Another Love Story

Thirty three

After that first day of meetings, the acquisitions team dispersed around Rwanda. Amanda and I stayed on at the hotel for three days before United transferred us to a two-bedroom apartment in Kigali. The apartment was in a posh high-rise building. It came fully furnished and I had to admit (albeit reluctantly) that it was better than my apartment in Uganda.

Every morning, a driver came to pick us at 7.30am prompt. We had a series of meetings with managers and heads of department at the head office over two weeks. It was exhausting but rewarding work. Our report for United was slowly coming together. At 5pm, the driver picked us up from Allied Bank and took us back to our apartment. Some days, we stopped to shop for groceries or to buy takeout.

When we concluded our head office meetings, we took a well-deserved night off. We fought through exhaustion and got dressed. Our driver picked us up and dropped us off at a classy restaurant. We had a great dinner paired with wine and then hit the club. I snapped enough photos and videos to last Trish a while. Rwanda nightlife was definitely popping. The fun lasted a night though.

The following week, we began our regional tour. We were scheduled to visit key bank branches in different regions of the country. The Eastern leg of the tour took a week and a half. We packed a suitcase each and went with our driver to the Eastern part of the country. We rented a motel and worked from sunrise to sunset. We took day trips from the motel to bank branches and often returned in the night to eat and crash on our beds until the following day.

As the days progressed and exhaustion sat deeply in my bones, I began to wonder whether I was still cut out for banking. Perhaps it was time to hang up my boots and attack portfolio management. That would be music to Tiger's ears. He had been incredibly supportive throughout my stay in Rwanda. No matter what time I called, he was available to chat for as long as I needed.

Many evenings, I had filled his ears with all the reasons why I was tired. There were equally many nights where I was too tired to sustain a conversation. We would start out a phone call and the next thing I knew, my alarm was going off in the morning. I slept off on the phone with him so often that I stopped feeling guilty and just felt sad.

There were some bright points to the Eastern tour. We dropped the formal dress code after our primary meetings at the bank branches. Amanda and I rolled up to branches for supplementary meetings in Polo shirts, jeans, sneakers and sunglasses. We got into an unplanned badass synchronized routine where we took off our sunglasses and tucked them into the front of our shirts inside bank lobbies upon arrival. Some days, those few seconds were the most fun I had all day. The sheer volume of information we needed to review and research was incredible.

While in Eastern Rwanda, we run into some members of the acquisitions team. They were definitely tearing it up and I had a renewed admiration for their intellect and work ethic. On our last night in Eastern Rwanda, we all went out to have a good time. The acquisitions team was staying on for two more days while Amanda and I were returning to our apartment in Kigali.

We had dinner and then checked out the night scene. Amanda and I had a few drinks for team spirit, but we declined dancing. Regardless of the fact that we were over the border, United's fraternization rules between managers and staff were strict. Luckily, we had a good excuse in the fact that we were travelling the following day. We left the bar and walked back to our motel.

The Eastern tour wrapped on a Thursday. We checked out of the motel at 6am and travelled to the last bank branch. We worked from 8am to 12noon when we set off for Kigali. On the drive back to the capital, I leaned back my seat and blacked out. Amanda was wide awake. We had a long weekend from Friday to Monday to mark the start of activities in commemoration of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide.