i once met a guy in hungary who kept asking me what america was like.  how is it different from hungary? he’d ask.  how do you begin to answer a question like that?  things are bigger in america – roads, cars, supermarkets, meals, value paks.   people aren’t concentrated into towns and cities like they are in europe.  they live in suburbs and drive everywhere.  people are more ambitious and more private.  i don’t know.  you can’t answer a question like that without generalizing.  in rwanda i’d get the same question.  and because i never knew what to say, sometimes i’d throw it back at them: what do YOU think america is like?  ‘everyone is rich.’  ‘everyone has a tv and a car and a computer and they eat meat every day.’  how true.  and the streets are paved with gold too.  i’d try to dispel the stereotype, saying there are plenty of poor people in america – we have one of the highest poverty rates among developed nations.  but i felt a little silly saying it in rwanda, where 90+% live on less than a dollar a day. 

what is america like?  the question gets easier if you make it more specific.  i can talk about the differences in the health care systems, the education systems, the personality of the people, religion, transportation, commerce, the landscape, the climate, so many differences.  give me a place to start and i’ll go all day.

so now that i’m back in america, what do i get from the americans?  ‘rwanda? really? what was rwanda like?’  and i don’t know what to say.  i don’t know where to start.  i look at them quizzically, trying to weed out whether this one really wants to know or is just being polite.  in the end i say, with a smile and a slight shake of the head and a throw-up-your-hands kind of overwhelmed look ‘it was… amazing… yeah.’ and they nod and smile and look amazed and say ‘yeah… i’ll bet.’  the conversation ends before it’s begun.  they’ve learned nothing about rwanda, and i’ve shared nothing, and neither of us feels like the other cares.  so if you ask me what is rwanda like and i tell you to be more specific, don’t take it the wrong way.  i’m just  trying to take an unanswerable question and make a conversation out of it.

if it gets that far, it will be a conversation of generalizations.  i don’t know if i can tell you what rwanda is like any more than i can tell you what america is like.  rwanda is overwhelmingly catholic, but i met a lot of protestants and muslims, and while most people i met were very religious, i also met a lot of people who bent the rules just like we do, if not more so.  but on the whole, i’d say rwanda is more religious than america.  of course, i live in new york, not kansas.  i see fundamentalist christians on tv and it’s hard to believe we’re the same nationality.  how can i make generalizations about a country as huge as america when i’ve only experienced a small part of it?  (i have actually been to kansas, but we never left the highway and all i remember is a lot of corn and a lot of billboards for triple-x movies and strip joints – not what i had expected.)

those of you who’ve been reading this blog have (i hope) a pretty good sense of what rwanda was like for me.  i tried to answer the question slowly, story by story, and limit my comments to my own experience.  as i begin this new adventure, this time here in new york, i’ll try to do the same.  where my experiences don’t jive with your own, i hope you’ll say so.  makes the conversation more interesting.

it’s been a long time since i wrote anything.  there are various reasons for this, primary among which is the simple dilemma that this blog is entitled ‘letters from abroad’.  and i am no longer abroad.  or am i?  while technically i am back in my home country, and while a good portion of my readership is here too, i still feel like a foreigner sometimes.  maybe, (and i might be giving myself too much credit here) i can pretend to offer an outside perspective.  i left the u.s. at the beginning of 2005 and, other than a few short visits, didn’t return until the end of 2008.  living here now is, for me, like living in a new country.  so many things have changed while i was away.  i can choose to re-assimilate as best i can: pick up my life where it left off, get back in touch with old friends etc.  or i can choose to look at this as a new experience, a new culture to understand and find my place in, a new country to explore. 

i choose the latter.  doing so means a few things: one, i can reinvent myself rather than revert to the old me (whoever that was anyway).  two, i can continue to look at the world around me with fresh eyes.  i know you don’t need (care?) to hear all this silly philosophizing, but i need to say it because it leads to the next part: three, i can continue writing a blog entitled ‘letters from abroad’ in which i make observations about my experience of life in this country. 

