Different Experiences

On Sunday morning I went to church in the Urukundo children's home (http://hopemadereal.org/our-projects/) about 40 minutes walk from my house. Am amazing project set up by a lone american women in her 80's that looks after and supports disadvantaged children. The most recent member was an orphaned baby, as his mother could not afford to stay the night in hospital, she bled out on a mototaxi on the way back to her house. It was a humbling experience, but also lots of fun, I had a game of basketball with the boys staying there.

Back at Azizi Life, the ceiling fell down in the bathroom. The story in the office goes that I didn't like the way the light through the corrugated plastic made me look in the mirror, so I tore it down. This is not the case I promise, but the big hole has already been fixed. I half cooked my own supernoodles last night, which I believe is a brave and bold and courageous step in the right direction. Had my first sit down meeting about my work with my boss so far, it went ok, so I am here for at least another week, I am sure many of you will be glad to know!

(bet the weather in the UK isn't as good as it is here, just saying :)   )

Fun times

Today Tom took me to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda and it was certainly an adventure ...

We got the one hour bus journey in, which cost about a pound, and the meaning of old person talking loudly down the phone was re-defined to me, at the cost of my eardrums. Our first stop was the African Bagel company, an oasis of western food, which to no real surprise was were most of the white people in Kigali were. As one fellow foreigners commented, if a terrorist wanted to strike against the western presence in Rwanda, this was the place to do it. Other boring stuff happened ...

Then we got a moto ride (motorbike taxi), which was great fun, to the bank for me to change money and visited the supermarket, where I splashed out on some super noodles and a four pots of yoghurt.

Luckily my co-habitants in the office are very helpful, I was taught how to wash my clothes and cook super noodles, which no joke are very important skills I needed to learn! Emily is currently multitasking being one of my favourite humans in the world at the moment as well as being a masters student doing international development, she is doing a four month internship as part of her course with Azizi Life. She has a couple of blogs which are more interesting than this if you wanted to check them out, this is funny http://saylovely.blogspot.com/2011/09/dancing-monkey-bear.html and this is interesting http://www.newlinweds.blogspot.com/. Enjoy!

First Few days

A lot has happened so I will share a few highlights:

On my first proper evening I went to a monthly "musical sing along" event with most of the other volunteers from lots of different organisations, as you could guess most were women, in fact all were women apart from me and Tom (my boss).  We watched the film Oklahoma, which although this phrase my be overused, was one of the worst things I have ever seen. This sort of hell happens when you leave groups of women on their own in a foreign land for a long period of time, they went mental about singing, it was quite surreal. But it was good to meet some other people.

Tom gave me a whistle stop tour of Gitarama. Suprises: they have a basketball court, not quite like one in England, but hopefully I will be able to have a game there once or twice. There is a half decent supermarket, that sells lots of things. It is quite a safe place, so I walk around on my own all the time without worrying, apparently :s .

So far, I have ended up having two tasty dinners cooked for me, and I think I am going to a restaurant tomorrow, so I just have to survive on stale bread till them. Need to get myself into a routine, which i will endeavour to do at the start of next week. Thanks for reading, well done if you got this far :)

I'm here!!!

Lying in bed, typing as an am staying in my own room :) next to the office and have wifi, absolute luxury. Sharing a bathroom with a young american couple, it feels a bit like how I would imagine hall accomadation in Uni is like. I have a bed, bookshelf, some pegs,  a chair and a side table. Its looking like I am going to have to do a lot of cooking, which I think will be the most challenging aspect of the trip but, Life is Good. The real work begins tomorrow ...     also thanks for prayers, I am really feeling their effects :)

Superb Schipol

Well Hello there,

I have arrived in Schiphol airport in Amsterdam and found myself some 6 euro for half an hour wifi, bargain. I flew on a KLM cityhopper, a tiny plane, a bit like a less cool Concorde. I will locate myself in the “comfort seats” which are leather slightly reclined seats, to hopefully get a good night’s sleep before my flight at 10 o’clock before my 10 o’clock flight to Kigali where the adventure really begins. Feeling quite relaxed and a bit excited.  Might settle down to a bit of QI before I hit the hay.   

Highlights so far = 1)the awkward moment when you have to be “searched” they are very invasive these days 2) the awkward moment when someone sits in your seat 3) the awkward moment when you look like a complete amateur, unable to understand the basic etiquette of the stewardess handing you a drink on a tray, trying to take the tray, followed by her wrestling it firmly back off you.

This fairly boring blog post which will hopefully followed by an incredulous entertaining one when I reach Rwanda. Bye for now, I think In will certainly be less cheery tomorrow if I don’t sleep.