To squeeze out every single drop

Weekends in Butare are actually some of the best and like everywhere else money is very essential to make them even much more fun. This time I was very fortunate for my wallet happened to be smiling. A couple of the red ones was enough to give me the idea of hanging out rather than going in my room and have a boring early sleep on a Saturday. To my surprise the campus canteen was not crowded like the other week at Mikes’ album launch where I had to stand (for there were no free seats left). I grabbed a chair in a corner sat and ordered the most legal drink. I was alone but it didn’t take long to get company. Some big guy came and took a seat next to me, ordered his drink and without a word started drinking. He seemed to be calm and not a talkative kind of a person. So we sat there and watched life passing by. I don’t remember who started the conversation, but we had very good and fruitful talk. Of cause we were talking about women. But this time in a different way, honestly in a way I was not expecting. The big guy comes up with a story of a certain girl who is currently studying in campus. I thought the guy was just going to bore me with his very successful relationship that he is into with this girl or worse a dying one because last week another guy almost made my evening a nightmare, telling me of how he got dumped. Thank God, for I do not really know where the idea came from, but I just told him that he has got a very serious problem and it would be wiser not to think about it or talk about it, but just drink about it. The guy just did as I had told him and I was about tell this one the same thing but something stopped me from giving him my ridiculous advice. The way the guy’s face lightened up when he was just about to tell me his story just meant he was just about to share with me some good story. It was about a girl whose background is one of those that makes one feel a lot better about his or her own. She’s currently an evening student, smart and beautiful actually very pretty for I happened to cross her path sometime back but at the time I did not know anything about her. She was employed a couple of years ago at a certain cleaning company. She used to clean toilets in the morning of either the girl’s hostels commonly known as Viet or others within town. And believe me it is hard to believe she ever did this kind of job. It takes one to have a goal and not just of any kind but one of those long-range goals that keeps one from being frustrated by those short-range failures to endure such a job. Well, she did for she had one. She pursued her goal and registered at the National University of Rwanda and as any other working student she got a discount on the tuition fee payment. This is a very good policy that the National University of Rwanda has, for it helps a lot of its working students complete their studies. This young lady could wake up early go to her daily work which was cleaning halls, classes, bathrooms, toilets etcetera and in the evening go for lectures. Even though it is said that:” you can’t do all that you are capable of doing. However if you don’t stay focused, you end up not doing much to talk about” she did not just stop at doing the cleanings and going to school but she also did campus driving school and got a driving license. She’s currently chauffeuring a staff member and no longer cleaning toilets. When my friend was telling me this true story I just realized how unthoughtful it is to wait for conditions to improve before one starts studying, saving for a dream project, helping others and so on and how ridiculously people fail to work hard because, in their conceit, they imagine they will succeed without ever making an effort. Most people believe that they will wake up some day and find themselves rich. Actually, they’ve got it half right, because eventually they do wake up. And this morning when I saw her driving to work I just knew that my living hero is not far from me, an inch for she is right here and I mean right there. Contact: muvunyiv@yahoo.com