A Praire Home Companion

It's Saturday night and the traffic-devoid miles from departure point to destination seem to elongate from 20 to unfathomable. Where have I been? The church gymnasium playing basketball, volleyball, roller hockey, or some other potluck-calorie eradicating activity. Number of casualties? Roller hockey: everyone sans spectators on a good day, everyone on a bad one. As I relax in my seat, I hear Garrison Keillor's soothing monotonous mutterings, quite able to subdue an ADHD 3-year old far better than a car seat. Yet the stories uttered and comedy cracked entertain the adult in charge of piloting our petrol steed. Terminus? A certain mundane chestnut-complexion sofa perched in front of a "Red Green Show" enabled television. A hillbilly sitcom which should be catalogued as "the source of bodged extravagance boggling the field of engineering with innovation through reinvigoration of absolute rubbish." But more than humor of the show are the overtones of a subculture struggling to stand above the scorns of society. Yes, I mean those back-country hicks accused of crimes against humanity including the defilement of the American dialect.

This past Sunday, like the Sunday before it, was a feasting day. Jovial celebrations, the local equivalent of a community-wide bar-b-grill, highlighted the holiday that occurred the previous day (on both occasions). After a suitable session of gorging, orators thanked the benefactors, and the talented children proclaimed their satisfaction in the best way they know: singing and dancing. What better way to empty the abdomen in preparation for another round of gluttony? But time passes and the night settles. Worship and peace. The 1.5 km walk back to my dwelling in the eerily silent darkness strikes me as familiar. The only noises are the chirping of crickets, my feet on the path, and Harry Gregson-Williams emanating from my iPod. And yet this four-song stroll feels so much longer no matter how frantic or idyllic the pace. I'm not overwhelmed with fears of being mauled by a ravenous creature. But I amble in solitude, quite unlike the last few hours of pandemonium. As Captain Ramius said, "Now they will tremble at the sound of our silence." The quietness is more deafening than an anechoic chamber can damp out, but only because I am between a rock and a hard place, between unreserved social immersion and isolation. My hammock patiently awaits my return, and it welcomes better than any embroidered doormat or wreath. Despite being here only a month, this is becoming quite familiar and will, in all likelihood, happen finitely many times again.

In my hammock, I realize it's a weekend evening not so different from my Saturday nights of yore. First came the eating, then the activities with a mix of friends and family and strangers, followed by the travel, and finally the comfort. The comfort of a well-known place, familiar feeling of a venue to put my feet, the warmth of a hot beverage on a cool night. Here resides a people fairly separated from technology and quite content to be so. They are bombarded with supplications to "become civilized" and "part of the world." Their identity comes not from what they do but who they are. They are one people who have overcome a brutal past (both individually [one of the orphans at the age of 9 literally dug his mother's grave because nobody else would] and as a nation [an event which brought the first generation of orphans to L'Esperance]) to stand or even dance.

Do I have Praire Home Companion? Prairies and mountains are more or less mutually exclusive. Ergo, I have no prairie. Do I have a home? Yes, yes I do. Do I know where it is? Yes. Is it here? Not quite yet, but I can sense that it comes ever so slowly, like the Christmas packages sent via snail mail (which still haven't arrived and probably won't for another month). Do I have a companion? Yes. Sometimes the thought is more realistic than this keyboard upon which I type, other times I maintain the far side of Charon is a parsec closer. Here in Rwanda, I see a pressured culture flourishing under the aegis of hope, under which I also find relief and my prairie-less home companion.