So I'm late again, partly because I haven't been up to a great deal work wise and because the internet has been even crappier than usual of late. You'll have to make do without pictures again I'm afraid.

Spent (and I emphasise the spent) last weekend in Kigali which was a nice change from Butare. Money evaporates there just like in London even without having to pay to stay somewhere. Had a very good brunch (at 3pm) with some Danish friends – they had some proper bread and made pancakes with nutella. Went for a real pizza in the evening too making it a very good food day (there are pizzas here in Butare, but they are more like cheese on toast and not very good). Don't think I mentioned before that I had my first goat intestine kebab a couple of weeks ago – I didn't order it intentionally (or notice what it was at first) but after a couple of beers it was surprisingly tasty.

Been up North in gorilla country this week working with some students who are studying pyrethrum – flowers which contain insecticide (I think I talked about this before). It's hard to imagine a prettier crop to work with. Annoyingly though, most of the work I did with them so far has been wasted as it turns out that the next harvest isn't until November, which is when they need to have completed the write up by... Quite how nobody worked this out until now, months after they wrote their research proposals is a bit beyond me, but Rwandans are not particularly renowned for their planning abilities. On the plus side though, I was staying in a hotel with a hot shower, which after about two months without one was literally amazing!

As it's been a few months since I started my competition and nobody managed to get the right answers I guess I should tell you what things are being used for. My first shower leaked around the head so that nothing actually came out of the holes – the shoelace was tied around the head making the water come out as it should. When I moved, it got a new lease of life, keeping my mosquito net up (with the help of a nail I found). My internet cable is now used as a washing line – not sure if it will still work but as they only cost £1 it would be no major loss if it doesn't.

Will hopefully be moving to a new and better house soon, to where Jan is living. It's a real house with a kitchen and sofas, rather than our three rooms with no furniture. It also comes with a maid, a guard and hot water, but will only cost a little bit more than at the moment (£80 per month compared to £60). On a related theme, I've got somewhere to live once I get back too!

Learnt a couple of things about bike maintenance last week that I didn't know before – you can fix a puncture without having to remove the wheel and you can use an old inner tube to make a patch, rather than a puncture repair kit. Managed to snap the chain on my bike a week ago – not really sure how as I've never done that before – guess that my legs are too strong. It was interesting to watch a chain being fixed with a screwdriver, a rock, a nut and a spanner as well!

All the coffee we've got so far is now dry and we'll be roasting it this week! I'll let you know how everything goes next time. As I've been waiting ages to post this, we actually ended up doing some roasting today, but only some small samples that we took a few weeks ago. Had a bit of a problem with the main batch as we took it to be milled before roasting (to remove either the pulp or the parchment) but then some people tried to confiscate it off us as we're kind of not supposed to process coffee ourselves. Anyway, we got it back thankfully (we sneaked in whilst a guy was having lunch) so all is good, we just need to find somewhere else to mill it... We got to cup (taste) four of the coffees too – they certainly tasted different which is good, even though three were from the same farm, just processed differently. The natural coffee was very interesting, and not like normal coffee at all – a lot more fruity, with almost a hint of cheese (that sounds bad, but it tastes good). For cupping the samples are very weak, but we're going to try and find an espresso machine somewhere later on and then try the natural in that as it should be even better in that. I'll keep you updated.