Gikongoro

I'm spending two nights at the Golden Monkey Hotel in Gikongoro, in the Southern part of Rwanda. Today I went over the new journal forms with the credit officers here, also touching on good vs bad client photos and the new processes we're implementing. It's all happening very slowly, partly because I haven't anticipated a lot of problems we've encountered, and because communication is painfully slow. So we're gonna have the branches hire another person, buy another computer (there's only one in the entire branch so far- owned by the branch manager) and buy a modem so they can have internet. They'll send the information into the head office by email (novel, I know) instead of by courier.

After this, we went out even further into the boonies to visit some clients and a field field office. This part of Rwanda is very poor, and World Vision has a large (sponsorship) presence. On the way back, we drove through part of Nyungwe Forest, but I unfortunately only saw one monkey and didn't get a picture.

This is Rwanda's tea country. They grow black tea here, which is one of the greenest and most beautiful plants I've seen so far:

Then we stopped at the Kitabi Tea Factory:
Where one of Jean Marie's friends took us on a tour. Now, if you're gonna take a tour of a factory, take it in a developing country where they aren't twisted in knots worried about lawsuits and cleanliness. (I'm comparing this in my mind to the Celestial Seasonings tour, which is way less interesting, and more about packaging than actual tea.) We walked right up to the machines, with their whirring blades and grinders, dodged hooks hanging from conveyor belts, and had a great time. Here's what I'm talking about:


This grinds the leaves into tiny little bits, and has a cover (r) that keeps people from falling in when it's shut. I'll post the rest of the pictures on facebook. Now here's some Rwandan kids: