Bicycles and Micycles

Today has been incredible. I have seen the ACTUAL Tour Du Rwanda (I was joking about there being one but it actually happens every year), a giant mouse and Jay Polly. And we're having curried potatoes for supper. It is such a great day.

We kind of stumbled across the Tour Du Rwanda the other day when we saw it advertised on a poster. It turns out that it is an international event that attracts teams from all around the world, including the USA, Canada and France. So it's a pretty big deal for Rwanda! Today was the second to last stage, Butare-Kigali.

Spot the man in the tree...

We managed to sneak to the front and ended up getting some pretty good photos of the riders warming up.

While everyone else was warming up, the Tanzania team just posed for photos

Dylan Girdlestone, Yellow Jersey

Team South Africa who won in 2012

After a huge build up, the start was (predictably) a bit of an anti-climax since it was over so quickly. I'm pretty sure Libby and I were the only ones cheering and getting excited, but it was really fun all the same! It was great to see a part of the Tour because it is clearly such a big event in Rwanda that promotes sports and puts Rwanda on the international (or at least African) sporting map.

In other news, in the immortal words of UB40, there's a rat (mouse) in ma kitchen (Miri's room)...

So in the afternoon we went round in the hope of capturing it and setting it free, instead of buying one of the ancient torture implements that were passed off as 'mouse traps' in the market (trying to explain to someone who doesn't speak a word of English that you want a humane mouse-trap proved impossible, my 'mouse in a box' sketch did not work and we ended up buying some rat poison - the said mouse had already been chased away but had come back so we were resorting to desperate measures...)

Sadly we didn't get any pictures of the mouse because it leapt out at me from Miriam's wardrobe, ran under the bed, into the bathroom, then evaded us again and ran out of the room altogether. All of this lasted less than a minute and prompted much screaming (much to the amusement of the students in the courtyard). So sadly the mouse has been condemned to death, with some dodgy looking rat poison mixed with stale bread crumbs. Will update regarding the corpse situation...

On the way back from Miri's we stopped off at an outdoor concert where Jay Polly was performing. Whilst I had never heard Jay Polly before, he's a really big deal in Butare which was why hundreds of people were stood in the pouring rain watching him (he's from round here apparently). Here's a video of his best song (it's actually pretty good..!)

Lastly, in an apology for the lack of mouse hunt photos, here's some wise words from the back of a truck: