Kwita Izina

And so we came down from the gorilla mountain and the Rwanda Development Board described it thus. "The pearly blue skies, often and intermittently so, turn into silver grey cotton-like boils, and then into ashen silky floating clouds of smoke, kissing the tips and lips of the imposing mountains that lumber in the skies with melody just like frozen music. In the North western Rwanda, the Mountains strewn along with their junior cousins that number in thousand(s) (hills), synergize with nature in a rhythm so inspirational and savoured by Rwandans and visitors alike with quiet satisfaction."

Mum and 2011 twins

Don't unwind your rhythmic synergies just yet; there's more.

"The enveloping canopies, the luxuriant vegetation that drunkenly leer about, the wild perfumes from naturally garnished flowers, carried along by the soft breezes that rustle through branches, give you a hearty appetite to simply either sit or walk and watch nature at its best in harmony. The equation, however, is made complete by the mountain gorillas." I swear by all the latest saints that I have not altered a capital letter, comma, or purple strewn word.

Colourful crowd outside the arena

These cotton-like sky boils, melodious like frozen music, combined with the drunkenly leering foliage and the gorilla sprinkled mountain, had given me a hearty appetite. Unfortunately the apes had eaten all our sandwiches (joking) so it was time to try and see what could be scrounged from the tented enclosures at the Kwita Izina (gorilla naming) ceremony. President Kagame was supposed to be coming and we had been told not to bring mobile phones as they posed a security risk and would be confiscated. However, maybe because the president was replaced by the prime minister or, more likely, because we were muzungus, we weren't even searched as we sauntered past the heavily policed perimeter and into the action. Rwandans, including children, were, however, subject to a thorough frisking.

The pathway reserved for VIPs and muzungus

It was actually quite embarrassing. All the ordinary Rwandans were crammed into the adjacent field enclosures while VIPs, who included any passing muzungu with muddy boots and nettle stings, got the red carpet treatment, strolling regally up the specially pebbled and flower-bedecked pathway. And yes, I did wave to the crowd as if I was Michael Douglas, minus the bushy hair transplant and botox injections but wearing fashionable, plastic over-trousers, a cheap safari hat and clutching my modest camera which I felt entitled to use as frequently as possible given my newly accorded celebrity status. My dark glasses, of course, made up for any sartorial inadequacies.

Police making sure the crowd don't get out of hand

The food seemed to have gone and there were coffee queues the length of Sauchiehall Street so it was back to the stage for the performance of Baby Cool a high octane Ugandan rapper. 'Surreal' (like my bete noire 'icon') is an overused word these days but how else can I describe strolling up to the stage in front of a tightly controlled cordon of severe looking police officers, imagining a new career as an East African roadie, when just a short while before, I had been communing with giant apes in a tranquil national park. Meanwhile the passive audience looked on bemused at the hyperactive antics of this extravert musical performer. Rwandans are a famously reserved people and yet this rapper comes from a country which is only 25 kilometres away on the other side of the border. It might as well be the moon. He attempted to crowd surf running, at one point, from one side of the field to the other to throw himself into the throng and in one case pushing past distinctly uncomfortable looking security guards. This is not the kind of behaviour they are used to at all. All the while he was quipping, 'hey guys, why so many cops, are you expecting a revolution?' Maybe it's a good thing most of the crowd wouldn't understand. Earlier, he had apparently dragged the prime minister on to the stage to get him to dance. I wonder if he will be asked back next year.

Baby Cool crowd surfing

As if this wasn't enough excitement for one day, when we got back to the hotel we were invited to the garden wedding of an obviously well to do Rwandan family. It's a good time of year for marriages now that the long rainy season is officially over. The dances were fun but we ducked off before the speeches began as, based on our one and only previous experience, they do tend to go on a bit.

Wedding dancers with cake in the background

The weekend fun ended with an exploration to find a patch of forest with dragon trees that we had read about in the guidebook. This was nearly our undoing as one of the moto drivers confidently told us that he knew the spot. An hour later we were eight kilometres up a mountainside having negotiated the freakiest road surface and most antiquated bridge system yet encountered in the country. I nearly fell off twice and my thigh muscles were tighter than if I had played a 90-minute football match. And we still had to go all the way down again because, of course, it was the wrong way. Everyone the driver stopped to ask told him to carry on and that we were nearly there. The cliché about rural Africans telling you what you want to hear was certainly borne out in this case. What was amazing, though, was the good-spirited way that the two drivers dealt with the situation, especially the blameless second one. They were in serious danger of writing off, not just us, but the motorbikes as well. Que sera, sera! There is something very healthy about the refusal of people to get angry at such minor (in their terms) inconveniences.

Dragon trees at $40 entrance

As you can see from the photographic evidence we did eventually find the dragon trees only to be told by the guard that we had to pay $40 each to get in and walk around. Best of all, if we were prepared to pay this excessive sum to visit such a small forest area we had to go all the way back to Kinigi, where the Kwita Izina ceremony had been held some 25 kilometres from the woodland, in order to buy the tickets. Is it any wonder, according to the guard, that only about five people a day bother to visit the nature park?

