home patch, and the welcomes have extra warmth. (Baptiste told me during lunch that some of the women remembered him as a little boy and had been reminiscing about his parents' wedding, just 30 years ago, notable for the bride and groom riding in a car, lent by the bride's White employers.)

20 participants had been invited. Then two had been sent by a neighbouring church with a congregation of Batwa. The two were sitting apart and Bucura invited them for a photo with the others.

The pastor's crop of potatoes in flower

We went through the pastor's garden to his office and he said there were now to be 26, not including the local official. I paid cash – quite a lot of cash – for lunch and a tea break for 26 for two days. On this, my sixth visit, I still begrudge spending more than half my budget on food for participants. But that's how it is: if I'm not paying an attendance allowance, which AGLI* forbids, at least they'll get food and drink for their pains.

So it seemed the official was not expected to stay for lunch. We assembled in the church and after a song and a prayer the pastor opened proceedings, remarking among other things that the official was expected any minute. He introduced Jean Baptiste 'who was born here, and his father before him'. So I introduced myself by saying my father was born in England in 1903 and I in 1942. Invited to introduce themselves, all the participants gave their year of birth: the oldest was in 1942, the youngest in 1988.

I described a sack garden, using my faithful visual aid (thank you, again, Ann R), then showed a set of photos of the stages of construction and an array of successful crops, taken on previous visits. We discussed criteria for a good location. Then we trooped out to the pastor's garden, selected a spot to suit him, and filled the sack. By now it was nearly noon.
The sack is half filled. It's woolly hat weather. Jean Baptiste is to the right. Note the rabbit hutch behind the house.


Studying the visual aid


A tall man approached, in early middle age, and greeted the pastor. He was introduced as the local official. Baptiste and I were briefly introduced. With barely a glance at the sack or the assembled students, he launched into a speech. This was the week of unity and reconciliation. (Last week had been for the struggle against gender-based violence. I don't know yet whether next week also has a designation.) He hoped this church would make its contribution by funding a poor widow or donating a cow. I asked if I could speak for a moment. He was visibly impatient, but tolerated a quick demonstration of the surface area available with a small footprint for those with no land to grow food for themselves. Then he left, with the briefest words possible, for something presumably more important.

Having decided to write this piece, I asked Baptiste at breakfast this morning for his take on the encounter. He said the man was clearly in a great hurry, running very late and only interested in saying his piece. I asked whether local officials ever take representations or suggestions from their constituents to higher levels. Yes it does happen occasionally, he said, but you have to wait a very long time for results.


*AGLI is the African Great Lakes Initiative, the US based charity for which I am a volunteer.

A photo after all

Well, there's no cooking going on, because the battle between sun and rain has been won by rain again, but in a few minutes of promise I assembeld Anne's panels, taped the wire supports to the back, put some water in a small black cooking pot and covered it with a glass mixing bowl, bought this morning.

The angles will need adjusting but that's easily done. A series of smaller panels would allow more concentration of rays. I read, on the internet again, that one cardboard box can be converted into a cooker with the addition of aluminium foil in less than one hour, and the design allows adjustment othe height of the sun.

Working with the Tabitha Group

(Composed on Friday 14th, posted on Saturday 15th)

Yesterday, Thursday, was the second of two days with a group of women from the Friends Church in Kagarama. This is where the friendly FolkDancers stayed in Feb 08. It's the place I've worked most often, with church or school personnel.

Their name is the Tabitha group. I suppose I should have looked up the New Testament reference but I won't spend time doing that now. (With my wonderful unlimited internet access this time, I could.) Their purpose is to support other women in the church with friendship and good advice.

When I saw the list of participants' names, and then the much revised list of names two days later after the workshop had almost folded, I was faced with a teaching challenge. A couple have worked with me 4 times, several twice, and 4 never. So instead of trying to find enough material that would be new to everybody but comprehensible to 'beginners', I had to find a different approach.

Wednesday
I asked them to discuss among themselves what they hoped to achieve in two days together, using me as a resource person. I suggested they begin by brainstorming their vision for 5 years from now. Not altogether successful, as the concept of throwing out crazy hopes without immediately smothering them in ifs and buts was hard for my translator to convey or the group to understand. (My translator was doing the job for the first time. I found I needed simple syntax and vocabulary. Sometimes either a group member or I would use French for a bit, quite comfortably.) However we generated 4 goals – all church women to have kitchen gardens, all church women to understand nutrition and feed their families accordingly, all women outside the church to get to that same point, and all cooking to be by other means than wood and charcoal by 2015 – this last being a government target.

We talked through the reason for sacks and other intensively cultivated small spaces, and those who were new to the idea could see photos of the projects of other group member and other people from my workshops. Challenged to plan some first steps towards their goal, they appointed the two most experienced members (and the ones with most church responsibilities already) to be the leaders. Having a group without a responsable is unheard of. With some diversions into compost and manure, that took the whole morning session. Goal one was addressed.

Lunch was takeaway in foil boxes, since the woman who would have cooked was in the group. It was the worst kind of Rwandan meal: rice with a little gravy, two vegetable bananas, a lot of potato, some spaghetti, two nuggets of beef and a teaspoonful of warm coleslaw.

