... finally back into this blog; since last time I went back to Rwanda where sadly the team had broken down and not much had happened in Ruhanga. However, RHEPI has been promoting the tanks and other good things are happening. Long time ago!

Home again
Say my good-byes in Kigali on Thursday. Pizza lunch at the New Cactus then to CEFORMI to see Peter and Vianney. Everyone's enthusiastic about the pots but as everyone also has lots of other commitments they'll need to prioritize the project if it's to succeed.

I feel like I've spent the last month waiting for things to go wrong and they haven't. Someone must be praying for this project! The tank at Ruhanga is good and solid, the boys are enthusiastic about the work, we've arranged for Peter to travel up every day to assist them until they get the hang of it. Once they've made 60 (2 per house) they should be real experts!

Friday morning Karen and Doreen drop me at the airport and by 10.30pm I'm back home with the family.

At Ruhanga

After some initial organisational hitches we get training started with the 6 boys. We've decided to be practical from the start and after showing a small model we built last week take the boys out to start building. As rural people they have good practical skills, though one or two have not used a trowel before. Over the 7 days it is good to see skills develop. They are obviously enjoying the work. By the second Wednesday we have one tank almost complete, one tank onto its second coat of cement and a third foundation built.

The tanks are physically a size bigger than the one I built in Tanzania and it takes 14 bags of sawdust to fill one. The physical work of packing and removing that volume of sawdust is quite a time-sonsuming job.

Preparing for Ruhanga

On Friday we visited Ruhanga to check that things were in place for the training. I emphasised the important things like lunch provision. Vianney, Peter and I will do the training with Ernestine, the settlement's social worker acting as translator... she didn't seem to have a lot of English on Friday, but by the time I've demonstrated my Swahili and French skills most people decide English is our best common language. Some returnees from Uganda don't speak Rwandan yet and manage in English or Lungana. As most t.v. films are in English it's a language with a future!

We met 3 of the boys who'll do the training. I'd hoped for girls but was told none of the girls wanted trained. The boys have little schooling, one has not had any at all. It is dawning on me that the 2 days training that Thai people get is for people who are no doubt already skilled masons working against a back-drop of familiarity with the technology. We're going to need to teach the boys how to make cement before we do much else. Happily, the church technical school will continue with the training once I leave so one way or another we still have a viable project. A plastic tank costs around #70 more than a cement jar and with 28 houses to furnish with 2 or 3 jars there's huge benefit in getting the project running smoothly.

The pots themselves are coming along. We still haven't made a full size one, and one of our practice pots broke on Friday... people here are a bit more refined than our workers in Tanzania who made sure they put on a very heavy render; the pot that broke was only around 10mm thick cement in places. So we'll make the next pot thicker and give it longer to dry before working on it further.

Visit to Kagitumba
Wednesday was an early start on the 5.40 bus to the Ugandan border. Didn't worry much about this as our 8.30 bus last summer in Kenya didn't leave until 12.10. But this is Rwanda. We hit the bus station at exactly 5.39, the taxi having got lost, and the bus was already moving. Happily they let me on and I arrived at the border with a nice amount of time to look at the classroom block CED is supporting with money from a trust fund. Not quite as far on as it should be as the contractor disappeared but they have now found others to carry on and things are moving. James of RHEPI arrived with an agroforestry professor and we walked to the new tree nursery funded by the university of California. It was tree planting day and everyone got some seedlings to plant in preprepared holes. The district mayor arrived and made a speech. He's giving the community the nearby hill to cover with trees. Everyone cheered but it occurs to me that it's a lot of work that won't benefit the people for a couple of decades... I guess people here can think ahead better than westerners; there's more awareness of climate change. I left James happily working out how he could put together a project for RHEPI to run the programme.

Rwanda 19 November 06

Arrived here last Wednesday morning... relaxed trip and got the airport Java Coffee House coffee we missed on the last trip with Jeni. Good.
Karen was arriving at the airport as I reached the exit; she'd had a puncture but was still on time.
Wednesday afternoon we met with Henri from CEFORMI, the church's technical school. He offered us a covered area to experiment with rainwater tanks so we know what we're doing when we get to the village... seemed a bit cautious but...
Thursday Karen and I bought some cement and tools and I got to work at CEFORMI. Nice thing about Africa is that things usually work out. Everyone has problems with communicating (mainly poor web connections but its worse!!) and I hadn't even been sure I'd be met at the airport until Tuesday, never mind have support to make the project happen. But now we're underway and I seem to have a couple of Henri's tutors at my disposal. Good someone knows what they're doing!
Friday was a bit of a test of faith; we hadn't packed the sawdust well and we hadn't found good old fashioned jute sacks; cement doesn't stick so well to modern plastic. So tomorrow will be interesting. We need to find foolproof ways of constructing the tanks so we can train teenagers with no experience. Everything will work out!
Today's Sunday. Got to church so early (despite having to bump start the Land Rover) that we got Bible Class too. We have 4 Ugandans staying with us; they're from the Pentecostal Church in Kampala and are helping Christian Life Assemblies put on a play called "Heaven's Gate and Hell's Flames"... evangelism here is straight to the point! So most of our household is back at church this afternoon and I've found an internet connection at Hotel Gorilla down the road.
Tomorrow we'll build another tank or two and (hopefully) get them to work better. I've still to make contact with the Episcopal Church as Nathan tends to be busy. My contact person for the water programme is off work and I'm keen to involve his technician in the rainwater programme. Timothy has flip charts for malaria talks etc. and was quite excited about the project back in May.
Please pray we'll all stay sane and the project will start to run smoothly. Other problem is the rain... it tends to be really heavy which isn't good for cement. Please also remember the family back home; Jeni's having to sort out problems with my work and has plenty of more interesting stuff to keep her busy.

