Still doing great!

Two weeks have passed since I last posted an entry. The main reason for this is that there was not too much going on: I had some digestion problems (giardiasis, don’t look it up though, it’s pretty gross) for around five days which kept me from travelling, for instance.

I have already found bunch of friends who are my age here in Gitarama: through Madame Astérie, my landlady, I got to know Gilbert, who in turn introduced me to his group of friends, centred around three DJs who run a tiny studio close to my workplace. Besides DJ-ing at parties, their main business is selling people videos and other digital gadgets for their mobile phones, and burning CDs and DVDs. As everyone knows everyone in this town, I’m starting to develop quite a social network myself, finding lots of interconnections between my group of friends and my colleagues. I also got to know the tiny Western community here in the area a little bit, running into two British girls the other day, and (again, through my group of friends) meeting Bart, a néerlandophone Belgian who is working on his thesis here. This Friday we went out: me, the group around the three DJs, Bart, and the Belgian ambassador’s son and daughter who were passing through on a visit with their parents. It was very nice to talk to some fellow Europeans and to dance with them and my Rwandan friends! The DJ even put on some “white” music for us (he thought we’d like Kelly Clarkson, haha). The only thing that annoyed me a little later on were some men I didn’t know who were trying to dance with me all the time. I mean, I’m perfectly comfortable with the local habit of men dancing with each other as if one of them were a girl (there really is nothing homoerotic about it) as long as I know the person I’m dancing with. When it’s some random guy (who is also not very attractive), it gets really annoying, especially when he’s pulling me away from girls and won’t let go of me.

DJ Maurice explains the meaning of PRIMUS to the Belgians

My work here at Uniclécam EjoHeza is also starting to take more and more shape: my main task thus far has been assisting in the creation of a three-year action plan for two of EjoHeza’s ten microfinance cooperatives. This is where my lifelong computer experience comes in handy: I can handle software like MS Word and Excel much more quickly than my colleagues. I have also been asked to do a little research on the influence of the agricultural cycle on savings and deposits at the Muhanga cooperative (that’s here in Gitarama), pretty interesting stuff. A week ago, we also had a celebration, at the cooperative in Kamonyi (on the road to Kigali), where I was the only white person among the 1,500 attendees. The governor of the Rwandan National Bank was also there, and he even mentioned me in his speech (as the action plans I’m working on will be used to for a financing request). And, of course, there was some traditional dancing and singing!

Yesterday I had a cool first-time experience: having dinner in a house without electricity! Monsieur Laurien, the coordinator at Ugama/CSC (the organisation that’s hosting me) took me to hill where his family is from, at some kilometres from Gitarama, and introduced me to his parents (who are in their eighties!) and some of his brothers and sisters. It was very nice to have some amazing-tasting food that had been produced a few hundred meters away on the same hill (except for the rice) by the light of a petroleum lamp.

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