Connect Africa

Kigali, and particularly our appartment block have been turned upside down by a large ICT conference being held here.

http://www.newtimes.co.rw/index.php?issue=1332&article=1925

http://www.connectafrica.gov.rw

some of the heads of state are staying here which means that we can't park on site, or use the main gate, instead we have to go through a tent with metal detector at the side gate.

We were informed of this late in the afternoon Friday, by a letter posted under the door, with instruction to inform management of our names, and regular visitors names before 8 am on Saturday. Because of said VIPS, the appartments have been a veritable hive of activity the past week with appartments being spring cleaned, new furniture arriving and, painters everywhere. Because said VIPs were here for an IT summit, the usual system for connecting residents to the internet (wires looped round the bannister and in through a grate above the door) was considered to be a *bad* thing. This meant that the IT chap spent upward of an hour trying to get us connected wirelessely, but no luck. So the wire now runs outside via the balcony to us, and where visible in the stairwell has been neatly pinned down. OK very nice, but the wires leading from the ground to first floor are still looping round randomly, and the VIPS are on the first floor!!

Yesterday I lost the plot, since when we returned from lunch we were treated with huge suspicion and absolutely no courtesy by the security personnel. I understand the need for increased security with VIPS around, but the lack of respect for the regular residents here was where I lost it.

It doesn't help the we are listed as Lonsaka Zomer and Hazel O'rea, both German and I am working at the Detch Embassy. The guy asked 'Bloke?' several time, my answer being "I am Lon Zomer, I live here at C301" until I realised he meant "In which BLOCK do you live sir?". Now I know you just mention first clearly Block C, more then once, then mention c301, and then point at your name on the list. Even if you say your name clearly they still ask if you are Vince Johnson, to them it sounds the same.

Now we are having to grow accustomed to the constant and not restful beep of the metal detector and the noise of people talking, as the security tent is directly below our appartment, (will take and post photos)

thanks

..for all the birthday good wishes.

Quite a quiet day, partly (mostly) due to excessive wine on Friday night. We went for brunch, and out for dinner to a nice restaurant.

Rwandan Music

One of the things that struck us about Rwanda so far is the lack of music on the streets.

In most other African countries we have visited, music is pumped out of every shop, car and bus, competitively. It is often Congolese rumba or Bob Marley, but still an integral part of the whole experience.

Some internet searching has found some sites, but there really is relatively little going on., and the live music we have heard so far, is very much hotel background pop stuff
http://www.musicvideos.the-real-africa.com/rwanda/

http://comeandseerwanda.org/anthology

Fillings at the Faisal part II

I've just spent 2 and a half hours getting two fillings, paying for it, and getting invoiced.
All would have gone much more smoothly if I wasn't in the system as Nazel OiDea.

Ho hum

Malaria: The Preventable and Treatable Disease

Malaria is a disease of the blood that is caused by a parasite transmitted from person to person by certain types of mosquitoes. Malaria symptoms, which appear about 9 to 14 days after the infectious mosquito bite, include fever, headache, vomiting and other flu-like symptoms. If drugs are not available for treatment or if the parasites are resistant to them, the infection can lead to coma, severe life-threatening anemia, and death by infecting and destroying red blood cells and by clogging the capillaries that carry blood to the brain (cerebral malaria) or other vital organs. Worldwide, malaria causes around 350 to 500 million illnesses and more than one million deaths annually.

Malaria is particularly devastating in Africa, where it kills an African child every 30 seconds. Many children who survive an episode of severe malaria may suffer from learning impairments or brain damage. Pregnant women and their unborn children are also particularly vulnerable to malaria, which, during pregnancy, is a major cause of mortality, low birth weight and maternal anemia. And while we know malaria is preventable, the lack of resources, coupled with a climate very hospitable to the deadliest strain of malaria, has made the disease a leading cause of death among African children.

In addition to the human toll malaria exacts, the economic and social impacts are also devastating: Sick children miss school, tourism suffers, and foreign investment is stifled. Annual economic loss in Africa due to malaria is estimated to be $12 billion, representing a crippling 1.3 percent annual loss in GDP growth in endemic countries. Malaria becomes a self-perpetuating problem, where the disease prevents the human and economic capital necessary to bring the disease under control. Moreover, malaria disproportionately affects the rural poor who can neither afford a bed net for prevention, nor access appropriate treatment when they fall sick.

http://www.malarianomore.org/malaria.php


Here in Rwanda they are carrying out an Indoor Residual Spraying program to kill mosquitoes which are inside, whether that will have the desired affect is still to be seen, but it is one of the strategies being employed, along with treated nets and better access to treatment. Full strategy doc here - http://www.fightingmalaria.gov/countries/rwanda_mop-fy07.pdf

In the meantime, until we have settled into our new home, Lon and I are still taking the Lariam aka Mefloquine

