Characters of Nzige town

Ok so calling it a town is a bit of a stretch but it sounds more poetic. There are a number of people I’m starting to encounter on a regular basis on my walks to school and as I go about daily life. Some of them adorable, some of them a little scary and some of them very worldly wise. My first memorable character is the ‘woman carrying a big pot on her head who always stares at me but never says hello back’. She is memorable for that precise reason as pretty much everyone will greet me back. But one day she will, I’m sure of it. I see it as my personal mission to get her to slip up and accidentally greet me. We shall see...

Another memorable character is the ’little boy in the stripy t-shirt’. By far my favourite child in Nzige, he is always playing in the mud on my dirt track whenever I walk home from the TTC. Whenever he sees me he stops whatever he is doing, runs towards me arms outstretched and gives my legs a big bear hug. Every time I see him he banishes my frustrations. He never follows me or shouts muzungu, all he wants is a hug!

The sisters are a memorable bunch because of their mustard attire and crosses. They are always very smiley and probably the friendliest greeters on the dirt track. A couple of them came to my resource centre yesterday for a look around. They were very impressed by my Kinyarwanda rice sacks and one of them tried to run off with my P1 English textbook but I caught her just in time.

The wheelbarrow boys on market day. Every Tuesday morning I’ll see them on their way to the market, their wheelbarrows piled high with tomatoes. They are memorable because they are normally in a hurry, a rare thing in Nzige as usually I am the only person who ever walks at speed. For a place dubbed ‘the country in a hurry’ I very rarely see anyone in a hurry in Nzige. It is so rare it makes me stop and stare!

The moto drivers. Most of them know me by name by now. The moto drivers at Kabuga (where I have to change from a bus to a moto to get to my village) will spot me before I’ve even got off the bus, grab my hand and literally plonk me on their moto. They all know where I live and take me exactly to my door, regardless of whether that is where I want to go or not.

Deary me, all these characters and no names, not that I would put them on here. However I do think its about time I tried to learn some more, especially my little friend in the stripy t-shirt. Its just that they say their names so fast and they say there first name after they have said their incredibly long and unpronounceable Kinyarwanda name. Excuses, excuses....