From Secretary General to Stadium Gig

I had an early start this morning and wasn’t prepared for the exhausting day ahead.
After waiting 25 minutes for our staple breakfast of – yes you guessed it – omelette to turn up (I mean how long can it take to fry an egg?!) we gave up at 8am and started the interviews.

We had people who were working from Oxfam, and the UN, an expert on the environment (who was wearing the smartest suit I have ever seen) and after seeing seven candidates for a solid seven hours - it was looking like Joan and I were going to have a tough job on our hands.

By 4pm. we still hadn’t had time for breakfast or lunch, and it was onto a meeting at 4.30pm with the Secretary General of the Rwandan Private Sector Federation (RPSF). His office was like a penthouse suite, complete with huge cream coloured leather sofas, where we sat to start the meeting.

It went exceptionally well. After we gave Emmanuel (yes it was first name terms!) an overview of the Shared Interest and COFTA project, he sat back, smiled and said: “Thank you for choosing Rwanda– we are very excited to have you here. This project is a Godsend to us�.

His support basically means that the project can continue even after we have finished the 3 years. Also, Emmanuel kindly offered to base our Project Coordinator in one of his offices and provide a desk and chair for them.

We finished the meeting at 7pm (somehow these meetings have a way of overrunning!) and had just one hour to get back to the hotel, get changed and get to the stadium to see the gangster rappers from yesterday’s blog.

We turned up at the stadium (with our VIP tickets and cameras) to be greeted by over a thousand Rwandan’s all waiting to see the famous P-Square!

There were several TV cameras, posters everywhere and a huge stage located at one end of the stadium. It was a mixed evening with Traditional Rwandan dancers intertwined with traditional drumming.

Then the main acts came on the stage one by one! We started with the famous Ugandan rap artist Jose Chameleon who was absolutely crazy! He stopped his act at one point and demanded that “his people� come to him and all of the security be removed from the front of the stage!

He then bounced from one side of the stadium to the other – climbing scaffolding when at one point, he stepped back and fell through the straw roof, somehow managing to fall without missing a word of the song! The crowd went crazy! One ecstatic fan climbed up on stage and danced for us the whole night.

The finale of the evening – Joan and I had managed to squeeze our way to the very front of the stadium and were ready to see the World Famous P-Square, two Nigerian Brothers (who both have names beginning with P (Peter and Paul – P Square).

The crowd went wild and Joan and I got caught up in the madness and were dancing away (to songs we had never heard of! My personal favourite was “Will you be my Wifey?� in which both brothers picked a girl out of the crowd and proposed to her.

The night finished at 1am and after a successful day of interviews and meetings and a fantastic cultural evening, I was ready to hit the sack – for tomorrow another busy day ahead.

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