Thursday 4 March was my last day of teaching - on Friday a meeting to prepare for October's joint project with HROC was planned. Antoine proposed an early finish to the workshop so we could go for a walk. He would like to take me to his wife's family home and his own and it was not possible to drive. Could I walk for perhaps one hour?
I wondered about the weather - it had rained on two afternoons out of three so far, on the edge of the remnant of the tropical rain forest where mountain gorillas used to live side by side with the Twa. By noon the cloud was thickening but no rain had fallen. As we left the workshop after lunch I began to hear rumbles of thunder. Were we still going? Well it's OK so far, said A, and we can get a little way at least.
We left the car outside a church just off the tarmacked road. A told me to bring my computer and camera, just in case of thieves, and I packed them into my handbag, together with umbrella, purse, passport and signal-free phone. We set off, uphill, between small fields of potatoes, millet and cassava.
After 15 minutes it began to rain. I took out my umbrella - A had none and he had even forgotten his cap, he observed. We took shelter under the tin roof of an open-sided structure, together with half a dozen men and boys. (I suppose the women kept working in the fields - they do most of the labouring.)As the first heavy burst subsided, A suggested we carry on. I had an umbrella, didn't I? Our route took us past a primary school, the one he had attended as a boy, where he borrowed an umbrella. It was bigger than mine and he offered to swap. Foolishly I declined.
Onwards and upwards we continued. More of the path disappeared under trickles then torrents. At least the volcanic soil wasn't as slippery as clay, and frequently there were lumps of larva to provide a better footing. I am not at my fittest after weeks without my usual level of activity, but I kept up OK.
The bottoms of A's trouser legs were splashed, then soaked. I was wet well above the knees and nearly to my shoulders. I was concerned for the contents of my handbag, which I was wearing on my back. A few others were on the path but many were sheltering against buildings. Did I want to wait for a bit? No, what was the point? By now my feet were also soaking and I didn't want to get cold standing about.
Time after time we saw a house ahead and I thought this might be the one. We climbed for an hour and a quarter. Eventually I confessed to a headache, probably from the altitude. Was it serious? No, not worth making a fuss. (I couldn't see any intermediate stage between keeping on keeping on or summoning an emergency medical service with unpredictable results. At a later stage A talked about how in the old days the Red Cross would send four men to carry a sick person on a litter.)
At last we reached the compound where some of his wife's family still live. It is only 7 or 8 minutes' walk below the border of the preserved forest on the steep mountainside. The main house was being rebuilt and one of the two households had decamped into a storehouse, very dark, with clothing slung on ropes between the rafters. Antoine was given a large mug of tea. (I later asked him why I was offered nothing and he said he'd declined on my behalf because country tea would upset my stomach; I wish he'd told me.) I took off my wet overshirt and was lent a polyester sweater, removed from the rope and stripped from the shirt inside it, which I was to keep for the rest of the excursion. Bonaventure, the head of ESK (Ecole Secondaire a Kidaho, one of the Friends schools) who is our host for the week, is a brother of the family and a fairly frequent visitor, so it could be returned when laundered.
We probably sat there for half an hour – it seemed outside time. My headache cleared. Somebody commented that we would have done better to visit in the morning – yes, but we were working then. The thrumming on the tin roof lessened. My sopping wet shirt went into my wet bag and onto my back again. My computer, camera, phone and passport were repacked in a paper bag (no polythene bags in Rwanda) inside a sturdy document wallet, which Antoine was to carry for me. He asked for a bamboo cane to help me on the way down and checked it for splinters.
In Rwandan custom, guests are always accompanied a little way when they leave. Antoine's mother-in-law, who must be close to me in age, found shoes and a shawl and came with us; a younger male relative led the descent by a narrower route we had not taken on the way up.
This was the best part of the walk. It stopped raining completely; the path comprised mostly rounded rocks with a good grip; my trousers dried to below the knees. It was beautiful and it was fascinating. As we descended we passed cows and goats and their young herdsmen. The path was strewn with strips of chewed sugar cane. The air bore a slight fragrance of eucalyptus smoke. Others came to greet Antoine and walk part of the way with us, as had indeed been happening at the beginning of the ascent as well.
After only a few minutes it became impossible to ignore the returning rain. I stopped wishing I had taken charge of my camera. Umbrellas went up. The water line on my trousers ascended almost to the bottom of the sweater. Grandmother made her farewells and returned home. After maybe half an hour the young man did likewise.
I began to sense an atmosphere of pilgrimage as Antoine pointed out the border of his family's land, and indeed his own field given him by his parents. We entered a very pretty garden and knocked on a front door. It was eventually opened by a young houseworker and her toddler, but Antoine's brother and his family were not at home. The next house was smaller and simpler. It was occupied by a son of the family who had apparently decided to move in on his own; there were a few pop posters on the walls.
We sat for a few minutes, then left. This was the family house of A's childhood as the youngest of 7, built by his father. In the garden A showed me a rockery, then a bee hive, then the site of his mother's grave. His father had been a well respected farmer and a bee-keeper, he said.
Accompanied by the nephew, in unrelenting rain, we walked to the other side of the family land, looking up hill and down to see its extent. A couple more houses had been recently built for (or perhaps by) other households. The rough track followed the contour. Before the war you could drive a car along here, A remarked. Then umuganda, communal work on the last Saturday of every month, was well organised and things were kept in good order. Now the track was deeply rutted, with occasional sections of rudimentary larva cobbles rising above the puddles. In an instant of inattention to the muddy grass, I fell to the side, not injuring myself but dirtying one sleeve of the borrowed sweater and one leg of my longsuffering trousers.
Maybe half a mile further on, we met A's sister-in-law returning, with two more women. As always, hands were shaken all round and greetings exchanged. Not far now, A said, as we left them.
We reached the car at six o'clock, four and a half hours after leaving it. A handed over the borrowed umbrella to the nephew. The drive back was short. I had just enough with me for a complete change of clothing. Apart from a tweaked intercostal muscle, now well again, no ill effects.
Muhabura in the sunshine on Friday, showing the division between settlement and forest.
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