Please note that VSO is in no way connected with or responsible for the content, comments and observations in this blog: these are solely my own in a personal capacity.
Got up really early and started packing and repacking. My luggage allowance from London is 46kg but only 33kg from Dublin to London, so EVERYTHING heavy has to go in my hand luggage. This makes my backpack 12kg which is heavier than I imagined 12kg would be! I went to the airport with my brother Aindriú and his wife Catherine and my mother Catherine and my nephews Pádraic, Colm and Iain and arrived really early, which was great. Met up with Sonya Fay and Christine Campbell who are the other two Irish VSO volunteers heading out to Rwanda with me. I also got loads and loads of text messages wishing me good luck so apologies to anyone I didn’t get to reply to before I left.
Flight to Heathrow was fine, getting from Heathrow Terminal One to Terminal Three with 46kg of baggage was another thing altogether! However, we managed it and met up with a load of other volunteers, most of whom I had previously contacted through Facebook or email – Tom, Hayley, Heloise, Amy, Andy, Joe (UK), Tina (Germany), Nidhe, Steven, Alain, Susanah, Marjolaine (Canada), Ivana (Slovakia via NY), Danielle (France), Berthe (Netherlands). And Tina Payne, from Sheffield, with whom I will be sharing a house in Gisagara for the next year! The flight to Addis Ababa was eventful enough though I slept through almost all of it. Apparently (so I am told by those who were conscious at the time) we stopped to refuel in Rome and then, when we were about to take off again, they decided there was a technical fault and aborted the takeoff and we spent an extra hour sitting there until the pilot discovered it was actually a faulty bulb that was flashing. Luckily they held our connecting flight in Addis Ababa for us (tough luck on everyone else on the plane who sat for 90 minutes on the runway waiting for us) and then a further 30 minutes delay taking off from there. However, all in all, not so bad and we arrived in Kigali at 1400.
There was a huge reception committee with flowers and greetings and they packed us into buses to bring us to our guesthouse (I mean packed – we really got an introduction to how many people Rwandans figure you can pack into a bus). We dumped our stuff in our rooms and had a quick lunch and then headed off to an Internet café which was just 10 minutes down the road; turned out to be full so we walked another 20 minutes or so to another which was less so. I managed an email to family and a few friends but, because I had emailed over 500 people the morning I left, Gmail has temporarily blocked me from sending too many messages (antiSpam security measure) so I’m not sure how soon I will be able to email again.
One of the volunteers had to go back to the guesthouse by motorbike taxi so Jane asked for a volunteer to go with her and I thought I might as well try it out as I am going to be getting motorbike taxis for the next two years. Well, Lesson Number One in Rwanda: when you take a motorcycle taxi you are NOT supposed to hold the driver by the waist! Not that he was offended but he thought it was SO funny (then I am only a muzungu and can’t be expected to know any better!! Actually, it was fine and quite enjoyable, though, being Kigali, he wasn’t able to go too fast and the road was good – I expect it will be a different matter down the country!! As soon as I got off the bike, I saw the handles at the sides of the pillion which everyone else passing on the road was using (probably the same in Ireland, mind you, I’m just not used to riding on motorbikes!).
Dinner was at seven and was preceded by the most amazing birdsong as the sun set (only excelled by the dawn chorus the next morning). Nightfall, however, wasn’t anything as sudden as I had been lead to believe but it was strange to have pitch dark by seven o’clock in the middle of ‘summer’ (as I still think of it). And then it was an early night, as everyone was pretty much knackered.
This was my first encounter with a mosquito net – luckily my roommate – Joe Walk (that’s Joe and NEVER Joseph) has previously served with VSO in Guyana and was able to teach me all about tucking it in around the mattress and getting in and out without tearing down the whole thing (Joe has also agreed to speak nothing but French to me starting tomorrow, bless him!).
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