Butterflies

Lots of fun, posey selfies. Went to Kigali International Food Fair with Maia and Taia at the weekend. Had a lovely time. Bumped into Laars, the lodger who looked after my cats whilst I was at Maasai, and ate baklava and noodles (not at the same time). Also got my face painted. 

 

Got plied with plenty of free wine as Maia was dishing out food on the Spanish stall as advertising for her tapas restaurant. It was a really fun day, with loads of people enjoying themselves. Held at the European Ambassador's residence. We stayed until the very end, when the beer ran out.

 

Then it was back to Casa Keza, where I relived my postgraduate years as a barmaid. Still got it.

 

 

Nice to know I've got a job if this piano business doesn't work out. Maia's also installed some very pretty lighting in the garden, so I get accommodation, too.

The decking was done by Désiré, my partner in pianos. He took my Lirika away today to start taking her apart so that we can work out how to build one. It was quite an emotional morning.

GYC alumni Fidele popped by a couple of days ago, and was the last person to give her a good playing. He taught himself keyboard in his room and this was his first time playing a proper piano.  Reminds me why we're doing this.

Also went back to Kigali Music School yesterday. Spent the day cleaning up their Heintzman and teaching Director Bonuni how to tune.

The inside was well dusty, though. This was the water after rinsing out the cloth! 

 

100 Year Old Piano in Rwanda

Aaaand, back to pianos.

Had a lovely time at Kigali Music School with my new friend Chris from Musicians Without Borders. They've got a 1924 Canadian Heintzman - almost 100 years old. It's got a few problems including missing (quite likely ivory) key tops, couple of stray damper heads and a lot of dust, but hopefully we can restore it. I've got a guy coming later who knows about 3D printing. Going to see if it's a better bet to try to print new key tops. A full set of whites is fairly cheap, but these seem a little slimmer than modern keys and each of the 52 would need filing down. 3D printing could potentially replicate them to the exact size.

Had my first string breakage whilst tuning at the Korean church a couple of weeks back. Thankfully it was a treble string with a treble unison, so one string remained - still playable until the new string arrives. Managed the entire tuning in under four hours. 

One of the former human rights participants from GYC 2015 came to visit when he heard about the project. He bought a keyboard and taught himself to play in his room. This was his first time playing a proper piano and his smile was fabulous. Like many of my friends, he asked where you plug it in, and was intrigued when I explained it doesn't need electricity.

Also took Chris to visit Alex's forge. This is where we'll be melting down the metal to build the string frame.

Alex Explaining How it Works

Don't forget, you can help us to build the first pianos in Rwanda via our Indiegogo campaign. There's also a blog here, Facebook and Twitter to help you keep up to date.

Fairy Lights

So, what happens when you get two girls and 50m of fairy lights together?

Not a lot.

What happens if you add two bottles of wine, a bottle of port and some sanity-bending pastis?

A two-woman rock fest and a hangover that lasts the entire weekend.

My Brain on the Floor

We were going to recreate our pub crawl, but child care backed out so we started off very civilly in the garden. I still had a bottle of red left over from my birthday. A friend had broken the corkscrew in it, so it's taken until now to get the cork out.

Anyway, I'm really, really excited because Kigali is about to have its first ever rock night next month. I'm desperately missing my piercings and determined to find some black lipstick and carve pumpkins. Check out these incredible pictures from the Botswana metal scene.

It's been so many years that I've requested an old rockers' corner featuring comfy cushions, a water dispenser and possibly a neck brace.

I've persuaded Maia to come with me. Actually, she didn't take much persuading. But after the second bottle of wine she asked for an introduction to rock music. I promptly took her through Kerrang (Limp Bizkit, Sum41, Lit) through the classics (Chilis, Alice Cooper, House of Pain) up to the meaty classics (Rage Against the Machine (Christmas #1 in the UK, 2009), Drowning Pool, Metallica).

The Enchantress, Suicide Squad

We started with Metallica and ended up with John Lennon, Oh Yoko - which I think is my overriding tune of the night. Dancing like lunatics, covered in fairy lights. 

Meanwhile, I started out in a suit and tie, and ended up in somebody else's dress!

Now that isn't normal...

But, you know what? Even that can be uber rock.

(Bad) Attitude, Baby

EvErY bOdY iN tHe WoRlD dEsErVeS fAiRy LiGhTs!

Five Bar Bonanza

L-R: Me, Celia, Michelle and Tracey

Girls on tour. The lovely ladies of the Maasai. Ceilia just got her photos in order and sent this. Think there are some more from the album, I'll raid it later.

