Grenades and Guests

Well, lookie here. Haven't been out the country a month and people are already blowing themselves up:

Kigali — The Rwanda National Police (RNP) is holding a number of suspects alleged to be part of Sunday night grenade attacks in Kigali city but has declined to reveal details of the arrests.

The attacks left more than 16 people injured most of them sustaining minor injuries. Only seven were still admitted at Kigali University Hospital (CHUK) by the time we went to press. - New Times 30/12/08

It says on there it's believed to be part of the DRC conflict, but someone else said it was near Gisozi where the grenade was thrown last April. Not a great omen.

Anyway, welcome back. I went to the shops to get some food and felt my shoulders tensing already. I'd become accustomed to just walking into a club or a bar or down the street like any other normal human being. In Sierra Leone not one person walked into a lamppost staring at me! I felt so normal. Two seconds in Rwanda and back to 'mzungu! mzungu!' and full-on ogling. Yuck.

Oh, well.

Sonya headed out in the morning but left some stuff here. She went to the AEE Guesthouse with Els, down the road. VSO are paying as it's work-related. I spent the day working my way through 125 e-mails, weeding out the Viagra ads.

Sonya popped back in the evening to collect her stuff, and Ruairí also dropped by after that to say 'hi' as he was in town. He's going to stay over at mine in a couple of weeks for the next VSO Family Dinner, to welcome the newbies. Apparently, they've had real trouble recruiting due to the recession. Out of about 10 Education vols supposed to be coming, only 4 are now coming. Might give the PO a chance to practice volunteer management and housing before upping the intake again. Not all bad.

So, off goes Ruairí and there's me, still smelly and unwashed because I can't be arsed, when I get yet another knock on the door.

"Hullo?"

It's Eric of all people, fresh out of a car crash! He got back to Kigali, his bags didn't, so he was spending the night in town to try and reclaim his luggage the next day. Meanwhile, a guy at the airport offers him a free lift here and then proceeds to ram his car headlong into the one in front! Wrote both cars off but, thankfully no damage to Eric.

We have a natter and he suggests the pub so, making a supreme effort, I get myself washed and dressed and we head over to this lovely little place I didn't even know existed. He was planning to stay with a colleague who's also in Kigali for the night, so we all met up there. His colleague, Viatol, is absolutely lovely, and we drank a lot of beer and babbled bollox for a good few hours. Viatol played a game where we all had to liken ourselves to a pint of beer, then I played the heathen 'oath, boast, toast' game and we finished by inventing unique ways of greeting each other, like secret handshakes. It was a very surreal night. Eric ended up crashing at mine.

So, in the two nights of being back, I haven't had one to myself yet - but I'm not complaining. It's been fun.

He poddled off this morning and I had another extremely lazy day, mostly writing this blog to catch up on three weeks of 'stuff'. I agreed to meet Firmin from Kivu Writers at 4pm as he wanted some advice. I said La Planet, but I stepped out of the house and start walking there when I got this 'sense' that something wasn't right. I'm wondering what, when I look up and see that everything is closed, like memorial week come early. I turn to scratch my head when Firmin comes bounding towards me.

"What's going on?" I ask.

"I don't know" he say, and we come to the conclusion that it must be because Rose Kabuye has gone back to France today. She was bailed over Christmas, but agreed to go back. So, we held the chin-wag at my place.

Ah, well. Here's to a prosperous and peaceful (heavy emphasis there) New Year.