6 October 2008 (Day 6 Rwanda
We were suppose to have a meeting with Brigadier General John Bagabo at 9am, with one of the men who works in the office, Alex, picking us up and 8.45, but since Alex was what I call on "African time" he arrived at 10.45, so as you can guess our whole day was thrown a bit off.The morning meeting went really well, meeting Faustin and BG Bagabo and the chairman (who's name I've now forgotten), but the main point is they gave us approval to go ahead with the spaghetti dinner with the ex-child combatants on Thursday :)
After that meeting we headed to the church to meet with Herman (Pastor Francis' brother who runs the sponsored children program at the church) and David (who helps) to discuss the child sponsorship program & party which we would be holding on Saturday. David only speaks Kinyarwanda and French so at once point I was translating en francais about the lack of personal letters the children were sending and how they need to improve their letters in order to help secure the sponsorship program overall.
After that meeting which ran WAY longer than we had anticipated especially considering how late our day had started! We then went to spend a quick five minutes with the weavers of the Rains of Hope, before our taxi came to bring us back to the hotel where we scarfed down a protein bar and guzzled a Fanta l'Orange (cause a day in Rwanda without a Fanta just isn't right!) before dashing off to our next meeting with the minister in charge of registering Itafari Foundation in Rwanda.
A funny thing happened when we were there, we couldn't find the room, we tried 2 floors, and a few different rooms, before sitting down to meet with a very nice man who seemed a bit confused about our arrival, but was pleasant enough to meet with us for 20 minutes. Upon completion of the meeting as we were leaving the building Emmanuel (who was helping us with the process & translating for us) stopped us to say we'd met with the wrong person . . . hence his confused look when we arrived. So we went back into the correct place, room 10, for yet another meeting which lasted about an hour, but we got a full list of exactly what needs to happen in order to register here in Rwanda - so even though we were rather exhausted and hungry, the day full of meetings, we felt very accomplished!
That evening we took Emmanuel to Heaven for dinner
posted by Sara @ 3:12 pm
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