Enjoy

A kind message to the generous Israeli who donated the particular T-shirt I saw in Rubona: Your old T-shirt that says “Enjoy קוקיין[Cocaine]” with cocaine italicized to look like the Coca Cola logo is hilarious, really clever, but if you donate it to Good Will while cleaning your house in Israel then a modestly-dressed Rwandese woman may end up wearing it, with her baby waddling behind her as she carefully balances a jug of water on her head, walking down a dirt path, perhaps on her way home or to church. How it got to tiny Rabona is beyond me. I suppose no one else understands it.

After spotting this particular woman, I struck up a conversation with another woman, and had a conversation in Kinyarwanda using the precisely ten phrases I know. And then she asked me for my number. My number! This is fantastically exciting because until now only men have asked for my number . With a woman I know it's for platonic reasons, at least in village with a 100% church/mosque attendance rate. It must have been my awesome personality deduced from the ten phrases I stated, or at least the three that she probably understood….Anyway, she was a very cheery, smiley woman and lived right outside of Agahozo-Shalom.

When going to the market in Rubona, it is easy to forget that the rare good imported from a country farther than Uganda is significantly more expensive than any local goods. I spent 250 Frances on a garlic clove, about the price of half a kilo of tomatoes. The garlic was in a package with Chinese letters on it, and even if only the packaging was from china, that could still explain the price difference. I do not think I was getting ripped off – there was only one lady in the market with garlic, which seems to be a bit of a luxury item.

Speaking of purchasing luxury items, I got a bottle of the Pineapple and Passion fruit whine. It satisfyingly tastes like Kiddish/Communion/cheap-yet-delicious-dessert wine but better because it is sold in cute little bottles by cute little nuns. They sit in front of their church in a little whole-in-the-wall with a microscopic piece of paper with writing on it indicating that something is sold there, and you point to the little bottle of sugary pineapple goodness.They wrote a price in their calculator, I did not have exact change, but a little boy eventually came to buy candles so I only waited five to ten minutes for change. I took the wine and went back the Agahozo-Shalom, past the woman with the Enjoy קוקיין T-shirt.