17th April 2020

My landlady’s very happy because her eldest daughter is coming home.  She’s at university in US and Rwanda are providing a flight next month to fly their nationals home. Several weeks ago, she was told she should leave the country by US officials but appealed and was allowed to stay. Now that things have progressed from bad to worse, she’d rather come home even though it means going into quarantine for two weeks when she arrives.  My landlady also confides that she has concerns that there may be racial discrimination should she need treatment, especially with all the stories on the news about the way the US are behaving.

We discuss how different things are here – how the government are so open with what is happening and how the Rwandan President has behaved with such dignity and respect for his citizens.  It’s reassuring that we are being informed daily with updates from the Ministry of Health and the Rwandan Police. We can see exactly how many people have been infected, where the cases are, the source, the condition of the patients (most are asymptomatic) and how many recoveries there have been.  

I have also noticed on Twitter that there is an amazing dialogue going on between the Rwandan police and the public, giving directives and responding to questions. Using Google translate, I read that some people are concerned about groups gathering and have reported this, and the police respond by thanking them for the information and reply that they will step up monitoring in the area.  I can’t ever imagine this type of open dialogue going on in the UK, and again it helps to reassure, knowing what is happening and what is being done to support the public.  I also read that there have been some infected workers at a bank not far from me, as a consequence they’ve closed the bank and are asking people to come forward for testing.  There are now close to 1,000 tests being carried out each day.

There have been 850 deaths in the UK today, and 2,500 in the US.  It seems Trump is more concerned with his ratings that these figures, and is even in agreement with people who are campaigning to end lockdown.