A muddle of muzungus

Life has gone full circle and I have just finished welcoming all of the new January volunteers for vso. I can hardly believe that a year ago I was the one trying to process the massive stream of information and make sense of the seemingly senseless buses, banks and bureaucracy. Now I wonder why I ever found it so hard. Of course that second unmarked white bus will be the next one to go to Kimironko market and not the identical one ahead of it in the line, and of course the last chair on the right hand side is where to queue starts in the bank. Although having said that the mtn phone centre in Remera still baffles me, there is no obvious queuing system there...or perhaps it is simply that I have not been there enough times to pick up on all of the subtle clues about how things work.

Talking of Kimironko market, I took the new volunteers there in a moto convoy and we didn’t half turn some heads. Streams of white light streaking past, all clutching nervously to the back of the motorbike on the rough cobbled track...like beginners hells angels. I have finally after a year got to confidence to ride a moto the Rwandan way. You casually slouch your back, let your hands go loose or rest on your knee, and occasionally you get your mobile out of your pocket to answer a call or send a text.  Ok so I’m mostly joking about that last bit!

So 14 more volunteers and 5 accompanying partners have been let loose on Rwanda and I’m sure they will do very well and like it here. We did have some dramas including no less than 3 lost (and subsequently found) bags, a suspected death (not a vso volunteer!) on the Dutch volunteers’ KLM flight and a good few trips to the polyclinic, but all’s well that ends well I say. So its back to the job of teaching for me. I have had a big increase in my hours this year so it will be interesting to see how it all goes. So here’s to another week. I must admit even after a whole year I still have to take this experience of being out here one week at a time, and sometimes one day at a time, although I do have a sense that time is speeding up since I returned from the UK...