Maxime and Giudi's wedding
Maxime and Giudi

Final postcards from Gisenyi
Sunset over the Congo - 1

Staring into my suitcase
November 26thA quiet day today. In the morning there are a lot of letters to write, and I decide to work from home. We’re almost completely out of vegetables and most other food, what with me being away in Gisenyi and Tom up and down to the hospital to see J, so I go to the market and do a big shop-up. What I buy will probably last me until I leave.I spend the rest of the morning cooking up an enormous batch of vegetable stew, which we can either liquidise for soup, or use as stock to make a base for other meals. From previous experience this system works well, and the cooking is child’s play with Tom’s pressure cooker.By now its late morning.

A glimpse into our local hospital
November 25thA very busy day today. This may well have turned out to be my last “working day” in any normal sense of the word. Into the office well before seven. No sign of Claude or the modem. Valérian is there, and I have some files to put on his computer for him. There’s no other work to do; Soraya has a few trainings left but they tend to be at weekends and I can’t share them with her.At the post office there are a couple of packets for April, one of which contains her new iPod to replace the one which was stolen just after she arrived. Not only that, but she can use the iPod for a lot of her audiology work, so it’s very much one of the tools of

November 24thTo a...
November 24thTo anyone who has just discovered my blog it must seem that being a VSO is a sort of permanent paid holiday. Not so. It’s just that I’m at the very end of my placement; I’m also in the situation where it’s the school holidays, so I can’t visit schools, and all my office work has been completed. So I’m spending my time doing some travelling and saying my goodbyes to various people.Today finds me waking up in the men’s dorm at the Presbyterian Guest House in Gisenyi. I’ve come up with April, an Australian VSO, to get away from Gitarama for a bit and to have a last look at Gisenyi before I leave. We had intended to go t