I can’t believe that Sunday was Mother’s Day. It seemed like we'd just celebrated it. Well, in reality, we had. You see, in England they have “Mothering Day” in March. With so many visitors here from England, we've already celebrated "Mothering Day." So that explains why it seemed too soon to have another Mother’s Day.
When I first came to Kibogora, Sheila insisted I watch season six of the TV series, “24.” She is quite a fan of the program. So the last three weeks we have been slowly working our way through season one. One of our visitors is returning home Thursday, so our "24" watching has sped up. Tonight we watched four hours of the program. But then that doesn’t beat the eight hours that Sheila sat and watched the show one time. We could have watched eight hours tonight, but since we all had to work the next day, we were good and stopped at 9:30 p.m. J
We drove back to Kibogora today with two nurses who have come for a month to teach emergency room nursing. The drive through the rain forest was a great experience…especially when the monkey we stopped to photograph jumped up on the side mirror of the c ar and tried to climb in the rolled down window. Thankfully, some screaming from one of the women and quick reflexes to roll up the window saved the day, so we didn’t have any extra passengers. J
This weekend Jen and Seng Thor came to Kibogora for a visit. It was wonderful to have them here. For those of you who don’t know them, they work in Kigali with Food for the Hungry but are friends of mine from home. We watched films and played card games together. Sunday afternoon we went to Kumbya and played lots of cards while enjoying the sound of the water lapping up against the rocks, a very familiar sound for those of us who grew up near the ocean.
Originally, in the Kinyarwanda language, there were no words for machine, coat, tee shirt, etc, so they just turned the English into Kinyarwanda with imachinei, itee shirti, icoati, etc. (I have spelled the words phonetically. They are spelled a little differently in Kinyarwanda.) So, you see, Apple might have the trademark of ipod, iphone, etc., but, I think, the Kinyarwanda language had it first. :-)
The newly remodeled apartment is almost finished. We have just a few minor details to finish like moving the rod further out from the wall, so we can actually hang the hangers on it, and adjusting the louvered windows so when it rains, there isn’t a puddle on the floor. This weekend while in Kigali, we bought a nice rug for the front room floor plus fabric to match to recover the chairs and couch. It'll look quite nice when all is finished. I enjoy the sewing projects although I am a little behind, but I’ll get there.
Today I had a new, though strange experience. Sheila and I are in Kigali for the weekend, so she decided we would treat ourselves. We went to one of the nice hotels in town for a manicure and pedicure. I've never had either before. We walked into the beauty parlor…and two and a half hours later walked out with painted nails and, at least for me, hands and feet that have never had so much attention. And all of that for 7000 francs or $13 each. Quite a deal!! Then we went to the newly-opened coffee shop to sit in leather chairs, watch the other patrons take advantage of the wireless internet, eat a grilled chicken salad, and drink fruit juice (since I don't like coffee). It was easy to forget I’m in Africa. But it didn’t take long for reality to hit once I was back on the road headed for home.
This last weekend was a nice chance to get some work done and relax. I made the curtains for the apartment we are almost finished remodeling. Now the guys just have to put the curtain rods up then I can hang them. I'll show pictures when the furniture is in and the place is ready for visitors. It was nice to have a laid-back weekend. I enjoyed the weekend before, but it wasn't quite as restful as I spent most of the time at Kumbya, swimming and building sand castles with a visiting family.
