THE REALITY

We are worried that we have been making life in Rwanda ( especially our part of Rwanda ), sound too romantic and idealised. Its not that we havent told the truth but we may have glossed over some of the more difficult aspects.
for example the reality of being without any source of power is the biggest problem for us. During the day its fine obviously but as soon as 6pm chimes on the church bell things just go down hill. We light the kerosene lamps - they stink and make your eyes sting and they give out hardly any light; We invested in lamps with batteries but they are so badly made (like everything in Rwanda) that they are falling to pieces all the time. You have to remember to take a light with you wherever you go and you do drop things and you do bump into things and the nights are so long! You go to bed at 9 and often wake up half way through the night praying for it to get light. and if anything happened to you on the mountain in the night in the dark what would you do ? you are trapped you just have to hope.
Then there is the reality of being a muzungu in Cyanika - you are from another world, you may as well be a monkey or a martian. People may be slightly more used to us now but they still come out of their houses to see us go by; Every morning half way to school, I have to run the gauntlet of all the men idling outside the kiosk waiting for something to turn up; they usually shout something which I ignore but i hate it. If people address me which they often do, I will reply but if they shout muzungu I ignore them but i still hate it.
We are now known as " muzungu kuruhu" which means the muzungu that doesnt give money!
It is embedded in the rwandan psyche that muzungu means money. Rwanda has always been a jewel in the aid- agencies' crown although not much of that aid money gets to Cyanika. so to rwandans all muzungus are dripping with money which should be given to them and no matter what we do here to help with our services they would still prefer our money.
Finally there is the reality of the limited food supply; we have eaten nearly all the ryvita bicuits and laughing cow cheese and tins of pate (for John) that we bought back with us so its back to avocadoes and beans. sometimes we just dont know what to cook, the other night all we had was a baked potato with a fried egg and tinned sardines (it was ok)
we are in Kigali this weekend, we came for VSO team building and family dinner, so we have been eating and drinking at their expense.
Muzungus who live in Kigali have no idea what life is really like for most rwandans.