Monkey Troup Visits Us

William, cornered in the tree house, screamed for help and spent the rest of their visit sitting in the house. Hannah ran after them calling out “Monkeys! Monkeys!”

Whose the king of the castle (tree house) now?!

Night driving, Rwandan style

 

… is not for the faint hearted.

I’ve been in Kigali all week, working on putting together protocols for all the hospitals around the country to use in managing their medical patients (sort of like a big recipe book for doctors!). It’s been a useful but tiring exercise, and I was glad to be finally heading home to Catherine and the kids this afternoon. We’ve had lots of rain this week, and it was pouring steadily most of the afternoon.

After a quick shopping trip (foods and spices, small presents for the kids and a gift from a lovely Indian spice-seller of a curry leaf tree!) it was time to hit the road for Butare. It’s about 150km, usually a 2-2.5 hour trip as the road, while good, is very windy. Unfortunately time had slipped away and it was after 5 when I left and the sun sets at 5.45 year-round here.

It’s hard to describe the road to Butare. Perhaps the closest I can come is to suggest you imagine the Great Ocean Road, on a day when the Great Ocean Marathon is being run along it (so there’s people all over the place), and then pretend there’s also a simultaneous bike race along it, with prizes for who can carry the most stuff while they race their bike (placegetters on my trip – man in blue top with 35 deck chairs stacked on the back, man in Arsenal singlet with 6 50 litre jerry cans and 15 broomsticks etc etc.). It’s also the main overland truck route to Burundi, so add that in and you’re starting to build up the picture.

Now, after dusk the bikes and pedestrians don’t go away. But the real hazard is the buses. They are quite literally lethal. There are really only three main problems with them:

• They drive at 90km/hr down the aforementioned windy road
• They think the dividing line down the middle is  irrelevant and, in any case, they’re travelling too fast to be able to corner on their own side
• They rarely dip their headlights, so you’re often blinded by their high beams

This in turn poses three slight issues for your night-time motorist:

• Any contact with a bus at a combined speed of 160km/hr (their 90 plus your 70) is almost certainly fatal
• You can’t see the bus, road or any other bikes and travellers on the roadside because of the blinding highbeams
• You thus have to chose how far to swerve (always necessary because they’re on your side of the road) for each bus based on a combination of luck, instinct and sheer panic, hoping you don’t hit anyone on the verge in the process

I said a lot of prayers on the way, and survived several near misses. Thankyou God. I think I’ll be avoiding inter-city night driving at all costs in the future.

A few family pics

 

We went to Will’s best friend’s third birthday party today. It provided a great excuse to get the family a bit dressed up, and I snapped a few pics of our kids, who are playing together in a lovely fashion MOST of the time now Hannah is a bit older:

And just in case you thought they were always beautifully behaved and formal:

Visiting Nepo (a favourite memory)

Nepo invited us to visit his family. Fidel, our language teacher, came with us to help conversation along. As we bumped along many children in the small villages we passed predictably called out ‘Bazungu'!’, waving and running along with the car. As we got closer we were chuffed to hear some of the kids calling out ‘Bazungu wacu!’; ‘our white people’.

We pulled into the driveway to be surrounded by many children and adults from the village, greeting us. Hannah took off confidently to visit the cow and her baby, packed closely into the middle of a crowd who thought her oh so cute. She was fine. We left her and went into the house.

Nepo and his wife gave us a soda each (Very generous! A day’s wage.They didn’t have one themselves.) I was glad they don’t speak English when Will asked for another one!! Then they sent a kid to run off somewhere and buy our kids a lollypop each. A treat I doubt their kids receive. People here are generous hosts, though they have so little.

We had forgotten Williams shoes. And the camera. Such a pity. We’ve been a bit worried about William in recent months and thought the lack of shoes (out of routine) was sure to make his confidence worse. We were SO excited when after a few minutes of sitting shyly on Tim’s lap, he slipped down and disappeared outside. He ran around with a pack of 30 kids (also without shoes – he likes to fit in so maybe this actually helped!). At one point he ran so far up the road I could barely see him! He ran, jumped, laughed and played. He is finally really settling in, and it is absolutely wonderful.

Our Garden / Farm

I’m not a pet person, but agreed that we could get one as Hannah blatantly is. We settled on chickens – useful animals. Then Tim and Nepo got excited about a goat lawn mower, so Belinda arrived. She was lonely so we got her a friend (as yet unnamed – we were thinking of ‘Little’ but after a couple of weeks lawn mowing that’s no longer appropriate). When we visited Nepo in his village last weekend he gifted is a rabbit…and all of a sudden we have 5 chickens, 2 goats and a rabbit. A farm!!!

Animal Corner (with an unfinished outdoor kitchen the hospital was building in the middle): rabbit hutch to the left, hens to the right and goats far right.

The rabbit lived up until now in a very small box, which I learnt from Nepo when I commented with surprise that she hadn’t tried once to jump out of our washing basket, even after a few days in there! She is now learning to jump and chooses to spend as much of the day as possible out in the sun.

