It's simple, it's complicated

It's simple, it's complicated

The phrase came to me at breakfast with my host Jeanette, director of women's and children's programmes at Friends Peace House (FPH) Kigali, where I have come to work for four weeks after my visit to Rwanda with the Friendly FolkDancers at around this time last year. I was expecting coffee with my bread and omelette, as discussed the previous evening (and yes, I drink Nescafe here and not at home). A thermos was on the table but it had tea, not hot water. There's no electric kettle here, though some households do have them, and water can't be boiled quickly because you have to begin by heating the charcoal. So I drank tea.

Now at the end of a busy day I'm back before Jeanette. I had a moment's anxiety about getting into the house before remembering there's a servant here who does the cooking and cleaning. I'm in and I'd quite like a cup of tea. At home I would simply make myself one – clean water from tap, electric kettle, vast choice of teas in supermarkets and small shops, the freedom of my own kitchen. Here I consider miming my request – I have no Kinyarwandan, he has no English or French – but decide it's simpler to await Jeanette's return.

Getting to work this morning was simple – the FPH driver came in the FPH car, with my colleague Musafiri already aboard. The driver negotiated some steep and muddy side roads, with gullies gouged deeper by recent downpours, dropped Jeanette on the corner of the road that gives her a 20 minute walk up to FPH and took us into the centre of Kigali to buy some vegetable seeds. From there we drove steeply up out of town for about 15 miles to one of the villages where Musafiri runs workshops for local young people, to work with a group of 18-30 year olds . He is the youth worker at Friends Peace House (as well as running the peace library there as a resource for all local peace organisations, 'days of reflection' with a speaker and up to 300 participants, and very popular evenings of peace films and discussion for 'the authorities', who thus come into contact with FPH).

Musafiri told me at the introductory meeting at the beginning of the week that peace activities for young people are profoundly necessary in these post-genocide conditions. 67% of the population is aged between 14 and 35. Because of the war and its aftermath many experience being or having been child heads of household, with consequent poor education or illiteracy, frequent abuse of drugs including alcohol, and joblessness. FPH runs introductory workshops touching on nonviolent conflict resolution, human rights, AIDS/HIV education (rates of infection were low here before the genocide but are so no longer, and sex education has become an unwelcome necessity), environmental responsibility, and how to resist recruitment into the army or informal military groups. Of course a single three-day workshop is not enough and later workshops focus on conflict resolution, saying no to war, and building community cohesion – by doing household chores for elderly widows, for example.

(Ah! Tea has just been put on the table. And a tin of coffee but no plain hot water. Tea is fine.)

My chosen task here of spreading information and examples of some kitchen garden techniques has been made much simpler than I expected by the government's recently stated policy of developing organic cultivation and small scale food production. Indeed, every neighbourhood has been ordered to set up demonstration plots, with the usual threat of fines for non-compliance. Today's students are keen, well motivated and – for the morning at least – full of energy.

Thinking through all the necessary materials and resources was complicated, however. Once in the community centre we shall have to be self-sufficient. In the car we have six potato sacks (unfortunately new ones as there was no time to locate more environmentally and financially sustainable used ones), six empty plastic bottles (not new, I assume), one pair of scissors (from my first aid kit) and the seeds we bought this morning, with some more I brought from home (for symbolic as well as practical reasons). Waiting for us in the centre after a phone alert from Musafiri are two hoes, a shovel and a machete. Musafiri has also gone through his usual routine of gathering flip chart paper, masking tape, felt tip pens, and biros and small notebooks for the students, as well as ordering lunches and cold drinks for 30.

Most tricky of all proves to be finding a way of playing the CDs I need for the international dances I have been asked to teach to provide breaks in the garden work. I am trying to take nothing for granted. I have a small laptop but it has no CD/DVD slot. Musafiri has a workable CD player at home but when I ask him to test it he phones to say it isn't working. FPH doesn't have one. Much of the sound equipment brought from the USA for the Friendly FolkDancers last year was left behind, in the care of the FPH staff member who travelled with us as interpreter and dancer and knows how to use it. I have asked him to find and test it. and emphasised how frustrating it is for everybody to learn the steps of a dance then find the music won't play. He hasn't got round to it. In the car we have the central part and one speaker from a large old player; Musafiri thinks it will probably work, and there will be plenty of young men in the group keen to sort it out. On arrival I discover there is no electricity in the building. Perhaps Musafiri suspected this. He sends out for a generator to rent and the driver goes to buy some petrol for it. I am reasonably hopeful.

Making the demonstration bag garden goes well. We had thought of making all six here in the centre, but when I ask who will look after them the students say they have been asking around and found several nearby households keen to be involved, including village authorities. So the whole group of 30 focuses on the one bag. Three or four wield hoe and shovel to loosen nearby earth and carry it to the bag, one supervises the central column of stones controlled by raising the cylindrical part of a plastic bottle, many bring stones and drop them in place. A few of the young women take the opportunity for some private conversations but I don't sense disengagement, just overcrowding.

After lunch it's time to dance. The generator is fired up, connections are jiggled. Several students rush forward to charge their mobile phones in the surplus sockets. The music comes and goes. Stern instructions are given to remove the phones. I ask to test the track I shall be using and Musafiri presses the shuffle button. This is not the technique that would have occurred to me. (I realise only later that perhaps his sight is not good.) We get to my track. It plays. I explain that this is a slow introduction dance and we will do a more energetic one afterwards. (I am very conscious that I am a generation older than Musafiri and two generations older than many of the students, and the Rwandan dance I have seen is very fluid for the women and energetic for the men. I don't want them to be bored.) I teach the dance. 'Track one, please.' After two introductory bars, as I lift my foot for the first step, the music dies. Another try, and we get going. But for only about 20 seconds. I am embarrassed and frustrated: I tried so hard to avoid this situation but I am powerless. A few students sit down. Music again, and we manage to move into a snaking line, but not far before another halt. Enough! The complications have defeated me.

It's planting time. Collective decision making is not easy. Around a quarter of the students seem to understand my French. Musafiri translates for the others, and adds comments in Kinyarwanda: I'm glad he was able to go with me to visit the place where people are trained in the techniques I am using; he will know what needs explaining. My visual aids show leeks and peppers; we choose these and spinach beet, which I saw growing lustily at the farm training centre.

All crowd round the bag full of earth, supported by stakes fashioned by a confident machete-wielder and rammed down with blows from the back of the hoes. Rows of holes have been cut in the sides of the sack. What would you like to put where, I ask. Peppers on the top because they grow tall, and the others below. I put three pepper seeds into a waiting hand, and another, and another. (I hope they germinate. It would be a great pity if this experiment fails.) Next some beet. I suspect the same students may be always at the front, though I can't really look at their faces as well as the seed packet, so I ask for those who have had no seeds yet to come forward. I suggest writing on the sack, to record which seeds have gone where, as I change from beet to leeks. I look up, to see the planting pockets have been labelled with students' names. Neat!

Time to go indoors again. The students sing and dance for me - and for their own enjoyment, I hope. I teach the round 'The bells of peace', done in three concentric circles with simple steps, first writing the words, which are laboriously transcribed. It's too much for this stage in the day, too strange, too complicated. We might try again tomorrow.

Musafiri switches on the sound system to play quiet music behind the closing prayers. It runs without a stutter. Simple.