So another week has passed, time is starting to fly by! I've moved into my house now which is good. It's hardly luxury accommodation but as with before it is somewhere to sleep, there is no hot water and no kitchen (the only items I found there were a bottle opener and an afro comb) but for £30 a month I'm not complaining. I've got a bike now as well which is useful for getting around, but it's a road bike so isn't particularly well suited to dirt tracks. The roads around my house are being surfaced at the moment, but for now they are muddy gravel which is very sticky. The coffee is still up for grabs about the shower, and there is now another bag on offer if anyone can guess what the shoelace is now being used for. It's in by bedroom, performing a job that would not be required in England.... We have some pets, my housemate Mario is a vermiphile and so has bought his own worm farm with him. They're certainly not as cute as dogs, but they have the advantage of being a bin that doesn't need emptying and they don't need much looking after!
We visited a couple of other coffee washing stations last week, so there is now only one that we'll be working with that I haven't visited. Jean-Marie is leaving for the US in a few weeks so had to go the US embassy to sort his visa, so I spent quite a lot of time waiting around for him. The second washing station I visited was about 90 minutes drive down a dirt track from Kibuye, which is on the shore of Lake Kivu. We arrived in Kibuye at night so couldn't see anything, but the view when I woke up was awesome – I'll try to get a photo up. It was quite bizarre driving along a very bumpy dirt track to see that a fiber optic cable has already been installed alongside it, even when the roads only lead to villages. They've been laid by the South Koreans but aren't in use yet, but rural Rwanda may well end up with better broadband than much of the rural UK once it is in use!
I'm writing this as I wait for a meeting to start, we're currently running 40 minutes late but it doesn't seem to be a problem... I think it might be a bit difficult to get used to running on time once I'm back home. (next day now) The meeting ended up starting about an hour late, which isn't so bad. We were in Kigali (the capital) for a monthly meeting of SPREAD staff which went on and on and on. Originally the plan was to leave at 3, but we ended up leaving at 8.30, but the good news is that we acquired a fridge!
Rather than another Kinyarwandan update, I thought I should write about the complex sign language that drivers use here instead. The speed limit in Rwanda is only 60 kph, and therefore pretty much everyone is always speeding. Because the Rwandan equivalent of a speed camera is the police stood at the side of the road at random positions, drivers signal to each other as they drive past by pointing up (go faster) or down (go slower). When overtaking, lorry drivers help other drivers by indicating left (overtake) or right (don't) which is pretty sensible. At night things become more complicated: for some reason that I haven't quite worked out, sometimes instead of switching off full beams when another car is coming, they switch on the left indicator instead. They also flash their headlights a lot to signal that they are overtaking that they can see another car coming. I'm lucky in that SPREAD drivers are safe and sensible, but that doesn't really protect your from other road users. We had to take evasive action last week when we found a truck overtaking another round a blind corner at night (very sensible) but fortunately the roads are wide enough for three vehicles (just). In Kigali some drivers also like to use this to their benefit by overtaking entire traffic jams, which is always interesting to see.
I haven't talked about food until now either, which is slightly uncharacteristic of me. I haven't been able to cook anything here yet which is annoying me – kitchens are essentially unheard of here as most people cook on charcoal stoves and if you have any money at all you have a house boy to cook and clean for you. As I haven't had a house until recently I've been eating in restaurants which is a little dear but cheap compared to home. The standard meal out is goat kebabs which are generally pretty tasty, if sometimes a bit tough. I've had a very good goat stew with savoury bananas a couple of times as well. There are also many restaurants that have self service buffets for lunch which are pretty cheap, although when eating at them I'm glad that my antimalarial is a broad spectrum antibiotic to keep my guts intact! The local equivalent of ketchup is pili-pili which is mashed up chillis which is very fiery indeed. There's also an oil version that comes in a little bottle, which when I first saw it I thought is was medicine! What I don't quite get is why they have that but don't seem to use any chillis in normal cooking... I'm going to start cooking at home this week, as I need to save money, I'll let you all know what it's like to cook using charcoal power for everything.
Hmm, this has got rather long considering I didn't really think that much had happened last week.
Tusa garuka (I will be back)
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