Week One

Arrived in Kigali Saturday 30 hours after leaving Seattle with stops in Wash DC and Brussles. Have had a very busy first week getting the download on the project. Many thanks to Al Bergman who has been here for the last few months for bringing me up to speed on the project and filling me in on how things work here in Kigali. alot to absorb in one week! Al has done a great job setting the table and has returned to Seattle.
The project is about 1 hour south of Kigali and I made 2 trips to the site this week. first meeting with the Rwandan contractor Hygebat on wednesday. they appear to be a good sound contractor. i am keeping my fingers crossed. I hope to attach some pictures of the site when i post this update as long as i can find time to upload my camera programs tomorrow and if we have power. the site is being graded with a D7 CAT and foundations are being excavated by hand. labor is very cheap here and so most work is done without machinery. one of the attached pictures was taken on the way to the project and is of men digging a trench to install fiber cable. you can see many men digging which was the same scene for miles.
I am very pleased with my housing accomodations. RGI has rented a nice 3 bedroom house in the Gacuriro neighborhood. I am sharing the house with the school headmaster Peter Thorpe who is here from San Francisco on a 3 year contact. We are fortunate to have a attendant who also lives with us and does the cooking and cleaning. The usually call them houseboys but Paul is a older gentleman and so i would rather not use the term. Paul has done this type of work since 1969 and is well versed in many different types of cooking which is very good! we told him we would like chicken for dinner and to my surprise he came home from the market with a live chicken which he killed in the back yard, threw in some boiling water and then plucked the feathers! suppose to have for dinner tonight. Paul just replaced the original houseboy John Baptise this week as John was caught exchanging Al's $100 US bills with conterfit bills. when confronted John ran off knowing the police were on the way. Very unfortunate. He made off with $900 dollars of Al's money. we have no concerns with Paul.
The people I have met so far are very nice and have been very accomodating. except for the memorials you see no evidence of there past troubles. The pace here is very much slower than the US which I must adjust to. The internet is extremly slow and alot of times does not work at all. as a example it may take 5 minutes to log on to a website and then not be available. I tried loading pictures to shutterfly last night for 1 hour and then system failed and time was wasted. all service is from cell towers. power is also not dependable as we have lost power 4 days in my first week. I am typing this post from a very nice coffee shop as we are out of power again today.
Many things are expensive here, especially imported goods. the conversion is about 585 Rwandan Francs to the US dollar. I travel everywhere by taxi which is also expensive.gasoline costs about $6.50/gallon. you pay as you go for phone, internet, power, tv. you buy cards with time and enter a code into each system. cards are similair to a lottery ticket and you scratch the back of to get your code.
Last but perhaps most important is that the beer here is good and cheap! I have found a liking to Mutzig which cost $1.70/bottle. Hope all is well with all of you back home. My first week has been good. I will talk with you soon.