Rain and roads

Written on Friday morning, 5 Feb

The heatwave is over. Yesterday at the end of the afternoon it poured with rain as David and I were in his car. The window on the passenger side is stuck half open and he hasn't got round to having it fixed. (The practical priority at the moment is getting a couple of doors re-hung in the house. Yesterday morning he fetched the workman and took him to the house, but the electricity was out and the man now depends on power tools.) For most of the journey it wasn't too bad, then we changed direction. My waterproof jacket was at home but I had an umbrella. Opened inside the window it didn't d0 a bad job.

David and his nine-year-old daughter Dina were about to set off for a keep fit class at his church, offered on Thursday evenings at present by one of the church members who is a PE teacher. But the rain cam back even heavier. Going was pointless, as nobody would be able to get there. It rained for several hours.

This morning it's overcast and damp but not actively raining. The temperature has dropped by about 15 degrees C I would think. After last night's scouring the lane from D's house up to the metalled road is patterned with deep gulleys. I comment that I wouldn't like to be driving here. 'Oh', says David.'Is it the roads?'

I take the opportunity to fill in my background understanding of how things work here. Who is responsible for the lane, I ask. We are, says D. 'We' is a group of around 30 neighbouring households, the smallest unit of lcal government. The leader is elected but not paid (and that can lead to petty corruption). No, there are not a lot of candidates – as at home, I say. There are monthly meetings to which D usually sends his house worker, Jean de Dieu; he thinks that the last time he went himself was 4 or 5 months ago.

I know that the last Saturday of every month has a few morning hours designated for community work. (In Bujumbura, with a similar system, I could get a cup of coffee at breakfast time only because the cafe staff knew me and took pity on my ignorance.) Would the neighbours get together to patch the lane? Yes, eventually: it's already nearly too bad to ignore. How often does it get patched? About twice a year.