"The Ambassador will see you now..."

It was only really in Nairobi airport while waiting for my flight to Kigali that i began to get a bit nervous about my year in Rwanda. I was still not quite over my flu but was feeling much better and a hell of a lot less stressed then i had been in Europe before my departure. I had started the day at my campsite just to the south of Mombassa, I'd decided to be lazy and take a taxi to the airport, to hell with the expense i was still officially sick. After 5 days of blazing sunshine and cloudless skies just as i am about to pack up the tent there started a torrential downpour which lasted an hour. Me and my driver were late laving Tiwi beach but fortunately there were no blockages on route and we arrived to the airport in good time. i might just add here that its little more than a year since someone launch a rocket at Mombassa airport! Worth noting was the fact that they had very manual check in procedures involving some guy at the entrance checking my passport and crossing ,my name off a very large print out. After what seemed like a never ending wait for my connection at Nairobi I was finally on the move again and this time seated next to an American lady who was touring Africa from a base in Kigali where she was visiting the father of a work colleague. This guys father apparently owned an Indian style restaurant in Kigali and i was assured their samosas were to die for. I might just check it out one of these days.

I was met at the airport, one of the few occasions in my travels, by Nellie who was my primary contact in the VSO office in Rwanda, she had been the one to negotiate my placement with the Ministry of Gender and Development which would soon be my employer. She took me to my hotel, out of town but quite near the airport and within walking distance of the VSO offices where i would spend the next two weeks on in country training. Due to some transport crisis, she had to literally drop me and the hotel and run off again with the car leaving me in the capable, if a little overenthusiastic hands of Loren, the hotel manager. I'd hoped to get a shower and a rest before another guy called Bryan from the program office and one of the other new volunteers arrived for dinner. The hotel was pretty nice and the bathroom was clean (hurray!). When I tried to turn on the shower nothing came out, so i called one of the staff to get them to show me how to work it. I had assumed there was some problem with the large and complicated looking water heater beside the shower. The chambermaid came but communication was a little difficult, in the end she said i would be able to have a shower "dans 10 minutes". I assumed this was to give time for a tank to fill or some water to heat and went to rest. I was almost asleep when over half an hour later there was a knock on my door and my shower was "delivered" in the form of two jerry cans of water (one hot, one cold) and a basin! Yip...central Africa was a whole different ball-game.

That evening I had dinner with Liez, a Belgian volunteer here to work with education for the disabled, Bryan from the VSO program office and Mark, another volunteer working as a teacher somewhere rural. We heard that the other volunteer joining us from San Fran had missed her flight and would arrive a few days later. When Sade did finally get here, it seemed it was more of a case that her flight missed her! Apparently the woman at the check in desk decided to have a problem with her only having a one way ticket, despite the fact that she had a letter from the organisation explaining exactly why she had a one way ticket.

We spent the next two weeks having Kinyarwanda lessons in the morning (Mvuga ikinyarwanda bahoro bahoro!) and doing an assortment of activities in the afternoon that were of varying degrees of utility. The description of my job had said that knowledge of English or French was required but it became obvious fairly quickly that without french or the ability to learn the local language at light speed, you'd pretty much be in trouble with communication here.

One of the more interesting parts of the induction training was the courtesy calls on the British and Canadian Ambassadors. Neither of them is what would be called career diplomats and both it appeared had their respective positions due to their in depth local knowledge. British Ambassador is double jobbing as the Ambassador to Burundi but flies down only once a month never leaving the capital. She brought us up to date with the latest political developments in the Great Lakes regions. My head was spinning after only half an hour of which factions were for/against which other factions, I don't know how she keeps up!

The Canadian Ambassador was quite a different kettle of fish, he was a historian and had been in Rwanda for the better part of 30 years. I set to work attempting to impress him with my Kinyarwanda although I'm not sure of my success. Foremost on my mind was the general reservedness and dour looks I'd noticed on peoples faces on the street. It seemed to tempting to blame everything on the genocide - many other parts of Africa had lived through awful events and yet I would see smiles everywhere, but not here. Liez once remarked that she felt as if she was back in Belgium sometimes. I asked the Ambassador his opinion. He first mentioned something so glaringly obvious it hadn't crossed my mind: population density. Rwanda is the continents most densely populated country, which isn't too difficult with the open spaces there are elsewhere but it does have an effect on people. With population density comes attempts to get out of peoples space and so less sociability. Think about how city dwellers behave differently from those in remote areas with less people. He then explained that Rwandan society was traditionally based on the clan, or immediately family like in Europe rather than the tribe or extended family as is common in Africa. Rwandans did not have the custom of greeting people they did not know. They were also primarily hill people and hill societies tend to be quieter and more reserved than the plains people. We went on to discuss the current situation in Rwanda and his perspective on future developments here.
"I for one, am an afro-optimist, certainly in the case of Rwanda", he concluded, "but I might be a little biased", he said with a smile.
And he certainly seemed to have a lot of affection for his adopted homeland...