t has been about 3 weeks since we last wrote and during that time things have been hectic. We have been dealing with the government to try and produce passports for the 12 boys travelling to England. One of the obstacles has been the children not knowing when they are born and having no parents to ask. It is pretty hard to get a passport without a birthday or any identification. We have persisted and it seems that immigration will give us the documents eventually !! The next hurdle is the VISA issue. At a cost of 70 quid per person for a week in the UK we hope that the British Embassy is more timely in their assistance of our cause. I am slightly concerned about the 10 page document that each child must complete in English but we will muddle through.
We have finally moved into our new house. What a PALACE it is, 3 rooms and a bathroom so we now have space for anyone who wants to visit. The visitors are supposed to start today. We have 2 British volunteer coaches based in China coming out for a month. At least we think they are – we have not heard from them for about 10 days – so we are hoping everything is OK.
Our social circle has expanded and with it our beer consumption. There are 10 Australians in Rwanda and we have formed a “Sunday Session”. Yesterday upon our arrival at beer garden without ordering out came our regular 3 bottles of Primus. At a cost of 50p each they continued through the 2 sessions of brochette, chips and stew which have become standard dinner at the beginning of each week.
We have also befriended Amanda, a rugby fanatical VSO volunteer. We took some equipment for a rugby session on Saturday and managed to tempt some students from church to try out the game. They were excellent, we all had fun and there is real potential for a team there in the third term!
Finally this morning feeling a bit worse for wear we were confronted with the resident mouses’ suicide in our water barrel. A tragedy to be sure for both him and us as we now need to get a new water barrel.
