Rwandans dont have a typical national-dress as many other african countries do. Until they were colonised they wore garments made from tree bark and animal skins. On special occasions women dress up in what is probably the only real "national costume": a long flowing robe with a matching piece of flowing material that goes over one shoulder and often a band in the hair - it looks lovely. The men wear suits or african shirts for such an occasion.

For day to day wear however, women wear either various pieces of coloured cloth wrapped around themselves and their babies(this all comes from Tanzania) or they wear second hand garments which you and i may have donated to charity in the past. This is where something quite scandalous happens! -we have all given things to charities, which promised to be sent to poor African countries, which indeed they have been , but here is the scandal - they end up on markets where the poorest people in the world then have to buy them!!! We cant understand how this is allowed to happen! and wish we could get to the bottom of it. Someone is obviously making a great deal of money from the second hand clothes market.

As you can see from the photos, some people cant even afford second hand clothes and are literally dressed in rags, usually the children. Their clothes might have been recognisable once but not any more.

A more amusing aspect of the second hand clothes industry is that people buy items of clothing when they have no idea who or what they were actually originally worn as: men quite happily wear pink flowery tops or very obviously female attire or you will see people in dressing gowns or salopettes, but it doesnt matter they have customised them and look good in them -the item of clothing takes on a whole new life. The funniest thing i have seen to date was the other day when I passed an old man standing at his door wearing a lady's high-necked,long, frilly night dress over his trousers - he looked very dignified!

I used to be careful about taking photos, but in Cyanika now if they see us with a camera they come and ask us to take a photo so they can see themselves, which they may never have done. Occasionally, I will have photos developed and present them to the person - they are always delighted!

return to rwanda

We knew it was never going to e easy aftr a wonderful month of seeing family and friends and having electricity and eating and drinking wonderful things whenever we wanted to! The supermarkets were a shock.

We returned to a very dry and dusty cyanika and the news that we had had no water in the house for 4 weeks. The garden was a wreck - goldfish man had done nothing and it was all rather depressing. However, the next day we were greeted with great warmth by everyone we met; gone was the more formal hand shake, we had moved up to the much nicer head - touching greeting and we really felt they were pleased to see us.

It has been really hard getting used to being in the pitch dark again from 6pm and we have had some very early nights this week!

my week culminated with a funeral! The mother of a colleague had died and it was debated long and hard as to how the staff could show their respect. it was finally decided that a delegation should go to the funeral and I was chosen along with 5 other members of staff. I was forced to go down the mountain on the back of a motor bike which i had refused to do up till now, but i actually enjoyed it! The funeral cortege was somewhat different to what we are used to: 5 or 6 flat bed trucks with the coffin and main mourners in one, together with the big wooden cross that was to be placed on the grave, and the other mourners standing crowded together in the other trucks. The main mourners were dressed in typical rwandan national dress - in white. We had a very long steep walk to the grave side, where after many speeches and songs, Clothildes mum was finally laid to rest and then we went back to her very humble house (about 50 or 60 people) and were given a soda and invited back to continue the funeral in a week. It was good to share the experience of a rwandan funeral and i think people felt that i had shown respect by attending.