My new house sits on a north-facing slope in a Kimoronko neighbourhood. A wide dirt street leaves the paved road and within a couple of minutes walk I arrive at a lively intersection, small stalls selling cabbages and carrots and bananas, the vendors having visited the large Kimoronko market in the early morning and bought fruit and vegetables that they carry in baskets on their heads to sell in their small shops. You can buy cooking greens at this intersection, you can buy toilet paper and milk and soda and airtime for your mobile phone. There are all sorts of things on dusty shelves, and numerous hair saloons, both for men and women. The moto-taxis wait here for customers.
I turn right onto another bumpy and unpaved road, dusty or muddy depending on the day, and another minute’s walk takes me away from the life of the crossroads and to my gate. The house is nestled in a hillside neighbourhood and the sounds of the neighbourhood have already become part of my daily life. One evening we sit on a small side porch, facing a large mango tree with large dark green leaves that rustle stiffly in the evening breeze, reminding me of the arbutus trees of the north-west coast. In the valley below, a chorus of frogs, making a tinking song and a few creaking crickets. On the next hill, the distant sound of traffic. It is restful, very few vehicles on the dirt road and the occasional sound of people talking on their way home, mostly male voices.
At four in the morning I wake to a deep resonant male voice singing and chanting and praying, apparently right next door. It is beautiful and compelling, but much too early and much too loud. The roosters start early, too, and at six, the sounds of sloshing water as servants at that same house scrub the porch and the car. There are children in the house, who sometimes play in their front yard after school and on the weekend. They are not silent, but they are subdued compared to the raucous sound of after school soccer outside the gates. These kids on the street might be the same ones who yelled ‘musungu, musungu’ (white person) into our yard, and they might be the young siblings of the older boys who hang out all day at what might be a store although I can’t see anything for sale right across the street from us. The lounging boys talk loud and long in Kinyarwanda, and there’s often laughter, especially when girls join them.
The backyards string together here, the home and hangout of the guards and servants and often radios are playing Rwandan country music or Rwandan gospel music or modern pop with too much bass. They are listening to the news, too, but if there’s something important a man in an orange vest walks down the street with a megaphone, as he did on Saturday morning, alternating repeated delivery of his message with a siren like sound. Although the message is entirely lost on us and maybe there’s no message at all.
On a weekend afternoon someone on the hillside is playing traditional wooden flutes and the hollow sounds bring a glimpse of the past. There is distant thunder, but no rain, and the little robin chats with stripes on their heads converse as noisily in their varied conversations. The digital tones of a mobile phone and the ensuing loud one-way conversation.
The weather turns cool, the rain comes and settles in and I go to sleep to the familiar sound of rain on roofs.
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