Au revoir and Adieu (Part II)

If you’re wondering what the French title is all about and why it reads ‘Part II’, then you’ve obviously haven’t read the last article I wrote. Well, I don’t have all day so here is the deal; I give you guys who missed the last column a small intro. Okay, here goes; I’ve just been barely squeaking by down in Butare, and it’s with great pleasure that I finally handed in my dissertation a week back. Butare, as anyone who’d been reading the OB for any amount of time knows, wasn’t, and will never be, my cup of tea. It was cold, wet, with one street and full of professors itching to make you repeat. But, like they say in the old song, ‘on every cloud, there is silver lining’. I don’t know just how relevant that saying is to the story line, but I’ve always wanted to use that idiom and this time felt as good as any other. Last week, I’d recounted the events of the first three years; my wonder at the first glimpse of the campus, the shock of finding out that Butare’s premier nightclub, Sombrero, was the size of my father’s living room. The fact that I could barely understand a single word that the French-speaking lecturers spoke (the move to make the abhorrent ‘Anglais’ the medium of instruction was a few years to late to be of help to me) and the fact that I got suspended an entire year because I stood up to some bullying lecturer, who as it happened, was the Dean of the faculty (not a smart move on my part if I may say so). Well, I went back to Butare after a one year forced hiatus with a sense of unease. For, you see, I’d spent a whole year doing nothing other than sleeping, eating, drinking and chasing after skirts; activities that were only interrupted by the fact that I had to do a few ‘biraka’ to finance my activities. So, “just how could I possibly adjust to being a student again”, I pondered. “Would I be able to study?” Well, I got a quick answer to that question…as soon as I found out that I had an exam the next week, I found out that the fear of failing was an instinct stronger than the laziest bone in my body. But trust me on; it wasn’t easy to see the fellows, who used to be your best mates, one class ahead of you while you were forced to cosy up to strange bedfellows. My first instinct was to ignore those ‘small’ boys and girls, but then I remembered one thing; I needed them to like me enough to do my assignments for me. So, the legendary OB charm was unleashed on my poor classmates; they didn’t know what hit them. However, despite my friendliness in class, every Friday I was seen at the Shady Bar (R.I.P…sniff, sniff) along with the Ugly Munkiz, where I’d proceed to get royally drunk; at six in the morning I’d board the bus back to Butare. It was like that Friday…although it cost me a pretty penny in transport charges, like they say in French, Je Regrette Rien (I regret nothing)! But, as the concerned parties know, the Friday night trips to Kigali had to come to an end. Not because I’d suddenly become too poor to afford the transport….but because the city council decided to raze down the Shady Bar (damn them) and henceforth making me and all the boys orphans. Luckily, Sombrero was overtaken by development, and we had a proper nightclub, with all the amenities like lights and an AC, called MeloTwist. It certainly wasn’t a B-Club, but at a thousand francs to enter, I say it was a bargain. But enough of that Butare talk; does anyone have Kigali plot?Because the Bachelor is back to town…and he’s not going anywhere. YEAHHH! Contact: madogz2002@yahoo.ca