Murakaza neza mu Rwanda.

I'd been awake for about an hour, sort of half way between wake and sleep, tossing and turning, aware that something was keeping me up but not willing to fully address it, like when you're freezing cold at night and you know there's a blanket in the closet but you're so tired you don't want to get out of bed and get it, like that. It gets louder, and louder, and what had just been loud voices becomes full-on singing and chanting and pounding, and I finally snap out of my doze, and I see that Jane is awake too. We look at the clock and it's 2:00am, and the racket is getting louder, and it feels like the whole hotel is shaking. We go back and forth about what it might be, how many people it is, how we're about ready to jump off the balcony, how we've already had food poisoning from this hotel and flooding from this hotel and no power from this hotel and a general royal screwing from this hotel, and there are references to straws and camels' backs bandied about, and finally by 2:30am the hullabaloo reaches such a fever pitch that we jump out of bed in nothing but shorts and tank tops, showing off our scandalously inappropriate knees, and march downstairs to have a look. We find them at the bar, in the center of the small whitewashed tin box hotel, eight or nine men and about six times as many beer bottles and no television or radio or anything, just them, singing football anthems at the top of their lungs and pounding on the table, the counters, whatever. We put on our most pleasant faces and use our most pleasant Franyarwanglish to explain that please, we're sleeping, we're tired, it's 2:30am, we're teachers, we have class, we need sleep, please. They get too close, they touch our arms, they tell us that they're guests at the hotel, they ask us where we're from, we're a little freaked, we repeat that they need to shut up and we back out the door. They agree to close the door and say they'll keep their voices down, and we bolt upstairs and lock ourselves in our room and agree that the two muzungu girls in their skivvies going down to take on the band of drunk local men in the middle of the night was not our brightest scheme.

Two minutes of serene peaceful quiet and we're rather proud of ourselves.

And then it explodes again, the chanting, the pounding, the head splitting racket. We call Eric and he says the manager is going to cut the power to make them go to bed, that's the manager's solution, there will be no talking to the men, just a vague hope that the darkness will make them tired. Eric says stay in your rooms, there's nothing to be done about it tonight, we'll get in touch with the police tomorrow. We hang up with Eric and it's funny now, it's been hours and we're so tired and all the frustrating things about this country and this experience are concentrated in the racket and ruckus and it's awful and great to laugh it all out. Perfectly timed, we both receive a text from Meghan next door:

"I t h i n k t h e n a t i v e s a r e p r e p a r i n g t o e a t u s."

They hear us laughing and soon all four of us are out on our adjoining balconies, me and my three buddies that I met two weeks ago but feel like I've known for months, delirious with tired and laughter, letting all our frustration out onto the muted balmy Rwandan night. Susan points out that we can see the stars out here in the country, not like in Kigali, and we all sit and Jane shares her Nice brand biscuits and we enjoy the stars and the relative quiet for a while. The noise is still raging by the time we go back in, but I'm beyond caring. We put on David Sedaris reading Christmas stories, and I idly listen, and after an hour or so the noise must have died down, because the last time I remember seeing on my clock was 3:57am, and I fell asleep.

Eric filed a police report this morning. I doubt much will come of it.

Many things here seem all-encompassing, freaky, and infuriating when I'm in the thick of them, but just two weeks in this country and I already notice a pattern of being constantly pulled back to what matters. Having a tiny room with no amenities doesn't matter when you get to wake up to stunningly beautiful choir practice each morning. Being hot and uncomfortable and irritated doesn't matter when you get an email from a friend back home that makes you happy enough to cry. Waiting two hours for a meal at a restaurant and finally being served almost, but not entirely, the perfect opposite of what you ordered doesn't matter when the server is the nicest person you've met so far and when John makes a joke and the end of it all that makes you laugh harder than you ever have in recent memory. Tossing and turning to the sound of rowdy drunks for three hours in the middle of the night really doesn't matter when you're lucky enough to share biscuits and watch the stars with new friends that you weren't looking for but are starting to need.

Murakaza neza mu Rwanda. Sorry this is a long one, shorter, more informative, less introspective next time. Missing the Afghani, Scottish, and Pleasant Hillian Copley contingents with wild abandon. Love you all!