Towards the end of Kwita Izina the crowd only had eyes for the boxes of sticky drinks that were going to be given out

Apes Galore

Well, there are definitely two things that people know about Rwanda and this is the second one. We thought at first we were unlucky, because of the crowds, to have booked to visit the gorillas on the same day as Kwita Izina, the naming ceremony for gorillas born in the previous 12 months. This ceremony has existed for years for the naming of Rwandan children but since 2005 has become a feature of the gorilla protection programme. It occurs annually in June in the village of Kinigi near the Volcanoes (Virunga) National Park and this year at total of 22, under one-year-old, gorillas were named including the first successfully reared gorilla twins since 2004. When we arrived at NP headquarters early in the morning, dances, food and medicine displays, and music performances were just commencing, put on for the special occasion. It was a double bonus. We could visit the gorillas in their natural habitat and then hopefully return later and participate in more of the events planned for the day long festivities. These were to take place in a large, open area not far from park HQ.

Twa (pygmy) dance leader

After our briefing and group allocation - no more than eight people are allowed in each of the seven habituated gorilla groups on any one day- we set off in a 4x4 along an impossibly rough road fashioned out of large basalt rocks and past some of the poorest people yet seen in Rwanda. I do hope that the economic benefits of gorilla tourism will eventually trickle down to these farming communities in ways beyond the occasional use of porters or the selling of mini-gorillas and T-shirts at the edge of the National Park. From there we were to begin our ascent into the mountain, hopefully, tracking at least some of our intended gorilla group, Kwitonda (the humble one), named after the 35-year-old chief silverback. This group originally crossed into the Rwandan side of the Virunga Mountains escaping conflict in the DR Congo. War experience seems to have made Kwitonda a more gentle gorilla than usual, hence the name of his 21 member group.

The habitat

Our human group consisted of tour leader, Olivier, three porters for those who chose to employ them and a guard with a gun to protect us against roving buffaloes or testy elephants. We proceeded uphill at quite a pace struggling at times to avoid tripping over fallen branches along the heavily overgrown track. Thistles, which gorillas love, stinging nettles, for which plastic over-trousers and gloves are recommend, and scrubby second growth were the norm with intermittent small to medium sized tree cover - jungle in its true sense. Olivier had been carrying a walkie-talkie and after around 45 minutes of climbing we suddenly stopped. In front of us were three National Park rangers whose job it is, not only to protect the gorillas from poachers, but also to follow their movements within the group's territory to make it easier each day for tourists to see them. I have only heard of one tourist party, in gloomy, wet weather, failing to see any apes which must all have been sheltering. I don't know if they got their money back to offset the bitter disappointment! The presence of the rangers indicated that the Kwitonda mob were in the vicinity. This was the moment when we left behind walking sticks, water bottles and backpack food with the porters. It's definitely not kosher to eat and drink in front of gorillas and, who knows, maybe they would snaffle the walking sticks for their night-time nests or for the more elderly members of the troop! Then armed only with (flash prohibited) cameras it was upwards and onwards all hoping, no doubt, for a special Attenborough-like moment.

Mum and 6 month baby

Now you might think that after all this build up and the massive hype associated with gorilla tourism in Rwanda - it is the country's second biggest income earner after coffee - not to mention the exorbitant cost of the trip, $US500 dollars for non-residents and $250 for overseas residents like us, that you would be bound to be let down by the experience. Not a bit of it. Nothing can prepare you for that utterly awesome (lapsing into teenspeak is justified!) moment when you round a corner and almost bump into a giant male silverback who just happens to be lounging in the grass. This was (the recently mature) silverback number 4 of the group who immediately loped right in front of us and fell in a heap in the open on the other side of the path. When a gorilla sets off somewhere you don't ask questions, just get out of the way as fast as you can. He then proceeded to give his nuts a thorough scratching. Typical male said the Canadian woman next to me.

Silverback number 3

We could see activity on the other side of the clearing in thick undergrowth and headed in the direction of what turned out to be Kwitonda group morning central. A mum and six month old baby were resting against a tree with a fellow sister caring equally for the babe. The vegetation was so dense we didn't know what was going to happen next and from which direction. There was a crash behind us and another huge silverback peered through. This was number 3 in the family hierarchy. His face looked distinctly Neanderthal as you may adjudge for yourself in the above picture. Then a couple of females bustled past with babe jumping from one back to the other. The only thing missing was a lollypop ape to direct the traffic. Over to the left another silverback made his appearance. This was number 2 in the pecking order. He might get a hairy leg over when the chief wasn't looking but he'd have to be quick or the Big Ape's anger would be keenly felt. All fertile females are, after all, supposed to be the leader's for mating purposes. This was all going according to plan but I began to feel like Patrick McGoohan in that old hit show 'The Prisoner' which had a vapid modern re-run on telly not long ago. Yes, you are number 2 but where is number 1? The tension was mounting. A few lesser members put in appearances. We had seen most of the clan but the very special gentle giant had still not shown his coat.

