Crawling Towards the Weekend

Oh my god, I am so full of snot!

I'm going to curl up in bed early and make love to a LemSip.

My nose hasn't stopped running since Tuesday. Christiane came - my first visitor - and I proceeded to fall ill on her. Local toilet paper is cousin to sandpaper and my poor snoz is red-raw from blowing. LL was supposed to come over today but all I could manage was a pathetic whatsapp announcing my demise. 

Everything hurts.

In other news...

Reconstruction of Damascene's house (which got washed away in the rains recently) is in full swing. He's extremely happy, though only working for me once a week at the moment as 1) I don't need full-time staff and 2) he prefers living in Kanombe where he knows loads of people and gets occasional work. So, we've renegotiated the arrangement and everyone's happy. Saves me some money and I still get someone I trust working in the house. 

Found this weird caterpillar with a predator head! Was well scary.

Decided not to take him in and hatch him like the last one, for fear he might rip off my face in the night.

Got a papaya growing.

Incredible sunset over Kigali the other day.

And a rainbow when I got home.

Jo had been driving me about Kigali, helping me to get my gas bottle refilled. Bumped into a guy at the petrol station who was really upset. Turned out he'd been using the ATM. It was just in the process of counting the money when the electricity went out. No one knew when it would come back on again, and he didn't know if the money would then dispense to whoever was standing in front of it at the time.

Tough situation. No idea how it ended. Wasn't a number or anything inside the ATM to call in case of technical difficulties. (That would be too much like customer service, and Bank of Kigali don't do that, as I'll get to shortly). Though we have just added 28MW to the grid, which is fantastic news. Hopefully that should help prevent such things in the future.

Such a beautiful sight! Plus it's got an internal flint so I won't get through so many matches. After Kanombe, where I had a fully kitted kitchen, it does feel a little like camping in my front room.

Celebrated by cracking open my birthday tin of Heinz Baked Beans. I also have the toaster and kettle set up. Never had an electric kettle before. It used to blow up.

Out of sheer curiosity, I did explore the traditional charcoal cooker outside. Damascene left a bag of charcoal under the sink. He made me an incredible meal on it before, so I went and bought a big pan with notions of resting a thick stew to simmer over the embers. Decided to test out my new purchase by boiling peas and rice. You have to give peas (amashaza) a head start as they're hard as marbles.

  

Sadly, I think the charcoal had grown damp. Try as I might, I just couldn't get it to take. Made me supremely grateful for my gas cooker.

Dragged myself out of bed today to go pay my quarterly VAT return at the bank. RRA were actually really good at responding to queries this time. Sent them an e-mail late at night and there was a reply waiting first thing in the morning. Like a plonker, I'd filled out my return in GBP. Basically, to convert between FRW and GBP, you just knock off three zeros. So instead of putting in something like FRW 100,000 I'd only put in FRW 100. Major error. Thankfully it turned out to be easily rectifiable.

Yet where RRA is improving, Bank of Kigali are just as hellish as ever. I swear to gods I'm leaving this bank. There are far better banks about. If I decide I'm definitely staying, I definitely will. Otherwise I only have to endure them until September.

Basically, you're supposed to be able to pay your bills online. Yet when I went to set it up at BK, they scribbled down a password on a post-it note (!!!) and when I got home it didn't work. Surprise, surprise. So I'm still having to go to pay my bills on foot.

And when I get there, I'm still met with a wall of people and an hour's wait just to hand over my cheque.

This is the back of the queue. When you get to the chairs you're allowed to sit down. Well, until someone goes to the counter, then everybody moves along one chair. It's a system they used to use five years ago in the worst banks. BK switched to a ticketing machine instead, but the ticket machine kept breaking and didn't work in power cuts, so it appears they're back to the chair system again. When you get to the last chair on the back left, you then have to stand up and walk around the entire front row to take up the empty chair on the front right. That's if one of the dozen queue-jumpers doesn't take your seat first.

I get so mad at that. Being British, I was born queueing. We've made it an art form. Yet Rwandans often complain how 'poeple in the West are so rude, they never look out for each other. Here in Rwanda we always look out for each other, we are a community.' *coughing into hand* I'm sorry, but that's blatant butterballs. Every time there's a queue it's every wo/man for her/himself. Elbows at dawn. Forget the elderly, the weak and infirm, it's survival (or service) of the fittest. The people behind the desk don't give a hoot either, they'll happily turn to serve someone else in the middle of serving you, if that person speaks louder or leans across your window. Same goes for buffets and - on the whole - driving. S/he who dares, wins. Being British, I am genetically incapable of pushing someone out of the way or jumping the queue. I am fated to die here from starvation, clasping my revenue cheque to my weak-beating heart as it finally fails.

Plus, this: 

The biggest bank in Rwanda can't even be bothered to print out a clear list of account numbers for its customers. You need these numbers on the back of any cheque, so that you deposit it into the right account. Yet, look at this! I couldn't even make out the numbers on the middle row - had to ask the guy standing next to me.

Bank of Kigali now charge FRW 2,000 every time you make a withdrawal from one of their ATM machines, yet they can't print a simple sheet of paper, and I have never, ever had a response to one of my customer e-mail enquiries. 

They really are utterly dreadful. Top tip to anyone contemplating coming to Rwanda, check out Access Bank, GT Bank and IM Bank (my friend swears by IM's local branch in Kibuye, but I wasn't that impressed by their mumugi branch). I like Access at the moment because they don't charge to use their ATMs.

So, yes. I crawled out of bed to go deal with that (totally lost it with a woman who just pushed right in front of me - breathed cold over her in retribution), then got a moto home ('Oya - no mobile phone whilst you're driving!'), got within sight of my house when the heavens opened.

Staggered through the door looking like a drowned rat, sloshing water across the floor.

*AAAAACCHHHOOOOOOOOO*

*SNIFF*