Fingers crossed!

As if I am not already enough of a spectacle I now have the added bonus of having the worst Laryngitis ever known to man. I can barely even whisper. Naturally I want to curl up in a ball and sleep and drink water until my voice comes back but I can’t because it’s exam time. So I’ve been struggling through review sessions, which I’m really not sure of the benefit of due to my incomprehensibility, but I feel obligated anyways. Big momma (the school bursar) keeps insisting that I need to eat a mixture of raw eggs and lime-juice and I’ll be fine but I think I would rather be sick then ever taste that concoction, much less suffer the stomach consequences of the raw eggs! So now when I walk past all the primary school children and they say ‘Bonjour!’ or ‘Good Morning!’ I croak back some unintelligible word and they fall apart in hysterics and so they start again and on and on until my dignity sinks to levels I never knew possible at the hands of seven year olds. No not really I love those little rascals.

One thing that I think is so weird with this voice issue is everyone whispers now when they talk to me. A new teacher, who I think is pretty creepy, came up to me in the staff room and whispered, “Is your director single?” I answered, “Are you sick as well?” and he whispered back, “No. So is she?” I signaled back that I couldn’t hear him very theatrically and then walked away. I thought he was just being the weirdo that I already think him to be and then I started talking to other people and realizing they were all speaking so softly. I guess it’s kind of sweet in a way.

The director who the teacher was referring to is my director from WorldTeach who came to do a site visit for a couple days. Another awkward encounter in the staff room, one of the younger teachers marched right up to her and exclaimed, “O! Claire’s mother! You are welcome. You are just as beautiful as the pictures!” Jessi is barely thirty and doesn’t look a thing like my mother. Naturally I was mortified and signaled wildly behind her to shut up but he just kept going. She seemed to take it in stride but it made for quite an awkward couple of minutes.

I think the reason I’m so sick is because of my adventures with Jessi on her visit. Nyanza was home to the kings of Rwanda before Rwanda won it’s independence in ’62???? I should know that. Anyway, we went to see the King’s Palace which is really a very interesting reconstruction of the royal huts they lived in up to the early 1900’s. Rwanda really got the shaft with that whole Scramble for Africa, it used to be much bigger. Was that last comment in bad taste? Yves, who was born in Congo, loves to emphasize that he is actually Rwandan but the white people messed up the borders. So it was a nice, enlightening trip but for some reason we hopped on motos to go home without a second thought to the very dark clouds on the horizon. The weather, as I have mentioned, moves SO fast. I got dressed that morning in a tank top and left the umbrella and rain jacket that I always have with me at school in my haste to meet Jessi at the bus. Almost immediately after we got on the motos it started to rain. Not rain like I used to think of it, but the aggressive wall of water that seems to now thrash Nyanza everyday around three in the afternoon. It hurts really badly. I was literally buckled over with my helmet buried in to the back on the driver, praying that he wasn’t doing the same thing. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see the Rwandans packed under the awnings of businesses pointing and laughing, also buckled over but for a different reason. When we finally got back we were soaked to the bone and so frazzled that we both darted down the hill to my house with our helmets still on. We couldn’t hear the drivers screaming at us over the pounding rain so when we reached my porch they were right behind us screaming at us for trying to steal their helmets. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time, well actually not since I went swimming in that puddle on my way to visit Elizabeth. So ya, now I have laryngitis and I’m thinking that’s probably why.

Fingers crossed it’s not Malaria or Typhoid!