Right. Let's get piano news out of the way first.

The past week has been utterly gruelling. Gaston came back with the video and I put it up on Indiegogo. It's been one week now and we're 15% funded, but wow - what a week. I had no idea how hard a crowdfunder is. It's 24/7 social media deployment. My fingers are seizing up from typing so many 'please can you...' e-mails.

So, please, please can you share the Indiegogo campaign with as many people as you can reach:

VISIT INDIEGOGO CAMPAIGN

Seriously grateful for any assistance getting the word out. I'm even offering free piano tuning in Kigali for people willing to help me raise contributions.

There's also a Facebook page and Twitter feed.

On a similar note (ho, ho), I undertook some major maintenance this week. A little while back I was called out to the Korean church in Kinyinya. Somehow, their pianist had managed to cut five bass strings! No idea how that happened. I helped them identify what they needed to order, and it came through. So, two hours of fairly sweat-drenched restringing. All looking good now. Going back to do a proper tuning once the new strings have settled.

It was a real workout. Pianos are very physically demanding. But it was a lot of laughs.

What else has been going on? Well, I walked into a bookstore to find myself on display. Was totally thrilled. Massive thank you to Haepi Bookstore. They rock. I thought about signing them, but chickened out. I'll go back in the week and pluck up the courage.

Unfortunately, no more writing has been done for about a month. My laptop's hard drive melted after only four months. I took it back to the shop which sold it to me along with a one-year warranty. The place has the HP logo all over it, and on the website. They're apparently an official partner (which I've since learnt means bugger all in terms of customer protection).

It went from the bizarre to the ridiculous. After trying to tell me a warranty meant I had to pay for parts, the manager resorted to communicating in emojis:

He insisted on calling me 'young lady' (that's sweet, I'm really not), told me not to contact him again, then threatened me after I mentioned it on a local expat forum, telling me to 'be careful' and saying he was going to report me.

A total and complete weirdo.

His technician called once to tell me he wasn't sure how much it was going to cost, but he'd let me know. When I pressed further, he hung up. I called five times over a fortnight, and sent two SMS - no response.

Eventually HP had to launch an official investigation. I got the laptop back - it was still at the store. Hadn't been touched. Took it to the official HP servicer. They were much better and fixed the problem without charging me or threatening me - or even calling me 'young lady'. Gone straight to the top of my customer service list.

Meh.

Anyway, after all of that, and the crowdfunder, I haven't had the energy to transfer everything onto my revitalised laptop, so I'm still using my old one with a clunky USB keyboard. I can manage e-mails, but a novel is improbable. I'll eventually get set up again and resume writing.

Meanwhile, my cats have full use of the writing desk.

Talking of which, I tried out that thing from Instagram. Y'know, if you tape a square to the floor, cats apparently get in it, like a box. There's loads of pictures of cats sitting in tape squares. Not mine...

In between all the chaos and mayhem, there has been time for a little relaxation. Beautiful blue skies and a healthy breakfast at Inzora.

I hadn't had a drink in almost a fortnight. The girls went off to Dubai, and I've been so focused on the piano idea. Did a lot of making up for that last night. Maia invited me over for a beer at her bar. It was really quiet as it was Easter Sunday and everyone was probably too full of chocolate. We decided to go for a walk.

We found a nice little bar down a backstreet and decided to stop for a beer. It didn't have a name, but the lighting was pretty.

We kept walking and found the road that runs behind the library. Kigali can be extremely confusing in that it's one big crown of buildings on top of several hills, so there are many different ways to get to the same place, and you're never sure quite which direction you're going in. To this moment I'm not sure quite how we walked one way and ended up over there. But we found another local bar and decided to stop for a drink

Unfortunately, we could only have one there because - toilet. Sanitation can be a little hit and miss. In this case, someone had definitely missed. There was a big poo on the toilet seat. But a little further down the road, there was another nice, nameless, bar. So we decided to stop for brochettes... and beer.

We took one drunken selfie that came out so badly we couldn't stop laughing. Luckily, this place had a decent toilet. We continued along the road, freaked ourselves out looking at a ghostly restaurant turned empty flat, and an abandoned building site - spooky. Then ended up at the top of the road leading home. Just across that road was another bar. What could we do?

It was a tiny little place, barely room for ten people, but we were made to feel welcome, and the fairy lights were pretty. Downed our last drink of the night and wandered our way sleepily down the hill.

Felt a bit like this in the morning: