It never rains but it pours

So the British love to talk about the weather, and I am no exception...

I had always imagined I was coming to a dry land, where the sun always shines, but I could not have been more wrong.  Since arriving in Africa in January, I seem to have been in a perpetual rainy season, and I have been wondering, am I missing home and chasing the rain, is it following me, or does it just rain a lot in Africa?

I heard a lot of stories while I was in Rwanda about how hot and dry it can be.  But for my time at least, it was green, and lush, and wet.  I remember one particularly wet weekend camping on the shore of Lake Burera.  Our $10 tents did not fair so well, and were it not for our local gin-jackets, I don't think we would have either.

And then I arrived in Nairobi, where it is not only wet, but often cold and grey too.  If I am honest, this is actually a refreshing change from sweaty Sudan.

But Sudan... Sudan must be dry.  Right?  Well, sure, it has its fair share of dry and dusty landscapes. The 10 hour drive to our field site in Kassala  is notorious for the countless dead cows and camels along the way (trying to count them is an irresistible way to try and pass the time).  It is seemingly so dry the animals don't decompose, and lie mummified, littering the side of the road.  But in my first week in Khartoum, the heavens opened and it poured with rain.

Finally, my travels have brought me to South Sudan, where there is absolutely no disputing the fact it is rainy season!  All 3 WFP flights to our field site in Twic have been cancelled this week because the airstrip is submerged, and the streets of Juba turned to a fast, muddy river, knee deep in places.  Even now the roads have stopped flowing, the thick, sticky mud seems set to stay for the season.  In the towns, the only way to get down the high street is in a 4WD, while in the countryside, a tractor is an essential comrade for anyone brave enough to venture out.

Last week I was in Upper Nile State visiting some health clinics along the Sobat river.  Given the mud, we use a boat to get around during the rainy season.  It seemed quite an adrenalin rush, zipping down the river, stopping at 8 SPLA military check points along the way.  But it turns out that even our new, speedy boat can't outrun the rain clouds, and we spent nearly 2 hours being pounded by the rain.  At 50kph, it felt rather like small needles pricking your skin.  Still, there is always someone worse off than yourself; the driver's wife was in the boat, and heavily pregnant, but the driver made sure he stayed dry under his raincoat, leaving her to sit the rain out in her pretty summer dress...

Whirling Dervishes in a howling haboob

Haboob means sandstorm in Arabic.  Having said goodbye to new friends and lush green hills in Rwanda, I found myself head down and eyes squinting to avoid the sand whipping through the air as I made my way across a dusty graveyard in Khartoum.

Khartoum was built up around the confluence of the Blue and White Nile, and so the rivers naturally break the city into 3 sub-cities: Khartoum (the seat of the Sudanese Government), Omdurman (Middle Eastern in atmosphere) and Bahri (largely industrial and residential).

Each Friday evening, Dervish people (Sufi Muslims) gather in front of the Hamed an-Nil mosque in Omdurman for a spiritual festival that lasts until the sun goes down.

 

With the scent of incense in the air, and the sound of drumming, men gathered around a circle move in rhythmic unison, bowing, clapping and chanting.  Meanwhile, in the centre of the circle, people perform acts that highlight their spiritual strength, including the characteristic spinning which lead to their name Whirling Dervishes.

 

For a few, it seemed the outfit was more focal than the movement, but the spiritual strength of one man in particular was unreal;  he was already spinning when I arrived, and was in that same trance-like state when I walked away an hour or so later.

Although sad not to see the festivities close and find out what happened when he finally stopped turning, I was rather eager to pass back through the graveyard before dark!

 

2 Robbos, 2 bikes, 2 peaks

Planned Day 1: Drive to Snowdonia

Actual Day 1: Drive to Snowdonia, climb Snowdon and cycle 75 km

Dad and I discussed a cycling adventure for months, exactly where, when and for how long changing often, but we finally settled on cycling from Snowdonia to the Lake District, hiking up Snowdon and Scafell Pike at either end of the cycle ride.

