The perfect breakfast

It’s no secret that physically we are not “roughing it” here. Breakfast shows this very clearly. Full cream milk only 1 day old, local honey, lemon marmalade made from our garden produce, fresh bread or rolls plus fruit salad of pineapple, banana and orange (our garden again). Unfortunately, the menu also includes 1 doxycycline pill!
Perhaps best of all, however, we can take 20 minutes to sit on the veranda and enjoy it together, with a stunning view over the lake to the Congo mountains. I think back to 5-minute “solo” breakfasts at home, where it is dark for about 4 months of the year. “Quality of life” is a wide and undefinable term, but for quality of breakfast, Rwanda is streets ahead.

Waiting

I visited the gacaca recently. This is the local court system which is being used across Rwanda to investigate genocide crimes from 1994. When we got there we found instead a meeting about security, being addressed by a senior army officer. This was at great length, of course (nearly an hour). When he had finished, there was the formal opening of the court and the identification of witnesses before the trial began. By this time my back was quite sore with standing and waiting and I was feeling hot, tired and dehydrated in the glare of the direct sun.
Then I thought about the families of the murdered, who have waited 12 years for justice. They have also had to wait their turn in the gacaca process and finally today for the army officer to finish his speech.
I am an amateur at waiting.
There are echoes of the Psalms here, people waiting to see God’s justice come on the earth.
How long, O Lord?
How long will the wicked be allowed to gloat?
Hear their arrogance! How those evildoers boast!
They oppress your people, O Lord, hurting those you love.
They kill widows and foreigners and murder orphans.
“The Lord isn’t looking”, they say, “and besides, the God of Israel doesn’t care”.
Psalm 94, New Living Translation

The mzungu baby

Aimee, one of the diocesan staff, had a baby recently and yesterday we all went round to visit. I got a chance to hold the baby and someone joked that it was a “mzungu” (white person). Sure enough, the skin on the arms was paler than mine (admittedly now quite well tanned).
The baby presents were definitely in Rwandan custom : 2 crates of Fanta, a hen and a large matoke (savoury banana).

The first signs of Christmas

Of course Christmas is completely different here. The first time I really heard it mentioned was in relation to the police. “The police become more harsh in December – they are trying to get more money before the end of the year. You even see them in the villages.”. There seems to be some truth in this, there is a lot of police activity and I had my first slightly unpleasant encounter with police recently, normally they are very pleasant.
The second conversation about Christmas involved food prices : “They start to go up near Christmas”. I can’t vouch for this personally. What has surprised me is that there has been little mention of it in church. I thought an Episcopal church would be stronger on celebrating Advent (apparently it is more significant in the Catholic Church). This week the church is being painted and decorated there are some special meetings next week, but there is certainly no Advent theme in worship yet.
Last Saturday we were in Butare and there was one shop with a tiny Christmas tree and a tinselly Christmas banner, but otherwise they are thankfully free of Western glitter.
For our part, we have put up some fairy lights on the veranda, taken a suitable branch to act as a small Christmas tree outside our door and are working our way through a chocolate advent calendar (thanks, Clare!). With reports of storms at home and the weather actually improving here, it’s hard to believe that there are only 12 days to go.
There is one other sign of Christmas – the flow of newsy emails from the UK has dried up! Presumably everyone is writing Christmas cards?

The first 100 days

We have just passed 100 days in Rwanda. Coincidentally, it arrived just after I had prepared a report for Rwanda Aid. My first surprise was that it was about 8 pages long. I didn’t think I had done that much since coming here! It also coincided with a very inspiring meeting with the bishop, where we were able to share ideas about our work and the way ahead. As always, the difficulty is putting ideas into practice. That is particularly tricky here where the management systems (i.e. the tools to implement ideas) are weak or non-existent. Challenges all around.
We have passed some kind of milestone apart from merely counting the days. The difference is subtle but noticeable in a number of ways.
• We have started getting interested in the news again, Rwandan, British and world.
• We have found a new confidence in speaking French and not worrying about grammatical errors. We are also starting to understand African French better.
• We understand a fair amount of what is happening round about us (we think) and do not need to ask so often. This makes life easier, but it also means that some of the novelty and wonder of living here is wearing off.
• We have people we would count as friends.
• We are seriously missing people at home.
We are also past the stage where we can say “we have just arrived here”. There are lots of things which are still new and mysterious, but the settling-in period is over (as is 1/7th of our time here).