Kagitumba
Friday: today's trip was right to the northern border of Rwanda... and home in time for tea.

James picked me up at 7.30 and we stopped off at Kabuga where he is planning to build a hostel for secondary school girls. He's also started building a bio-digester there. At Kayonza we met with 3 AIC pastors. None has any training but the Kenyan church visits to encourage them from time to time. Their leader has been accused of involvement in the genocide and this has become a real problem for all of them, not to mention his wife with 7 children to care for (4 of their own plus 3). We discuss the orphans I visited last year and (hopefully) convince the pastors that the way ahead is to invite the government to take over the orphan schools; that way, the schools will be for everyone, the orphans more integrated and the teachers will be paid.

At Kagitumba the school is coming along nicely. James has also been working with the community on encouraging kitchen gardens - a mound of earth with kitchen waste in the middle that takes up very little space and should be really productive.

Bugasera
Monday and off to Nyamata. Stayed in a convent right next to the genocide memorial. Didn't manage to visit - there's no escaping the genocide even without visiting memorials. Spent the evening with Timothy the water technician. We speak in Swahili, but most of the time I'm nodding politely as his is much better than mine. Over the next couple of days we travel with Emmanuel by Land Cruiser and Timothy on his Yamaha 100 to look at wells and spring renovations. I show my confidence in his work by tasting the water. Then Timothy explains how he tests it: first by taste, then they leave it overnight and next day try washing with it and cooking with it. If it lathers up OK and doesn't turn the food black then it's OK. He thinks his water testing kit is for swimming pools. We checked on Wednesday and, sure enough, there is a domestic pool testing kit, but also a couple of proper kits left by the refugee organisation from whom we're taking over. All he needs is instructions. We managed to visit most of the sites over Tuesday and Wednesday then returned to Kigali on Wednesday afternoon. Much relieved; it had poured most of Tuesday evening and the car got stuck visiting one of the wells. Also hungry... the restaurant in Nyamata ran out of food after it had served Timothy and our driver while Emmanuel and I looked around the local market.

Our furthest visit was to Embyo where the Arch Deacon, Pastor Stephen thanked me for the rainwater catchment tank that CED had organised. It's a dry area and the nearest 'proper' water source is the lake 35km away. They're keen for a couple more tanks; if tanks are available the government tanker would fill them in dry season. This is a famine area and the children in the primary school are provided with lunch to help them along.

Wednesday evening I went to a Bible study with Karen and Doreen. Mainly professional people from their pentecostal church; well read and fun to be with.

Rwanda
Wednesday morning was off to the airport by taxi in the rush-hour traffic. A couple of hours later the most suspense-filled part of the trip... will my case (originally booked on the evening flight) arrive? Out into the sunshine at Kigali airport and no, there's no-one to meet me. Taxi to the episcopal church then on to Signpost's house on a Kigali hillside (a bit too like a street from Hotel Rwanda... a huge area of the city is red murram roads along the hillsides with houses to one side). The Signpost house has its office downstairs (where I am now) and rooms upstairs (where the t.v. is).

The Signpost Team is headed by Nathan who's always running about, Caren runs the show; she's lived in USA and is great fun, and Doreen from Uganda who just started a few weeks ago. A couple of boys stay here during term time and Caren's cousin Sylvia is visiting. She's a journalism student, 22 years old and knows more about world affairs than I do (OK so that's not hard!). They have a land-rover called Miss Daisy but that's in the body shop because a mechanic tested it a bit too enthusiastically when it was in for service. They're a fun crowd to work with.

Child Headed Households
This morning we visited the Child Headed Household villages that the church is building. Janjagiro is right on top of a hill. Beautiful view with Lake Mchazi in the distance... and that's the nearest water source. So we need to work out some temporary water arrangement to collect from the pastor's roof, then plan tanks for each house.

Next we went to Ruhanga where there are 31 houses built by Signpost. www.signpost-international.org Nicely finished houses with beautifully kept gardens. Not many people about as most of them are at boarding school or local school. It currently takes 3 hours to get water in a jerrycan; of the few people we met, one was ill and one had AIDS, so they could really use a local water source here... they could also use some help improving pit latrines etc. though that's not in CED's project proposal... yet.

Final stop was Kabuga where there are 18 houses; more will be built when finances allow. This settlement is funded by Christian Hope International. www.christianhope.org.uk

This afternoon met the archbishop; at present the church is in the middle of '100 Days of Hope' following the '100 Days of Mourning'. It's now 12 years after the genocide. They've had Joyce Mayer over and the Hillsongs people are coming in July. He's keen to get CED more involved with the church.

So far, the plan is for me to go down to Bugesera for Monday - Wednesday... don't think the internet's reached there... I'll have 3 days to teach Timothy, the water technician who runs the programme, all I know about wells (possibly only need 3 minutes, but I'm sure we'll find other things to do too). Emmanuel who's responsible for the project department will come with me, but probably return here after the first day as his wife is due her first baby any time now.

Next weekend I'll travel with James of RHEPI to visit the school at Kagitumba, his girl's hostel site, then go with him to visit the Kayonza orphans. The last bit I'll really appreciate prayer for. There are 3 or 4 groups of orphans cared for by poor families and we helped them a little last year. Now the leader of the help organisation is in prison and the teachers have given up having not been paid. James is keen that we see whether we can give them a bit more support; if they can be integrated into the general school system (government is keen for orphans to integrate) then they will have free education, but in the past Emmanuel has resisted that idea. I'm hoping to visit him with James to discuss all this, but will take guidance as to whether it would be appropriate.

After going round 5 taxi companies Dominic finally found someone foolhardy enough to take us. We nearly got out of Nairobi before he had a front tyre blow-out. After that things went fine and we saw the Kyalui site before it got dark.