Hitching a lift

Suddenly there was a noise and the tall foliage behind us opened to reveal a much more mature male gorilla with a thicker mane of head hair flecked with grey on the sides. This was the main ape himself - Kwitonda. He was obviously a huge media tart because he promptly sat down and let everyone in our group take a massive number of photos. Anthropomorphising horribly I have to say that I thought his eyes looked very sad. Go on, click away with your foolish devices, shallow creatures. Or, he may have been unhappy because of his clearly developing ape boobs a condition with which I can readily sympathise. Soon, he grew tired of the paparazzi and in a trice Olivier was forcing us back to make way for the Paul Kagame of this particular world. I only managed one snap of his silvery back as he ambled into the bushes to have his fur checked out by some of the females. Gee, there are a lot of flies in the Virungas so heaven knows how many ticks and mites there must be. (In one those amazing coincidences my own primate partner has just come out complaining of an itchy back and I have just extracted what looks like a dead tick! No, I used tweezers, not my teeth.)

Kwitonda

As we followed Kwitonda, some smaller apes were playing in the tree above and one released the biggest waterfall this side of Victoria narrowly missing one of the guides. How can creatures eating almost entirely cellulose (with the occasional protein filled safari ant) manage to produce so much urine? I look forward to replies from all you expert nutritionists. The icing on this ape cake was a hoped for glimpse of the newest addition to Kwitonda's extended family, a three month old baby which we finally saw in poor light in the protective arms of its adoring mother. There I go anthropomorphising again. The gorilla mother looked, well... like a female gorilla. She breast feeds the baby for three and a half years during which period she is infertile so the turn over conception period with female gorillas is never less than about four years. After a series of pictures with tourists and gorillas in the background (okay, so it wasn't quite the quintessential David Attenborough moment but it will do), it was time to head back down the mountain. Our allotted time of one hour with the Kwitonda clan was up. Even for a nature lover like me, who has had some pretty amazing wildlife experiences over the years, this was special and I commend it to anyone with the time and money to spare.

Anyone have nail clippers?

Getting to the heart of the matter

A Family Visit

Last week I had the opportunity to travel north towards Uganda for a couple of days combining a visit to study the work practices and statistical marvels of a fellow management advisor (IT whiz Ken) in the town of Kabarore in Gatsibo district, with a stop at the family home of our friend Theo at Muhura (S 01.72630 / E 030.26818 - altitude 1795m) one hour west of the main road south of Kabarore. Theo has been keen, for some time, for us to meet his parents although unfortunately Stella couldn't come as it clashed with one of her English classes.

A surprise at the top

We reached the turn off well beyond Lake Muhazi (where President Paul Kagame has a weekend retreat on the far shores). Five minutes of intense haggling later we set off by moto up the rutted, dirt road to the top of the range where sits the biggest Catholic Church I have ever seen in Rwanda. Close by and somewhat incongruous, given the surrounding privation, was the Motel Refugio Italia which I believe is Italian only in name and architectural appearance. You are more likely to be offered beans, rice, chips or goat brochette than a carbonara, risotto or spaghetti bolognese although, apparently, a Spanish omelette can be arranged.

Setting off to Theo's family home with coffee plantation

Some time later when the bone-jarring journey ended, as a winding side track finally petered out, we clambered off the motos and I removed the protective dust trousers and jacket which I have started wearing since the end of the wet season. My hands were a filthy orange colour from dirt churn after tensely gripping the metal support bar at the back of the moto. A few drops of precious bottled water and a discreet squirt of hand gel (what a godsend it's been bringing bottles of that) and some semblance of muzungu respectability was restored. Appearance is very important to Rwandans and I couldn't be introduced to Theo's parents looking like Mr Scarecrow. We proceeded down a steep hill passing between sorghum, banana and coffee fields. Theo waved to everyone tending their crops and they responded with amakuru toto (how are you, young one) - his childhood nickname.

An aunty plus family en route

I was introduced to several smallholders in front of their mud houses most of whom seemed to be aunties and uncles of some kind. I thought for a minute that we were going to have to walk to the other side of the deep valley when suddenly Theo pointed to the house right below us. We had arrived and after skidding down the slope in my city slicker shoes I went to introduce myself to a couple we were sifting through beans in the family's front yard. It turned out they were unrelated neighbouring farmers with no personal space to dry and sort their produce. It is common practice to allow others to share in return for the expectation that the yard will be left in the spotless condition in which it was found.

