Mwaramutse (good morning)

So, it's a new week so I thought it's time for an update. As Alex kindly pointed out mzungu is actually specific to white people rather than just foreigners. On a related note, I was actually called Japanese this week by a kid, which made me chuckle.

Some fellow Brits visited us last week from the University of Bradford, who are studying a Masters in "Peace Studies" (whatever that is). They were going all around Rwanda but came by to find out how coffee has helped to generate cash for communities after the genocide. We also had a visit from a Kiwi film crew who are making a program about coffee for a show called global radar in NZ. My boss, Jean-Marie showed them his worm farm and talked about soil in a very enthusiastic way (he needs his own TV program about soil in general), which as the students said, made worms sound sexy. We sold the students some coffee that we had helped to roast a couple of weeks ago and then went out for lunch with the profits - that's the way I like to do business!

Work wise, I've been redesigning an experiment examining how fermentation time affects coffee quality. Just in case anyone's interested; the old method contained pseudoreplicates and was going to rely on staff at coffee washing stations following the method, which was quite unlikely since it could involve staying around for hours longer than normal. The new method does away with those problems as instead I'll be there, staying up all night if necessary to get better results. Also managed to cut the number of samples in half overall, which means that it's cheaper to analyse the results as fewer samples need to be cupped (tasted). It's been good to get stuck into something though and feel like I'm actually some help, rather than just tagging along! Visited another washing station on Friday, to mark some trees so that farmers keep the berries the pick from them separate so we can estimate yields in different areas. I did point out that it would seem easier if we just asked farmers how much money they earnt from their crop and how much each washing station processed in a year, but apparently they don't want to say as they might end up paying more tax. Visiting a couple more this week as we need to get them done before the harvest begins (which should be soon).

Met a German guy at a party in the week who is working on trying to compost human shit into fertiliser. He was very proud about experimenting with his own waste, apparently if you look after it right, it reaches 50C and everything nasty is killed and it doesn't smell.

Spent the weekend in Rwanda's capital, Kigali, sampling various nightclubs. Found 5000 francs (£5) on the floor in the first one which made me a happy bunny, especially as it paid for double tequilas for me and my Panamanian friend. Saturday morning was the muganda, which is when all the shops are closed and everyone is supposed to do community work, but it seems to be a good excuse for everyone to party hard the night before and then stay in bed until the afternoon. It's very nice being in a country where even though you are supposed to check out of your hotel room at 10, you can stay in bed until 12 without it being a problem.

Still haven't got my house sorted... currently in negotiations to get the landlord to buy a fridge (well you wouldn't want a warm beer would ya?) but, fingers crossed, next week, it will be sorted. Learnt some more important Kinyarwandan this week - icupa rimwe ryishe umugabo inyanza - which means - one beer killed a man in Nyanza. Unfortunately it means we always have to have at least two beers, something which I am certainly not accustomed to in England, where of course, we have a strict maximum limit of one beer per day. Some local customs just have to be adhered to though don't they!

That's all for now folks. The coffee is still up for grabs btw, the fact that my fix was negated by the shower head being replaced should be a pretty good clue.