BUTARE

We are spending the weekend in Butare, which is the nearest "big" town to us. It involves walking down our mountain which usually takes one hour but yesterday took us an hour and a half because we kept having to stop to shelter from the rain! From Gikongoro it takes about 30 minutes on a tightly packed, ancient mini bus that thinks it is one of the rides at Alton towers, careering round hair pin-bends on two wheels! I have worked out a coping strategy for these hair-raising journeys now - i close my eyes!

Butare is the main university town in Rwanda and has a great atmosphere. It basically consists of one main street, a massive cathedral and a huge university campus. It also has a wonderful national museum. We are staying in a small guest house which is costing us £7 a night. Last time we stayed here we really liked it but this time, the restaurant is shut down and we seem to be the only ones here and i was badly bitten by fleas last night so we might not come here again

There are two really nice old colonial hotels here and yesterday we watched the FA cup final in one and ate chicken in another (how sad is that)

We went to the cathedral this morning, it is a huge building built in the 30's by the belgians, when they planned to make Butare the capital of Rwanda and were going to call it Astrida. Most of the large buildings in Rwanda were built by the white fathers from Belgium. There is still very much a 'muzungu' influence here and you get a lot of missionary types who drive about in their huge vehicles throwing coins at the beggars and acting very superior. Its the only thing we dont like about Butare. There is a post office here and a very nice craft co-operative which has really cheap and interesting things. We feel that if we could sell that stuff in UK we would make a fortune (for Rwanda)

Yesterday we spotted a chinese restaurant and we are going to risk it tonight, although i might just have a vegetarian meal because anything like prawns will have been frozen and there are so many power cuts here.

We went to the chinese restaurant, it was ok. They brought us an extensive menu but then narrowed it down to about two things that were available. oh well c'est la vie a Rwanda!

Teaching in a Rwandan Secondary School

My school is G.S. Notre dame de la Paix, a catholic boarding school( most secondary schools here are boarding schools).

Average age of pupils: 16-25( some even older)

Reasons:Many children don't start primary school until they are 11 or older.

There is often a gap between leaving primary school and starting secondary school (usually financial reasons)

Secondary schooling is not free, parents must pay the equivalent of 30 pounds a year-a massive sum for most Rwandans. Some pupils manage a year of school and then their parents simply can't afford to continue paying.(It's so sad).

Rwanda uses the European system of repeating a year for students who don't obtain high enough marks.

Class sizes: between 50 and 60.

Resources: blackboard, chalk and teacher ingenuity.

No text books, no photocopying facilities, nothing on the walls. Classrooms dark and crumbling, rain hammering down on the tin roof sometimes so you cant hear yourself speak.

Student motivation:

desperate to learn and to do well and make something of themselves. No discipline problems!

The Rwandan govt has now decided that Rwanda should be an anglophone rather than francophone country and fro March pupils in years 1 and 4 have to be taught in all subjects in English, which is tough on the teachers whose English is generally very poor-some have lost their jobs because they simply can't teach in English.

My school is almost self sufficient-school cows, school hens, vegetables,( fertiliser from the school's ecological toilets) which are ENORMOUS( Don't even think about it!)

its not all wine and roses (certainly no wine and very few roses!)by John

Nothing works!Door handles fall off and can't be replaced because you can't buy screws unless you are prepared to walk up and down the mountain to buy them. The toilet is now fully flushing, after 4 months waiting. My journey to school was a nightmare: a stony, slippery impossible and terribly dangerous track, which after rain is even more dangerous, on the back of a motor bike which has caused me severe back problems. Have now negotiated a change in my work situation so no need for the bike trip, i can now walk to the new job.

After 4 months here we discovered the value of a charcoal stove, heat in the evenings, hot water for next morning's shower and a much more flexible cooking arrangement,e.g. roast potatoes, sweet corn.

Back to Nothing works!! In the first week the tap in the kitchen broke and water just poured out all day long until the guard turned up with a bent nail to use as as a stop tap.Why didnt I think of that! Then the shower exploded in a waterfall of freezing water( no big problem) my namesake John came and sort of fixed it the next day.still works, almost!! Having the mosquito netting fitted was a relevation.. How do you screw into concrete around your window frames when you have no drill and no electricity? Answer! Bash in 4 inch nails, not with a hammer either but with a big stone! What's a hammer? Still it's keeping the mozzies out!

