Land of a Thousand Hills

Ok so i have to start this blog with an apololgy- it is a little delayed! i blame it partly on the fact that i have been a bit busy trying to sort out my life move house, get a new visa etc and partly on the fact that "FastNet" is anything but!! but anyway, I'm guessing that all of you know that i'm here for another few months now, seeing as i wasant on the plane home and all, and i finally got my extended visa yesterday after a slightly scary interview- apparently there can be no possible reason why someone would want to stay in this country for longer than 3 months!! Any way I'm here now and thery wont be getting rid of me that easilyI'll try and keep you up to date on any interesting developments of annecdotes but i think the blog writting might be too much for just me, so anyway here is the last blog me and Jaz wrote together in Rwanda, little out of date but well worth the read I'm sure... Nell xxxx


So we suppose we should start this blog by mentioning a small change of plan… Nell’s not coming home!!! She has decided she’s not quite done with Rwanda and therefore has extended her stay for another 3 months! Jaz is very, very jealous and will have to be forcibly removed from the country on Tuesday but alas she has spent far to long away from a certain Mr Roberts and is in need of his…rather hairy chest to fall asleep on at night! So unfortunately for Jaz she has a 10 hour wait in Brussels ALONE without her beloved Umutesi to entertain her (queue violins). We have to admit that it will be very strange not spending pretty much 24/7 in each others company, and in fact, as a result of this intense time together we have kinda merged into one person and often wind up finishing each others sentences or saying things at the same time… much to the amusement of everyone else! At this point though we feel it is only fair to congratulate ourselves on getting on so well… we can count on one hand the number of lovers tiffs we’ve had (normally pmt induced) which we believe to be pretty good going…so well done us!

So onward to fill you in on the last 3 weeks of our rather splendid lives! Work has, as usual, been incredibly hectic with various big events requiring our artistic talents. It was Aids Awareness day a couple of weeks ago so we spent an afternoon painting messages on banners with car paint, as any other sort has proven impossible to find which is ideal with young children with only one set of clothes… mind you Jaz was the only person who actually managed to sit in it! On the day itself the whole centre marched to the national stadium and took part in a concert for the kids which included Karate displays, singing and of course dancing, all of which our boys took part in and did us proud.
Our friend Andrew has purchased another 20 cards for his work and the card making group have officially organised their association so only time will tell now how independent they really are of us… fingers crossed we’ve done our job!
Our latest Jaz and Nell Club involved making the longest paper chain in the world ever, which surprisingly the kids loved (we kinda looked at it as slave labour… ‘you will make Christmas decorations… we don’t care if you’re Muslim just keep sticking!’) We have also had a run of really brilliant English lessons, in fact Jaz’s introduction of blind date went down particularly well…. Perhaps a little two well! (Jaz- Finishing teaching will undoubtedly be the hardest thing about leaving and tomorrow is my last day at the centre so I have a feeling its going to be a messy one!) The centre also had an open day last week to inform the community of their progress and the work they do. This involved speeches (mainly in Kinyarwanda but we smiled and nodded all the same), a tour of the centre, singing, and dancing- both modern and traditional (during which Jaz was dragged on stage by one of her students and forced to humiliate herself by attempting to dance Rwandan style!). Also, Viv, the co-founder of the centre, arrived this week to stay for at least a couple of months, so all in all Marembo has had a pretty eventful couple of weeks.

Besides work at the centre we’ve spent a couple of days enjoying real coffee at The Novotel (Rwanda’s poshest hotel) firstly in celebration of Nell’s birthday and secondly because Jaz got projectile vomited on the last time we were at the orphanage and felt that justified a little self indulgency after having to travel home on the bus drenched and stinking of baby sick (you’d be amazed how much came up… he was only a little fella!) We also celebrated Nell’s birthday by getting our hair washed and styled at the salon which involved plastic rollers and those 1950s style hair dryers that cover your whole head… it was an interesting experience resulting in us both getting quite over heated and having hair resembling Dolly Parton. This was a slightly different day than originally planned but certainly a safer option. We had intended to be climbing a live volcano in The Congo on the day of Nell’s birthday, however a few days before we received enough signs to convince us it was not such a good plan. Firstly we heard there had been rebel fighting only 15 miles from the area we planned to visit, then Kine relayed some particularly worrying news of an acquaintance of hers being shot and killed that same week in the same town. And finally, as if that wasn’t enough, the volcano neighbouring the one we wanted to climb erupted twice only days before we were due to go.

What else… ah yes we had a rather surreal trip to the police station, as during our first week here we managed to ‘misplace’ £150 and needed to claim for it on our insurance. We were accompanied by Innocent (one of the volunteers) who brought our pre-prepared statement sandwiched between the pages of a children’s book entitled ‘The alphabet pals surprise’. We might like to add at this point that we had to tell a little white lie in our statement, and claim we got pick pocketed in order for the claim to go through, we were therefore a little anxious to appear serious. Whilst waiting anxiously to meet the constable we were joined by two evangelical Christians from Kenya… who were suspiciously jolly for a couple of guys who had just been robbed, and insisted on finding out everything they could about our ‘attack’. The policeman then made us wait two hours at the ‘station’ (a glorified shack) before he would actually sign the statement, at which point he asked to borrow a pen while he answered a call on his mobile which rang to the tune of ‘Santa Claus is coming to town’. We’d like to end this tale by noting that this all occurred at 7am on a Saturday morning after a heavy night of drinking… Tolerance and patience are virtues you cannot afford not to have here and being able to laugh in pretty much any circumstance is a great advantage! So, besides experiencing the joys of a Rwandan police station we have also been to two weddings. The first was a traditional Rwandan wedding with over 400 guests! We had great fun getting ready, trying to figure out our traditional outfits, lent to us by one of the volunteers… and without Nicky’s assistance we would have been truly lost. The wedding included traditional dancers, and a traditional power cut. We (well Nell) got the pleasure of trying goat intestine and altogether we felt culturally enriched! Our second experience was of a traditional Muslim wedding, which began with us helping a lot of big mamas prepare the food at 7am. Despite the early start and the many blisters we received from chopping a LOT of onions this was a brilliant experience and felt a little like we were allowed to go behind the scenes of a culture which ultimately, as a muzungu, is very difficult to penetrate. Our other attempt at being cultural involved a day trip to Butare, Rwanda’s second largest town in the south of the country. There we visited the national museum and university, which is situated on a really stunning campus.

Which pretty much brings us up to date. Which means its time to face the realisation that this is the last blog we will be writing here and in two days I (Jaz) will be flying on a jet plane never to return again…. Well, hopefully not ‘never’, but who knows what the future might hold. I can honestly say that I’ve had the most fantastic 3 months of my life and I really hope our blogs have conveyed that. Rwanda’s beauty and charm can never be captured in full by any amount of photographs and no matter how hard we try to relay various tales sometimes inevitably words fail us, my only hope is that my memory doesn’t and that every now and again a sight or a sound will bring me back to my home for 3 months, ‘the land of a thousand hills’.