Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Just Another Weekend

So it’s been awhile. But that’s a good thing. It means I’ve been busy. And it also means that the time has been flying by. I can’t believe that I have been living in Africa for six months now. School is on break right now and I have a little time to breathe and relax. And to update my blog!

Keeping a blog is proving to be more difficult than I expected it would be. I’m running into the problem that so many Peace Corps Volunteers before me have run into. The weird things that we are confronted with every day simply become normal to us after repeated exposure. Writing about my experiences just doesn’t seem interesting most of the time. But I know that people back home would still be interested in my adventures here in Rwanda, and so we continue. It has been so long that it is difficult to know where to start, so let me just tell you about my weekend.

My school finished administering exams on Thursday. This means that all of the students were leaving school to go back home on Friday because we are a boarding school. I decided to go to the nearest town with some other teachers in order to celebrate the end of the term. We made the forty minute walk down our dusty red dirt road to the main paved road to catch a bus into the city. We met quite a sight when reached the main road. Hundreds of students lined each side of the road. They climbed into the backs of pickup trucks, buses, and any other vehicle whose driver would give them a lift. We managed to get onto a bus, but they increased the price because the demand was so high. Luckily everything in Rwanda is cheap and the price increase was a whopping 17 cents.

When we reached the city, we met up with another teacher who was waiting his turn to get some money at the teachers’ bank cooperative. The other teacher who I was with lives in the city, so he ran home to change clothes while I waited with the teacher who wanted to get his money. I find that I do a lot of waiting in Rwanda. I am coming ever closer to mastering the skill of entertaining myself using only the thoughts rattling inside my own head.

Once my teacher friend got his money, we hit a local restaurant and got a little snack. He had meat and beans, I had ciapati (flat bread) and Fanta Orange. I was saving space for inzoga (beer), chips (fries), and brochettes (goat meat) at the bar. And it was worth it. I love goat meat.

After “taking one” at the bar, we headed to a village nearby to visit another school. I quickly made friends with all of the teachers and the headmaster there. (So this is what it is like to be a hot girl… I had a conversation with some other volunteers about this. One of them said that here we are treated like circus animals. The other, who has already served as a volunteer in Swaziland, agreed and said that in that Swaziland he was treated like a wizard when he proved his worth by accomplishing some task. But here, the host country nationals simply note that a change has taken place, then they continue to stare, poke, and prod. I receive this treatment from some, but I wouldn’t classify myself as circus animal here. At first I couldn’t quite classify it. I thought celebrity, because as I walk down the street, people stare, children call out my name, and everyone assumes I must have a lot of money. But I give no autographs. Then it hit me. Everyone wants to be called my friend. Everyone wants my phone number. Everyone tells me how beautiful my hair is – and they become upset when I cut it off. I am the hot girl. Anyway, this was a long aside. End parentheses.)

Where were we? Oh yeah, the school we visited. We ate a whole bunch more food, which consisted of every Rwandan’s favorite foods: boiled plantains, mushy rice, and terrible cuts of overcooked cow meat. After chatting for a bit, we all hit another bar. Really, there’s not much else to do in the village for entertainment besides bar hop. At this bar, I got to talking with one of the older teachers, who explained to me that he is the former inspector for the whole entire district. He sipped on Ugandan Waragi, or gin, as he talked to me. The bartender brought the 8 oz bottle out to him and punched a hole through the lid with a pen and slipped a straw through the opening. I took a sip just to see how it tasted. It was like a concoction of pine sap mixed with turpentine. When he asked me if I take Waragi, I answered with another question. “Why would I pay someone to give me a headache? At least beer taste good.” The old teacher continued to brag when he saw I wasn’t impressed by his boasting. I may have offended him when I pulled the pen from his breast pocket without asking to write some notes about our conversation. But this is such a passive culture, I guess we’ll never know. Unless I find out several weeks from now from a third party who drops hints about it.

After “taking one” again, I headed back into the city with my teacher friend who lives there. Guess what we did while we were there? That’s right, we hit another bar to “take one” again. We’re not alcoholics, I promise. With the wait times here, these were spread out over many hours. But here comes the interesting part of my story, which takes place in this bar.

In Rwandan culture, it is taboo for girls to drink beer. The bars are usually filled with old men, and sometimes old women. But even if a young woman visits a bar, she is only seen drinking Fanta. I was disappointed to see that things were not any different in this city from our village. We walked into a bar full of drunk old men. There was a room with loud music playing for dancing, but who wants to dance with a bunch of drunk old men? So I asked my friend where all of the girls were. And he took care of it.

After he had a short conversation with one of the bar staff, we were seated at a table outside. Five minutes later, I was being introduced to a pretty young woman. But this didn’t seem right to me. Then the proposition came. Turns out, she was a whore. And she was the most modestly dressed whore I’ve seen in my life. An awkward exchange ensued, I declined the offer, she left the table, and my friend and I finished our beers in uncomfortable silence.

It was late when we finished our beers, so I stayed at my friend’s place. I felt so dirty sleeping in his bed with him. It wasn’t because I was sleeping with another dude. I once slept in the same bed with three other guys back in California. I’m secure with my straightness. And it wasn’t because the sheets were dusty or possibly infested with bed bugs. It was because just one hour earlier I had been offered to use the same bed to get down and dirty with a hooker. I couldn’t help but think of the nasty things that took place on this bed I was sleeping on. But I made it through the night.

We woke up to pouring rain in the morning. We waited for a bit, since the buses wouldn’t be running for awhile. We stopped in at a restaurant for breakfast. Here we ate the Rwandan version of menudo. It was a stew of boiled plantains, cow tongue and intestine, and tomato sauce. I couldn’t stomach the meat, but the rest of it was pretty tasty, despite the awful smell. After breakfast, I headed home and continued my mundane habits of cooking and watching “How I Met Your Mother” on my laptop.

On an unrelated note, today I drank coffee with latte art on top for the first time. I was in a coffee shop in the city and ordered an African coffee (espresso, ginger, steamed milk and foam). I was a barista for about five years and I’m a bit of a coffee snob, so I have visited many coffee shops in America, but I have never had the pleasure of experiencing a true coffee artist's signature in the foam of my cuppa. That’s why I was surprised to see a perfect rosette on top of my coffee in the middle of Africa. And it tasted pretty good too.

2 comments:

  1. eileen and ryan luckyApril 3, 2012 at 5:00 PM

    A latte with ginger sounds tasty! Sounds like you are healthy and having a good experience. We miss you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love your hot girl reference and it's so hard for me to believe and remember your out there not playing with your cell phone and texting all the time.. I kind of wish I could say the same here. love your stories.

    ReplyDelete

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