"Did one of the Boyz II Men memers die? If not, they've gotta come out with another track ASAP." ~C.Lutes

Random tree at Reeb's office in Rwamagana, love how different the flora is here

Put me in coach.. Too bad I don’t know how to say that in French or Kinyarwanda. So I just waited and ended up getting 20 minutes of playing time. Pretty sweet, God that chick on left wing was fast. Those Africans and their fast-twitch muscle fibres, I tell ya. Probably can’t play with them again because of work and traveling but it was sweet (and tiring) while it lasted!

The mosque in my hood.

‘The Internets’

One of my brother Chad’s favourite sayings, the plural form of internet, has made it across the pond. It is always a topic of struggle, with the word ‘struggle’ being totally relative to many other sources of struggle in this continent, of course.

BUT, having said that, when was the last time any of you went without internet for 8 days? Okay, I’ll have to admit C and I have been cheating a little bit, and may or may not have sat at a restaurant that had wireless for 4 hours (read: 7 hours) straight just so we could download the newest episode of Gossip Girl, but who’s counting the hours anyways (hopefully not the staff at Shokola)?

You realize just how useful being connected is when it goes out at your workplace for over a week because of 'network problems'. Rumour has it that the bills haven’t been paid (FAIL!). TIA. Usually, I can keep abreast of all the latest news back at home via websites from the Nelson Star/Nelson Daily/Nelson Post (filling me in that the new Glory Chair is going to DOUBLE the area of Whitewater, WHAT!), The Vancouver Sun (informing me that Justin Timberlake just flew in for a little stopover to see his girlfriend Jessica Biel in Nelson, making my dreams since the age of 9 come true and then simultaneously crushing my dreams upon the realization that I am 14,000 km away from this. Don’t worry JT, I’ll find you some day.), and The Globe and Mail (tantalizing me with the most amazing recipes that are waiting to be cooked upon arrival in Canada as the ingredients in Kigali are either nowhere to be found or are 2342 times the price. That and we don’t have counter space in our kitchen so it becomes difficult cooking up a storm when you have to chop vegetables on top of your mini fridge and coffee table). But for now, this is leaving young interns such as myself and C, who can’t afford to pay for a modem because that would mean less Primus on the weekends, internet-less. Day 9 sans-internet has just commenced and thankfully I am going away to Butare to do final clinical evaluation of the fourth year BLS students, where there is a guesthouse with internet and (hopefully) a hot shower waiting for me.

Speaking of Jessica Biel, my sister Sydney was asked to be a double in The Tall Man and while doing this, invited Jessica to come watch her hilarious comedy show, Skidney and Sleazle (check it:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Skidney-and-Sleazel/134174223300394), at Oxygen last weekend. No big deal.

But enough about home!

Halloween

Reminiscing of all the effort we put into our costumes back home for the past 4 years at university, my personal favourite being cereal box characters last year (only to be shown up by the Manor Boys), C, R, S and I decided to take the easy route and ask some dudes on the street if we could have the shirt off their back. Literally. People stand all around the city wearing fluorescent yellow MTN (a cell phone service provider) pinnies selling airtime, because all cell phones and internet are pay-as-you-go type of thing where you just buy minutes. This is probably due to the lack of street addresses here to send bills and the fact that almost no one has a credit card (lucky ha!). Even when you put electricity into your home you can do it via text message (they call it SMS messaging here) from your cell phone!

So, the guy was pretty weirded out when we asked nangahe? (how much?) and pointed to his shirt. But, since this is Africa, he offered up a price of 2,500 Rwf for the pinnie that he probably gets for free from MTN. Fine by us, this was a $5 halloween costume! And not a huge deal because they wear a yellow MTN shirt underneath their pinnies. BUT. We needed 5 of them. The first guy proceeded to run up the street and grab four more pinnies from four more guys who wanted to make a fast buck. Two of them even sold us their hats haha. Anyways we were laughed at several times at the party full of westerners (who else, they don’t celebrate this strange holiday in Africa and most of Europe) when we said ‘Sistah! Sistah! Airtime?’ in typical MTN fashion. I almost tricked someone into actually buying airtime from the used cards we picked up off the ground… A couple of Rwandese friends came to the festivities and thought everyone was absolutely nuts. Why wouldn’t a bunch of white people dressed as zombies, cats or as a shower gather in one place on October 30^th for a party? By the time 5 AM rolled around, two (in some people’s case, three) bars later our MTN careers were over. And the sun was up. Thankfully I don’t have a picture of what we looked like then..

Other than continual power outages at work (KHI may not have paid those bills either?) and the concurrent four-day water shortage at our house in Nyakabanda (bucket-showers4life, until you run out of reserve water… then it’s no-showers-or-washing-hands/feet-and-no-flushing-toilet-4life), life is grand. Just gearing up for a weekend in Gisenyi (Northern Province, on the other end of Lake Kivu, the lake I was on when I worked in Kibuye) for an interview with a young woman, Molly, from CTV Saskatoon who is pitching a story to my, C, and S’s local newspapers about CIDA internships. She is here volunteering at RwandaTV, Rwanda’s only news channel. Why do we need to travel to do this interview when Molly lives in Kigali too? Well, considering the weather here is still 20+ degrees, we are going to fit in a little basking in the sun and swimming during said interview… When in Rwanda..

OH AND HOW COULD I FORGET: Was honoured to be asked by my lovely friend since we were babies – not you Corbin – Erin Speirs, to be in her wedding party next summer! Clearly there is some sort of love bug rolling around my friends, and I couldn’t be happier because a) marriage and love are happy things and b) weddings = party time.

I’ll post some pictures when I have more than just pictures of football games and food, which are two of my favourite pastimes but aren’t the most interesting of photography subjects. Speaking of football, my friend was telling me about the time he played against team Canada at the U20 tournament held last year in Lebanon… he’s 24… Rwanda is taking a page out of Nigeria and Congo’s FIBA ‘Under 19 Team’ book.

For now I’ll continue to listen to Boyz II Men Greatest Hits (thank youuuu utorrent) and be more productive than I ever have been because I don’t have Facebook beckoning me on my Firefox tabs… I don’t think office work is really in the cards for my life plan, clearly.

Happy one-month-til-X-Ring y’all (in my case, 11 months since X-ring.. I am soo old.)

Amahoro,
L