Thursday 1st January to Saturday 3rd January: Days One Hundred and Seventeen to One Hundred and Nineteen in Rwanda.

THURSDAY

Well, a nice New Year’s Day it was too. Once I got back home to Gisagara (having bought bread) I had a nice relaxing day reading (there not really being anything else to do on a public holiday in Gisagara). The area outside my house is a real tip from the market the other day – papers and plastic and all sorts of rubbish lying around. So I stayed at the back (where the view is anyway!) and decided to pretend it wasn’t there!!

FRIDAY

Woke up this morning at 0530, bright and cheerful and ready for work! Quick cold shower, banana sandwich and then off. I actually got to work so early, there wasn’t another soul there. Not a soul. And so it continued until around 0745 a security man came by and informed me that the goverment had announced yesterday that today was to be a holiday for all public workers. However, when I remarked that I was supposed to meet Francois, he siad ‘Oh, he’s here, he just arrived’!

So, there was Francois who had come out to the office to see if I was around (if I hadn’t been he was going to call to the house); however, with no generator on and no keys to any of the offices, there wasn’t a lot we could do. And, with no petrol, I couldn’t suggest using the generator. So we arranged to meet later in Butare and go over the school statistics and redeployment figures. He also told me that school opening for the next term had been changed from the 5th to the 12th January – thank God for that!

So he dropped me back to the house and said he would see me in Butare at 1700. So I reappeared, much to Alexandre’s surprise and decided to spend the morning doing my laundry, which had really been piling up. It’s amazing how much laundry you can do in comparatively little water if you really think it through properly! Five shirts, five pairs of underwear, three pairs of socks, three t-shirts/football shirts all in about 20 litres of water. My nerve quailed at the sheets – they’ll have to wait for next time, and anyway I don’t have that much clothesline space!

Deo collected me at 1030 and dropped me in Butare. Lunch in Matar (Oh Matar!) which was its usual delightful self. I rang Andy in Kibuye to see if they were going to Kigali tomorrow or not and to wallow in a little self-pity over having cancelled my trip there for my now non-existent meetings! Andy assured me they were having a rotten time, the weather was miserable and I wasn’t missing anything and they would see me in Kigali soon. (Alfred: not sure just how serious Andy was being there, just a hunch!). Then Sonya texted to see if I was coming Sunday as she has people staying until Saturday, which is when I thought I needed to be there to mind the cats. So maybe I’ll go up Saturday and stay with someone else or I’ll wait until Sunday – no worries.

Meanwhile it is now 1647 – let’s see if Francois turns up or rings or ... anything!!

.......

Well he did! And we had a good work session – we finalised all the redeployment plans: teachers are being moved all over the place in a way that would cause a complete riot back at home. Francois went off with copies of all my files on his flashdisk. I went up to the Giant Animal Pub (not sure what it’s real name is but it has loads of giant wooden animals all over the place) for a drink and an Omelette Speciale (they do a serious Omelette Speciale there, RWF2000 but massive and with lots of meat in it). Their TV seems to be permanently tuned to the Liverpool FC TV channel which is a bit wierd but what the hell!!

SATURDAY

Not a lot to tell about Saturday. Nice quiet day overall. Set up a database for the adult illiteracy statistics I will be working with when I get back from Kigali; had lunch in the Motel Ineza; talked to Suzanne who was able to find her malaria medication (her doctor thinks she has come down with malaria, poor thing), (Alfred: do you all REALLY want to know EVERY tiny detail of his daily life? I think not! Brief is better; being concise is being nice; short and sweet; how many hints do I have to drop?). Ok, point taken.

One really big news: my mother’s package finally arrived!!!!! Yeah – loads of spices and seeds, plus peanuts, pistachios, a grater, batteries for my water purifier (exactly the right kind!) and anti-fly covers for food dishes (Alfred: Wow! That’ll keep those ******* fruit flies off the bananas! At last!) I can only imagine my mother’s glee if she finally manages to turn me into ...... a gardener! Of all the things I never ever ever ever imagined myself becoming ........................... But I now have seeds for parsley, coriander, scallions, peas, beans and nasturtiums (the pods are really nice and peppery in salads and the flowers are decorative, though they don’t taste of much). There are loads of spices and – almost miraculously – the spices MT sent me earlier are all different!! Going to have to share these out among my friends – thus making me even more popular than before!!!! (Alfred: ............ words fail me; I swear, someday .....)