Hero's Day aka Y2K Rwanda style.

2/1/09
This morning I went with Alicia and Neva (the Quiagen trainers) to visit the clinic at Nyachunga and figure out the logistics for the HPV training. When we got back we walked up to the Kadafi Mosque where WE-ACTx sponsors a children's program every Sunday. Lara and Eunice do a yoga program there with the kids and the group of donors for Heartland Alliance came to observe that. I made friends with two deaf boys who can't really sign (I can't even imagine how isolated they must be) and we played marbles and one of them had a good time taking pictures with my camera. Neva passed out while we were there from a combination of not eating and altitude issues I think so she went home in a taxi and is doing fine now.
We had a going away dinner for Lara tonight at Soleluna which has excellent pizza and a nice view of the city. I met a few more new people that will hopefully fill the void that Lara and Eunice are leaving once they abandon me here. After that we got a drink with Sean at the Mille Collines and when we got home Anita (a medical student from Downstate) arrived so now the house is really full (but Lara leaves tomorrow so we'll only be at capacity for 1 night).

And now for a little taste of the quirky country that is Rwanda:
So today is a national holiday known as Hero’s Day… it’s somewhat controversial since it basically celebrates the start of the civil war – an odd thing to have a holiday for. Even stranger is the fact that they announced on the news tonight that tomorrow would indeed be a national holiday in observance of Hero’s Day but up until that announcement they hadn’t actually decided. Can you imagine an announcement on the evening news in the US that the next day would be a holiday when up until that point it hadn’t been planned to be?
Anyway, in addition to being Hero’s Day today is also the Rwandan version of Y-2K… they decided to change some of the phone numbers to standardize them and make them all 10 digits so a bunch of people had a 78 added into the middle their number today – talk about confusing. Thankfully my cell number stays the same since it already had 10 digits but the cell network has been busy for most of the day with everyone trying to figure out the new numbers. So between that and the national non-holiday, I’m telling you this country just gets more and more bizarre as the days go on (don’t get me wrong though, I’m loving it).