Weary and bleary eyed
on Rose Hardman (Rwanda), 27/Mar/2011 07:23, 34 days ago
Heather, Julia(2) and I headed to Ngororero on Friday evening. The bus journey was interesting as they were trying (and achieved) to fit 6 of us on our seat which really was only designed for 3 and normally takes 4. Heather, Julia(2), me and another woman all managed to get our bums on seats. Then a man decided to drape himself across us, whilst another sat on the woman’s knee. Judging by her face she neither knew this man nor wanted him on her knee. I lost feeling in my leg after about ten minutes but as I wasn’t using it at that time it didn’t seem to matter. Luckily the leg was still there an hour later when the two men finally got off the bus after we had got to know each other a little too well!We were heading to Ngororero to help Pauline in her quest to put it on the map. Obviously our presence will help to do that! We were also there to celebrate St Patrick’s Day again. Pauline had received a parcel of St Patrick’s Day goodies too late for us to enjoy them at St Patarama and so she decided to have another party- why not! There were 14 of us in total over the course of the evening; 2 VSO, 2 Canadian Co-op, 3 Peace Corps, 1 Engineer who didn’t have a border, and 6 Rwandans. It was a great evening where apparently I made one of the Peace Corp’s time in Rwanda by saying ‘The Beatles’ in a scouse accent. Excellent.Pauline and me and St Patrick's Day goodiesFeeling a little worse for wear the next morning Pauline, Heather, Julia(2) and I set to work on a power point presentation for Michael. Michael is leaving at the beginning of April and he was having a little leaving do that evening. Pauline had asked me to help as she was finding PowerPoint a little more than annoying. Unfortunately I got it in to my head that we had to have the‘This is your Life’ theme tune to introduce the Power Point. I’m not sure which Pauline ended up finding more annoying, Power Point or me! Luckily Heather was on hand to help her make the Power Point. I never did manage to add the theme tune to the Power Point either!Heather and I then had to hurry to Kigali as we were meeting the VSO crowd at The Manor for Louise’s birthday. I had never been to The Manor before. It was like a little piece of luxury. We went for a swim and then had hot showers and dried our hair with hairdryers! I then ate hummus and olives. It was AMAZING. That evening we headed to Lalibela, an Ethiopian restaurant in Kigali. They had anall you can eat buffet which was lovely but unfortunately I had filled myself up on hummus! We then sat round the fire chatting until the owner of the restaurant offered us a lift back to the hotel. Get in!Heather and I were sharing a room in AEE. We’d been upgraded earlier that day because the room we were supposed to be in had no light. However, as I was getting into bed that evening I realised that the mosquito net didn’t reach the bed. I decided that it was too late to say anything to the staff and also we didn’t want to lose our en-suite room! So instead I started a little mission to get the mosquito net lower involving coat hangers and jumping. It took two attempts, after the first attempt ended up falling on top of me. Heather and I were both really tired and finding everything hilarious. Heather than managed to fall asleep sitting up and then ended up yelling out in her sleep. I then had a dream that someone was coming into our room in the middle of the night and ended up yelling too. So all in all it was an eventful evening!The next day, a little bleary eyed from the previous night’s shenanigans, we headed off to St Etienne, the English speaking church, with Emma and Cam. Things didn’t go completely to plan as my moto driver got lost (for an hour in the rain!) and Heather’s moto driver broke down and Cam’s stayed with it. So only Emma made it on time. I eventually made it there an hour late after taking two motos, both of which got lost and finally relying on a small boy to show us the way. I ended up sitting next to a very well dressed small child who was having great fun seeing how many times she could fall off the chair and have the ‘muzungu’ catch her! She stopped finding it fun when I didn’t manage to catch her! Luckily there was no lasting damage...