so here it comes, alicia is back.  get ready for new posts.  a sneak preview of a few that have been sitting in the back of my head for awhile: the story of my flight home (see below), and a series of pieces on reverse culture shock including (but not limited to) alicia standing befuddled in front of rows and rows of salad dressing and alicia trying to hail a cab with her eyebrows.  happy reading.

kigali.  mid-morning november 22.  flustered and overheating in front of an airport check-in desk.  moving my stuff from one bag to another, hefting the bags on and off the scale, trying to fit within the baggage limits.  i’ve donated most of my clothes, books, and assorted possessions in favor of spending my precious kilo allowance on coffee, fabric, baskets, and other souvenirs.  once through the line, boarding card in hand, i return to my fan club outside for final goodbyes.  one by one a smile, a hug, a thanks, a wish for the best.  mugisha, fulgence, justin, emmanuel, chantal, nepo… it gradually gets harder to hold tears behind my eyes… innocent… adolphe…… amanda.  i look at her and then we’re both heaving, tears bloating our faces, words overwhelmingly insufficient.  what you have been to me, how you have changed me, why i couldn’t have made it without you.  all said in a hug that refuses to let go. 

the loudspeaker calls to board.  pull away.  turn.  walk.  one foot in front of the other up the stairs, through security, onto the tarmac, up the steps to the plane.  right foot left foot sit.  sunglasses on to hide my tears.  the plane rolls forward, turns, picks up speed – wait! let me off!  i’m leaving myself behind but dragging it with me.  full engine throttle, nose lifts, and i’m silently breaking down, the only signs to my neighbor the shake in my shoulders, white knuckles gripping each other, my breath drawn-in short and held without release.  in my head i’m exploding.  two years of working as hard as i could to make whatever impact i could, two years of challenge frustration elation disappointment satisfaction learning.  i gave every ounce and i have nothing left.  i am wrecked.  i am devasted.  i can’t breathe it hurts so much.  leaving rwanda.

nairobi airport a few hours later.  pacing.  my ipod pumps angsty damien rice as i march up and down the long airport corridor.  i move with purpose: i WILL get to the end, i WILL turn around and march back, i WILL do it again and again and again.  if i stop i’ll crumble.

nairobi airport three hours after that.  numb.  sitting on the carpet staring at the wall.  the tears have gone out of me and now i’m simply waiting to be home.  home is still 23 hours away.  i reach for a book i have little intention of reading and a slip of paper falls out of my bag.  it says.  “#5 this one time in musha i ate a poisonous plant and my mouth swelled up and i passed out.”  i smile.  the first smile in hours.  i don’t know how or when this slip of paper was slipped into my bag, but i know there will be more.  and there are.  between the folds of my book, in my sunglasses case, in every secret zipper pocket of my bag.  i find a few at first search, then gradually come upon another and another with mild surprise at her ingenuity.  as my london-bound departure draws nearer i am haunted by the notes, finding new ones where i’m sure i looked before.  stories of our crazy times together – showering in the rain, inside jokes through interminable teachers’ meetings, people we met, moto rides under the stars, a broken bed, some stories too embarassing to recount here.  my best friend has left me the best goodbye gift: memories to sneak up on me when i need them most.

somewhere mid-air over europe.  i emerge from restless airplane sleep puffy and disoriented.  out the window is a clear starry night.  there’s orion.  standing up.  for two years living at the equator, orion lay down in the sky for me.  now he stands.  i’m going home.

london heathrow.  it’s 5 am and freezing.  i wander empty halls of polished marble, glass and steel.  shiny.  sleek.  i’m too exhausted to walk, too cold to stop moving, too drained to think clearly.  i need water but refuse to pay 2 pounds for it and am still too much in africa to consider drinking from the tap.  so i wander.  i go up and down (and up and down) escalators for the novelty.  i stare at rows of glossy magazine covers without focusing my eyes.  i am on a new planet where nothing is human and everything is sanitized.

new york jfk.  unknown time.  i don’t remember getting off the plane, though i suppose i did.  i don’t remember getting my bags from the luggage rack, though they must have arrived.  i don’t remember hearing american accents coming from my neighbors’ mouths, though i imagine there were some.  i vaguely remember seeing my parents and sister in ‘welcome home’ newspaper hats coming towards me with open arms and ready smiles.  i fully recall the awesome array of cold cuts at the subway sandwich stand in the arrivals lounge.  and i can still feel in my bones the biting cold, colder than i’d felt for years, cold enough to chap noses and numb fingers, cold november wind attacking me en route to the car.  and the next thing i remember i was home.

