OK – so Friday wasn’t as finished as I thought it was! We decided to send Ephraim for water: he was out back with two friends. He said it would be RWF200 and we said fine: when we left the room we heard the hysterical laughter we will become accustomed to when we have fallen for some outrageous price hike! (Having said that, Ephraim has continued to bring us water ever since at no extra charge so that may have been just to impress his friends). We set up the water filters but they are INCREDIBLY slow. Also we couldn’t boil the candles (that’s what the filtering mechanisms are called) so the water that eventually comes out is very chalky. I decided to use my Steripen that I had bought in The Great Outdoors and it works really well: you take a litre of water amd then insert the SteriPen. It emits UV radiation for 90 seconds and sterilises the water. Then I pour it through a few layers of muslin to filter out any impurities and it tastes great. So far so good. Now I do three litres every morning as soon as I get up and that is what we use for cooking and drinking. As long as the batteries hold out we’re fine for water! I had somewhat less success with my Powerchimp – a mobile battery that is suppsoed to charge mobile phones and other equipment. My phone is almost flat at this stage so that is something I will have to be careful about.
Ephraim joined us and tried to teach us some Kinyarwandan: we didn’t pick up much vocabulary but he certainly corrected our pronunciation a lot. They don’t seem to pronounce the final vowel in words here, unlike in Kigali. He’s a really nice kid (figure about 14-15) but we are not sure if we are supposed to be paying him or not. We will have to sort that out once we know what we are actually doing ourselves!
We skipped supper and then considered our situation. We don’t know where we are living or what our jobs are or when these are likely to be sorted out. We are still living out of suitcases and all our possessions are in Tina’s room, so I have to get into her room if I need anything. We can’t set up our mosquito nets (luckily it seems to be far too cold here for mosquitos, though I should have bought thicker blankets in Kigali!). On the other hand, people here are extremely nice, we have a roof over our heads and enough to eat (and we always knew variety is not an aspect of Rwandan eating habits) and it looks like things are on the way to getting sorted out.
Murabeho!
Thank you very much to all those who have supported my ongoing fundraising effort. I will be continuing my fundraising for VSO for a few more months so, if you would like to contribute, please go to www.mycharity.ie/event/ruairi.
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