Peoples, peoples, peoples
Do you know what it means to be left alone?
Oh peoples, peoples, peoples
Do you know what it means to be left alone?
Lord, it happened today
Lord, not even a call on my telephone
“Bleeding Heart” - Jimi Hendrix
I am standing in the threshold of the doorway of our hotel room. The light that pours in from the windows of the hall is nothing less than blinding. The sun… is loud. Wearing nothing but hand-me-down red boxers with white hearts on them, and a Bed Bath and Beyond eye mask strapped to my hairless head, I squint through the rays, and through my nascent hangover headache, to address my friend Leah, who has knocked on my door, and woken me up.
The silhouette speaks. “Are you guys still sleeping?” she exclaims. She knows the answer. The blackout drapes are pulled over the window of our darkened room. No attempt has been made to clean up the mess that was left of our hotel party the night before. Kenny is still sprawled across his bed, limbs at the odd angles of someone who isn’t sleeping as much as was felled by the devil drink.
I want to respond to her question but all I can feel is neuronal misfire. Words jumble without syntax: well, you like, not anymore cause you knock, loud so loud why do that you head hurts tired me sad. I need to keep it simple. “Yeah… you know? Yeah”, I reply. I am rebuked by her sharp midwestern laugh, which is usually endearing but in the current context pokes my brain. “It’s past Seven. People are downstairs, ready to go to site. I think people have even left already. Goodbyes are being said, man!”.
With my face blank I blink, slowly slowly, while the information processes through the lag. Seven o'clock already? Didn’t I just lay down to sleep after walking back from our Kigali goodbye celebrations at the bar around 12ish? I just laid down. I thought I was being good - I left early, earlier than I should have, to avoid just this feeling. People can not have left already, they wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye their pal Ol Jonesy. My friends wouldn’t do that. It’s just not the case. No. Nope.
“No it’s not. No they aren’t.” I muster in a slow monotone reply. The laugh again. I close my eyes to withstand it. “Jonesy you always say that. You seem to like to just make up your mind about things that you don’t know. This is happening! I was just downstairs - literally everyone is down there but you two bums”.
I stare. I scratch my face.
“Nah”.
I turn and go lay back down.
Leah laughs and is undeterred, clearly as though she had expected this very scene. She enters the room and harasses Kenny until he finally stirs. Through a flurry of groans and laughter I come to find that both Kenny and Leah were out several hours longer than I was, in a fun-filled dance party that can only be fueled by the motivation of knowing that This Is The Last Night. I was sad to have missed it, but I knew that we had a big day the next day - “Site Installation” as it was called. All volunteers were being shipped off to their respective sites as early as was possible. We wouldn't all be together again for months. But unlike their fresh-out-of-college faces, the four years between me and them has produced a precipitous drop in my alcohol tolerance, and more specifically, my hangover tolerance.
But even the steps I had taken to mitigate the scourge - saving a whole plate of food for right before bed, and leaving the bar at a reasonable hour - had not done the whole job. I still have a headache and I still have a million things to do. The floor is sticky. My things are everywhere. Irrespective of Leah’s call to action, which was totally correct, I knew I had to get up and start getting my act together. I don’t feel great but I could have feel worse - so let’s get going.
Leah takes her exit and leaves us to our work. After slowly rising from bed, Kenny and I move about our room, walking slowly and occasionally bending over to pick up our things with the confusion and semi-intent of flightless birds. We don’t speak because our brains aren’t quite there yet. I can see in his movement that he is dealing with the same mental jumble that I am, gathering things with no plan.
Ok how many bags do I have I have my big duffel and suitcase and backpack but all my valuables go in the backpack cause my clothes are all over the floor here’s my computer put it in the bag does my toiletry bag go in the suitcase or the backpa it’ll have to go in the backpack cause we have all these damn books they gave us why did they give us all jeez I gotta brush my teeth my mouth is a biohaz but don’t forget that shoes are in the corner near the bed put on your jeans but damn I gotta put the other jeans in the laundry bag knew I was forgetting something important phone’s buzzing Leah again leaving soon she says ok I gotta go downstairs say bye but shower first I feel nasty left clothes in the shower room jeeeeesus the sun in bright why did I pull the curtains charger is behind the bed don’t forget that I’ll grab it in a minute no grab it right now yes yes I’m coming down give me a minute keys phone wallet go downstairs.
