At our house we have two guards/care takers. One of them is always here. Between the two of them they are here 24/7. They work on a 24 hour shift. One is named Joseph and the other is “Rambo”. Rambo it turns out is an athlete that tired out for the Rwanda Cycling team but didn’t make it. He’s also ex military having previously been stationed at the Rwanda and Democratic Republic Congo border. These two work on cleaning up the grounds and taking care of small maintenance issues. They have a small brick guard house next to the main driveway entrance. Our house is also fully enclosed with an 8 foot high wall and steel gated entrance to the drive way, that only opens to let you pass through and closed promptly behind you.
Lately we’ve had some gardeners come to hoe by hand the front yard in preparation for replanting of grass. It took three women gardeners four days to turn the soil. Now the same three are hand planting blades of grass one by one. It will take them another three days to finish. They do this all without any machinery. They bend over for 8 hours a day, the whole time to plant and hoe, back breaking work for most people. I’m guessing this in preparation to make the yard look nice for November when the tour of Rwanda comes to town.
There are also four avocado trees on the property. Two are haas avocado trees and produce several avocados a day. The soil here is rich in nutrients for agriculture. In Ruhengeri there is a big open air produce market. We have some raised garden plots here, but are presently not growing anything.
Our house has two bath rooms, four bed rooms, one kitchen and a front room. There is a detached garage that serves as the bike storage and mechanic room. It’s always locked. You’ve seen photos of the front room with Jock, me and Zulu, Jocks’ dog. In the kitchen we have a small four burner stove that uses a big steal natural gas bottle for it fuel. The beat up looking natural gas bottle sits in the corner. There is a small frig that sits in another corner. It has a few items in it that need refrigeration. Also in the kitchen is a sink for washing dishes and draining dish rack. If you run too much water into the sink at once the drain pipe over flows onto the kitchen floor. There are a couple of shelves with various dried good and seasonings. Fresh veggies are kept in a basket, in yet another corner. The dog and cat get feed in the kitchen.
Our front room serves as ground zero for meetings, dinner, socializing, and office work. I’m writing this at a desk in the front room. There is a fire place in the front room. I’m told that the chimney backs up and smoke comes into the house. We have made a tea and coffee service area on the fire place mantle. There are numerous books and some artifacts as well on the mantle. On the walls there are huge maps of Rwanda, Southern Africa and one of all of Africa. Africa is Huge! There are also some small African paintings and three African masks on the front room walls. There are two large desks. One desk is for Jock and the other for Kim. They both have more computer, printer and copy equipment then “Best Buy” on them.
One of our two bathrooms has a full size laundry machine in it. It drains into the houses only bath tub. The bath tub does not get used. This bathroom also serves as storage for used and new cycling clothing. The other bathroom has a shower stall, toilet, sink and a few shelves. The water comes out hot from the sink and shower. The 2x2 foot space you stand in to take a shower has no shower curtain. If you turn the water flow up the shower nozzle spares water everywhere and the whole bathroom floor gets wet.
All the wall circuits in the house are 220 and every electrical appliance or computer we have is 110. There is a voltage converter on all most every wall contention. Some are big industrial boxes with three prong plugs. Some wall out lets have plug strips in them with. This house was never intended to have this much electrical equipment in it. Our internet is good to poor as long as we have power. There is a heavy gage orange extension cord coming from one of the power strips that goes through the front window to power the Velotron on the front porch. The front porch is 8’x 20’ with a painted concert floor and covered. It serves as a parking space to keep five BMW motor bikes out of the rain.
The bed rooms are nice. One bed room is Jocks and has built in cabinets and faces the front of the house. Another room is Max’s and faces the back of the house. I get a bed room that faces the front of the house and has two beds and one shelf. The forth bed room is for the athletes to use when they come for training camps. It faces the back of the house. All the floors in the house are concert and are painted red. The paint is peeling up all over and in a few spots there are pot hole in the concert floor. There are a few area rugs. The house is on a dead end dirt road. The main paved road is 500 meters from the house. We are in the Musanze area in Ruhengeri.
-Clark