Saturday afternoon, I am sitting at home, well positioned to look out the window onto the tree that sits right next to our wall. Half an hour ago some kids climbed it up, ready to jump into our garden. Now Gemma and I take turns in housesitting. She wants to cut the tree, I dont really, not that it is particularly pretty, just for principles.
At least now I have some time to blog again.
Some of you knew about my special 20ies birthday ritual - never spend them at home. And i almost succeded, only spent one in Berlin, I think it was the 22. New decade, new ritual, its called the birthday week(s). Introduced by my dear friend Liz when she turned 30, we spent a whole week spoiling ourselves on Zanzibar at the time. Now, this is the documentation of the 32 b-day week.

It started off with the Irish Community St. Paricks Day Ball at the Serena Hotel. Last year I missed it cause I had to work the next day and there is no point in going to an Irish party and not getting drunk, right? This year, since my b-day fell in a Friday we all celebrated together, me, the irish and Dafne, the fellow B-day girl.

Iam waiting for a friend to send me her pictures with the whole crazy dress parade. Meanwhile, a photo of me and Liliana.



















The next day, I had people over for coffee and cake. I got up early and flicked through my receipes. Iam not that much of a baking person, but I do have some hidden treasures scribbled down. And then for fun wanted to try out something new. Music loud, kitchen covered in flour I baked away happily. But when it was time to put the doughs into the oven, it remained cold. Of course, I remembered then that a couple of weeks ago, when I wanted to turn the oven off, it wouldnt and I had to unplug it. The mental note never materialsed into action and so the thing was never repaired. Nothing to worry about, carefully i carried the two bowls over to the neighbours, two guys, wanting to be helpful but unfortunately a little helpless in the kitchen. Didnt know how to work their oven. Now, slight panic. Called the other neighbours, out of the house shopping for their party that night. And then got lucky with the last one. An hour and a half to go. Phew. Cakes turned out delicious, neighbours got their share, too.

all is well that ends well, sitting in the shade on a very sunny post-birthday-afternoonNach dem ganzen Backdrama sitzen hier wir hier nun ganz gemuetlich im Schatten

Me and Steve, good to have a photography nerd friend (you said it yourself!) when you have just bought a new kick ass digitial camera.

Saturday neighbours party, was followed by a dinner in Kigalis best new restaurant "Select", a lazy sunday afternoon and one of the best theatre plays i have seen here in Rwanda. Adapted from a south african play about two political prisoners performed by a rwandan and congolese.

Birthday week was completed with my fourth "Happy Birthday Anja Fischer" cake Monday morning in the office  and two outings, one to

Mt. Kabuye with my friend Steve and the other one to Lake Ruhondo in the Northwest, my favourite area in Rwanda. its the rainy season now. Well, its seems its always raining season here nowadays. So, no surprise that it was overcast when we started towards the mountain. We only had a very rough idea where we were going, so gladly excepted local help when we parked the car in the parking lot of a small public adminstration building. Our entourage was made of 4 guys, the youngest about 9-10, all in flip flops, wellies or simply barefoot. The higher up we went the colder an foggy it got. By the time we reached the top I had put on my raincoat and hat whereas the boys were freezing and shivering in their t-shirts. So we just had a short food break in the forest, unfortunately without any view. This photo was taken on the way back.
Mit dem Wetter hatten wir nicht so viel Glück auf dem Weg zum Gipfel von Mt. Kabuye. Es war ziemlich neblig und regnerisch, vor allem auf dem Rückweg, hier auf dem Foto. Dementsprechend schlecht war auch die Aussicht, aber es war dennoch ein guter Trip!













Whereas we took a well trodden path on the way up, we were led down on the backside of the mountain, no path whatsoever, steep as hell. All to see a cave, which was a little creepy. It started to rain and it became more and more slippy. The red earth turns into something thick butter-like, expect to slide. And so we did. We were wet from top to toe and trousers were covered in red mud. I had already decided and announced to Steve that all that stuff will have to come off in the car and that we might be stopped a litle more often by the police who have been lining the roads on our way up from Kigali. Luckily for all of us I had forgotten my sweaty yoga gear in the back of the car again from a couple of days back. Better stinky than wet and dirty!

