Out and about

Out and about, Friday 6 Feb

Yesterday we planted the first experimental bag garden in the community centre at Shyorongi, a village on a ridge above Kigali, straddling the main road leading to the west and north-west (to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda). Today another five potato sacks will be installed in private yards and gardens.

First we shall need to divide the students into five groups. Musafiri, my Rwandan colleague, asks the first group to stand. Three volunteers – not enough. He presses another to join the group. Second group? Two this time. Changing tack, he goes round the circle of 30. I don't know what he has asked, but he seems satisfied with the replies. Groups form again. At the end of the process I have counted six groups. There are only five sacks. Has anybody found another one, as suggested yesterday? No. OK, all sit down, he says. Number round the room in fives. Ones stand up. Twos. And so on.

That process, at least, was familiar. Now to distribute the sacks. Only four can be found. Moreover, yesterday there were only two empty water bottles where six had been assembled. (On my previous visit I noticed that our discarded water bottles were eagerly snapped up by children and adults alike, though the children got shouted at because drinking water of dubious quality carried in a bottle in the heat is not a good idea.) Musafiri suggests sending for the cleaning woman, the only person likely to have been in the room since yesterday, but a student finds the remaining sack stuffed behind some benches and straw mats in a back corner. Bottles are replaceable, so the matter rests.

The five groups spread out round the village. Giving them some time to get started, M and I talk through necessities and possibilities for the rest of the day. It is wonderfully easy working with this man I hardly know, in a foreign culture, in a second language for both of us. I do need to think ahead for French vocabulary and am glad I kept the donated French-English dictionary to use till I leave for home.

I assemble what I think I will need for the excursion round the groups. Seeds, pictures and diagrams, camera, sun hat, umbrella, phone. I change into my gardening shoes. The classroom is locked behind us. Our student guide takes us to the first location.

Many of the village houses have a few flowers or shrubs fronting the road, then a fence or hedge, then a one-storey house with very plain exterior. We step through the gate made of vertical bamboo poles and a domestic world is revealed. First a heap of animal fodder covered with tarpaulin. Round the corner of the house a small vegetable plot, a chicken or two, a cow in a stall, corn cobs drying, the ubiquitous yellow water containers. Then the woman of the house, looking very surprised by this invasion. We have come the wrong house. Apologies and laughter. We try further down the road.

Here is our group of students, sack half filled. The girl whose house this is proudly shows me a tube for constructing the column of stones, improvised from some old sheet metal with wire ties. Watched by several small children, I get out the bag of seeds. Four or five varieties are chosen and set aside on labelled pieces of scrap paper. A child of round four is designated to see they don't blow away in the slight breeze.

Photo time. I need these pictures for showing to later group here, and for illustrating talks on my return to England. Nobody seems camera shy. (Later in the day email addresses are exchanged so the students can receive and distribute the photos. You're not getting them with this blog because I've brought the wrong cable for connecting camera to computer, and I haven't yet found a computer with a slot for the camera card.) The children's mother, whom I assume lives here, appears. May I take her picture? A big smile. 'Avec ma vache.' We go round to the back of the house. I take the picture and show her the image – one of the plusses of digital photography. A cow for every family is one of Rwanda's development slogans and the households I'm visiting are presumably among the most prosperous in the village, though to my untutored eye they show little at a first glance. Theirs are the children who proceed through secondary education and get selected to go on courses like this one. 'Twas ever thus.

We cross the road and wind our way down a path bordered with bright flowers, of which I recognise only one or two. And oh, here's a rose! To our right the land slopes away, planted with bananas and cassava and a view beyond of the other side of the steep valley. One of the students is digging out some compost, which smells just how compost should. We turn left and go to a spot near the house where topsoil, compost and dry ashes are being mixed and put in the sack. I don't know how these experimental demonstrations will work, but they do seem to be getting a good chance of succeeding. I give out more seeds for this group and for a young man who has come to collect the seeds for his group. Temporary seed packets are made from twists of paper and he goes on his way.

I was asked yesterday if I had any flower seeds. I have one packet of borage, one of lavender, and some English marigolds collected from my own allotment. I explain again that I don't know if any of these will grow here. Never mind, they'll try. I put a few marigold seeds into each of several outstretched hands. Then I start on the lavender. But the seed is very fine, my hand is damp with perspiration and the method is not going to work. I pause to pass round the packet, which gives an idea of the perfume. I realise the only sensible thing to do is to give these eager recipients the whole packet and be done with it. Have I remembered the strictures in the AGLI workcampers' handbook on making gifts to individuals? Well, yes, but what else can I do at this moment?

We visit the other three groups. All have completed the task. Back to the classroom in the community centre for fizzy drinks. Rain thrums on the tin roof.

Later in the day we talk about constructing a compost heap. I am able to make a comparison between what happens in a forest to sustain it – leaves fall, tress fall, animals leave their excreta, insects and worms do their work – and the elements to replicate, particularly in a large heap for several households. There is discussion about how to begin reversing the exhaustion and erosion of soils, to feed a dense population like that of Rwanda sustainably. I ask how many in the room are or will be students of agriculture – four or five out of thirty.

No neat ending, but I do find myself resolving to use more of these organic methods, and not just the avoidance of synthetic fertiliser and pesticides, on my own allotment. At the end of the afternoon I get back to a power cut, which lasts 27 hours. The lane leading to the house is almost impassable on account of soft mud and deep gullies. This reasonably prosperous young professional couple has no running water in the house. (There is at least a functioning sewage system in Kigali.)

Much to be done.