Yesterday afternoon.

I am back in Bukavu after two weeks in Buloho, Bugalika and Luzira (small villages in Sud Kivu, all inside the locality Cibandja). It was fantastic, and there is - again - so much to tell.

Let me start with our afternoon yesterday. We are here with a team of four (Eustache, Desire, Freddy and me), and I push the guys hard. Each morning we wake up when the sun rises (6am) to start work at 630am, and we continue until 5-6pm. Normally we eat around 9pm. This doesn't mean that between 6 and 9pm the guys have a few hours off. No. We check the collected data, and I bother them with tens of questions (there is still so much for me to learn about the Congo).

In the villages we stay over with the chief, and we have dinner with him in the evening. However, this still often means work. Either the chief invites people ("There is a white guy staying in my house") or we do - for example, a few days ago we invited the president of the displaced-people committee of the Luzira entity for dinner. The guys know what I'm interested in, so they now often ask more and better questions then I do.

Yesterday, however, was different. We finished work early (around 3pm) and after two weeks of hard work we had the feeling of deserving an afternoon off. So we walked to Lake Kivu, stole a piroque (one of those boats cut out of a tree) and had several hours of great fun in the water. Then on our way back we got ourselves a case of Primus beer, had a lady literally taking her living room outside of her house so that we could enjoye a beer with the chief. Next to Lake Kivu, in the sun. Fantastic!



Team in Lake Kivu.



Muzungu hanging on the bow.