Comic Relief

We never expected to celebrate Red Nose Day.

On Saturday we went for a walk with two volunteers from Potters Village, Ruth and Ellie and a friend, Victor, a priest working at the Diocese. It was up the same nearest volcano that the Bishop took us to in January. Once again we were followed by a group of local children, amused at why these strange white people should want to walk up and then down the ‘fields’ where their parents grow food.

Unfortunately on the way down Irene fell and badly grazed her nose.



Malcolm was quite keen to include a photograph of her ‘red nose’ in this blog but has been strictly forbidden to, unless he donates £100 to the Vocational Training Centre (VTC) to buy material for the dress making course. Not wishing to embarrass his wife (and being mean) he has decided to resist the temptation. However, he is happy to report that there was no permanent damage and we all enjoyed ourselves at Victor’s place where we were treated to refreshments.




The reason material is needed for the dress making course is that there are not enough funds to buy material for the students to learn on, so instead they have to practice dressmaking by cutting up and sewing together paper bags. Similarly, a new computer course has started with 3 students enrolled, but the VTC has no computers – the second hand ones that were expected have been embargoed at Kigali as Rwanda now ban the import of second hand recycled goods.



Irene is now involved with the course. She first managed to persuade the University, who hold a weekend course at the Diocese, to allow the students to use the University Computers during the week. Then, her master stroke was to visit the local secondary school where she discovered they had just received brand new, state of the art computers, and so they were prepared to give their old ones to the VTC. Malcolm noticed from labels that most had been donated by his former company, ICL, which was ‘absorbed’ by Fujitsu in the mid 1990’s – which makes them about 20 years old (i.e. early Pentiums)!!!! Still, a computer course ought to have computers. All it needs now is a teacher. Irene!



Our culinary experiment this week was crayfish – a local delicacy from Lake Bunyoni. A large, football sized bag only costs about £1.50 (cheap enough to appeal to Malcolm) – but by the time Irene spent 3 or 4 hours removing the shells she was left with enough tails for 2 servings. She has decided, despite the cost, next time we want crayfish we will go to a restaurant and pay about £2 each for a meal and let someone else do the dirty work.

And how do you get rid of smelly old crayfish shells when there is no household rubbish collection?

PS. In keeping with tradition Malcolm’s computer crashed once again in Africa last weekend and now requires a new motherboard before he can use it again – shall it be taken 600km to Kampala or England to see a Dell engineer? And the good news is that the mobile Internet has been upgraded to faster 3G on Wednesday – which means that since then no-one has been able to use it as it doesn't work. This is Africa!