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.
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