That set us up for the afternoon. My chief new material for this visit is Rachel's translation of my notes on vitamins and minerals for Rwandans, with examples of available foods including African vegetables. We worked through the notes, with lots of time for them to discuss in Kinyarwanda. I have brought with me this time an excellent textbook written 20 years ago for health workers in developing countries, and could look up answers to questions such as how long you need to spend in the sun to make enough vitamin D. We laughed at the timely example in our lunch boxes of the adequate quantity but deficient quality which is the norm here even for people who are not poor.

It was time to stop, before any planning on how to approach this goal had been done. So we would start there on day two, and then go on to cooking devices.

Thursday 13th
In the event, the planning was postponed to the regular group meeting on Monday. I'm very happy to be surplus to requirements as people take what they want from my teaching and make it their own. The second goal was to be addressed. The third may follow from the first two.

So we were quickly on to cooking methods. (I say quickly, glossing over the usual delayed start as people turn up mostly between 20 and 40 minutes after the agreed time. I continue to find this frustrating. Perhaps I should start delaying the end of the day's work by an equal amount of time.)

I asked the group what they knew of the proposal to stop cooking with wood and charcoal. The plan, it seems, is to give a cow to every family outside town centres, then to install the necessary gadgetry for the manure to yield enough biogas for the family's needs. I didn't dwell on the possibility that the scheme may not reach every household, or that some will be unwilling or incapable of taking responsibility for a cow. In town centres electricity will be the only option. I didn't get the sense that they think this is a realistic goal, though it isn't done to criticise government plans in such a setting.

My friend Anne during the summer in suburban London had constructed a simple solar panel cooker, with foil stuck on cardboard, supported by straightened wire coathangers and focussing heat on a black cooking pot. But I can't erect it for a photo now (Friday), and we couldn't try heating water in it yesterday, because there has been little but rain for two days. I did unfold it and show how it could be turned to the sun. We also had the two pieces of kit constructed by the small group of women in March: the tire/tyre cooker made from an inflated inner tube and a sheet of glass, and the insulating basket – also known as a haybox or a peacemaker – for heat retention cooking. Now with internet access I can look things up in class. So I showed the best site I have yet found for such a device, at http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Retained-heat_cooking.

With no sun, there was little enthusiasm in the group for solar cooking as a concept. Evidently Rwanda can't depend on solar devices. The women do know, however, that solar generation contributes to the national grid. Anne had also given me two types of solar lamp, which were passed round and admired. Nobody had seen such a thing. I mentioned that there would be a business opportunity for an importer or distributor on the off chance that somebody might respond, but no.

We also looked at a leaflet about the evaporative cooler made from two concentric pots with wet sand between, and at a schematic design for using a variety of materials following the same principle. One woman had used such a cooler, but she didn't know how to get hold of the pots now marriage had brought her to the city.

Was I wasting their time on such oddities? I hope not. There were good questions as well as some lively conversation I couldn't follow. The heat retention cooking seemed to me to be the likeliest idea to be acted upon. We had at least begun conversation on their fourth goal.

Lunch arrived, from the same outlet as yesterday and at the same price, but as good as could be, with a generous portion of beans and some cooked carrot and dodo (amaranth) supplementing the rice, fried potato and one vegetable banana, with goat meat.

As usual, I ended by giving some seeds from my garden, from English shops, and from a Kigali seed merchant. As usual, they tore eagerly into the packets, separating seeds from printed information. In a few months I shall be back to hear how their plans have been put into action and to see some gardens. I wonder what they will be harvesting.


PS: This morning I bought a glass bowl to make the solar cooker more effective. By the time I got it home it was raining again. But I'll assemble and test the cooker as soon as I can.

Food and water again

Most summers I spend 12 days in a field in Wales, cooking on an open fire, using water drawn from a tap some 50 metres away and carried in containers of various sizes. There is a charming photo (at www.dancecampwales.org.uk) of our circles of tents, yurts and lodges (teepees). But off to one side is a field full of our parked cars: we play at the simple life.

Here in Rwanda I have now had three opportunities to cook with a group of women, making some salads and English dishes such as macaroni cheese while they prepare rice and vegetables in their usual manner. (Well, most are unused to scrubbing potatoes instead of peeling, but nobody has complained yet.) On Tuesday my workshop budget included the use of a minibus belonging to a church member to take us to the big market at Kimirongo and carry us back with our purchases. Possibly in consequence, we bought rather too much food. The day was particularly hot. Several group members had bad backs or bad knees or were dozing with their new babies. The rest of us worked hard for three and a half hours before 'lunch' was ready at 3.30.

There was time for a short conversation after the meal. Most of the Rwandans, including a couple of passing pastors, had tried every dish, though some drew the line at putting fresh yoghurt (substituting for sour cream) in their beetroot soup. They said they would have no difficulty finding hungry, poor people to eat our leftovers. I hope the recipients didn't mind having 4 or 5 kinds of salad, which most Rwandans never eat. I said how difficult I find it to cook without easy access to water. (It emerged that the supply was off for a couple of hours.)

Rinsing vegetables, utensils or hands are actions I don't even think about in my kitchen at home with water on tap. Here we had not enough water, not enough plates or bowls, no such thing as a chopping board (people cut towards their hand and the knives are mostly blunt – perhaps fortunately), not enough table top for everybody to have a work space other than their lap, and not enough charcoal cookers for all the dishes to be ready even within an hour and a half of the first being cooked.

Tired, hungry and impatient, I tried to feel the thankfulness invited by the grace before we ate. There was plenty of food; we could even afford juice to drink, as well as bottled water for washing the salad. And next month I shall go home.