VSO

As we were leaving the site this young lad passed us going up the hill to Nonko. One of the usual unusual sights we see daily. How he got it up on top of his head I have no idea!

On our way back from the site, we stopped off at VSO (voluntary service overseas). We had heard yesterday from Chrissie of Inkuru Nziza that VSO are involved in Secondary schools including technical schools. This brought the hope that they might want to be involved in our NGO joint project with the Scottish Colleges.

We dropped in to their headquarters at Remera and we have arranged to see Mark (or was it Mike) on Wednesday.

Since Inkuru Nziza have 5 or 6 skills centres as well it would be good if we could get some agreement to undertake some development work with the Colleges.

After we had visited there, it was a short taxi ride home, or it would have been had it not been for my helmet flying off when we were doing 40+ mph. As usual the straps are hopeless, and it landed 30 yards behind me, fractured the face vizor, and I had to run the traffic to get it back off the road.

 I am now thinking of buying and carrying my own helmet - has to be safer than these useless ones.

Bulldozer Big End!

Up early, cleaned and teeth brushed, packed my bag, sent me meeting organising emails, and then we were off.

The bulldozer was coming to the site at 8am, and we arranged to meet Norbert at 9.30am to see how they were doing with laying out the platform.

The taximotos took us quickly to the site, round the corner and yes there it isn't! No bulldozer, not a skip, no-one. Empty. Nothing.

Oh well they will be hear shortly. Nobert arrives, he has his sardonic German smile, well its Rwanda. But we were so confident of our builders - was this a terrible sign of what was to come - hopefully not.

Actually Jeff arrived a few minutes later. Dad had been having trouble getting hold of the machine - perhaps 12, but could be as late as 3pm. We arrange a few matters and agree that we go back to Solace and do some other work and Jeff will call.

Jeff

12md - no news, 1.30pm  - its on its way - should arrive 3pm, 3pm - its broken down in Remera - poor Jeff, he really is trying his hardest. His last text tells it all - oh, why did I think being an occasional project manager was bad - imagine being a builder in Rwanda when you get this all the time

Here is the text - 'I'm going to search another machine, cause the first one, though it was powerful, has many problems, and this time it didn't happen to have it working properly! so I can't trust them anymore neither what they are saying! Then I will call you tomorrow morning before 7am to let you know what is going on.'

The poor lad (he is only 22) was at the site all day waiting in heat and rain - what a life!

In the mean time Fleming remains under the weather, off food and tired - I caught him in the middle of some intense design stuff this afternoon

Fleming Hard at Work

We will see what tomorrow brings - its a public holiday, so I am not holding my breath

Win Win Win

Talking of Andy Murray reminds me that I received a threatening email from my doctor yesterday.

You will remember that Dr Bad Boy Bennie, see photo below, has become my personal psychological trainer. He awarded himself this position when I once again lost to Keith Prentice and team in the European Seniors semifinals.

Bad Boy Bennie

Well Bad Boy had given me a set of psychological exercises which Andy Murray should try, and which Dr BBB assures me will be highly effective in winning in the Scottish Championships shortly to start. It basically involves setting yourself thoughts challenges and then telling yourself - win, win, win. He believes I have been following his therapy to the letter (or word) and expects to be paid for it.

Anyway Bad Boys letter is printed below for all to see:

"Dear Garlic

I am delighted you have taken my advice and have Ginger with you once more. I understand that you are on holiday again and I am just writing this short note to bring to your attention the small matter of unpaid fees that are now long overdue.

In truth this letter has been triggered by photographs of you with wads of cash that I discovered recently on the blog site and my hope is that you would like to share some with me so that I can remove your account from my “send in the heavies file”

Please do not see this as a threatening letter (as they are typed in red ink) but look on it rather as a friendly appeal prior to violent action being taken.I have been using a new company for cash recovery recently as members of my last agency have been detained at her majestys pleasure for an unspecified period.My new man is known only by his tradename of old Vic but he comes highly recommended and my source tells me that he never disappoints.

On a lighter note I do hope that you enjoyed your holiday and that you are back fit and healthy (at least for the moment).

Indecently how is your condition coming along? I have had no further communication with you since I set before you a strict training regime entitled” trying to be a winner”.I trust that you have been strictly adhering to the exercises programme suggested and look forward to hearing about your successes however small they may have been.

Please pass on my warmest regards to Ginger I trust that his mood has lightened now that he teamed up with you again but can I remind you that you will have to be diligent in matters of hygine he can so easily slip back to his old ways.I still have dreadful memories of a holiday we spent together where he was only allowed back on the plane if I signed him over as cargo in order for him to be stowed in the hold such was the reaction of fellow holidaymakers at the airport check in.