Surprised by the sun

I was surprised to notice recently that the sun here does not always set in the same place. Being very close to the equator, our days are pretty much the same length, but the sunset is definitely moving. This was disguised because it is the rainy season and sunset is usually behind cloud, but I had expected that it would always be virtually due west. The technical explanation is provided by my dad, who used to teach navigation.

“Being on the equator greatly simplifies the calculation of the bearing of the sun at sunrise and set. Cyangugu is at 2* 29' S of the equator but that will not affect the situation to any extent.
The amplitude or bearing at sunrise is the number of degrees from 090--- N from the Spring to the Autumnal equinoxes and S of 090 for the rest of the year. The same applies to 270 at sunset. At the equinoxes it rises at 090 and sets at 270.
The maximum angle away from the E---W line occurs at the solstices and is 23.5* The sun therefore rises at 066.5 and sets at 293.5 on 21st June and rises at 113.5 and sets at 246.5 on 21st December.
These values for the amplitude of the sun at the equator are the same as the sun's declination on the respective dates. Minute by minute value for declination is given in the nautical almanac for each year. You could get an approximate enough value by drawing a cosine curve or even a straight line graph of angle against time”.
Reading this led me to another surprise – the sun is not always directly overhead at mid-day, as I had imagined it would be. This will only be true at the equinoxes.
If all this technical writing detail seems difficult, there is also a very simple parable here. I don’t understand half of what goes on in Rwanda, even simple things like the rising and setting of the sun!

The wedding introduction

We were invited to one of these in Kigali recently. There is no real equivalent in our culture – “engagement party” does not even begin to describe it.
The event is hosted by the girl’s family and its purpose is twofold – to negotiate how many cows the boy’s family will give and to introduce the engaged couple to the wider family on both sides. As it happened, the happy couple definitely played second fiddle to the cow discussions!
There were about 150 people there, equally divided between the two “sides” and facing each other, with a space in between for a sofa and chairs, later to be occupied by the couple plus attendants. We started an hour and a half late with a meal and then proceeded to the most important part of Rwandan events – the speeches.
The bargaining was carried out by a senior male relation from each family, with one or two advisers on either side and was very good-humoured, lots of jokes (we had a translator to give us the gist). After the opening speeches and some verbal sparring, the boy’s family eventually offered 8 cows. They were asked to confirm this and then the girl’s family said “that’s 8 plus 8 then?”. Much hilarity.
They went to 9, then 10 and finally, after about 1 hour, the sides agreed on 11. By this time it was about 1 hour away from dusk and I wondered if we would even be able to see the couple when they came!
I thought we were finished, but the discussion now turned to how to divide the cows between the couple and the girl’s family. This was shorter and ended up as 5 for the couple, but the boy’s family had a nice twist to their negotiations and insisted that the couple should be able to choose ANY 5 from the girl’s family stock. Finally, a request to describe the 11 cows was declined and they agreed to go and see the cows together to complete the transaction.
The couple showed up to great applause, greeted the families, exchanged gifts and then disappeared after about 15 minutes without saying anything. Since darkness was imminent, the party dissolved rather quickly : the wedding is in 4 weeks’ time, anyway.