I suppose I should mention: travelling in crowded buses with flat tyres, cars with cracked windscreens, water pouring into the house whe the wind blows in a certain direction, and to finish off, the greatest irony for me is offsetting the rich fashion conscious 4 wheel drive culture of the capital and other larger towns against ragged starving kids in our village, and NO we can't help them for to give even the smallest sum of money here means thousands at your gate minutes later expecting the same.

A typical Friday.

Get up at 6 A.M. and make tea with water from the thermos flask, boiled the night before.

Cccccold showers (and the mornings ARE cold here). 7.30 Ignace, John's motor bike driver arrives and he judders off on his 5 mile of hell. Valerie, our lovely help who comes twice a week, arrives with a woven basket to sell us which we can't resist. I have a sedate 5 minute walk to school, admiring the splendid view and greeting everyone I meet. I have a split day on Fridays and return home at 11 o clock. Phocas, our nightguard has oiled the lock on the gate using about a litre of oil and my hands are covered in it! Soon after I get in my boss Calixte arrives with a plumber to fix our toilet (for 4 months we have been flushing with buckets). Kalixti assures us we are going to have" une toilette tres operationelle". Plumber leaves and returns later with another part. An old man appears at the gate with his arm strapped to piece of wood and his leg all swollen. He tries to tell me he has fallen and needs money. I feel so sorry for him but have no change so tell Valerie to tell him to come back at 2.

He goes obediently away. John returns at 1. We are just having avocadoes for lunch when Mathias appears at the gate. He has brought us 20 eggs and is begging forgiveness for the fact that 2 weeks ago when we gave him money to buy us some goat meat and potatoes he spent it all on sorghum beer. We forgive him and he has repaid us bit by bit and is now a better man ( so he says). The old man returns promptly at 2 and we give him 500 francs about 70 pence. I return to school at 2. 30 and on the way see the most incredible pale blue bird.

4.30 and it's the weekend. The plumber has fixed the toilet by dismantling the sink. He's going to return tomorrow to fix the sink!! We sit and look at the beautiful view until 6 when it's quite dark. Time to light the hurricane lamps and the charcoal stove so we can eat the beans Valerie has cooked and enjoy the heat. No solar shower tonight. The sun wasn't hot enough to heat the jerricans of water. A few beers and we turn in before 9 p.m. sweet dreams inside our mosquito net.

Rwandan garden by john

When we arrived we discovered a large, empty space which could not be described as a garden. There was a kind of rockery with a few wilting lilies in front of the porch and the rest was a moonscape. On the second day we realised that there was also a back garden with banana plants and dahlias etc but somebody was busy digging it all over and destroying the flowers. However I managed to salvage some tubers and planted them at the side of the house and already they are flowering.( SEE pictures). We experimented with various seeds but it was difficult. Some seeds do not germinate because of soil conditions but others thrive. We have radishes the size of golf balls, bok choi grows well and lots of flowers are starting to grow from seeds we have collected locally and planted.We now have the following in the garden at different stages of development: dahlias, aster, sunflowers, lettuce, bok choi, cabbage, cauliflower, peas, beans,sweet peas, black eyed suzie, and other things we cannot name, not to mention the beautiful avocado tree which at the moment has mature fruit, new fruit and blossom all at the same time, never ending.
The back garden has now been planted with potatoes and we will soon be self sufficient as far as roast spuds are concerned, just right to roast on our lately acquired charcoal stove.
Gardening is a real challenge but once you get things established they really take off.

children in Cyanika

childrens' voices

children running

children singing

children clapping

children asking for money

children shouting "muzungu johnny and cecile"!

children barefoot

children in rags

children carrying water

children carrying great heavy loads on their heads

children herding goats

children playing with wooden hoops

children on bicycycles made entirely made of wood

children playing football with balls made of rags and elastic bands

children carrying baby brothers or sisters on their backs

children hungry

children alone

children walking, walking, walking

children always, always with big, beautiful eyes and beautiful smiles.

Beautiful Rwandan children.

The average Rwandan family has 7.2 children. The average rwandan family lives well below the poverty line. Dwellings are so small that children only go inside at night to sleep on the floor.

There are so many children that Mineduc (the rwandan education authority) has introduced a shift system in primary schools so that no class will have more than 49 pupils at any one time. Half the children go to school from 8 - 12 30 and the other half from 1 - 5. Teachers stay all day with no extra pay. (primary teachers dont earn enough to live on, secondary teachers earn slightly more)

Primary schooling is now free in Rwanda, but there are school books, pens and uniforms to buy, so many children dont start school until they are 11 or older and some never go to school.