A week ago was the best day in Rwanda because I went out, went dancing, and had a blast. Wednesday over took it when I met Taylor and hung out all night. Tonight grabs the Rwanda Top Spot, and part of it is because I went dancing with Taylor until the early morning. To be fair, I don’t think any day is better than any other, it’s just easy to feel that one is the best while it’s still fresh in my memory. Each day gets a turn and really they’re all the best in their own right. So I guess I could just go without reporting that from now on. Every day is the best. It will stay that way until further notice.
Like all (great) days here, we had breakfast at Bourbon. We also had another morning favorite of ours: an early meeting. Now, I’m not going to write who we had a meeting with, because I actually want to take a moment to rant about it instead. We have met with this person before, and we were hoping to collaborate and bring this person into our projects so that everyone benefits. We were told to take our ideas to paper form and propose them, that way this person could show their boss and the plan could move forward. We (Kara and Lama, but I’m sure I was around while it happened) wrote it out. We sent it to this person. They told us they got it and read it. We scheduled this second meeting to talk about what we’d written and the next steps to take.
When we get there, this person begins by saying they didn’t actually read our proposal. That pretty much derails any hope this meeting had right off the bat, because how can we even discuss the project if this person hasn’t taken the time to read our two page proposal and see where we stand? And what good exactly, did lying to our faces do about reading it? We still found out this person didn’t read it, nothing was hidden. But now we also get to find out they’re a liar too. I guess that’s what that changed. We would ask this person straight forward questions that as far as I could tell had very straight forward answers, and they would ignore them and just keep jabbering on and on. We would get stupid run around answers that avoided the question and then eventually, after so much worthless posturing we learned this person didn’t know the answer. Why not tell us “I don’t know”? I understand lying for gain, even though I don’t support it, I can comprehend it. I do not understand lying when there is no benefit in doing so. I don’t think I opened my mouth once during the meeting, because if I did it would have been to scream profanities.
And that’s the most interesting part I find. The stupid social niceties I act out despite feeling the complete opposite. I have to smile and shake hands and pretend like I’m so grateful to this person for meeting with us, this person in turn does the same pretending they give a shit about us or what we’re doing. Our behavior toward each other is just hilariously absurd to me. Nobody’s telling the truth. We’re just actors, and obviously neither of us are doing a convincing job of it. What a waste of our time.
After we left that worthless meeting, I guess worthwhile only in the revelation of a person’s true colors, we went to Novotel since I had told Martin to bring the microphone to the conference so I could get it from him since Saturday wouldn’t be possible. Lama also wanted to speak to Jobb. We also all were hungry, so even though we didn’t do a single participatory thing toward the conference today, we joined in the giant buffet and ate really well. We also met with Louise, a nice girl we’d met at the very first conference we attended back in June, so Kara and I hung out with her and we all ate together. As soon as we finished eating we left. I know there was no bill, but we literally dined and dashed.
We went downtown so that we could meet up with Cynthia (Freddy’s sister, not Regina’s daughter) and Josian, Freddy’s wife. They were going to take Kara out shopping for the wedding we’re going to tomorrow. Lama and I were going shopping ourselves for the same reasons. We went to this market that was…… One word isn’t enough! It was amawesomely-crinsane. The first thing you see when you walk in is a pile of clothes as tall as a person, with people just lying in it. I guess you can dig through it and find a nice shirt? It’s like the discount bin taken to a whole new level. If there must be a deal on a DVD in the bottom of the bin, there MUST be a sweet shirt in the bottom of Clothes Mountain. The aisles are less than 2 feet wide, so even when you and another person turn sideways to pass each other you get to touch them. There are booths of clothes and stuff everywhere, and people are above them, hiding underneath them, it’s just the perfect frantic foreign market you dream you’ll go to when you go to an exotic country. Some of the clothes were awesome too.
