I’ve decided that I like people called Alphonse. My vet is called Alphonse and he’s lovely, having saved Shue’s life, and yesterday I met another lovely Alphonse who runs Fountain Publishers Rwanda Ltd. I’d passed the sign whilst going to buy glasses for D’s birthday and decided to check them out with regard to the Sign Language Dictionary. Lovely offices, and he’d lived in Uganda a long time so his English was thankfully excellent.
We had a good chat about preparing the dictionary. He's going to get back to me with a quote on Monday, hopefully.
The rest of the day was a bit awful. I've major mucked-up. I've lost the receipts from our IT training - all the signatures that show we'd handed out the transport funds. I'm so annoyed with myself because they've been here in front of me for an entire month and I didn't photocopy them. The one day I went to do it and they've gone. I have an absolutely awful feeling that my domestic has 'tidied' them... possibly into the bin. They did just look like scraps of paper :o/
So, minor panic. Going to have to stall for time and get everyone to fill out signature sheets. At least that will look a bit more official. Ho hum. Problem being that two of our lot are out of the country at the moment.
The irony is that I'm supposed to be giving a presentation to the next Disability Working Group on the role of a volunteer in fundraising. Slide 42: the role of the volunteer is not to lose the receipts that prove you've spent the money...
Oh, the shame!
I'm currently trying to rewrite the budget for our next year's funding. It needs a bit more detail and a better breakdown of the costs. Getting there slowly.
Today is a national holiday: Independence Day, to celebrate Rwanda's part in ridding the world of tentacled, bad-ass aliens... err, and Belgium colonialists. Probably going to plod on with the budget though. Nice quiet day.
I went over to Martine's in Nyamirambo last night with Mel and had a lovely meal at Panorama. I received some very nice new clothes. Martine's daughter brought some out to give away. Not totally ethical that I should pinch them perhaps, but you just can't get clothes here for the most part. So, we couldn’t help having a root through. Clothing blind orphans... and VSOs. I found two very nice tops: a flowery boob tube and a hippie halterneck, plus some 3/4-length smart trousers. Very happy, and I've gone down a dress size! Huzah.
Also discovered eBay the other day. Ordered a bra and swimming costume - my other one is rotting slightly after Lake Muhazi! With postage costs and all it really isn't that cheap - all very fiddley. Plus, it'll take a couple of months to get here.
I'm quite irritated by the internet at the moment. I was complaining to Suite101 about the length of time it takes to upload articles to their site. It took me three hours to get one online with my dinky USB modem. The reply came back as:
I'm quite irritated by the internet at the moment. I was complaining to Suite101 about the length of time it takes to upload articles to their site. It took me three hours to get one online with my dinky USB modem. The reply came back as:
"It is unfortunate that you still have to use dial-up because website technology has advanced to the point where dial-up cannot keep up with it."
Which tipped me over into a rant that the woman didn't fully deserve. But it does piss me off a bit, the way the internet is becoming yet one more advanced tool which is separating the minority developed, and the majority developing, worlds. The language being mostly English is a problem, I suppose, for about 70% of the world’s population, maybe more? But the speed of connection is the biggest thing - at least if you can view a page you can get it translated. Most sites now are so heavy it's impossible to view them with dial-up unless you've got a spare five hours to wait for it to load. The Couch Surfing website is a great one because it gives you the option of 'high', 'medium' or 'low' bandwidth. I mean, how hard is that for a room full of web developers sitting around at Google, or S101, or a thousand other sites?
Blah. But anyway... oooh, public holiday :)
Rose is coming over later. She's been off and found out what we need to do in order to set up an NGO. I'm quite excited to see what we've got. I've also found a potential job that she might be interested in. One of the café's in town is advertising for staff and she speaks Kinyarwanda and English, so it might be of interest to her.
For now, I'm off to stroke my new clothes again and then wash some undies. It's a glorious day today so I shall pop them out on the line and they'll be dry in no time.
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