An official visit

(Written Weds 19 Oct)

On Tuesday morning, at the far end of a 20 minute moto ride up and along a rocky road, three of us dismounted and were dusted down by our drivers.
Despite low cloud, the views along the way were spectacular

I was to spend two and a half days working with a church group; Jean Baptiste was my translator; David Bucura had driven us from Kigali on Monday afternoon and had business nearby with an inter-church pastors' forum – I think he said they were to receive a gift of two cows. He had come to greet the pastor and introduce me. Bucura with some early arrivals outside the Friends Church (Eglise Evangelique des Amis au Rwanda) at Mutura

For both men, as for Augustin (whose brother-in-law was one of the pastors who welcomed us at the guest house), this is their home patch, and the welcomes have extra warmth. (Baptiste told me during lunch that some of the women remembered him as a little boy and had been reminiscing about his parents' wedding, just 30 years ago, notable for the bride and groom riding in a car, lent by the bride's White employers.)

20 participants had been invited. Then two had been sent by a neighbouring church with a congregation of Batwa. The two were sitting apart and Bucura invited them for a photo with the others.

The pastor's crop of potatoes in flower

We went through the pastor's garden to his office and he said there were now to be 26, not including the local official. I paid cash – quite a lot of cash – for lunch and a tea break for 26 for two days. On this, my sixth visit, I still begrudge spending more than half my budget on food for participants. But that's how it is: if I'm not paying an attendance allowance, which AGLI* forbids, at least they'll get food and drink for their pains.

So it seemed the official was not expected to stay for lunch. We assembled in the church and after a song and a prayer the pastor opened proceedings, remarking among other things that the official was expected any minute. He introduced Jean Baptiste 'who was born here, and his father before him'. So I introduced myself by saying my father was born in England in 1903 and I in 1942. Invited to introduce themselves, all the participants gave their year of birth: the oldest was in 1942, the youngest in 1988.

I described a sack garden, using my faithful visual aid (thank you, again, Ann R), then showed a set of photos of the stages of construction and an array of successful crops, taken on previous visits. We discussed criteria for a good location. Then we trooped out to the pastor's garden, selected a spot to suit him, and filled the sack. By now it was nearly noon.
The sack is half filled. It's woolly hat weather. Jean Baptiste is to the right. Note the rabbit hutch behind the house.


Studying the visual aid


A tall man approached, in early middle age, and greeted the pastor. He was introduced as the local official. Baptiste and I were briefly introduced. With barely a glance at the sack or the assembled students, he launched into a speech. This was the week of unity and reconciliation. (Last week had been for the struggle against gender-based violence. I don't know yet whether next week also has a designation.) He hoped this church would make its contribution by funding a poor widow or donating a cow. I asked if I could speak for a moment. He was visibly impatient, but tolerated a quick demonstration of the surface area available with a small footprint for those with no land to grow food for themselves. Then he left, with the briefest words possible, for something presumably more important.

Having decided to write this piece, I asked Baptiste at breakfast this morning for his take on the encounter. He said the man was clearly in a great hurry, running very late and only interested in saying his piece. I asked whether local officials ever take representations or suggestions from their constituents to higher levels. Yes it does happen occasionally, he said, but you have to wait a very long time for results.


*AGLI is the African Great Lakes Initiative, the US based charity for which I am a volunteer.

A photo after all

Well, there's no cooking going on, because the battle between sun and rain has been won by rain again, but in a few minutes of promise I assembeld Anne's panels, taped the wire supports to the back, put some water in a small black cooking pot and covered it with a glass mixing bowl, bought this morning.

The angles will need adjusting but that's easily done. A series of smaller panels would allow more concentration of rays. I read, on the internet again, that one cardboard box can be converted into a cooker with the addition of aluminium foil in less than one hour, and the design allows adjustment othe height of the sun.

Working with the Tabitha Group

(Composed on Friday 14th, posted on Saturday 15th)

Yesterday, Thursday, was the second of two days with a group of women from the Friends Church in Kagarama. This is where the friendly FolkDancers stayed in Feb 08. It's the place I've worked most often, with church or school personnel.

Their name is the Tabitha group. I suppose I should have looked up the New Testament reference but I won't spend time doing that now. (With my wonderful unlimited internet access this time, I could.) Their purpose is to support other women in the church with friendship and good advice.

When I saw the list of participants' names, and then the much revised list of names two days later after the workshop had almost folded, I was faced with a teaching challenge. A couple have worked with me 4 times, several twice, and 4 never. So instead of trying to find enough material that would be new to everybody but comprehensible to 'beginners', I had to find a different approach.

