I’ve been sick, so I have had to go in and out of Kigali the last week. Its annoying, but was nice seeing Adam on week days. My doctor at the hospital was really cool too. It sucked because I had to wait almost 3 hours to be seen, but it was nice once I got in there. He explained everything and was showing me all kinds of stuff. He was really nice.
Saturday, I went to a wedding of a friend of a friend. One weekend a couple months ago the lady next to me on the bus started talking to me, then stole my iPod for an hour and we exchanged numbers. Well, turns out she works at the church next door to me, so I have run into her on occasion in town or on the road on her way to work, so one time she invited me to the wedding of the girl who was sitting on the bus beside her. They go to the same church. I said sure and she gave me an invitation. I see her all the time and she’s one of my only ‘friends’ in town and I live right next door to the church, so I felt obliged to go. I showed up 40 minutes late, but the pastor was still preaching away. He was up on stage while the two couples (they do simultaneous weddings here) were sitting below him facing the crowd. Both grooms had on white suits with red shirts underneath. But not just any white suit, shiny white suits! One was pin striped with satin or something shiny, the other was just all over shiny and the red shirts beneath were satin as well, so they were shining away! The groom that I was there for had a bright red shiny shirt, with a white and gold brocade tie (it looked kind of like a curtain or some sort of upholstery), the other groom had a more subdued, darker red, but it was still satiny and shiny (I don’t remember what his tie was like). The pastor was talking to the husbands telling them to respect their wives and something about not beating them because they are now one and one cannot beat oneself. Then he came down to the couples and they swore to love each other forever, exchanged rings (while reading vows off of a piece of paper) and then the grooms lifted their brides veils to show the crowd how beautiful their wives were. They did it soooo slowly though. It was funny. The grooms slowly rolled up the veils and then… nothing. No kiss. Nothing. They just stood there. The best man and maid of honor kept wiping the faces of the couples and fixing their clothes and jewelry, all on camera and in front of us all. It was strange. Then the couples got down on their knees and people stood around them and prayed and then a giant dancing party showed up and the collection bowl was set out, not for the couples, but for the church like it was regular Sunday. The pastor had all the married people in the church stand up and wave to the new couples to welcome them into their new life as married people and then had us single people stand up and wave goodbye to them.
After the church ceremony, we all drove over to the museum and took pictures in the gardens and with the kings palace house. I didn’t bring my camera cause I figured I wouldn’t need it, this being the 5th wedding I’ve been to and I don’t really know the couple, but now am I so upset! They were really nice pictures and we took ones in front of the house and in the house. They kept pulling me into the pictures and I wasn’t dressed all that fancy, so I felt a bit self-conscious. We went to the Petit Prince hotel afterwards for the reception and they had a huge cake stand with 8+ cakes and a banana tree in the middle of the cake stand and they had tied bunches of small bananas to the tree. The bride and groom fed each other wine and then went over to the tree and picked a banana and fed it to the other. Everyone got very excited at this point and were all yelling and whistling at the couple. The choir came and sang songs, they cut up the cakes and passed out pieces of it with napkins and we all drank sodas. Then I decided I had enough (it was about 4 hours by this time) and was supposed to meet up with the RPCV who has moved to Butare and was already 20 minutes late, so I told my friend that I had to go and she pointed out to me the way I should walk. It was a nice, quiet walk; not many people around.
Met up with Richard (the RPCV) a while later and we went into town and met up with 3 of his friends from Kigali who spent the day hiking in Nyungwe and were spending the night in Butare. We had dinner and then were going to go get drinks, but they were charging a cover and we refused on principle. So, we went to Richard’s house instead and I got to see it and we had a beer on the balcony overlooking the valley. Then I walked home with a headlamp.
My new friend calls me by my Kinyarwanda name only. All during the wedding she would introduce me as Mukobwajana, or when she needed to get my attention she’d call it out and I had no problem responding immediately. I really respond to that name now and know that if I hear it someone is talking to me. At the PC office, in the official PC database, my name is Kimbrel, Alicia Mukobwajana! Haha Everyone always asks the same questions when they hear my name. "do you know what it means?" and even if I say yes, I know what my name means, i've had it for two years, they still explain it to me. Its annoying. I know what my name means!!!!
