Good Times

I don't know what it is about Sunday, but it always turns out to be the best day of the week.  I woke up today at 8a, ecstatic that I have finally been able to sleep in!  This is the latest I have been able to sleep since being in Rwanda so with such a good start, I already knew today was going to be a good day.  My family didn't go to church today so the day was more or less relaxing...and kind of boring.  After sitting around reading for a while and talking to my family here and there, I decided to call Tamika and see if she wanted to go and visit Phyllis in the next village over.  She agreed, and so after about an hour and a half, we were on our way.  Helmets in hand, we walked to the center of our village to catch a motorcycle taxi.  We had about a 15 minute ride to get to Phyllis's and once there, we greeted her family and then headed out to a bar to have brochettes and Fanta.  While at the bar, we ran into a guy from Kenya who spoke perfect English.  When he saw us he said, "Finally I find someone who speaks English!"  After speaking with him over our yummy brochettes, we discovered that he does not know a lick of Kinyarwanda and that he is here with the Rwanda English Board to help teach Rwandan teachers how to teach English to their students.  Like us, he will be in Rwanda for two years. 

After our brochettes, Phyllis gave us a tour of her small village and we eventually made our way back to her house so that we could head home and hopefully make it back before curphew.  But of course something had to go wrong right??  Well first off, when the moto taxi dropped us off at Phyllis's, we asked him if he would come back to pick us up at 6pm.  The guy said okay, told us how much it would cost and went on about his merry little way.  Well 6:00 rolls around, and no taxi shows up.  Then 6:20 rolls around and still no taxi.  At 6:30 (which just so happens to be our curphew) me and Tamika get desperate and decide to just take one of the buses back to our village (which is an overcrowded mini-van filled with drunken weirdoes).  When one stopped near us, we walked over to get on, but luckily (this had to be God) it was full.  I'm almost positive we would have made it anywhere but home had we gotten on that grimy thing.  So there we were at 6:35, standing in the dark, trying to waive down every taxi that passed us by so that we could get a ride home.  This wasn't working at all so Phyllis finally went to get her dad and have him help us out a bit.  (It's pitch black outside at this point, and I was very worried about getting home safely).

Just as Phyllis's dad approached us from the house, a motorcycle with a passenger was getting ready to take off down the road.  Her dad saw this, went up to the motorcycle, told the guy on it to get off, and then

told us to get on.  I stood wide-eyed for a split second thinking to myself, did this really just happen??  Did her daddy really just punk this man and make him get off the bike??  And to add insult to injury, once we both (yes, me and Tamika) hopped onto the motorcycle, her dad told the driver how much he was going to charge us.  He said, "You will charge them 500 each."  The ride should have been 1000 each since it was dark outside (prices increase at night), but apparently her dad wasn't having that.  At this point, me and Tamika were just laughing away, amused by the entire situation.  Just before we took off, Phyllis said, "That's my daddy girl, he don't play."  We all laughed and then the driver took off and we were on our way. 

Now there have been plenty of times when I have seen 3 people on one motorcycle and each time, both Tamika and myself had always said that that would never be us.  Well so much for that!  Here we were doing what I'm hoping is not illegal (Peace Corps never mentioned it so I think we're in the clear) with the driver in the front, me in the middle, and Tamika in the back.  With each bump in the road, Tamika's helmet would come crashing into mine, and then mine would crash into the drivers.  I was getting a worsening headache with each thump and to top that off, me and Tamika couldn't stop laughing during the ride.  It was very scary, but very fun at the same time.  As we were laughing, and making the driver laugh in the process, we took out our cameras and snapped some pictures of the three of us on the moto.  Once we finally made it to our stop (thank God), we paid the driver our 500 RWF each and walked the rest of the way home.  As I approached my house, I began to get a little nervous as I tried to put together in my head how I would explain to my host mama why I was getting home an hour past curphew.  When I saw her, I put the words together the best I could (with a little help from my sister) and my mama just laughed.  Sometimes I'm not sure if she's laughing at me or with me, but in hindsight, at least she didn't trip.  The last thing I need is for Peace Corps to send me back to America for missing my curphew. 

Love and Peace Corps,

Dametreea

P.S.  I had a great time, but this definitely can't happen again.

(Written 7/1/12 at 7:32p)