After I woke up but before I decided that yes, I probably did need to get out of bed to go back to pick up my stuff from the church yard sale, I thought of the waiting room at the Toyota dealership in Kigali. I don't know why. It's not a place where I spent that much time, nor one that I have any need to think about, but suddenly there it was, with its darkened glass and sample sets of tires. It's funny how things come back to you when you don't even need them, when you may never need them again.
When E. came to Rwanda in 2004 to help me out for a few weeks, we were on our way to the Toyota dealership when the baby Land Cruiser's tire deflated. A person in a passing vehicle on the road to the dealership and further to Uganda waved out the window at us, and finally I figured out what he was trying to convey and pulled off to the side of the road.
People gathered, as they do, and I tried to change the tire, with a lot of assistance from the gathered men, in particular, but it was to no avail for an embarrassingly long time. I do know how to change a tire, but there was some complication that I cannot actually remember. Perhaps E. would remember it. I need a key for... something. To unlock the spare? Yes, I think that was it. I could take off the old, deflated tire but I had the wrong set of keys with me, and the spare was locked onto the back of the truck. The key to unlock it was back in Kibuye.
We scratched our heads for a while, and then I left E., on her first day in the country, along the side of the road with the truck and all of our stuff. I hired two bicycle taxis, one for the deflated tire and one for me, and we set off, the tire balanced precariously on the back of the bicycle in front of me, and me balanced precariously sideways on the back of the second bicycle, the mile or two down the road to get the tire repaired at the Toyota dealership.
...
Today, I got up and went back to the yard sale, where I bought still more, an ironing board and a fan and a jewelry box and a stand mixer and a dishrack and a saw and a little box of tiny drawers full of nails and washers and nuts and bolts and screws, and a couple of men from the church threw everything in a trailer and brought it to my house.
I need most of those things. The recipe for the last cake I baked, the night before I left Gone West City, called for "beat[ing] eggs until thickened slightly and lemon colored." Try doing that with a wooden spoon. It takes quite some time, and it does not do well for the golf elbow.
Still, I begin to see the need for a garage.
Not for the future car.
For the (useful) stuff.
...
We drove out of the city to a vineyard on a hill.
"Are those the vines the wine comes from?" J. asked, gesturing outside the tasting room and the proprietor laughed.
"No, those are basically dead. They are just there for show. Our vineyards are further out."
Later, after a girl and her date left, he told us that she's come there with three or four different guys. "This time, she looked at me with a worried look, like she thought I would say something wrong."
We took a bottle of rosé out to the picnic table and ate chunks of baguette with cheese and tomato and roasted peppers and avocado falling out of them.
At the next winery, a man played an accordion and I took M.'s big fancy camera and snapped picture after picture of the blue grapes* and the rows of green vines meeting the darker green of the hills and then of M. singing Edelweiss along with the accordion man and M. and S.K. dancing around in circles.
* M. handed me some grapes from a bunch she got off the ground, telling me how delicious they were, and they looked so much like blueberries that I kept chewing straight into the pit and then making faces and spitting out the whole thing and I thought they just tasted bad until a few minutes later when I remembered that you don't eat the seeds with the grapes, and I ate a few grapes without the seeds. They were delicious.
When E. came to Rwanda in 2004 to help me out for a few weeks, we were on our way to the Toyota dealership when the baby Land Cruiser's tire deflated. A person in a passing vehicle on the road to the dealership and further to Uganda waved out the window at us, and finally I figured out what he was trying to convey and pulled off to the side of the road.
People gathered, as they do, and I tried to change the tire, with a lot of assistance from the gathered men, in particular, but it was to no avail for an embarrassingly long time. I do know how to change a tire, but there was some complication that I cannot actually remember. Perhaps E. would remember it. I need a key for... something. To unlock the spare? Yes, I think that was it. I could take off the old, deflated tire but I had the wrong set of keys with me, and the spare was locked onto the back of the truck. The key to unlock it was back in Kibuye.
We scratched our heads for a while, and then I left E., on her first day in the country, along the side of the road with the truck and all of our stuff. I hired two bicycle taxis, one for the deflated tire and one for me, and we set off, the tire balanced precariously on the back of the bicycle in front of me, and me balanced precariously sideways on the back of the second bicycle, the mile or two down the road to get the tire repaired at the Toyota dealership.
...
Today, I got up and went back to the yard sale, where I bought still more, an ironing board and a fan and a jewelry box and a stand mixer and a dishrack and a saw and a little box of tiny drawers full of nails and washers and nuts and bolts and screws, and a couple of men from the church threw everything in a trailer and brought it to my house.
I need most of those things. The recipe for the last cake I baked, the night before I left Gone West City, called for "beat[ing] eggs until thickened slightly and lemon colored." Try doing that with a wooden spoon. It takes quite some time, and it does not do well for the golf elbow.
Still, I begin to see the need for a garage.
Not for the future car.
For the (useful) stuff.
...
We drove out of the city to a vineyard on a hill.
"Are those the vines the wine comes from?" J. asked, gesturing outside the tasting room and the proprietor laughed.
"No, those are basically dead. They are just there for show. Our vineyards are further out."
Later, after a girl and her date left, he told us that she's come there with three or four different guys. "This time, she looked at me with a worried look, like she thought I would say something wrong."
We took a bottle of rosé out to the picnic table and ate chunks of baguette with cheese and tomato and roasted peppers and avocado falling out of them.
At the next winery, a man played an accordion and I took M.'s big fancy camera and snapped picture after picture of the blue grapes* and the rows of green vines meeting the darker green of the hills and then of M. singing Edelweiss along with the accordion man and M. and S.K. dancing around in circles.
* M. handed me some grapes from a bunch she got off the ground, telling me how delicious they were, and they looked so much like blueberries that I kept chewing straight into the pit and then making faces and spitting out the whole thing and I thought they just tasted bad until a few minutes later when I remembered that you don't eat the seeds with the grapes, and I ate a few grapes without the seeds. They were delicious.
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