Mr. Lova Lova

Amahoro Stadium set up for Shaggy

Goodness, it's been a whole week since I last posted.

Possibly one of the boringest weeks on record. Went in Monday, bundled up all the remaining signs for the dictionary and took them home. Spent the next three days finishing all the English translation for them, including signs for: sex, penis, testicle, fart, bra, knickers and 'gorilla's buttock'... I mean, really, did that warrant a sign all of its own?

I took that in on Friday and Léon and Gerard have started translating the Kinyarwanda. I'm a little worried as, for each 3-point instruction I wrote, there's about one line of Kinyarwanda. I'm pretty sure it's not that economic a language. But, I've done my bit :)

Had an interesting person pop by the VSO office Monday afternoon, an American planning to apply for a scholarship to study the standardisation of sign languages. Was excellent meeting him and chatting about sign language linguistics. I haven't had a conversation like that in a while.

Thursday night, I met up with Cathryn at SoleLuna for pizza and a few drinks. There's absolutely no sign of Christmas here, except for an horrific Coke advert: a black Santa on a motorbike with the slogan 'Celebrate the Brrrrr season'. 

1. There is no cold season here - it never gets brrrr 
2. Most people/kids here have no idea what Santa's all about - most kids certainly don't get presents and 
3. It's not even a clever advert; something like 'Celebrrrrrrate the season' might have worked - so Coke, you suck.

Anyway, no sign of Christmas, so I've taken to eating as my decadent seasonal addiction. SoleLuna, then Friday night Cathryn and I went for a slap-up dinner at Republika, then headed up the road to Freddy's bar to see J playing. B was also there. It turned into an excellent night, quiet but fun. Hopped a moto home around 12:30, who wouldn't stop talking to me and telling me he loved me; two police stops (unusual) and bed.

Today, I headed to town to get my money for Sierra Leone (this Thursday!! Eeeep), grab cat food et al., and had lunch with Cathryn at Bourbon. Plenty of eating. I'm spending money like water on food.

Then I bought me a ticket to go see Mr. Boombastic himself, Shaggy, who is playing at Amahoro to mark MTN's 10th anniversary. Starts in about 20 mins, but I'm going with Lies who's picking me up at Chez Lando after a meeting at 9pm - should be warming up by then. Hirut may also be coming. We went completely crazy and went for the VIP tickets - FRW 20,000 each! The cheapest are 2,000. Where else would you ever get to see Shaggy for £2?

Anyway, really looking forward to it. Decided I had to do something to mark the festive season and the wind-down to holiday time. My last weekend in Rwanda in 2008 :)