Home Sweet Home
on Geri Skeen (Rwanda), 30/Jan/2011 09:18, 34 days ago
I am living in a five-bedroomed house with two other VSO volunteers, Rose and Julia, in Gitarama, Rwanda’s second town. On the plus side we have a hot shower! Almost unheard of for volunteers, many of whom don’t have running water at all. On the flip side, the water is off most of the time and the boiler sometimes heats the water and sometimes doesn’t, or maybe the tank doesn’t refill when the water comes back on or something we can’t fathom. So any time we get a shower at all we are grateful and if it’s hot it’s such a luxury. Indeed, every time I hopefully turn on the tap, I get a thrill if even a trickle of water comes out. We boil our water, cool it and then filter it. Some of the mazungus (white people) in Gitarama do both, some just boil, some just filter and some do neither. It’s fairly clean, though has lots of yellow stuff in it if you don’t filter it. We have electricity, again unlike some volunteers, and the supply is quite reliable. We have a double electric ring for cooking. It was giving Rose shocks yesterday but I seemed alright, maybe because I was wearing flip-flops.We don’t cook much though as we have a domestique, Mado, who cooks for us Monday to Thursday. She prefers cooking on charcoal so does it that way. She cleans too and makes our beds. She does the beds beautifully, tucking the mosquito net in under the mattress.We have a night guard, Damacene, who sleeps in our five-bedroomed annexe. Yes, that’s ten bedrooms altogether. We don’t really need a guard as crime is rare in Rwanda, but he came with the house and VSO pays for a guard if you want one. Damacene fills our six jerry cans with water whenever it’s on. They used to contain petrol and the water still smells of it no matter how many times they’re refilled, but the filtering process sorts that out for the water we drink. We just put up with it for washing in when the water if off, and use it for washing up and for flushing the loos.Rose and Julia have made me very welcome in the house and also shown me round the town, helped me open a bank account, shown me the market and which shops they use. There are several alimentations, like little corner shops, in Gitarama. There are also tiny shops selling just a few items at the end of our road. I managed to buy something I asked for as papel de toilette and asked for imineke (bananas) which they didn’t have, so I bought a papaya for 300 Rwandan francs. That’s 30p. Not sure if that’s the going rate or the mazungu rate. The lady was very friendly, gave me the prices in French and congratulated me when I managed to translate the numbers into faltering Kinyarwanda.Our house is a few minutes’ walk off the main tar road, along a dirt track and then a dirt path. Or you can go along the dirt track and go the long way round, which is wide enough to drive a vehicle along. Whenever we appear, half a dozen children shout‘Mazungu, mazungu’ and come and say ‘Good morning’ to us. It’s always, ‘Good morning’, regardless of time of day.Here's the view from the house of our little front garden, our big wall, and Rwanda beyond.  I don't much like the wall but it does give us privacy, which is welcome as we are constantly stared at when out. And Alis this one's for you; look who's taken up residence in our garden: