Still in December 2012
Having my Peace Corps-issued mountain bike, was bittersweet.
I had owned a typical steel, cheap African bike in Ghana and it was good enough
to get me between home and work on flat, decent paved and unpaved roads. I was
in a Rwandan, village though. The roads were unpaved, covered in rocks, and
full of hills. I recognized that this mountain bike could be an advantage in
this terrain and I was grateful for it. However, the attention it gives you is
pretty obnoxious. I already turn heads while walking around my village, but
when I am on my bike it is like I am in a parade. I feel so self-conscious
about my wealth. Plus there are the constant requests from people to borrow it.
I wonder if the Rwandans that do have those old, black, steel bikes are
constantly asked by other people to borrow them. I wouldn’t be surprised if
they were. I wonder, though, if they do loan them out a lot. I hope not,
because I would feel even worse if they did.
One day I went to my market town on my bicycle. It was nice
to avoid the hour-long walk, but when I got to the crowded town, I almost
regretted riding my bike. I found a post to lock my bike to. In the time it
took to get off my bike and fish my lock from my bag, I had a crowd of about
twenty boys and men around me. As I fiddled with the combination, I tried to
send glances to the men to imply that it was impolite to look at the number on
my lock as I undid it. I am sure they weren’t being malicious, but my emotions
got the better of me and I got angry and northwest-style, passive aggressive. I
threw my lock back in my bag, shot everyone dirty looks and pushed through the
crowd in a huff. I went to the outskirts of town, which was, arguably, a worse
idea, since the bike would actually be very easy to steal there. The lock that
was issued to me had a cable about half the width of a pencil. I could have
chewed through it.
There were a lot of things I was looking for in the market
that day, but I found little of it. The biggest success was finding Christmas gifts
for my friends Luke and Caitlan. I was trying to turn them onto the virtues of
tire sandals, and I found some cobblers doing some very impressive work. Tire
sandals, for whatever reason, seem to be a dying art in the developing world. I
have never seen the fabled “huaraches” of Mexico, and the “Afro-Moses” of
Ghana, for the most part, are now relegated to the most rural villages in the
north. Even in Mali it took days of asking around to find someone to make a
pair. So the last place I expected to find an oasis of tire sandal production
was in all-too-formal, shiny-shoe obsessed Rwanda. What’s more, these tire
sandals had style, in one of the less
stylish places I have been. The creativity that these cobblers were putting
into their kicks was impressive. First of all, the sandals were two-layered.
The bottom layer was the rugged tire rubber. The top layer, though, was a
softer rubber that was what you would expect to find on cheap Tevas. It was in
ingenious mix of comfort and ruggedness. The kicker, though, was the strap.
They didn’t simply use tire tubes or nylon straps. I don’t really know what
they used, but on top of it they sewed different kinds of fuzzy fabrics that
they had probably scavenged from somewhere. So I got Caitlan a pair of fuzzy,
shiny-blue tire sandals. I got Luke a pair too, but I felt the flashy, fuzzy
kinds were for the girls only.
My hair was getting long, and I had been wanting to get it
cut for a while. I kept putting it off though. One day, when I was walking
through town, a guy asked me if I wanted a shave. I thought about it, and asked
what he would charge for my whole head; haircut and shave. It was less than a
dollar, so I went into his shop. While they don’t do the straight razor in this
part of Africa, it is impressive how much effort they put in with the clippers.
He probably spent almost an hour on my head. Most of the volunteers did not
trust the local barbers to cut straight hair. I wanted to say that they were
being judgmental and they shouldn’t judge since they don’t know. But then
again, I had actually never had a haircut in black Africa, so I wouldn’t really
know either. I really felt, though, that this guy would give me an awesome
haircut and I could gloat to the people that went to expensive barbers in the
capital. I was only half-surprised that this guy didn’t have scissors. I had
figured they could come in handy at some point for some hairstyle. So he went
at my mane, with an amazing confidence, with the clippers, slowly trimming away
bits and pieces haphazardly. There were moments where it looked like it would
be a great haircut. Then there were moments when I started to develop a mullet.
When he was finished, he asked if it was ok. My bangs were completely jagged.
It might have been the first time in my life when I have asked the barber to
adjust something. I usually can’t wait to get out of the chair. But I looked
ridiculous. He managed to even up the middle part of my bangs, but he left me
with what would come to be known as “fang bangs”. On either temple my bangs
extended about two inches longer than my hair in the middle of my forehead.
When I pushed my hair down, the hair framed my face and it looked like my bangs
had fangs. He proceeded to work on my facial hair. I said I wanted him to get
rid of everything. For whatever reason, though, he left the mustache. What was
he implying? I told him to get rid of it, so he trimmed it up a little bit. I
repeated that I wanted it gone, no mustache. He went even shorter, but it was
still there. This barber really wanted me to have a mustache, so I gave in and
planned to shave at home.
After paying for the haircut, the barber invited me to his
house for lunch. He put his hair products away and closed the shop. His name, I
would find out, was Mwizerwa. He had an energy about him that I had not seen in
anyone else here. Wherever he went, whatever he did, he seemed to be doing it
at double speed. I tend to walk faster than most Rwandans, but I almost had to
run to keep up with Mwizerwa. As much as I appreciate when people slow down and
don’t take life so seriously, I found something admirable in Mwizerwa’s energy.
It was like he was just that excited to get where he was going that he would
move that fast. We arrived at a small house where some young women were sorting
beans in the yard. His grandmother, who he referred to as “umucecuru”, or old
lady, was sitting in the doorway. We sat at a small table inside next to a bed
and his grandmother brought us a plate of beans and plantains. It was actually
nice to be served in a communal dish. This was something I found odd about
Rwanda. Eating communally, especially with the hands, seemed to be seen as
passé. I really liked his grandmother and the atmosphere of this house. Plus,
they seemed to understand my sense of humor. After eating, Mwizerwa said we
were going to his house. I had thought we were at his house, but there was no
time for questions. We were on the move! There was no after-meal conversation
or relaxing, and I barely got to say goodbye to the old lady. We were off! After
ten minutes of slogging behind Mwizerwa, we arrived at his bachelor pad. It was
a little house with a small living room, small bedroom and small bathroom. But
it was his own. Like his barbershop, the walls were adorned with posters of rap
artists and Bollywood stars. It was fun to visit a Rwandan who lived as a
bachelor. He reminded me a little of Awine, my roommate back in Ghana. He
brought out some mangos and gave me one to peel. When he saw that I was too
slow to peel it, he grabbed it and peeled it for me. Conversation with him was
difficult, though, since he spoke as fast as he walked and my Kinyarwanda
abilities were still…under construction. As soon as the mangos were consumed we
left. He showed me that he had two pigs in a pen behind his house. This made it
seem even more likely that we would develop a friendship.
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