Boats and Goats Episode 2

The building works...

To continue with the journey... we left the village with the building works very much under way and the classes already started. 


Wonderful memories of my sister and I doing the 'Hokey Cokey' with new friends and using 'Heads shoulders, knees and toes to teach English (parts of the body) This song can be heard the length and breadth of Rwanda!!

The Hokey Cokey 

So, back to the boats and goats...

My most challenging journey is a continuation of my favourite journey. We left the little boat and walked over the hill to the next inlet so that we could board the big boat to the market in Kibuye. Our friends carried our belongings into the boat and we said ‘Good bye’ or in my case ‘Farewell and see you soon’

The walk over the hill

The big wooden boat takes lake- side dwellers up to the market in Kibuye, picking people up from various points on the hillsides, as it makes its way down the lake.  A boat journey that would take 2 hours in a private hire boat takes 4 hours and is very very crowded by the time it arrives at its destination.

The empty market day boat

Women with babies on their backs and bananas on their heads; lean muscular men with great sacks of cassava roots; smartly dressed students travelling back to school; wide eyed toddlers and babies; toothless  old women with grins as big as their beams. All kinds of baggage- our now almost empty suitcase which we’d brought full of exercise books, text books and curriculum documents and teaching aids to leave in the village was on the roof of the boat, along with Jack’s grass mats that were made by a lovely girl in the village. He’s taking them home to the UK as presents for friends – each one represents a day’s wages for the artisan. At every stop on the lake more and more people and bags, goats etc were loaded onto the boat – more sacks of cassava, pineapples, mangoes, potatoes were added to the pile, goats and chickens were pushed in together.

The boat began to list to one side as people shifted around to find more space. The last hour was desperately slow and arduous. But at last we arrived at the market landing stage and, what chaos greeted us there!

The best bit was that we were on dry land again and out of the suffocating crowd. The second best bit was the noise and clamour as pigs were being loaded on an enormous deep hulled boat going to Congo. These pigs did NOT want to go on that boat – what a racket!!! Squealing and honking and grunting as the men pushed, pulled, lifted and threw those great beasts into the hull of the boat.  More than one made a bid for freedom – at one point I looked up and saw what I thought was a hippo in the water, but no, it was a pig swimming furiously away! However he soon turned round and swam back to the shore.

Later on I realised if we hadn’t had that awful journey we wouldn’t have had that great experience of the crowded quayside. That day began with a beautiful dawn journey, followed by a sad farewell and a frightening journey culminating in a sight so comical as a pig swimming in the lake. We were ready for a rest and, yet again, the beautiful Lake Kivu had shown me another aspect of its personality.

The peace and tranquillity of Home St Jean awaited.