Macadamia Nuts!

Franco picked up some macadamia nuts at a plantation run by a friend (of a friend) of his. He has around 150 trees, and each produced 15-20 kg of nuts per year. The downside is that they are VERY difficult to crack. Most plantations use a special machine. Here is Casa Nyamirambo, we use the time-honoured method of BBQ fork and two rocks.

CHUK Hospital

This is where we will begin work tomorrow. It is the main public tertiary care hospital for Rwanda. There is another hospital in Kigali called King Faisal, which is private and has access to much greater resources. The kind of pathology seen in CHUK includes disease entities that are rarely seen in Canada (probably never in Halifax).

View from the apartment

Sunday in Kigali

Patty and I got up early and started the day with a treat we’d been planning on for more than 36 hours: a run. The temperature was perfect: low 20s and cloudy. We had expected to take a little ribbing from the local population. The last time Patty was here, the accommodation was in a rather posh embassy neighbourhood. She and Genevieve were the only ones ever running, which looked like a crazy waste of energy to the local population. Here in Nyamirambo, a much more populist, mixed neighbourhood (not really that mixed, we are the only white people), we found a bunch of people out running! Tons, in fact. We ran up the unforgiving hill (Rwanda is the land of a thousand hills, after all), and realized that many of the runners, dressed in all sorts of clothing and all condition of footwear, were congregating at the local soccer stadium. They shouted “bravo” or “courage” as we persisted up the hill, red-faced and puffing (Patty much less so than me, obviously). Wonderful! Obviously there is still going to be a contingent of those who shout out Mizungu! (white person or foreigner) or make this hissing sound they do when they’re hitting on you. Still others were dressed to the nines on their way to church, singing. Overall a great way to get to know our neighbourhood.

In Rwanda

Hi Everyone,

We've arrived safely and all is well. We're tired and jet lagged so will write more once we are refreshed.

xxoo Patty

p.s. in the photo is Esperance, a dear friend who picked us up from the airport. All of our luggage made it in one piece!!

On our way...

After an INCREDIBLE week at the olympics in Vancouver with the family, I had a short week for last-minute Rwanda preparations. 8 months of no vacation, then this turnaround! (Although I'm not in any way deluded into thinking that Rwanda will be a vacation... most people have found that they work more, and need a vacation to recover from it).
This will be a long journey into Kigali - around 28 hours if everything goes according to plan. I'm already regretting not having brought a pillow, but looking at the size of our luggage there would never have been room for it. I generally try to pack light, but 4 weeks on the other side of the world with medical equipment, work clothes, hiking gear, etc. adds up in a hurry.
One thing at a time: next stop will be Auntie Annie's pretzels in Newark airport.

We're off

Ariane and I are in the Halifax airport waiting to fly to Newark, then to Brussels then on to Kigali. We should be in Kigali by 7:30 PM local time Saturday evening.