Temperature rising

In the wake of the French judge issuing warrants against several senior Rwandans and the expulsion of French ambassador, there is a real buzz about the affair. The Rwandan “Sunday Times” had about 4 pages allocated to it. We spent the week-end in Kigali and quite a few people talked to us about it. One was a guard at some shops – he said “the French killed our people during the war”. We missed the demonstration in the capital, but apparently there was also one in the streets of Kamembe on Friday afternoon.
Of course, there are individual repercussions for the diplomatic spat. French-funded aid projects may be closed, the Franco-Rwandan Cultural Centre and a French-funded school in Kigali have been closed and the guard told us his sister, a student in Paris, had been expelled from the country.
All in all, it has been a reminder of how volatile things can be. It has also been remarkable how the country has united against France. This shouldn’t be too surprising – I have been trying to get a Rwandan perspective on this. The nearest I can come up with is this – imagine in the 1950s if Rwanda had accused de Gaulle of war crimes against the Germans. It would of course be unthinkable that France would even entertain such a suggestion. The “New Times” claimed that the events even had a racist tone to them and I can see what they mean.

Frustration - good for the soul?

The starting point for this is a very frustrating week, not the first since I came here! However, this is the common, if not universal, experience of Westerners visiting Africa. Frustration levels rise. We say that frustration is not good for our blood pressure, but I wonder if it can be good for our soul.

This is more of a personal confession than a general principle for spiritual growth. I don’t recommend seeking frustrating situations (although you only have to commute with Scotrail for a short time to come across quite a few!). The value is in what we learn when we cannot do or get what we want, when our wills are crossed by others or by circumstances. It reveals what is really important to us and as is often the case with self-knowledge, it is painful, because the causes of frustration are often very petty and show how self-centred we are. It’s all about my time, my priorities, my plans.

It’s certainly not always wrong to get frustrated. Jesus was clearly frustrated by his disciples’ slowness to learn spiritual truth, by the Pharisees stubborn refusal to accept him and by Jerusalem’s rejection of him and many of the prophets before him. In sharing our humanity, God understands what it is like to be frustrated – He does not get all He wants, either.

No cow for us

Tonight we were at a ”lottery” organised by our bank. Every 3 months they organise a draw for customers who have savings accounts – the prize being a cow. Unfortunately we were not lucky this time. It’s a shame - we know a few bachelors who might have offered us a good price, as cows are still the “bride price” here.

Conversation with Theogene the butcher

I met Theogene through a mutual friend and last week we got chatting about his work. At first Theogene was bemused and amused that I was interested, but I learned a bit about the meat trade in Rwanda.

I – “Do you have a butcher’s shop?
T – “I kill the animals, then people from the Congo take the meat and sell it in Bukavu”
I – “In English, we would call that a slaughterhouse”
T – “We do not have a house, we just kill the animals outside”
I – “And when it rains?”
T – “My job is very difficult then. I have to take the animals inside the house” (!!!)
I – “”So you cut the throat of the animals?”
T – “Yes, of course”
I – “ And what about the blood?
T – “It falls on the ground”

I explain the Scottish idea of black pudding, made mostly from blood. Theogene is very surprised. “In Rwanda only dogs eat blood”.

I – “So how did you become a butcher?”
T – “I needed to make money and some people near where I live were butchers”
I – “Did someone teach you how to do it?”
T – “No, I just watched others”
I – “But someone must have taught you how to kill an animal!?”
T - "No"

Armed robbers foiled in Kamembe

Apparently a gang of about 6 Ugandans tried to rob one of the new banks in town. The police caught them, one was shot dead and two escaped. One version I heard was that the gang had bribed one of the guards, who had then informed the police. When the gang arrived at the bank, they had knives and in the fighting one of them was killed.

The group I was discussing with agreed that these criminals were not over-endowed with intelligence. Kamembe has no obvious escape routes - the lake is on one side, the Congo border with its security guards close by, Burundi to the south (again there is border security) and lastly there is the difficult road through Nyungwe, with patrols by soldiers. How they planned to get back to Uganda, or even get rid of the money, is anybody’s guess.

(Note to friends and family - the events took place in the middle of the night and are as rare for Cyangugu as they would be in the UK, or any other part of Rwanda. We are quite safe here and crime rates are very low. Our bank manager said to me that he was not planning any new security measures as a result of the raid).