




We are spending the weekend in Butare, which is the nearest "big" town to us. It involves walking down our mountain which usually takes one hour but yesterday took us an hour and a half because we kept having to stop to shelter from the rain! From Gikongoro it takes about 30 minutes on a tightly packed, ancient mini bus that thinks it is one of the rides at Alton towers, careering round hair pin-bends on two wheels! I have worked out a coping strategy for these hair-raising journeys now - i close my eyes!
Butare is the main university town in Rwanda and has a great atmosphere. It basically consists of one main street, a massive cathedral and a huge university campus. It also has a wonderful national museum. We are staying in a small guest house which is costing us £7 a night. Last time we stayed here we really liked it but this time, the restaurant is shut down and we seem to be the only ones here and i was badly bitten by fleas last night so we might not come here again
There are two really nice old colonial hotels here and yesterday we watched the FA cup final in one and ate chicken in another (how sad is that)
We went to the cathedral this morning, it is a huge building built in the 30's by the belgians, when they planned to make Butare the capital of Rwanda and were going to call it Astrida. Most of the large buildings in Rwanda were built by the white fathers from Belgium. There is still very much a 'muzungu' influence here and you get a lot of missionary types who drive about in their huge vehicles throwing coins at the beggars and acting very superior. Its the only thing we dont like about Butare. There is a post office here and a very nice craft co-operative which has really cheap and interesting things. We feel that if we could sell that stuff in UK we would make a fortune (for Rwanda)
Yesterday we spotted a chinese restaurant and we are going to risk it tonight, although i might just have a vegetarian meal because anything like prawns will have been frozen and there are so many power cuts here.
We went to the chinese restaurant, it was ok. They brought us an extensive menu but then narrowed it down to about two things that were available. oh well c'est la vie a Rwanda!