Everything I Do, I Do in Slow Motion
I take a deep breath. I relax my mind. And I start walking downstairs. With the fresher air outside our room, I’m actually starting to come around and feel better. I will get food downstairs. I will sip tea and look out over the hills from the verandah of our hotel. My friends will receive me as they leave in an orderly fashion, saying our heartfelt goodbyes. We will chuckle heartily and smirk knowingly and remark about the passage of time and the impermanence of mankind’s endeavors within it, thus making our parting of ways more palatable. It will be good. And calm. And quiet.
But walking down the stairs, with each step I can hear the noise growing, growing, growing. This doesn’t sound orderly? Where are the muted existential conversations? When I reach the final landing, the reason is revealed. It is chaos. Totally Mayhemic. The front doors of the hotel are flung fully open. Outside the door the bright sun beats down onto a slew of Peace Corps LandCruisers parked across the small entrance lot in no particular order - most of which have men dangling from the tops in precarious positions, using rope and bungee cord to strap odd items. Suitcases, duffels, backpacks, hiking backpacks, are absolutely everywhere. And the unruly items bought in anticipation of Site Installation, large metal trunks, wicker chairs, buckets, basins, loose boxes of food - fill the voids between the large bags.
The parking lot had transformed to assume the look of a tiny refugee camp. Almost all 25 of the people in our group are scattered about the parking lot, and almost everyone was crying. Long hugs were shared, and people waved wistfully out the windows of cars as they bumped away on dirt roads, kicking up dust in their wake. My friend Anji, who’s heart is an aberration of medical science as it is made of solid and unalloyed gold, cries with such genuineness and intensity, such fearless expression of emotion, that I can’t even bring myself to look at her for fear of tearing up in my own fragile mental state.
Rushed and uncomprehending of the situation, my own goodbyes are stilted and quick. It hasn’t quite dawned on me that we are literally being shipped to every corner of this small country of Rwanda, and that I will not see the majority of my friends, people with whom I’ve spent nearly every waking moment of the past two months, until the end of November when the Peace Corps sponsors another conference for us.
A new policy is focused on each volunteer staying in his site for as much of the next three months as possible to greater facilitate their integration into the community. In layman’s terms, you’re supposed to stay at site and not leave for three months. Like most Peace Corps experiences it is one that is so jarring as to seem impossible, but will likely vindicate it’s usefulness in the end. Nonetheless, it raises the stakes of our goodbyes palpably.
After several goodbyes the urgency of it all finally starts to dawn on me, so I run upstairs to gather my things that I haphazardly threw together and bring them down. My site travel-buddy, Megan, already has her things together and ready to go. Coming back down I load my bags - I think I have them all - and my mattress and other miscellania onto the roof and into the trunk of the car.
Before I know it, I’ve said my final good bye. My legs, carrying me towards the car, understand the obligation to leave, but my head stays turned towards the hotel and the people still inside. Now the window of the car separates me and them. Now the dust as we pull away. Finally, I have to come to terms with the fact that it’s over. We’ve left for site.
After a couple hours of noise, within the car we settle into the newfound silence. It simmers for a bit, everyone taking a bit of solace in it. My mind is still spinning. It feels like I just got to Rwanda, it feels like I was just mired in the miseries of the Mosque, it feels like I was just prepping my Swear In speech, it feels like I just got to the Kigali hotel, and now we’ve said all the goodbyes and I’m being shipped off? I cut the silence with my incredulity. “That was…brutal”. Megan agrees as I turn to her in the driver side of the backseat. “Yeah,” she says, “it was”.
You Got to Ride, Ride, Ride
Three hours separate me from Kigali and my house in the Southern Province. I know this because I have made the drive before during site visit. Except the site visit trip was on typical Rwandan bus services. Which meant that my knees we’re in my chest and a baby was drooling on my arm and staring blankly at me, taking a short break from his afternoon meal at his mother’s exposed breast, which Mama naturally had no intention of putting back in her shirt.
But here I sit in the front seat of a polished white Peace Corps LandCruiser, my legs are enjoying the luxuries of being unencumbered by a seat ahead of me. What’s more, while most of our group received hired Rwandan nationals as their drivers to site, Megan and I have Scott, Peace Corps Rwanda’s media director and good old fashioned mid-western American who likes English and likes to speak it nice and fast. And Scott has an auxiliary cord and no music of his own. I fish my iPod out of my backpack and quickly move in to fill the void, indulging in one of my favorite activities - playing music that only I like and know.
I would love to sleep in the car, and Lord knows I need it - but in terms of travel in Rwanda my current situation is an embarrassment of riches. Unless I were to fall ill and the Peace Corps comes to pick me up in this very same type of vehicle (knock on wood, always a real and imminent possibility) from here on out in my service it would be nothing but public transportation. Small buses, and even smaller “tweges” - minivans type cars capable of cramming up to 30 people inside that make me cringe every time my eyes fall on them - are all that await my future.
