Home, Sweet Home

Me and Rwanda have a love-hate relationship (although hate is too strong of a term I think). Sometimes, I am frustrated as one can be and feel like I am a complete outsider and no one cares that I am here to help. Then, other times I have these amazing moments or conversations that re-energize me. For example, this morning, I jumped on the ‘squish’ van at 5:45am. It was a bumpy trip down my mountain and I got stuck in the back seat where there is zero leg room with my knees jammed into the metal back of the row in front of me. On top of that, when we hit big bumps my head gets thrusted into the roof. When we got to the bottom of the mountain, we stopped to pick up another person. Maybe I am not a morning person, but this guy crawls into the back seat with me further hindering my space then looks at me and says “Mwaramutse muzungu” (good morning white person). It just got under my skin. I resorted to my go to line, “Ntabwo nitwa muzungu, mfite izina.” (I am not called white person, I have a name) Then the people proceed to say, “Witwa nde?” (what is your name?) Then I say, “Nitwa Andre” ( I am called Andrew). Then they get the point that I don’t like to be classified by the color of my skin and will call my Andre. I have this exact same conversation EVERY time I leave my village. It can get old sometimes, but hopefully I am peacefully helping Rwandans to stop having to classify everyone and see us all as just people. So, this guy put me in a funk. One amazing thing, by the time we made it to the pavement road 19 kilometers away, we managed to squeeze 23 people into this van. There were people sitting 5 to a row of seats that were only built to hold 3. It was quite a feat.

Now to the amazing moment. I was returning to my village on a moto in the evening. For everyone back home, the time period of 5:00pm until dark at 6:45pm is rush hour in the village. No, people don’t have cars. But the people take to the streets to socialize with neighbors, just casually stroll, the kids play football (soccer), people are returning home from a hard days work in the field, or people just sit on the side of the road and watch others do these things. As we are moto’ing, I get a lot of crazy looks and shouts of muzungu from the road, from the forests, from the next mountain over. . .no joke. But once I got to our mountain, people quite called me muzungu and they start shouting “Komera Andrew!!” (Be strong Andrew: a typical greeting here), “Good morning Andrew!!” (Incorrect, but sincere), and “Good afternoon Andrew!!” (perfect!!: proof of a hard year correcting everyone’s English greetings). People know my name all up and down my mountain and realize that I am not just some strange white person showing up for a quick peak around then leaving, but that I am a part of the community, a neighbor, hopefully a friend, or at least the teacher of the children. It is a great feeling when kids are running next to the moto screaming your name and trying to greet you. They have this bright, beautiful smile that just makes you feel good inside. It is a tough feeling to describe. It’s like when you go on vacation for a week or two, then you return to your home, open the front door and just feel good that you are back home. That is how my moto ride was this afternoon.

So yes, to steal a line from Ice Cube for my quote, “Today I didn’t even have to use my AK, I’ve gotta say it was a good day”.