Bicycles and Micycles

Today has been incredible. I have seen the ACTUAL Tour Du Rwanda (I was joking about there being one but it actually happens every year), a giant mouse and Jay Polly. And we're having curried potatoes for supper. It is such a great day.

We kind of stumbled across the Tour Du Rwanda the other day when we saw it advertised on a poster. It turns out that it is an international event that attracts teams from all around the world, including the USA, Canada and France. So it's a pretty big deal for Rwanda! Today was the second to last stage, Butare-Kigali.

Spot the man in the tree...

We managed to sneak to the front and ended up getting some pretty good photos of the riders warming up.

While everyone else was warming up, the Tanzania team just posed for photos

Dylan Girdlestone, Yellow Jersey

Team South Africa who won in 2012

After a huge build up, the start was (predictably) a bit of an anti-climax since it was over so quickly. I'm pretty sure Libby and I were the only ones cheering and getting excited, but it was really fun all the same! It was great to see a part of the Tour because it is clearly such a big event in Rwanda that promotes sports and puts Rwanda on the international (or at least African) sporting map.

In other news, in the immortal words of UB40, there's a rat (mouse) in ma kitchen (Miri's room)...

So in the afternoon we went round in the hope of capturing it and setting it free, instead of buying one of the ancient torture implements that were passed off as 'mouse traps' in the market (trying to explain to someone who doesn't speak a word of English that you want a humane mouse-trap proved impossible, my 'mouse in a box' sketch did not work and we ended up buying some rat poison - the said mouse had already been chased away but had come back so we were resorting to desperate measures...)

Sadly we didn't get any pictures of the mouse because it leapt out at me from Miriam's wardrobe, ran under the bed, into the bathroom, then evaded us again and ran out of the room altogether. All of this lasted less than a minute and prompted much screaming (much to the amusement of the students in the courtyard). So sadly the mouse has been condemned to death, with some dodgy looking rat poison mixed with stale bread crumbs. Will update regarding the corpse situation...

On the way back from Miri's we stopped off at an outdoor concert where Jay Polly was performing. Whilst I had never heard Jay Polly before, he's a really big deal in Butare which was why hundreds of people were stood in the pouring rain watching him (he's from round here apparently). Here's a video of his best song (it's actually pretty good..!)

Lastly, in an apology for the lack of mouse hunt photos, here's some wise words from the back of a truck: 

A weekend of worship, sugary tea and Great Mutual Expectations.

This weekend involved a visit to LLCCM, an orphanage initiative supported by RVCP, a leg of the Tour de Rwanda (of which there are sadly no photos...), The Great Mutual Expectations Meeting, a three hour Church service, Primus, dodgy sun-burn, an insane amount of mosquito bites and a lot of HALLELUJAH! AMEN!

On Saturday, Libby and I joined Miriam and went to LLCCM, a community-based voluntary organisation to help children orphaned by HIV/AIDs or the genocide. The initiative aims to place children back with any family that remain, and the organisation acts as a centre to support the children and their families. Saturday is Children's Day, which includes Bible/worship sessions, games and lunch.

Since LLCCM is based in a village outside of Butare, the easiest and cheapest way to get there is by a cycle-taxi. Next time I promise I will take photos, it was absolutely hilarious. It's quite nice to sit on a cushion attached to the back of a bicycle and be pedalled along, but everyone does stare at you (because clearly seeing a white person on a bike is the FUNNIEST THING EVER).

The worship part of Children's Day at LLCCM was also an experience. All in Kinya-Rwandan, it involved a lot of singing, dancing and a call-and-response shout: 'HALLELUJAH!' 'AMEN!' x 3 (this randomly occurred throughout the morning). I felt slightly awkward not knowing what was going on, and the entire session lasted 2 hours so it was quite hard work to pay attention for all that time without understanding a single word (except the HALLELUJAH! AMEN! bits). Afterwards we played some games with the children and met the cows and goats that are kept there before having a lunch of extremely sugary tea, rice and beans which were the best beans I have had in Africa so far.

On our ride back to Butare, I sadly got a bit burnt, which was annoying cause I was wearing a necklace at the time so now I have a vaguely elephant-shaped tan line. This goes well with all the bites I have, my feet have never been so itchy. If anyone wants to send me a present, then send Aloe Vera gel because one tube is not going to be enough for 8 months.... My address is P.O Box 696, Butare, Rwanda by the way (Christmas is soon, right?!)

After returning to Butare, Miriam and I went to have ice-cream at Inzozi-Nziza, a non-profit organisation from a New York ice-cream company (which our housemate Lora works for) to empower women and provide them with jobs and income (as well as making amazing ice-cream available for Butare!)

