A Day and a Half

Yes, the blog for a day and a half. Yesterday was quite hard getting onto the GPRS network, even the local office of the mobile service provider was complaining. What we think is happening is that signals and frequencies are being checked and/or setup on Karisimbi, the highest of the Virunga mountains. Also explains all the helicopter traffic over the last week. A telecoms tower is being setup there which will be serving the whole region (as in immediate international neighbours too) and will also be linked to main East & Southern African fibre optic line, opening up a whole new world in the telecoms future here. Anyway, while this is being done we have days like yesterday when getting a mobile signal for gprs or phone is very hard.

Lunch was quite different to the norm. Using our new old style mincer, put together some mince for hamburgers and had some lovely hamburgers for lunch. This turned out to be quite an experience for Claude (our housekeeper) who says he's never had hamburgers before - apparently not seen them either. The previous evening we had sausages from one of the German butchers in Kigali - mmmm! The menu is starting to change a bit now, I'm jumping in and showing the guys some new dishes and/or new ways of preparing known dishes. We worked out yesterday that our burgers cost maximum 50 pence each (and they were massive!) - what a bargain.

We received the final programme for the 3rd Rwandan International Investment Conference (22-24 May 2006) next week. Looks like we're up for some interesting sessions on opportunities and trends in the local economy and the region.

Also had a look last night at some of the videos I'm making of amongst other things Rwanda. This led to some re-discovery of some applications on the pc I had all but forgotten about.

Yesterday ended with a wind driven rain storm that I haven't seen for a while. Usually its all thunder and lightning etc etc but the thunder and lightning was absent last night. At the moment its all building up again for what looks like another BIG storm. The first few light drops have fallen, the wind's picking up and the thunder is starting to roll - so all toys out again on the weather again.

This morning's been fairly standard on the work front. Been catching up on the e-mails left over from yesterday and Andy's gone out to the site to see if all's ok there.