First day of my Rwanda holiday OMG! Last night when I went to lay in my bed, I just started to laugh. Ohhh the bed was soooooo comfortable with fluffy pillows. I forgot that feeling, I couldn’t stop laughing from happiness. Never been that grateful for a bed! I slept 8 hours straight! & without Advil PM. That’s the forte time this happened in Rwanda. With no alarm, I woke up fresh and still quite early and my 9-year old son Skyped me. Finally, I have a strong enough wifi connection that can hold a video Skype call. I put in my headphones and went to have breakfast. My son and I virtually had breakfast together. I was eating at the breakfast table in Rwanda and he was eating at home. He helped me select what I should eat for breakfast. He saw a donut and that one I had to eat for him. He was able to wave at the Chef who was making me an omelette. For a moment it felt that he was here in Rwanda. We video Skyped at the breakfast table for 2 hours. The day feels weird without the tea union. It had been a big part of my life for 2 weeks straight. I also find out that you can’t have chicken in a taxibus and no heavy market goods. Numerien didn’t believe me that it was illegal. Smggghhh…. I miss the Union and all its people already. I saw that the hotel has a beauty centre and decided to go for pampering.
That day I also went to the pharmacy to buy amiable pills in town, just in case I get infected since I have been grubbing on food that I shouldn’t eat. I bought a double dosis Nausicaa :) Walking through Gisenyi, I got a couple of good photo snaps from the Nyiaragongo volcano in Congo. So much steam that comes out of there. In the night you can see the red fire in the background of Gisenyi. This place is just beautiful, we walked to some amazing ‘rich’ people neighbourhoods and into the market. The market of Gisenyi is quite big and they are constructing a building to move it into a proper construction. A type of shopping mall, one can say. These markets always upset me. They sell second hand clothing mostly. Second hand clothing that comes from Europe and America. These are the clothes that we put outside our houses for charity. They are being collected all over and sold in bulk by Western businessman to African whole sellers. The clothes are then resold through retail in the markets. It pisses me off! These clothes should be given for free! On top of all of this, these second hand clothes are very expensive. Second hand clothes from America and Europe are considered premium quality while new clothes are considered bad, low quality from China. My argument is that most of these Western clothes are also made in China. Thus, this reasoning makes no sense. No matter what quality, these clothes should be free. They were donated to be given away for free. This phenomena is all over Africa, not only Rwanda. On the positive side, it is sustainable. Gisenyi is small and we are quick back where we left off. I found the mosque that was keeping me up last week. Its actually far from where I stayed. Back at Lake Kivu, I watch the sun set and order yummy food. Lake Kivu is so big that it looks like an ocean. The water is always warm and the methane gas extraction continues to fascinate me. I might go out tonight ;) after watching #rwandaday live President Kagame is just saying that Kinyarwanda learning centres are being set up so that Rwanda’s or adopted Rwandans wanting to return home can prepare. I want to learn the language ! Let me find out where these will be.