A week later, the weather was a little better, at least until we got back into the car to go home when it started to piss down like it only does in the tropics. The word was that there is a beautifully situated church on one of the hills overlooking Lake Ruhondo, up in the north towards the vulcanoes.
Ich wollte schon eine ganze Weile mal zu dieser Kirche, die so eine schoene Aussicht ueber den Ruhondo See hat, im Nordwesten in Richtung der Vulkane. Und so brach ich mit ein paar Freunden auf zu einem kleinen Spaziergang, nichts im Vergleich zu der Bergwanderung der Woche zuvor!


The walk was a little less heavy than up Mt. Kabuye, we made plenty of breaks on the way down to the lake and up again. Here during one of them, with Ashani and Nicks legs in the back.


One more down, many more to come!

Last Christmas

I probably spent the most unusual Christmas Eve ever today.
Though a normal working day, I sleep until after 8, have a cup of tea and am actually waiting for our housekeeper to show up to give her a Christmas present and some instructions for next week when I am not here. Turns out she took the day off. So I go to the Bourbon coffee shop for my regular tall cappuccino and zucchini bread to go, buy wine next door in Nakumatt for tomorrow's christmas dinner and pay my internet bill while waiting for the 10 waiters to coordinate and process my order. And while I still wait even after all the errands i cant help marvelling at the christmas decoration. If you look at the entry from 3 years back, my first Christmas here, I displayed a nice little choice of Kigalis Christmas decoration. Have a look for yourselves how far we have come since then. Mental note: propose christmas decoration as a development indicator for next budget support review!















9:30 I finally rock up at the office and start my work day, lot of archiving, inbox clearing, giving my staff the afternoon off to prepare their christmas festivities at home. Love the way they present their request, they don't even usually celebrate today. But hey, its Christmas and they are bored. So when I come back from my audience with the Minister of Health - some people actually really work on this day - and driving my friend Joy to the airport for her holidays I spend another good 2 hours by myself in the office, its overcast so I need to put on the lights listening to Radio Eins and still no "Last Christmas". No new incoming mails all day, no one's on skype either. When all the archiving is done and it gets too depressing to do anything else really productive i finally close the door behind me and am off to massage at my house. Since I am home alone I put the mattrass on the dinner table so I can look out into the rain, switch on the radio and get high on Zanzibarian clove oil. And as I lie there on my belly, raindrops steadily dripping from the roof: WHAM! The jingely tunes of "Last Christmas" on the radio at last. And so this is Christmas!

first time Uganda

I just got back from a little walk around my neighbourhood, a network of smaller and bigger dirt roads, in the most stunning golden afternoon sun. The beauty of these hills and the red mud and brick houses gets me every time. The bigger roads run alongside the hill, further up mostly private houses, some big villas next to rather shabby huts and further down long lines of shops, bars and make shift markets of women selling vegetables opening up a nice view over parts of the city. Kids running around with selfmade paper windmills, young men playing cards, shy couples holding hands in the protective shade of a bar, families streaming out of a church - must have been a hell of a long Sunday service. One of those days i need to do that walk with a camera. Now the sun is setting opposite my porch, i have a coke in my hand and I open up my eager eyes.

Not so long ago I went to Uganda for the first time proper - the first time 2 days to a conference in Entebbe didnt count obviously. Well, even this time it really only was 30 min over the border. Its a favourite with Kigalites for a short weekend away. Interestingly you can leave Rwanda in either direction, the contrast couldnt be bigger. It starts with the food, we had yummy crayfish from the lake, french onion soup and other lovely dishes. And the customer service, ah. We were 10 people, all orderering together and all meals came...and on time! The place we stayed at was this eco-tourist resort on an island with compost toilets, outside showers and nicely tucked away huts slash tents named after birds.
It reminded me a lot of lake Kivu when I did the trip from Goma to Bukavu last year. The scenery was very similar, with the lake winding along, little islands everywhere and terraced hills left and right.

