The increase in Rwandan nationals
on Melissa Hipkins (Rwanda), 23/Jun/2011 13:13, 34 days ago
Jacky will leave us at the end of this month as her pregnancy becomes more of a hindrance to her. That gives her about 5 weeks to prepare for the birth, due sometime in the first half of August. Our plans are to leave Rwanda in late November, so it is unlikely that she will have finished the 3 months she feels she needs to nurse the baby before we go. We have thought long and hard whether we need to replace her and on the whole life is less complicated with someone helping in the house. Melanie left her house over the road to return to the UK at the end of May, leaving Bettine, her domestique short of a job. It took a bit of negotiation to secure her to work for us but we feel it is only necessary for three days a week. More volunteers are planned to come to Nyanza in September and doubtless some arrangement of her working between the two houses will be worked out.Zebounissa has long had the ambition to become a citizen of Rwanda. She was born here, and I have not had the full picture as to why her citizenship was not automatic; perhaps to do with her Indian ancestry. She has been under the handicap of being technically stateless throughout her life in Rwanda. This has led to all sorts of obstacles for her over trivial matters such as bank accounts and more weighty ones like not having a passport. For a woman in her mid fifties running her own businesses her life has been unnecessarily complicated.The process has been drawn out; she has had to get sponsors to support her and to demonstrate by taking and passing tests her knowledge of Rwandan culture and language. This month at last she has been notified of her success. All that remained to be done was to attend a ceremony to swear allegiance and to receive her documentation. She was overjoyed at finally putting an end to the wait and invited us to be present at the mayor’s office with twenty or thirty other guests. Initially it was set for a day that coincided with Melissa having no school visits, but as with many things here the date was changed at short notice to one that precluded Melissa from attending.I was happy to go and represent both of us. Zebounissa had specified a smart turn out; she herself would be in a sari, a costume to emphasise the fact she still feels some loyalty to her roots in the sub continent. Equally, she chose not to take the oath in Kinyarwanda but in French to remind her witnesses of her different background.It’s been very dry this month; whether it’s the start of the proper dry season only time will tell but the dust lying on the road and thrown up by the passing traffic makes it difficult to walk anywhere without arriving looking like a tramp. There are no taxis in Nyanza and riding on a moto only means the dust layer is thinner but more widespread. So having decided to wear a jacket and trousers and not a suit it was just a matter of walking without kicking up too much dirt and hoping there was a lull in the lorries speeding past on their way to complete the major road repairs being done in the town.I arrived with only a powdering of red dust to find a crowd of guests with Zebounissa in the middle waiting to be granted entrance to the council chamber that was to serve as venue for the proceedings. I was surprised to be one of the last to arrive; it was a minute or two after the arranged time of noon and for things to happen here on time is almost unprecedented. I needn’t have worried, we went into the chamber and took our places, relishing the luxury of using office chairs normally reserved for the councillors, and waited 20 minutes for the mayor to turn up.It seems that no Rwandan occasion can be allowed to pass without the contribution of at least two or three speeches, and a speech isn’t worthy of the name unless it goes on for at least 20 minutes. I suppose that speeches when declaimed in a foreign language are of necessity more opaque and dense and therefore something to endure rather than enjoy. Even so, to judge by the expressions of the audience no-one was spellbound by the message or amused by the jokes. Zebounissa’s role in giving her pledge of allegiance while holding the flag amounted to no more than a few minutes between the speeches. Once the business was completed to the satisfaction of the officials, she showed off her certificate of citizenship while beingcongratulated by all around her. Then came the photographs; much in the style we are used to at weddings in the UK, Zebounissa and sponsors, then special guests and so on until the final wrap up of everyone on the district office steps.She led a procession of guests and interested hangers on back along the main street, picking up handshakes and kind expressions of greeting all the way back to her very modest one room house at the other end of town. Her house lies in the grounds of a redundant mosque from which she sells her bicycle parts, using the lobby of the mosque as a secure store. The mosque’s generous porch/veranda was the site of her own part of the celebration of what she had achieved by citizenship and as a way of thanking those that had helped. The ubiquitous sugary soda drink was shared out together with a light Indian lunch for all present. A contemporary of hers gave the speech, and she gave a brief response. More photographs and then we all left after about an hour.I’m very happy for her; she is remarkably cultured, speaking fluent English and French and has a large collection of books in those languages. She has been very helpful to us during our stay in Nyanza and I hope she remains firmly connected with the volunteers here. She is always the first important introduction to secure when new volunteers come for their placement. She has fond memories of previous volunteers and it is to be hoped that this relationship will be fostered by those that follow.As I hinted, we appear to be in the grip of the dry season. Apart from the universal dust, we have already gone on to water rationing. The system operates by only pressurising the pipes for about 12 hours every 2 days. The hours of supply start at around 17.00 and then go off about 09.00 next morning. So far the resumption of supply has been predictable so planning is practical and with plenty of empty vessels enough can be stored to last the next 36 hours. If the dry season extends itself beyond the normal and the interruption to the supply goes on for longer the situation will naturally get more difficult. For the majority who have no mains supply the routine is unchanged. Before school begins children have the chore of fetching water; most of them pass by our house on the way to the spring, the noise of empty jerry cans being banged wakes us before the alarm goes off. While the return of our supply can be anticipated reliably, Jacky has no need to join the procession once a jerry can is empty. We want her to keep her waters for as long as possible.