Update Mid April...soccer pictures

Hi everyone!  It takes time to settle into a new community let alone a new country!  We have received two-year Temporary Resident Permits (Zain to work and Yusuf and me as dependents.)  I was told that I may work (for money, that is) if I simply notify Immigration here because, in addition to Zain, I am deemed to be bringing significant skills into the country that are needed here.  Not sure if that includes tractor-driving, home-making and child-rearing!  However, we will be volunteering with youth soccer in addition to helping the country with various business initiatives especially as they relate to Information Communications Technology.  Zain has qualified to bid on a huge project here and we have partnered with the General Manager of Yusuf's soccer club in order to build greater infrastructure for youth soccer here.  In addition, Zain will continue with international training and consulting around Africa, the Caribbean and the South Pacfic supported by another subject expert from Toronto who has worked with us for several years.

We will be moving house for May 1 to a more central location in Remera which is closer to shops, soccer and the airport. It is only $1,000 per month plus utilities and garbage collection which are about half the price in Toronto.  Our current McMansion is costing us $1,500 per month plus utilities & garbage collection.  We don't need all this space unless I were to have a grand piano sitting in the front window.  The acoustics in this house are amazingly great with the porcelain floors and high ceilings.  However, a Chinese family just moved into the other half of this semi-detached building and I fear there is no sound barrier let alone a fire wall!  This morning I heard someone blowing their nose and yesterday there was the click click of heels across the master bedroom floor.  Also, a couple of electrica switches are not working properly (i.e. shorting out) and the landlord just ignores us since he has had to make some plumbing repairs.  At least the roof doesn't leak but the paint is starting to peel on the outside cement walls.

Our new place is a detached bungalow facing due west on a slope of one of the thousand hills in this city.  We overlook a lush green park with trees and flowers where I will have to remember to wear my sticky Deet insect repellent.  There is a huge master bedroom with en-suite and 3 other bedrooms.  My housekeeper/student/interpreter has her own quarters with separate entrance at the back and there is a gate-keeper who has a small cabin.  We need to buy a washing machine (LG model for about $400 plus tax).  We signed a one-year rental agreement and the owner is actually a lady working in Ottawa.  Definitely, she has made this house a "home" ... white ceramic tiles in kitchen and bathrooms.  It's furnished with dining suite and lounge chairs in the living room.  There's a huge garden at the back elevated into the hill supported by a 10 ft high stone/cement wall with steps ascending to it.  Someone is growing cabbages up there that I could see from below.  I plan to grow my own fresh flowers for decoration in the house with the white tiles as a backdrop.

Our car is to arrive by next Friday and we will not pay any custom duty as expected because we have a two-year TempResPermit.  Zain flew to London, UK early Sat. morning for a Commonwealth Telecommunication Organization annual meeting all this week.  Rwandair baggage tag came off between Kigali and Nairobi.  Kenyan Airways told him his bag would be on the plane to London anyway...NOT!  Zain is bagless in London but they're tracing it.  This has happened in the past when his bag was left on the Tarmac in Dubai en route to Johannesburg a couple years ago.  He did get it back in a couple of days so let's hope for the best especially since it was a new Heys bag from Toronto!

Attached, please find an assortment of pictures that I haven't posted earlier.  Yusuf is fine and has a soccer friend, Fabrice, who comes to visit us.  He wants us to adopt him and his mother, single mother since the genocide, has agreed (according to Fabrice).  He's nineteen and the Immigration told us to talk to the Family Services department.  I'm not sure that a nineteen year old needs to be "adopted" but rather needs career guidance and money for education.  He's a fine fellow with no bad habits. There's a picture of him with Yusuf.  By the way, Fabrice loves my cooking!

This is Yusuf's Division 2 team with Yusuf second from far left.  They won with much composure and strategy.  This is the college turf field where they train.  Yusuf travels there and back on motorcycle taxi.

                                  

This is half-time when they were losing and the coaches gave them the confidence to come back even though they were tired...and these guys don't tire easily.  The other team was just as strong and I was afraid they would win.

This guy was the "hornblower" making so much noise!  He loved it when I took his picture.

Great shot of these two friends...Yusuf and Fabrice.