Arriving at the family home

Tharcissie (Mama) and Etienne (Papa) are a delightful couple who went out of their way to make me feel welcome. Although very poor they went to the trouble of cooking a delicious meal of rice, beans and peas with eggs freshly laid by their chooks. They even sent d'Amour, Theo's youngest brother, up the hill to buy four bottles of coca cola for us to wash down the food. That's 1000 francs (nearly $2) of scarce cash. Tharcissie makes the most exquisite baskets and insisted on giving me one as a gift. It is now proudly hanging in our living room back in Kibungo. She worked tirelessly on the one you see in the pictures the whole time we were there. It takes her at least three days to make one for which she receives a meagre 5000 francs (~$8) from a cooperative which sells them in Kigali. The coop provides the dyes for free and the baskets are made from local reeds usually papyrus. Etienne makes an occasional income from selling the coffee in his small plantation and they have two cows in a backyard enclosure. They are by no means the poorest people in the valley. The little boy, Gashuhe, in the bottom picture standing in front of me is a neighbour's child who was initially frightened by the appearance of the strange, white alien. It was only later on sorting through photographs that I realised how badly he was suffering from malnutrition. His simple bewilderment, face to face, now looks a little more haunted in image retrospect.

Etienne, Tharcissie and Theo with the gift basket

There are six children in the family. Theo(phile), 26, studies in Kibungo; Jackson, 22, is a taxi driver in Kabarore; Joselyne, 20, the only girl, has left school and lives at home doing chores; Theodomir, 18, lives with his grandmother; Wilson, 16, goes to the big school at the top of the hill and lives at home; d'Amour, 13, is at school and lives at home. There are, therefore, five people living in the house you see in the photographs. I was only shown Theo's old bedroom so cannot imagine where they all sleep.

Theo's old bedroom which he reclaimed immediately by putting his bag on the bed!

Theo disappeared for a lengthy period leaving me to fend for myself in Kinyarwanda with Tharcissie and French with Etienne. Although he hadn't spoken French in years the old school grammar came back and we chatted about farming, beer and the government's decision to move all the valley farmers to the top of the hill as part of its village consolidation policy. A neighbour has already accepted the decision and is set to move out. Etienne worries about not being close to his coffee plants but Tharcissie is keen to move as she doesn't want to spend her old age alone and isolated in the valley. She thinks a move to the hill top will signal better transport access, health care facilities and closeness to water supply. Paradoxically, the water they use is pumped up to the top of the hill from the foot of the valley and farmers, or usually their children, have to climb up to fill their containers with tap water.

View of home from the back

The government has promised to provide housing for all displaced valley dwellers although it remains to be seen where, and to what standard, the houses will be built, as the ridges have limited available land. The idea is then to knock down the valley houses and expand the area of productive farmland. Farmers will then have to go down the hillslopes each day to look after their cropland.

Tharcissie at work nearing completion of a basket

Theo had been off visiting nearby friends and when he returned it was time to head off down the bumpy road and onwards to Kabarore where he was going to stay with an uncle while I was working with Ken. Tharcissie and Etienne accompanied us back up the hill to await the return of the moto drivers. There, on a shady part of grass, three raggedy children climbed all over me chanting 'good-a-morning' as Etienne explained to the army of onlookers who I was and why I was there. I heard plenty of 'mwarimu' (teacher) and no 'padre' which was pleasing to my secular ears. A guy in a Manchester United op shop jersey (remember Ruud van Nistleroy!) made an appearance but he didn't want to discuss their disastrous second half performance in the Champions League final in May. Some of these onlookers would perhaps have been crowded round the Motel Refugio Italia bar watching the razzamatazz at Wembley Stadium on satellite television. What would they have made of it? Is it any wonder that some might believe muzungus have money growing out of their nose hairs?

Etienne, Tharcissie, Gashuhe (little boy in front of me), Keza (godchild), Joselyne, d'Amour

The crowd looked on, fascinated, as I struggled into my plastic dust trousers hoping I wouldn't topple over. Then, with 'murakozi cyane' (thank you very much) and 'murabeho' (goodbye), smiles and waves, we were gone. The downhill exhilaration was about to begin.

Kigali v Kibungo

There really are two Rwandas - Kigali and the rest. There is a city/country divide everywhere and that is especially true in Africa. Kibungo looks big and impressive on all the maps but is not even a provincial sized town by any definition, more a collection of hilltop houses running along two roads; one main, north and south, and the other, arterial, spreading west to the district surrounds. Language is one reflection of this divide. In Kibungo it is nearly all Kinyarwanda with French and English of varying degrees among those more educated. Here it is still the norm to use Kinyarwanda for motos, going to the market or ordering brochette and chips. (You don't really need to speak any language when piling your plate full of 'melanje' or buffet foods!)

Carbohydrates and a culturally interesting poster

In Kigali, Kinyarfranglais is becoming the standard. It is often hard to get people to want to talk to you purely in Kinyarwanda. In restaurants and ordering motos everyone seems keen to practise their English although some fall back into French (restaurants) or Kinyarwanda (motos). Which is good news, in one sense, for the further development of English as the lingua franca of the East African Community of which Rwanda has been part since 2009. Yet I worry. Are current education policies leading to a nation of people who will not be highly literate in any language?

Bicycle taxis off duty for umuganda

With English now the medium of instruction in public (state) schools from Grade 4 and in private schools from Grade 1, what impact will this have on the literacy level of the mother tongue, Kinyarwanda, which is then relegated to being just another subject along with science, maths and social studies (which are all taught in English). With even less of a reading culture than most Asian societies, it is hard to imagine genuine multilingual success. You can't even find a newspaper in Kinyarwanda in Kibungo and the standard of the press in English in Kigali is, unlike Nairobi where it is vibrant, pretty woeful and heavily self-censored.