on saturday november 22nd at 1:45pm i leave rwanda.  i arrive in new york sunday morning, via nairobi and london.  it’s been a long trip, and i’m sad to leave, but i’m glad to be coming home.

we went down to gasarenda in the southern province to visit han and mons, two dutch volunteers who came out with us in january 2007. it was to celebrate han’s birthday, but also the nearing of the end of our two years here. voila les photos…

saying goodbye is difficult here.  here, it is looking someone in the face and knowing that, even if by some miraculous turn of events i find myself in rwanda again some day, the chances of seeing that face again are minute.  yes, i’ve given my email address out, with hopes that they’ll send me updates about their lives, but for most, internet access is hard to come by.  the faces are sad but smiling, wistful, in contrast with the bright and hopeful faces that greeted me on arrival.  i’ve received countless thank-you letters from students, carefully spell-checked and copied onto nice paper and slipped into the flimsy air-mail envelopes that are ever-so-readily available.  some have added a photograph to remember them by.  i myself have posed with studetns and teachers alike for hundreds of photos.  at my first goodbye party, the photographer made a killing while i stood with student after student, some of which i hadn’t even taught, all lined up outside the frame like for santa claus at the mall.  after three rolls of film, my face hurt from smiling and i was seeing stars.

the first goodbye party was organized by the english club students and well-attended.  looking out at the faces of my favorite students from all my classes, i gave a teary speech, thank-you cards to the leaders, and books to this and last year’s presidents.  they gave speeches, read poems, performed skits, sang songs, and presented gifts.  they asked me to promise that someday i would return to rwanda.  i cried.

the second goodbye party, for both amanda and i this time, was sponsored by the headmaster.  there were drinks for all and an impressive buffet with more meat than the guests could eat.  the president of the parents’ association was there, as were a select group of ‘important’ students.  the teachers were notified of mandatory attendance an hour beforehand, just after we finished deliberation (a frustrating and divisive event that left me so angry i almost refused to attend the party).  we were placed at a separate vip table where we couldn’t talk to anyone.  the prefet des etudes gave a long speech in kinyarwanda, then apologized and gave a one-minute paraphrase in french.  the head of teachers gave a nice speech in french saying how amanda’s and my odd methodology somehow managed to motivate the students, and saying how the teachers regretted not attending our teacher-training courses, particularly now that rwanda is to become anglophone next year (!).  the dean of students thanked us in english, which no one but us understood, but by this point the guests were all drunk and loudly congratulated him for his skill in english.  there were nice (drunken) speeches from a math teaacher and from the president of the parents’ association.  one of the congolese teachers, speaking for ‘the congolese colony’, asked us to find them sponsors for university in europe.  amanda spoke and no one listened to her.  then the headmaster yelled at everyone for being drunk and not giving presents.  he asked us to remember apagie school and do some fund-raising when we returned to europe (?).  then we received presents from the administration and the photographer was called in and my face hurt and i saw spots. 

one chink in the elation of feeling appreciated here, is the rwandan tendency to say ‘thank you and now i need…’ a dictionary, school fees, your picture, sponsorship, your laptop, your digital camera.  i sometimes want to scream ‘you’re welcome, bye!’ after the thank you part, before the i need part.  amanda says ‘you know in my culture, we just say thank you. we don’t ask for more stuff’ like she’s a mom calmly reprimanding a child for being impolite.

but i’m done complaining today.  i have taught my last english class.  i will never again walk into a room of 50 kids shouting ‘how are you, teacher? teacher, what’s up?’  i will never again cheer them for a particularly good discussion, or walk from desk to desk answering questions, or choose from outstretched hands begging to be called on, nearly standing to get my attention, snapping their fingers and shouting ‘me, teacher! me!’.  i will never again smile a hello as i pass them in the road, or spend hours chatting with the ones who are close friends now – david, kizito, bosco, innocent, rafiki, jean de dieu, jackson and justin (the peanut gallery from senior 6), edson, emmanuel, desire, freddy, fidele, jean baptiste, robert, the list goes on and on.  my students.  they are why i came here, they are the faces i will never forget.  they have taught me more than i ever could have taught them.  in david’s words, ‘how can i say goodbye? it is like crying.’

