Rural Women's Day

Rwanda loves its holidays. This past Monday was Rural Women's Day, and I attended a celebration in the district capitol of Nyakarambi. When my roommate and I arrived the audience was...sparse. It seems somebody did a bad job of advertising and so at the last minute they sent out scouts out to recruit some rural women to...you know...go celebrate being rural women. Nonetheless, once the ceremony got started (one hour after if was scheduled to end) it was actually a lot of fun. There was even a traditional dance performance by some of the local High School kids, I got some video but seeing as the internet here is running only 10kb/second I wouldn't expect to see it on YouTube anytime soon.

For most of the ceremony there was nice weather, that is until the Mayor of Kirehe began his speech. Suddenly a black cloud began racing towards us and the tent we were sitting under began to lurch. One of the local soldiers began calling able men to help hold it up but everyone seemed more interested in saving themselves. I looked over at my roommate who screamed 'Let's get the f*ck out of here!' (he just learned about the 'f-word') and soon I was pushing him as fast as I could run to the car. The scene has descended into chaos and in the background I could hear the mayor begging everyone to just 'remain calm.'

Just then, the tent blew over.