Made a friend!

11/7/09 First time walking into "town" by myself. I loaded up my backpack with my laptop and camera and flash drive with the intention of using an internet café or some wireless at a hotel. I began the 45-minute trek with a delighted certainty that soon I'd have a trail of small followers. Somewhat to my dismay, I only ended up with one very brief, but quite large, group of young'uns following me. I waved and "Bonjour"d or "Mwiriwe"d to everyone, and waved especially fanatically to the children, who were always brimming with giggles and "Muzungu! Muzungu!"s. But most of the kiddos did not latch on and trail behind. Except at this one house, there were like 15 children playing something, and they all started following me after I greeted them. But this man walking a bit in front of me turned around and yelled something at them in Kinyarwanda. I'm assuming he was telling them that I didn't want them following me, because shortly thereafter they all dispersed. Bummer. Oh well, next time.
Well, I continued on my way and eventually a guy about my age struck up a nice French conversation with me! I had a hard time understanding what he was saying, but he actually spoke pretty good English, so he'd insert the English word whenever I was clueless. He assumed I was Italian for some reason, probably my accent I guess. And it turns out he was an Animator (like a junior camp counselor) at Patronage (a 'vacation bible school' that we're putting on next week) for the past 2 years. He said he'd be back again this year – yay for making a friend that I might see again! Well, he ended up walking me all the way to the internet café, which was at least another half-hour away. I'm sooooo glad he did because I would not have found the place on my own. It was jammed in this building with about 6 other shops, and it was up on the second floor, and even if I would have found the right place, it was not what I was expecting. I figured I'd be going to a café, a coffee shop, where I could whip out my computer and use their wireless. Well, there is no coffee, just a dozen large, antiquated, semi-private desktop computers jammed into a small room. I wouldn't have known what to do – pay first? Just sit down and start working and pay later? Plus, it turns out that this little place had no connection (see, I wouldn't have known to ask if they've got connectivity. And when the cashier would have told me that they don't, I likely would not have understood and would have just smiled and continued to try to connect while looking stupid. Yes.) So, Amiral walked me to another café just down the road. This one looked the same, and had a connection. And again fortunately for me he took care of the entire transaction – talked to the cashier, asked me how many minutes I wanted to pay for (its $0.20 USD for 15 minutes), handed my money to the cashier, and directed me where to sit. Then, he proceeds to sit down at a nearby computer and check his own email! At this point I'm like . . . nuh uh…you're not gonna sit here till I'm done are you? Its gonna be a long time, and didn't you have something you were going to do today? I'm pretty sure you weren't planning on coming here…You just went half an hour out of your way being insanely kind and hospitable – you've done enough! But he did some computing for another half hour and then finally parted after I gave him tons of thanks. What a nice guy!