Breaker of Things

 

 

Found this cute little critter the other day. Love the colours on it. And just rescued two mantises in as many days from the cats.

 

It's been a busy few weeks. My friend Emma, a former creative writing student, came to visit and we went out for the night. She lives a bit out of town and doesn't get into Kigali often. She's part of a beekeeping operation and brought lots of wonderful gifts, including fresh honey, soap, a candle and lip balm.

 

Did some baking with my trusty bucket oven. Harris left some sheets of lasagna, so I finally put them to good use. Had to make the white sauce using Blue Band, but it tasted really good.

 

Also went to help my friend Bonani tune his piano. He used to be the manager at Kigali Music School, but that sadly ran out of funding and had to close, so he's setting up his own place in Nyamirambo. Someone gifted him a 1980 Swedish Nordiska. Couple of strings missing and out of tune, so I'm giving him a hand with that. Once I had finished tuning, he took it for a test drive and completely floored me. Very talented guy.

Then, on Tuesday, my lovely friend Tracey arrived with a special guest. Tracey runs a tourism business in Kenya. I last saw her in March last year when our friend Celia was leaving Africa. We had a girls' weekend away at Maasai Mara. At that time, she was heavily pregnant - and still running safaris. What a star! This time, she was coming to Rwanda to start another tour, and brought along baby Gabriel.

 

 

He wasn't too sure about me at first, but we bonded over shoes.

 And a love of chocolate pancakes.

  

Kaiserschmarrn
'Emperor's Mess'

Gabriel's Kikuyu name translates as breaker of things, and he sure lives up to that. He just looks so damn cute whilst he's at it.

Luckily, he didn't manage to break a cat - they're too smart. But the boy's got get-up and go. It's nice here though, because whichever restaurant you're in, people are always friendly and smiling when they see a baby. We took him to the German Butchery, and the next day over to CasaKeza to meet up with friends Maja and Vincent.

But his absolute favourite pastime was the garden tap.

 

Unfortunately, I'm now suffering the consequences of last night. There was rather a lot of rum and sangria consumed, and I managed to completely knacker my foot again. Just stood on it slightly wrong and the Achilles tendon tore again. Fairly distraught about that, as I've spent three weeks in physio and was really starting to get somewhere. I was almost walking normally, and now I'm hardly walking at all. Annoyed it happened a second time at the same place it happened the first time. Maybe this is a sign not to drink at CasaKeza any more? I hope not.

Tracey and Gabriel were up at 7 a.m. to start their safari, so I'm having an extremely lazy day in front of Netflix. Rather happy, as it looks like I have another contract before Christmas, which would be most welcome.