I forgot to take a photo of the house, so that will have to wait a while. Got back home on Tuesday night to find that the water wasn't working... I mentioned that they are surfacing the roads before - somewhere along the way a pipe got broken. Fortunately our landlord lives next door and he woke me up on Wednesday by banging on the gate for fifteen minutes (he does have my mobile number) and gave us a big bottle of water. It was fixed within a couple of days which was lucky – fortunately we live in the rich part of town so somebody could probably pull some strings.
Had dinner with the governor of the province last Tuesday, he's the cousin of a friend of Jean-Marie's, who is the head of the organic farming movement here (very much in it's infancy) and he wanted us to explain why organic coffee is a good idea. Jean-Marie is visiting Texas for three weeks later this month so I'm going to have some spare time so will try to put together a report explaining organic coffee, and who knows maybe something might change.
The genocide began 17 years ago this week and there are events to commemorate it, starting last week and going on until next week. Quite strangely, I put on my only purple pair of socks on the first memorial day, not knowing that purple is the Rwandan colour of mourning. Everywhere is closed in the afternoon which makes things quite difficult – right now I don't have any water or toilet paper, but we'll get by I'm sure!
Got up at 6am on Friday to go visit some farms where they are planting more coffee trees. It was a bit of an early start but the weather was good and the views made it worthwhile:
This lady was the owner of the best coffee trees that we saw that morning. Jean-Marie was so pleased with them that he thought she should be rewarded so gave her 2500 francs (£2.50). Cash crops are often berated in the UK for decreasing food security, but to see how important that cash was to her, made me realise that that point certainly doesn't apply here. There's a hell of a lot of work to be done though to get every farmer to be like her - her plants had maybe 10 times as many berries on than average, and even that can be improved.
I spent the weekend in Bujumbura – the capital of Burundi. Had to pay $40 for a 3 day visa which was annoying (it used to be $20 for the visa and $20 for the customs officer) which makes me appreciate coming into Rwanda for free. I'll have to go somewhere else before I leave as I can only stay in Rwanda for 90 days and getting a proper visa sound like a lot of effort, anyway that's a bit of a tangent - Jean-Marie's wife is Burundian and has lots of family and friends there so we were well looked after. I should have looked at a map first (maybe I would have done if the internet had been working) because I didn't realise it was on the shore of Lake Tanganyika so I could have gone for a swim. Spent most of Saturday afternoon sat on the beach though which was very nice, there's a fish called makeke which is only found in Lake Tanganyika so I had one of them. It actually tasted strangely similar to mackerel though. A fair few other mzungus had also left Rwanda to go to Bujumbura for the weekend as it is the memorial week, I even found some fellow unwongereza (English) people which was the first time since arriving! There was a pretty angry storm whilst I was at the beach (such a shame as I had to buy a beer and wait it out) which I thought you'd maybe like to see:
It was quite a bit hotter in Bujumbura than here in Rwanda as it is at a lower altitude. The weather in Rwanda is pretty much perfect though – it doesn't really ever get too hot or too cold! It's the rainy season at the moment and it rains a little bit most days but often it comes down hard for an hour or so and then is sunny again. I jinxed myself on Friday by asking Jean-Marie if it ever rained in the evening – about 20 minutes later it began to pour down and continued to for hours!
Rightyo, think that's all for now folks. Don't forget to let me know what you're up to!
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