to the students of apagie musha: thank you so much.  i will miss you.

on a bicycle (on a shelf at the back behind the driver):

-people (men straddling, ladies side-saddle, either holding on to the seat for balance or carrying something else themselves.)
-goats (alive but strapped down so they can’t kick)
-chickens (also alive and strapped and, like the goats, often held by the passenger)
-100kg rice sacks full of charcoal or potatoes or sugar or cassave flour or you name it (so heavy and laterally balanced it’s a wonder the bicycle doesn’t tip over in a turn)
-red crates of beer or soda (as manay six at a time, though usually just two)
-silver canisters of milk (maybe 3ft tall)
-jerry cans of water or petrol (these are yellow 20 liter jugs that are strapped to the side of the bicycle rather than stacked like the crates)
-bananas (big green bunches of bunches cut from the tree, perhaps 2 or 3 feet long altogether. one bicycle will often carry several of these to or from the market)
-pretty much any fruit or vegetable you can imagine, in large quantities
-corrugated steel roofing panels (rolled into a 15ft-long tube and strapped somehow vertically, such that the whole ensemble – bicycle, driver, and tube – is 16ft tall and brushes low-hanging tree branches)
-furniture (i once saw three handmade armchairs and a coffee table all on one bike)
-any combination of any of the above
note: only men drive bicycles in rwanda

on their heads (with a small donut-shaped ring of banana leaf as a cushion):

-baskets (tall decorative ones, wide functional ones, full of fruit or vegetables usually)
-just one of some of things they carry on bicycles in larger quantities: yellow jerry cans, red soda crates, silver milk canisters, white rice sacks, green banana bunches (though i really have no idea how they balance these lopsided bunches)
-bags (could be big rice sacks, could be shopping bags, could be duffel bags or knapsacks like we would wear on our backs but they balance them on their heads instead)
-farming equipment (notably hoes, the heavy metal end of which rests just behind the skull, the wooden handle sticking a few feet out in front)
-big bundles of sticks for firewood
note: more often than not its women carrying stuff on their heads (except for the really heavy stuff). they walk with a swing of the hips to balance the weight and will stop to have full-out conversations without dropping anything.

on their backs:

-babies (women strap them on with a cloth around the waist and the baby’s little feet stick out at her hips, its head between her shoulder blades. if it’s hot they’ll often carry an umbrella or drape another cloth to protect the child from the sun. they’ll carry babies like this even onto mini-buses where they lean forward so as not to squish them)

we’ve been robbed.  several times actually.  the first was last year, after we’d just moved in.  the local ‘fool’, a woman living in the health center with her infant child, followed amanda into our yard demanding money.  when she was refused, she swiped amanda’s bathing suit off the line.  i saw the woman a few days later, wearing the bathing suit and pointed her out to the headmaster.  ‘let’s take her to the police,’ i said.  ‘but she is crazy.’  ’so? we want the suit back.’  ‘i cannot accept that.’  ‘why not?’  ’she is crazy.’  ’so?’  ‘i cannot accept it.’  ‘well, i can.’  apparently, once a crazy lady has worn your bathing suit, you can’t wear it again.  i missed that one in the cultural guide.

so we lost the bathing suit battle, and the next bit of thievery happened several months later.  some of our clothespins disappeared.  clearly our fault for leaving them out.  we didn’t say anything.  it was probably kids.  life continued.

in august of this year, after a blissful year of nothing stolen, our guard was down and we trusted the community.  at the back of the house, where no one can see, is a small room with its own entrance separate from the rest of the house.  it’s meant for a security guard, which we don’t have, so we use it as a cooking room.  the kerosene stove is there and this way it doesn’t smell up the house.  one day we left the door open while at school teaching (as we regularly did, not sure why) and someone ran off with a 5 liter jug of kerosene.  this was the first thing of real value taken, but we felt we’d invited it by not closing the cooking-room door, so we didn’t report it.  a fissure appeared in our trust of the neighbors, but life goes on.

a month later, the rains came, and we left our buckets on the back porch under the gutter to catch the run-off (a regular habit, dating back to last year)  i went out to collect them and two were gone.  had we not learned our lesson?  don’t leave stuff outside.  how stupid can we be?  and yet, it’s our yard, our things.  is there not some well-known saying ‘thou shalt not steal’?  is it unreal to assume that in a catholic country such as this, most people might have heard of it?

feeling slightly violated, we licked our wounds and took care not to leave stuff out.  but as they say, third times a charm, or three strikes you’re out, or troubles always come in threes, or something like that.  and so it was that a few weeks later the buckets were out – and the pots too because we’d lost those other two buckets – catching rainwater to use for dishwashing and toilet-flushing.  i was in the house reading.  once the rain had stopped, i went out back to bring in the water and – low and behold – some had taken the pots (and amanda’s kneepads which were also outside).

this was too much.  must we have someone watching our house at all hours?  even when we’re home?  should we erect some monstrous brick wall with glass shards or barbed wire to isolate us from the community and scream go away?  did our neighbors not appreciate the work we were doing for the school, or that we shop locally, that we’ve tried to learn kinyarwanda, that we play with the local kids and chat with shopkeepers?  what had we done wrong that after two years someone would steal our cooking pots, pots that when we move out we’d have happily given away?  or is it a simple case of poverty inspiring greed?  or bending the rules out of necessity – the poor man who steals a loaf of bread to feed his children?

so i was angry.  hurt.  this time we decided to tell someone about the theft.  we spoke to our neighbor mugisha, the prefet de discipline at the school, and also had some students ask around in the neighborhood.  it turned out that we’d been hit by the local thief, a boy who’d been sent away for stealing before (from mugisha, from students, from other community members) and had just recently returned to musha.  mugisha went with amanda to speak to the boy’s father, who kindly offered to pay for the missing stuff (we appreciatively declined).  the boy was beaten.  the next day he stole a radio from the headmaster’s house.  after that, he was chased from town with the threat of juvenile prison if he returns.

in the end, i’m glad we told someone.  by identifying the thief as a repeat-offender, we no longer felt so stupid for leaving our things out, we no longer felt the sense of being a target as mazungus, we were able to shift the blame off the community as a whole and onto the shoulders of one kid-gone-wrong, and we could commiserate with other neighbors who’d also been robbed.  it brought us closer to the community in a way the barbed-wire fence idea never would have.

in rwanda, to accuse someone of being a thief is a serious accusation, akin to calling them a murderer.  i learned this the hard way.  i lent my stapler to my senior 6 accounting class and it disappeared.  this wasn’t the first of such incidents – a few of my class dictionaries were stolen, as were some of amanda’s class calculators.  students often report stolen notebooks (anyone caught is expelled) and things routinely go missing from the dormitories.  in my frustration at the stapler theft, i wrote a letter to the class demanding an apology and that they find the missing stapler.  my mistake was to say i had lost my trust for them and that ‘i would not teach thieves.’

they couldn’t find the stapler, so they pooled together money to buy a new one.  i said that wasn’t necessary and let the issue go.  but because they never wrote a formal apology (we had just studied letters of apology), i never formally forgave them.  class continued as normal, but something felt different.  there were fewer students in class, less of them doing homework or participating.  i found myself less motivated to teach students who weren’t motivated to learn, and it just snowballed.  i stupidly wrote it off to senioritis – last year a similar demotivation had occured amonst senior 6 students studying for national exams and focusing on ‘important’ courses, cutting their losses on english.

but a few weeks ago, i overheard (and later got a full recounting of) a conversation between amanda and one of my students (aime sincere, who is true to his name and speaks his mind), regarding theivery.  when i had said i would not teach theives, my students had taken it as an accusation that all of them were thieves and, as per their culture, been royally offended.  because i hadn’t realized and they hadn’t said anything, the cultural and lingual misunderstanding had hurt our relationship.  i felt terrible, immediately wrote an apology, and was forgiven my mistake.

