How to keep an illegal cow in the city.

Our neighbourhood is a strange but beautiful one. We supposedly walk home right through the middle of the red light district but the only real indication of this is a few lively bars with the odd red lantern. Our next-door neighbours are stowing an illegal cow, or at least we think they are. Apparently there are strict guidelines to do with space and keeping live stock in the middle of a capital city… ones which we feel might be being overlooked. Also slightly suspiciously there is a milk bar just down the road…. So when they say ‘fresh’ they mean fresh! Everything here is a bit of a misfit, which makes our area a bizarre combination of being quaint and urban Our street is no more than a dirt track patterned with potholes but our house and the three that surround it would fit in nicely in a middle class American suburb. Peoples dress sense here tends to mirror this randomness, with pink shellsuit bottoms and a traditional African patterned top being the latest fashion. Another observation that cannot go unmissed is the attractiveness of the bigger woman… the bigger the better! Many of the street children carry around scales to weigh yourself for a very low price, what they fail to realise is that very few muzungu women are likely to what to take them up on their offer. We have had to educate the boys at the centre that telling us that we are big would not be a wise move. Eric, One of the older boys, introduced us to his girlfriend the other day who happened to be a fairly voluptuous girl. After telling us her name he proudly pointed out her large cheeks and while vigorously moving his hands in the shape of an hour glass said ‘she’s biiiggg no?’

So on to what we have been up to… Well a few weeks ago we finally made it out of Kigali. We managed to experience some of Rwanda’s finest countryside by visiting our new friend Laurence, who lives, quite frankly, in the middle of nowhere…also known as Gahini. He took us on a two hour bike ride which to be perfectly honest nearly KILLED us (we blame it on the altitude)! But never the less we managed to see some spectacular scenery. The landscape was very much the quintessential rural African setting with little mud huts placed sporadically, fields of luscious green palm trees contrasting with the deep red of the soil. We also passed acres of paddy fields, the scene complete with workers and a setting sun. Rwanda is known as the land of a thousand hills which made the ride breathtaking in every sense of the word! We had a few near collisions with young children, goats, chickens… and each other! Being a muzungu in the city is difficult… being a muzungu in the country is near impossible. When we stopped for a breather we discovered how it must feel to be a zoo animal… a very rare zoo animal. Everybody who was walking passed stopped to point. People only a few metres away stood open mouthed out rightly staring. At this point it was very temping to stick our tongues out to see their reaction but we feared we might get poked with a stick and thought better of it. We completed the ride with a swim in Gahini’s very large and picturesque lake. Andrew then joined us, and Laurence very hospitably cooked us fish from the lake for dinner. The rest of the evening is a little hazy as much red wine, wuragi and Ugandan cherry was consumed. We do however remember thinking it would be an excellent idea to go swimming at around 3am during which time Nell managed to lose her top. Sunday was spent recovering by the lake and luckily we managed to scrounge a lift home, as being rammed into a taxi bus may not have agreed with us.

Last week we managed to fit in a trip to see the boy’s accommodation. It is a small but adequate house with a little out door kitchen and a couple of long drops. Each room hosts a surprising amount of bunkbed’s given their size and the boys have decorated their walls with a number of cuttings from newspapers… some more random than others! One wall had a selection of people taken from what appeared to be a Littlewoods catalogue, modelling clothes ranging from baby grows to walking boots! Another boy had decided to cover his entire room in newspaper including his ceiling, which looked like some kind of crazy modern art. Still we remember the days when pictures from Bliss and Just 17 stared back at us from all angles of our bedrooms… including the classic one of Leo De Caprio or such like placed prominently on our ceilings above our beds! We also got the chance to take part in an Eid celebration, which required us to eat a lot of food! Nicky’s friend Supertall (not like the opposite to Little John – he really is massive) is a Muslim and invited us to his cousins house for lunch and then his own house for dinner, with about an hour separating the two! The food was delicious and it was really nice to be invited into a Rwandan family home. Other than that illness has once more taken its toll on both of us. On Friday Jaz spent the entire day projectile vomiting into a very sorry looking basin. (I probably shouldn’t be admitting this, as you may all question my sanity but whilst alone, desperately board and fed up I wound up drawing a face on my belly; with my belly button acting as the mouth I then filled it full of water and made it mimic me throwing up… its amazing the things you can find entertaining when you spend 24 hours on the same sofa).