Walk on Golf Course Road

We are into the month of "April Showers" when the flowers come out all over the place.  After working on my laptop, I went out at 3 p.m. for a 45 minute walk down the Golf Course Road to the Tennis Club and 45 minutes back.  The stiffness in my joints has all but disappeared since being in this warm climate for almost 3 weeks.  Here are pictures from my walk.

A caddy waiting for a "white" guy to hit the golf ball.

Hill side of golf course with wall between a home property and the road.

Perfectly groomed putting green.

A long run for this hole down into the valley.  Stream at bottom from man-made lake.

Very quaint ivy-covered home.

On golf course side of road.

New apartments going up overlooking road and golf course.

A single home overlooking road.  Wooden entrance door.

Man-made lake in background.

Slowing down for speed bumps in front of Tennis Club.

The best clay on these courts.

Watering down the dry clay.

The "white" house Zain likes a lot.

Wall separating white house from road.

White house from in front of Tennis Club.

Golf course is behind the bushes.  No fences at all.

Soccer registration for Yusuf

Yusuf at the Rwanda Soccer Federation where he registered as a player in Rwanda.

Our friend, Juma, drove us to the Federation in his lovely, old Mercedes.  That's Zain in front right.  Juma is a translator fluent in Kinyarwanda, Arabic, French and English.  He's transferring to Darfur, Sudan for nine months and has invited us to his wedding in Kigali when he returns!  A lovely, gentle man whom we will miss.  He loves my cooking, by the way.

Attended Soccer Game outside Kigali

We drove with the General Manager of Yusuf's soccer team, SEC, to Rwamagana, about 60 km to the east of Kigali last Sunday.  Very fertile farmland with lots of banana trees.  Rwamagana was settled by Arabs from Oman a long time ago.

Arriving in Rwamagana and having some African Tea at a local restaurant.  African Tea is a mellow blend of ginger, tea and hot milk.  We loved it!

Very fertile land in a valley east of Kigali.

Local dwellings along the smooth asphalt road which is maintained for transport of agricultural products.  (Lots of big trucks.)

A little cool that day but pleasant.

Old mosque in Rwamagana.  New mosque being built to the right.

Yusuf took this picture before his team played.  He is not registered to play yet.  This pitch was very poor using wood chips as line markers.  The police guard uses it for practice and one end had no turf only red clay which had turned to mud due to earlier rain.

Very athletic players with unique style of play.  They are Second Division in Rwanda.  Eight players were moved up recently to Division One so these boys are new playing together.

This was a field beside the soccer pitch.  The birds feeding on the ground are large crow-like creatures with a white band around the chest.  According to Wikimedia, it is a Pied Crow common in East, South and Equatorial Africa.  There's one that sit's often on top of our house at the back letting out several belches of  "CAAW" before it swoops off down over the golf course.  Much larger than Canadian crows...more like ravens with black bills.

Drove out from Rwamagana to a 'finger' lake, tourist area called Muhezi.  The boy on the left was biking on the country road and knew the General Manager.  That's Yusuf on the right.  I believe the green bushes on the left are newly planted macadamia trees.  There's a deep, narrow lake in the valley toward the left.  End of day and I heard a mosquito buzzing around my right ear.  Time to go home to Kigali!

Photos around our neighborhood

Here is a collection of shots around our neighborhood.

Tennis courts near our house.

The Rwanda Development Board which is facilitating our business here.

Balancing act...

View from open-air restaurant at Manor Hotel looking south.

View of our house from the street.  It is a semi-detached but no one lives in the other half.

I walked up the hill from our house which you can see on the right.  Bosco's house with the barking guard dog is on the left with the black iron balcony railing.  House in between is rented to an airline where its flight attendants stay as required.

This is the storm drain with the airline house to the right and Bosco's house to the left.  Beautiful blue, morning-glory type flowering bushes.

This is our front gate which is open about a foot for me to re-enter.  Grounds person sleeps in the left tower where there is that turret-like window.  He's high and dry there and has two small rooms at the left lower side of our house with his own quarters.  We give him food regularly.

Lessons Learned so far...

Truly, the following points should be shared by anyone coming to Rwanda. But then, who would ever undertake such an adventure without the full support of multinational corporation with a department of staff dedicated to giving accurate advice to valued executive staff? 

