Blue Friday

Yip, a bit of a blue Friday which makes up I suppose for not having blue Mondays. The weather was a bit dreary as well with rain and cloud most of the way from Musanze to Kigali and the latter eventually warming up over midday and then going rainy etc again.

I only achieved 2 of my objectives today out of a fairly lengthy list. Lengthy lists is the way to approach a day in the city, one thing doesn't happen then there's always a load more to do. On the flip side, you could end up doing only one or two things like today. I must say though they were two important things.

The first, which I'm quite happy is done with is the proper 2 year visa replacing the temporary one I had which coincidentally expires on Sunday. So other than being quite keen on getting it all finalised, I was also quite nervous that the new visa couldn't be done today. I did have to pay a price for it though, a 7 hour wait! The waiting was as much my decision as anything else as I didn't feel like trying to deal with an expired visa next week etc etc. But golly! Believe me, I can't remember when last I waited that long other than in the queues on election day in South Africa in 1994 - the latter was infinitely more exciting and interesting though. Trust me - I'm not complaining - I now have the visa!!

Then I went to the Rwandan mobile network to get the modem for a GPRS modem for the laptop. This internet connection is a flat rate of £20/month - bargain, considering what the dial-up costs and how slow it is. That's the excellent thing here in Rwanda, the communications etc infra-structure is all the latest toys and is happening at speed. By coincidence we heard on the radio today President Kagame opening the ICT Investment... which is a large international telecoms convention as I understand it.

Setting up the connection turned into a bit of a circus as I had to delete some software that was blocking the installation of the GPRS software. The network technician and I ended up spending at least 2 hours sorting this out - he was an absolute star as he was working well past closing time. People like this always remind me why Sarah and I enjoy Rwanda so much and the nice thing is that people like this are in the majority.

Consequently we set off back to Musanze at 7pm, dealing with the dodgy headlights of some vehicles through the mountains and sections of torrential rain. We had quite a few "Hey!!" with some lightning on the way home - interesting ride and got home safely.

I've been referring to "we" - Greg went with as he had some things to sort out in Kigali and he was a star and hung around after he'd finished his business. On the way there and back is always a good catch up for us on the industry gossip and latest news and rumours. Sorry all reading this - I'm not going to divulge all the gossip ;-))

Otherwise, a nice quiet night at home with maybe a movie or two. Andy is off to Kampala for the weekend so other than Claude (the housekeeper), all's really quiet here.