To Sleep, Per Chance...

Ntabwo nitwa "Muzungu"!

Help. I am soooo tired.

Wedding outside my window on Sunday night, got a grand total of four hours' sleep before heading into town to deliver my first tender, and then on to a meeting.

I could barely remember my own name by the time I got there.

The Post Office made me smile though.

I spent an hour in the printer's getting the documents sorted on an inkjet. Popped them into an envelope and took them to Iposita. The post box was downstairs, next to mine. In order to put my envelope in the post box downstairs, I had to purchase stamps and post my envelope in the post box upstairs. £2 to move the envelope a grand total of about twelve feet. It was Monty Python-esque. 

Still, it's done.

See how that turns out.

Afterwards, I went to Brioche and fell asleep in my coffee.

That place has saved my life a couple of times now.

Bit fed up with communications in general. Someone waved a magic wand in RDB and made it all efficient. Why couldn't they go do the same for Immigration or my bank? Neither of which reply to e-mails - ever. Still no idea where my passport is. Going to go see them tomorrow if I can stay awake that long.

It's not a Rwandan thing though. HMRC in the UK is just as crap. They have a really important form that all charities need to return in order to receive a tax-exemption certificate. Half of my UK clients will need it at some point. It's supposed to be available online. Not only can the public not open it, the people at HMRC can't open it either, and there is no e-mail that allows you to communicate with anybody technical there.

The result? A very kind friend of mine who used to work there has managed to get a former colleague to send her a hard copy, which she will then post to my client in Spain. Thus taking weeks to achieve what should be a five minute job.

Only HMRC could arrive in the 21st century unable to cope with PDFs.

I'm embarrassed on behalf of my country. 

Embarrassed, and fairly pissed off.

Yes, I know. I am very tired.

But they are very crap.

After my coffee, I crawled to a meeting at VSO with an NGO I used to know in a previous life. It was very productive, and afterwards I found myself standing in the middle of a massive yard sale. 

Lots of volunteer furniture on sale. I picked up a bundle of A1 flipchart paper, a bucket (for water shortages), and a little piece of VSO history. I just couldn't resist. 

Posted a few of my own in here years ago.

The house hunt has turned into minor trauma. I viewed a nice fully-furnished house the other day for the same price as where I'm living now. I would have gone for it, but the agent is about as much use as tits on a bull. He's pathologically incapable of answering straightforward questions or closing a deal. I'm so tired by the whole process. Trying to find somewhere suitable to live in Kigali is like pulling teeth. 

Not too sure quite what to do. I haven't had a decent night's sleep since I got here. So long as I'm fuelled by alcohol and cigarettes I can just about cope, but I am starting to lose my mojo. Feeling this crap without even a hangover to blame just isn't working for me. I'm trying the healthy living gig: home cooking, swimming, ditched the ciggies, cut back on the beer... for my trouble I'm piling on weight and I feel like I want to put my face through the computer screen. 

In fact, the only things getting me through at the moment are Game of Thrones and Peaky Blinders. Who ever knew a Brummie accent could be considered sexy? The play between Cillian Murphy and Annabelle Wallis is enthralling, and the soundtrack is yummy.

Talking about yummy, I am still loving having my own kitchen. Rice, pasta, porridge, lost bread (the French name, according to Martine, for French Toast), ugali, cardamom pancakes... no wonder I'm putting on weight. Went shopping for a tin opener the other day and found this lovely wooden chopping board. 

Another quirk: beautiful wooden chopping board versus cheap, tacky plastic board. Only, here, vice versa. Tacky plastic board almost twice the cost of beautiful wooden board. Go figure. But, as happens universally, the tin opener never works.