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!