Kigali, Rabbits and a new construction!

Last weekend was my friend Ruth’s birthday – she was 23. To celebrate we organised a trip to Kigali, which is the capital city of Rwanda. It was a long journey each way and we only stayed for one night. However, we were so pleased to get out of Ngara for a bit it was worth the effort.

We left at 6am on Saturday and made it to Kigali for 1pm local time. It was very different from life here in Murgwanza; full of people from every nationality, traffic and so many more food options – (one of the main reasons we were intent on going!)

We went to a beautiful craft market full of hand-made jewellery, shoes, bags and sculptures. The colours were wonderful, but I’m living on a shoestring so I only treated myself to some beaded Masai Sandals (which kill my feet – But I am determined to wear them in.)

Pastor Aaron brought Ruth two rabbits for her Birthday – we are acquiring quite the farmyard at our house – (3 goats, a pig and now 2 rabbits!)

They are called ‘Chips’ and ‘Mayai’ after the popular chip omelette I have told you about before. The brown one is Chips and the white one Mayai. Mayai means eggs in Swahili.  They are very tiny but eat a lot of carrots and grass. Everyone at the office wants to eat them –meat is expensive for people here and they think it’s crazy to have animals which can be eaten and not intend to eat them. Ruth and I are fiercely protecting them until we have left.

The three boys who live next door (Mitch, Jake and Ollie) have constructed this kibanda (hut) from sticks, banana leaves and bark. They are here with their parents for a year and come from Australia.

The weather has been incredibly dramatic and powerful recently. One minute it’s boiling hot and the next the heavens open and it just pours and pours. Because we are living at such a high altitude, we are often surrounded by cloud and can’t see a thing out of the windows. It is exciting, but also gets tiring because you get stuck in places and have to wait for the storm to pass before you can get back to whatever you were doing previously. Today is one of these days (Thursday 7^th April), but we are happy because we have the day off for a public holiday (there are hundreds of public holidays here) so we are safely at home. We are so lucky to live in a sturdy house. Most local people live in mud houses with a banana palm roof, which provides little shelter for rain and wind.

Here’s a picture of a local house compared to where I am living. One huge difference between the two is the corrugated iron sheeting. It is expensive to buy this sheeting here. If people come into enough money it is one of the first things they buy as it makes such a huge difference to their everyday comfort.