Breakfast this morning was at seven, to give me time to buy some salad items on the way to the bus to Gitarama, where Rachel and I were to perform our double act of preparing food with a dozen women. (We ended up with 12 dishes, of which 5 were salads.) I am given hot water for washing every morning. What time would I like it, I was asked.
Would 6.30 be OK, I asked, imagining the charcoal would have to be fired up some time before 6. Yes, 6.30 would be fine. At 6.20 I went out to the dining room to get some drinking water. There on the side table were the 5 litre water container and a singing kettle. Easy.
Last weekend Annunciate asked me to teach her how to make mushroom soup. Several other dishes were also being prepared, and the pan of water for cooking, heated with charcoal, had run dry. 'If there's no hot water we can add cold', I suggested. 'Oh no, that won't be necessary; I'll boil the kettle.'
In preparation I had looked at several recipes. Do they have cookery books in Rwanda? Well, I had seen a small, modestly presented one in French at Gaudence's. But no, I simply used that upstart – the internet.
When I came for the beginning of my project, in February 2009, web browsing was a luxury beyond my reach. Email was done at a small internet 'café' (with no drinks) where the system crashed when the power failed, customers paid per 15 minutes and were expected to leave after 30 unless there was nobody waiting. Then my hosts started to offer me time on a home computer, when the machine was free and with dial-up at a price that I learnt was embarrassingly high. Then one of the missionary households had bought unlimited airtime for a monthly fee and I was sometimes invited in. Now I have my own dongle (portable modem) with unlimited time, paid by the single week or month; this was a special offer in October and still operating in February. And yes, it is a welcome luxury.
Friday
This morning I had a late start and used the lovely kettle to make my own coffee. Setting off to walk to the church at Gasharu, taking my Rwandan cell phone, I left on charge the batteries from my little radio, the UK phone I use for my morning alarm and to receive emergency messages from home, and the laptop that hosts my modem and is carried round to show photos as teaching aids to groups. In my bag I had a camera with photos of plants and plantings to show to the small group planning the church garden. None of these devices would function without access to electricity and I would be sorry to have to do without any of them.
Only around 15% of Rwandans are connected to the grid. A few more have solar panels. Most eat their evening meal in the dark – if they have food enough for a second meal in the evening – and go to bed by 7.30 or 8. In the novel by Anthony Trollope I've just finished reading (largely by the light of a natty solar lamp), one rich show-off is described as having the gaslights in his house lit before a dinner party. The others presumably use candles, sit talking by firelight in winter, or go to bed when it's dark. Yet their inner lives are as rich as ours, after another century and a half of technological innovation.
I heard an item on BBC Africa – thank you, little radio with the rechargeable batteries – about the lifelong damage caused by early malnutrition, illustrated by a visit to an infant feeding programme in Kicukiro, which is where I am staying. Children suffering from kwashiorkor or marasmus are taken in for several weeks' feeding, and their mothers educated in nutrition. This evening I shall use my phone to discuss with my translator for next week, Alphonse, which topics relating to diet and health would be most suitable to present to the group of women in Mutura, high above Lake Kivu in the foothills of the volcanoes. Much of the country's food comes from this fertile region, where rich soils get plentiful rain, yet the custom is to send the vegetables off to market, filling the family with maize, potatoes and beans. (I'm reminded of how difficult it is to buy fish in Cornwall, because it's almost all sold in France.) In my usual guest house near here, greens have to be ordered in advance to supplement the standard supper. It will be interesting to see what food Alphonse and his family eat while I am staying with them.
At the end of our shared meal at Gitarama yesterday, Rachel and I asked the women what they had found interesting.
A first encounter with cheese; much vegetable preparation in the backgroundThe main thing they had learned was that you can make salads or stir fry with what you have, combining ingredients in different ways. As we left, they were gathering round the table to share out the seeds from Kigali and from London that I had given – probably 20 different vegetables. Most of this group had worked with me on my first visit three years ago; they have been planting in sacks and they have compost. I hope they realise that eating better need not be a luxury.
Well, somebody had to hold
the baby
Pre-electric light: in Bill Bryson's At Home there is a throw-away remark to the effect that actually Europeans did not all write off their day as soon as it got dark. The implication has to be that they used rush lights or something; but from memory he does not say what the evidence is.
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