Before setting off, I received the following wise words from my brother on how to enjoy a cycle trip with Dad:

(1)    Ignore Dad’s packing rule of one set of clothes to cycle in, one set for the evening/to sleep in;

(2)   Allow Dad to create a “zone of control” wherever you stay (translation of “zone of control” – a corner in the room where his entire belongings will be emptied out from his bag and lined up neatly on the floor);

(3)   Eat lots!

The night before the adventure was to begin, we were pumped and decided it would be best just to get on with it and leave that night.  So, at midnight, we set off to drive to Snowdon, passing no one in our sleepy village bar a lone man walking his dogs in the middle of the road.

We drove through the night, and yet were disappointingly not the first in the car park at the base of Snowdon.  Nevertheless, we bound up the mountain and enjoyed a very bleak, viewless summit all to ourselves.  Being in thick cloud where the visibility was extremely poor, coupled with our isolation, was spooky and coming down, we felt we’d conquered that mountain (that is, until we reached the base and saw hundreds of school children starting the hike!) 

We were back in the car park with a cup of tea by 9.30am, having successfully sold on our “all day” car park ticket.  We were still full of excitement (and sleep deprivation), and we’d seen the hill our bike ride started with.  There was nothing to do but start peddling...

At 1pm, having conquered the hill I’d totally over analysed, and enjoyed speeding down the fast open roads on the other side, with spectacular views of the hills all around (the sun even shone in Wales for us that day), a friendly policeman offered us advise on our rather poorly thought out route, along the lines of “oooow, you don’t want to go that way, there’s a huuuge hill.  There is this other route, which takes you up a nice, gentle incline...”  We followed his advice in good faith, but that pleasant, gradual hill went up continually for 16 miles!

We arrived in Denbeigh, exhausted, in the early evening.  And so we’d completed day one of the 4 day adventure, which took us up Snowdon and Bowfell, and saw us peddle just over 200 miles.

If you have been reading closely, you may have noticed an inconsistency in my writing; we had planned to hike up Scafell Pike in the Lake District but ended up summiting  the wrong mountain.  On the morning of day 3, we arrived in the Lake District.  It was a busy bank holiday, we’d not booked anywhere to stay and we didn’t have enough time to get to the base, complete the hike and then cycle back to a vacant B&B before dark.  On brief inspection of the map, there appeared to be a third, more accessible car park from where to start the hike.  We arrived at this car park at 1pm.  We were feeling pumped and excited again, but it was short lived, as multiple people told us it was a bad idea to try and get to Scafell that late in the day (perhaps they were particularly concerned that, in contrast to their top of the range hiking kit, we were in cycle shorts and trainers!)  We considered ignoring them, being macho, but we thought better of it and picked a different peak in a closer range, Bowfell, and a jolly nice view we had from the top (although, even with a map, we ended up taking a slightly unusual route and scrambling up the side of the mountain, nervously close to a steep waterfall).

If I learned one thing from our trip, it’s that every journey is unique, unreplicable, and that’s the real adventure in it.  Sure, the “2 Peaks” would have been good, but Snowdon to Bowfell, via the Liverpool ferry port, was even better, finishing with a cycle past Big Ben and then home into Sussex.

Volcano Ventures in the Congo

At a height of nearly 3,500m, Nyiragongo volcano towers over the city of Goma in eastern DRC.  It is one of the most active volcanoes on the planet, as well as one of the least studied.

Nyiragongo last erupted in 2002 with a fissure eruption (like a bursting pipe, rather than a classic spouting-out-of-the-top eruption), destroying a large part of Goma.  But Scientists believe the volcano is capable of far greater fury, as a major eruption could release the huge volume of lethal gases trapped under nearby Lake Kivu.

With the geology facts in place, there was one task to complete before I could venture to the summit of Nyirogongo; I had to meet the Ambassador of DRC in Kigali to request a visa.  He asked all the expected questions: what I’d be doing in DRC, how long I intended to stay (fortunately, my French skills just about stretch that far)...  When in response to his question regarding my occupation I informed him that I am an Accountant, he gave me a huge grin and kindly welcomed me to DRC.

