Merry Christmas

 

After my board meeting on Sunday, I went with my fella up to Gisenyi so we could spend Christmas together. We had a fun lunch with his friends in Kigali first, including a large quantity of pink gin. *hic* 

Had a nice couple of days with friends in Gisenyi, fish at Tam Tam and  drinks at Serena, where we had apple pie and ice cream on Christmas Day, despite ear-splitting children's entertainment by the pool.

Not the most relaxing atmosphere at Serena, but we decamped to Inzu Lodge for more drinks and a game of igisoro. It was wonderfully peaceful there and a nice view.

Quiet day celebrating S quitting his job at the tea plantation. He'd worked for the same company for years, then they went bust last year and the gardens in Rwanda were taken over by another company who set about dismantling the community that had built up over the years and generally making people's lives unpleasant. When S went back to India for a holiday earlier in the year, the company moved a random stranger into his house with no consultation, even though there were two other empty houses right next door and he explained how this put a strain on our personal life. They did a load of other petty things too, and just generally acted like arseholes. It seemed they were angling for constructive dismissal so they didn't need to pay severance. Under those circumstances you have two choices: stick it out as life gets progressively more unpleasant or accept that's the way they're going to behave and leave. 

He'd been thinking about it for a while and I think it was completely the right decision. Within minutes of putting in his resignation he was receiving loads of calls from friends and colleagues. A couple actually drove over an hour to come take him for drinks. It was really touching and showed how much people like him and will miss him.

The plan is for me to go back to Kigali with our friend Jo tomorrow to give him time to finish packing, then he's moving down to Kigali with me for some well earned R&R. There's maybe an opportunity on the horizon and we have a couple of friends handing out his CV, but just desperately looking forward to spending some actual time together. We got together in July, so five months, but he was out of the country for one of those. The distance between Gisenyi and Kigali, and his regiment working hours, meant we haven't spent that much time together in reality. I just can't wait to fix that. It'll be hard for sure. There's always two stages to resigning from a job - the thrill of freedom and the panic of 'what next?' but who cares, we can work that out together. For once, we have time.