Beginning to find my Rwandan feet!

Yesterday I met up with lots of people who I have been so looking forward to seeing…and a couple who I haven’t been quite so looking forward to seeing! The first came to visit late morning (that should give you the context that I was already a little hungry). In this country if someone comes to see you, you drop everything and you sit and talk to that person, regardless of whether you have anything to say! I discovered yesterday that one of the children at Sonrise googled her name and found my blog and read what I had written about her so I am going to change names a little bit, just to be on the safe side!

So, Pastor Boris turned up, and was let in, hobbled down the drive on his gammy leg and then sat himself down comfortably in the office to talk to me. Pam continued with her work and left me to it. In principle I have nothing against the man…I believe he is very intelligent and has some very interesting things to say…unfortunately his English seems to contain random French words and when you add to this his speech impediment I can honestly say that I understand no more than 20% of his words!! Tracy and I had one notorious journey back from Kigali in the car with him once…and he talked non-stop…I was relieved slightly more in Tracy’s direction than mine (I think because she was the history teacher…or perhaps because she did a better job of understanding him than I did!) Well, this time I had no Tracy, and Pam was firmly embedded in her computer not making eye contact…so I had to pretend to understand him for over an hour!!! I was exhausted with the effort of trying to work out the meaning from the odd words that he was saying, and being on the ball enough to work out when I should be laughing, saying yes or no…or answering a question (the heart-stopping moments in the conversation!) At one point he was definitely talking about John Milton and Macbeth and then we moved on to Christ, Mary and flagellation. All I could keep thinking was “please let Fred arrive soon” (he was due to visit at any time…but unfortunately arrived not quite as early as I hoping!)

Well, eventually he did arrive, and Pastor Boris made a move for the door…what I hadn’t realised was that he was just going to the toilet and when he returned he told Pam that he hadn’t finished with me yet! By this time I was embroiled in some serious praying with Fred who recently had his eye operation and was thanking me and all the people who donated money for his cornea, and God of course. Pam interrupted to tell me that Pastor Boris hadn’t finished, so I went out only to glean that in fact he had been in the middle of a three part sermon, and I had had part one, part two a, b and c but that there was still part three to go! I apologised profusely and explained that Fred was now here…and so he said something along the lines of, “OK, I’ll come again or you can come to my house and I will finish the sermon…” I muttered something along the lines of, “OK…I’ll see how my time goes…” and escaped back to Fred…who was just settling down to telling me the long and involved story of his trip to the hospital. Actually I did want to hear this…it seems that he was incredibly lucky to get the operation at all. There were 50 people wanting corneal transplants and only 20 corneas. After being ignored for some time he eventually got a friend at the hospital to talk to the specialist and to tell him that he was a teacher and the education of the children in Rwanda depended on his being able to see. This seemed to do the trick and he was put on the list. Then there wasn’t a bed, but they cobbled one together and to cut a long story short he was operated on the following day. I’ll spare you the gruesome details of injections in the eye and the even more gruesome details two days later when the cornea had not attached itself properly and he ended up back on the operating table with no form of anaesthetic local or otherwise! Anyway, his sight is improving all the time and whilst the eye still looks cloudy and he must wear dark glasses, he is now able to take the glasses off with no pain from the light, and was able to see the photo I showed him of Tracy’s wedding…which he now keeps in his shirt pocket to the envy of everyone else who has asked me if they can keep it! (Tracy, you are like a miniature married celebrity out here!)

Half way through Fred’s story, it had got to 1.30pm and I just couldn’t wait any longer…we were sitting talking by a table which had, concealed in three containers, our lunch. Finally a suitable time presented itself and before part two of the operation I managed to dive into the containers and serve us lunch…remembering just in time not to start gobbling it down before we had prayed over the food!! I finished my plate of food long before the story had finished! Then Pam said she’d take Fred back to the school where he teaches…and he then declared he had not had enough time with me! I did enjoy talking to him…but I should add at this point that I have picked up a chesty cough thing, probably on the plane and so spent most of yesterday dosed up to keep my temperature down, so the extreme concentration with the pastor and then the lateness of lunch and the length of the hospital story, coupled with being passed over to Fred’s wife as he spoke to her on the phone (who told me I had to go to Uganda so she could thank me personally!) lead to a definite need for time out by this point!! So, we did take him back to the school on the proviso that he gets to see me again before I go! I kept telling him it was money from very generous donors in the UK, not money from me but it didn’t seem to make any difference to his gratefulness which was very touching.

We also saw the matron from the primary school, and some of the children all of whom I was very happy to see again! The evening was spent recovering from the day…and last night I sweated out my fever, woke up in a pool of sweat, took more pills, went back to sleep and woke up feeling better. So hopefully that’s the end of that, I just need to get rid of the cough and make sure I don’t loose my voice like last time I was here!

If there are any Akimbo people reading, I had an extremely exciting meeting with a boy who has shown me four traditional Rwandan drumming rhythms and I have recorded them so that we can use them as the basis for something Rwandan-style. It was wonderful being talk djembe rhythms by an African – he was amazing! I am hoping that we will be able to get together again with a group of people to have a session…the problem is that drums are few and far between out here and they usually play on water containers or anything that is handy, so we shall see whether it ever happens.

I am now sitting here munching on a piece of sugar cane that I have been given...wondering if one is actually supposed to swallow it...or just chew the sweet sugary juice out. Its very pleasant...but I'm not sure I can swallow what is left...