Shyorongi

Hiking in Shyorongi

While being given a tour of my school on my first day here, I noticed a wideish red dirt path passing behind a section of the school wall that was under construction. A few days later, a bit bored and craving a walk, I decided to see if the path had anything to offer. One of the most beautiful and unexpectedly delightful hikes of my life ensued. The path wound around the huge hills surrounding Shyorongi, giving me epic views of banana, tea and coffee fields for miles. The landscape around here is so green, and the dirt on the paths is so red, it feels like I’m in some kind of enhanced Technicolor version of reality. For the first hour or so, there were little clusters of huts every few hundred yards along the path, and everyone who saw me asked where I was going. At first, I was worried that I might be trespassing, but after asking a few people I realized that the Rwandans seem to have no concept of private property. People seemed nothing but proud when I told them that I was just walking to enjoy the scenery. No one gave me a hard time, and almost everyone wished me a happy journey. There were frequent turnoffs from the path that wound down into the giant valley below Shyorongi, but I stuck to the main, widest route, since I’ll have plenty of time to explore the rest during my year here. I walked for a couple hours before I hit a road, then I retraced my steps. The terrain isn’t too hilly, since it hugs the hills while staying on basically the same topo line the whole time, so it’ll be fantastic for running if I can work up the nerve to let the locals see the crazy muzungu turn bright red as she runs for fun. I’m so excited that my aimless wandering doesn’t have to be put on hold till I can get back to San Francisco, and I can’t wait to check out some of those crazy inner-field offshoot paths.

Mardi Gras with the Sistahs

The nuns here at Stella Matutina have extremely generously been inviting me to lunch and dinner almost every day since I got here, and penniless, cooking skillless me has been accepting every time, but Rwandan food is ROUGH. Rice, beans, cassava (the hateful starch), potatoes, liver, and cabbage salad is the daily fare, and it’s always prepared exactly the same, and I invariably hate it, and internally pine for Mexican, Indian, Thai, seafood, hamburgers, anything available for purchase at Bi-Rite market, fresh-baked bread, Italian, pizza, red wine, American breakfast foods…oh, God. But! Yesterday, in an inexplicable stroke of divine benevolence, after the aforementioned Rwandan starchfest had been cleared away, a piping hot stack of at least twenty CREPES appeared, followed by a tub of BUTTER (the first time I’d seen it here) and a little pot of sugar to boot. I nearly wept. The nuns asked if I’d ever had a crepe before, and I went off, talking about Shrove Tuesday and French class and Crepevine and Crepeville and all those other crepe-themed restaurants that make my heart sing, and about Ross and Nicki’s cromlettes and about the countless times that I have been too stuffed with crepes to open my eyes, and how they’re like sushi in that you never think you’ll be full off them but you always are…I don’t know if they understood anything I said, but they loved that I was so excited over a stupid crepe, and piled some on my plate. I braced myself for the worst, telling myself that maybe Rwandans make their crepes out of cassava flour, or with banana paste instead of egg, or in some other fashion that totally destroyed crepes as I knew them, but then I took just one bite, and grinned from ear to ear, because from sunny California to stuck-up France to weird and wonderful, cassava-worshipping Rwanda, you can’t mess with crepes. Tres, tres, tres bon was all I could say, and it was enough.

California Stars

So I’m getting used to life here, and really liking it in a lot of ways, but missing home more acutely than I expected. I’m even surprised to feel that strongly about “home” at all; I knew that I liked California, San Francisco particularly, but it’s only now that I’m attempting to really live somewhere else that I realize how strongly I felt about it, how comfortable I was in my home, how much of a home I had. Being away from home is exciting and exhilarating and exhausting. This makes sense:

I'd like to rest my heavy head tonight
On a bed of California stars
I'd like to lay my weary bones tonight
On a bed of California stars

I'd love to feel your hand touching mine
And tell me why I must keep working on
Yes, I'd give my life to lay my head tonight
On a bed of California stars

I'd like to dream my troubles all away
On a bed of California stars
Jump up from my starbed and make another day
Underneath my California stars

They hang like grapes on vines that shine
And warm the lovers glass like friendly wine
So, I'd give this world just to dream a dream with you
On our bed of California stars