Of Bucket Showers and Nightlife

Uraho,

I realized today that I hadn’t mentioned one of my favorite aspects of life in Rwanda (and I would assume Uganda), and that is the bucket shower. You may think I am kidding, but you would be sorely mistaken. The bucket shower is awesome. Let me explain. In my house here, there is a room with a bare light bulb, drain, clothes rack, and chair. On the chair rests what resembles a plastic trashcan, and may very well be; this is the bucket aspect of the bucket shower. When I rise every morning, and go outside to brush my teeth, the house boy (basically a servant), Celestin, brings me a jerry can or two of really hot water. I then get two jerry cans of cold water from the large water reservoir in our house and head to the aforementioned room

Once inside, I mix the hot and cold water in the bucket until I get my perfect temperature. Then, using a hard plastic cup I douse myself in water and soap up. It’s amazing how small an amount of water you actually need to clean yourself. I normally end up with half of the bucket left that I use to splash on the floor to clean up any soap or shampoo. It’s an impressively efficient way to bathe and really wakes you up in the morning. Who knows, I might try to bring the bucket shower back with me to Bowdoin.

Now for the second part of the title, the nightlife! So during the week Rwandans seem to wake up around 5:30-6:30 am and get to bed by 9 or 10 p.m. And last weekend due to the funeral of my host grandmother, my family didn’t do any weekendy things. But this weekend… wow. So I spent Friday night with most of the people in my SIT group at a café and a restaurant, pretty low key. But Saturday night was a whole ‘nother story. So two of my host cousins (out of the estimated 30 I have met), Allie and Aisha, asked me to join them on Saturday to go to a club, Club Cadillac. I agreed go when they asked me last weekend. Saturday rolled around and plans started being made. We would have dinner at 10 p.m., go out at 1 a.m. Sunday morning and get back at 8 a.m. WHAT?! That’s absurd. So I texted some of my SIT friends and asked them if they wanted to take one for the team and join me in this endeavor. I received a number of “are you crazy!”s. Great.

So 8 p.m. rolls around and my host brother Ashiraf asks me if I want to go to his friend’s party before we head out at 1. I figured why the heck not, it’s gonna be a long night anyway. So we headed to the other side of Kigali and met his friend Boris. After heading down some side-alleys we came to a house and went in and lo and behold… two fellow SIT muzungus, Caitlyn and Dani, who had come with their host siblings! Wonderful. We then signed our names onto an invitation to a party and headed out. After a brief walk past the US Embassy and SIT headquarters we reached Danico Villa. We showed our invite and walked in, were seated and then the madness began.

It turns out that we were at the birthday party of Rwanda’s premier producer and DJ, DJ Bob. Yes, that’s right, we were at DJ Bob’s party, jealous? You should be. Dani, Caitlyn, Ashiraf, Boris, and four other Rwandan friends and myself sat around a table and for the next two hours watched the arrival of DJ Bob to his party, followed by a long line of artists that DJ Bob had discovered and made famous in Rwanda who all thanked the man for what he had done. We were served free food and drinks, awesome. Us Muzungus really had no reason at all to be there but when DJ Bob made his rounds he greeted us with a handshake and a smile. It turns out that his ex-girlfriend just happened to be Caitlyn’s host sister. Sweet.

Well, after the introductions and praising the music started and for the next seven hours it kept on going. Turns out that Allie and Aisha decided to stay in so instead of going to Club Cadillac, we stayed at DJ Bob’s birthday all night… til 4:30 a.m. We met a horde of incredibly friendly Rwandans, including a wonderful man named Innocent who seemed to be some sort of organizer for the birthday boy. Innocent talked to us all night and was very interested in Dani, Caitlyn and I had to save her from overly friendly touches a number of times. Innocent even offered to take us camping at Lake Kivu over the next weekend. We nodded our heads and told him we would seriously consider it.

Late in the evening (or early in the morning), after DJ Bob had truly celebrated his birthday he discovered us Muzungus and wanted “pictures with our crew” which turned out to be just us white kids. We were told to look for the pictures the next day on the news. Hmmmm, will do.

We ended up getting home around 5:00 a.m. I slept til 12:30 p.m. on Sunday. Caitlyn, unfortunately for her had to get home at sixish and then had to go to church, where her Dad is a pastor, for six hours! That girl deserves some sleep. Heck of an evening. I’m truly impressed by the Rwandan party stamina, I’m used to the Bowdoin clock and fading by 2 or 3! All in all an interesting experience. Thank you DJ Bob for having a truly fascinating birthday party.

That’s all for me now. I head to Kibuye a town near Lake Kivu and the Rwanda/ Democratic Republic of the Congo border on Wednesday. Should be fun and interesting. I also get to visit the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda soon. This is where they tried some of the genocide perpetrators, again, should be incredibly interesting.

Muzungu currently trying to catch up on sleep thanks to DJ Bob in Kigali, Rwanda.