After crossing the boarder, we drove through Goma to the base of the volcano, passing UN peacekeeping troops along the way.  Despite the constant threat of another eruption that would likely follow a similar path, many homes have been built directly on top of the old lava flow.

Accompanied by armed guards, we hiked steeply uphill for 5 hours to reach the very windy summit.

From here, we looked over a crumbling sheer wall, down to a lake of lava, with a mesmerising kaleidoscopic surface.                                                              

                                                                 

          

We spent the night camping close to the summit, with a small fire of our own, and the glow and intimating roar of the bubbling lake in the background.  Just awesome.

Monkeying around in Volcanoes National Park

I love jokes but can never remember the punch line.  One of the few jokes that I’ve always remembered is one on a lollypop stick from when I was little: Where does a monkey cook his toast?  A. Under a gorilla!  
Well yes, perhaps it is a lame joke, but it seems like fate that I would one day meet a gorilla, and when I did, it was awesome!

The 3 hour hike in the Volcanoes National Park to find the gorillas was an adventure in itself; it is the rainy season at the moment, and we had to wade through thick mud.  At the start of the hike, I naively tried not to get too dirty but soon realised this was a pointless feat so just enjoyed the squelching and squishing.  As well as the mud, there were 6 ft stinging nettles (a key part of the gorillas’ diet), and as we ventured deeper and deeper into the bush, our guide had to use a machete to hack through the dense vegetation.  The excitement of the gorillas meant I didn’t think that much of it at the time, only realising after the adrenalin had worn off how stung my legs had got through my trousers.

We spent an hour watching the Amahoro group with great fascination.  Amahoro means peace in Kinyarwanda.  Before people are able to go and visit a group of gorillas, the group has to be habitualised to humans.  The Amahoro group is so named because it took a surprisingly short amount of time for the silver backs to get used to people.  Now, it just takes a deep “haaaaaaummmmm” sound from time to time to remind the gorillas that their human visitors are friendly and they go about their business of eating leaves, tidying their nests, etc, as if you aren’t even there.

There were 2 babies in the group, a tiny one month old who just clung to its mother and slept, and a very playful 4 month old, who swung from trees and generally performed for the audience until its mother grunted and it retreated back to the nest for a cuddle.

The Amahoro group is unusual in having 3 silver back males.  We were stood watching the 2^nd in command when he turned and decided he wanted to be exactly where we were standing.  We rushed to move out of the way, but he was quick and so passed by us very closely.  Ever the cool, calm naturalist, I clung onto a friend and tried not to look the gorilla in the eye.  Our guide just looked on and chuckled.  But he was HUGE...                   

How many accountants does it take to run a training day?

For an audience of 17, apparently 5 Rwandan Accountants and one Brit!

Having finally got the formal Rwandan greeting down to a fine art, we finished the last of the Health Centre audits just over a week ago.  Before coming, I certainly had not imagined that during these visits I’d sit through more than one meeting with an accountant while she was breast-feeding, or that I’d take a long, bumpy trip in an ambulance, wedged between a woman with a sick bucket and a man with a hacking cough...  It has certainly been a lot of fun exploring the country and working closely with the PIH finance team on this project.

Last week, to follow up our audit visits, we ran 3 training days (one in each district) on financial management for the Health Centre Accountants.  In preparation, I have spent the last few weeks writing up a summary of our observations and recommendations, finishing off the new financial monitoring and reporting templates for Health Centres to use, helping the finance team put together a finance manual for Health Centres, and preparing the training course.

