Mugged: Revisited

Today I partook in what can only be described as the most pathetic encounter between man and the wild. The space between my bedroom window and the thick concrete wall that surrounds my house is about five feet. While the view of a laundry line, water spicket, and rock pile are simply breathtaking I rarely open the bedroom curtain to take it all in. Today though, I heard a ruckus and I opened my curtain. Seeing nothing I sort of spaced out (I know, so uncharacteristic of me) and sipped my cup of tea. All of a sudden at the bottom of my vision I saw a rat bounce across the concrete and before I could let out a yelp a much more terrifying creature entered the picture. In the little alley between my window and wall an absolutely humungous hawk swept down to grab the rat. Only, just my luck, it didn’t. My initial surprise was evident by the spilled tea down my clean white shirt but then I had the added bonus of witnessing the slightly pathetic scene in front of me. The hawk had gotten its wing caught in the laundry line and was now causing quite a stir, desperately trying to break free. It was like being at the nature museum in 5th grade only it was literally happening in my backyard. Once the hawk caught sight of me gawking in the window, the desperation turned to a sort of angry cry of deep despair. In height, the bird came to at least my waist so there was no way I was getting tangled up trying to help it break free, also there was a rat out there! The house boy who works at the house behind mine heard the commotion and I think thought I was on the verge of death because the cry was so humanlike. So in he burst through the small gate in the wall, literally right in to the hawk. I think the surprise shocked them both so much that the boy ducked and disappeared almost as quickly as the hawk broke free and flapped away. It was the strangest thing. It was over almost as suddenly as it started and all in the space of about a minute.

Thank god he broke free, because turns out Rwanda doesn’t have an animal control and I’m not really in the market for a pet hawk, although they, as well as the crows, commonly land on my tin roof and seem to have athletics competitions with one another which sound like the end of the world on my tin roof. Last night, there was an extreme thunderstorm and the combination of clapping thunder and the deluge of water falling from the sky rocked me awake at two in the morning and kept me up until four. Talk about the end of the world, those storms are by far the most intense I have ever experienced.

My main motivation for blogging today is to address my earlier blog post about being mugged. As Kurera is just starting up, my Mom thought that a blog about muggings in Rwanda probably wasn’t the best publicity. I argue the contrary. I think I have written before that I feel safer in Rwanda than I have ever felt alone in America. I think my shock at the situation should only exemplify the relative security I enjoy on a daily basis. Furthermore, what is a better advertisement for providing an education than experiencing the blatant repercussions of an uneducated youth? By providing fees for students who cannot afford secondary school you are providing a future, a realistic hope for financial and physical security that in a country so often associated with the terrible genocide that occurred only fifteen years ago, is a new and novel idea. That’s enough preaching for me, but please prove me right and don’t let my unfortunate experience deter you from investing in the future of a country with so much development potential. On that note I’ll have a new blog for Kurera up in the next couple of days so make sure you follow that one as well! I won’t be the only author so hopefully it will be updated more regularly than this one!