Buhoro, buhoro - slowly, slowly

So they say, and so it goes… Since I last wrote I have had a couple of weeks in my new office and getting into the new job, or at least trying! Well, there I was all bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to get cracking, but as with everything here it takes longer than you would like for things to start happening. So my first few weeks have been tainted with characteristic hitches, such as all the people who I am supposed to be reporting to being in Kigali on my first full week in Nyagatare, and not meeting my line manager until one week in when she happened to come in to my office looking for someone else!

But the office itself is great; I am squeezed into a corner sharing a desk with piles of documents I don’t understand! It is actually the office of CDLS (District AIDS Control Commission) who coordinate all of the work in the district on HIV&AIDS. The Director and his assistant are both great, but we struggle slightly as they are both francophone and my French is a lot more rusty than I would have liked to admit and certainly not up to complicated policy discussion! They have both shown me around and I meet so many people as the office is something of a hub for anyone working on HIV&AIDS and related issues (youth, gender, you have to come through our office to get to the gender office), or anyone who needs the internet or photocopier as we have the only ones in the area it seems!

I should probably explain what it is that I actually do here at this point. So I coordinate the PHARE (prevention of HIV&AIDS in Rwanda through Education) project in Secondary Schools in Nyagatare District (15 in total), which is a VSO project funded by Irish Aid. Each school has an Anti-AIDS Club, we support these clubs by providing training and resources. I have a team of 5 facilitators who go to each of the schools once a week and facilitate sessions which are conducted by the 2 students and one teacher in each club who have already been trained, with the aid of a manual produced by the project. Then we look at other activities and areas of improvement.

Have you switched off?! Sorry, I thought that I ought to explain myself briefly. So this week has bee a lot of planning, interspersed with lots of waiting around (why say 8am when you mean to show up at 10am?). But of course I am adapting to the new pace of life, and beginning to understand that in a county where power (the sudden loss of), politics (the sudden change of) and weather (the sudden raining of) are unpredictable, one has to learn to be flexible and therefore any arrangements should be taken loosely to say the least (ie always bring a book or some work to get on with).

Ah as ever there is so much more to share, such as the bright lights of Kigali where I spent last weekend, the bus driver who spent the whole 3 hour return journey relating every detail of a Nigerian film he had just seen to the passengers, and the great PHARE team, my fellow volunteers with whom I have spent much time planning and learning about excel! But this will all have to wait for another instalment as I am sure that you have had quite enough for one visit!

Oh and I am currently accepting suggestions for my new hobby which should be both cheap and productive – I have a free weekend! Comments in the box below – many thanks!

Pictures: My office with my bike in the foreground (mine is in the far corner); and the PHARE team, each doing the same things in different districts in the East and South of Rwanda.