Rain

Written Weds and Thurs

Tropical storm Sandy, wreaking havoc in the USA, is leading the news bulletins from the BBC and Deutsche Welle. I learn from the internet that there have also been devastating floods in Argentina and Sri Lanka as well as in Haiti from Sandy in its earlier phase. Lives and livelihoods are being lost. The death toll mounts

Here it is merely raining, I think. Last night's downpour trickled under the door on to my floor again, but I now know where the puddles will form and can pick up anything that might be damaged, while giving thanks for a sound roof.

This afternoon the clouds were gathering but I had to go into town to make photocopies of Rachel's translations of my notes on nutrition. If any are spare after my 3 remaining groups, I will leave them for others to use. Photocopying is done near my bus terminus by a group of friendly rivals who swoop on any customer. 'Choose me.' 'No, me.' 'Why not me?' I had a big order last week, shared between two operators. Today several crowded round as I took out my originals and I parcelled out the work between three. After the original competition they share machines and paper supplies.

While they were at work - wheeling the copiers under cover, making the copies, tapping on calculators for the elementary arithmetic of 20FRW per side, sending out for change, finding an invoice chit and a rubber stamp to make it official - the rain began in earnest. After 10 minutes or so I was offered a stool. Another 15 or 20 minutes and a comparative lull allowed me to splash the 50 yrds to T2000, the Chinese supermarket occupying two floors of a smart new building, relocated from a dingy basement nearby.

Here as in many new buildings it's required to have one's bags inspected and to pass through a scanner. Usually this is a trivial annoyance but today access was blocked by people sheltering and I had to work quite hard to get in.

I had come to enquire again about an oven thermometer. Like many in Kigali, the household where I'm staying has added a gas cooker to the traditional charcoal - the cost of cooking is about the same either way. But there is no regulator for the oven. I'm learning to turn the gas up or down according to the sight and sound of what's being cooked. But I'm expected to demonstrate cake making and I don't want to waste good ingredients. Toasted cheese for lunch on Sunday was hard work and not very good - rubbery cheese and melt-in-the-mouth white bread; roast veg for 9 in the evening took longer than I'd expected - most things do, in the kitchen as elsewhere - and were then gratifyingly well received.

No thermometer though, despite assurances a few days ago.

I got back to the bus under my umbrella OK for what is usually a 20 minute journey, sat in traffic for well over an hour, and was very glad when Antoine texted that he would meet me from the bus.

As I write, while a visitor is welcomed and eating dinner is delayed, the TV news has pictures of flooding on the other side of Kigali - and four killed. Heavy rain rushes down the steep hillsides, sweeps away flimsy foundations and the roofs fall in.

The Bugesera district, where I'm teaching this week, is in the dry south east. When I ask the group in Katarara, on my third visit, to tell me of their successes and failures with growing vegetables, the only topic of interest is the chronic lack of rain. Actually this rainy season is wetter than usual and uncultivated land looks green between cultivated patches of beans, beans and beans interspersed with cassava. However, the rains have arrived only recently.

In the dry season not only does the usual piped water supply dry up and the crops shrivel - even finding enough water to drink is a problem. The women go down to the lake and fill jerry cans, then use the newly introduced water purifying tablets. The suggestion of making all that effort to carry water and give it to the garden makes them laugh grimly. Yes, it would save money spent on food at the dearest times of the year but it would be too much hard work.

I ask if there are ways of storing rain water. A few houses have gutters now and they are compulsory on new public buildings. The conversation about the price of domestic water tanks I've had many times. I wonder why they don't dig pits; the clay soil could be pounded into an impermeable lining even without plastic sheeting, which I've seen in use elsewhere in Rwanda. No, they don't think they could do that. Rain comes and then it goes.

Antoine's comment as we drive back is not new either: it's a matter of changing minds.

Minds could need changing in relation to climate chaos, too. When I hear, in Rwanda where even the main roads have many times more pedestrians than bicycles - ridden or wheeled laden like donkeys - and many more bicycles than cars, of New Yorkers having to walk for two hours to get to work because there is no power to pump the fuel for their cars, I must confess to moments of schadenfreude. Could this be a wake up call for some changes of mind?