Well it's 9am and I've been in the office for about an hour. It was a great walk as usual - a lovely text from the UK gave me a real spring in my step and despite me having my pretty industrial rucksack on my back (I'll be staying at Amy's tonight for the training weekend), the journey in passed quickly. I guess I'm still fascinated by so many things I see -the funniest/strangest this morning was a little boy licking a lampost. I probably should have said something more than 'morning' but he was with an adult and actually what could I say?Obviously this is an extreme example but sometimes it's hard to know when to say something or not. While I'm sure licking lampposts is not part of Rwandan culture, some things which are can be equally surprising so I try to reserve judgement... Who am I to say? blah blah...

As I made my way, I decided to take the dirt path which goes above the main road and which they're currently working on. Men and women together. Some are chipping stone, others mixing concrete-the work looks arduous and no doubt it's a long term project. Nevertheless, everyone seems happy- a group was even singing and stopped to greet me as I went through. I continued with some of the girls who were collecting water. They seemed to be very concerned by how much I was carrying on my back. I explained I was fine and I was pretty close to my office now anyway. I left them at the water pump where they were about to fill up their huge jerry cans. These they'll fill and carry back effortlessly, (on their head!) countless times a day under the scorching sun...But still they worried about my load!

So, I'm in the office now catching up on emails and looking at the activities for tomorrow. I've just received two emails from Innocent (my errant director). Looks like he's been catching up with his emails too. I was trying to keep him in the loop about what I was doing (on a weekly basis-no need for detail here) and he's finally got back to me. Here they are:

Hello how are you? I am sorry I was surprised to move from Kigali to South Africa. I got the ticket at 5 pm on sunday and we had to go on monday at 2 am and I was not aware of it. I did not come back to Nyamagabe to say bye. But any problem you will have contact Marc or send me a message I will try to give a help.
Thank you.

Isn't that brilliant? Now, as you know, I kind of knew there was rumour of him going to do this MA in South Africa, so it's nice now that everything's been confirmed! Oh and Marc, yeh he's a nice bloke but he works for the department of health- so not overly concerned with education! He then followed this with a little progress report:

Hello how are you? I hope you are fine. I am fine too. We have started studying it is not easy but very soon it will be okey. Have a nice day.

... So once again, I am surprised but not shocked. I am learning that things are just different here...courtesy and professionalism do exist but they are just conveyed well differently. There is now no director or charge of education basically, at district level, it's just me-hilarious!

Anyway, that's all for now-nice to know some of you are reading this. I hope you know how hard this is for me. Not quite used to it yet, maybe it's like Big Brother and gradually, I 'll forget you're even there...:0)

Bon weekend!