TIA (Thanksgiving In Africa)

7:00am: Met at the starting line for the 1st Annual Kigali Turkey Trot 5k Fun Run/Walk benefiting our longing for some familiar Thanksgiving tradition. The air was cool and the sun was conveniently hidden behind the early morning clouds, providing the perfect running conditions. I really kicked it into overdrive for the last 150 yards or so. I passed two people like they were standing still, but as I neared the finish line, I could hear the approaching footsteps of the very petite 7th grade girl that I left breathing my exhaust. Not good. There was a crowd of probably forty people at the finish line who saw this girl catch up and pass me just before I crossed the finish line. I blame loss on my bad knee and the fact that I started my final push too soon. But do I regret it? Not in this life. As the man himself, Steve Prefontaine said, "I don't just go out there and run. I like to give people watching something exciting." In that case, mission accomplished.

I ended up with a time of 38:13, which does seem a little high for one who survived the militant off-season regime of Coach Les Johnson during my Junior High football playing days. It turns out that the course was actually 6.5k, which doesn't make my time a lot better, but it is a bit redeeming, considering the fact that I've run twice in the past five months and Kigali is about a mile above sea level.

The event was organized by a couple of people in our office, and around thirty people participated, all Americans from FH and some students and faculty from the international school that shares our office space. There were plenty of spectators throughout the race, but they were mostly banana salesmen and people tending roadside gardens with babies strapped to their backs. Not your typical long-distance fans, but the jeers and cheers were appreciated all the same.

11:00am: Rode with two over-packed carloads of Americans to Circle Sportiff, a sports complex in Kigali with a relatively nice soccer field, to help ease the jonesing for american football by playing some ourselves. We met some other Americans stationed in Kigali and had a grand 'ol time. For all you skeptics of the far-reaching capacity of the Aggie network, I met my first Ol' Ag in Rwanda, Jamie class of '04, and talk immediately went to the disappointment of the Aggies' season and the utter inability of Fran to coach the team. I guess someone heard us...

5:00pm: Arrived at the American Club with Jen & Seng, where we joined at least 150 other Americans for a delicious Thanksgiving meal, complete with turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, brown gravy and pumpkin pie. It was phenomenal. Jamie sat at our table, along with some other Americans we've met and gotten to know over the past couple months, and we talked a lot about the Aggie Spirit, the die-hard dedication of being a Boston Red Sox fan, and about the awesomeness of Texas. It definitely made me proud to be an American.

That pretty much sums up my Thanksgiving day. It was the most tiring Thanksgiving I've ever had, as I never had run in a Turkey Trot or played an really intense game of football (aside from those throw-arounds on the #-th green in the backyard of Aunt Carmel's house) on Thanksgiving. In some ways, it was a new experience of American culture for me. And it only took 23 years and 8,000 miles.

My Newest Companion

I forgot to mention that I also found a small coffee press while venturing around Kampala. I am thoroughly pleased, and I've used it no less than thrice daily since my return from Uganda.

I can get a 1/2 kilo (about 1.1 lbs) of delicious, Rwandan coffee grounds for about $5. At Starbucks in the USA a similar product would cost no less than $12, but as it turns out, I'm living just down the street (in a sense) from the farms that grow the coffee I'm drinking. How's that for an incentive to export?

Sometimes I try to make sense of what comes over me when I get to drink good coffee here. I don't think I realized my dependence on coffee until this week when I finally had unlimited access to it. Maybe I'm just trying to make up for lost time, but I really drank an exorbitant amount of coffee last week. I'm hoping that this week will bring a bit more equilibrium in my consumption.