A Day in the Life

People always honk when they pass me on the left. It startles me every time even though I really try to make a concerted effort to stay centered in my lane. The problem is, I just haven’t gotten the hang of this steering wheel being on the right, and I find myself drifting too far to the left all the time. I usually break a sweat once they honk, overcompensate by swerving to the right, and then cuss loudly that the curb shouldn’t be so close.

(photo of the house + corona)

Between the honking, the people milling about, the Atraco Town Service (festive yellow and green striped VW-like vans usually filled to the brim with people) vehicles that dart in front of you, combined with the whole steering wheel on the right thing and the fact that I only know my way to 5 places (further complicated by no cell phone) and I can assure you that driving here is a wholly unnerving experience.

If that isn’t enough to make you pee just a little, there’s rumored to be a fierce sense of vigilante justice here… Apparently, if you kill someone in a car accident, you should just keep going and not stop, as the angry mob might avenge the poor sap’s untimely death by killing you. Eye for an eye, in the flesh.

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Mosquito bite count: 16

3 of which were on my face. Why do they bite my face? If I was a mosquito and I had the sad choice of dining on my forehead or upper arm, I think I would choose my upper arm. But nooooo. Fortunately, many of those angry red and swollen welts have healed and I no longer look like a leper. I’ve taken to dousing myself in DEET nightly. Stay tuned for gene mutation.

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Every time we pull up to the blue gate of the house, one of two ‘guards’ is there to swing it open. By day it’s Sambiri; by night, it’s Edouard. And they are as different as day and night…

Sambiri is maybe 17 years old, tall and lanky. He has a bright smile and mischievous glint in his eye, particularly when I pull onto our road and find him dashing to the gate from across the street where he often hangs out with other neighborhood folk. I often wonder if he feels bad about ‘abandoning his post’ but as soon as I think that, I want to slap myself, ‘cause really, what is there to protect here?! He should be off doing whatever he pleases – or more importantly, he should be in school! He perpetually has ear phones on – part of an unwritten dress code for teenagers worldwide I think.

(photo of the front garden)

Edouard – who must be pushing 70 – reminds me of a wire hanger under clothes. He is short, a little hunched, exceptionally frail, and friendly (although Garron says that he’s known Edouard to cop some ‘tude now and again). He shook my hand warmly and smiled broadly when I met him but I couldn’t help but be a little shaken inside by his teeth. He has two large, yellowed front teeth that point in slightly opposite directions and are separated by a good 2 cm gulf. During the night, Edouard rests on a very sad mattress in the garage (it really kills me to see it) and we speculate that he must be going deaf because we often hear his tinny radio echoing down the hallway well into the wee hours of the morning.

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Days ‘til Paris Hilton arrives: oh wait, I don’t care

See Garron’s blog (http://millescollines.blogspot.com/2007/09/news-that-has-kigali-abuzz.html) as well as this recent article on cnn.com
(http://edition.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/15/people.parishilton.ap/index.html ).

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If we return to the house for lunch, we usually enter to find Mélanie industriously mopping the floors, out back doing laundry, or cooking up something delicious in the kitchen. She is fantastic. She’s a very cute, smiley lady who – I imagine – has youngish kids who adore her. (We need to talk more, but I like to use the excuse that my French is utter sh*t so we don’t say much really. I know, I’m terrible.) Part of me feels super guilty that she works so hard to clean up our disasters. I feel especially bad when she serves lunch to us at the dining room table like a waitress. I can’t wait to give her a Christmas bonus. Or maybe two.

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Cockroach sightings: 0

(angels singing)

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By midday, the sun often becomes so intense and turns the Corona into one sweltering sauna. I wilt a little. I think to myself, ‘I’m about as close to the Equator as I will ever be, so maybe this is true, unadulterated sunlight. If sunlight were water, this must be what it’s like to drink it from the firehose.’

Fortunately, this is the rainy season, and by mid-afternoon, clouds roll in and the skies empty themselves with gusto: sheets and sheets of water that turn the drainage ditches into raging rapids and even wash out entire sections of brick wall. Yesterday I saw a group of school children gleefully running in the rain. One little girl had even taken off her periwinkle uniform top and was sloshing it in the gurgling runoff along the sidewalk. I imagined that she is some free-spirited student who will one day travel the world; I wondered if she would look back on this day as a fond memory of her childhood and yearn to go back. From the look on her face, you would think it was nothing less.

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New Favorite Pastime #1: Waving to groups of school children.
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In the rush hour crunch to get home, plumes of black smoke billow from every fourth car, and it feels a little like you can’t breathe. Your eyes burn and you taste bitter exhaust in your mouth. Garron: “This is what it must have been like to live in the US in the 70s.”

When we finally pull into our neighborhood “Kimihurura”, I take a deep breath as we rumble downhill. The pavement gives way to a now familiar burnt orange dirt road, one that looks like it has been clawed by a giant hand from all the rain and little valleys it leaves in its wake. I sometimes sigh when I see the hills in the distance. It’s just a nice sight – one that I hope I don’t tire of too quickly.

(photo of the view beyond the house fence)