Wednesday
I asked them to discuss among themselves what they hoped to achieve in two days together, using me as a resource person. I suggested they begin by brainstorming their vision for 5 years from now. Not altogether successful, as the concept of throwing out crazy hopes without immediately smothering them in ifs and buts was hard for my translator to convey or the group to understand. (My translator was doing the job for the first time. I found I needed simple syntax and vocabulary. Sometimes either a group member or I would use French for a bit, quite comfortably.) However we generated 4 goals – all church women to have kitchen gardens, all church women to understand nutrition and feed their families accordingly, all women outside the church to get to that same point, and all cooking to be by other means than wood and charcoal by 2015 – this last being a government target.

We talked through the reason for sacks and other intensively cultivated small spaces, and those who were new to the idea could see photos of the projects of other group member and other people from my workshops. Challenged to plan some first steps towards their goal, they appointed the two most experienced members (and the ones with most church responsibilities already) to be the leaders. Having a group without a responsable is unheard of. With some diversions into compost and manure, that took the whole morning session. Goal one was addressed.

Lunch was takeaway in foil boxes, since the woman who would have cooked was in the group. It was the worst kind of Rwandan meal: rice with a little gravy, two vegetable bananas, a lot of potato, some spaghetti, two nuggets of beef and a teaspoonful of warm coleslaw.

That set us up for the afternoon. My chief new material for this visit is Rachel's translation of my notes on vitamins and minerals for Rwandans, with examples of available foods including African vegetables. We worked through the notes, with lots of time for them to discuss in Kinyarwanda. I have brought with me this time an excellent textbook written 20 years ago for health workers in developing countries, and could look up answers to questions such as how long you need to spend in the sun to make enough vitamin D. We laughed at the timely example in our lunch boxes of the adequate quantity but deficient quality which is the norm here even for people who are not poor.

It was time to stop, before any planning on how to approach this goal had been done. So we would start there on day two, and then go on to cooking devices.

Thursday 13th
In the event, the planning was postponed to the regular group meeting on Monday. I'm very happy to be surplus to requirements as people take what they want from my teaching and make it their own. The second goal was to be addressed. The third may follow from the first two.

So we were quickly on to cooking methods. (I say quickly, glossing over the usual delayed start as people turn up mostly between 20 and 40 minutes after the agreed time. I continue to find this frustrating. Perhaps I should start delaying the end of the day's work by an equal amount of time.)

I asked the group what they knew of the proposal to stop cooking with wood and charcoal. The plan, it seems, is to give a cow to every family outside town centres, then to install the necessary gadgetry for the manure to yield enough biogas for the family's needs. I didn't dwell on the possibility that the scheme may not reach every household, or that some will be unwilling or incapable of taking responsibility for a cow. In town centres electricity will be the only option. I didn't get the sense that they think this is a realistic goal, though it isn't done to criticise government plans in such a setting.

My friend Anne during the summer in suburban London had constructed a simple solar panel cooker, with foil stuck on cardboard, supported by straightened wire coathangers and focussing heat on a black cooking pot. But I can't erect it for a photo now (Friday), and we couldn't try heating water in it yesterday, because there has been little but rain for two days. I did unfold it and show how it could be turned to the sun. We also had the two pieces of kit constructed by the small group of women in March: the tire/tyre cooker made from an inflated inner tube and a sheet of glass, and the insulating basket – also known as a haybox or a peacemaker – for heat retention cooking. Now with internet access I can look things up in class. So I showed the best site I have yet found for such a device, at http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Retained-heat_cooking.

With no sun, there was little enthusiasm in the group for solar cooking as a concept. Evidently Rwanda can't depend on solar devices. The women do know, however, that solar generation contributes to the national grid. Anne had also given me two types of solar lamp, which were passed round and admired. Nobody had seen such a thing. I mentioned that there would be a business opportunity for an importer or distributor on the off chance that somebody might respond, but no.

We also looked at a leaflet about the evaporative cooler made from two concentric pots with wet sand between, and at a schematic design for using a variety of materials following the same principle. One woman had used such a cooler, but she didn't know how to get hold of the pots now marriage had brought her to the city.

Was I wasting their time on such oddities? I hope not. There were good questions as well as some lively conversation I couldn't follow. The heat retention cooking seemed to me to be the likeliest idea to be acted upon. We had at least begun conversation on their fourth goal.

Lunch arrived, from the same outlet as yesterday and at the same price, but as good as could be, with a generous portion of beans and some cooked carrot and dodo (amaranth) supplementing the rice, fried potato and one vegetable banana, with goat meat.

As usual, I ended by giving some seeds from my garden, from English shops, and from a Kigali seed merchant. As usual, they tore eagerly into the packets, separating seeds from printed information. In a few months I shall be back to hear how their plans have been put into action and to see some gardens. I wonder what they will be harvesting.


