Fun and Food

 

It's been a fun week. Went out to 514 with my friends Arum and Odette. Started off as a quiet girls' night out, then escalated.

 

 

Said I needed to cut loose a little. They've been helping me with that.

514 is a bar in Kisimenti which used to - and I think still does - belong to my friend Cindy. It's on the corner of a street which is just start-to-finish bars.  

Rosty, another local landmark.

(panoramic, click to enlarge)

Before I got there, I'd had a perfectly civilized evening with my friend Cathy at Inzora, which is a café that does a Friday-night cocktail special. That night it was rum punch, so I was fairly sozzled by the time I got to 514 and was home by midnight. Definitely a bit out of practice.

Rum Punch

Took a slightly spacey selfie on the moto home. The lights make me look like an astronaut.

That was a fun night, and the next day I headed to Billy's for brunch with more lovely people. My friend Solvejg has just returned to the country to work on a mental health app, which ties in with what I'm doing at the survivors' organisations. Hoping we can find some ways to work together in the future. We had a leisurely ladies' brunch: me, her, Jo, Chantel and Jessica. 

Then, on Tuesday, Arum invited me out again for dinner with a group of friends at Borneo, which is a really lovely Indonesian restaurant in town. She's from Indonesia herself, so ordered for everyone and we got to sample the entire menu. Really delicious, and took enough home for seconds. 

I was a bit tired that night as I'd just started delivering training to one of the ministries, and ministry officials start at around seven in the morning! I get up at six and start training at 7:30 twice a week. It's only for an hour, but my body's still getting used to it. I'm really enjoying it, though. Good group of people who keep me on my toes.

Yesterday, I delivered training and then went from there to tune the grand piano at Serena Hotel. I got a call because they have a professional pianist giving a recital tonight, so I'm going back around 6 p.m. to make sure it's still in tune after they move it across the lobby.

 

The coolest thing about big, expensive Yamahas like this is the fallboard. On most pianos the lid just snaps shut, but not on a beauty like this...

From report trainer to piano tuner, and all before ten in the morning. That's what I love about living here - you never quite know what you're doing from one day to the next. 

I've also started using my new pool pass for Nyarutarama. It's fairly quiet most days, so you can just dive in and do laps. I really forgot how much I love being in the water. It feels like home - that wonderful sense of weightlessness. I love diving down to the bottom and trying to swim the entire breadth of the pool without coming up for air. I used to swim a lot as a kid, and it's nice to discover that I'm still a pretty strong swimmer. I'm thinking I might hire a coach to teach me to crawl properly. I usually do a speedy breaststroke, but always wanted to learn to crawl. I find the breathing problematic and think I'd feel less self-conscious practising with an instructor than thrashing around on my own. I know the theory, I've just never quite mastered the practice. 

The other nice thing about being in the water is that I can practise standing on tiptoes on my damaged leg. I smashed my Achilles a couple of years ago and it's never properly healed. I can't raise up on it on dry land, but I can in the water because it helps support my weight. I'm going to keep exercising it for a few months and see if that makes any difference. 

Finally, had a fab night out last night with Solvejg and Chantel, who we're just getting to know. We went for dinner at The Hut, then on for drinks at PiliPili. Such a lovely night discussing everything from work to relationships. Had a lot of laughs. 

The Hut now has pretty lights around it.

Famous passion fruit mojitos that don't
actually look that florescent in real life.

Whilst we were there, I bumped into another friend, Olivia, and we realised that we were both born at the same hospital in Oxfordshire. She was there with her mum, who was a youth worker and thinks she might know my mum. Kigali really is a village. 

As we were leaving, I had to take a picture of Kigali's most haunted building. For the first time ever, there were lights on! A whole floor. I can't quite decide whether it makes it look more or less spooky.

Promises made to go drinking with more people soon, so I'm starting to feel a bit better about old friends leaving. Olivia was saying the same, she's just lost a load of good friends too and it sucks. But there's always new connections to be made.

Drunken Floor Selfie