over the piney woods

I drove over the mountains, through the green and the blue, and onto the flat lands beyond. The trees are evergreens, but the brush beneath them is changing color up there in the hills. Yellow and orange shown out from under the trees. It's the first time I've followed that road in daylight, and I was alone. One curve was so exactly like a curve in Rwanda that in both directions I thought, "They are reusing the scenery again," but then I passed around it and found myself facing more piney woods instead of the first glimpses of Lake Kivu between the hills.

I drive a car so rarely that I'm beginning to be nervous behind the wheel. I, who used to know my Prado inside and out, and feel so confident behind the wheel that I would pass on blind corners (okay, everyone does that in Rwanda) and dart through little spaces (okay, that, too). I forget about speed limits, now, and the need to check mirrors all the time. I used to love driving: the steering, the passing, the speed. Now I just want to get there and to get out.

S.'s car is old, and it has no power steering. After seven hours driving it, almost seven hours continuously, my shoulders ached, and my golf-elbows are still screaming. My right foot hurts. I really do not want to go back to owning a car, I decided, as I paid another $22 to fill up the gas tank. I was delighted, this morning, to get on the bus and sit down and daydream as we crossed the bridge in the morning light.