Saturday evening was the evening of our Great Mutual Expectations Meeting. This was with the RVCP committee and aimed to do several things: explain who BVDA are and how we work, outline why BVDA have sent two long-term capacity builders to RVCP, and to discuss our expectations of each other while we are here. The meeting itself went really well; the RVCP members thought it was useful, interesting and the discussion about what we expect from each other was very productive. However, when we did the session evaluation at the end, all the members thought of the same problem: there wasn't enough sugar in the tea. This is a totally Rwandan thing - each cup of tea has to have about three large spoons of sugar in it before anyone will drink it. Which is 1) totally alien to me and 2) meant we got through about half a kilo of sugar in just one evening (and still this wasn't enough).

The Great Mutual Expectations Meeting

On Sunday morning, I met Peter and went to Church. I wanted to experience a Rwandan Church service, and thought that it would help me immerse myself into the community even more, because going to Church plays such a huge part in the Rwandan week. I chose to go to the Protestant service Peter attends because of the music and the dancing, and this definitely didn't disappoint! I was immediately made welcome, and someone appeared next to me who translated the entire service. There was a stage at the front with a band (electric guitars, keyboards, drum-kit - it was like being at a school concert) and a huge gospel choir. Everyone was standing up, dancing and singing, and I was given a child to look after more or less as soon as I arrived. My translator translated everything for me, which was great because I would have definitely fallen asleep during the guest speaker's hour long speech if I hadn't have been able to understand him. The service ended up being about three hours long (and we missed the first hour) which was way too long but we met Miriam and Hyacinthe afterwards and went to Shekina for lunch (more on Shekina another time. This blog post is way too long).

If you've read this far, you can be rewarded with a photo of us trying (and failing) to light our stove:

Interesting reading:

LLCCM: http://www.llccm-rwanda.org

Inzozi Nziza: http://www.bluemarbledreams.org/

Some things

- Libby: 'There's a film I think you'd really like. It's called Mothra. It's about a moth the size of a human.'
- I went to choir rehearsal - everything was in Kinya-Rwandan and I had NO IDEA what I was doing - but helpfully one of the guys who ran the choir translated the songs for me and one of them was about a native Rwandan leaving Rwanda and singing about how much he missed the cows
- I did some laundry with some luxury Joules triple-milled soap (thanks Em and Freya, my clothes now smell amazing)
- I'm going to teach the choir some barbershop tags next week (any suggestions barbershoppers?!)
- Moth count: uncountable. Huge yellow one at rehearsal: very unhappy Olivia
- Watching Libby's and Miriam's reactions when watching the Japanese Transformer Owl youtube video was INCREDIBLE!

So this was a really good blog post until it deleted itself.

My first weekend in Butare involved the sun, a party, some hilariously bad karaoke, learning to dance African-club-style, sunbathing, a meeting with the coordinator and vice-coordinator of RVCP, some questionable meat and some al-fresco German dining (complete with German apfel-wine).

Peter, Libby and I

Normally at parties in the UK, you don't really dance until it's late and you're drunk. Here, the whole point of the party is to dance, whether there are 4 or 40 people there. As a terrible dancer, this takes some getting used to! However, good news - there's a traditional dance class at the university that I want to join so hopefully it won't be long before people stop laughing at my dancing.

I had written a really really really long post about my entire weekend but STUPID blogspot decided to delete everything except the first two paragraphs I'm SO ANNOYED because I can't bring myself to write everything again. So bulletpoints are happening instead

- I'm also going to join a choir at the uni. It's not barbershop but should be pretty fun!
- We went to a club which was like a weird hotel reception room, when we arrived there was some very formal karaoke going on (which was terrible, except the Kanye West impersonator singing Coming Home, he was awesome) and everyone was sitting round tables like in a wedding reception or something. After karaoke the place turned into a 'club' - the first song played was Mysterious Girl which clearly meant the DJ peaked WAY too soon, cause nothing else topped that. Also Primus beer was around 50p, bargain!
- On Sunday Miriam, a German girl volunteering at an orphanage, cooked us some German food - fried potatoes and onions and meatballs (fried egg for me (no-one understands vegetarianism here, I told some RVCP guys I have never eaten meat and they genuinely face-palmed)). We stored the meat in our fridge for Mim during the day, but because in Rwanda stuff is stored in paper not plastic bags, the meat bled all over our vegetables. Who stores a chunk of raw meat in a paper bag, no-one will know. The food was so delicious, everything cooked outside on fire stoves tastes so much better! (and takes about 3 hours to prepare)
- We bought a thyme plant at the market today and planted it in the front garden, Nymwaza came over and was laughing at us, we must have looked so ridiculous, two white girls in flip-flops trying to dig a hole in rock-hard soil for a pathetically small and wilted thyme plant. It had better grow but I'm worried it might just be washed away in the ridiculously heavy downpours we get over here!