All the small things

February 19, 2011

I've been learning to appreciate all the smallest things in life over the past weeks, and they are worth mentioning. Here are some small anecdotes and things that don’t necessitate individual posts, but I think they're important anyway:

1. Stinging Nettles. During the hike to the Umubano gorillas on Friday, one of the things about which we were warned was stinging nettles. Stinging nettles are plants that have small thorns on their stems. If you touch them (or in my case, one swings back and touches you because it was being held back until you crossed its path when naturally, it moves rapidly backward to hit your hand). Coming into contact with stinging nettles is very unpleasant; your skin feels like it’s getting bitten about a hundred times over in the same spot by the most persistent of mosquitoes. Eventually, the red dots and the pain subside, but nonetheless, it was the ONLY downside to the gorilla trek. It also just had to be mentioned.

2. Because I am an idiot, I woke up again at 5:30 this morning to participate in Muchaka Muchaka, the weekly Saturday morning run led by the village athletic coaches and the security guards. The kids run by families, and every family has a meeting point to join their assigned guard and the other families jogging in the same group. My family meets outside their house at 6 to start running a few minutes after. We were running with two other families (the other girls’ family that lives next door to my family and a boys’ family a few houses down). By 6:05, our guard was in the front of our group, chanting and singing in Kinyarwanda (all the kids sang along) to set the pace. One song had a clapping beat, which I was able to participate in, but other than that, I just had to run and try not to get run over. At one point, one of the girls in my house, Francoise, grabbed my hand and Souvenir, another girl in Family 8, grabbed my other hand, and we pulled each other along. After about twenty minutes of this, my whole body started to ache and I wanted to pass out (waking up before 6 AM two days in a row, one to hike up a mountain and the other to go on a run complete with African chanting and singing, was a bad idea). Muchaka Muchaka (which they scream over and over again, “Muchaka muchaka! Brrrrr ahh! Rrrah, rrrah! Muchaka, muchaka!”) was a great time with my girls and an awesome experience.

3. After running this morning (three of us went to Muchaka Muchaka, everyone else slept), we left for a hike to the rice paddies. The walk itself was gorgeous; we went through Rubona and down a huge hill into the rice paddies which are divided in half in a giant valley by a tree-lined dirt road. Unfortunately, my legs were in serious pain given my gorilla hiking and my morning run, but otherwise, it was a really nice walk. On our way back, a little girl was walking alongside me and holding my hand on one side, a jerry can on her other. She kept smiling up at me as we walked along the road back toward Rubona, passing small huts and lone goats tied to trees (this is how they are kept from running away). I kept thinking that things like this would never happen in America (or Israel), but in Rwanda, given its friendly and welcoming culture, having a little girl come up and take my hand isn’t out of the ordinary. We walked along for some time, and then I think she realized she had to fill her jerry can and was straying a bit too far from her necessary path, so she waved goodbye and went along her way. This moment stuck with me, for some reason, and I’ve been thinking about all the children in Rwanda, what their families are like, if they have them, where they come from, what their homes are like, if they go to school. Their childhoods are clearly so different than mine was, and I wonder all the time if they realize just how different we are, yet at the same time, in small ways, how similar.

4. On our way back from the rice paddies, we were very hungry, so we stopped at a samosa shop in Rubona (not the one we go to on Fridays. That one, like most shops and stands in Rubona, is only open on market days which are Tuesdays and Fridays). We literally bought the two guys working at the stand out of samosas; they had none left, no more potato mix and, as far as I could tell, no more paper-thin dough wrappers, to make any more. As a group we probably bought somewhere near 40 samosas. In the space of ten minutes. That’s probably not a normal day of business for these guys.

5. It’s not almost 7 PM, I’m exhausted, and I am considering attending church services tomorrow morning, if I’m awake. On Saturday nights, we all sit around and discuss which church service we want to see the next morning (Catholic, Protestant, etc.) This is especially hysterical because we’re all Jewish. Tomorrow, however, there is a soccer tournament happening in the village, so church may either be delayed or not happen since the teams are coming early in the morning so they can play before it gets too hot in the afternoon. I really wanted to attend services, so this would be a major disappointment (luckily, I can still go next week).

5b. One of my roommates just walked in and said, because she is British, "I have wind." I only just figured out what this means. I really think I should get some sleep.

That’s all for now from here. Weekends are very nice and relaxed in the village because there is no school or construction and we have time to catch up on much-needed sleep after a long week of work.

Thanks for reading, as always. Shavua tov (a good week) from the hills,

Elana