From left - gravy, meat, mixed veg (a highlight) and kidney beans

A thing that really struck me this time in Kigali which I hadn't noticed before was how many overweight people there are, especially men with their little pot bellies. It made it easier to 'silver' ghost (one of my nicknames in Cairns soccer circles) past some of them in my guest appearance with the Kigali Kougars on Sunday morning. Fatness and the fad culture it creates is not much of an issue in Kibungo. These plump players really are part of what must be a developing aspirational class in Kigali. And, as elsewhere in the world, they are becoming increasingly sedentary using buses, cars and 4x4s (how their numbers have grown in the capital!) and motos to get about instead of walking which is the way of life in places like Kibungo.

A very moderate portion of melanje

It must have something to do with the diet too as hamburgers, pizzas and other fast foods expand their foothold in the capital. There are no McDonald's or Domino's yet but small restaurants selling such global fare are available and I have to say make a welcome change from the limited options down our way. Here it is brochette (goat kebabs) and chips, or melanje (buffet) where you pile your plate to the very brim with rice, chips, kidney beans, cooked bananas, sweet potatoes, quite bitter green leaves and tough meat stew (of which you are usually able to take no more than two or three pieces unless you want to pay extra). In Kigali restaurants the melanje (melange) vegetables are much more varied and usually pretty tasty (often carrots, cabbage or cauliflower in an appetising mix ) although the meat stew in gravy sauce is never any more than just edible. Where we westerners have a habit of piling our plates and then leaving half of it (which is why Sizzler's in Australia now supply patrons with very small plates) here Rwandans will gradually reduce the monumental 'bowling ball' of food down to nothingness. It is quite likely to be the only meal of the day when eaten out at lunch or in the evening.

The bar at Mille Collines

Nowhere more different than Kibungo are the fancy hotels like the famous Mille Collines where the film Hotel Rwanda was shot and where it is hard to be without thinking of the terrible events of 1994. The clientele is both international and Rwandan buying expensive beers and brochettes (melt in your mouth fish, chicken and beef kebabs) at prices per item more than double what the average Rwandan earns in a day. As a volunteer it is also possible to experience the earnings split as $270 a month between two doesn't go very far in Kigali if you want to take advantage of such delights.

Hotel Rwanda

The muzungu income divide must also be confusing to Rwandans many of whom think we are all on big salaries irrespective of NGO status. The key is to say that you are 'umukorerabushake' or volunteer, although that can also cause problems as some think that because you are volunteering you must have enough savings to allow you to work for next to nothing. Which is of course often true especially for older vols! You can't win. Theo (our language teacher), Justin (our house guard), Julie (our one day a week domestique) must look at our little Eee laptops sitting on our porch table behind our gated compound and wonder at the definition of allowance for being an unpaid volunteer. In Kibungo, where there is a huge barbed wire complex for Chinese (mostly) hospital staff (whom you seldom see out and about), locals may associate the term volunteer with umukinwa (Chinese person), although I believe that a lot of them are quite highly paid unlike the handful of Japanese vols who exist on similar allowances to VSOers. Twice now in the street I have been called umukinwa which is a welcome change from (u)muzungu. Makes me feel quite exotic imagining a new dimension to my blood line that I didn't know about!

Doing my bit

Umuganda (compulsory community work), which I attended in Kigali on 29 May (always the last Saturday of the month), was very different to the one in Kibungo which as you may recall concentrated on umudugudu or village security in the collective briefing. I was staying with Dutch volunteer Bert and we had an interpreter to guide us through the labyrinth of his umudugudu's politics and personalities. In this Kigali chapter the major emphasis was on church noise and permits to preach. Churches are springing up like wild daisies and the correct paperwork is not being followed. The umudugudu leader was intransigent in his refusal to let one group preach until everything was in order. They also had to tone down the noise which was bothering the neighbours. (Can we have this guy as our Kibungo leader?) The evangelical group was distraught at the idea of missing one day's vocal ecstasy and it looked, for a while, as though there was going to be the mother of all rejections until the leader, who had until then been looking stonily ahead and ignoring the pleas, gave a casual nod and said they had until Monday to come up with the right documents.

Umudugudu leader criticises poor umuganda attendance

The deference and lack of questions to the village leader were once again surprising to a westerner as he criticised the poor attendance (1500 people should have been there which you can see from the picture falls quite a way short) and need to perform various community duties which nearly all required small donations of money. This neighbourhood is quite well off with lots of big houses and the owners invariably send their house guards to represent them at umuganda although I did notice one well dressed and well fed couple in the midst. The leader stated, as in Kibungo last month, that people were going to start being fined for non-attendance - 5000 francs (~$8) for Kigali instead of the 500 francs mentioned in rural Kibungo. There was vagueness around how it would be enforced.

