There’s a Cat in the Wall!

We are bit behind with blog posts – my phone died a death last night but has been revived this morning so that the blogs can continue!

We have had a great couple of days based in Kigali. Friday’s training at the AGR was cancelled due to a public holiday called ‘Umuganura’. The guides explained to us that it is a day when everyone wears traditional Rwandan clothing and celebrates by eating food that has been harvested locally. There were no specific celebrations for us to attend but we certainly had a good view of some fantastic clothing during the day!

To celebrate Umuganura the guides took us to the local market at Kimoronko. The market is a vast array of traditional crafts, fabrics, clothes and food. We were very excited to have a look around.

Our day started at 7am when we were all awoken by some very impressive rain. During the morning the weather was very variable. We quite enjoyed watching the rainstorms, although it wasn’t quite as much fun when we were stuck outside in them!

We hopped on the bus to Kimironko and arrived to be greeted very enthusiastically by everyone at the market. They all seemed very excited to show us their things. We split into two groups to make it slightly easier to look around. Half of us headed to the fabrics whilst the others went to the craft section. There must have been about 50 fabric stalls all selling a number of different Kitenge fabrics. Some of us were slightly more picky than others which meant that we looked at every stall before going back to original ones that we liked… You never know what might be at the next place!

We all got some fabric and headed back to the craft section to swap over with the other girls. Traditional Rwandan crafts comprise of woven goods (baskets, coasters, table mats), model animals made out of Kitenge fabric, beaded necklaces, pictures from banana leaves and wooden gorillas. We learnt the art of haggling from our Guide friends and managed to get some good deals for what we bought.

By the time we got home we were pretty tired from our day out! Pasta and a bit of Gavin and Stacey was on the cards, plus an early night.

Yesterday was a rest and catch up kind of day. We all had a lazy morning and a relaxed breakfast followed by Hannah, Holly and Alice going into town for coffee and an explore whilst Kat, Francesca and Sophie stayed at the apartment to clean, do some washing and most excitingly – bake a cake! Two days before we had bought some butter with vanilla extract in by accident so decided it would be a good opportunity to try and bake a cake. No cake tins was the first hurdle but shallow saucepans can do the trick when in need. Cake complete with nutella and butter cream added we were looking forward to trying it later!

In town, the girls were trying African coffee with a summary of ‘tangy’ and ‘unlike any coffee we’d had before’. It was served in a teapot too, sounds interesting!

The afternoon bought lots of excitement – heading to the dressmakers and then for pizza! The AGR have their own dressmaker who has made the clothes for the GOLD teams previously and comes highly recommended. We showed her pictures of what we liked, she drew them and then took our measurements. It was a smooth process and our clothes will be ready for collection in a week – we look forward to sharing pictures with you.

The pizza place was called ‘Just Chill’ and this is where the story about the cat in the wall starts! On arrival Kat saw a cat pop up from a section in the wall but no one else saw. We ate our pizza and other people tried to see the cat but it wouldn’t show it’s face. No one believed that there was a cat in the wall! However, the waitress confirmed, they have a cat that wanders within the walls and pops its head out at various points in the day. We are still unsure why they haven’t tried to get the cat out. The waitress let us name the cat and we christened it ‘Cat’!

After pizza it was time to go home on the bus. We were very impressed by the queuing system and how many people use the buses. We joined the back of the queue and luckily made it onto the the first bus that came…. only just though!

More Gavin and Stacey to relax before bed and looking forward to being shown around the local market known as the Expo.

Look out for another blog post to see what today will bring!

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