Move along

[As in a day ago] Just had a mini-scare with my computer as I was going to type out this post - windows explorer (i.e. basic windows 32-bit stuff) crashed and upon restarting the computer couldn’t find the boot drive. I thought it could either be overheating, hardware-dislodge, a virus, or me just straight up killing the program. It turns out it was the latter, and there was a fail-safe feature where win32 restarts itself after a while (as does many important computer functions, thankfully) Still, did not stop me from letting Sunday know immediately and make an appointment with Kathryn to go to Mumujyi. I should try and find a laptop case.

A Rwandan was singing Let It Be (Beatles) on TV to an audience of what looked like students in some kind of (religious) forum? And so I’m listening to it now too. I told my host-dad my real dad really liked this song, and I remembered it was made after MLK was shot? But then I could totally be wrong and I had no internet to lawyer myself. Regardless, it’s a beautiful song. I just thought it sentimental hearing it on a Friday evening in a place I did not expect.

I just went through my system’s event log because Sunday texted me to say if I couldn’t fix it I should let him know so I was curious to see if the system could tell me when it revived it’s on boot drive. Couldn’t exactly find it, but whatever, it’s running, and I’ve backed my boot onto my hard-disk.

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Just went through my system event log again to see what happened to my trackpad not working. Discovered that the computer shut down around 4pm while I was gone and the kids were using it. I asked them about it and they were being furtive while mumbling about the computer crashing so I suspect they just let it overheat/did not check to see if the power was working - both resulting in a crash and damaging my computer more. I am actually so annoyed but this was a risk I took with the computer and plainly they had no idea what they were doing so what am I to do really.

In fact I was trying to write about my 4-hour bizarre adventure on no-coffee day. It starts off with my host father asking me out of the blue if I was free to accompany him to visit an uncle. I was technically free (but not for 4 hours I should think) and tried to ask him if we would be back in time to take a photo before the sun set and he gave me an affirmative reply after I asked him several times. Typically, he didn’t actually understand what I was saying and I was to return well after sunset. Again, kind of knew it would happen but also didn’t want to be a dick with my fast-paced lifestyle. We set-off and first thing he tells me to do is to take an SIT-forbidden mode of transport (moto), classic start to adventures of course. We then end up in a church session, sit down in the crowd for about 5 minutes, only for him to take a call and take me out of the church? What was the point you ask? No idea, something about the uncle wanting to meet there so let’s just casually sit in on church. We then get into his (admittedly expensive-looking, but I didn’t pay attention at the time) car and wade out of a packed to the brim carpark (as in, church-goers straight up parking in the lane) only to literally just cross the street to park at a pub and wait for my host dad’s uncle’s technician who apparently was going to fix his lights. Why didn’t we just let his car sit in the church carpark? Not really sure, but I guess it made going out later faster. We wait about 40 minutes just drinking beers (while his uncle was noticeably drinking wine). His light-fixing ‘technician’ arrives, and then we drive off to Bugesera, which was a familiar name to me and, in typical no-coffee day ashion, I realized it was outside Kigali, so a long drive we go! I of course, was still under the impression that we were just going to the uncle’s house and giving the guy a lift to fix his lights.'

I fall asleep from the beer and smooth ride out of time while trying to stay awake, so kind of hazily if you know what I mean. We near the place and drive through typical houses one finds in the country-side and then enter the gates into a really nice looking house (i.e. much more expensive than its surroundings). I step inside to realize by ‘light fixing’ my dad actually meant ‘setting-up the light fixtures’ because this house was brand new and under furbishing and looked like one of those ‘model showroom apartments’ with contractors about fixing up the lights and finishing touches. In fact, as we stepped out, it dawned on me that the gated plot of land had 3 (and a half, for the workers) houses and a sizeable garden/porch. My host father, seeing my expression goes ‘he is a rich man’. No kidding. ‘He is the owner of the petrol station.’ Wait, just the one? ‘The one outside our house…not Engen, SP’. Holy crap, this guy literally owns the Rwandan gas station company and this is probably his very expensive retirement home.

So as it turns out, my host family has low-key (very) rich relatives (well, I guess I only saw one). It was then, sitting on the steps to the house and watching the sun slowly set over my plans to take a photo of my host family, that I felt a very strange sense of ‘epilogue’, the same kind you see in books, movies, video games, any story really. It was, after all, the last Sunday I would be staying with my host family, and I was, admittedly, killing the 2 and a half hour on those steps contemplating melodramatically and thinking about this post. I saw traces of that alpine glow on the hills and farmlands just outside Kigali as the breeze gently blew and the soft chatter of arguing over lights went on in the background. It was cinematic, it was sombre, it was a really epilogue feeling. What you have to go through before it ends, so that your longing turns to gladness that it happened. I thought of the many times I had the same feeling, somewhat in this order: when Neo and Trinity fly over the clouds in The Matrix, when Samurai Jack returns to the past, loses Ashi, but finds the ladybug and hope, sitting with Chris in the large playground in downtown Chicago, the epilogue of Witcher 1, Odysseus nearing the end of his journey (well, odyssey) staying on that perfect life island for many years. All this time too, I was thinking about how I used to imagine myself being some random olive farmer on the hills of Greece, cut off from the world but serene and happy. But I couldn’t do it then and I couldn’t do it now, I’m too restless, and there are things to be done still. It’s exactly what it is with epilogues too - the credits roll, but the characters always move on, they always do something after glimpsing the sun (as in the Matrix), the things that need to be done to keep building a ‘better future’. Some kind of obligation keeps them tethered, but that image of ‘heaven’, of some ‘lovely retirement home in the countryside’ - as this rich guy’s house was - keeps them working till that goal, maybe for their children or people. In fact this bizarre adventure even felt a little religious, as if falling asleep hazily on that car ride was like entering into a dream, and this was a glimpse of a peaceful old life that I would never obtain, at least not now. It was a glimpse of what ‘heaven’(?) looks like but I feel too obligated on earth (i.e. thinking about all the work I should be doing instead of watching the sunset for 2 and a half hours in the country side). The fact that the house wasn’t finished too, in fact added to that perfect epilogue feeling, where people are still building their dream, but there is peace after a conflict - Rwanda’s story itself.

I don’t know if the rest of the journey needs to be said, nor whether this absurdly long narrative/melodrama was necessary. But it was said, and it seems my study abroad, despite being a month from finishing, is reaching its epilogue chapter after a jam-packed, heavy course on Genocide history. Pretty tired trying to speak French and dispelling myths about Asia/Singapore too.