PS: This morning I bought a glass bowl to make the solar cooker more effective. By the time I got it home it was raining again. But I'll assemble and test the cooker as soon as I can.

Food and water again

Most summers I spend 12 days in a field in Wales, cooking on an open fire, using water drawn from a tap some 50 metres away and carried in containers of various sizes. There is a charming photo (at www.dancecampwales.org.uk) of our circles of tents, yurts and lodges (teepees). But off to one side is a field full of our parked cars: we play at the simple life.

Here in Rwanda I have now had three opportunities to cook with a group of women, making some salads and English dishes such as macaroni cheese while they prepare rice and vegetables in their usual manner. (Well, most are unused to scrubbing potatoes instead of peeling, but nobody has complained yet.) On Tuesday my workshop budget included the use of a minibus belonging to a church member to take us to the big market at Kimirongo and carry us back with our purchases. Possibly in consequence, we bought rather too much food. The day was particularly hot. Several group members had bad backs or bad knees or were dozing with their new babies. The rest of us worked hard for three and a half hours before 'lunch' was ready at 3.30.

There was time for a short conversation after the meal. Most of the Rwandans, including a couple of passing pastors, had tried every dish, though some drew the line at putting fresh yoghurt (substituting for sour cream) in their beetroot soup. They said they would have no difficulty finding hungry, poor people to eat our leftovers. I hope the recipients didn't mind having 4 or 5 kinds of salad, which most Rwandans never eat. I said how difficult I find it to cook without easy access to water. (It emerged that the supply was off for a couple of hours.)

Rinsing vegetables, utensils or hands are actions I don't even think about in my kitchen at home with water on tap. Here we had not enough water, not enough plates or bowls, no such thing as a chopping board (people cut towards their hand and the knives are mostly blunt – perhaps fortunately), not enough table top for everybody to have a work space other than their lap, and not enough charcoal cookers for all the dishes to be ready even within an hour and a half of the first being cooked.

Tired, hungry and impatient, I tried to feel the thankfulness invited by the grace before we ate. There was plenty of food; we could even afford juice to drink, as well as bottled water for washing the salad. And next month I shall go home.

Come-uppance

(Posted Monday evening)

On Saturday morning at breakfast I asked Augustin where I could get some photocopying done. There is a copier in the yearly meeting office, but he confirmed that it would probably not be staffed. I was happy to go to a shop, though preferably not the one I know in the centre of Kigali, several miles away.

'There is one at Sonatubes', he said. This is a large plumbing factory which gives its name to a junction and several small parades of shops and businesses on the approach roads. We discussed the exact location. I said I'd go on the bus. I checked that there still would be buses, because the standard route into town is now on a newly resurfaced stretch cutting the Sonatubes corner. 'Well, yes, there are buses, but why don't I send the yearly meeting car and driver to run the errand for you?'

I explained that Britain Yearly Meeting had recently committed to becoming a low carbon community and that part of my personal commitment was not to use a car unnecessarily. I didn’t want acting on my principles to cause anybody any difficulty, but this was not the case here. I would be happy to go myself by public transport.

Augustin then said there was actually a copy shop at Kicukiro, our nearest market district. I was in any case going to the market to buy ingredients for the beetroot soup I was to make on Sunday. When I got there I found Augustin and Gaudence's son, Justin, working to support his wife and new baby, having dropped out of university. He took the considerable task off my hands and went to a better quality copy shop, bringing the 700 copies to the house in the evening. Good. (Yes, 700 is a lot of paper. However, the material is excellent - Rachel has translated my compilation of vitamin and mineral notes into Kinyarwanda and set it out with lot of space for individual notes. The copies should last me the whole of this visit and perhaps beyond.)

Today, Monday, was the first of two days with a women's group on the other side of town. Gaudence was going with me. We had discussed timing, from which I had deduced we would travel by car. That's fine if it's arranged to suit other people. My back pack was moderately heavy, with handouts and demonstration materials and my netbook for showing photos. My bulky nutrition text book was on the table. Augustin asked if I wanted to take it. I thought not because it would add extra weight for carrying on the jpourney home. 'You can come home in the car', he said. OK. I added it and a couple more I might possibly want.

At the end of the working day, at 3.15 with the sun still very hot, we set off home. I was surprised to get on the bus, but didn't ask Gaudence whether there had been a change of plan. I thought perhaps we were to be met half way. When we walked the 200 yards to the second bus (at Sonatubes, as it happens) it was clear there was to be no car. The second bus finishes outside the market at Kicukiro. I was steeled to carry my over-heavy pack for the 20 minute walk back to the house, and at Gaudence's slowish pace. Serve me right for being self-righteous on Saturday, I thought.

Yet worse was to come. Gaudence wanted to do some shopping in the market. I said I'd wait in the shade, which I did for at least 15 minutes, eventually resting first my pack then myself on an empty barrow. Could I suggest riding home on moto-taxis? Gaudence's skirt was long and straight. No, I'd manage to walk.

What was on my face? I hate to think. Gaudence glanced at me as we set off again, and asked if I was OK. I had decided to say nothing about the expected lift, but she caught me at my weakest. I said that my pack was too heavy and that Augustin had said the car would pick us up. She knew nothing of the arrangement. She phoned, and Edouard came to our rescue.

I wonder what Augustin is thinking of my principles.

Food and water

It's a year since I stayed with Gaudence and her husband Augustin. Like Rachel, my host in February, she is a keen grower of vegetables. It was her bumper crop of basil cooked communally with the N American women last time. She and Rachel together are taking the initiative in continuing Growing Together when I finish.

So I wasn't altogether surprised this morning to see at the back of her house a new-style tiered kitchen garden, with new season's green pepper and aubergine plants peeping through the moist half-rotted mulch. The rain came late last month but it is here now. (Twenty minutes was added to the delay in getting into the air terminal in Kigali yesterday while a bus was sent for to protect disembarking passengers from a downpour. Those going on to Entebbe were not well pleased.)

Conversation is sparse between us without a translator, though her English is better than my Kinyarwanda. With a broad smile she led me round the side of the house, past the polythene sided rainwater store, to a neat row of four sacks, generously planted with isogi (an African leaf vegetable), leaf celery, spinach beet, piri-piri (hot pepper), basil and probably more. It really does seem to be true that even people with enough land like planting in sacks. We walk round to the front, where newly pruned bushes of moringa and another edible shrubs are interspersed with maize, fronted by a row of young papaya. I'd like to get a close look at the macadamia sapling, but the ground is too muddy.

My first appointment is with Bucura David, in charge of the AGLI work in Rwanda, to talk timetable and money.

As I cross the yard of the primary school opposite the Friends compound at Kagarama, I notice a mound about the size of Gaudence's new structure, surrounded with freshly dug earth. I greet the group standing round it, including a young white man. I ask if I may take a photo. 'Would you like to look inside?' he asks. I didn't know there would be an inside. However, the structure is not beaten earth but mud-stained concrete. The hole in the centre gives onto a deep chamber, hollowed to a width of about 3 metres. A rainwater cistern! When asked what would help Rwanda most, I often propose water retention. Here it is in action, directed by a young man from Bristol called Toby, a garden construction engineer, working with Water for Life. 'Are you working for Christ?' he asks. 'Well, sort of,' I mumble, Quaker fashion. 'There is the church I work with, over the road.' My credentials are enhanced when Josine, the deputy head here and participant in several of my workshops, comes to greet me in lively French.

Over the road, David proposes postponing a two-day workshop in a remote location till my next visit; I suggest a re-arrangement that would avoid my working two 6-day weeks consecutively; he tells me to bring the proposal to the planning meeting this afternoon. He fails to bring up the budget on his laptop and emails me later that there's a 25% discrepancy between my expected budget for the QPSW funded Batwa project and the money wired from AGLI in the USA. Fortunately I have cash for such contingencies.

By 5pm I've re-established my dongle for internet connection, failed to get a US phone to accept an African SIM card, arrived late for the 3pm planning meeting, which I hate, after one of those public transport stories you don't need to hear, and returned to Gaudence's garden on my way into the house. She is at the door. I ask if I may thin the forest of tiny lettuces. We could eat them for supper, I say.

I pull out several handfuls. Already some of the outer leaves have rotted from lack of air; the roots are coated with mud. Clearly, I need water to prepare them. Gaudence goes inside to get a key, brings a jug and a bowl, and makes her way round the side of the house, presumably to the stopcock. Water pours out of the tap above the sink on the outside wall. I fill bowl and jug, but can't turn off the tap. The flow can be slowed, but only by pushing down on the tap as well as turning it. Gaudence goes back round the side and eventually the flow subsides. I don't want to embarrass her by offering to pay for a repair, though it's tempting.

How long would it take me to get used to such as routine? And how much more inhibiting would it be if there were no stopcock in the garden but only a communal tap several hundred yards away? Or a muddy pond, as I have seen in some places being used to draw water and wash motor bikes. Would I want to eat salad and encourage others to do so then?

Ready for supper time is a small but perfectly formed salad of baby lettuce leaves, rocket, basil, leek green, parsley and celery top, all from the garden, with an onion and a tomato added and a little salt. Also enough water to drink and later to wash in. We are blessed.

Link to my programme for Oct-Nov

http://www.ealingquakers.org.uk

I hoped this would be a link to my programme for Oct-Nov 2011 on the Rwanda page of Ealing Quaker website. The link doesn't seem to be working, but here's the address.