Diaspoman: Remembering those visiting Sundays way back…

These days, students at boarding secondary schools really do have such a good time. On the visiting Sundays, they are always almost assured of visits from parents and relatives loaded with fried food in form of chips and chicken. How I wish they had tasted our olden days when our old folks visited us all the way from the village. During those days, our parents would come to school loaded with mini sacks of millet flour. The millet flour would be sprayed all over the bags and one would think that the old man had smeared his face with baby powder. They would put the sacks of millet flour on their heads and march on for miles. By the time they arrived at school, their hair and face would be covered in white and grey powder. Well! This kind of affection went on even during the mid 90s when we had just arrived in Kigali. This love and affection was not for us this time. Instead, it was for our nephews and nieces who were in and around the Kigali boarding schools. I cannot forget when a distant male relative of ours boarded a bus from Mutara to visit his daughter at school here in Kigali. I remember it vividly. It was June 1996. The old man carried a calabash of cow ghee for his 15 year old daughter. It was a Saturday evening when the Mzee came to our house in Kiyovu of the poor. I had spent the day at home while Aggrey had dashed to the market. I then expressed my happiness to Mzee by buying him two quick bottles of Primus. Mzee then unfolded his polythene bag to reveal the ghee that he had brought for his daughter. Suddenly, the whole room got filled with a powerful smell, followed by a buzz of houseflies. Mzee sat back with a wry smile to show how satisfied he was with his consignment. We agreed to retire so that we could be fresh for the visiting day. The next day, Aggrey, Mzee and I left the house with our cow ghee. The old man seemed excited about visiting his daughter who was at secondary school. Since we did not own any cars during those mid 90s, we decided to use the natural RAV-2s. Our RAV-2s took us up to the Payage stage where we boarded the twegyerane. The taxi dropped us at the nearest bus stage. We left a host of on-looking passengers wondering where that powerful smell of cow ghee was coming from. Off we walked for 30 Minutes on the dusty road to the school. Students were already assembled in anticipation for visitors. I was the first to spot Mzee’s daughter. What surprised me is that instead of running towards us, she just made a quick Usain Bolt U-turn and sprinted away back to her dormitory! Wow! What was happening really? Sorry, one of her friends told us the reason the young girl fled was because we drove in with a RAV 2 instead of the RAV 4. Peer pressure would be intolerable for her if she received visitors who had travelled on foot and not in a 4 wheel cruiser! We had to fabricate a good lie for Mzee. We told him that his daughter had gone to Kibuye with classmates for a geography fieldwork. Mzee had no choice but to leave the cow ghee with us. We thanked him and dispatched him back to Mutara. As soon as Mzee boarded the Mutara bound taxi, we quickly collected the ghee and dumped it at the nearest rubbish heap. We promised ourselves that the next time Mzee came over for a visiting Sunday, we would borrow a friend’s car – if there was any! diaspoman@yahoo.com