Kagame! Oye! Oye! Oye!
Thanks to everyone for keeping up with me and e-mailing their feedback! I’ve gotten a few e-mails asking me to enable the comments feature on this blog, so after a few minutes of searching I believe I figured it out—anyone who wishes to should be able to leave comments on my blogposts now.I’m sitting at the Alpha Palace hotel, where the WiFi is 100x better than what we’ve been using at home. Blogging is quite unnatural to me, so here’s what I wrote in my journal last night in red ink, with Tom Waits rasping in my earbuds:
My blue pen exploded on the way from Brussels to Bujumbura—all over my hands. Writing in red is traumatic to the eyes, but I’d rather focus on my grandfather’s advice to a 7-year-old me: “practice for your spelling tests using red ink—it will stay in your mind and you’ll get a 6.” So perhaps red ink will imprint my short few weeks here in Rwanda more deeply in my mind than blue ink would have.
I’m writing this at the dining room table of our house here in the Kabeza neighborhood. I’m tired as hell—today was eventful, to say the least. Nelson and Julia are watching the latest episode of “Harmony Gates” or whatever it’s called on the couch. The doors and windows are wide open, the walls are crawling with geckos, the mouse in the kitchen is chomping down on the sweet potato we left for him, mosquitos are eating us alive, the room is lit by one light bulb, Julia just “showered” with a bucket, and we’re happy as can be.
Tomorrow is my first day of photography class, to be taught in the front room of the Play for Hope office. I’m anxious to meet my ten students and show them the cameras I brought. I don’t really have a plan, and for the first time in a long time I feel like that’s a good thing. Note: I’m uploading this blog post right after my first class—it went quite well, but I have a lot of work ahead of me. I hope I can accomplish something significant with my students in the short time that I’m here.
Highlights from my time here so far:
-sleeping for 15 hours on the first evening here (last night)
-discovering that the landlord’s crazy dog attempted to consume my new Teva butch-sandals…they look less lame now that they’re a little beat up, at least
-cooking omelets for breakfast on a propane-tank gas stove
-hand-washing golden brown dust out of my clothes on a daily basis (I’m trying really hard to ease up on my obsessive cleaning—it’s not conducive to life here)
-getting hugs from the neighborhood children every time I pass by their hangout spot
-watching the locals celebrate Kagame’s reelection at the Matutina Bar tonight
-eating “broshette”—skewered goat meat and onion, with a barbecued plantain—at Matutina
-carrying two 1.5 liter bottles of water all the way home—my biceps are aching as I write this
-riding into town on the back of a motorbike-taxi
-talking to locals while riding mini-buses (packed like sardines) back into town
-making friends with Joshua, the adorable shop owner up the street who has officially become the “Hasmik” of this trip—his store is open all the time and I stop by there 3-4 times a day and he’s awesome
-spending time with the Millers (Don and Lorna) in their apartment downtown, and being reminded of the bright shining stars in the Armenian community that I often overlook while being frustrated with everyone else
-trying to communicate strictly in Kinyarwanda using my phrase book and failing miserably—extremely difficult language, thus far
-sitting in the backyard, surrounded by trees and purple flowers, watching the clouds float above the next neighborhood on the other side of the valley
-resisting the urge to think of Gyumri when I am in this house
-drinking Fanta Orange out of a glass bottle, twice in one day.
I’ve been shooting exclusively on film, so I took this photo (above) of our street this morning using my laptop to supplement this post (note how I’m repping Clark Magnet High with my old P.E. shorts). I’ll try to remember to take some digital shots here and there for the next post. Hopefully what I’ve described here is vivid enough, for now.
