Returning to Rwanda part 3 - Rwanda two years on…

I was interested to see what had changed in 18 months. Kigali has changed a lot. There are new pavements, grass and banana trees have been planted down the middle of the main roads, new buildings have popped up, there are signs for lots of international conferences… But this seems to be as far as it goes, bar some improvement in the electricity supply and the completion of the road through the east.

The development appears predominantly urban and of benefit to the wealthiest. The vulnerable and the rural areas seem to be suffering. The first newspaper I picked up had yet another article about the arrest and detention of street children and other ‘idlers’ on the basis they ‘mess up the city’.

Human Rights Watch was calling for the closure of the central detention centre for such persons, which they alleged was illegal and whose conditions were inhumane. Just as in Iraq, it is illegal to be homeless. Genius. There’s also been a big drought in eastern Rwanda which has ruined crops, led to the displacement of a lot of children onto the streets, and created a food shortage and inflation in staple goods prices.

On top of this, in urban areas local government have started demanding that anyone with a home below a certain standard must sell up (to the government or to people who can afford to build expensive homes) and move to the villages. In Kayonza (where one of the centres is) they have declared that only 2 houses are acceptable. The rest must be demolished. In Rwamagana, the newly declared regional capital, huge swathes of homes are to be demolished to make way for people moving out of Kigali, new government buildings and businesses.

Outwardly, things seem calm and peaceful still. In reality, the gacaca (village court trial process for the tens of thousands of genocidaires) is well underway and stirring up tensions, there are political power struggles underway, people are afraid to speak openly, and the government remains rigidly authoritarian…

Rwanda has just hosted the NEPAD delegation who will report soon on its assessment of Rwanda’s progress. That should be interesting. NEPAD is a network of African countries which have agreed to peer evaluate each other on progress towards each countries’ 2020 development goals. It’ll be interesting to see what they make of the changes in the last couple of years. Sadly, there are few African leaders that aren’t self interested, power crazy, nepotistic, pillagers intent on being life-Presidents, so the idea of them assessing each other isn’t very promising in my mind. Furthermore, the fact African leaders won’t stand up and condemn the likes of Mugabe, doesn’t make me very hopeful they’ll have the objectivity and will to hold each other to account. I also fear they’ll be blinded by the new buildings and roads and overlook the more substantial and pertinent issues and the people who have been pushed out of sight because they ‘mess up the city’.

Returning to Rwanda part 2 – the kids

The children I left behind 18 months ago have, in general, progressed amazingly. The investment and challenges of those first 6 months to change behaviours and get the children back on track, has paid off remarkably. The things that the boys initially struggled with – washing regularly, cleaning, cooking together, stopping stealing, stopping going to the market, stopping fighting, stopping smoking and drinking – have over time become natural and they are going to school. All are in the top 10 in their classes. The community’s attitude has changed towards them. The kids are proud of themselves. They’ve asked for the old photos of them to be taken down off the walls. Admittedly some have fallen by the wayside. Mostly these are the older boys whose experience of vocational training was bad and disheartening. About 10 new, young, boys had come into the centre. That was interesting too because they fitted straight into the routines and expectations, largely I think because there were examples unlike first time around.


And now in addition to the boys, the centre is working with 15 girls, along with their 11 babies, which is a wonderful achievement. When I left we’d only been conducting outreach at night and holding twice weekly meetings with the girls.

Sadly the centre is bare and shadow of what is was when I left, and staff morale is low. More issues with funding and the senior management, just like before…

As for Bristley... well he's gone on from strength to strength. He came top of his class in mechanics, passed his motorcycle driving course first time, finally passed his vehicle driving course on the sixth or seventh attempt, started working as a motorcycle boy, has settled down and has found his parents via ICRC in Zimbabwe! It's been such a transformation from the kid I knew in Zaza, living in the middle of nowhere, with few prospects ahead of him...

Returning to Rwanda part 1 - holiday plans gone to pot

My ‘holiday’ remarkably rendered me more exhausted and drained than I was before. After falling ill on day two, I also caught malaria somehow and had to replace my week in Zanzibar with a week in a guesthouse bed.

And it had all been going so well. I walked out of the airport and into the capital, enjoying the morning sun rising over a quiet, lush, hilly Kigali and friendly greetings. It was a good 2 hours before anyone called me muzungu. Unprompted, the ladies in the market recognised me and called out ‘Amakuru Mateyo’. I met up with old Rwanda friends in Kigali. There were no security check points on the road to Rwamagana (there used to be at least 4). I returned to the centre and saw the staff and the boys and girls. I went to visit Fils’ grave to pay my respects (Fils died of a brain haemorrhage a couple of months after I left). And in the evening we all went out for brochettes and fanta.

Brochettes and fanta!

Then I fell sick and did very little other than feel sorry for myself, lie in bed, visit clinics, take drugs and watch really bad Rwandan television!

The clinics were hilariously bad. The first didn’t do any diagnosis. No questions about my symptoms, no checks except my temperature. They just immediately gave me a painful miracle injection in my bum which within an hour made me feel like a new man for 12 hours, did a malaria test, tried unsuccessfully to test me for stomach problems even though I had none, saw several patients around me as I lay in pain on the bed, announced I had malaria, got confused when I questioned why because it has a 2-3 week incubation period and I’d only been in the country for 6 days, then issued me with my malaria drugs. But, oh my God, that injection gace me an amazing kick! I had crawled out of my room bent over, struggled onto a moped and almost fallen off it several times going the short distance to the clinic, but after that injection I could run! And the first place I ran to was the pizzeria with beautiful views over Kigali's hills and great pizza and ice cream!

Rwandan TV was as bad as the clinic. And the torment almost drove me to hunt their producers down and offer them some common sense guidance. Their only Rwandan productions appeared to be the news in 3 different languages delivered by stoic robot like presenters, interviews with children in which an interviewer manhandles kids and forces them to perform for the camera, footage of Rwandan dancing, and a segment titled ‘ICT Development in Rwanda’ which is a montage of pictures of computers played over and over between programmes. The rest of the broadcasts are other largely French TV channels which they arbitrarily switch to and from without introducing or giving any consideration to the start or end times of the programmes. Consequently you start watching a programme or a sports game and half way through they just switch to another channel. A week of this drives you nuts.