Side-effects

Mefloquine may have severe and permanent adverse side-effects. It is known to cause severe depression, anxiety, paranoia, nightmares, insomnia, seizures, peripheral motor-sensory neuropathy,^[2] vestibular (balance) damage and central nervous system problems. For a complete list of adverse physical and psychological effects — including suicidal ideation — see the most recent product information. Central nervous system events occur in up to 25% of people taking Lariam, such as dizziness, headache, insomnia, and vivid dreams.[5] In 2002 the word "suicide" was added to the official product label, though proof of causation has not been established.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mefloquine

Luckily, we both took this before when we travelled, and I have the most reaction out of the two of us, in that I often on Lariam night experience vivid dreams (also known as cheese dreams!). Once we have moved we will be stopping this drug as it's not something you want to take for three years, and relying on spraying and nets and clothing as prevention, and getting a blood test as soon as we feel rubbish.

le rugby

At one of last weeks social gatherings I met some of my first brits, and established that the Rugby world cup would be witnessed live en masse at a local bar/nighclub called Cadillac. As it was our anniversary, Lon and I went out to celebrate at the adjoining thai restaurant. We were surprised that the carpark was deserted still at 20.45 with a 21.00 kick off, but had a nice enough meal.

21.00 came and went, we went to Cadillac, and had issues - in both english and french
are our friends inside ? - yes
is there rugby on the television? - Rugby? Television?
South Africa, England - Rugby? - ah rug-by I check
and off he went never to be seen again.

We decided against paying entrance to the club, and went to a bar in town to watch the match.

Upon checking my emails it was apparent that I'd missed the mail kindly sent by Laurie, stating that it was Carwash and not Cadillac as per earlier mail.....

Landenteam

A short explanation on what the countryteam is.

The country team, is a team of people that are involved with policy regarding a specific country in this case Rwanda and Burundi. They came here to assist with the writing of a multi annual strategy plan. In saying that, I don't think even a letter got on paper, it was only talking. The first two days were for Rwanda. I was there for the first hour, luckily I was excused after that. The third day we planned the morning for Burundi. Smaller team and less programmes, so we thought it could be a quick session. Unfortunately we first have to say that we are writing a plan and should think about priorities and not mention details and should not forget the most important issues and the small things can be important, but mostly are not, so we have to agree that we do it in such a way that the important things get priority and the smaller thing get a lower priority, we can mention the smaller things, but the priority is lower.....

Luckily there was plenty of coffee, I set a record!

So, we decided on above mentioned. Then someone, who shall not be mentioned, said we should not forget about programme x and y and z. Apparently she too had been sleeping, a strategy plan is not mentioning specific programmes. Unfortunately we let her talk, and the 'speaker' told her in a roundabout way that her imput was ...... So at 13.45 we decided that the morning was not long enough and we needed another hour after lunch.

If it was me it was much quicker: Burundi - fragile state - take weapons away - give support in the form of money and training. END. We all knew this, but thing had to be said.

Sorry, dinner time now.

Oeps 2

We often borrow an embassy car, this could be either of the two white Toyota Pick ups or one of the Toyota Prado's.

Kigali has quit a few cars, a lot of white Toyota Corollas as taxis, a lot of Toyota minibuses and privately owned mostly 4x4s. There are a few categories of private cars, in order of appearance, White Toyota pick ups, white Toyota Prado's (see a pattern yet?), other 4x4s, Toyota 'normal' car and finally 'other'. The 'other' category is rather interesting, but I won't go into that.

Anyway, I had one of the pick-ups, dropped Haze of at Yoga and went to do some shopping. Some bananas (obligatory), some mangoes, yoghurt, some other small things and a box of four 5 liter bottles of water. A man from the shop kindly offered to bring the water to the car, of course this kindness was not just out of kindness. We walked to the car, I opened the door with some difficulties and the man put the water on the backseat and walked aways after I give him a tip. Then to my great surprise someone started to put a great tree of bananas on the back. I asked him and his made what he thought he was doing. The bloke was surprised and assured me he had the right car, so just to assure myself I looked at the license plate. Insert oops here. Indeed I had the wrong car, I didn't know how quick I could get my stuff out the car into the other one 10 meters further and drive away. Of course all this was witnessed by a lot of people and the word Muzungu was used, probably followed by stupid, but luckily my kinyarwanda is not that good.

Online learning

I got the go ahead from the dutch for funding and have now enrolled in the following two courses:

Editing and proofreading

TEFL (Teaching English as a foreign language)


I'm really looking forward to getting stuck in!

Sociablity OD

Friday night we attended the Dutch ambassadors annual dutchy drinks reception, which gave us the opportunity to mix with non embassy staff - sadly we got latched onto by the one chap who thought smart casual meant white pyjama style striped trousers with a paisley shirt.

