Heading home

I have less than two weeks left in Rwanda before I head to North Carolina to help put an end to this "the election is too close to call" garbage. I've been experiencing a whole range of emotions. As I pass my evenings in my temporary digs, watching European soccer via satellite TV, some of me feels very ready to get home, eat a good hamburger, and talk to friends and family on the phone without having the call drop. But then there's the rest of me, and the rest of me feels very sad to be leaving a place that has given me so much in exchange for so little.

One of my friends and favorite people, Jacob Moore, spent the last couple years working in Guatemala as a Peace Corps volunteer. As far as I know, Jacob didn’t blog while he was there, but instead sent incredibly entertaining emails with lists of things that had caught his eye, made him laugh, or that were far too strange to NOT tell his friends about. Recently, as he’s now almost ready to head home, Jacob sent a list of the things he’s going to miss, and the things he won't, about his life in Guatemala. So, with a tip of my hat to Jacob, I give you my own “Things I’m going to miss” list (undoubtedly incomplete and in no particular order):

Things I’m definitely going to miss:

- Conversations with my students that begin as follows:
Me: “What’s up?”
Student: “Cool”
Me: “Great. So what’s been going on?”
Student: “Fine”
- the sunshine
- the rainstorms
- the coffee
- the dancing
- drinking on the porch in Kimihurura
- Larry London, Ray McDonald and the “World’s Best Variety” on Voice of America radio. (Larry London may be the greatest radio DJ ever: imagine a guy whose voice and personality belong on the local soft rock station, but whose job requires that he sound really excited about the latest song from a band like Plain White Tees. The results include awkward non-sequitors and hilarious transitions. He once introduced a song from Ruben Studdard by saying “And now we hear from another big man, Ruben Studdard, he’s a REALLY big man, over three hundred pounds!...and, wait till you hear this...he just got married!!” Maybe you had to be there...)
- The population’s general appreciation for the musical gifts of Akon, Rihanna, Sean Kingston, and Chris Brown.
- The T-Shirts: It would be impossible to list all of the out-of-place and hilarious shirts that I’ve spotted since being here, but the best-of list includes “Yanni: Live at the Acropolis”, “Yes, despite this look on my face, you’re still talking”, and, my all time favorite, seen on a woman in a village outside Kigali: “Work Sucks – I’m going golfing”
- Rwandan mini-bananas
- Primus, Mutzig, and the concept of ordering a “big” beer
- matooke, chapatti, and the rest of the lunch buffet at Africa Bite
- Coca-Cola out of the bottle
- the culture of shaking everyone’s hand when you enter a room
- getting to know Rwandans and their stories
- and, most importantly, ORI: the students, my wonderful co-workers, and the "easy" button we imported from Staples.

Things I’m not sure I’m going to miss:

- having one of my main modes of transport be this city's fleet of motos, 90% of which have broken speedometers AND gas gauges
- negotiating with moto drivers and indignantly holding my ground when they try to charge me even 100 francs more than what I think is fair (100 francs being the equivalent of about $0.20)
- pili pili
- fries at every meal
- when I order beer, having to specify that I want it cold
- driving the ORI car and wondering how many seconds I have left before the wheels fall off
- staring back at people who stare
- Umuganda – a half-day of state-mandated public works projects that happens on the last Saturday of every month
- relying only on landmarks and hand motions to explain any given location to another person

Things I definitely won’t miss:

- the staring, accompanied by calls of “mzungu,” everywhere I go
- having rocks thrown at the car (only happened once, but I wasn’t a huge fan)
- having people, kids and adults, jog along behind me when I go for a run
- the roads and the way people drive on them


More thoughts, and maybe some additions to the list, before I go...