Cat post

In response to many requests, more about the cats...
last time for a while (promise)

they have now progressed to sleeping in the same room, and are sharing food bowls so assimilation is almost complete...this is good as we will be away next weekend

Nev has the blue collar, and Musti the red with bell. Just so we can tell who is who at a glance!







This is a piece of catfood being kidnapped by ants!

Musti

We have a new family member: Musti.

Our dear friend Bettina is leaving (left) Rwanda to go to here hometown of Berlin. Sad news. Her husband is still staying for a few months for work.

They have a cat and a dog (oh, and two children). We are taking over the cat, this way if it doesn't work out we can still give it back, not the we are planning to.

Musti is a female and looks like the twin of Neville, slightly smaller and half a year older. At the moment the easiest way to recognise Mutsi is that she is not wearing a collar.

The name Musti comes from a belgian TV programme. Drawn by a Belgian in 'Dick Bruna' (Miffy) style. See the website (with difficult puzzles)
www.musti.be
Her name might be abused, I like to call her Mutzig (local beer) or muts.
She is very good in languages, she listens as much to our english and dutch as to her german mothertongue! The guard might speak kinyarwanda or french to her.

The introduction went rather well. A lot of sniffing by Musti and Neville staring at her making growling noises at a 2 meter distance. No fighting.

We made Musti sleep in my study, she ate a lot, but spent a lot of time miauwing during the night. Today we decided to let Neville outside and Musti inside, seems to go alright, less stress. Tonight they can have a second introduction.

Big brother

Around Christmas we went for a little walk around the neighbourhood. By the roadside lay a coin. I picked it up to look at it, it was a 50 RWF coin (0.06 Eur). Because it was dirty I threw it back on the street.

When we where 50 meters away a gate opened behind us and a man came out looking around, and sure enough bent down to pick up the coin.

I was so unaware we were being watched. Just a reminder, we are being watched all the time.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU

HAPPY 2010!

Change of address

The postal system will be more automated. This means that as of 1 January we need to use a different PO Box.

Here is the new address

L.P. Zomer and/or H.G. O'Dea
Locatie 308 / HMA Kigali
Postbus 12200
2500 DD Den Haag
The Netherlands

Just to remind you. No food, and please check with us if you want to send anything heavier than 50 grams.

Whem we go to a new post the PO Box remains the same, only the location code and place will change of course.

Cyangugu

Cyangugu is a nice little town split in two areas; one up the hill and the other part at the border. We found Hotel du Lac next to the border, from our hotel room we had a good view on the border bridge. We sat a while to watch life going by and take some photos.



View from our room.



Ladies with their small Sambaza fishes.

After 18.oo the border closes and the streets get rather empty at the border part of town. The other part remains busy with many people walking on the street.

It was sad to see some houses, which could have been nice, were left to rot.



The next day and night we spent at the Peace Hotel. A lovely place with a view over the lake. Luckily we were prepared for the place this doesn't serve alcohol, we had our own little supply.



As the drive back was over the same road, I hope I don't need to explain there were some potholes.

Never mind the potholes

This blog comes with a slight delay, sorry.

We went for the weekend (Friday-Monday) to the south-west of Rwanda, an area we did not visit yet.

We left around ten to be for lunchtime in Butare. There were a lot of people at the roadside because the tour de Rwanda is this weekend. It turned out today etappe was Butare-Kigali, the road we were driving on. Halfway in the well known town Gitarama, we were summoned to another road. We went off the sideroads to come out in the centre at the mean road, just in time for the leader group. People were cheering loudly, the racers were going fast downhill.





The next ten minutes every now and then some racers came past, people cheering for every one of them, even louder for those with a rwandan shirt. The end of the race coincided with the rain starting, it's rainy season after all. People ran off to all sides and we were clear to drive on.



The drive to the entrance of the Nyungwe forest was good, nice road, nice view. However the road became worse every meter, until there was more hole than road. We did see some monkeys at the side of the road. As later became apparent, you don't actually need to go into the forest, the best place to find the monkeys is the side of the road.




There are 6 monkeys in this picture if you look closely.