On Saturday we went for our now habitual exploratory drive. I wanted to revisit a road I remembered as being green, in a valley and quite straight with had the Kigali Institute of Management on it, Lon has gamely tried to find it for the past couple of weekends, but with little luck. Apparently all I needed to say for direction was the one down from the airport. I had no idea we were anywhere near the airport. The geography really has to be seen to be understood or appreciated. The rational, European logical sense of direction plays no role here - theres no four turns left and I'll be back here concept, as there most probably isn't a left, or indeed further lefts from that. Roads follow the contours of the hills, and probably previous popular trails. Oh and the map we have is part fiction in that some roads don't exist that are shown, others don't indicate that they are blocked due to the American embassy or the presidents residence.

Sunday saw us relaxing by the pool and attending a birthday party (dutch), so once again seeing all the embassy staff and partners.

Monday, the Landenteam (country team) arrived, and of course a reception was held with all the embassy staff and partners...so we have all seen a little too much of each other! I'll leave Lon to elaborate on the purpose / outcome of the country team visit.

Tuesday I got invited to go to Butare with Els and her guests, so I now know some more interesting places to stop (shop) along the way. Yesterday morning the dutch partners (again) got together to sort and price second hand clothes for sale at the AIC bazaar in November, and to cap it off we had an AIC (African International Club) social evening last night!!!

I can't wait for a nice quiet evening in with Lon, but tonight is yoga........

Fillings at the Faisal

On Tuesday I went to the dentist.

On Saturday a piece of filling fell out. No pain, but none wanted so I got Lon to ask for recommendations at the embassy.

I went to the King Faisal Hospital, and saw the dentist there. http://www.kfh.rw/dentistry.html - despite my having visited our NL dentist before departure for a (I thought) thorough check up - the X rays revealed several more problems where I have decay under existing fillings, and will have to return for more treatment, this hasn't occurred since my last dentist visit in July, but is longer standing.

I'm p***d off with our dentist, he knew we were going to live overseas, fortunately we are living in the capital city with easy access to a dentist who is a fully equipped Philippino lady who speaks excellent English - but we could for all he knew be off to the bush. Grr!!

The hospital is pretty clean and orderly by any standards, so I'm in a way relieved to have gone there for a non-urgent visit - at least I have an idea of how things work there.

Muzungu

For the attentive readers, it might look that we are not sure what the local word for white man is, we used mzungu, muzungu and bazungu. This is not due to fat fingers on the keyboard, nor to our lack of spelling, there is an explanation.

Mzungu is the kiswahili word for white person. Muzungu (the difference is hard to hear) is the kinyarwanda word for white person and bazungu is kinyarwanda for white people.


So now you know two words kinyarwanda.

Oeps

I finally did what I was afraid of.

Haze asked me to bring home a couple of avocados for lunch. Not a big deal as on one of the side roads are some shops, and avocados are available most places. I went down the road in the big embassy car. By the way the embassy car has a little flag up front, but this is covered by what we call a condom, so it looks like a little stick (could call it dildo, but that would be too many sex references in one sentence). So one of the first shops was a local lady with a bowl of about 20 avocados, bingo. I stopped the car got out and asked in my best French how much they were. The lady made the universal sign of a fist. Luckily I came across this sign before when something cost 2,500 RWF, the signs used then were two fingers and a fist. I know this must sound wrong to the English giving somebody first two fingers and then a fist, but I can assure you this was a friendly man and he did mean 2,500 RWF. So I assumed the lady wanted 500 RWF for a avocado. So I picked up two nice avocados, gave the lady 1.000 RWF (GBP 1, EUR 1,35, USD 2) and left. I did get some looks, but a muzungu in this kind of street always gets looks. Going home I thought, this might be a bit much but I am not sure.

At home I told this to Haze and she had to laugh, the sign apparently means a half, or instead five, but can mean half of 1.000 or, in this case, half of 100. So I paid the lady her daily salary for two avocados, where I could have gotten the lot.

I am glad my money went to a lady on the street and not to a big store, and this quality would not be available at 1.000 in The Netherlands, if available at all.

Technophobes united

Several viewers of our blog have been unable to post comments, or unwilling? and have been sending private emails to us (which proves that more people than my mum and friend Miranda read this.....)

anyway, the kind blogger people have encountered this before and have made a lovely help page...

http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42399&topic=8921

looking forward to hearing from you!
H

Water Project

Yesterday I went on a dutch partners organised tour of a water project. I didn't really know where we were going, except the restaurant for coffee, but that was it.

It turned out to be a great trip. The EU has funded a project which has been widely accepted and appreciated by the local people.