For the first time since getting here, I felt properly stressed last Sunday night.  We hit printing issues - a small malfunctioning printer, no paper, and unsurprisingly, no one to help at 10pm on a Sunday evening.  And then there was the fact that I felt nervous about sitting through training courses that I have been so heavily involved in preparing and having absolutely no idea what’s being said.  But I need not have worried; we solved the printing problems early on Monday morning, and then the team did a wonderful job in presenting the course, a fact that was highlighted by the good understanding the Health Centre Accountants showed when they completed the training exercises, rather than a miraculous understanding of Kinyarwanda by me.

And here is the A-Team of the training world in action:

Gorilla and volcano adventures to follow shortly...

Food, glorious food!

Food is a much talked about topic in Rwinkwavu, so it seems worthy of a short blog entry...

Locals joke about the sugar intake of expats (which always amuses me, given I have seen multiple people put 5 teaspoons of sugar in a single cup of tea), while expats compare notes on how long it took before they stopped eating matoku (mashed plantain - I’m still eating it).

Meals mostly consist of a combination of vegetables, beans, rice, plantain, mashed/boiled/fried potatoes, and goat a few times a week.  We were even treated to goat pizza one night last month.  While it does get a little repetitive, I actually quite like the food, especially since discovering Akabanga (a super hot sauce, a few drops of which transform a dinner, or at least give you a slight burning sensation in your mouth!)  I should perhaps note one exception - goat intestine brochettes.  I did not deal well with them, but fortunately it seemed to go relatively unnoticed.

Hospital lunches (photo attached below), taken in the fresh air by the TB ward, require taking your teeth into your own hands as the beans frequently contain stones.  The other day we found one the same size as a kidney bean!  Rwinkwavu legend has it that one member of staff ended up having to go to South Africa for dental work when a hidden stone broke his tooth...

Stock takes, finance templates and lessons in debits and credits

The weather was decidedly British on Saturday; it was grey, cold and wet.  Such unusual weather for Rwanda was particularly unfortunate for the traditional wedding I attended!  In the hope that the weather would clear up, we sat eagerly waiting for two hours, but to no avail.  It did not stop raining all day long.  So the show went on, and the people I attended with did their best to interpret what was going on.  There was singing and dancing by cow herders, the timeless tradition of giving and receiving orange fanta, and a long process of witty negotiations between the two families (possibly lost in translation).  The groom’s family asked for the bride’s hand in marriage, the bride’s family pretended she had already been taken by another man, to which the groom’s family responded “oh, but don’t you remember, she was promised to a man, but he turned out to be a priest, so they never married!”  It went on...

At the weekends, I have been exploring the country as much as possible.  A few weeks back, we arrange a trip to Lake Kivu, and over 20 people ended up coming along.  I learnt that some Rwandans like to party hard so was almost relieved to go back to work on the Monday!  Last weekend, fancying a quieter weekend and long hike, we set off in the general direction of some coffee plantations.  Along the way, we came across a dozen or so prisoners sitting on the side of the road, wearing brightly coloured-coded jump suits depending on the offence they had committed, and seemingly unattended.  Hundreds of their fellow inmates were working in the paddy fields in the valley below.  It really intrigues me that none of them seem to run off.  After a hilly 15 km, we felt almost triumphant to come across a coffee washing station, run by a women’s co-operative.  One of the women kindly showed us around, acting out the process as we knew only a few shared words.  And then we set off to walk home.  But if I’m honest, we got pretty tired, so hitched a lift and visited our second co-op of the day, an ice-cream parlour back in Butare (the university town of Rwanda).

It can’t always be time for adventures; I need to earn my keep.  Having been here for over a month now, I feel like I might actually have started to be useful!  You were warned by the blog title...

The main project I am working on is the implementation of a reporting and monitoring process, which will support the recent expansion of PIH's activities to fund around 40 health centres.  The aim is for each health centre to submit a monthly financial return, with a budget summary, detailed breakdown of expenditure, petty cash count results and a bank reconciliation.  The PIH district accountants will then visit each health centre on a regular basis to verify the reported expenditure, and monitor controls over general expenditure, payroll and cash.

