Day 3 Monday July 18

In the morning we visited the tailor shop micro-enterprise. This is where the girls (and guys apparently) graduate and may get jobs there or elsewhere. The shop is on a typical dusty Rwandan street and is very small. Bahati (short, light guy) and John (tall dark guy) run the place with a variety of other women who share equally in the profits (about $120 a month, which is quite good). This is after they pay the rent, utilities and other bills, all left over is split evenly. Regardless of your status, expertise, or managerial responsibility, everyone shares equal profit, something very foreign for westerners. No one seems to feel slighted in any way.

In the afternoon we procured 4 sewing machines for the graduates of Hope’s sewing program. They will each be able to start a career as a seamstress working at the shop or perhaps starting their own. Buying the machines was extremely stressful. We went to the main shopping center in town, absolute chaos, typical for Africa. Crazy traffic, loads of people going here and there, music blasting, dust everywhere. We had Hope and Charles negotiate the price before we went in (vendors see white people and the price doubles) but when we went in the store to get our hands on the items, they tried to hit us with a 19% VAT. So we walked.

Next vendor was down a dingy alley, men moving mattresses as we tried to squeeze our way through the crowded entrance. There’s something always going in Rwanda, it seems. We negotiated a decent price and finally bought the machines cash for $800. Total time expended, 3 hours. Nothing takes 30 minutes in Rwanda. We left feeling a bit crappy not knowing how good the machines are and spent more than we wanted, but the tailors from the shop assured us they were good machines so all was ok.

Got back to the hotel a bit early around 5 and just relaxed at the restaurant, drank lots of beer and chatted about the trip and the trials and tribulations of Emma’s man hunt. This chick should totally write a book.