To close just a short update on news from home , it is costing £200Million to break up the Nimrod aircraft that we do not need any more but I have written to David Cameron and suggested that he puts them on E Bay  and assured him that someone somewhere will take them off his hands thus saving the country such a huge scrappage bill.

My other suggestion was that he just parks them on the outskirts of Coatbridge and that they will just disappear piece by piece again at no cost to the taxpayer .

I await my invitation to join  the coalission gonerment ( no spelling mistake)quango that deals with such matters and have already started to put out feelers to see if anyone wants to buy an aircraft carrier  I feel that there may be possibilities in converting it to some kind of floating theme park / hotel experience.

Anyhow must go as my phone line is probably bugged hope to hear from you soon

Yours impatiently

Dr BBB.

Now, when you are in Rwanda, for curling training, constantly practicing your inwicks, draws, takeouts, cross house doubles and tap ups, you would think that your doctor would understand that 4 months is not a  long time to wait for a medical bill to be paid, especially when I am such a 'finally' tuned athlete. 

These kind of threats cannot help, and anyway surely Bad Boy should understand that he is paid on results, and therefore he needs to wait a couple more weeks - roll on Hamilton and the Scottish

Garlic

Taximoto Training

My training of Fleming as an expert taximoto passenger is nearly over. My days as the top Chryston taximotist are not quite at an end however. Although he usually leaves before me, he nearly always arrives after me. I have been unable to teach him all the quickest routes - shame.

I know that David McAdam may resent me taking the numero uno taximoto spot from him, but he could always send me some incriminating evidence of heroic feats if he wants to claim the crown.

Unfortunately Fleming is getting quite a taste for the bike as these photos show. I thought there was an air of calm relaxation, something of the Schumacher about him - perhaps Norbert is having a German influence on him. Worrying times, as we spead along at 45 miles an hour.

I expect that he will shortly be trying to pass me and to gain advantage by driving down the wrong side of the road to overtake.

Today we were going to church in Gatenga. This is an 85p bike ride of 15 minutes duration from Solace. We went together because Roger was not quite sure of the directions. In fact his driver was not either.

I have to admit to a bit of Scottish tactical planning, in going to church, which went sadly wrong. The church services at Gatenga start about 9.15am with singing and hand raising, the latter you will remember we are both allergic to. The services usually last 2 and a half to 3 hours until around 12 o'clock.

Being really good Presbyterians, who believe in a strict Scottish length of service (ah right!), we deliberately left late in order to arrive at 10 thereby reducing the dancing we had to do!

This would have shortened the service to a manageable 2 hours, except that it went onto 1.30pm in the afternoon! Thats a 4 hour 45 minute marathon for those who came at 9.15am., and a mere 3.5 hours for us. We were completely done in by the end and headed to the Leica hotel for a rather weak latte.

This afternoon was spent crying for Andy Murray, and in between the tears we worked on plans and a report for the Inkuru Nziza church who we meet on Tuesday.

Tomorrow morning we go to the site to see the digger commence work. Can't wait

The money is Gone Callum!

Callum the director of Comfort Rwanda gave me £4000 in cash to start the project, and yesterday I became  a millionaire for a day - except that it was a Rwandan Franc millionaire.

Today started with going through spreadsheets of action points and financial issues, just making sure that we had not missed much.

After that we did some scouting for a few hours around Kigali city centre, for a wee report the Inkuru Nziza church has asked to do.

At 3pm we met with the builders and Norbert the supervising architect and pretty well completed most of our business.

At the end of the meeting there was the little matter of shaking hands on our agreement and passing over to Sabine the £4000 I had brought. She is going to manage the financial monitoring of the project for us, and the first stage was giving around £3200 to the builders for the site preparation and excavation.

We meet on site at 9am Monday to see the the bulldozer roar into action - should be great fun.

So millionaire no more, but  great anticipation to see the site transformed into a platform for the College. I must admit I remain pretty nervous, but so far everything is going well.

Thanks for continued prayers and support

Money, Money, Money!

When you start construction you need money.

When you are building a College you need about £105,000.

When the money is in the UK bank, then you need to get it transferred physically and into cash that Rwandan's use - the Rwandan Franc RwF.

Millionaires

Today I have been in discussion with Norbert Kalka the supervising architect, about establishing an escrew account - the things I have had to learn for this project.

Norbert has a helpful German bank who can set up this account in a day! Makes me question further what is happening to UK banks.

Now that brought me to the subject of exchange rates, and this is perhaps a plea to some of you money movers out there to give me financial advice to help us get best use of our limited resources. If we are transferring largish(for us) amounts of cash from UK how do we get the best rate.

I asked this question of Norbert and he contacted his nice German bank and they gave me a rate of exchange of 939 RwF to £1. Was this a good deal - the internet aid 942 today.

So to check this out further I went down to the local Access bank. They offer 933.5 and absolutely no negotiation. I asked them if I got a better rate is it worth me coming back - sorry - no!! This was on the assumption I was seeking to exchange £4000 UK into RwF, so there was some incentive for them - well a bit!

There are some money exchange shops behind the Bank of Kigali where we have changed money before. By the way I do not use the Bank of Kigali since they offer at least 30 RwF below these shops. So I tried a couple of these money 'shops' and initially was offered 913 - ridiculous I pronounced - off he went to speak to his boss.

I decided to leave and went up the road. Now there is a very nice young Indian man in a Western Union who started negotiation at 930 and we finally agreed 936.5. Whether that was a good deal I do not know - perhaps David McAdam who is our local expert will let me know.

So I opened my bag, got out the money and the deal was done. You see I need the cash for the builder tomorrow for stage one of construction - excavation and site preparation!

What I did not expect was for it to come in the equivalent of £2 notes - and certainly could not count it  in the shop. So the ton of notes was packed into my bag, and I scarpered up the road to a taximoto and fled to a secure location for counting the money.

Gleeful Garlic!

Roger and I are now millionaires for the night. We are off to meet Kirsty Mcarthur, Norbert and Sabina, and Denise  - for an Italian - what a life - should be a good evening  - do not worry Callum,  Comfort Rwanda is not paying the bill!

Fleming Foot in First!

We are such softies here, and at home for that matter.

You will of course already know that because of my previous descriptions of plumbing or lack of it here in Rwanda. However, our softiness is getting worse.

When we arrived at Solace that heavenly guest house here in Kigali, we were allocated to two rooms in the office building rather than our very favourite rooms with the superb view of Kigali.

We were both disappointed, and when Roger found out that his plumbing was sadly deficient (that is his room plumbing - not his personal plumbing - sorry Rog!) it was a perfect excuse for me to ask if there was room in the main building.

Callum would be mortified we thought - but we still asked and last night I was informed that there were two rooms available both with verandas.

In my room!

So first thing this morning Roger got the keys, reccied the rooms and gave me my key. The rest of the day has been spent having a go at him  - the scoundrel got the better room, in fact the room I had in August!

Here he is showing me the fabulous view. As if I needed to know about the view - it even has a golf course.

Rule number one, always, always , always get your foot in the door first!

Other happenings today:

• Roger got lost on his taximoto to Garlics great glee!
• Met Kirsty McArthur, found out she likes Kigali Beer, and arranged to take her out for meal on Friday, with friends and perhaps Denise also.
• Safari and Emmanuel chased us around Kigali, and finally found us at the site - that what happens if you are late for appointments with F and G!
• Spoke to Callum back home about the costs of the Project - they have risen quite a bit - suspect we are going to have to make a strong appeal to all those interested in the College - watch this space!
• tried to Skype Fiona for first time, with no success.

Tomorrow we gather our thoughts about all things construction  - summarise costs, prepare construction agreement, meet Paul, and plan the key actions we need to take in the next few days.

Inkuru Nziza

When Roger and I first came to Rwanda in August you may remember that we met up with Rwandan Pete (Peter Andrews) who works for Inkuru Nziza - the Good News church.

Recently Pete got in touch and asked me to spend a bit of time chatting over their church developments, to see if there was any advice that we could give their church leaders.

We met at 9am this morning and discovered what a superb range of community based works they do. We were both very impressed by the clarity of their thinking, their commitment to God, and their determination to make the most of their city centre position

Apart from their church services which have several hundreds of people at most services, they run:

• an Aids and orphans programme for 350 children.
• a disability project
• a Vocational training facility
• a bookshop and community 
• support to 170 churches throughout Rwanda
• Emmaeus courses and a translation facility

Translation of Good News!

Oh, and they have a very good table tennis team! Time to get my bat out!

Yet, despite all this work and more, they are looking to the future and seeking to improve their support to their community, hence our discussions today.

Chrissie takes Rog back to class

After the meeting we escaped to chat at the Bourbon UTC, and Roger and I share how impressed we were with their team. We both wonder where these discussions are going to take us.