But our pleasant conversation and musical enjoyment do not stop the passing of time. Before I know it we have made the turn from the main road onto the smaller road. And from the smaller road to the dirt road. And from the dirt road to the one lane rocky road that my house sits on.
Then the car stops, and I’m staring at it. My house. My black house that looks out over the hills. Well, not quite the hills themselves because of the two trees that block the view - but just to the left of the trees, the illustrious Rwandan hills. I hear a pig squeal and across the face of the gate a chicken walks across, popping his head forward with every step and pecking at the ground. I’ve been there buddy, thinking about my morning.
Getting out of the car we fill the empty house with my assortment of bags, trip-by-trip back and forth on the rocky path between the house and the car until suddenly there is nothing left to take. I am cut off from the comforts of the car. I walk back to the house where my Rwandan Peace Corps translator, Moses, gets the paperwork settled with my landlady. They talk to me as I recede into my own mind to come to grips with the situation.
Alex please sign this, sure. Christ, I am here now. Alex you must get the locks replaced, yea yea I will. No more car with A/C. I will stand in this very spot of this house when they leave. And months from now, I’ll stand in this spot too. There is nowhere for me to go now. Alex where do you want this water filter, there I guess. It’s over. Alex you must send the emergency contact form in, yea I hear you. I live here, straight up.
When I came back forward out of my mind, I look at Megan. She looks similarly lost, except her faced is tinged with the pained anticipation of seeing your own incomprehensible future unfolding before you. “This is… crazy”, she finally musters. I can’t do much more than laugh and agree with her. “Yeah. It is”.
All Alone
My final goodbyes of the day are to Megan, Scott and Moses. And, just like that, they are gone. And just like that I am living in the day-dream that I’ve been having for weeks now. What it would be like in those first moments in the house, alone. The car gone, the people gone. The heavy, thick silence in the ether. Staring at an abundance of time ahead, and an abundance of work to be done.
I imagined that in this moment, I would be overwhelmed by it all. The loneliness would rush in like a storm surge, threatening to drown me. The obligations of being in a home by myself would destroy me. In the preceding weeks, I thought about this constantly as I fought the tide of time pulling me to this exact moment.
But instead of all that, I simply find myself… hungry. And my head hurts.
Arriving to my house has been less an exercise of being overwhelmed by the possibilities and responsibilities of my future, than it has been a freefall down Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I am less worried about whether I will find abstract happiness among the hills of Rwanda than I am about how to cook food in the meager paper bag that I had. I am less fretful about the execution of my future projects and the reduction of malnutrition in Rwanda than I am wondering about how long my water filter would take to do its job so I can quench my thirst.
I stand. And I stare.
“Nah”, I say to no one. And I lay down.
Laying on the bare mattress that lay on the floor with nothing to adorn it but my one small pillow, I stare at the ceiling for awhile. Sleep manages to come over me. At least I think so. The thoughts that raced around my brain couldn’t have swirled for over an hour could they have? In any case, my hunger has tipped the scale from inaction to action.
I walk out and grab my bag of food. Rice, some veggies and a can of sardines. A Michelin Starred restaurant would be jealous. I go to wash my plates, but there’s no sink. I pick up my pan but there’s no table to put it on. I grab a spatula but there is nothing to place it in. I want to cut the vegetables but I forgot to buy a cutting board.
I am faced with my first enduring problem. For lack of domestic vocabulary that has always eluded me: There are no Things to put my Stuff on or into. I know that, in order to have a house, you need Things. And you also need the Stuff to put those Things into. I only satisfy one part of this equation, but the Stuff part is the easy one. Or is it the other way around? Without knowing my future, I know myself well enough to know this will be a persistent problem.
I settle on the floor - to do everything. I chop the veggies, boil up the rice and add the sardines. Eating it, I remark out loud that it’s not as bad as I thought it would be, and it is surely a good source of protein.
I revel in my first independent Rwandan victory. I made some food, and so far I don’t feel ill. With my blood sugar getting back to normal, I start to think positive thoughts. Perhaps this all won’t be so bad. If I continue to eat well, then I’ll feel good and things will start to come together. Right?
In the cement square that I call my Living Room, given its proximity to the front door, I stare at the bags. And this time they stare back. I have a lot of work to do tonight, that much is clear.
But a bigger, simpler question looms over my head as I chew slowly. One that I hadn’t yet considered, given my anxieties about Day One Part II.
What will I do tomorrow? And the day after that? And the day after that…..and the day after that…..