January 23, 2024

Last blog of the day (unless anything more happens). BE Design: Bruce Engel and his staff arrived tonight from Rwanda. We enjoyed dinner together on the balcony of Bishop’s home. We got to know a little bit from Bruce’s staff members – Yves and Emmanuel who evidently had some interesting and comedic travel experiences to share. General Secretary Jeremiah and Dean Wakami joined us which is always nice. Accurate and her staff provided the most amazing food. You really need to come to Karagwe and have her chicken with red sauce, rice and beans, her fantastic chips and my favorite – her sweet banana.

It was great to see Bruce. We haven’t seen each other for quite a while and needed to talk of his new baby, his last visit to Puerto Rico, how he scouted out his staff members who were posing as his top students while he taught architecture in Rwanda. When I asked Yves and Emmanuel what they learned from Bruce they simultaneously responded, “Everything!”. Not bad for a spontaneous endorsement.

Bishop, GS, Dean and I shared a little about the service for Mel earlier in the day, updates on KARUCO and KARUCO Solar and then a couple of (pretty funny) jokes about current politics. Then on to some discussion about the Rural Opportunity Center and ways we can make clear divisions of responsibilities for each entity involved. Bruce is writing up something for tomorrow. We all agreed we are not fond of redundancies. Except to say: Not fond of redundancies.

Bishop’s guests left and I retired for the evening. It will be good to get a good rest tonight. It was a great and big day. A really big day.

Tomorrow’s Agenda: Updates from ETI, BE Design and KAD. Identification of issues to be resolved. We begin with meetings tomorrow morning.

Sorry: Forgot to take photos.