On Sunday, my landlady came over and told me that they’d have to construct something at my house to catch the rainwater. She said they would come on Monday and I said that was fine, and they could come at 7. There were a lot of other words exchanged, but I don’t know what she said, and she doesn’t know what I said. She speaks a lot of French to me and honestly, its more confusing than if she’d just speak Kinya. When she was leaving she said that she would call my boss, Jeanne (I’m guess to explain to her, so she could explain to me in English). Later that day, she showed up again with the village leader. He is a lecturer at the University, so he speaks English well and he explained to me that they’re fixing the roads, so my rain water can’t go out onto the road anymore, so they have to build a rainwater catchment thing. Then he told me that I had to turn on my outdoor light every evening to make the street safer for those who walk along it. He said there are thieves on the road, but that they come from Save, a neighboring town, not Butare. He was very insistent on this point. haha. I asked him to ask my landlady to put back the outdoor light on her house because I don’t have one on that side of my house and hers shines on the outdoor sink that I do my dishes in. The last month I haven’t been able to see to do my dishes because her light went out. I also showed her my sink, which is broken and won’t turn off unless you use the knob below the sink. Its annoying, but livable, so I don’t think she is going to fix it for me.
The construction guys came Monday morning along with my maid, who has been gone the last 2 weeks! I was so happy she came back! I was trying to find another one, but to no avail, so I was doing my own laundry and dishes and was getting tired of it and I really didn’t want to mop the house (but I did clean the bathroom). She said she has been sick and then something about breastfeeding… I don’t know what that was about. The guys who came dug a huge hole in my concrete and were pulling out all this rich, dark earth, so I thought, ‘that’s some good, fertile soil. I should use that for my garden!’ So, I told the guys not to take it out and dump it wherever they were dumping it and to instead put it in my garden. Well, they decided to help me build a real garden and we borrowed the hoe from the neighbor and then collected rocks to make a barrier around it and make a nice little garden! The guys were there until the evening and one stayed a LONG time because he got stuck in the rain. It started raining a little after 5pm and then it just kept up and it got dark. I last saw him peeping in my window around 6:30. I don’t know when he left, but he must have walked home in the dark in the pouring rain (this was no light rain!). Poor guy.
The next morning, I got up late after battling with the crows on my roof before 6 and so didn’t leave the house until around 8:30, when I opened my gate, the guy who got stuck in the rain was sitting there outside my gate, so I handed him the lock to the outside gate and went on my way. I then thought about how long he probably had been sitting there. They came at 7 the morning before and most Rwandese start work as soon as the sun is up (6am), so he could have been sitting there for an hour and a half at the least! I don’t know how to say ‘knock’ in Kinyarwanda or else I would have told him its okay to knock and I’ll let him in. At work, I got really into making amazon wishlists of food I want to bring back to Rwanda with me, so didn’t leave the office until 1pm for lunch and when I went out, I found out that I was locked in the office! I only have a key to my office, not to the front door! I tried the backdoor and the side door and all were locked! I called my boss and she laughed and said she would call our receptionist, who lives nearby, to come let me out. I saw the guard/landscaper and asked him to let me out, but he didn’t have a key. He told me the key was 'wapi' and to 'ihangane'. I only had to wait 15 minutes, so it wasn’t too bad, but it was funny and a bit embarrassing. I went into town to buy a few things and ran into Madison, another PCV, while she was walking the other direction but said she was going to the market soon, so I waited for her there after shopping. While I was waiting, I bought an airtime card and the guy scratched it for me and I won a bandana! I haven’t bought airtime in a long time, so I didn’t even know they were having this promotion. The guy selling the card said he didn’t have one and then tried to take the card from me. I took it back and then he said, ‘okay, go to the store and they’ll give it to you’. Madison and I walked over there and picked up my free, bright yellow bandana. We then went to the market and sat in the café and had lunch. After lunch we waited for the VSO volunteer to come in and then sat together for a while talking and then two more VSO walked in and sat with us. We were at the café about 5 hours! But the TV was on and we had a fun time laughing at the ridiculous music videos that were showing and then the stupid MTV shows, Punk’d and Room Raiders and I stole some movies from Madison’s external hard drive. Madison came back to my house for a bit before her bus left.
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