Local church in the umudugudu

A spiel was given on separating rubbish into recyclables and non-recyclables but no direction on what to do with the different piles. Maybe some people already knew although our interpreter didn't. A government level vice-president was supposed to be there but the visit had been postponed because one of the organisers said they had not been ready to receive her to which the umudugudu leader retorted that they should always be prepared. It's hard to know whether being ready meant buying in some fantas and mandazis (a kind of fried bread which is very popular in Rwanda) or providing more hoes and spades for the actual work routine which, on this occasion, involved even less labour than last month's umuganda in Kibungo. You can see me in the picture hacking up some stray grass which had dared to find its way on to the dusty thoroughfare.

Quality Education for All?

I have just returned from a three-day conference in Kigali on the theme 'Quality Education in Rwanda'. There are major difficulties associated with the transformation in education which is taking place in this country. Teachers are woefully underpaid and, because of the move to 9 years basic education for all, the government has introduced double shifting into the teaching day. There are simply not enough classrooms or teachers to lump everyone together so teachers do two half-day shifts to be able to cover all the students of up to 60 in a class. The long day, poor salary and large class sizes also make for low motivation among many staff. The pupils, on the other hand, have a relatively short day which parents often take advantage of, using them as workers in the fields. There are possible ethical questions about child labour but who can blame the parents for seeing idle children as a resource. There are, after all, no libraries or study centres that these children can attend before or after school. There is no reading culture here and precious few books especially graded readers suitable for early learners of English.

Attentive participants

Most teachers have been educated in French and now have to teach in English. In addition they are supposed to start using what is called a 'child-centred curriculum' which basically means children more actively participating in their learning. This modern, western approach to learning conflicts with the traditional chalk and talk method which is still very much the norm here. It is not uncommon to observe classes where children will not say a single word during a lesson which may be totally conducted in heavily accented, faltering and grammatically incorrect English. At the conference one VSO teacher, who is a fluent Irish speaker, made the audience feel bewildered by giving a brilliant demonstration in incomprehensible Gaelic of what it must feel like for large numbers of Rwandan students to sit in classrooms and be subjected to a daily round of uncontextualised blather in a foreign language.

A keen student voices his concerns

But where to begin to solve the problem? There is no doubt that the teachers are planting bad habits into the students especially where big words are transplanted from the French pronunciation directly into English. And how, if the teachers are struggling with English themselves, can they be expected to teach effectively using pair and group work activities associated with this new methodology? Yet this kind of learning is essential if Rwanda is to produce a populace which is more confident in the active listening and speaking idiom. Currently this is not happening in schools, with what passes for dialogue usually a form of stilted, rote learning with little flexibility of question and response. "Good morning", "How are you", " I am fine thank you, and you", as the only sequence, belongs with Dick and Jane and the structured Alexander books of a bygone era - firmly in the recycling bin. Language learning develops best with adaptability of thought that gradually allows the student to imagine different ways of communicating. It's wonderful for confidence too, which is half the battle in speaking a language - when you can say "Hello", "How's it going", "What about you", "Not bad", "Okay", "See you later", instead of only the prescribed rote. This growing confidence, too, helps liberate you from the fear of making mistakes, which is inevitable in language learning, but which paralyses so many.

The current reality versus hopes for the future

Methodology teachers employed by VSO are helping to train interested Rwandan teachers especially in the use and development of visual aids (often rice sacks are the source material for writing on). Such aids are essential elements in communicative teaching methods but they only work if accompanied by the knowledge and training of how to use them effectively. Most educational volunteers come from a primary or secondary teaching background in the UK or North America but very few have qualifications in the teaching of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) which is a vastly different way of approaching language teaching. As one UK teacher said to me during the conference -'being able to teach TS Eliot isn't much good here.'

Part of crowd at Amahoro Stadium for big screen telecast of Champions League final

VSO Rwanda is in expansion. Indeed it is the only country in Africa where numbers of volunteers are growing. It is the precious baby of many western governments especially the US and the UK. The British Conservative Party is even sending a large delegation of MPs and party members to visit our schools for two weeks in July. I doubt I'll bump into any of them but if I do, I will emphasise, as I did at the conference, the importance of recruiting suitably qualified EFL teachers, over a defined period, to improve English teaching ability and enhance better teaching practice. It would be nice, too, if salaries of Rwandans were increased from 25,000 francs ($42) minimum a month for entry level primary teachers but the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) bureaucrat at the conference said it wasn't going to happen as they couldn't afford it. Others said that it was simply a matter of priorities as Rwanda has the lowest teaching salaries of any East African country. However, a lot of money is being spent on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative as it is seen as part of Rwanda's goal to be the hub of the African IT industry in the 2020 vision but is much criticised because laptops are being sent to some so-called Child Friendly Schools - a UNICEF definition - which don't even have electricity.

Dangerous electric cables on short cut to Bert's house where I was staying during the conference

I believe in a one laptop per headteacher policy for my district of Ngoma (which is lucky in having better electricity and internet access than some other districts) so that they can all start to use email and USB memory sticks to store all the training information that I give them in action and strategic plans, evaluation procedures and many other common sense ideas. I am not confident that hard copies won't simply find their way into cupboards to be forgotten after I am gone. At least with electronic versions there is a permanency and the simple facility of making adjustments - dates, costs etc - when necessary on a termly or annual basis. I am also pushing for training in the use of any future laptops, which the heads have been promised, otherwise they too will gather dust like many of the textbooks which sit on school store room shelves because the teachers are afraid to use them.

Much to my delight I managed a game with the Kigali Kougars on Sunday morning on a pretty fine artificial pitch. Cairns Rovers  (my old team) eat your heart out

Regarding the reading problem, I pushed at the conference - and with delegates of USAID and UNICEF who have strong links with EFL publishers like Longman, Heinneman and Macmillan - for the importance of simple, child friendly reading materials of which there is a complete dearth. Cultural appropriateness can be a problem with some of these graded readers but only by flooding the schools with such books can a reading ethos start to develop. Little children stop me in the street begging for books to read and don't understand why I don't have boxes of them in my house! Stella's young adult students also crave reading material. She has taken to lending out my old Guardian Weeklies for want of an alternative but the articles are usually too difficult for them.

Initiating a push for more EFL trained teachers, good graded readers and establishing the use of email, simple spreadsheets and folders for all 69 head teachers after my sector wide training sessions would at least be a small, tangible contribution to the development of this small but crowded country.

A Question of Faith

When I got into work on Monday morning I was approached by my best Rwandan office friend, Guido, and asked what I had done at the weekend. He usually asks me that question and I always regale him with the exciting things that I may have got up to including incomprehensible trips into the adjacent valley in search of birds and the ultimate source of the Nile. This time his question was different and it was the one that I had been dreading: "did you pray yesterday" he inquired, with what I thought was a bit of cheek in his gap-toothed smile? At last! I should have been expecting it and he'd obviously been plucking up courage to ask. After all, he, like countless other Rwandans, spends large parts of his Sunday in church and I had been repeatedly told at group training sessions that my religion would be a subject of much interest to locals - not far behind my marital status and age! By the way, I have taken to being 25 again when children ask as I can't be bothered getting on my cultural high horse and explaining that age is usually not the second question to put to grey-haired western visitors. Or maybe I'm just suffering from a sexagenarian hang up!

Anglican Church opposite my work. Stella teaches here twice a week

Leaving me time to concoct a response Guido suddenly disappeared saying there was an Anglican pastor outside that he was going to fetch. My heathenism was going to be put on office show for all to witness! If the question had been 'what is your religion?' it would have been easily countered. I was brought up a Protestant. Matter closed. We have a volunteer friend who lives further into the boondock bible belt and she has decided to share her ideal of Humanism with anyone who asks. But in this case it was impossible. The question could not be dodged; did you pray yesterday does not permit use of the metaphorical hedge trimmers.

Camus was a good goalie but I think JPS was better at table football

A non-work buddy was sitting next to me in the office. I have been helping him to apply for a teaching job where I know he would excel. He was smirking wondering how I was going to respond and I'll tell you why. Recently I wore my Philosophy Football T-shirt to a big Premier League game at St Joseph's bar. Sartre and the number 10 are written on the back. (Somehow I see Jean Paul more as an outside left than in the inside left position!) This friend suddenly shouted out - as a theatrical player was writhing on the ground pole-axed by a puff of wind - that JPS was an existentialist and then asked me aloud, in front of the expectant barroom, if it was true that such people did not believe in God. You can imagine how the room reacted. It's not the kind of thing you say to a group of people who can't comprehend the idea of atheism! The choice was stark. Get into a deep theological and philosophical discussion with a muzungu in a variety of languages or continue to bait Wayne Rooney on the TV screen. It was a no brainer - I had to rush back home and fetch my copy of Richard Dawkins in order to sustain my argument. Hence his smirk now.

Catholic Church but as you can see they all really look the same

By this time Guido had returned and true to his word there was another gentleman at his shoulder. I was hoping the whole issue would have blown over and we could get back to a fresh round of 'mwaramutsis' but it was not to be. Guido turned to the pastor and said 'I was just asking Denis if he prayed yesterday'. There wasn't even a beating about the bush with a rephrasing of the question to give me a chance to waffle. And no, tempted though I may have been, I wasn't going to give a cheeky or pretentious answer such as, ' yes, I was down in the valley worshipping the majesty of nature's fecundity'.

Evangelical Restoration Church behind our house

"Well, did you?" said the eager cleric suddenly right in front of my desk. "No", was all I could muster. "Why don't you pray", he pressed on,
furthering my discomfort? I was now trapped so I performed that old Jesuit trick and answered a question with a question. This is a complicated subject, I pre-ambled with a smile, but I could easily ask you, 'why do you pray?' Match drawn, 1-1. As Jean Paul himself nearly said: 'everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite point of view.' Both teams recognised that the office on an early Monday morning was not the best place to carry out a theological debate and it was agreed to re-schedule a discussion on the topic for a later date. We shall see.