Above you can see Nepo climbed into the hutch with the kids to show them how to handle the rabbit.

(N.B. We had a very funny moment when Nepo arrived at night to find the finished rabbit hutch with rabbit inside and spent several minutes trying in vain to figure out how on earth we had got her in there before Tim demonstrated the lid.)

Our hens stopped laying while our neighbours kept some roosters with them for a few days (we heard they were delicious). Now we’re happily back to 4 eggs a day.

Nepo and his friend built the goat enclosure to the right for us. The goats are 10 and 6 months old. They will get bigger.

The latest additions to the tree house: a sand pit, shop (kiosk) and climbing frame. I thought it would be impossible to get good sand locally, but Nepo knew where to get it and some men carried the sand in bags on their heads to his house. Then I picked them up in the car. I’m really excited that it’s been a big hit; the kids sometimes start using it in their pyjamas!

We’re in the second rainy season of the year and everything is growing so green. The herb garden has really taken off.

Nepo’s project today: a new compost hole (you can see loads of beautifully composted dirt in the foreground from the old one). The banana tree started out a tiny baby not long ago. Soon we will have little lady fingers growing!

 

And to end on a high note, I got my second jigger today. A flea that lives in the soil lays an egg sack in your foot. When it gets to a certain size it gets itchy and you dig it out. It sounds disgusting and I was quite worried about them, but as it turns out it’s a bit like picking a scab – there’s something satisfying about getting them out! Still, I hope it’s my last.

Our kids love the wet season

We recently had guests from other parts of Rwanda come to visit. As they arrived one evening (in the midst of the rain) I went to guide them home from the front of the hospital, only to have Will and Hannah insist on coming too. They only got half way to greeting our visitors before they found a much more interesting attraction – a large puddle in our road. The rest is history. Fortunately the house water supply came on so we could bathe them….
Tim

Catherine’s Exciting Teaching News

Seven years ago when I taught in Rwanda, I left with the vision of helping teachers here receive the professional development they wanted. I looked for experienced teachers in Australia who wanted to come here but found none. After a few years I realized that I was being provided with experience leading teachers in Australia that I could use in Rwanda too.

Then I had a child, soon two. By the time we arrived with a crawling baby and a two-year-old I wasn’t at all sure when my role as a mother would leave enough room to do anything else. When Bishop Nathan asked me to help establish a new school I agreed to look into it, and prayed that if God wanted me to take on this role he would make it clear.

I looked into the new school in small ways. I researched government guidelines for schools and how to apply to begin one. When I happened upon people involved in the field I asked them for advice. Then in July while we were at Kumbya Conference a colleague suggested I talk to Jeff Komant, who had established a Rwandan Christian school recently.

I was nervous about this meeting – hunted through my wardrobe for some professional clothes and left the kids with Tim at a friend’s house in Kigali. I caught a motorbike taxi to the Wellspring Academy; the school that Jeff’s foundation had built as a shining example to elite private schools. Jeff, a friendly Canadian and young father, set me at ease as we sat and chatted. It was exciting; we share a dream for education in Rwanda! I was even more amazed to hear Jeff’s foundation has started to make that dream come true.

Building a new school had been very expensive and was teaching a small number of children. It had a purpose in raising the bar for such schools but Jeff and his team wanted to reach more teachers and students. God introduced them to Kirsten, a British teacher, and together they developed a two year upgrade of skills program for teachers in Rwanda. The Wellspring Foundation now has a team of twelve Rwandan teachers who, having been trained, enter schools to teach their teachers and leaders. They are now running this program in forty government primary schools in the district surrounding Rwanda’s capital, and reaping wonderful results.

Jeff offered that if I wished to lead the expansion of this program into my district in southern Rwanda and could find a team of people, they would be happy to help train the team on the job alongside their own. They are also happy to freely share the resources they have developed. To top it off my role managing the team could definitely be part time, leaving me plenty of time to focus on my children. All in all, he was handing to me on a platter the role I had thought to play for so many years but with a lot of the hard work already done!

‘Hmmm, how would I find teachers for this training team?’ I wondered in the days that followed. Then I realized that a most perfect candidate was my closest friend here; Clementine, a Rwandan mother of three who trained in teaching, is naturally gifted, and wants to get back into the workforce to do some good for the community. I was feeling out-maneuvered and in awe of God’s planning and care. I felt like I had sat on my behind and done almost nothing, and yet God had arranged things so fully that I would have no excuse other than to participate.

On Wednesday Jeff Komant, his co-founder and I met with Bishop Nathan. The lead up to the meeting was very stressful, including a car accident on my way there! However the meeting went well. Bishop Nathan, to my delight, is very supportive of my following a call to train teachers rather than build a school, and is also thankful for the openness with which the Wellspring Foundation is sharing its knowledge and resources.

So a new phase in my life is about to begin…