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| Pasadena, Gikondo |
Well what an interesting night last night.
Week's been fairly slow work-wise but manic otherwise. Finally wrestled a green card out of Immigration. What's the point of making people wait until after 2pm if, after two weeks, you're still stapling it together when they arrive?
Aaaaanyway. MTN seem to be doing pretty well the past couple of days on the whole, which left a gap in the market for duffest company in the country, which was happily filled by BCR. I mentioned the other day that, after waiting half-an-hour to get service at the Kisimenti branch, my friend got to the desk only to be told 'sorry, we can't deal with signatures today' (as you have to cash a cheque to take money out). Well, I spent 20 minutes waiting like a lemon in the Novotel branch before someone thought to tell me "Oh, sorry, we only do deposits here, you can't take any money out" - !!! Since when did a bank stop being a bank? "Okay, where can I take money out?" - "Remera." "Remera? That's miles away" - brief pause, thoughtful silence - "Oh, or there's the one over the road."
Heehee. One thing Rwanda has certainly taught me is patience - for some things (others it's definitely gnawed away at).
Last night I met up with my friend David from salsa. We had a really good natter and a couple of draft Mutzigs. He works for an NGO that works with street kids and former prostitutes. They've got a scheme running to try and place street kids with single parents in return for financial support and education. Very interesting stuff, so I'm going to try and get him over to talk to the single parents at some point.
Talking of which, there's an expo. on 23rd May on the theme: End Violence Against Women and Children. On the Friday they're holding a concert and the Sunday is a fun-run. Hoping to have a stall on the Saturday manned by the Single Parents Network volunteers. D's looking into printing information flyers and T-shirts.
So, yeah, all good with that at the moment.
David and I met at Passadena, which is likely to become my new local - that and the Guinness Club. D joined us there and afterwards I walked with him down to the studio he's working at, which is also in Gikondo. Everything and everybody is in Gikondo I'm fast learning. When we got there he explained he had to put in a couple of hours of work on a presentation for some Swedish investors who are looking to open a film school. He hadn't eaten though, and the guard was going to lock-up, meaning if he went for food he'd have trouble getting back in to work. So, taking pity, I persuaded him to get food at Bar Nyenyeri. We put it in a bag and took it back to mine.
We stayed up the whole of last night from around 11:30pm when we got back with the food to somewhere around 4am, writing the synopsis and sample script as part of the presentation. It was hard-graft but strangely good fun. Drank a lot of coffee.
I hit the sack then but he stayed up and left around 6am for a pre-presentation meeting. Saw him earlier, as he dropped by to pick up some stuff, and he really needs some sleep. He's got the presentation at 6pm so he'll have been awake/working for about thirty hours straight by the time he finally goes to bed tonight. I'm proud of him.
Apparently, the script committee he's working with were really impressed with what we did and with the scene construction of the sample script. It's nice to get creative, actually.
He's off to Kampala again tomorrow and back at the weekend. I got a text from Martine earlier saying she wants to get out of town on Friday and I said I was up for that. We can't decide where to go but anywhere should be good if the rain holds off a little.
Also, Cathryn's back. Got a call this arvo and will probably see her Thursday. She sounds happy to be back. She says my old house in Kisi has been turned into a massage parlour! That's quite entertaining.
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