11th April 2020

Today I went for a walk to the larger supermarket, which means I get to do a 3 mile walk for exercise.  The main street that used to be throbbing with traffic is now largely empty and there is a police presence on most corners. On my road, I see a cow casually strolling towards to me.  I’ve seen plenty of cows since I’ve lived here, but none in the middle of Kigali.  My landlady later tells me that the cow belongs to the house behind hers, and the cow provides her family’s milk.  Sure enough, later that evening I hearing mooing.

My youngest son is ill, and has a headache so bad he can’t speak to me. The next day we Facetime, he looks awful and has a sore throat and cough.  I hope that he doesn’t have the virus but unless it’s bad enough to go to hospital how would you know.  Rwanda is testing everyone with symptoms and have so far carried out over 11,000 tests on over 8,000 people, 845 samples were tested just today alone, and over 1,000 yesterday.  There have been just 120 cases, of whom 18 have recovered.

Today’s daily update by the Ministry of Health carries a new warning; it is now an offense to not report symptoms of C-19, or to withhold any information regarding tracing of contacts.

Yesterday the UK saw 980 deaths, the highest they have had and more than either Italy or Spain when they were at their peak.