Lama and I were having a really good time shopping together, but I must admit, the experience got even better when Lama left for moment, aka abandoned me. He said he’d be right back and to wait by this pile of belts, and I said sure. After about 15 minutes of standing still and kindly refusing the 100 people who came up to me with a shirt saying “This is a good shirt”, I decided I might as well go shopping on my own. One hilarious thing that happened though while I was waiting, was this guy came up to me and said, “Do you like the good shit? Because we have all the good shit right here” and he pointed to his little booth that looked like all the other booths. The reason it was so exceptionally funny, is because I don’t think he knows what the word shit means. He was using it so matter-of-factly, like it was the same as saying t-shirts or something.
Just like I am getting the hang of cabbing in Kigali, I’m getting the hang of haggling and bartering and knowing when to walk away at the absurd price. So I don’t think I got ripped off on one thing. I made some friends while shopping too, this friendly guy named Vincent, and this cool young guy named John who was wearing an american flag shirt. He said if I come back to look for him, I can ask for “teacher” because that’s what people call him. Also, when I told him I was Canadian, he told me he was dating a Canadian girl, for which I gave him a high five.
I ended up leaving with a dress shirt and dress pants, a plain white tee and a black button up t-shirt thing. Lama left with like 5 bags of clothes and bought a pair of shoes on the way out. I had such a good time shopping at the market and I can’t wait to go back another time and take Kara.
We all rendezvoused at Bourbon because it’s so central, and then from there went our separate ways. Kara and I went back to the hotel and after spending time alone in our rooms met up downstairs for dinner. I was also in text communication with Taylor and Kara was with Magnifique (Ndambe) and we were talking about meeting up later. We had just finished dinner and went back to our rooms for a second and Taylor had arrived, so I told Kara and I went downstairs, she said she’d be right down. Taylor wanted to check out another restaurant so we stood in the foyer and talked waiting for Kara. Somehow we started talking about dreams and I’ve never met a person who was so into dreams as I was, until Taylor. At least half an hour of dream talk later, we decided to go up and see what the hold up was with Kara. We banged on her door and there was nothing. So Taylor texted her and we learned she had fallen asleep. I don’t know how the phone woke her up and the pounding didn’t. The three of us went out walking but by this time it was too late for Taylor to get food, even though he was hungry, and so instead we got in a cab.
We were going to B-club. Taylor had promised a woman named Mary that he would go out dancing with her, and Kara and I had agreed to come along. She works with survivors, and even though we were all going dancing, the night was business based. B-club is hilariously tres modern. It’s futuristic. At 11:30 when we arrived, it was also deserted. Mary was there with some of her childhood friends, Rose and Christine. We had drinks and talked and danced once in awhile. To describe how modern this bar was, the gin and tonic I told Kara I would buy her cost $14 dollars. I hope it tasted good. The music was fine, but none of it was really that dancey. Kara knew all the songs because they were from her high school days but Taylor and I knew none of them. I did get up to dance to Cruel Summer, and made the bet I would dance until I didn’t recognize a song, and suffice to say I was sitting back down next track.
We did really feel like dancing though and were not satisfied with the current crop of music. Kara and I decided to take matters into our own hands and since we’ve both been craving Sexy Back, I requested it and the DJ agreed to play it. It was getting much later in the night at this point, and Magnifique had texted Kara and was coming to pick her up and I was going to stay with Taylor. She took off when he arrived, and she must have been out the door less than five minutes and Sexy Back came on. I hit the dance floor so hard and from that point on the DJ was playing bangers. The club was really starting to fill up too, so unfortunately as soon as Kara left everything got awesome.
We also ran into Eric Kabera at the club, the director of the documentary 100 Days. He and Mary go way back and he knows Taylor as well so he joined us for some drinks and conversation. He gave me his card and told me to give him a call some time. We were all sitting around talking when “Walk of Life” by the Dire Straits came on and Taylor and I bolted to the dance floor, and again we were out there for maybe 10 songs in a row. This time we went really hard and I was drenched in sweat by the end of it. When we sat down after that it was late and Mary was leaving, so we decided to go too. We walked for quite a while before a cab finally picked us up. I rolled up to the hotel at around 4:30, JUST as Magnifique and Kara were coming back too. So we chatted and laughed in the lobby for awhile before I went to bed and passed out. From exhaustion, not booze.
