Rwandan Wedding

Spent most of Saturday restoring an old apple ipad, that someone had donated to the disability group, to its former glory and getting all the programmes on it working for them. 

Set off to the wedding at 2pm in Mishinana (traditional dress) on the
back of a motorbike. Not much fun!

Worried about the dress getting caught in the wheels or blowing off etc.  Here is Nassa (Roisin's sister) Mike (Nassa's partner) Me Roisin and Stephen (Roisin's brother)

Anyway once the moto driver found the church - he went wrong a few times but eventually we ended up at the church. It turned out there were two weddings going on at the same time. Very strange and totally unrelated. The wedding I was attending had a military band (as the groom is obviously in the army.

Nadine looked very nice.

The service was about 2 hours long and the singing was beautiful. Then went by taxi to the reception.  Some traditions - bride offers groom a fanta!, groom reciprocates, then they do the same with the cake. Everyone who takes a present up to give to the newly weds has to make a speech.
The cake had a firework in the top of it which was quite unusual. 

The inthore dancers made several appearances which livened things up a bit.

We sneaked out at around 9pm thinking it was nearly over - only to be told that a bus was coming to take everyone to their house to continue the party - we bowed out at that stage.

A nice occasion and nice to be invited.

Work

Finally finished the training and all went well.  This week I have been working with two Head teachers trying to set up a template for them to use to timetable their staff in their schools without proper timetabling software – using Excel.  Not as easy as it sounds due to double shifting and the fact that they have very large schools, with large numbers of teachers and 12 periods in 1 day!  I have to prepare a presentation to the head teachers for Friday so busy doing that. 

During the last three weeks that we ran our training I also asked the head teachers to complete a ‘Needs Analysis’ for me with what training they needed outlined so I have the returns to analyse too. 

Nothing much has happened here, except I won the bid for the desks! Yippee.  I have been with the head teacher to the joiners to pay them half of the money to get the work started which gave me a real buzz.  They should be finished by 5^th January ready for the new term.  I hope I am as successful with the bid for the orphanage. 

It doesn’t feel like the 5^th December here as the days are still warm and sunny – very strange – but very nice.  I understand it’s snowing at home today.  Glad I’m not there!

Saw this little lad with his home made kite running down the road yesterday - lovely.