Here is the view from our tent.
Aussicht von meinem Zelt auf einer Insel im Bunyonisee in Uganda, 30 Minuten hinter der Grenze zu Ruanda. Sehr beliebt fuer Wochenendtrips von Kigali.



And here is me sporting some really classy sunglasses. We were sitting on this floating bridge on the lake resting from a little swim - very little, Iam so out of shape!

chez moi reloaded

I always wonder if we make our environment fit our mood or the other way around. This past week in any way has brought on an end of the year mood. Although work was still very busy and every evening something else was on. A christmas market that served oysters and foie gras for example - didn't create much of a christmas feeling but was very delicious, much more so than what they were trying to serve as Glühwein. Weirdest news from home this week: its snowing! "Abwrackprämie" beat "Wachstumsbeschleunigungsgesetz" as the word of the year. And only 5 more days to Christmas !!

Another episode worth reporting from this year, at some point i felt I had to do some redecorating in the house to make it a little more homy. So I had some more banana leaf armchairs made and spent an entire Friday evening pushing shelfs and furniture around. I was very pleased with myself afterwards and that what it looks like now.






























And now that I finally discovered how to open both wings of my front door out onto the porch even on my sofa it feels like sitting outside.
At some point we also had two cats in the family - anounced before as part of advancing to proper expatriateship along with the car. Unfortunately they didnt last very long. I should probably not say anything bad about the deceased but they weren't made to last. A lot of the local cats actually suffer from the consequences of a too small gene pool.





And no, thats not the way Pike - one of our kitties - died. Just a cherishable memory.

Home alone

As of today Holiday season has officially started, I am alone in the office and at home. Music at full volume - at home that is - a cuddely cat to my feet, lights in every room, it's nice to have the house to myself.

After much talk about leisure and fun things in Kigali and beyond on this blog I thought I should also share something on work. As I scanned our server for photos - knowledge management is actually one of my tasks - I realized once more how poor our photo archive is. The vast majority consists of overexposed or blurred photos of meetings or office parties and it reminds me once more that i have been meaning to buy a better camera and do a better job at that. I managed to come up with a couple of pictures though. Part one from random meetings, conferences, from different years actually but trust me, they all follow the same pattern.

One starts off sitting at the table looking busy studying the supporting documents (here during a small meeting in Arusha this year)





















Then there are tons of presentations, if you are lucky its interactive and you get to write on coloured cards.















After hours of sitting its time to secretly stand up in the back and stand a little (here during a teambuilding workshop with my team in July)















The bigger the the meeting and the venue the better the coffee break which is when you mingle with colleagues to discuss interesting aspects of the last presentation or just ask them what it was actually about. (here at a big international conference last year on what again?? )















And since the most important discussions never take place inside the conference room anyway there is always plenty of occasions to socialise. (at the same conference)















Part two with some pics from the field.

So its officially impossible now to write everyday, but I will keep trying. Promised.
On Thursday it was straight to Yoga after work, first session at the American Embassy in weeks and then collapsing into bed exhausted. Then, yesterday was of course Friday. It was a busy day doing handovers with literally all my colleagues as in good expatriate fashion people start their christmas holidays in mid december. As I am not going home this year I will be alone in the office as of next Monday and Hurray for that! Fridays I also like to go for an afterwork drink and if it hadnt been so overcast again i could have posted Kigalis best view from Panorama Bar right here.

