Yet another visit

I went with my colleague to visit the buildings of the Supreme court, which we finance. Two in Kigali, of which one was already in use and one in Byumba near the Ugandan border. There are more around the country, but these are the ones we could visit within a day.

The buildings seem to be all exact copys of each other. Two court rooms, several offices, toilettes on each ends of the coridor. Maybe stating the obvious, but on the picture you see is the front of the building. Visitors are welcomed through the front door and can wait in the hall. The two courtrooms are just behind the hall in the middle of the building, therefor not on the picture. The judge enters the courtroom from the inside (hall) but the 'normal' people enter from the outside, so they have to walk around the building.




left to right: Sebantu (high up court official at the ministry), Quirine (colleague who is cold because this building is on the hill at 2200 meter; it is only 21 Celcius), Me, Local building supervisor.

Field/road visit

I went on a three day field visit to watch some roads.

I left Monday with a colleague and somebody from the Canadian CIDA who co-finances the programme, and of course the driver. We drove to Butare, further to Nyungwe forest and near the end of the forest we stopped to meet our developing partner Helpage who build the roads, and our escort consisting of a police man and a military Colonel (high up). We drove an interesting road south to stop next to the border where the district office is. An district official (forgot who he is) did the official speech of things we all already knew. We had a quick look at the small bridge dividing the two countries. Because the roads in Rwanda are in a worse state than the Burundian ones, people from that vilage drive via Burundi to Cyangugu, the districts main town bordering Congos Bukavu.

Over the three days we ended op mainly driving various kinds of roads, ranging from bumpy and stony to muddy to flat gravel and asphalt with holes in. The reason for all this is to show us why roads are bad, what is being done at the moment and what the finished roads look like. Why we exactly had to drive the full length of these roads to see this is a bit beyond me. It was tiring, but I did enjoy it.

We stayed in Cyangugu with a view towards the river and Bukavu. The town differs in many ways from Kigali. It seems more african, or should I say Congolese. There are more people on the street, a mix between congolese and rwandans. Some houses are made of wood, as a forest gives wood and there is relatively less clay to build bricks.

Four of us stayed at the hotels, so we ordered a 'breakfast fool'. The full breakfast was bread, omelette and coffee or tea. The coffee was a bit weak. I ordered a spanish omelette instead of a normal one and my Rwandan colleague from CIDA order an onion omelette. The onion omelette looked rather full of vegies, and when my omelette arrived it turned out I got the onion omelette and my friend got mine, as it was already half eaten, we left it as it was. So day two a second change. We ordered four breakfast, noting special. 'Do you want a spanish omelette?' 'No thanks just plain.' '?' 'plain, simple' '?' 'blank, nothing on it' intervention from Kinyarwanda speaking partner 'butros butros gali!' 'Oh'.
So out came three normal omlettes and .... a spanish omlette for the guy who aet mine the day before, we just laughed and continued.

The trip gave us some food for thought. The road we built less then two years ago was in need of repairs, the district claims lack of money. It did not seem relevant we made clear appointments about this a few years ago. He did (want to) understand our question how the financing of road via taxes works in Rwanda. He saw a solution, he will make a plan of all that is needed and then ask different donors for money. The first part we like, the second part not. I seriously doubt if we need to finance roads which are not being maintained.

We did see progress in an other part of the project. They planted lots of trees, beside the road and on the border of the forest. The first to protect the ground from erosion and the other to protect the forest like a buffers zone. There are another 990.000 plants in the nursery to be planted in a few weeks time.

The roads are build in a so called HIMO fashion, intensive manual hand work. A few hundred people are working on different bits of the road and bridges at any given time. 60% are women. Most are jobless, so any job is welcome, they get 1 dollar a day, not much but more then nothing and more than a farmer makes.

Day two we had five minutes of rain, it rains a lot more in this region. The rain happened to fall at the moment we were on a muddy road, resulting in a sliding car, see photo. The mud is sticky (around the wheels) and slippery an ideal combination for disasters.



