Blog Neglect

Posted by Mikkel

It’s been very loooooong since I wrote anything here and I’m trying to think of why.

• Because Rwanda and the Rwandans became “normal” to me and I don’t recognize the special stories anymore. The barefoot kids that run along with me yelling musungu musungu; the incredibly beautiful green hills as soon as I leave Kigali; the luxury of coming home to Rose’s (our cook) dish and dessert of the day; the interesting discussions with friends like JP and Serge about the state of the country or peculiarities about Rwandan sex life; or the football training with 30 dead-serious young guy hoping for either a professional contract or me arranging a job for them. Most of you don’t think of writing long elaborate stories about going to work in the morning, this or that meeting, your football training or the drink you do with a friend in the evening, do you? (or maybe you do, but you call it facebooking ;-) )

• Because my wife is faster than me writing up the good stories. Even the “Rwandan Girls” I could not have for myself. She did forget to tell that Rwandan girls are VERY beautiful! And to those of you who are wondering about the ‘wife’ word just above: If we say we are not married after all these years, people here look at me like I’m the worst man in the world, for sure disrespecting and cheating on Janine. Why would I otherwise not marry her? The problem with the wife story is that they then assume that we (men look at me with a little laugh) have “a problem”…because there are no kids yet!

• Because I have worked my a.. off the last couple of months with way to many meetings with government officials about our registration as an NGO in this country; too many job interviews with both interesting an awful candidates; too much lobbying of the ILO to get our employees the last two spaces of their expensive two-week training free of charge; too many late nights trying to get too many expenses match not enough income in the budget; too many discussions with interested partners about trainings and events we are doing or could do together; a hectic week in Maputo to start up a new project; or too many personal development (or personal frustration) talks with my co-workers.

• Because it was a little hard to return to Kigali that had somehow lost some of its exotic charm after our summer holiday. Hard to face the lack of nice café’s and restaurants, of trustworthy housekeepers, of things that do not break down or fall apart, of cultural life, and of good friends to hang out with. It’s all here, but in very limited quantities. And that of course is not as cool to write about.

It’s probably a bit of it all. Now we got one week left at work and then a few weeks holiday. It would not be fair to those of you stuck in European winter to write too much about Zanzibar’s beaches and seafood. So I might just keep up the ‘blog neglect’, let Janine fill you in on our holiday adventures and then just hope to catch up with you all in person sooner rather than later. 

Merry Christmas :-)