My lounge floor is littered with carcasses this morning. The result of a massacre last night. I am fearless, I am merciless, I am brave....I have Baygon.
Look, I love the idea of a garden. And I love looking at it, especially this one. I just wish that its inhabitants would stay at home – their home – out there. And don't you dare tell me that I am living in their space. I know...but the conqueror sets the rules don't they? But I suppose I have to put up with a little guerilla warfare now and again...BUT EVERY NIGHT?
I also suppose that the mielie farm across the road doesn't help. A real mielie farm folks – with mielies and everything. I wake up to a thresher doing its thing in the morning. Amazing...I love this place – the locals need to work on their manners though...and by locals I mean the six and eight legs.
The Kigali of 2011 is a little more modern than I remember it being a couple of years back. It is still beautiful and clean and the people are still beautiful and friendly - if from more places other than Rwanda now. But there are more things available now. Not in huge numbers, but they are here.
Rwanda is known as the country of a thousand hills. Believe me, that is no exaggeration. You're either going uphill or downhill when you step outside your front door – literally. Me I go uphill to my front gate. I live on the top of the hill in Gacuriro Estates. I get to walk on flat ground outside my gate for about 50 meters. Then it is downhill...steep downhill.
I walked down to the supermarket on Sunday morning...and had to take a taxi-moto back up. A taxi moto is a motorcycle – and even it laboured up. There is no WAY I am walking up this hill...crawling maybe.
The hills make water pressure a problem too. And there are unique adaptations you have to make to life here. Your house has a water tank outside perched high on a scaffold contraption...with a pump – and even then the pressure in the upstairs bathroom...is not so good. Downstairs it nearly knocks you unconscious in the shower.
Due to the equatorial storms which we get everyday, power tends to go off now and again. Rwanda does not have its own power station, so you tend to conserve energy where you can. Gas is an alternative, and when you boil water...you pour the excess hot water in a vacuum flask for later, so you don't have to boil a kettle everytime.
You tend to eat hot food only at mealtimes....great for the figure as you stop snacking on junk and eat more fruit.
You don't have as many choices for junk...supermarkets concentrate on real food. Less choice means better budgeting and less FAT.
You tend to eat less meat...get more exercise and breathe fresh air, which to me acts like a sleeping pill. I sleep here...people...ME the insomniac. Now you know the real reason I came home.
TO SLEEP.
In fact I am going to take a nap right now!!
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