Back to Butare

This weekend I journeyed back to Butare (if you’ll remember, Butare is home to my previous business trip aka intellectual capital of Rwanda). I went with Kuku to visit and meet some more of her enormous family. Don’t ask me to draw the family tree; I think farida and kuku have 298234 cousins, brothers, sisters, newphews…but on this particular occasion I met: Kuku’s mom, farida’s brother, (its still not completely clear to me how they are related. I think it has something to do with farida’s dad and one of his 4 wives was kuku’s mom’s sister (?!!)) two cousins, and a 1 year old belonging to another cousin, who I couldn’t quite determine the exact location of. (and I thought trowbridge family reunions are confusing!)

Anyway, I wouldn’t say this trip to Butare lived up to its namesake (aka intellectual capital), no thanks to me and my horrendous language skills. My French/Kinyarwanda skills were pretty much exhausted after we discussed my family, the weather, and the 20 or so words I know in Kinyarwanda. We did branch off on a brief discussion of flooding (apparently our water in Kigali finally came back on (after 4 day hiatus) but no one was home and it completely flooded the apartment.)

So after a delicious dinner of meat, rice, and matoke, I was led to the neighboring house (home of the brother) to watch digital TV-first time I have seen here and it was pretty impressive. I heard about the debates (in French), watched about 13 minutes of big brother Africa (the #1 reality show here), and then finally settled on a movie involving a sex offender which was more than slightly awkward watching the graphic sex scenes with the cousin and brother. I tried to insert a little social commentary, but all I got was the typical “homosexuality doesn’t exist in Africa.”

The roosters woke me up at 6 am, so I wandered out to see what was for breakfast, forgetting that I was the only one able to eat. Ramadon=fasting. So feeling like a gluttonous heathen I enjoyed my pain au chocolate avec l’ananas with the family sitting around and watching me.

Anyway, we got a ride home with a friend of kuku’s and the only thing of note (aside from my usual fascinations with driving hand signals) was the two BUCKETS of avocados purchased for $2. I tried explaining that it was $2 for one avocado in the U.S. and that my friend Erica once paid $5 for a rotten avocado in k-stan, but they didn’t seem to grasp paying more than $20 for an avocado….