Apparantly this is how you hold a saw. Not just him, they all do it. The result is amazing, very straight.


Bridge waiting for the concrete to harden.



Nursery


Making the ditch beside the road. This is very hard soil, therefor hard work.


Oops, meant to go straight.

Language testing

Almost 2700 potential students applied to Orphans of Rwanda for scholarships. I spent a lot of the first week of June at the office inputting this data.
Becca with a small pile of the primary applications

From the primary applications 528 were selected for language testing in French and English, they then need to complete a secondary application with essay, which will then result in approx 100 being invited for face to face interviews, with 50-60 scholarships at the end of it.


Yesterday I was invigilating the language tests at one of the partner organizations in Kigali, SOS Kinderdorf(p). 120 students were split over 7 classrooms, which meant a lot of running round, and explaining over and over for myself and Sylvain. Despite clear instructions being given in French, English and Kinyarawandan to write their names on the answer papers at the beginning and end of the tests, there were still 6 papers I caught without names, and managed to get them to complete - probably more I missed - part of me feels sorry for the students who were stressed, the other part thinks if they are incapable of following the most simple of instructions, then they don't deserve to go to uni..


I arrived home footsore and shattered, and grateful that despite having to go through clearing, my university entrance was a far simpler matter.

Harvest

Some more harvest - this time prune de japon, japanese plum or tree tomatoes

A rather tart fruit which is OK in fruit salads, makes great fruit juice, and in turn the juice makes an excellent Kigali Cosmopolitan replacing cranberry.

I'm going to try making an apple and prune crumble - as I think it will be nice and tart like blackberries.

Schooltrip

This week we had the so called 'country team' visiting us. The countryteam is not some country and western band, but are some people from The Hague that look at Rwanda from there.

A colleague arrange a field visit, what we used to call school outing (schoolreisje). We went with our partner organisation IFDC to the North. There they showed us some fields that have been improved by using fertilizer. The farmers get the first year some fertilizer and training, the second year they have to pay half and the third they are on their own. The programme is called 'CATALIST' a long abbreviation for something but at the same time the word signifies what they want. The idea is to train some farmers and let them 'spread the news' as it were. It seems to work. The first farmers were very sceptical, they were promised a much higher yield without investment, they thought maybe they would lose their land. The farmers that use fertilizer see the benefit and will continue doing so, however to convince farmers they have to invest to get return remains difficult, so I wonder how it will go after the programme is finished. I sincerely hope more farmers will see the results and decide the benefits outweigh the risk.

Some farmers were asked to say something, the general message was clear, they increased production about 5 fold; even taking away the extra costs this means at least triple the income. We are not thinking big numbers though, the everage farmer still has an income of less then a dollar a day. However this means they might now for example be able to sent a kid to school. Also a farmer from the neighbourhood told he saw the benefits and wants to join now.



We drew a big crowd, mostly farmers from the area, some involved in the project, others not.

The fact that we had such a big crowd meant we didn't have the sceduled drink break. Which meant we didn't have anything to drink the whole morning, resulting in several people having headaches, I don't know why the organisation didn't drive a couple of km's to stop at the side of the road.

We had the traditional buffet lunch and split up in three groups. I opted for the ISAR lab. A research lab set up with Dutch support a while ago. The lab was clean and all machines seem to be in a good condition. However, we did wonder where the people were using these machines. Obviously they were not there today when we asked about this. The fact that the fridge was empty and some machines didn't have the right plugs did suggest it wasn't just that day.

Luckily the other part of the institute was working well. They 'clone' potatoes by testing a lot of potatoes until they have a nice disease free one, then they put some very small cuttings on jelly to grow. After some days they go outside in clean soil and two weeks later they are strong enough to be transported and multiplied by farmers.

Essential lab-kit especially the button.

