A couple of days ago we set off for a village named Kibuye. The village is surrounded by a remarkably peaceful lake called Lake Kivu, and was the main reason for the two hour long bumpy ride which made my hangover considerably worse than it actually was. Bear in mind that Rwanda is one of the poorest countries in the world, and as soon as you leave the city the poverty does not only strike you as a bitch slap in the face, but also gives you a surreal feeling of time travel. Not only is it a cliché to paraphrase ‘as if the time stood still’ but also a matter of defining time, because once we got out of the bus there was a shop selling Bob Marley cassettes. But while viewing out towards the landscape, it was not only as if the time had stood still since the 1980’s cassette revolution, but also as if all the tourists ever passing by, the market economy with its  g l o b a l i z a t i o n  and the war in Congo were just bizarre things that had no place in this reality. I do not under any circumstances wish to romanticize poverty, but at least it makes you think over your own situation in this truly peculiar world.

Rwanda is currently undergoing a heavy rain season and the rain was falling like cats and dogs (an idiomatic expression I have been using frequently over the past few days and exists in many languages). We asked for the direction to the restaurant famous for its viewpoint over the lake, and as we understood that we had to walk ten minutes in the rain, the four of us bought one umbrella each from the shop with the Bob Marley cassettes. The Rwandans were laughing hard at four pale ‘Muzungu’ girls, brave enough to face the rain with pink umbrellas. When I say face the rain I am dead serious. Rain here is considered to be dangerous and one must do everything in ones supremacy to avoid the infuriating wet drops. Thus Rwandans as a rule take shelter under a protective roof… and wait. Sometimes the rain goes on for twenty minutes, sometimes for an hour. Either way, there is always a group of people standing under the roof and wait. When Sweden, year after year turns out to be the most single dense country in the world, I bet you this rainy season with its fatal rain drops at least brings people together under one roof and accordingly serves as a dating spot. Imagine, if you have the slightest courage to face the rain before you pick the waiting stop, the window of opportunities is wide open. I know that if I was sixteen again, I would have loved the rainy season in Rwanda.

Anyways, I am not sixteen anymore, I am twenty-five with an eager interest in politics. Right.

So, as we finally found the restaurant and move a couple of times between sitting outside (facing the mortal drops) and indoors (facing the mise-en-place work of the clueless waiter), we ended up sitting inside. Out of the blue, a French man in his mid fifties asked if he could join us. Because we are so open-minded we let him to. It turned out that this man, a journalist he claimed, is here to collect data for the trial he is preparing against amongst others the French government and Kofi Annan. Now, I do not mean to sound badly informed; I am fully aware of Kofi Annan’s failure as a leader during the genocide. However, there are few things as entertaining as a male’s mid-age crisis, desperately trying to disguise itself in ‘more important’ matters; such as a back-packing trip to India (when it really is an all-inclusive five star trip), a brand new lap-top (with half of its functions never used, even less discovered) or a self-proclaimed journalist title (whose results probably will be published, but for the wrong reasons). As the politically engaged researcher I am, I dared myself into a wild debate with this so called journalist. It was all fun and interesting, occasionally even witty. Until, I mentioned the Palestine-Israel conflict. The atmosphere shifted and all of a sudden the peaceful silence was broken. The three other guests at the table obviously found this discussion too straightforward, whereas I in the midst of my hangover could not have bothered any less. For every minute the discussion went on I was regretting more and more my witty compliment I had hurried to make earlier- of the journalist being a ‘pillar of democracy’.

In the end, we exchanged each other’s emails: for me it was a false pretext to have a chance to google the man- for him doubtlessly another chance to mask the mid-crisis.

Thanks for reading.

With love,

Agata