The tourist office and guest house is at the other side of the forest, so we had no choice but to endure this. When we arrived at the guest house we found out it was fully booked by a group of mostly English people, grump. However we could stay at the teaplantation five minutes up the road, for dinner we had to return, as the teaplantation has just a room. It turned out indeed just a room, no shower, no warm water, broken toilet seat. But you can't complain for 10.000 RWF (12 Euro) and the next hotel an hours drive away. So we went for dinner, which was nice, returned slowly in the dark, driving through the potholes. We opened our bottle of wine and sat outside enjoying the few over the teafields.

We were surprised to see that they knew about Sinterklaas, but I think they weren't good, the next morning the shoes were still empty.



After a good sleep taking the circumstances in consideration we had breakfast at the ORTPN (tourist office) and set off for our walk. We booked the forest walk to the water fall, not the chimp tracking. We started at the edge of the forest, where we left the car guarded by a child. The teafields are stunning, as it is a fully covered low green plant, the hill look like covered in a blanket. The forest walk was lovely, a variety of plants and trees. We saw some big birds and a few monkeys in the distance. The waterfall was nice, but more a landmark than a 'must see'.

We were lucky and it stayed dry all the way to the end of the walk. When we came back to the office we were kindly asked to park the car elsewhere as the prime-minister was on his way. So we paid the guide and hurried off to Cyangugu. It is a mere 20 km drive, but took almost an hour. The man from the ORTPN said they will fix the road next year, I hope he is right. Not only did we have a big rain shower, we also ended up behind a wedding party, which was cool.

Vehicular vocab

Driving in Rwanda leads to some interesting utterances in our car, sometimes urging other drivers / pedestrians onwards, sometimes just insulting them. Some gems lately...

When being cut up on a roundabout - you should have tooted, that was definitely tootable
When a pedestrian walked in front of the moving car - see the big shiny metal thing - it hurts, don't walk in front of it
Crawling up a hill - go on, change gear, I dare you
Idiot
When the car in front suddenly changes lane - ooh, using the magical invisible indicators again are we?
When the car in front is sticking to the middle of the road - pick a lane any lane
when driver on left is more interested in nose contents than road - if you're hungry get a takeaway
When moto in front of car is cruising for business and veering from side to side slooowly - just drive in a forwards motion will you

This obviously has no affect on anyone exterior to our car, but it makes us feel better. Some of the above are translated, and some have been cleaned up for public digestion

The car is now fixed, we went away for the weekend and abused it through potholes, and did something to the exhaust which made the car very noisy, its fixed now, but communication difficulties mean we're still not entirely sure what was wrong, as the guy from the garage told Lon, it was making a big noise, and now its not...thanks!

Balcony and Beer

No, we are not drinking beer on the balcony. They are two unrelated subjects, but I just want to write one blog entry. I also want to put Kabul down, but it doesn't start with a B.

When we came back from holiday we still had a few days relaxing at home. To our surprise we found that the tiles of the balcony lifted themselves. According to our houselord a damp problem. So we spent our days with a man locked on the balcony hammering, how relaxing. Clarisse was good, she only left him in after we woke up, locked him on the balcony and sent him home when she went home. That doesn't change the fact that we had to flee the home on a regular basis for our own sanity. Now the man and his friends relaid the tiles and put a few new ones down in a corner, replacing the ones he broke. As extra service he fixed the squeaky tile in the hall, in a way I liked that tile, gives the house character.



On a different note. Forget the doing business index, the presidential elections or the petrol prices going up; Rwanda is developed: We have a dark beer! And it is nice!

To increase their marketshare from 99.8 to 99.9% Bralirwa introduced a brown beer with the catchy name Turbo King. This 6.5% dark beer comes only in 72cl bottles. I don't know the price, but it has to be closer to the local beers than the 4 Euro for import belgium beers. We might have to try some more, just to be sure.



Before the long wait on the decision where we go we have one week of stress deciding which post we want and writing my motivation. An addendum was promised last Friday, it came only today (Saturday). No extra posts for me to react on, except Kabul. As you might guess, I will not put this down. The bad news is that they need several people in Kabul and I can do three of those jobs, so if nobody wants it, there is a possibility they will send me.
On top of this, somebody had the nerve to put down Lusaka as well, it is so unfair, I bagsied it. I am sure I must be the better candidate though. A shame it is anonymous.
Good news for my collegues, somebody put my position on the list.

Next week I will have a final overview of how many people reacted on every post, and then the wait begins.