Valentine's Day Special

On the way back to Rubona from Kigali, I ran into one of the teachers from the school. She had on a bright, shiny, tortoise skirt suit, with the skirt going down to the ground, covering beige shoes, relatively practical compared to the black or gold stilettos I usually see her in. I visited her home for a spontaneous meeting of the family, who were not far from the bus station, and met her brother and mother. “Would you like anything to drink?” she asked me as I sat down. “Oh, um, just water” I answered – the standard response I give when I am not sure if declining the offer of a drink is rude. Her mother saw that my very heavy laptop, powdered-milk, oatmeal, coffee-filled backpack was on the floor, burdened by a quick shopping spree of western necessities I was bringing back to the village. She picked it up and put in on her very nicely-upholstered recliners in an otherwise modest living room. I felt guilty. The bottom that bag was probably caked with mud.

I sat across from her brother, who was studying agriculture in university. His English was perfect, and many words he said had no accent at all. “We learned that Israel has excellent agricultural studies and research,” he told me. “My dream is to go to Israel and do an MA or Phd there.” He had on a slightly shiny maroon shirt, dress pants, and smart polished black dress shoes. It was a Sunday, and they were very religious so, in addition to all being all dolled up, the family – or, rather, the mother – wanted to give me a blessing. “She is very religious” her children told me, almost apologetically. So we sat down, looked downwards and the others pressed their palms together, the way Christians pray. My Jewish education instinctively told me to awkwardly yet politely clutch my cell phone and umbrella, rather than put palms together, and she blessed me in Kinyarwanda.

A second later, another family member came through the door with a brown grocery back with bottled water, gone out and purchased specifically for me after my saying, “um, just water.” I was already on my way out, so I insisted that they keep the bottle of water and remembered never to ask for water again if asked what I wanted to drink, and also convinced that Rwanda was not a culture where you needed to accept something to drink. Or maybe you always needed to say, “tea” which is a staple. Right before I left, the youngest daughter – youngest of eleven children, and youngest of nine children who were still alive – said hello to me. She was around nine or ten.

“I am ready to pay to get married,” the teacher told me as she accompanied me to the bus station. She talked about the process of choosing a husband. She was not so young, perhaps in her late 20s or early 30s. She had put off marriage to help out her parents, who used to live in a very modest house compared to the neighbors, though they lived in a pretty nice part of town. Now she felt she had paid her “social debt” to her parents, who now lived in a nicer house – she lived with them –and she was ready to get married and move out, though choosing who to marry was a challenge. It was not so different from what Arab friends have described to me in Israel, but with a Christian twist of “I pray to God for a husband with specific criteria.” One time, she met someone who was tall and thin, just what she wanted. Almost. “He hadn’t studied, so I had to say no,” she said wistfully. She had a friend who once prayed for a husband who was good looking, with a job, a house, educated, the works. Her friend got what she wanted, but the husband was very jealous and demanded she be home every day right after work, controlling all her spending, including the money she made. “She had gotten what she prayed for, but forgot certain attributes when praying.” So now, the teacher told me, “Every time I pray to God I add to the list of things I want in my future husband.”

It was all very romantic. I was a bit romanced out from the debate I judged at the workshop in Kigali. The kids had thought of the motion “This House Would make Valentine’s Day a Public holiday.” My fave’ argument: “If Valentine’s Day is established, people will go out to drink and have sex, and then they will become pregnant and then they will get an abortion and die in the abortion.” There seems to be conventional wisdom here that people who get abortions die.

Anyway, when me and the teacher got to the bus station, I went to buy a ticket to Rwamagana, saw I needed to wait an hour before the next bus left, and walked around by myself as the teacher made her way home in Kigali. In a moment of weakness I bought two pricey imported oranges (around 60 cents each) and went to sit down on the curb, waiting for the bus. I pondered whether the mother’s blessing would have some impact on me – if I thought it did, some placebo function is pound to kick in. There didn’t seem to be any mention of Jesus, so maybe it was non-denominational. Maybe.

As the bus pulled its way up to Ntunga, the closest stop to Rubona, it was raining hard, and me and another volunteer who was on the bus went to ask the moto (motorcycle taxis) how much a ride to Rubona would be. They said a price that was twice the normal rate, citing the rain as a reason for the price hike. Stubborn, we said, “no” and went to buy butter milk – it was a perfect excuse to buy butter milk – and waited for the rain to subsist. Then, behold, we saw another staff member outside, who negotiated with one moto-driver to take us both, on one moto, with both of our incredibly large, heavy backpacks, for the double price – basically, sacrificing safety for around $1.50 each. There was only one helmet, so I went without one, a rare opportunity to see the outside view clearly because most of the helmets are too big on me and cover my eyes. Which also looks ridiculous. We weaved along the road, I was absolutely, horribly, incredibly cold, sleet got into my eyes because I had no helmet on but finally we got home. Safely. And the television shows I had uploaded in streaming video in a Kigali cafe were still on my computer. So I got into bed, made some American oatmeal and powdered-milk deliciousness, wrapped myself in my covers, watched episodes of “Community,” “Weeds” and “How I Met Your Mother” and felt truly blessed.