Market day in Kibungo

After the heavy rain of yesterday and last night, there was a brief break in rain this morning.  I awoke early (again) and after another cold shower and some breakfast (toast and nutella – mmmm), Cathy and I headed into town with a very long list of things to do.  First things first – we went to the bank so I could open an account.  This was helped along by Cathy stating that I wanted to open an account in Kinyarwanda.  Most helpful as I would have been a bit stuck.  An English speaking member of staff came out to assist and I was welcomed to the bank (“Murakaza neza cyane”).  They seemed a little surprised that I wanted to open a Rwandan bank account, but went along with it anyway.  After a lot of form filling, in which I learnt the Kinyarwandan for date of birth, address and revised words like signature and name, I became the proud customer of the bank.  I have to wait a couple of months for an ATM card and personal cheque book (this is so I can cash cheques at the counter as most places – including Kibungo – do not have ATMs).

Next we went to the water company to pay our water bill.  But it was not open on a Saturday, so we went along to the electricity shop to buy credit for our electricity metre.  Then we weaved our way in and out of a few alimentation shops to try and buy various things – there is no one stop supermarket here!  We managed to find toilet rolls in one and then we got tea bags, milk powder and Blueband (the kind that does not need to be refrigerated...) in another.  Then we bought MTN credit for our mobiles as anything you add this weekend will double once you load it up.  Finally we went to the market.  It was so busy and the aisles between the stalls was very narrow, so there was a lot of pushing past people.  Cathy seemed to be very well known on the market and there were lots of shouts of “Katerina! Katerina! Inyanya!” (tomatoes, for example).  We visited several different stalls and I got introduced to lots of people.  I mostly listened and tried to work out the numbers so I could see if I am hearing them right – I was mostly right, but some of them still get me.  Food was plentiful and we got: potatoes, tomatoes, chillis, apples, bananas, pineapple, aubergine, peas, passionfruit, garlic, ginger, limes, tomato paste, onions...and potato samosas (cost: 2p each) for our lunch.  We had them with some homemade guacamole when we returned and it was a delicious lunch.  It started to rain on our way home, so we jumped in a bus and got off directly outside the house (cost: 10p each).  We still want to venture to a nearby shop for some important items we could not find in town today – porridge oats and waraji.  However, it has poured down for the last four hours, so we might not get there and it’ll be another night on the tea!  At least we have electricity at the moment (although we did lose it for an hour earlier!).