thus ends this (extensively long) entry, the moral being that in both cases – the boy thief and the stolen stapler – much hurt and frustration would have been avoided by open discusssion of the problem.  amidst cultures colliding, a false assumption on either side – be it that the community sees our back porch as a free-for-all or that i think all my students are thieves – causes unforeseeable hurt and jeopardizes the friendships and integration for which we’ve worked so hard.

october 24th

dusk is approaching as i bound down the hill, close on amanda’s heels, my much-used yet lightly-packed knapsack flapping against my back.  we’re racing against the now rapidly setting sun.  where’s the moto?  i hear a hum, but it brings no motorcycle.  we’ll get one at the main road.  kids pop their smiling grubby faces from behind shrubs and banana plants, or snap their heads up from intent firewood-gathering to shout hellos.  i wave without slowing my pace.  there’s no time for hugs now.

we round a bend in the red dirt road and let loose a gasp of relief at the sight of two smiling moto-drivers headed our way.  urgency expedites the bargaining process: ‘how much?’ i jump on the back.  ‘5000.’  he hands me a helmet.  ‘you have petrol?’ amanda is already peeling away down the hill.  ‘mmm.’ ‘let’s go.’  we fly down the dirt road, hit tarmac at the junction, but rather than scrunch into a bus as i’d normally do for the trip to town, i adjust myself behind the moto-driver and settle in for a long ride.  ahead, amanda throws her hands in the air with a cheer and i hoot back.  we’re off.

there is no emergency – no bad news from home or local military uprising or anything that would oblige me to spend six times the bus-fare by taking a motorcycle 45km to kigali.  and there is no more rush.  now that we’re on our way, we’ll easily make town just after sundown. i relax on my perch, feel the wind at my ears and hum of the engine beneath me.  scenery whips past: first the eucalyptus trees lining the road, then musha mountain off to the right.  soon small mudhouses become banana plantations.  nyagasambu market flips into view and is just as quickly gone.  i look down at the road streaking by below me and i could be flying, i could touch the surface if i reached my foot out, i could grab a branch off a tree if we moved closer.  the wind swallows me, the mountains dazzle, the sky above makes its nightly change of dress, and i’m in it.  amazing.  i must buy a motorcycle.

night falls quickly here and soon i’m enveloped by a canopy of stars.  off in the distance, storm clouds are lit by spatters of un-foreboding lightning, but the wind in my ears masks the accompanying thunder.  we turn a corner and there is kigali – thousands of city lights promising the night’s entertainment.  we hit remera and rush hour traffic.  my country-bred driver starts to wig out – he’s used to dodging mud washouts, ditches, and goats, not honking flashing mini-buses.  ‘here’s fine, we can stop here.’  ironically, we dismount in front of the bus depot, where, spirits flying from the ride, i pay the driver and amanda chats easily in swahili with our busman friends.  our night out has just begun.  later we’ll go for dinner, drinks, and dancing, then breakfast at the serena hotel.  it’s a splurge, a gift to ourselves to celebrate having finished two years of teaching.

dinner is potato wedges at the local hotspot formerly known as ‘mango’.  there’s a pool table in the corner and a large group of university students heartily celebrating the end of their exams.  drinks are at a dive bar around the corner where we meet up with adolphe, a friend from kivu writers whose new song has just been recorded and released on the radio (see a home-recording here), and adolphe’s friend armand, who studies civil engineering at the kigali institute of science and technology.

it’s nearly 1am by the time we arrive at ‘one love’, a rasta joint with music (reggae, east african, and hip-hop, mixed) and dancing outdoors.  the place is lively and packed with young professionals, thankfully not the groping kind, and we kick up our heels and get down with our bad selves, until the electricity goes out at about 3:30am and the party moves to ‘cadillac’.  i haven’t been here in a while, for good reasons.  it’s the nightclub in kigali, made somewhat famous when ewen mcgregor stopped in on his african road trip (remember?).  though poorly ventilated and usually packed to brimming with sweaty sleazy guys, tonight the dance floor is relatively sparse, enough to move without being slammed into in any case.  the music is ok, and i know the dj so it soon gets better.  a taxi-driver friend of mine, fils, is also there dancing (he’s the one who bribed the policeman last year if you recall), and we have a good time.  before i realize it, it’s 5:30am and dawn is filling the sky.  amanda and i get motos (amanda actually drives hers) back to the guesthouse, sleep for an hour, shower and change, and then head for the serena hotel.

