Blogs from Kigali, Ville de Kigali, Rwanda, Africa - page 13

Riding on the bus returning to Kigali from Kampala, Jacintha and I were talking about what we had done in the week and what we would do upon our return when I realized that I did not think about returning to Kigali, but of returning home. I realized that in the short two months that I have been here, I already think of Rwanda and the Anderson property as my home. A wise man once said, “do not make your home in a place, but in your head. That way you will never be lacking a home. Unless, of course, you lose your head.” And since Kigali is now my home, then the people living here; Papa Jean, Faustin, Eric, Fidel, Gad, etc., they are my family. Jacintha also has become like a sister to me. ... read more

For those of you that didn’t know I’ve left life in London and taken a new job as the International Development Director for a small NGO, Children’s Care and Protection Rwanda and UK registered charity Unity of Children. CCPRWA was formed in 1998 following the genocide, by a group of Rwandan’s who had grown up as orphans in Uganda and with the support of a number of international organisations runs a number of different programmes in Rwanda, supporting vulnerable and disadvantaged children across the country. From the beginning of July I’ve been working with the charity in Rwanda formulating and implementing a strategy for the development and sustainability of all their activities. At the same time I am overseeing a major capital development at the Nsinda Centre, a vocational training school run by CCPRWA in Rwanda’s ... read more

Hello loyal fans! THis one, it wont be serious. Or long. So yesterday (Wednesday) I killed a goat. On purpose. Yup, I have blood on my hands (or did, until I washed very thouroughly). On Monday Papa Jean bought the goat and brought it back to the property, where it was immediately deemed by all the worker's as "too small". So on Tuesday Papa Jean went to take it back and get a bigger one. Failing at that, he brought the original one back and told all complainers to suck it up. Seeing as how the goat had managed to survive our scrutinies, I decided to name it, and chose "Betty". On Wednesday morning Betty got the chop. No worries, animal lovers, it was a sharp knife. We (Gad, Eric and I) then hung Betty from ... read more

Our last night at Nat Locke's place, and I decided to get a few hours sleep before our early flight the next morning. Nat had been tempting me with the thought of sticking it out in front of a laptop watching season 3 of Lost (I'd watched the last few episodes of season 2 a few nights earlier and was thoroughly engrossed), but wisdom prevailed. We were up a few hours later at 1:30am, and our lovely driver Ivan from KPC picked us up at 2am. A drive through a very quiet Kampala took us to Entebbe, where we checked in and sat around in the departure lounge for a few hours. Elle slept on my shoulder while I played games on her mobile phone. I have completed Sega Tennis in the course of this ... read more

part one: gorillas in the garden i got picked up at 5 o'clock saturday morning. going to track gorillas!! woo hoo! let's go. oh, first we have to stop for gas? ok. tank full? woo hoo! let's go! oh, now we have to stop at the office? ok. well, tell ya what, just wake me when we get there. there are 5 gorilla families open to tourists. 8 visitors per group for one hour of viewing. they know the locations of each family by tracking, like they do with the monkies and chimps. when we arrived, we had to decide which group i would visit. we had always talked about my going to susa, the largest group, but because of petrol issues (gas prices increased a lot here in the last week), susa was too far ... read more