Viruses and banana smoothies!

July 9th

Into work today and more or less straight along to see Cécille. She’s the ICT boss for the District and looks about 25. She’s very obliging and straight away gets cracking on fixing my laptop. This isn’t an easy job – the virus bounces back on screen every twenty seconds or so, and makes it tedious to download the latest update of the fixing programme. It eventually takes us three hours – all morning – to download the latest version of the anti virus software and do a complete check on all my files and my flash drives. It’s not helping matters, of course, that I’ve got so much stuff on the computer in the first place!

We just get my machine fixed in time for the lunch break. I thank Cécille profusely – she’s really done me a good turn, and it means that since she works for the District I can go back to her every couple of months or so for an update and not have to wait until my machine’s virtually unusable!

I go back to my little office, intending to have a working lunchtime so that I’m seen to be showing willing and making up for lost time.

However, at precisely this moment the power goes off and stays off till well into the afternoon. There’s nothing I can do in the office, loads I can do at home, and I’m already bored to tears with hanging around all morning waiting for programmes to download on the Rwandan ultra-slow network.

So it’s back to the flat via the market – I seem to have done loads and loads of food shopping these last couple of days, despite eating out – and do some planning for next term’s visits. I also do some more definite costings for Teresa’s visit, and try my hand at writing the formal letters (in French) to the Mayor and to the local schools ready for my next training day in August. August 198th, to be precise – it’ll be the first training I’ve organised all by myself and I don’t know whether I’ll have Soraya by then to help me.

I’ve also committed to helping Els and Marisa run one of their training sessions in Nyamata on July 28th-29th. It ends on the same day that Teresa arrives, but Nyamata is only half an hour by bus from Kigali so it’s not going to get in the way.

We eat really well in the evening, and I make us a smoothie for pud using imeneke and a strawberry yoghurt. It’s the first time we’ve used the blender Tom’s parents brought out. Mixed with a sliced mandazi it’s both delicious and filling. Hey, ho – my Rwandan recipe list is expanding!

Best thing about today – getting my laptop virus free again.