My drug induced high didn't last long. I was soon feeling deabilitated again. After postponing my flights onto Zanzibar several times I ended up giving up, cancelling the holiday and going back to recouperate in the comfort of Kuwait...

News from Rwanda

Fils has died. Out of the blue, of a brain haemorrhage. Or at least that's the best guess of the local doctors who are overwhelmingly incompetent. Fils had been sick but staff thought he was simply his normal periodic sickly self, suffering from malaria or sun stroke from wandering around all day long begging. But it dragged on and then one day he gave up the fight and his short life drew to a close.

It seems heartless to say but it may be for the best. He was dealt some awful cards in life and been through so much. Inconceivable things. It was a miracle he still smiled, still plodded on through life with so much determination, was not bitter and angry, still had hope... That doesn't mean it isn't really upsetting. He was an amazing kid who always, always brightened up my day. He was the one kid no one in the community had a bad word to say about.

Saying goodbye...

My experience of Rwanda has been a strange one. An experience you would probably not have if you were just travelling through Rwanda on holiday for a week or two. Every day here has been full of frustrations. You're warned - don't have expectations, be flexible, don't interpret things by your own standards and perspectives. You try but it's not always possible. Maybe some of the frustrations would have washed over me or gone unnoticed if I hadn't been so worn out, or had they been one offs. Maybe not.

At the airport with Grace, Sandra and Emmanuel

As if on cue, just as I was leaving the locals had one last opportunity to wind me up. Or at least that was how it felt. As I was saying goodbye to the boys, sharing hugs with each one, some stupid guy walks by, starts leering, and then clearly starts taking the piss out of the situation, joking to his wife and laughing. Just standing there a couple of metres away laughing. What is wrong with people? Do I have to live in isolation somewhere to be free of this sort of irritation?

The boys and staff on the morning of leaving...

Leaving was hard enough without that. How do you respond to a child who is crying because you’re leaving them. I know they’ll get probably over it fairly quickly but still, then and there, how do you deal with that when so much of you wants to stay and you know you’re walking away from children who’ve been hurt emotionally in the past. It’s weird, and tormenting, to have such extremes of emotions.

Goodbyes with the SACCA team of centre managers and volunteers after the leaving party...

Burnt out, still illegal and broke...

Come November, when my visa expires, I'm leaving. If I could take the kids, the team and the centre and relocate in Uganda for example, and get a work visa I’d be in seventh heaven. But I can’t so now that the centre is set up and the programme is running smoothly, I’m going to step away before I crack and find myself unable to make a positive contribution.

I can’t deal with the thundering church opposite waking me up at 5am everyday and continuing through the day and evening. I've grown tired of the prejudices, insincerity, dependency, hostility and apathy of some of the Rwandans who make life and work such a challenge. I can’t deal with dodging the authorities for any longer on a tourist visa because the promised work visas haven't materialised.

And then there's my relationship with Mark and Naomi. That's a whole other story... I have such conflicted views about them, just like Rwanda. Their commitment and vision that got this organisation up and running is inspiring. But some issues never get resolved, like the finances, the work visas, how much we're trying to do. They have what must seem like the weight of the world on their shoulders - they're now responsible for 120+ kids - and are completely burnt out. I mean really, really burnt out. Both of them weigh 7 - 7 1/2 stone, Mark's been sick a lot, Naomi's pregnant on top of it. When we have differences in opinion about the way forward, it's just aggravated by the fact we're all exhausted and so passionate about the work.

You have to live in Rwanda, to work with and through Rwandans, to live in the community with them, to understand its pressures. It’s not like any other place in Africa or elsewhere in the world where I have lived or travelled. It’s a beautiful, beautiful country but the culture is just difficult to deal with. Life in Save was easier and of course I had all the perks of being a VSO that make volunteering seem like a holiday by comparison – long paid holidays, mid service grants, flights, insurance etc. You have to make allowances, to accept that some of the challenges are the result of the context. People are self interested and looking for a handout because there is dire poverty and dire poverty leaves you run down and desperate. People appear insincere because the genocide has on the one hand made people very distrustful and guarded, and on the other hand made every desperate to appear to be everyone's friend. And I've been one of only two white people living here so their opinions and understanding of me are probably as ignorant as my opinions and understanding of them. But sadly its often not the poorest or least worldly and educated that make life hard. Often the reverse is true. And these are not observations exclusive to outsiders. You hear these observations from Rwandans too.

Teaching just doesn’t compare to this role in terms of how you are forced to confront and explore the culture and values. Here they’re in your face, they create the challenges you’re trying to overcome, they’re part of your work, and they create barriers, undermine or outright prevent steps forward being made. You have the community judging you and your work on a daily basis, often with ignorance, prejudice, arrogance and down right spite.

The job is tougher but it’s not that that’s the problem. The other things just sap the strength from you to deal with the toughness. Apparently at the VSO returnees conference it’s clear that there’s something very different about postings in Rwanda.

And it runs right through other organisations. Rwanda’s one of a handful of first placing ‘hardship’ countries for Red Cross workers, just like the first army posting used to be Northern Ireland.

It’s awful to generalise about people here but increasingly I find myself doing it. And I’m not alone. The Rwandans I work with, remarkably and encouragingly, see most of the cultural problems too and are literally emotionally burdened by them, and plead with me not to allow a Rwandan to be appointed as my successor.

It’s this sort of thing that often leaves you feeling like it’s all futile, all hopeless, all unsustainable – how can our work achieve its goals when the community at large lacks compassion, empathy, support and the capacity to provide enough positive role models for the boys.

