'Club de Fitness des Amis de Mont Huye...'

What about our very busy weekend...

On Friday, Iben invited us over to have a drink in her place (banana beer, brewed by the nuns; very nice and very religious! ;-)) together with Damas, Diogene and Aline (all medical students here in Butare) and of course our dear neighbour Noela. We had some good laughs! And afterwards we went to the Safari Club, the only club in town, to 'shake our white asses' (you can imagine that in between all these Rwandans that are 'genetically programmed' to dance -on the beat!- we sure had to do our best to keep up!)

On Saturday we woke up at 6 am, as we usually do spontaniously every day -could it be that the Lariam is showing it's side effects???- and since the weather was beautiful, we decided to get burnt beside the swimming pool (two lobsters are nothing compared to us!). So it was nice, but our skin is still complaining. And as Muriel and I have entered our 'tanning competition', I can not promise that we won't make the same mistake again...
At night we went to the campus to see a traditional dance show (I'll try putting some video material on our site, but I'm not sure it'll work). Anyway it was very nice (we got to see a lot of talent, and especially the student group -there were 5 groups performing- did a very good job -including, as a highlight of the evening 'a muzungu' performing with them! -no, it wasn't one of us!), although the 3 hours of sitting on a wooden bench was a little bit long...

Sunday morning Noela brought the sunshine into our room at 7.45am. Yes, we were going for the 16 km walk with the 'gym tonic' club. Ofcourse the sun was burning, our fluorescent red skin was becoming even more fluorescent, but it was fun, tough (Rwanda is the country of Mille Collines!!!) and we got to enjoy the premiere of their, now to be weekly, walk. After nearly dying of muscle soreness and dehydration (Okay, it wasn't that bad, but it makes it sound more interesting) we got to sit down for lunch in a restaurant nearby. And while waiting for the food (1 hour is more and less the regular waiting time in restaurants) we got to introduce ourselves to the other members of the group, saying who we are, what we do and whatever got into us to be participating in this walking activity. And then, as the club is only just becoming official and so on, we got to pick a name. Unfortunately 'Walkie Talkie' and 'Club Courage' (we were hypoglycemic at the time of inventing the names!) were not official enough, and so names such as 'Les Amis de Mont Huye', 'Club de Mont Huye' and last, but not least 'Fitness Club Mont Huye' were much more popular (the latter one has become the actual name).

And so this morning at 7am (after waking up at 6am as usual, and not sleeping much because of 'intestinal refusal of digestion of the Rwandese lunch') we were more tired than before the weekend, but we sure did have fun!