Friday Jan 18th

First day in new flat, and I love it. Clean spacious, light, airy, all mod cons. It barely feels like we’re in Africa at all until you look out of the window. Then there’s no mistake – the traffic (motos, matata buses, home-made wheelbarrows, and a constant procession of people past our window going to and from the market. Some carry great baskets of fruit or vegetables on their heads; others (women) glide elegantly in their African robes, usually with a baby strapped on their back. At least half the women have their hair in braids. What is nice is that is seems just as fashionable to be dressed in “African” style as in “Western”, and most people, men and women, are looking so smart it puts me to shame. When you see the tiny houses they live in with no modern facilities, you wonder how on earth they can turn themselves and their children out to immaculately.

Bought bread from the bakery across the road – my first proper transaction in Kinya-rwanda! Decide today’s priority is to get my water filter up and running (Tom’s gone to work and left me to it). Problem – the “candles” which filter the water have to be boiled, and are just too big for any of our saucepans. Decide to do them in sections and just getting well into this when there’s a knock on the door – Claude. He’s apologetic for not getting back to me last night and has come to help with my bank account and post box. So turn off the gas; the water filter will have to wait awhile. We walk to the bank and I’m so glad to have him steer me through the bureaucracy. It feels good to have safely deposited the great wad of cash I’ve been carrying around for the past few days. I’ll get a chequebook in a week or so, all being well. (I expect that’s an African week of around 21 days, but so long as it comes eventually and I can withdraw enough to live on….)

The post office is just opposite our District Office, so we nip in and I buy a post-box for Tom and I to share. Costs RwF9500 (£9.50) which seems quite a lot, but it’s the only way I’ll get mail so we have to grin and bear it. Tom says allow a good fortnight for letters to travel: if that really is the case then it’s twice as fast as post from Cuba!

Next thing, Claude takes me to the office and I sit like a lemon for a couple of hours while he deals with a steady stream of people coming to ask favours or negotiate things. This man is demanding use of the District motor cycle, but Claude refuses. He storms out of the office. This woman is about 22 with a year-old baby. She’s still finishing her secondary education. She’s been given a place in a boarding school but isn’t allowed to have her baby with her there, and the baby has to stay with her parents. But her school is too far away from her home for her to see her baby, and Rwandan law says she must be gioven the facility to be with her child at weekends etc. So Claude has to do a lot of phoning and eventually writes her an official letter which (I hope) will give her what she needs. She shyly makes conversation with me in halting French while all the official business is going on.

In the afternoon Clause is doing sport and then her has to see the priest to make arrangements for his forthcoming wedding, so I go back to the house and finish sterilising my filter candles. Put the first lot of water through – and its DISGUSTING. It’s so chalky it’s almost undrinkable. Decide this water’s too precious to waste, so I mix it with maracuja juice and fill a platypus so I can chill it down in the fridge. Properly chilled it’s just about manageable, but with a strong chalky aftertaste. Boil up several pans of water but can’t be bothered to wait for them to go cold before putting them to filter. Now we have lots of perfectly pure water, but it all tastes disgusting.

Tom cooks beautiful meal in evening and we stay up chewing the fat till the ripe old time of 10.

High points - lots, today: bank sorted, postbox sorted, flat feels like home…..
Low point – got to get the water tasting better. Maybe wait till its quite cold before filtering the next batch!