It’s sad that in a job where you see so many positive things – the children learning, the children getting opportunities, the children responding to love, encouragement and support, the children no longer living in fear, the children developing a sense of solidarity, the children’s self confidence and pride growing, the children being children, the children beginning to think beyond today and tomorrow, the staff showing that there are some incredible, inspiring compassionate people here – that you can be knocked down by the world outside the centre. But that’s the world they live in, that they’re part of so it’s not possible to isolate ourselves.

Maybe without the other frustrations - the church, the absence of ceilings in the centre, the worry over work visas etc – I could have found the strength to do this for longer but I haven’t had that luxury…

And it's sad too that I’m leaving but the kids and staff have not contributed to this frustration one bit. You expect problems with the kids and you’re forgiving of that. And my God, we've had problems. Boys stealing from us, boys abusing staff, boys rebelling... Sometimes I don’t feel like I have any of the answers to their problems, but life with them is far easier and less problematic than I ever expected. They are awesome… That’s the hardest thing and the thing that gives me sleepless nights – I feel so guilty about leaving the kids and so bitter towards the things that are pushing me away from them.

This constant sense of being torn between a sense of despair and intense frustration and hope and belief, is perhaps why I haven’t approached any of you to ask if you’d like to contribute in any way to the project. But I do believe in what we’re doing, we’re definitely making a difference right now to the kids lives and it’s better we’re here than not.

It will have been a long hard and incredibly rewarding five months, five months that have perhaps been the best and definitely the most significant and rewarding of my life. Five months which probably equate to twelve months. The centre is looking great, the boys are making great progress, there’s a great atmosphere at the centre, the programme is developing down some interesting avenues, the financial systems are much improved, we’ve had so many visitors and everyone has expressed sincere amazement at what’s been achieved and what’s happening…

I’ve made a contribution to something important, made a brief but hopefully positive appearance in the lives of children who deserve so much more than the cards life’s dealt them so far, and I’ll leave something tangible and an impact I’m proud of. It’s what life should be all about. It’s more than I could have ever expected last May when I was packing up my house...

So, it’s another unpredictable twist in my life and I feel a little lost, torn and bitter but I’m sure I’ll find my feet. Although I’d have lasted longer in Save and although it’s not worked out as I hoped it would, I’d make the same decision again because it’s been phenomenal. I’ll do this myself one day, somewhere where the community and culture promises to embrace it and take ownership of it...

Nothing out of the ordinary for here...

• The IRC six month pilot has ended but when they discovered Mark had no alternative funding strategy and only enough money to keep the organisation running for two months they provided us with a partial extension through to December!
• One of my boys has been in hospital with a drug overdose. Another four have been in prison for various things from smoking marijuana, playing urusimbi (local gambling game) and false accusations of stealing.
• I’ve been in trouble with the authorities over my visa, it being one for tourists not workers. The government have deported lots of foreigners in Kigali without the correct papers. The government have tabled a new law that prohibits NGOs having more than one foreigner working in Rwanda.
• We’ve met some of the street girls and started developing a programme for them.
• The boys stole a kitten for me which is adorable!
• We’ve had lots of visitors, each bringing something unique.
• We’ve built a cooking shelter now the rains have returned.
• We’ve started planning a sexual health workshop for the boys and one for the girls too.
• We’ve taken in another boy, an 8 year old who’s mother died of AIDS a month ago and who’s father then ran away to Uganda abandoning him, although it’s been a rough ride since then.
• We’ve had a few boys get unsettled by a few developments.
• I’ve had to deal out pay cuts because Sacca’s in such an awful financial predicament.
• We’ve started planning a programme to provide domestic support to HIV households.
• We’ve done lots of different activities with the boys including photo projects and football training and competitions.
• We’ve made progress adding recreational attractions to the centre including a volleyball net, football posts and nets, swing, hammock, rope ladder etc in an attempt to distract the children from wandering off to the market to play urusimbi, smoke marijuana, sniff glue and other undesirable things!
• We’ve started doing some work on children’s rights with the children. We’ve linked up with some new Child Protection committees IRC has set up to prevent separation and assist with reintegration.
• Oswald, my educator, has been in Kigali getting a new false leg and will soon be off to Solidarity Camp, the obligatory brainwashing of all new university students when the army spend a month filling your mind with political propaganda and reminding you who’s in charge of the country.
• It’s been busy but fairly smooth within the centre.
• Outside in the wider world things have been getting a little edgy. Lots of NGOs have been accused in government reports and statements of inciting ethnic tensions (largely meaning they employ too many Hutus and / or are favouring Hutus in their projects).
• The start of the Gacaca has brought new estimations of the actual number of genocidaires, inflating it from 100,000 to 500,000 as prisoners start identifying their accomplices who have been living free and as brave witness start testifying.
• Killing of witnesses is becoming increasingly prevalent, even including prominent figures – last week a Rwandan singer.
  
  
  
  

Income generation activities

Update on progress...

The boys are doing really good. Robo has taken the metaphorical olive branch and come back. Sulaiman too (the 8 year old drunk), who responded to some attention and is back and looking brighter.

We did a HIV afternoon activity with about half of the boys as preparation for the start of the food for working in HIV households programme. I have a meeting with an AIDS association and it’s members on Sunday to explain what I’m hoping to do and to achieve, and to decide which households are the priority ones.

Grace has responded to a chat about how serious and focused she needs to be. I asked them all to tell me what they wanted from me over the final month and Oswald has given me a list which amounts to the equivalent of a university course!

I’m trying to create more friends and informed people in the community by getting each member of staff to invite five compassionate people around and on your advice I’ll be inviting the pastor from the church opposite!

I’ve been sawing and hammering away today to make some sofa bench things so we have a more informal corner where we can do things like life skills and the kids can relax. We’ve made a draughts board and bought the local game with those beads and board of hollowed semi circles. I’ve tracked down someone who says he can get hold of some strong canvas material for me so I can make some hammocks for the kids in the back garden – they have such a calming effect on the kids…

More recreational activities - the busier the kids are being kids,

the less likely they are to be stealing or taking drugs!

We’ve started harassing the glue and alcohol sellers and getting the authorities on board to support us. The house hunting is progressing and I’m getting very excited about the boys having their own rooms and the possibility of getting more boys in since some still ask to sleep outside from time to time.

Grace is going out tomorrow night to speak to the street girls who are working purely as prostitutes with a view to getting them in for a meeting next week so I can better understand their needs and circumstances. I’ve set up a new timetable to incorporate life skills twice a week and a full day of staff training every Wednesday if I can stick to it.

Soon we'll start some basic income generation stuff for the kids and set up the weights and basketball post and hoop. It's never-ending!

Keeping the kids busy with sport...

Random insights

Oswald turned up late to work the other morning. His reason – he’d been trying to mediate between the local defence force and a man who was holding a knife to another man, threatening to cut off his sexual organs. The man had raped his 5 year old daughter. The girl is in hospital suffering from horrendous injuries.

I was speaking with the head of micro enterprise initiatives in the Umutara region the other night in the restaurant. I asked him to give me an example of a successful micro enterprise project. He couldn’t. He thought long and hard. I rephrased the question several times and dug deeper, but no, there weren’t any. They are unprofitable and the banks now don’t want to lend money to finance them. How depressing is that?!

I’m finding it hard to differentiate between a community uproar and fight outside, and the church. Often I jump up, run outside poised to break something up, and I find peace and tranquillity, bar an impassioned preacher and a congregation in a frenzy.

Emmanuel has just told me that the neighbour has just said he’s going to kill me and has instructed his children to stone me next time they saw me.

We did the health check on the new boy Suliaman. Frightening. He’s 25 kg, of which 5kg is probably intestinal worms. And horrendous scabies. Every inch of his skin is just covered with the rash and bites. He’s also epileptic. Which is raising some interesting beliefs. Not only do the other children think it’s contagious but apparently epilepsy is spread through farting. So when he had a fit the other night it took a lot of convincing to get the other kids to go back into the room and sleep there beside him.

If you only read one post, read this...

The past three days have been more intensive than usual.

Monday, shortly after returning at 7pm from a day in Kigali trying to sort out my visa with an incompetent immigration official who kept losing my documentation, one of the boys, Jean Bosco, turned up at the centre with a huge dent in his forehead and blood pouring out of his nose and mouth after someone had taken a brick to his head.

So we went to wake up the hospital’s emergency department. Someone in a doctor’s coat examined him and to my disbelief said there was “no problem”. Then Jean Bosco seemed to take a turn and couldn’t speak. Finally I persuaded the ‘doctor’ that perhaps the hole in his head, his loss of speech and the blood coming out of his nose and mouth might suggest there was a problem after all. Perhaps an injury to the head is a little different to an injury to an arm since there’s a brain inside. He announced that he was going to call the doctor.

The doctor finally arrived, conducted the same pathetically inept and inadequate examination, and then announced again that there was “no problem”. No he didn’t need to have a scan. Scans were too expensive anyway. There were clinical signs if there was an internal problem and he didn’t have any of them.

Just as I asked him for the third time if this was his son and money was not an issue, would he really only recommend that he be kept in overnight for observation, Jean Bosco contorted spastically, his knees came up to his chest, his arms bent up, his mouth stretched in a frozen silent scream and he had a seizure and fit. I don’t think I have ever felt such fear, to be stood beside a boy I feared was going to die before me, unable to help him and without any faith in the medical staff. There ensued a frenzied panic among everyone but the doctor who seemed stunned.

The doctor did nothing but announce to the onlookers, in a face saving effort, that it was a reaction to the drugs. Which drugs would they be - you haven’t given him anything? They gave Jean Bosco something and put him on a drip and his seizure past. I announced I was taking him to Kigali immediately for a scan and treatment. Fine, the ambulance is 15,000 francs. No problem. Please can you put Jean Bosco in the ambulance with a nurse. Yes.

I disappeared for a moment to speak to my social worker who’d turned up and then returned. Why is nothing happening? Why is the ambulance not outside? You must pay first. Okay, here’s the money. You must complete some forms first. Where are the forms? Someone will fetch them from the office. Five minutes later I have the forms.

Meanwhile the doctor has decided Jean Bosco is going to die and is just saying it over and over aloud. Someone tranquiliser the *?!@# doctor before I do. I then had to run across the hospital to another office to pay up. Finally, proof of payment in my hand, the ambulance moves. Then the doctor wants the ambulance to take him home first. Sandra, our fundraiser who’s there with me, goes loopy at him and he cowers away.

I ask my social worker if he’ll come with me to Kigali to help make things happen and translate. He looks down and explains that he would but he’s wearing flip flops. I am in disbelief and despair, again. Jean Bosco is wheeled out. But they can’t figure out how the trolley bed in the ambulance works so no less than six nurses and trainee nurses literally tug and pull and push him up into the ambulance and onto the trolley bed. God knows what damage they do to people with spinal injuries.

Is there a nurse coming with me? Yes, of course. Where is he? They point. The nurse is sitting in the passenger seat in the front cabin with the driver and the ambulance guard. What use is he there? Finally the staff, Jean Bosco, his friend Eramu, Sandra and I set off for Kigali, to the hospital with a scanning machine.

The journey was largely uneventful to my relief. I sat in the back with him shinning a torch over his bed since the ambulance was bare. He threw up a few times, coughed up more blood and managed to disconnect his drip so it spurted all over the ambulance as we bounced over the pot holes and bumps of the worst main road in Rwanda.

We arrived at the hospital and I carried him in as he continued to throw up left, right and centre, and put him in a wheelchair in the A&E reception. But it was as if the staff in reception were oblivious to him. They didn’t move. The door to the operating room was open. Five staff were slumped out on the operating table and cabinets, socialising, indifferent and nonchalant. Why are you not helping him? Some reluctantly moved but they wouldn’t approach him until he’d finished throwing up.

Finally they conducted an examination. There’s no problem. He’s just drunk. Excuse me. Peculiarly the huge dent in his head had disappeared, presumably because of blood building up behind the depressed skull so I could understand their reaction a little, but I knew he had had a huge dent, had had a seizure and hadn’t been drinking.

I showed them a digital camera picture of his head when he’d arrived at the centre. No he’s just drunk. But he hasn’t been drinking tonight and look, he had a huge dent in his skull and he had a seizure and fit and can’t speak. Why do you not accept he is just drunk? Because he’s not. Maybe it is his first time drinking. No. Maybe he has religion that says he cannot drink but today he drank and he is now feeling very bad. No. Look at the picture. Look at the blood.

I want him to have a head scan please. We don’t have a scanner. The only scanner is at the King Faisal Hospital. But the doctor in Rwamagana said it was here - he sent the ambulance here. We have an x-ray machine. I decided we’d might as well have an x-ray since we were here if it was going to be quick.

Miraculously it was quick. The x-rays didn’t look very clear but we took them back to the doctor anyway. While we waited for the doctor to examine the x-rays, they found a bed for him and put him on another drip. The doctor announced that he had a fracture. Really, that is enlightened. What does he need? Nothing, there’s no problem. That was that.

We sat up for the rest of the night keeping watch as he slept with Eramu curled up at the bottom of the bed. By 3am we were desperate for a break, some refreshment and something to revive us so we escaped for a bizarre hour at the neighbouring new Intercontinental hotel. Kind of difficult to get your head around such an experience when you live day to day in a very different world and you’ve just had an evening like that.

I got an hour’s restless sleep slumped in a wheelchair in the corridor outside Jean Bosco’s ward. I woke at 6 to lots of hospital staff laughing at the muzungus sleeping in the hospital. Sandra headed back to Rwamagana and I stayed put. Jean Bosco’s recovery seemed miraculous. He was smiling and speaking again and I was relieved and bemused beyond belief.

On the morning round the nurses said he could be discharged. Well or not I was happy to get him out of the hospital. Getting him discharged though took me 4 hours of bureaucracy and complications. Part of the process involves queuing up for a final examination by a specialist doctor. It was good to speak to someone who seemed qualified and competent but she took one look at the x-rays and confirmed my suspicions – they were useless because they didn’t show her anything, good or bad. We were sent back to get more done.

Two hours later they had x-rays that confirmed his fracture but he was still discharged. Then I had to wait 3 ½ hours for the car to pick us up. Whilst waiting I discovered Jean Bosco’s mother had come down to Rwamagana from her village. Someone had told her last night that he was dead. She had brought with her some villagers to go to Kigali to collect his body. I put them both on the phone and her grieving ended…

Finally we made it home just before 7pm. I gave him something to eat, set up a mat and blanket for him, and went to bed exhausted, 38 hours after I’d woken up on Monday morning. 9.42am the morning after and I’m woken by a panic. The authorities are in the town forcibly rounding up the street children. They do this every now and then in the towns. For entertainment it would seem. They lock them up, lecture them, beat them, send some of them to the old psychiatric hospital for ‘rehabilitation’, dump then in less conspicuous places in the country. It’s the pinnacle of Rwanda’s enlightened social care system.

So I have my four staff and Sandra running around the market trying to get the kids back to the centre where I can keep the authorities away. But three were caught and taken away on a truck. The authorities had rounded up ANY kids present in the market and when I arrived at the sector offices I found 200 or so frightened children from 6 or 7 years upwards imprisoned in a baking room.

Outside the authorities were criticising our approach and efforts, saying we had done nothing for our children, we hadn’t given them clothes, their behaviour hadn’t changed etc. Parents crowded around in a panic – some of the children had been helping them to carry and sell things in the market, some had been shopping with them, some did attend primary school but were on the afternoon rotation…

Four hours later, after lots of heated conversations about the programme and public relations, some of the local leaders had softened their attitude. Finally, they started releasing the children after they’d spoken to each child and their guardians. Those without guardians probably remain imprisoned until someone comes forward in their defence. Tomorrow’s job maybe going to the defence of those who had no guardian come to their defence… That’s all for now... I’m grinding to a halt again.

The team and centre

Emmanuel, Grace and Oswald

Me in the office

The centre

The volleyball court!

No time to breathe...

It’s all a little blurry but I don’t think I’ve written to you all for several weeks. Days and weeks don’t seem to be distinct anymore – they run into another without any break.

Things are working well so far. The kids living in haven’t caused me any problems, bar one incident of smoking, another of stealing and another of fighting. They are in a good routine of packing up their blankets in the morning, cleaning their room and corridor, tidying outside and cleaning the toilet and shower room. All essential given they have no shoes and the inside hall space is a mud floor because we haven’t money to concrete it so they walk dirt all around the house.

Teaching is going well. Three kids have dropped out of the programme. One had stolen from the centre twice so was banned till September but my social worker hasn’t been able to check up on him and apparently he’s run off to Kigali. Another boy borrowed money from someone and lost it gambling in the local card game so has run away to Kigali to escape reprisal.

Another attacked someone with a machete so is in the central prison. That was an interesting day. Just after dawn I found a blood soaked boy on my doorstep explaining how Hinya had attacked him with a machete in a drunken and crazed rage. So I took him off to the hospital where we sat together in the operating room as the wounds to his arm and neck were cleaned and stitched up, without anaesthetic, and I tried to be supportive rather than faint! Me, the pathetic person who loses feeling in his arms whenever he even thinks about blood and injections. But we both made it through.

That’s just one example of how the days rarely go as planned or expected but there are so many more examples.

The outreach to the girls has stumbled because my community outreach worker has been recalled by IRC for a couple of weeks to prepare Gacaca witnesses for testifying about their rape and sexual violation during the genocide. Hopefully she’ll be back soon.

The road construction company have agreed provisionally to help us lay a hard surface in the garden for sports activities if we could level it. Sounded great until we discovered there was a ’94 genocide victim buried right in the middle.

I have no work visa because we can’t get work visas until SACCA is registered at ministerial level but that can’t happen until the constitution is finalised and approved by IRC. Conventional wisdom would have you form an association, write a constitution, register yourself, apply for funding and then start. We’re doing it all in reverse. Which means I have had to apply for a tourist visa for three months as my current work visa runs out tomorrow. Then in three months time I’ll have to leave the country and return on a new tourist visa. And in the meantime also keep my head low. Which means no repeats of last month’s hairy arrest by the police for driving an uninsured and unregistered donated Congolese 4x4 (we’re on the brink of war with Congo) looking like a mercenary with my new shaved head!

Fils, the boy I had highest hopes for in terms of response to some love, attention and support has gone down hill and now rarely attends lessons. Robo, another genocide orphan, who I had the biggest concerns about because he behaves as though he is crazy and has a furious, really violent temper, has been remarkable since we sat down and had a long discussion about his behaviour before he moved in.

But then there are always the odd things that do go as planned or expected. Take for instance the church opposite which rain or shine always wakes me at 5am with the start of its boisterous, rowdy, thumping services which send reverberations around the centre. You also wouldn’t bet against me not getting more accounts to work on. Or on me spending much of the remainder of each day disciplining children for smoking dope in the garden, refusing to take orders from a woman, fighting etc. Or my workers being harassed and threatened by the military patrols at night when they go to check up on the kids living out.

Another thing that seems to be happening on an increasingly frequent basis is me acting like I have a death wish, confronting, searching and dragging a Local Defence Force man humiliatingly through the market to the police after he’d mugged one of my kids, and having some very interesting and inflamed confrontations with my thieving neighbour in his house after his son stole three times in one weekend and stoned the kids from his house. It’s fair to say Rwanda and a job like this brings out your extremes, extremes you often didn’t know you had.

Anyway, there are many more stories but I’ll spare you for now!

The rules and regulations!

My latest pet...

Two thousand francs bought me a tortoise today. Not bad I thought. I’m not sure what to call it as I don’t know how to tell if it’s a boy or a girl and I don’t want to create another pet with gender identity issues. Scamper is very intrigued. The tortoise is quite active, although that might be it trying to find it’s way back to the Lake that the poacher stole it from. He reliably assures me he can bag me a monkey too if I like. His sales pitch for the monkey wasn’t so good as he told me they are dangerous. I’m not sure how much a monkey would be. Anyway, no need for one as there's one living in the banana trees of the neighbour's property. He keeps popping into the house to steal things from the kitchen. One's more than enough. Sandra is already provoking my conscience to think about returning it to the lakeside where it probably came from...

Alternative medical treatment

Just on cue, as I’m beginning to ease into a relatively quiet evening, Daniel appears with a huge cut in his foot. Emmanuel is on hand to translate and help out. He suggests using petrol. Or agricultural pesticides. Apparently this is what a lot of Rwandans use. When I questioned how effective and healthy this was, Emmanuel responded: “Ah, they are very good. They kill many animals and things on plants. In the morning your cut is better.” Interesting. And perhaps an explanation for some of the more bizarre characteristics of some people here. Anyway, he's all cleaned up, minus petrol and pesticides, bandaged and socked reading for the dispensary tomorrow and possible stitches...

Local perceptions of the muzungu

Topic of conversation over dinner tonight with Emmanuel was what people have been asking him about me! They find it strange that my friends are street kids but applaud me for my work. Thank you. They think I am very ‘serious’. Good, that’ll limit the numbers who try to take the piss. They apparently find it very strange that I have moved into an unfinished house. Me too. They find it peculiar that my house isn’t fortressed and that visitors don’t have to knock on a gate and wait patiently for Emmanuel to answer. I wish. They think I buy everything I eat from the supermarkets in Kigali each weekend. If only.

Getting the shelter up and running...

Today was also our first day of teaching on Mondays and it went well. Now we’re teaching four times a week, working on the garden another day and supervising their cleaning (their sleeping places, cooking areas and clothes) another day.

We then had to round the children up for a meeting and had a long, long chat about blankets before distributing them. And finally we had a meeting with the children who are moving in about rules, behaviour, arguments etc which was excellent.

They’re now all crammed onto the floor of their bedroom, curled up with their new blankets, safe and secure for the first night in however many hundreds of days. As good as that’s been, drawing the line and trying to explain and defend it has been difficult and tonight I even had to throw out a boy who’d sneaked into the bedroom to sleep because his younger sleeping companions were now sleeping in the centre and he was alone on the street… I am kicking myself. I should have anticipated how this decision was going to break up sleeping groups and done some preparation work but I just didn’t think…

This week’s priority is trying to find safe places in the community where the other boys can sleep. If that proves difficult I’m tempted to rent a place for them… At the moment though Plan A is to try to bribe the local defence force who have an empty house. Africa has evidently corrupted my morality. In hindsight, without any real resistance either.

How the children were living before the shelter opened...

Dazed and confused...

Time to try and summarise umpteen days of experiences that evoke every emotion and whose combined effect leave you in somewhat of a daze of thoughts and feelings.

The boys are…well, they’re up and down. We have mornings when there are fights and arguments breaking out every half hour, stones being thrown, knives and metal bars being used, kids having to be restrained. The tensions are provoked by everything from mental problems and card games to stealing and the influence of drugs and alcohol.

To add to the tensions among themselves we also have tensions between the children and the community, sometimes due to the general perception of street children, sometimes because the children have stolen or provoked someone.

Then there are times when things are incredibly harmonious and blissful and I sit in the office working away with kids happily shaving each other’s heads, playing football, using the computer, playing cards, sleeping through the midday heat, asking you to put more money in their savings box…

And then there are the random events like children fleeing to the centre late at night because someone – a drunk, a thug, a Local Defence Force guy – has started beating them or thrown stones at them. Or other vulnerable children turning up at the centre asking for help.

And then there’s Fils who is already living in the centre with me because his special needs made him the most vulnerable of the group, courtesy of having his skull pummelled during an attack during the genocide that left him orphaned and lying amongst a pile of dead bodies.

He is currently sat in front of me, falling asleep on the table to the mellow tunes of Tracy Chapman, but usually he’s bouncing around the centre counting in French and English, conjugating verbs, listing African countries and doing other random other stuff… He’s also been stoned and drunk on several occasions, apparently because people seem to find it entertaining to force him to drink or smoke when he’s wandering on the street begging…

I’m hoping that soon we’ll find the funding to afford a 121 teacher / playworker who can spend most of the day with him and keep him away from situations like that. He’s a bright, adorable and incredibly polite boy with impeccable morals, who definitely inspires you to want to give him every opportunity you can.

Monday will be another milestone. The ten youngest children, who are also those children living in the worst conditions and who want to attend primary school, will move into the centre, blankets will be distributed, with conditions, to all the children and it’ll be the first full week of the daily food programme.

It’s a milestone because hopefully the food will lessen the impetus to steal and to work in harmful labour, the study and work they’ll do to earn the food will occupy them, accommodation will reduce their need to take alcohol and drugs to help them through the nights, the stepped up study programme and short term goals like reaching primary school and vocational training will give them a future worth working towards, the washing facilities and cleaning checks at the weekend in return for food will improve their hygiene, the medical care programme will continue to improve their health, and living, cooking, playing and studying in this environment will give them a little of the security and love that they lack on the street…

There are so many dimensions. But we’re not deluding ourselves. It’s not a guaranteed, set formula for success - any steps forward will be balanced against plenty of setbacks and there will be plenty of learnings and modifications to be made. When you’ve been through what these children have been through and experienced the losses, the hardships, the disappointments, the rejection and the physical and mental abuse, you don’t just adapt to such a huge change in life and your future.

We’re trying to build things up incrementally and at a pace that doesn’t breed complacency, dependency or a lack of ownership and doesn’t rock the world they’re accustomed to too much. The opening of this centre is eight months after they started a study for food and medical care programme and a lot of preparatory social and community relations work has been done to lay the foundations for the centre. School and vocational training will start in January for most of them.

We’ve started trying to identify the girls who are living on the street and working as prostitutes – twice a week two of my female staff spend the evening in bars and on the streets these girls frequent, watching and building a profile. Then when the time is right they’ll make contact and start to try to build friendship and trust so we can learn more about their circumstances, their needs, their motivations and later we’ll sell our programme to them, leaving them open to take us up on any element of it in the hope they’ll buy into it more and more and one day come off the street and out of prostitution. And along the way we’ll try to work on building more community protection of these girls.

At the moment the vulnerable girls forced into prostitution or subjected to other sexual abuse – girls in child headed households, orphans, girls living on the street – find themselves further ostracised by the community if they speak out against those who rape and abuse them. As if that wasn’t enough, my outreach worker says the girls they’ve observed so far appear to include several who are as young as 12 or 13 years old…it’s frightening.

This past week I’ve spent a lot of time with community leaders and officials from the municipality, talking to them about street children, our work, the role they can play and the work we’re planning with street girls. It’s been interesting and they’ve put up some very perceptive challenges to our programme and also provided some useful insights and encouraging offers of support.

At the same time life in a Rwandan community, doing this sort of work, work which is currently considered very political and implicitly critical of the government, is unnerving. I have been told, with total sincerity and seriousness, that people will be spying on me, recording, reporting and judging my actions and SACCA’s work. In this culture everything is about hierarchy, procedure and respect. And insincerity, superficiality and ‘Big Brother’ atmosphere.

To give you an idea, there is a leader for every 10 houses in Rwanda. They report into another local official, providing him with monthly report about the activities among his / her 10 houses. And so it goes on up the pyramid to the top, each level with its own obligations on citizens. It’s just one element of an authoritarian one party police state. And there’s plenty more. The army even have NGO vehicles they use to lure unsuspecting NGOs into conversation in order to determine their politicisation and allegiance.

Stoned again...

The temptation is to start this account of my days with the line that always comes to mind automatically, “Today’s been a strange day”! I guess after a while strange will become closer to normality although I imagine there will always be something that comes from left field.

Fils has continued to provide plenty of entertainment in the evenings. He has been under the influence of something for a total of four evenings so far. Tonight he was semi coherent in between moments when his eyes seemed to droop and he literally started snoring whilst trying to continue speaking! So we had a conversation about many different things, including Saddam, Osama Bin Laden and Bush, and which subjects he would like to study!

He’s so entertaining… I will have to video an evening some time because you just can’t capture him in words. Then in the middle of our conversation another boy turned up in a really emotional state having fled a man who was beating him. So the rest of the evening was consumed calming him down, checking out his injuries, discussing the circumstances and then sitting him down to watch a Jackie Chan film on to distract him!

More strange things are happening in Rwanda. People have been banned from cutting down trees, burning mud bricks and building roof structures with anything other than metal. Jeremy Lester, the European Ambassador, says the government’s negative impact on people’s daily lives is the worst he’s known in the four years he’s been here and he seriously believes something will happen within a year. I doubt it somehow. People just seem too brainwashed or frightened of speaking out. Fils even said tonight that Paul Kagame is good but he couldn’t say anything against him because someone would hear and he would be killed. He also said that the job I have is something that’s best done for a set period so there’s an end and a release from it’s pressures in sight. Wise words that bolster my plan to leave this for Canada after a year…

I called Sister Anne Beata to let her know Jeremy was going to give her a call to arrange for two free computers to be delivered to the school (finally – I arranged this months ago) and she just announced without emotion or hesitation that today she’d be very busy because they were having a big memorial service and re-burying the remains of lots of people who’s bodies were in the mass graves in Save. It’s amazing how you’ll just be going through your ‘normal’ day and out of the blue you’ll unsuspectingly be thrown violently back into the horrific past.

Here it’s the dry season for another month or two so the days are hot, the nights are cold, it’s dry and dusty, the skies are clear and the sunsets are superb every evening. I don’t think there’s been an evening here when I haven’t seen a beautiful sunset.

Is it wrong to find this amusing?!

Fils is stoned. This is both worrying and absolutely hilarious! In England I’d probably get into trouble for this! Usually Fils is very polite and calm but when I got back from Kayonza he seemed very different – demanding a banana, washing random parts of his body, making funny gesticulations and postures, more spaced out than normal, and claiming he felt ill.

He said he thought he had malaria but he was so stoned. I told him no banana unless he told the truth. Apparently, Robot – the 10 year old with ADD who wreaks havoc around Rwamagana – had given him something to smoke, in my back garden! So now I have a stoned 13 year old child with special needs who seems to keep going up and down. One minute he’s bouncing around the room or randomly telling us at great lengths which foods he likes and how exactly he’ll cook these things tomorrow, the next minute he’s slouched over a table looking a little sorry for himself and complaining that he feels sick!

Just another day in paradise!

The kids were banging on the door at 7.30am because the local defence force had beaten several of them, all because another had stolen some oil. A big ruckus broke out as eight kids tried to explain what had happened in very loud Kinyarwanda and lots of gesticulations and then proceeded to try to beat up the kid who’d stolen the oil and yet somehow avoided being beaten by the LDF guy.

I also have 27 kids turning up for lessons on the proviso we give them soap to wash with, Vaseline to groom themselves and 200 francs. But I have no money, no soap and no Vaseline. And only 10 francs on my phone. So we have a mini rebellion because, of course, they only study because they get money for it.

We also have one kid acting up in a lesson and when he’s told off by Oswald (my teacher), rips up his book, snaps his pen in half and storms out saying he’s got his ID card now and that’s all he ever needed us for.


Meanwhile I go in search of the thug who’d beaten up my kids, track him down and have a protracted conversation with him through one of our outreach workers about professionalism, me now being responsible for the kids, my hopes, and if there is tension between us and the LDF there will be problems. Then we try, unsuccessfully, to find the chief to arrange a meeting for next week with the whole thug brigade.


Sandra then arrived with some money – hurrah – and when Oswald and Grace return to the house looking very flustered after their morning we dole out their money and buy some soap and quality ‘Sleeping Baby’ Vaseline. Then the carpenter turns up and we begin to work out how I can sleep 8 kids in one small room with triple level bunk beds.


In between all of this, I’m trying to teach Fils how to wash his clothes, telling two more people that I don’t have jobs for them, telling a neighbour that no he can’t charge his mobile phone in my house and trying to humour Fils’ entertainment needs by dancing with him, playing mobile phones in English and listening to him repeatedly count to 10 in French and English, conjugate French verbs and list countries in East Africa.

And that was just the morning. The afternoon was more sedate. We sat down, had another team meeting, did some reports, sent the kids off to play football, made some curtains etc etc…

My new home!

It's got no ceilings, a standpipe in the garden is the only running water, there's just one pit latrine, and I'll be sharing this all with 25 street kids, a cat and the neighbour's monkey!

Rwamagana!

The centre and my home!

My bedroom, and the only room with a ceiling!

My kitchen - just the bare essentials

Climbing a Congolese Live Volcano!

I'm taking a short break between finishing teaching and starting my new job. England is three days away. That thought evokes so many different emotions. It’s hard to contemplate life back home given my comparatively surreal life here! The overwhelming emotion right now though is exhaustion – it seems that life has been non-stop as I’ve tried to juggle a new relationship, exams, wrapping up life here in Save and doing prep work for my new job, all on the back of a month of sleepless nights deliberating over the job offer and trying to revise for my exams.

Last weekend we travelled up to Ruhengeri in the far north west for a muzungu versus Rwandan and Congolese team. Predictably this was quite a spectacle with locals lining the pitch and roaring with laughter. Predictably too we lost, 8-2!

From Ruhengeri we went to Gisenyi and the following morning crossed over into Congo to Goma. Goma, was wiped out in 2002 when one of the volcanoes erupted, leaving almost the entire city flattened and covered with lava. Now a road has been built over the lava flows and people are beginning to try to establish a new way of life without any capacity to farm. It’s an absolutely phenomenal and fascinating landscape. After changing some money and buying some food and charcoal we headed off on a 45 minute motorcycle ride out of the city to the foot of the volcano that had erupted, found some guards, guides and porters and set off on our climb up the volcano.

After 4 hours of agonising climbing we were within reach of the crater rim and set up camp for the night. The volcano’s mountain sides were as stunning as the city, with huge lava flows and a landscape of burnt skeletal trees and steam. After an early morning climb to the crater rim, we came down, crossed back into Rwanda and spent the rest of the day on Gisenyi’s lakeside beaches relaxing and recovering!

It was fascinating to be in Goma simply because of the huge security operations and issues of the area and its history as the crossing point for hundreds of thousands of refugees both from the genocide and eruption. The UN operation in Goma was immense, with its own enormous airport terminal and numerous huge compounds. We didn’t see many Congolese troops though and I didn’t once feel threatened or unnerved. However, since we returned the newspapers have been reporting increasing tension between the Rwanda and Congo and Congo has now apparently stated that if Rwanda continues to enter Congo in pursuit of the interhamwe, Congo will consider it’s incursions as an act of war and respond accordingly. Since Rwanda seems unlikely to back down from pursuing the interhamwe, we are now waiting to see whether Congo’s statement is more than rhetoric…

Other than my Congo trip, life has been a blur of marking exams and preparing form tutor reports, playing with the local kids and leaving parties for NGOs and volunteers wrapping up their contract. I haven’t thought too much about leaving yet. It’s going to be hard. Life here in Save has been excellent and I’m going to miss the people, atmosphere, lifestyle and landscape. I’ve put off saying my goodbyes until I return to from England…