I got up at 8 am, an hour before Lama had said he was going to come by the hotel and pick us up so that we could all head downtown. Sleeping in the mosquito net (that the mosquitos know how to get inside anyway) gets so hot and I wake up with the driest mouth, sweating all the time, and last night I forgot to get a bottle of water to put beside my bed. So I got dressed quickly and ran downstairs to get water. Dany was there and I ordered it from him and he asked me if I wanted breakfast. I told him “I don’t know, let me check with Kara but don’t make any yet.” I go to see Kara and we decide since we’re heading downtown to do internet, we might as well eat at Bourbon Café and get a breakfast that doesn’t resemble what we eat the other 90% of days here.
I go back to my room and Dany comes to visit and says, “Why did you refuse your breakfast? It’s ready!” and I laugh and argue that I said to NOT make us breakfast, but Dany was trying to be nice and make it for us anyway. So I ask him if it will go to waste or not. It’s kind of a confusing conversation, but eventually he understands that I will eat it if it means saving it, and I won’t if someone else can/will eat it. He says it won’t go to waste, and I say good. He stays in my room and we talk until it’s time to go.
Breakfast at Bourbon Café is so delicious. I order a croissantwich with eggs and potatoes and I savor every bite. When you eat at Bourbon they give you a complimentary hour of internet, and then if you want more time than that you have to pay through the nose. Last time we were there, they gave us the passwords for an hour of time, but the internet server was down everywhere so we didn’t get a chance to use it. We had saved them and tried them out this time and they still worked, so we got two hours of free internet while eating breakfast and drinking coffee and it was really pleasant out on the patio. I never have as much to do on the internet as Lama or Kara, so I read for a lot of it. I am still in “How the Mind Works” and it is getting better and better. I burst out laughing at how awesome it was at the table, and I would like to quote the passage responsible:
“I call an old friend on the other coast and we agree to meet in Chicago at the entrance of a bar in a certain hotel on a particular day two months hence at 7:45 PM. I predict, he predicts, and everyone who knows us predicts that on that day at that time we will meet up. And we do meet up. That is amazing! In what other domain could laypeople – or scientists, for that matter – predict, months in advance, the trajectories of two objects thousands of miles apart to an accuracy of inches and minutes? And do it from information that can be conveyed in a few seconds of conversation? The calculus behind this forecasting is intuitive psychology: the knowledge that I want to meet my friend and vice versa, and that each of us believes the other will be at a certain place at a certain time and knows a sequence of rides, hikes, and flights that will take us there. No science of mind or brain is ever likely to do better. That does not mean that intuitive psychology of beliefs and desires is itself a science, but it suggests that scientific psychology will have to explain how a hunk of matter, such as a human being, can have beliefs and desires and how the beliefs and desires work so well.”
Lama leaves Bourbon to go get a haircut and tells us he’ll meet us at the bank, which is our next stop. Kara and I stay a little bit longer, just enough time to run into Jacques, a man we met at the Canada day party on Tuesday. The line up at the bank is really long, but its long enough that we get to meet two girls who have lived in Kigali for a couple of years, one from Michigan and one from London, and they work for a medical operation working with AIDS. We withdraw our money and then our plan was to go looking at prices for things we still need for the house, and then buy them tomorrow. Within the price-hunting, we find a hotel that is really nice and RIGHT downtown where we always are, and it’s the exact same price as our hotel 15 minutes away from downtown. I think we’ll likely stay there the next time we come to Kigali, and while it is a much better, nicer hotel, I feel like I am cheating on Dany.
While shopping, we ran into Julie from Canada Day too, and she was with a friend Alex whom we hadn’t met. After we finish up downtown, Kara had planned on meeting with Nat, a British guy she met through a chance encounter of his parents and his son at Bourbon the first day she was here. He runs a design firm here in Kigali and Kara thought it’d be helpful to touch base with him, and get an insider’s view into designing in Rwanda. The people who comprise Rock Solid design were AWESOME. They were so friendly and helpful and fun to talk to. For example, my shotgun mic just fell apart the other day, and I had it with me and Nat said, “Oh, I have solder so we can just solder it back together, and if not, I’m sure I can find someone with a shotgun mic who will let you borrow it while you’re here.” We mostly only talked with Nat and Emily, and we talked about Emily’s husband Tom, who sounds rad and unfortunately wasn’t there. It’s funny, they were all at the Canada Day BBQ too, we just never met them. I think that making contact with them will be invaluable for us. They publish an in-flight magazine for Rwanda Air, and they asked Kara (who has an English degree anyway) if she will write an article and provide photographs of our project here for their magazine’s next issue. WHAT?! Free publicity for COVAGA and BBR and CIDA? Kara getting published? How awesome is that? I think the three of us all left their office feeling really good about having met them.
We were given a ride by a friend of Lama’s (who was waiting for us outside!) named Nicole straight to KIST (Kigali Institute of Science and Technology) to meet with Etienne Ntagwirumugara, the director at the Center for Innovations and Technology Transfer we met at the RSRC conference last week. We said goodbye to Nicole and thanks for the ride. We had a brief discussion with him about our work with the Water Hyacinth and how we hope that KIST can work with BBR and COVAGA and hopefully find sustainable solutions and uses for the Hyacinth. He seemed interested in what we had to say, and encouraged us to write up a two page proposal and submit it so that he can give it to his bosses. It sounded like our project is within the sphere they are working, and that funding is available for what we aim to do.
We waited outside of KIST for a friend of Lama’s to pick us up but that fell through. We ended up sharing a Mutzig beer and going over all the highlights of our day. As it so often happens, the three of us talking filled me with excitement. It actually affects me, I can feel it all the time like it’s something in the air. As nice as that feeling is, I also have the nagging sensation of worry that we still have to act on it and use it. I really think we will, but I still have that slight fear inside me too, almost like a pressure to perform.
We took a taxi back to our hotel and ate dinner on the patio. We kept talking, but I downloaded all the pictures and captured all the footage we took the other day. I am excited to start working with it, and it felt really good to start filming and taking steps. Dinner, and especially the conversation, was great. Lama, Kara and I spend a great deal of time together, but we do alternate between professional and casual relationships. It was fun to talk as friends and people instead of partners, although that is nice too. My typical exhaustion kicked in, and the three of us parted ways and went to bed. Overall, it was a FANTASTIC day.
