An Interesting Bus Ride

An Interesting Ride

Here we go!! Yet another adventure into the big city.  My host mother invited me to a wedding near her house on Sunday so I'm going to spend the weekend in Kigali at the Peace Corps Hostel and then make my way out to see her on Sunday.  I already knew I was in for a weekend of fun and adventure, but I had no idea the fun would start already!  Of course I can always count on my bus ride into the city to be interesting.  Not only did I get lost again (kind of), but I also enjoyed my fancy ride on the fancy bus with a few fancy roaches who, too, wanted to get to the big city for a weekend adventure of their own.

At one of the stops, a little boy (maybe 12 or 13 years old) hopped onto the bus and started speaking a whole bunch of gibberish really, really fast.  Everyone just stared at him, and I was a little startled as I didn't know what he was doing or what he wanted.  There are A LOT of strange people that do A LOT of strange things here so I wasn't quite sure what his deal was.  It sounded like he was either casting a spell on us or like he was saying, how much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood in Kinyarwanda.  When he was finished everyone on the bus started laughing and clapping and giving the little boy the loose change from their pockets.  My immediate assumption was that he was a comedian or something and this was his hustle.  I asked the guy who was riding next to me what the kid was talking about and he said that he was just telling everyone the news.  I guess this is how everyone gets up on their current events in Rwanda...sure beats reading a newspaper.

And now the roaches.

  I had no idea they were on this overcrowded, filthy nasty bus until we were almost to my stop and most of the people that I enjoyed my 3 hour ride with had gotten off.  With just 10 more minutes left until I arrived at my destination, I looked over to my left to gaze out of the window and what do I see??  None other than a brown and black little critter running up the interior alongside the window!! Of course I panicked (inside, I didn't want anyone of the bus to think I was crazy) and I started shaking my legs and tapping my feet on the ground so that nothing would crawl on me.  As I was tapping my feet, I looked down at the ground to do a security check and what did I see?? TWO MORE roaches!  RIGHT BY MY FEET!  At this point I lifted both of my feet off of the ground and shook them in the air (not caring about looking crazy anymore) so that nothing would crawl on me.  When the bus finally arrived at my stop I carefully grabbed my bags (to make sure no critters crawled up on them) and looked over at the door as I waited for some of the other passengers to get off of the bus.  As I sat with sheer fear in my heart, I marveled at the fact that it wasn't just people getting off of the bus.  The roaches were all bee-lining for the door like, "Yep, this is my stop."  I was soooo totally grossed out, but I couldn't help but laugh.  And be a little angry that I had to pay while the roaches got a free ride...it must be nice being a roach lol

Love and Peace Corps,

Dametreea