And now back to April 2009. I hadnt been back to my beloved Scotland in a while now and was therefore mighty happy that my very good friend Isadora (formerly known as Laura) got married in her native land and gave me a reason to visit. Of course I was equally happy she had found the man of her life in the first place. It still makes me consider going to Afghanistan for work every now and then as I know at least 4 people who went there and got married with people they met there - emergency countries, way to go, lots of eligible young men!
On my way i stopped over for my annual visit to London to do some last minute wedding outfit shopping (as a bridesmaid we had to come up with a peacock theme!) and to spend some time with my friend Ines. For this time of year the weather was exceptional and I was walking around London in a T-shirt enjoying bright blue sky and sunshine. And I took that weather with me on a lovely trainride up north. As I arrived at Edinburgh Station the castle on the left and busy Princess Street on the right for a moment I travelled back in time and was 19 again. I was going to head further towards a little B&B near Isadoras house in Fife where I would stay with Liz during the days before the wedding. But before I wandered around town a little following my memories of places I used to love and ended up in my favorite cafe at Haymarket where I sat happily for an hour with my fudge cake and the afternoon sun in my face.
In the evening I met up with Liz and the bride for a happy reunion, first time we were all together again after Liz and Isadora left Rwanda. In the days to come I had time to show Liz a little around, we went to St. Andrews and for a coastal walk. On Good Friday we headed to Dundee where Isadora and Sabour had rented a big old house for the wedding. When I first entered I was blown away as it smelled exactly like the house I used to live in near Stirling, a mix of old furniture, dust...ok, that doesnt sound very inviting but it was in fact. So our first duty was to check out the rooms and allocate them to the wedding guests, from the big lovely rooms for the parents to the small downstairs servant rooms for the male single friends of the groom - all with quite distinguished names as "Bruce" or "Lady in waiting".
It was a very lovely and relaxed atmosphere the whole time, the cooking was done by ourselves, I think the bride actually made her own wedding cake. Most of the time we sat around the big AGA stove in the kitchen refreshing old memories and forging new bonds.
The wedding was a Baha'i ceremony, an religion coming out of Zoroastrianism in Iran. It comprised elements from different religions including a poem by arabic writer Khalil Gibran that I was honoured to read. I had heard of it for the first time then but as it turned out later its quite a wedding favourite. Again the sky blessed us with bright sunshine and bearable temperatures which meant relief especially for the ladies' wardrobes as we had feared to ruin our lovely peacock coloured outfits with hideous jackets or other unattractive accessories to keep warm - although I cherish the memory of the bride's red and brown knitted legwarmers underneath the beautiful white Thai silk dress deeply!

Here is a picture of the whole wedding party and one of the lovely couple amidst daffodils - ah, Scotland in spring!







Im April war ich in Schottland zur Hochzeit meiner guten Freundin Isadora (Laura). Ich war schon so lange nicht mehr dort gewesen und hab es daher sehr genossen, zumal das Wetter einfach grossartig war. Das Paar hatte ein schoenes altes Haus gemietet und so war genuegend Platz fuer Freunde und Familie. Hier ein Bild der Hochzeitsgesellschaft und Isadora mit ihrem Mann Sabour.

What started out with a miserable Monday turns into a miserable week, a few hours sunshine at noon and the rest grey and rain. Maybe its also me still fighting off some stomach bugs.

A few weeks ago I was at a workshop in Gisenyi, regular blog readers might remember this being a very popular place for workshops at the shore of Lake Kivu in the North West of Rwanda. We were working with a small group on a health financing and health insurance policy. On the way back I got a lift with 2 colleagues from the Ministry of Health in a rented landcruiser. We had only driven for 20 minutes when we had a flat tyre, great. So we get out, crowds of children and other bystanders gathered around and watched us. Then I saw this one kid carrying a younger brother or sister on her back and I remembered how a few months earlier I had given a mini kikoy (sarong) to my friend's daughter. I showed her different ways of wrapping it including the technique for tying babies to your back. As she was expecting a little baby brother at the time I also told her that in Rwanda children her age would often carry their siblings around that way and she was amazed by that. According to my friend she walked around the flat with the kikoy wrapped around her for weeks after that. So, Lisa-Marie and Franzi, this is what it looks like.