We have met so many different people it takes a truly singular personality to surprise us anymore. Fortunately, we do still meet people like this, and last weekend was a perfect example. But first I need an aside to illustrate how fortuitous our encounter last night was.
Evan had gone into town earlier in the afternoon to watch French Open action. Sawa and I planned to follow later in the afternoon, but one mid-afternoon Scrabble game at school dragged into three. Sawa and I left just before 6:00pm as the sun sunk methodically behind the high mountains to northwest, streaking the sky a million shades of glowing yellow-orange behind a curtain of prodigious billowy clouds.
Near school there is a trail that branches left and breaks down the hill through maize fields and pastures. Sometimes we take this trail when we are going to the market, which is located on a far fringe of town. Sawa suggested we take a “short-cut” to town along this trail, and despite my doubts (with the sun setting behind us) I relented.
Well, the short and sweet of it is that Sawa’s short-cut was actually a super roundabout long-cut traversing half of Nyagatare’s outer ‘neighborhoods.’ Sawa won’t accept this version of events, but she’s not a good judge of distance to begin with. What’s more, she insisted that it must be shorter because a Rwandese woman working at school told her so. The day when I accept at face value a Rwandese person’s assessment of distance and travel time is the day I check into the asylum. They are almost unfailingly unreliable in the same way they cannot attend meetings en masse on time. Don’t worry: this is not a sensationalized attack on Rwandans, it’s just true! And I love them for it.
The upside of our excursion was bumping into Gervais and Elizah, two old friends of Sawa who lecture at Umutara. Gervais is the former boyfriend of a VSO volunteer who worked in Nyagatare town, and Sawa met him through her. We invited them to join us later for a drink at Blue Sky and they happily agreed. Our timing was perfect to meet Gervais and his friend, so Sawa’s meandering path actually worked out for the best.
Swing back to drinks at Blue Sky with Gervais and Elizah. In the almost six months Evan and I have been in Nyagatare, we have yet to meet anyone as well-informed and as easy to converse with as Gervais and Elizah. Both did their studies in Dakar, Senegal, speak fluent French and impressive English (having just started one year ago), and, as well-educated academics, can carry very well-informed conversations.
As Evan and I cruised the internet earlier in the day we saw Gary Coleman had died, so when Gervais prompted us about the Hollywood actor who had just passed, we immediately assumed he meant Coleman. Wrong. Unbeknownst to us, Dennis Hopper had also died, and Gervais knew who both were!
We chatted for three hours about Senegal, the U.S., the Rwandan education system, American movies, and security for the World Cup in South Africa (including a comparison of private security contractors employed in SA and Iraq). It was incredibly refreshing to expound upon so many relevant world issues that many Rwandese seem unconcerned about, unaware of, or uninterested in. Needless to say, Evan, Sawa, and I will be contacting them again.
As we clambered onto a motorcycle taxi together in the damp, chilly night air, Evan and I began our ridiculous ruminations on new blog post titles. With me sandwiched between the driver and Evan, I offered Evan the lone passenger helmet. He declined, predicting that if we did go down, there would be two warm bodies between him and the hard, dusty, rock-strewn road. Then he paused, and added that it would be different if he fell off the back of the moto (quite likely given the roads). I reminded him that his head would be the least of his worries. He’d likely shatter his ass. He replied, yea, shatter, probably not shat, nor shart. If you’re confused, check out urbandictionary.com and be repulsed by our coarse, immature humor.
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