Kigali is full of hills. It rains a lot here. So far so simple. What this means is that there are streams/rivers of water which make there way downhill every rainy season. Due to erosion this means that there were ravines through settlements which were up to 12 m deep, though mostly shallower and wider. Small children and drunk men died frequently. Houses also subsided into the water every year.

A lot of stones, sand, cement
and people power have been changing this over the past two years, and a slow fascinating engineering project has made a vast difference to the local residents. More interesting for me was the social project - the workers are orphans, widows, ex-military from both sides, and women whose husbands are in prison. They are allowed to participate in the project for 6 months (about 700 are employed). Each worker earns 1,600 a day (about 2.5 times usual unskilled day rate) 1,000 goes to the bank, and the 600 to a savings account which can't be touched until the end of the project - which by then is quite a sizeable sum. There is an informal self organized reconciliation process that goes on, but nothing mandatory, yet somehow the groups involved are putting aside their differences.


We were a vocal group, asking the (Belgian) project leader lots of questions. Unfortunately the project isn't supported by the government (not helping the right people!?!), waste of money etc, so unless the communities decide to continue with maintenance after the project is completed mid 2008 who knows. The government is however busy with similar slightly smaller gutter building throughout Kigali. The workers who have been on this project, are now skilled in a growth area where there is a shortage of experience, and so are able to find work upon leaving the project. Also this EU project ends where leading the water to a river, so it has somewhere to flow to...many of the gutter projects just lead toward low ground, which is of course used for small agricultural plots usually....

The local population didn't seem too bothered by a dozen bazungu strolling round their neighbourhood to look at their new drainage system, though we were of course a great fascination for small children who wanted their photos taken.

Life guard

The local staff and, if they want to, the staff of embassy personnel gets a course on HIV/AIDS.

As a result we have baskets in the toilets with condoms. To promote the use they are cheap any way 200 RWF (0.20 GBP, 0.28 EUR) for 3.

Volunteering

I received a warm welcome at Orphans of Rwanda, and helped two students to create a cv and cover letter to apply for an internship at local companies.
Four students were scheduled.

Trying to pad out a cv for a school leaver who hadn't even begun their degree (physiotherapy) and write a cover letter applying for an advertising internship at a radio station was pretty taxing, especially when the whole concept of..cv, cover letter, internship - working hard without payment were all new...

I have also been busy today writing draft student evaluations. A great number of the students will be attending ORI sponsored Language and IT courses (starting Friday) and ORI had decided that they want the students to evaluate the courses...but there are no clear goals outlined (its a good idea...) so how can we evaluate if it successful?

Anyway it was good to exercise my 3 syllable braincells, and I'm looking forward to getting stuck in.

weekend in Butare

At the weekend we made it out of Kigali and to Butare (Huye) the second largest city. Against all embassy staff advice and dire warnings we took a luxury minibus (1300 Rwf pp) for the 2 and half hour journey. The bus was pleasant, and contrary to popular belief the driver wasn't a lunatic, as he also wanted to arrive home safely...the scenery was amazing, and the opportunity we had to look into peoples lives from the road was great.

We arrived just after dark, and didn't do much other than check into a motel and have a few beers and dinner. Saturday was Umuganda (community clean up) so the streets were deserted. This gave us the once in a lifetime chance to walk round and take photos of shops at will. This only took up the first hour after breakfast, and we spent a good couple of hours sitting at a cafe in the shade watching the world go by (the part of the world not taking part in Umuganda).

(Bored muzungu)

Then at 12.00 coffee was back on the menu, so we had a coffee, walked round a bit more, had lunch, and then had to get the 15.00 bus, so as not to be driving in the dark. In order to get the 15.00 bus, you buy a ticket before 14.00, then at around 14.30 go to the bus stop and sit down if the bus is there as you need to get a (good) seat. The bus then went to the getting on stop (we got on at the getting off stop - along with a few others) waited for people to get on, then drove back to the getting off stop where people then got back off, and sat down in different seats.....it was very confusing.

We'll go back again when we have our own transport and actually do something like visiting the national museum...another day

Ghost town!















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Paris Hilton coming to Rwanda

Kigali, September 26 (RNA) – Hotel heiress Paris Hilton is planning a very special trip - not to Vegas or the south of France, but to Rwanda, RNA has established.

According to CBC News, Hilton plans to visit Rwanda this November to raise awareness about child poverty. The service trip comes as part of Paris' image makeover following her brief stint in jail.

"The Simple Life" CBC News quotes her: "I'll be going in November, after I get back from filming my movie. There's so much need in that area, and I feel like if I go, it will bring more attention to what people can do to help."

Paris' Rwanda trip will be one of many service trips around the world. "I want to visit more countries where poverty and children's issues are a big concern," the 26-year-old socialite said. "I know there's a lot of good I can do just by getting involved and bringing attention to these issues."

The hotel heiress said that she wants to spread awareness about Rwanda and show people what they can do to help.