Labman looks important, in fact he is making cuttings, precise but boring work.

I like the fact they needed white coats and the window was wide open. Hopefully the machine works, it is some sort of ventilator that runs clean air over the surface.

After the visit we stopped at another cornfield to see the difference between 'normal' corn and a hybrid race. The hybrid was much taller, but clearly the problem is that hybrids don't reproduce, so all the seedlings need to be created in a lab. Another unforseen problem is that the wind was more of a problem, strangely enough this could be solved by changing the space in between plants, something to do with the amount of soil and/or the amount of sunlight.

Here we could have a drink and hand some out to local kids. Bart Simpson here got my waterbottle. I liked the 'no problem', (hard to spot on the photo).

Stairway to heaven? Not for the people who have to carry there water up this hill!

Back in Kigali at six for a beer and some dinner. Tired and slightly more brown (red according to Hazel) then before. It was a sunny, interesting, tiring day.

...

But that was not all for this week. Thursday we visited IFC (International Finance Cooperation, part of the Worldbank) and the Banque Populair, which is being restructured by Rabobank. The Bank was interesting for me, but probably not for most of the readers of this blog.

To close the visit we had a lunch at the ambasadors on Friday. On top of this I was invited for a dinner of IFDC (see above) which I shouldn't refuse. Because IFDC had the american board visiting they invited all the partners and the obligitory dancing group. The buffet was good though and the company was not bad and I did need to show my face.

The weekend for ourselves !!!

It is not what it seems

This is not a mouse, it is a cuddly toy.

This is not a cushion cover Hazel is working on, it is a bed.

Today Neville was sniffing Hazels armpit, until I lifted the blanket she was leaning on and a lizard appeared. Neville was so excited he didn't even eat his lunch.

Charity trip

Wouter, my brother in law, has the strange habit of running, I do not know from what. Anyway, this hobby has proven profitable for a Rwandan home for handicapped children. Last year he raised over 3.000 Euro for them by running the Kigali marathon. This year he is doing the 'running 4 days', if I am not mistaken 100 km in 4 days. You can read all about it on his blog, and hopefully find some of my photos.

http://www.rouwhorst.blogspot.com/

The project is in between two 'highways' so the way there I took the road from the east and back I took the way west and back down to Kigali on the Uganda-Kigali road.

After an hour and a half tarmac I hit the dirt road. Not too muddy, even though it rained hard last night. Some bit through me around a bit, but not to bad. Nearer my goal Ngarama there was a bit basically just stone, all the sand was gone, a bit scared of the sharp edges. Only the last km was good, I wonder who maintained this bit of road, as it is a bit pointless to have a good road, when you need to go for miles on a bad road to get there.

The project lady gave me a warm welcome, she seems to be doing well, but the future is far from secured, as there is no steady income. Read all about it on Wouters blog. Please do, it is also in English.

The way back was 'interesting'. I was glad I didn't have Hazel with me, or any other passengers for that matter. The road varied from rock, to hard sand with cracks, to mud and even a few straight bits where I can easily drive 40 km/hour. Thanks to my zigzagging and other driving skills or plain luck. The way back also to three hours, but more of it over bad road and it would have taken a lot longer if I had a passenger.

Innocent bystanders

Bridge. Yes I did notice the loose bit, but I am stupid enough to ignore it.

No matter how bad the road, the landscape is well worth it. The photos don't do it justice.

Signs of the times

We don't have a long drive to the embassy, but we pass these signs daily, twice.


































I hope you will understand what Shuga dadi means, the message is clear.

As well as the Bralirwa brewery we now also have a celebration of Primus being 50 years young. We like the GUMA GUMA. I asked my colleguea and he laughed. Guma guma is an encouragement typically shouted by women at for example weddings to make the men drink. It signifies being strong, manly and all other positive things linked to being able to drink beer. It is not the equivilant to 'cheers' and therefore not very helpful for day to day life - but we still like saying it.