I arrived in Gicumbi (or Byumba) Friday to an empty house
with nothing but furniture in it. The electricity and water were not working
and the house appears to have been vacant for a while as it is filthy and
covered in red dirt! I was whisked off to school after dropping my bags inside
to meet the principal of Byumba TTC – Bosco, he is a very nice man with
extremely good English, French and Kinyarwanda. He showed me around the campus,
which is beautiful and then I was dropped back off at the house. Luckily, I’d
taken a banana and piece of bread at breakfast, so I had them for lunch and prompted
fell asleep after moving some of the furniture around. A guy (Peter) came to
the door but didn’t speak enough English to communicate with me that he wanted
to help me with the house so I sent him away without realising. When the girls
arrived in the afternoon, they went off to buy electricity and somehow managed to make the lady understand
how much and what they wanted between the Kenyan and Ugandan languages they
speak! Peter came back and began to put up mosquito nets and clothes hangers
for us in our rooms. The water didn’t come back on, so we just went to the shop
to buy some and get a few basic things together for the house. We just boiled
the kettle for a drink and the power went off for the whole district so we ate
Nutella sandwiches by torchlight and waited for it to return. After that we
headed to our rooms for the night. I knew I would be up first because I had
school at 10am but I slept late as I was so cold! Is this Africa?
Today I woke around 7am and went quickly to check if the
water was on – yes! I filled up the buckets and bowls that were out and began
boiling the kettle for tea and breakfast. Angela and Debra woke later and I
left for school as Peter was back to change the front door lock. I jumped on a
moto and had a long chat with Principal Bosco about school life and hours
before meeting Simon – another volunteer who is based there and was running a
workshop. I decided to walk back to see how long it would take and suss out the
route and found myself at the front gate within half an hour. So I will walk to
school on Monday rather than pay to ride pillion on the back of a dirty great
bike. Our place is conveniently in the centre of town, opposite the post
office, just up from the bus station and next to the phone centre and moto
(motorbike taxi) stop. Upon my return,
the ladies I live with greeted me with new friends who took us to the market
and helped us to buy fruit, vegetables and meat – all a very eye opening
experience, I will take pictures once I’ve settled in and know more people to
ask permission. The water has been out since lunchtime and we returned from
shopping before a massive thunderstorm which wiped out the power until 4pm, so
we all cooked then and realised that we trip the system easily – even so, I
managed to cook my super-noodles, meat and carrots. At 6pm we went to a
bar/restaurant guest house with the other volunteers here, Lisa and Jane and
met more development workers from the area, I had a second dinner here of
Tilapia brochette and chips, washed down with a coke and Fanta. Tomorrow I’m
going for a walk with Lisa to see a bit more of Byumba and the landlord is
coming to visit so we can sort out all our problems with the house.
No comments:
Post a Comment