1. If you live in urban areas, you don't have to pack a ton of DEET bug spray to ward off mosquitoes.  I have heard only one mosquito buzzing around my head.  That was when I was in a remote part of the Eastern Province at dusk.  I was wearning bug spray and a head scarf but was terrified that I might be dead from malaria within 24 hours.  Based on warnings from the Travel Health people at home, I was thinking that maybe malaria-carrying mosquitoes don't have any buzzing sound and can sneak up on me (someone who grew up in Muskoka).  Where are all the so-called mosquitoes???
2. Do bring the chlorine dioxide mixture to treat your own water which has been filtered already of any visible contaminants.  None of us have suffered any of the dreadful, dysentry-type symptoms that we we warned about by Travel Health officials back home.
3. Buy from small farmer huts located near a local Supermarket. Can you remember bringing home farm fresh eggs in a brown paper bag? Just bought a huge bag of green peas.  I've never tasted peas as full-flavoured as good in Grandma Goltz's clay pea patch. Prices are great and food is fresh although it probably needs to be treated.  For precaution, soak this food in a strong concentration of chlorine dioxide before handling in the kitchen or boil it for at least 20 minutes like I did the peas. 
4. Understand fully what you are getting for Internet service and how to download more time.  Look for promotions among the local service companies.  For example, after gobbling many megabytes of data thinking that our service was 'unlimited', we have figured out that we should have topped up our daily quota before it ran out.  Also, 'browse all day' in fact means maximum 2 GB which we ate up within hours.  Furthermore, we pay about $2 per day for this promotion but we have to reinitialize the service each day after prepaying for several days at a time.  This sounds pretty complicated to me.  Why not give us unlimited for a set number of days?  "Unlimited by this particular service provider won't be available for 2-3 months but at least its high-speed service is consistent - when it's working.
5. Make sure a portable internet stick for your Apple laptop is compatible.  We were forced to buy a WiFi router for our Apple laptop and that resulted in the strange payment arrangement described in Item 4 above.
6. The easiest access is an Internet stick with unlimited access for about $17/week.  However, you have to go back to the service provider to have more time added to the stick.
7. You can buy local SIM cards for your mobile phone and purchase little vouchers for about 3 dollars which give you a couple hours talking for outbound calls.  Incoming calls are free.  However, make sure the voucher has not expired especially if you buy if from someone standing on the street corner even if they are wearing the service providers uniform!  Went back to that bunch of streetcorner vendors and they showed me all the cards are dated 2011.  So, one of them took one of the vouchers and uploaded more time for me.  Problem with my earlier voucher was that the "scratch" strip peeled completely off on me taking the voucher code digits with it.  Unfortunately, I didn't decipher the digits accurately and thought the card was expired.  
8. In humid tropical climates, if your electrical water heater stops working, the metal plug could be corroded and needs to be replaced.  This we discovered after four days of cold showers.  Mind you, "cold" in the tropics means  "tepid" in Canada and at the most, just stimulates the lymph nodes.
9. When applying for Resident Permits, make sure you understand completely all the documents required.  I don't know why this process hasn't been completely documented.  The only thing I read was the need for a police clearance.  Believe me, there's always more so be prepared.  For example, you have to be able to prove your relationship to the person apply for the Permit if you are applying as a Dependent. 
10. Last but not least, take a week to sleep as you adjust to this fantastic warm, gentle climate in the tropical highlands of East Africa.  Life is simpler here than at home and a common phrase I keep hearing is "no problem."

Yusuf's Casa Kigali

Here are some pictures of Yusuf's room at our Casa Kigali. We brought the comforter and cover from Ikea in Toronto.  Perfect light weight for this climate.

The 'wired' generation.  Helps with home schooling and not feeling lonely with old friends just a click away.

Using the old Tiger beach towel from home as a floor mat.  How could I not bring it to Africa?

Common bathroom as above which Yusuf uses.  Yes, there's a modern, flush toilet but I don't take pictures of toilets.

Heading out to practice.

Returning from practice.

Kigali volcanic dust which comes off easily like powder.

Yusuf catching up to Zain as they head out to travel by motorcycle taxis to soccer practice.  Gate being opened by our grounds person, Juma.