Normally days are sunny and gorgeous here, but today was quite bleak. Gray and dreary, all the way. It started with breakfast. The complimentary breakfast at the Dream Inn Motel is not something to write home about. It’s a plain egg omelet, nescafe, and a rock hard baguette. Kara and I decided to eat it anyway, and then we were free to go eat immediately afterward somewhere else. That somewhere else was Bourbon. Since we weren’t coming back, we packed up all our stuff and checked out, and then lugged it all up the hill to UTC. I was really sweating by the time we got there, which was fine because I’m happy to get any form of exercise I can. Plus, even though we have tons of money by Rwandan standards, I still can’t justify spending for the sake of uber-convenience. I’ll walk any time I can.
I had to return the microphone to Martin, but since I had all my gear and luggage I asked if he would meet me at UTC to pick it up, instead of me coming to him. Thankfully it wasn’t a problem. Again he said he couldn’t pin down a time for me to work for him, and I had to pay for renting it. I don’t think I can afford to keep renting his microphone if he’s not going to let me do some kind of service exchange. I’d like to think he’s trying to work something out, but he could just be saying it to keep me happy and using his mic. I don’t know.
We stayed at Bourbon til it was time to take the bus back to Kibungo. We took a big, much more comfortable bus this time. It cost the same. I don’t know why it took us 7 weeks to figure out which bus to take, but I’m glad we know now. While we were on the highway, there was a lot of commotion in the middle of the road surrounding a little boy who was lying there. I couldn’t tell if he was moving or not, nor what had happened, but it looked serious. We just drove on by.
By the time we got to Kibungo, we were all so hungry. I only had coffee and a cinnamon roll at Bourbon at 10 following the simple breakfast at Dream Inn, and now it was after 4 pm. I was also starting to feel sick. When we walked in the house Alice had dinner waiting on the table and I was so happy to see it. Food preparation is a long process here using the charcoal stoves, and I didn’t know if I could make it if dinner hadn’t already been started. So we sat right down and ate, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I had taken a dose of Mefloquine yesterday and I’m starting to hate it. The repercussions are getting worse and worse, usually in the days after I take it. I feel so weak and shaky, and I can just tell that something is going wrong in my body. I also am getting massive headaches.
So I just went to lie down, because I was feeling dizzy and awful, and felt I had nothing to contribute. But I couldn’t fall asleep. I just lied there. All night. Eventually I would put on a movie and watch it, but looking at the screen hurt my head so much so I would go back to lying down. I’m also running out of movies. I’ve been reduced to romantic comedies and summer blockbusters. I watched 27 dresses and I was happy to be watching something while feeling miserable and lying down, but the movie was nothing. Later in the night I put on Fool’s Gold, with Matthew McCaughnehey and Kate Hudson, and I would go so far to call it an atrocity. After another couple hours of lying around without sleep, I succumbed to the Nanny Diaries. Except it was actually good. The movie was marketed as this stupid, fluffy comedy about an evil upper east side manhatten mom vs. the nanny. It is actually a real story, with a lot of ideas and comments to make, and the best part is that the characters are real humans. I wish it wasn’t peddled as a dumb family movie, where the people who would go to it were lied to and people who might actually enjoy it would avoid it (like me), because it was actually really well done.
I think I finally fell asleep around 5 am. Today was definitely not one of the best days in Rwanda.
Hang in there Mitch. Some days are good, some not so. I, like others have commented, stopped taking my anti-malarials and felt so much better. Maybe consider this for yourself. That helps one fell better even if frustrations remain.
I had given Kara a “map” to the Ontracom bus in Kigali. Way more room, cheaper by 300 Frw per trip. Is that what you are now using to go back to Kibungo? I highly recommend it even though I mostly took Stella to Kigali because Wellars at St Joseph looked out for me.
And I learned how to buy Ontracom tickets. At first I waited politely for someone to ask me what I wanted and almost missed the bus. After that I started yelling “Kibungo, Kibungo” when I walked up, passed my money over the heads of others to get my ticket. Nobody was offended and I made it. Lining up for service is not expected or understood!