Rwandan Diary: Day 5

This was our final full day in Rwanda. It started with David Cameron addressing the Rwandan Parliament. Apparently ITV News said that there was hardly anyone there. Not true. I counted around 40 MPs, including the heads of all the leading committees, and there were a lot of press and NGO representatives present too. The speech didn't get off to a good start when all the lights went out for twenty seconds. Cameron made a good joke about it and moved on. It was a strong speech, launching the Globalisation Commission Report.

Next stop was the Presidential compound where David Cameron spent an hour with President Kagame, who has led Rwanda since the 1994 genocide. Apparently they agreed that Kagame would address the Tory Party Conference in October. So with Governor Schwarzenegger there too, Blackpool will resonate to the Arnie & Kagame roadshow.

This afternoon it was back to the Girubunto orphanage project which we visited on Day One. They've certainly made a lot of progress on building a new classroom and renovating the rest of the buildings. Andrew Mitchell is shown helping build a climbing frame, while Vicky Ford (below) shows off the classroom she has renovated. David Cameron was shown round and then did a round of media interviews including one for our film on the trip for 18 Doughty Street. We have nine hours of footage so far, so it's going to be quite a task to edit it down.


In the late afternoon Alice, my trusty camerawoman, and I hired a taxi to go out to a couple of villages to see what life is like outside the capital. At the first one I'm not sure that everyone was pleased to see us so we made a bit of a hasty getaway, but at the second one we were mobbed by both children and adults. Our taxi driver spoke excellent English. Both his parents were killed in the genocide and he is the head of the family, supporting his two younger sisters. He exists on $300 a month. He can't afford to buy a car (a Toyota Corolla costs $80,000 here!) so he rents one every day. But by comparison, he's well off. He said he was totally committed to rebuilding his country and was proud that everyone was pulling together.

One thing you notice here is that there is a total absence of litter in the streets. The government has banned plastic bags and on the fourth Saturday in the month everyone turns out to clear up their local neighbourhoods.

After returning to Kigali we found a local crafts centre, where I spent rather a lot of money on what I can only describe as shirts that Nelson Mandela would be proud to wear. I thought they'd go well with my Duchamp ties!

In the evening we all went out for a Chinese. Bearing in mind that most of us have got some sort of stomach upset (or worse) I wasn't sure that was a very good idea - especially as I don't like Chinese! The bill for eight of us came to $54. We tend to tip rather heavily here. Later on we met David Mundell MP and some of the volunteers at the Republika nightclub

I had to get back to the hotel for midnight to do a Radio 5 Live interview on Gordon Brown's first month. It seems very strange to do interviews from Rwanda, but I think it went OK. I'll leave the last word on this blogpost to the Guardian's Will Woodward...

Mr Cameron's 32 hours in Rwanda may have looked bad at home; here, however,
it has felt more positive.

Too right it has.