this is the ritz of kigali hotels, swankier thank even the milles collines.  breakfast is all you can eat for $20, a massive sum but worth it.  there’s mueslix, cereals, dried fruit, sticky pastries, five kinds of cheese (i miss cheese more than anything), smoked salmon, sausages, omelets made to order, crepes filled with fruit and chocolate, lovely rwandan coffee.  we stuff our faces for three hours, until i think i’ll burst, then stuff our bags with pastries and head out, our bellies weighing us down, but our spirits still high with the perfect evening we’ve had.  just as we’re slowly making our way to the bus station (on foot because it’s the community work day and local transport isn’t running yet), my phone vibrates.  it’s a text message from mossi saying he’ll meet me in zanzibar!  woohoo!  it’s been a great weekend!

p.s. when we finally got back to musha, exhausted and stomachs bursting, it was pouring rain.  we decided to take a walk in it, not up the mountain, but along a footpath running flat about halfway up the mountain, with stellar views of the valley.

i’m sitting in an internet café in kigali and banging my head against the table cuz the connection keeps coming in and out. why bother? because today is the american election and it’s hard to be thousands of miles away and not know what’s happening. of course, i have options. first i could find a radio, since voice of america and bbc are surely carrying it. second (and what i’ll most likely do as soon as i finish this post) i could walk across the street to one of three bars with a television and join the masses of rwandans who are also following the election.

surprised? did you think that only americans care who wins today? you’re wrong. one of my students called this morning to tell me obama was speaking on the radio. then the prefet des etudes asked me what i thought would happen. then at the doctor’s office, the nurse asked me if i had voted. a friend sent an sms to see if i’d heard any results yet. the moto driver from town to vso gave me a thumbs up and said ‘yeah, obama.’ and that’s just today. i’ve had obama posters up around the house for a month and everyone who comes by the house smiles when they see them. months ago, when it was obama and hillary, i was getting a play-by-play from the students with radios (i stupidly don’t have a radio- not sure how i managed for two years without one). the day hillary conceded i heard about it from the dean of students, who stopped me in the road to tell me. i hooted and jumped and ran back to the house to tell sara.

so despite being on the other side of the globe, in a tiny country in the heart of africa, i feel almost as though i’m back home in new york, submersed in obama-mania, with the added bonus of not having any mccain fans in the vicinity. oddly enough, most of my rwandan friends love george w. bush. they think he’s a powerful man and motivating speaker (perhaps his english is easier to understand) and they totally buy his war on terrorism. my non-rwandan friends feel differently on the subject. but when it comes to obama, there’s no dispute. rwandan and non-rwandan alike, everyone here knows that an obama win today will change the world.

i remember in 2004, some well-thinking europeans sent letters to random americans saying how important the american election was to the rest of the world, and how bush’s policies and his war had an impact beyond our borders. and the recipients of these letters were outraged that non-americans would attempt to influence the results of the election. but being abroad today, among non-americans (i don’t have any american friends here, though i think it’s just that i run in different circles), i understand what those europeans were thinking. because (and don’t let this go to your heads), this election does affect them. america is a ’superpower’. american policies ripple and resound world-wide. our economic disaster has overflowed into economies around the world. our government subsidies and ‘free trade’ agreements make or break my farmer-neighbors’ livelihoods. our biofuel cars take food out of hungry mouths over here. the results of today’s election matter just as much here as they do at home.

i’m not sure that many americans are thinking about people in other countries when they’re pulling that lever today. but maybe, just maybe, the interests of americans and the interests of non-americans will align on this day. just maybe.

i’m going over to the bar to watch cnn. it’s almost 9pm here, which means that i’ll be getting the first real results at about 3am my time (on country director mike’s tv i hope). it’ll be a long night, but we’re making pancakes in the morning. none of those funny european pancakes. real american (ok north american) pancakes. to celebrate.