Thursday 9th October: Day Thirty-Three in Rwanda

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.

A real nothing day. It turns out that the meeting with the mayor will take place tomorrow afternoon rather than today. Call me a pessimist but when someone postpones a meeting to a Friday afternoon, I reckon the chances of its taking place have considerably diminished! We killed another day between us – lunch in the Lebanese supermarket (really good Cheese Quesadilla made with Lebanese flatbread), cybercafe, hanging around the hotel trying to summon up the enthusiasm to do some work. One nice thing was my first copy of the Economist arrived: I only emailed them about ten days ago to change my subscription and the current issue arrived yesterday (well, it is the issue for September 27th – October 3rd but that is amazing by Rwandan postal standards!).

Another positive thing is that I am going up to Gikongoro on Tuesday to talk to Mans Schram who has been doing my kind of job here for the last two years, especially on education statistics. This should be a huge help in giving me a head start once I start working. Also, Joe Walk who shared a room with me in Amani is coming down later next week to do similar work with Mans so I’ll persuade him to come down here and get a bit of R&R. Soraya is having a party Saturday night in Gitarama so I’ll probably head up for that as well as I haven’t actually been anywhere other than Butare and Kigali since I got here!

Are Hull City really lying third in the Premiership behind Chelsea and Liverpool? Carlisle United reborn (for those of you old enough to remember .........).

Some plants and flowers to cheer things up. The big trees are eucalyptus – the country is covered in them. They experimented with hundreds of different trees to see which suited Rwandan conditions besy and eucalyptus won out, so you find them everywhere. I haven’t the slightest idea what the others are – not a big plant and flower guy!

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.