Wise words from JPS

My mischievous friend leaned across after they'd gone and said that there are plenty of Rwandans whose faith was shattered because of the genocide and no longer attend church especially of the Catholic persuasion given their complicity in many of the atrocities. However, life is hard and comfort still much needed and this has led to a phenomenal growth of new evangelical and Pentecostal churches. The rapture coming from two of them close to our house has already been mentioned in a previous post you may recall. Increasing numbers of Rwandans are even establishing their own churches although others look askance at what they see as individuals seizing on religion as a business opportunity. And naturally the American evangelicals, with typical, entrepreneurial zest, are forging into this growing field of ecstatic soul redemption. Dawkins' vision of a god-free world is quite a way off.

Umuganda

Unable last week to join a billion other people in goggling at the wedding of an English couple (Prince William and his missus) we have never met, we decided instead that it was a good opportunity to experience umuganda. This is a form of community service initiated as a nation building exercise in 2006, which is supposed to be compulsory for all Rwandans between the ages of 18 and 60, and takes place between 8 and 11 o'clock on the last Saturday of each month. It normally involves activities like weeding, hoeing or cutting but can also entail road building, house construction for the needy or tree planting. Our friend Theophile arranged to meet us near the genocide memorial in downtown Kibungo. Where are your tools he asked as we arrived fashionably late at the work site, a large field next to the memorial?

The umuganda field and participants

The group's task was to cut the grass by hand. Unfortunately I'm not in the habit of carrying long, sharp implements around with me and probably subconsciously believed there would be some spare tools kicking about just as there are at tree planting back in Oz. However, people out-numbered machetes by a wide margin and there was a large number of folk milling around with nothing to do. Two women sat under a tree and checked their appearance. Some older men rested against an embankment and asked what we were doing there. Who could blame the umuganders for not bring their own machetes which might easily disappear into the mix never to be seen again! All this looked promising for my dicky back but I wasn't going to get away with it that easily and was soon offered a machete by someone wanting a break. My action was now under scrutiny. It is de rigueur to put your hand behind your back while carrying out the wide-arc swinging movement. Rule one is to make sure that there is no one standing close by especially when gross amateurs are around. It occurred to me that a few lovely Rwandan cows would make a better job of the field than us but was told by the umuganda coordinator, who turned up in his motor scooter, that it would be disrespectful to the dead in the fenced off graveyard.

Jacket spoiled this guy's action

Rwandan political jurisdictions are divided into provinces, districts, sectors, cells and the umudugudu (or 'village'). The coordinator visits each nearby village on umuganda day to see how things are getting on but the umudugudu leader is responsible for the register of attendance and to make sure that everyone is turning up. Work stopped shortly after 9.30 for a lecture from the leader about what he considered was a poor turnout and asked if this meant that Rwandans didn't love their country. The rebuke was met with total silence from the crowd and was then followed by speeches from other community leaders about ways of correcting recent bad behaviour. For example in the umudugudu during genocide memorial week a stepmother had locked her 8-year-old stepson in the house for four days without food or water. Other stories included a bar that was selling banana beer 24 hours a day when it was only allowed to sell it from 2 to 10 pm. This behaviour had to stop. We actually passed the culprit bar returning from a walk in the valley the next day and wondered how hard it would be for the police to come round and close the place if there was such a problem.

Some umuganders resting

One cool guy with a grass stalk in his mouth was made to stand up and recant because during memorial week he didn't want to go to a ceremony in town but preferred to stay put. One of the leaders accused him of not respecting authority to which he responded that he was being persecuted. The umudugudu leader then recounted an episode where a thief had broken into a house to discover that the owner was inside. There was a fight in which the house owner was able to subdue the thief and call the police.

Umudugudu leader addressing the crowd

As a result of all these incidents the umudugudu council had decided to institute a system of night guards to supervise village behaviour and its security. Each household would pay 500 francs per month (less than a 1$US) for the salary of up to 15 guards to patrol the village.

Police chief speaks

I asked Theo why there were so few female umuganders and he said I should ask the meeting so I plucked up courage and did so in my best Kinyarwanda. The leader smiled and said that he would take it on notice and make sure that there were more women next time should I decide to come back. I immediately regretted asking the question as the women were probably flat out at home preparing the men's lunches!

Theo and Lucien, the umuganda coordinator

The leader also stated that non-attendees would be reported and fined 500 francs (maybe less than a dollar but nearly a day's pay for some people). Feeling even more guilty I thought a 'ni menshi' was in order. ('It's too much' is one of the first things that volunteers are taught in Kinyarwanda in order to learn how to bargain and it has a kind of joke status). There was a laugh but the leader stated there needed to be a stiff fine so that recalcitrants would see the error of their ways and learn to do their civic duty.

Stella showing her silky cutting skills

I couldn't help but feel overall that the grass cutting exercise was a bit of tokenism but that the meeting afterwards appeared to serve a useful purpose in managing wrongdoing. I did, however, feel uncomfortable at the social control aspect of dealing with the guy who didn't want to do what he was told which was reminiscent of scenes in societies much less democratic than Rwanda.