More Coffee than Sense

Part of Saturday has been set aside to consider our thoughts and recommendations to them. Sunday we meet Chrissie and her husband for supper, and then we meet their team on Tuesday to share our ideas - exciting times

Termite Armageddon

You will remember from last nights blog that I fell asleep content with having delegated the termite prevention to Norbert. It was he that had suggested that we might have to make plans for keeping termites away from the College. I, of course, did not think that this was a problem, that is until we arrived on site today.

Time for Armageddon

There must have been at least 10 - 12 of these termite mounds scattered around the site, and these 2 were 4 feet high.

Now being a man believing in delegation, I turned to Norbert to see how he was planning to get rid of these insects, and caught this rather studious photo which I very much like. I wonder what form of armageddon Norbert has planned for our not so friendly termites

Studious German

We had come to the site to lay out the platform for the beginning of construction which starts on Saturday, and had arranged for Kayitare and his son Jeff to meet us there. They are confident that the bulldozer should take about 4 days to remove the soil and to level the area. We are not quite so confident because there is a lot of earth to move - watch this space!

Roger and the team set about the measurements - first the 9 metres across the Nonko Road, then 51 metres up from the middle of the main Tanzania highway - Norbert took that measurement rather speedily! Then directly west for 20 metres then the College length, then ten metres up to get the width and finally the last measurement back to the Nonko Road.

Best view of Rog!

Now with stakes marking each corner, the only matter was the level, and for that a thodelite and ruler - just a wee ruler. You may well wonder why Roger is measuring the sky, but this is a real attempt to measure the fall of the ground - 5 metres to be exact - hence my observation that there is a lot of earth to move!

So after 3 hours work in 30 degree heat we finished the laying out of the site ready for Monday.

Observant readers of this blog will note that I have given you nothing but good news. Well I know that is rather unusual, but then I am pretty upbeat. But for consistency I had better mention the wee matter that the construction certificate says we are building a GUTURAMO (residential house) and not a College - signed by the Mayor of Kigali and the Mayor of Kicukiro.

Well we do have signed drawings for a College, so we strongly suspect that this is a typo, but you can imagine what Garlic thought when he read this!!

On Saturday we are hoping that the local Mayor, Paul the pastor and the head of the local neighbourhood will come and dig the first sod, which will be very exciting. I think we may just be seeking a  bit of reassurance about the typo, prior to the bulldozer arriving.

Nothing in Rwanda is simple, but then we did not expect it to be so!

Termities - just what I need

Termites

I spend 3 and a half hours listening to 2 architects disagreeing about things they do not know anything about. Then I spend  another 3 and a half hours trying to get some sense out of two architects and 2 builders.

Considering that I had only a small amount of sleep on the plan last night, I was thinking to myself that I was doing very well not screaming and banging on the table.

Then we are almost finished, nearly home for tea when Norbert pipes up - how do we protect the College from Terminites? You are joking? Not a bit of it - termites are a big problem, he says - you do not want them! We need to design the College so that it can defend against the nasty termites.

Time for a bit of delegation, - right Norbert - you asked the question - now please find me a sensible answer. I am off for tea and then bed

So, I am just lying in bed desperately trying to stay awake and block, but find myself scratching thinking about them.

Bet I dream of a line of them coming trudging over the end of the bed!

Actually nothing will rouse me - I need sleep!!

Cutting it Fine

Roger and I were just going through the gate to join our flight to Kigali when Callum phoned to say that the Rwandan team at last had in their hands the construction certificate.

Rog at Schiphol

We knew a few days ago that the planning application had been accepted, but the piece of paper that allows us to actually build had been a bit elusive. Our trip this time is focussed on starting construction, and without the certificate the journey would have been a damp squib.

So by the time we were leaving Nairobi we were pretty positive, and so it has continued all day. We arrived at Kigali at 8am having flown overnight - slept not a lot! Filled with 2 continental breakfasts care of Kenya Airways we caught a taxi to Solace Guest house, and dropped off our bags.

Our first meeting was at 11.30am, so we lost no time in getting to Remera by taximoto - no racing this time! A quick walk down the dirt track and we were at Norbert's who is our architect for monitoring the project.

This was no quiet introduction to construction management - we had 3.5 hours going over everything about the College building and particularly prices. After that time I was sure that an additional £15,000 had been added to the cost of the building.

Then the builders arrived, and brought much clarity to the subject and now its only £10,000 over!

I do not think I will get any marks from Callum for keeping the costs down, but then we seem to be getting a pretty good deal - value wise.

So, tomorrow we mark out the platform for the College and on Monday the bulldozer is arriving. It should take 4 days to move the earth - and Rog and I are determined to get  a go at some earth moving - expect lots of photos

Regards to all our supporters

Gary and Roger.