Sarah’s story continued…

6/6/10 B

So, we’ll start at the beginning of the bike ride. Sarah mentioned to you the not so fun parts. Now I am going to tell you all the amazing parts about the ride. Well, at least some amazing parts. Anyway, we got up early on Saturday for our (okay maybe my) long awaited bike trip to Lake Kivu which was only supposed to be around 15-25 kilometers away. Side bar: one of the Kageno nursery school teaches was getting married on Saturday and the groom had to go to Rangiro for the dowry ceremony part of the wedding…you know the part where they give a cow or money to the father of the bride. Rangiro is on the way to the lake. Anyway, we didn’t know about the wedding until about 2 days before. Okay back to the main story. We get up early, dressed in our killer “bike attire” and Elise our counterpart shows up on the moto with yes…wait for it…the groom whom we had never met before. We introduce ourselves and congratulated him and then the groom says in Kinyarwanda, “you are dressed very nice. I am happy we are going together”. WHAT!!! Another side bar: If there is one thing that our time here in Rwanda is not short of, it’s AWKWARD situations. They seem to pop up everyday at the most unexpected moments. We have decided that so much gets lost in translation that it makes things so stressful, confusing and awkward at times. Back to the story…so it seems that we are going to his dowry ceremony which I believe only close family goes to and we are dressed in sweat pants and hoodies. So, we took off on our journey with the groom and Elise ahead of us on the moto. Turns out, they ended up being so far ahead of us that we weren’t able to make it to the dowry ceremony or the wedding anyway…so we kind of felt bad especially since the groom was seemingly expecting us to be there. Anyway, that is just one of the many awkward situations we find ourselves in from day to day.

On to more cool stuff. We saw many amazing and beautiful views on our trek across the 1000 hills of Rwanda. Also, on the way back from our nothing but AWESOME (don’t listen to Sarah) bike ride we ran into an exciting yet somewhat unnerving experience. Now we had seen some monkeys on the way to the lake and one on the way back. And at one point I turned around to see Sarah stopped in the middle of the road (and on a perfectly good down hill slope which should never be wasted on a trail like this). I asked her what she was doing and she said, “SHHHHHH Listen.” She had heard some barking noises and then saw what appeared to be some really big monkeys around the corner. So, we decided to get closer as these big monkeys were in the trees directly above the path home anyway As we got closer we noticed they were baboons…many, many of them…probably 30 or more…mommas and babies…and possibly daddies. Now we had heard stories of how mean baboons can be and if threatened, especially with babies around, could possibly attack. One thing is for sure, as we whipped out our camera and begin to snap some photos, we began to notice they were not quite as excited to see us as we them. Some of the bigger ones begin to bark loudly, stomp their feet and hands on the ground and shake the trees violently. At first it was amusing and then Sarah started getting a little worried…and to be honest I might have had a few bad images in my head as to how this could play out as well. So, what do I do, that’s right…being the manly protector of a husband that I am, I pulled out my manly 1 ½ inch blade pocket knife…these baboons didn’t want any. So, as I handed my knife off to Sarah so I could snap a few last photos before taking off, one incredibly large and disgruntled baboon began to get a little perturbed that we hadn’t left yet. So, I threw everything back into the backpack and said, let’s get out of here and we sped off around the corner…screaming for our lives like a couple of little sissy school girls. Well, I say I threw everything into my backpack…until I realized once we got home that in the hustle and bustle of our “near death” experience with the primates, my camera case which had Sarah’s lip balm and a back-up 4GB SD card was left behind…birababaje (it is sad).

 This is Lake Kivu....amazing!

So the next morning roles around and bright and early I hear our counterpart outside waiting for us to open our gate (it is not uncommon for us to have visitors anytime after the sun rises). He has another gentleman with him. Elise greeted me and then asked if we lost anything on our bike ride yesterday. At this point I was thinking, was he hiding in the bushes watching us…how did he know? He seems to always be around somewhere near so that wouldn’t have surprised me. Anyway, I explained that yes I lost our camera case around 10-15 kilometers back down the road. Turns out, this man had found it on the trail and decided that it must belong to the “abazungu” that just rode by on their bikes. He thought the case and card was something to do with a computer. Anyway, this guy walked 2-3 hours one way to bring us our camera case…the nicest thing. We couldn’t believe it. So, we gave him a little money for his trouble and he went on his way. Turns out, there are still some amazingly good and honest people in the world.

We have one last thing to add to our crazy weekend. After visiting the market today we ran into a little scuffle on the way back home. We saw a large huddle of people gathered around and then noticed a few in the middle getting smacked around. The one doing the smacking around was one of our co-workers. So, naturally we stopped to see what the fuss was about. Now I am not 100% sure if this was translated correctly but from what we understood, a man who has a wife and 4 kids recently took another woman as a “wife” and got her pregnant (which polygamy is illegal now from what we’ve been told). The mother of the newly pregnant girl showed up and was demanding to know what the man was going to do about his predicament. Some local authorities had heard about the situation and asked our co-worker (who is part of the city security/defense) to find out what was going on and so…he found out what was going on and did some butt kicking in the process. Oh and from what we observed from this scuffle, Rwandans slap and backhand instead of punching. It may be different in other circumstances but in this fight…there was some major slappage going on!

Okay…I am exhausted from this weekend and from writing this blog. I hope you all are doing well back home. As always, we miss you all and hope to hear from you at some point. Take care and be blessed!!

Rings