It’s Wednesday evening, 7:00 p.m. here in Butare, Rwanda. We arrived at our hotel after two days of traveling by plane and bus, with little or no sleep. I’m pretty sure I’m delirious at this point, because I can’t quit laughing. After spending most of two days on a plane, you can imagine what we all smell like. So, we had an hour or so to move into our rooms and shower before dinner. The rooms are quaint, small and each has its own bathroom — a pretty big deal for Rwanda. Being that the room is small, I decided to unpack my suitcase and put my stuff in the armoire. (Please know that I never do this when I travel, because I would rather just pull my stuff out of the bag each time. It saves time and the fear of forgetting something when I leave). But, tonight I felt good about neatly putting away all of my things to leave room so I could walk around the bed. Really, I just wanted sleep, but I thought my other group members would appreciate it if I bathed before dinner. So, I remembered to brush my teeth with bottled water, which felt great! (Those little portable toothbrushes are good to freshen your breath, but just not the same as a good teeth scrubbing!) I was finally ready to get in the shower and then the power went out. I had been warned this happens often, so I just found the handy-dandy flashlight I had already placed by the bed, and went on to the shower (the power was only off for a few minutes).
The front desk had also reminded us to turn on the hot water heater for a few minutes before we needed to use it, so I looked for the knob. As I was doing so, I overheard a discussion in the hallway about my room and one other room that had to be accessed from outside. No problem, they were on it! And, I really didn’t care if I had hot or cool water at this point anyway. So I turned on the faucet — drip, drip, drip. Uh oh. I looked around for a special knob and, finding none, I put my stinky clothes back on and tracked back down stairs to see what the problem might be. Our very kind host came to see for himself and, not being able to fix it, he decided I should change rooms. So a said, “no problem” and began packing. Just as I entered the hall on my way to the new room, it was determined that it was an entire floor issue and that the outside generator was to blame. So, back to my original room to unpack once more. This is when I began to laugh hysterically.
I’m about to head downstairs for dinner, hoping everyone else is stinky like me, and then to bed. Tomorrow we visit one of the villages our church has supported. I can’t wait! More to come tomorrow…