A Rwandan Life

I am very aware that up until now my entries have been very much me me me. And much as I am loathed to admit it, it goes without saying that my life and the way that I am living it over here remains quite different to that of the majority of Rwandans. So I thought it was about time that I give you a slightly clearer picture of the bigger picture!

While I struggle out of bed a 6am every morning (well more like 6:15 thanks to the snooze button) others around me have mostly been up for an hour already (don't worry I can hear them - so I know!). My next move is to crawl from bed to yoga to shower and then to a massive bowl of porridge with bananas. Meanwhile most of my Rwandan colleagues will be having a cup of tea if anything at all before either heading to work for around 7am or if they are subsistence farmers living in the villages the work of tidying the house will begin. And here is another point of shame for me - the average Rwandan house is immaculate, however large or small, and is swept and mopped daily (mine is swept weekly and mopped when I can face it, which is rarely!). However, I comfort myself with the fact that most families with a house my size or smaller have some kind of houseboy or help which I do not have - yeah well I have to have some kind of excuse!

Then its out into the fields for the whole family; however small you are there is something that you can do to help. From the early hours you see women bent double hacking away at grass, harvesting crops or hoeing the fields, while children carry bundles of straw twice their size from place to place. By the afternoon bushes are strewn with laundry (the replacement for a washing line) and children returned from school are carry jerry cans of water back to the house. By this point the bars may be full of drunken men sipping on jugs of banana beer around the market, but for most the work never ends...

And in the midst of it all most people will have one big meal a day (generally cassava and beans with other carbs depending on availability) and otherwise just tea, milk or water, while I tuck in to my three hefty meals with snacks in-between. The number of times colleagues have spotted my flask of tea at work and wished me 'bon appetit' or 'enjoy your breakfast' before I have time to point out that breakfast was hours ago and I am famished already! By 8pm I am exhausted and crawl back to bed soon afterwards, well aware that others around me will be up for many hours to come, only sleeping if this is deemed truly necessary. But for me the sleep remains of utmost importance and I gladly indulge myself of a good eight hours...

This is just a glimpse of life in Rwanda and I cannot claim to be all-knowledgeable, in fact in six months I may realise that life is nothing like what I have claimed above, but this is how I see it and thought I would share a little of how things are from this perspective. Tomorrow I am off to run another training in Kibungo with Ellie, this time 120 young people and teachers, so think of us trying to keep a track of 80 over-excited teenagers!