Ishya :)

New Registration, Domestic Company - APPROVED

AAAAH!

I am having a serious 'I love Rwanda' day.

It took two days! Two days to think up a company name that wasn't already taken.

I used to work with a guy whose motto was "every delay is an opportunity." Unfortunately, he delayed paying me so long that I took the opportunity to leave, but the sentiment does hold true. In those two days I consulted my housemates and all my Kinya speaking friends, and we arrived at possibly the coolest company name ever registered in Rwanda. 

No, I'm not about to tell you what it is, but I hope it gave the registrar at RDB reason to smile.

They have even e-mailed me my certificate of registration!

Truly incredible.

I pop back tomorrow to pick up the paper version, then over to Immigration to sort out my residency forms.

Then I've been invited to a do with an old VSO colleague, which means I get to see the new VSO office. I'm both excited and a little apprehensive. It's hard to feel nostalgic about a place you've never been to before. Not sure how I'll feel about that, but very much looking forward to catching up with my friend - and learning something about solar energy provision?

Hmm.

To celebrate, I decided to go for food. 

I'm currently boycotting Bourbon since yesterday. They charge a fortune for dreadful service (you're always waiting ages to be served, then half the time they don't bring what you ordered), plus they charge you extra to put milk in your coffee! Err - hello - coffee shop. Forgive me for assuming milk and sugar come as standard. Because I ordered a 'regular coffee' I was asked to pay 500 for milk, when it would have cost me 200 if I'd ordered a 'coffee with milk' - oh, bugger off. (I said something similar in a slightly more polite manner and they took the charge off).  

So, I'm making it my mission to seek out good old fashioned cafés where I can get a bite to eat and a coffee at a reasonable price. Today, I found one next to the Post Office called Panafrique. Stand facing the PO and turn right (you'll see a Primus bar ahead of you). A few meters on the left is a set of shops with a tall, spiralling metal staircase. On the top floor you'll see a little Mutzig sign - go up.

It was a really pleasant surprise. A spacious, quiet bar tucked away from the hubbub of mumugi. You wait a while for food, but the brochettes were really good and the view was fairly spectacular.

Totally recommend. An iced mango smoothie at Bourbon costs over FRW 4,000 and last time it came in a plastic cup. Here, I had coke and brochettes for around 2,000 and even got a smile with it. They don't have wifi, but I think I might see whether AirTel works up there. It would be a lovely place to sit and work for a couple of hours.

To finish off, I headed for Caplaki Craft Village to purchase an igisoro board. My housemates expressed an interest, and I love the game, so it's now my mission to teach everybody how to play - although I'm afraid we'll be playing omweso on the igisoro board, as I learned to play in Uganda and those are the only rules I know.

An extremely productive and strangely relaxing day. Feeling totally floaty, and very excited about the business. I'm going to make a cup of tea and settle down with a packet of Fairyland (yes, Fairyland) cookies to work on my website. 

[P.S. If you would like to know what the title of this post means, there's an excellent online Kinyarwanda-English dictionary.]