Having developed a proforma for the health centre monthly returns, and an audit template for the PIH teams to use, I spent last week out and about with the Burera district team performing our first audits, and teaching the health centre accountants how to complete their monthly returns, how to perform bank reconciliations, and so forth.  Initially, it was planned that I would do a couple of visits with each accountant until they are confident with the process, but they have decided they want me to attend as many of the first audits as possible, so I should be kept out of mischief for at least the next month!  This week I am working with the Kirehe district team.  It is pretty fun work as we get to go out and about and see some remote countryside (unfortunately the remoteness almost always makes for a very bumpy journey), and I’m collecting a stash of telephone numbers of new friends I make along the way.  After spending a day grilling one health centre accountant, she gave me a huge hug, thanked me for visiting her, and said she’d never had a British friend before.  Not quite how auditor independence is meant to work, but there we go!

The stock count went well a few weeks back.  We started by counting food packages, which were spot on, but I was sceptical that the stationary cupboard would be so well accounted for.  It is a small room, absolutely crammed full to the roof, with no apparent logic or order.  I was proved wrong.  When I called out 102 blue bic biros, there was a short period of rummaging but low and behold, they had exactly 102 biros!

Otherwise, Excel training continues, and I have been updating and creating finance forms for purchase orders, payment requests, petty cash withdrawals, etc.  We have also updated job descriptions for all the finance team, and have been working with them to ensure they are clear of their roles.  It is the first step towards introducing a performance appraisal system across the whole organisation, the success of which will be interesting to follow.

A doctor who is working on a new sister project in Mali has been visiting for the past few weeks to try and learn lessons from the project here.  He even seems interested in accounting and audit, so I’ve also been spending some time with him, teaching him debits and credits, discussing internal controls and explaining how to account for restricted funds!

A hospital fit for a President

My weekend started in Kigali, with the discovery the local drink of choice, Waraje (Rwandan gin), and an exploration of the city on the back of a moto.  Then early on Sunday morning, I set off with several colleagues on a road trip to the Northern Province.  We stopped along the way for a table football competition, a trip to “MacDonalds” (a small but very popular roadside bbq stall, which sells fried sweet potatoes and goat brochettes), a hike in Parc National des Volcans, and finally to enjoy an evening of wine and cheese by a log fire (given the altitude, it is surprisingly cold up in the north).

On Monday morning, we headed (rather indirectly) to Butaro for the opening of a new hospital by Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda.  

PIH has been working in partnership with the Ministry of Health and the local community to build the hospital for the past two years, following a request by the Rwandan Government for help to bring health care facilities to Burera, the last district in Rwanda which did not have access to a hospital.

Luckily, the President was two hours late, so our detour meant we missed nothing more than an hour or so of sitting and waiting for things to kick off.  When they finally did, there was the token ribbon cutting, followed by speeches by the President, the Minister of Health and Dr Paul Farmer (founder of PIH).  The president then lead a rally down in the community, and the day ended with traditional drumming and dancing back at the hospital.

Since PIH started working in the district in 2008, in a temporary make-shift hospital, the rate of infant mortality in under 5s has more than halved and malnutrition has been cut by over 60%.  The project has also created over 3000 jobs for the population of Burera.  So there was such a buzz of excitement at what can be achieved now the new facilities have opened.  

The hospital really is impressive.  It is situated on top of a mountain, close to Lake Burera.

And rather than looking in at a room full of sick patients, every bed looks out at the wonderful views: 

In terms of facilities, the hospital hopes to become a model of how to deliver health care in rural Africa.  It features an innovative design intended to harmonise with the local environment and reduce the risk of hospital-acquired infections.  It has an emergency department, a full surgery ward with two operating rooms, a neonatal intensive care unit, the list goes on...  It will even be making use of the impressive hills to supply hydro-electricity.

 

I am certainly looking forward to spending some more time up in Burera in the coming months, but for the rest of the week at least, I’m back in Rwinkwavu, as the stock take started today!

Oh, and of course, no official opening celebration would be complete without a huge cake, with a photo of the new hospital on the top...