Post-Uganda happenings

I actually wrote this blog at the same time as the previous one, but I
didn’t want to bore you guys with such a long post, so I broke it up a
little.

After returning to Rwanda, I stayed in Kigali for a night then headed
up to Kibuye for our program’s Mid-Service. Kibuye is a town in the
West, on the shores of Lake Kivu. We stayed at a guest house called
Home St. Jean, which was built on a hilltop peninsula surrounded on
three sides by the lake. Beautiful, to say the least. Mid-service
itself was mediocre, though I got some great ideas from other
volunteers. The best part of the weekend was a boat trip to a place
called Bat Island (exactly what it sounds like). The island itself
was pretty cool; the guide took us on a little walk, then started
clapping. This caused hundreds of bats that had been nesting in the
trees to take flight and fly around us. It was pretty cool, but a
couple of us got guanoed (I won’t name names…) Better than the island
though, was that we stopped the boat halfway there and a bunch of us
jumped in for a swim. It felt so good! I hadn’t gone swimming in a
while, and the water felt amazing! We were far enough from shore that
we didn’t have to worry about bilharzias or other parasites and the
lake had been calling out to us since we’d arrived. The only problem
was getting back into the boat. None of us looked graceful doing
that, let me tell you!

I’m now back in Nyakarambi, trying to get back into a routine. School
has started up again, technically on Monday, but I taught my first
class on Thursday. So it goes.

Also, President Paul Kagame was in town today! (Today being the day
of writing – Friday the 24th. Who knows when I’ll post this!) The
VSOs and I went over to the District office where he was supposed to
speak. The place was packed! It looked like the whole province
showed up. We managed to finagle our way under one of the tents to
get out of the sun, and we waited for about 4 hours until he came. In
the meantime we were entertained by singers, dancers and drummers.
The drummers were amazing, the dancers, pretty good, and I could have
done without the “singing”. Eventually, his Excellency showed up, the
crowd went wild, and he gave a speech. Entirely in Kinyarwanda of
course, so I didn’t understand a thing. But now I can say I’ve seen
him!

Hmm, this post isn’t nearly as interesting as the last one…