23 December 2012
To celebrate Christmas, I went to my Luke and Caitlan’s
house. We were not sure about transportation to each other’s sites. Officially,
It would require a two hour bus, followed by a 45-minute moto ride. This seemed
far too complicated, so I asked around about whether there were back roads that
could get me there easier. As the crow flies we could not have been more than
20 km away from each other. Indeed I was able to find a moto driver that would
take me there for a reasonable price.
The ride, which was entirely uphill for almost an hour, was
incredible. There were deep, green ravines off to my left. We rode dangerously
close to the edge as my driver, Pussy (like cat), made a call on his cell
phone. I was amazed to see homes on the other side of the ravine. I wondered
how they reached the nearest town, as they seemed completely cut off.
Deep in the hills, at an elevation at least a couple
thousand meters higher than my home, I arrived at Luke and Caitlan’s site. When
I walked into their house, I was delighted to see the work they had done to
make their home not just clean and livable, but even cozy. When I had seen it
when they moved in it looked depressing. A grass mat, some decorations on the
walls, clean floors and some Christmas lights went a long way. They had even
made a paper Christmas tree to put on the wall, next to their paper fireplace
with paper stockings. It was awesome. I was so glad I was able to go there for
Christmas. I think that just about all of our training group was getting
together in a few different locations. Our Christmas party would definitely be
the smallest and most low key. I was glad for this though. It felt very
family-like. We spent most of our time hanging out and cooking.
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| Christmas Tree, Mantle and Stockings. Just like home. |
That day, though, we had been invited to lunch by one of
their friends in town; a fellow teacher named Samuel. He was also the owner of
a restaurant, called “Healthy Resto-Bar”. We ate in his home, however, which
was a single room about half the size of a small college dorm room. He pulled
out a small, yellow jerry can and poured us each a glass of homemade banana
beer. As we waited for the food, I am assuming to be delivered from his
restaurant, we listened to music from his “OLPC” laptop. Do you remember that
organization, “One Laptop Per Child”, that was trying to distribute simple,
durable laptops to children in developing countries? Well, Rwanda was one of
those countries, and I have heard only stories of those laptops being in the
hands of people other than students. It makes sense when you are here. If a
school got a shipment of 20 laptops, they wouldn’t possibly just give them out.
First, there would not be enough for the hundreds of students at the schools.
Second, the teachers, at least some of them, would certainly manage to snag
them and keep them for themselves. The schools don’t even have books, and
sometimes not even electricity. Giving laptops seemed to show poor judgment and
misplaced priorities. Anyway, lunch was good, and I was served the biggest
piece of liver. It was dry and livery, but not the worst I had ever had. Even
though it was only noon, Samuel kept topping off or glasses of banana beer,
until the jerry can was empty. He was a cool guy, and we invited him to dinner
the next night.
On Christmas eve we started to get in the Christmas spirit.
We cooked all day and listened to Christmas music. We made fried rice with pork
and pineapple for lunch. For dinner we were making Mexican food. I was making
my cochinita pibil, and while it marinated, we went to the market. We were on a
search for ugly Christmas sweaters. It was last minute, but we knew it was
possible, as we had seen people wearing them on occasion. We found one, plus a
Christmas-themed Betty Boop shirt.
That night Samuel came over for our Mexican Christmas Eve
feast. Caitlan made tortillas and guacamole. Plus we made a huge pot of Mexican
rice. I was worried that Samuel would not like the food. Previous experiences
with serving non-Rwandan food to Rwandans had shown mixed to negative results.
Samuel, however, loved the food and ate a lot. I had also made a vanilla mango
liqueur which he also liked. The final test, though, was whether he would like
my spicy tequila. I had bought some tequila back in Atlanta, then infused it
with chilies at site, and was finally breaking it out for the special occasion.
It was a big treat. Best of all, it was not wasted on Samuel. He seemed to
tolerate, if not enjoy, it.
On Christmas morning, we opened our gifts, which were
nestled under our paper Christmas tree. Caitlan had made Luke a big poster
collage. It featured a lot of pictures from magazines of different places in
the world. It said, in big letters, “Not all those who wander are lost.” It was
very cute. Luke made Caitlan a backgammon set. He had found some thin pieces of
wood and glued them into a real backgammon board. He used paint to draw the
board. He had gone around the local bars to ask for bottle caps for the pieces,
but they didn’t understand him. So he dug them out of the dirt around the bar.
He also carved a couple of dice out wood. On the opposite side of the
backgammon board, he painted a checkerboard. The board featured poetry very in
English by, I want to say T.S. Eliot, and in French by…a French poet. It was a
really cool, and romantic gift. When they were traveling together in Eastern
Europe, they had taken a backgammon board everywhere they went. They had a
tradition of writing all the places they had played it right on the board. They
gave me a jar, which was basically like giving me a new jar of jam, and a whole
bunch of candy that they had gotten in a care package. Little Butterfingers and
Reese’s were a great Christmas morning appetizer. I was saving the Hershey’s
bars, though, for making s’mores. I gave them pairs of tire sandals from my
market and a jar of my mango chutney. I learned that Luke’s mom and my mom have
the same Christmas morning breakfast tradition of pull-apart bread (monkey
bread). So we made it. Well, I think Caitlan mostly made it, while I just
started the charcoal stove. It was delicious. Although I was far from home and
missed my family, it was still a really special Christmas.
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| Our presents nestled under the tree. |
For lunch we ate some of our huge amounts of leftovers, as
well as easy cheese and (on) summer sausage that they had gotten in a care
package. For dinner we made breakfast. It was very influenced on their
Midwest/southern upbringing. Biscuits, gravy, eggs, and hash browns. Hint to
everyone: while I am not a bad cook, never put me in charge of hash browns. I
don’t know what I did, but they were mostly inedible, unless you’re Luke.
Afterward, I went to town to pick us up a round of beers from the bar. Part of
me wanted to go into town to enjoy the day with everyone else, but it was so
relaxing at home. I was glad that I got a glimpse of what was going on, though.
Since it is a very Catholic town, everyone was freely drinking at the bar.
There was a DJ, Christmas decorations, lots of drunk people and even more kids
running around. It was an interesting scene. I imagined that this was probably
a lot more raucous than whatever was going on down in my much bigger, though
much more protestant town.
I was planning on leaving the day after Christmas, but I was
tired and they said that I could stick around another day. I still felt like I
was violating that rule about visitors being like fish; they start to smell
after three days. Well, I was probably smelling anyway. Their site, unlike
mine, is too cold for cold showers. Not much happened that day. Lots of games
of yahtzee and backgammon. Then we watched Forrest Gump, which we decided can
happen on every holiday.
The next day I made the journey back home on a moto. I felt
a little ripped off, though, since the driver only had his motor on for about 7
minutes of the hour ride. The rest was just coasting down the hill. Now that I
had a new jar, and had emptied another one, I spent that evening making mango
cinnamon jam. It was so good that I wondered why it wasn’t more common to put
spices into jams. Fools!
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