Almost One Year

So, I sort of dropped off the face of the planet.

That's what happens when life becomes mundane enough not to warrant a blog entry every couple of days, I guess.

The past month has just been a blur of work mostly.

Tomorrow, I will have been here one entire year! Go figure!

I'll be spending it at Heaven restaurant with Giudi at an election-night extravaganza. I'm forking out an entire FRW 10,0000 (£10) on a slap-up three course meal. I can't afford to, but I want to! Mwaha...hahaha. After 12 months I feel I deserve it as a congratulatory pat on the back.

There's another party Friday. A 'quietly confident' Barak Obama celebratory bash where we're all going to drink a lot of alcohol and cheer at him winning... or drink a lot of alcohol and wonder what went wrong. Either way, I expect to have a hangover Saturday morning.

So, how is work? This thing which has kept me so busy. Well, it's average. At present I'm feeling directionless and marginally despondent. But bahoro, bahoro - little by little. There is potential for productivity.

We've just about finished illustrating the Dictionary of Amarenga y'Ikinyarwanda and I'm translating the instructions into English. It will be such a wonderful thing to have this finally completed, and hopefully an income generator.

Things are a bit of a mess in other respects, though. DFID has cut the funding for the Disability programme and we failed to get EU funding. Which means that we had nine months of funding left to complete a set of objectives, including translating the disability legislation into sign language to take into the villages, hiring a consultant from Uganda to help us develop a national curriculum, and set up a lobbying group.

Due to poor account keeping (just very messy, not dodgy) our funding was delayed coming in for two months, cutting nine months down to seven. When we got it, we were drip-fed. Instead of the full quarter's amount of 15mil FRW we asked for, and were granted, we only received 2.5mil in the bank.

The idea was that we'd report on each bit as we spent it and, once we'd reported, we'd get the next instalment.

Only, RNAD thought the 2.5mil was it. The total. So they didn't report in order to claim more, and just sat around. By the time I found out and explained, another two months had passed. Then, chronic inability to write a decent financial report cut it down again. So, now we're still waiting for funding. Even if we got it tomorrow, we'd have less than five of the nine months left. So, all systems go. Only they're not. We're just sort of twiddling our thumbs about it.

Although, we do have a new accountant, Peace, who is brilliant. She's a business studies student who is really clued in and capable. Hopefully she'll push it all along a bit.

So, I contented myself with running a Strategic Planning workshop, which was good. Strategically it was supposed to start at 10am. It started at 12pm. But it was highly constructive and participatory, and gave enough material to write a 76-page, three-year strategic plan, including a review of the organisation to date. It's an impressive document, but has received no feedback from my boss yet. Whether it's practical or just nice wallpaper, who knows? It includes monthly priority sheets you can stick up on the wall and everything.

But, now it's back to translating the Sign Language Dictionary and watching paint dry.

Just got a call to say tonight's CouchSurfer has found my house okay, and Karzai let him in. Last minute Italian (I think) traveller called Vincent, here to visit his sponsor child. I haven't had anyone stay since Chris last September.

I've been in a major communication slump since the folks went home. What with Mao and all, and so many close friends leaving, I haven't felt very chatty. But I think I'm on my way out of it. It'll be nice to have a Surfer again, and this week's election parties should be fun.

I've got quite a nice week, actually. In the office today, then tomorrow preparing my presentation for ICT2 on Wednesday, delivering Capacity Building again. I delivered it to the last lot and it was a great day, so hopefully it'll be fun again this time. Also helping with a session on Friday, so hopefully only Thursday back in the office. That'll be nice.

Looks like we'll have to move offices again on 20th, as the landlord wants to use it as his house. TIA. Shame though, love having the café right next door. Not many places you can get melange and a fanta for FRW 750 (75p)! Quite like it here.

Other news from Rwanda... well, Laurent Nkunda is still waging war in Eastern DRC. I think that's making international headlines from the number of worried people who have been contacting me.

The headlines make me feel vaguely ill: "Fears of another Rwanda!" they all proclaim... One paper even citing the '1995 Rwandan Genocide'... wow, so interested s/he couldn't even be bothered to do the basic research.

But, fears of another Rwanda? Let's put this into perspective for a minute shall we.

• Rwandan Genocide: 800,000-1mil dead.
• Congo since 1994: Well over 3mil dead.

Another Rwanda? It's already far worse than Rwanda and has been for a very long time.

But, hey, every politician needs an excuse to come here, don't they? First Cameron and his cronies, now Blair and Miliband. The joys. All going into schools with volunteers, exclaiming how terrible it all is, promising to raise awareness back home and stay in touch... then never getting in contact ever again. How predictable. But, still, the pictures looked nice in the papers back home.

Just to reassure everyone, though, the conflict is not affecting volunteers in Kigali. The border town of Gisenyi is still safe to travel to, and, one assumes, the West has got too much invested in Rwanda to let anyone cross the border... Not to mention they're Rwandan rebels causing havoc anyway. But, hey ho.

In other news, we're at 20% inflation, highest in 5 years, everything has doubled in price and the VSO allowance went up by... ooh, twenty qwuid at the start of the year. That didn't factoring in things such as rubbish collection, and the community protection racket for which I pay a privileged FRW 4,500 a month and my friend pays 8,000!

Essentially, the VSO allowance doesn't cut it. Although I'm going to stick out another year, I'm counting down the days until I can start applying for proper jobs. One member of staff responded with the line 'what does volunteering mean to you?'

Well, happily taking a whacking pay cut and, from the situation at present, not-so-happily eating into savings. *shrug*

As you can tell, I'm on a bit of a low tide at the moment. It's my 12-month low and will pick up again. A recent string of mis- and non-communications between RNAD and VSO have left me wondering 1) what I'm doing and 2) what they're doing. So, until I know, I'll just ride the wave and try and stay sane without spending any money.

The post is p'ing me off chronically. Haven't had a parcel in a couple of months and I'm expecting my new VISA card, which expired in October. My account is fine so no one's swiped it, but my bank issued the new card to my registered address in the UK,. from whence it had to be forwarded about a month ago. Can't access my UK account without it. It's tempting to contact the bank and say 'send it here' but, if it is almost here, that would mean cancelling it and re-issuing. Just a pain. How can things take five days to get to the UK and three months to get to Rwanda? What's that about?

My passport's at immigration getting the VISA renewed, all good and timely this year, unlike last year's five-month sitting-in-a-draw delay. Things are certainly improving, only my landlady sent over someone to do some plumbing the other day. They managed to fix my toilet fine, but replaced my leaking tap with one that leaks even worse. Plus they didn't fix the water tank, which has started overflowing again, causing me to get out of bed at 4am in the morning to turn it off.

In order to distract myself, I've been writing like a maniac. I managed to get a High Commendation on a poem in the Faringdon Online Poetry Competition, including publication. I also had a short story published in America, through another online competition with Secret Attic. So, that's uplifting. I spent about 48 hours last weekend writing a feature and a sitcom episode - just for kicks. I'm now talking to a guy who has industry interest in his spec script about co-writing it with him. Not too sure whether I want to do it yet, he's a bit of a nutter, but could be interesting.

So, that's about it really. Not much else to report. Will do an anniversary special tomorrow ;)