Back in Kigali

Weds evening, 3 Feb

Leaving Bujumbura on a hideously expensive 30 minute flight yesterday, I was looking forward to a more comfortable temperature in Kigali. Not for long: the pilot cheerfully told us it was 32C at 5.30 in the evening. It's not just that I have left Britain in winter: everybody is remarking on the heat and here they are saying it must be climate change. I tried the term 'climate chaos', which I now prefer, on Rachel, my hostess (David Bucura's wife) and she didn't demur.

I slept for more than 10 hours in a quiet house where even the dog barked quietly when something moved in the night. Then after breakfast David presented an outline programme, to be firmed up tomorrow. He is responsible for the work with the women's and church groups, Antoine for the school contacts. (Antoine is no longer the head of the Friends School here in Kigali at Kagarama but has been promoted to superintendent of all 4 Friends schools in the country. I expect to be visiting 3 of them.)

Rachel leaves tomorrow for Nairobi, where she has 4 more months to complete her masters in counselling. We went into town together. The bus journey requires one big bus or two little ones. Fortunately for me we got on a little one, so I could learn how to change over in Remera bus station. I wrote down the name of our stop: Chapere, and the name of the district to check with the driver: Samuduha. I have no memory for meaningless words. On our return we get off the bus beside a little church, whose board says 'chapelle'.

We both changed money; I went seed shopping, while Rachel bought her bus ticket for tomorrow. (The journey takes 24 hours but flights are just too expensive.) The local seed company, Agrotech, had a much better selection than previously, including several herbs, which had seemed almost unknown. (It's om my schedule to se about making a demonstration herb garden.) Another innovation was a computerised system which gave me a printed list of all 18 kinds of seed instead of a hand-written scrap with a bare total. The Kenya Seed Company, a few shops further down, had some of the same staples and a few additions: a second variety of tomato, chard, kale (known here as sukumawiki – the Swahili name usually translated as collards), and spinach – especially useful for the sides of the planted sack which is my first project with every group. I have packed up samples for Burundi, where the choice was very limited, and will ask the church office to find somebody to take them to Alex – contact between the two yearly meetings is frequent.

I see more multi-storey buildings going up each time I come here, though many remain unfinished. Very pleasing to me is the increase in size and number of street trees, though most don't yet cast deep shade. Town was very crowded, and Rachel said the extra people were students preparing to return to school. All the schools have been closed for an extra month at the end of the long holiday while the teachers have training for teaching in English. A month is certainly better than nothing.

I didn't take my camera into town, and I didn't see anything I would have liked to capture. I was sorry, however, not to have had it when I went for supper with Alex on my last evening in Bujumbura. Hearing that I had not seen the lake other than from the aeroplane, she took me a few hundred yards from the house she shares with the two QPSW workers to a place called the Sunset Bar but nicknamed the hippo hole. There we sat sharing a drink, counting three solid dark shapes in the water as the light faded and glad of the protective netting even if it did mar the view.