Summer Nights in Kigali

So just when I was beginning to think that all of my blog entries were going to sound the same, talking about the maladies of poverty and trauma of the genocide, something changed. Last night I went for an evening walk with my friend Nina. We left our house at about 7pm and decided to go in a new direction. Down the hill, we passed Republika, the local bar and lounge and continued on a windy road of half dirt, half asphalt. It was past sunset and there was just the leftover light, like the warmth still emanating from the ground after a day under the bright sun. We heard some children laughing and as we rounded a corner, there were 5 or 6 little boys scooting down their driveway on a cardboard box. My friends and I used to do that down the long concrete slides at Golden Gate Park. They hardly payed attention to us (usually everyone pays attention to muzungus), but when I asked “amakooroo yanyu?” (how are you), they all answered “ni meza” in sing-songy unison. The crickets chirped and the scent in the air reminded me of alfalfa, a scent that my Mother loves and always pointed out to me when we drove through the valley or woke up on a weekend morning in the delta. Just as I was reflecting on how peaceful and lovely a summer night it was, and how refreshing it is to hear familiar sounds and smell familiar things, I looked up and the moon was lit from beneath, creating a slim, horizontal crescent and Mars was lit up just to the left of it. It was so slender and still so bright that I couldn’t stop staring the rest of the way home. And then I taught Nina the Good Night Moon song that my Mom always sang to me before she left on a trip.

I see the moon and the moon sees me. The moon sees the one I want to see. So God bless the moon, and God bless me. And God bless the one I want to see.