I am tired in the morning, but I wake up early and as I can’t sleep anymore anyway, I start packing my things together. It doesn’t take me long. The sun is shining and one last time, I sit down in front of the house. Emmanuel gets up, but he leaves the house. Gabi prepares the morning tea and I take breakfast. Beatrice wakes up as well. She is probably more tired than I am. I help Gabi cook our lunch, peel banana and then just sit on the low wall and watch her washing the dishes.
After lunch, Beatrice and I go for a walk. I want to buy pepper and maybe we will find a CD with some Rwandan music. It is the last time I walk along these streets. We walk up to Kisimenti, but can’t find a shop for CDs. Some guys send us back to the junction to Kabeza. We are both tired and take a motorbike to that junction. There is a tiny shop that sells videos. Now we find out that they also burn music on CDs and I make them put together two CDs for me. One with popular music from Rwanda and a second one with religious songs. I wanted to have that kind of songs they were playing in the bus on our trip back from Rubavu, but either they don’t have that or they don’t know what I mean exactly. It doesn’t really matter. I get my two CDs and now it is time to go home to get ready. Leon has arranged a driver for me. Theonest promised to take me, but now for some reason he said he is not taking me to the airport. Somebody else will pick me at 6pm. Beatrice doesn’t want to walk anymore, so we take a bus to the station closest to her house. It is a big bus, where people stand in the aisle and we are squeezed together. I would have preferred to walk and probably it would have been faster as well. There are discussions at the door and it takes long until the driver finally starts the engine.
The SNV driver arrives on time to pick me up at the house. Fiston has come and I say goodbye to him. Beatrice, Emmanuel and even Gabi will come to the airport with me. It is not far to the airport from the house and the ride appears much shorter to me than I remember from my arrival. Walking to the terminal, Beatrice takes more picture of me, Emmanuel and Gabi and the bags. I am getting a little bit impatient now, especially when I see how many people are gathered at the entrance to the check-in hall. Do they all want to go in there? The number is deceptive. Only those with a ticket can enter, which means that family and friends are gathered around the entrance as well, but they are not queueing. My host family follows me to the entrance and here I have to say goodbye. Everything goes very fast now. Beatrice has already said her big thank you at home. Now all that is left is one last hug and ‘Good bye’ - ‘Murabeho’. I prefer it that way. The lady who checks my papers accepts the receipt with the flight confirmation that I give her instead of the real ticket. Maybe she doesn’t really understand what it is, but I don’t have anything else to give her anyway. I enter the check-in hall and queue for my bags to be checked. In front of me a slim man with long beautiful dreadlocks is waiting. He has a handsome face and sparkling earrings. Let’s give him the name Bob. There is no problem with my luggage and I proceed to the next queue until somebody asks if I am flying to Brussels. If not, I have to queue somewhere else. Bob is going to Amsterdam as well and I follow him to the correct check-in desk. The queue here is much shorter. An officer approaches me. They mixed up some sheets of paper when they were checking my papers and gave me the wrong one. I take my own printout and return what they had given me. Bob laughs. I get my ticket and move on to the immigration desk. I have to fill in a departure card. The immigration officer is friendly. He says Goodbye in German when he sees my nationality and I answer in Kinyarwanda. One last smile. There is one room as waiting area for all four departure gates and the room is crowded. A guy next to me sees my passport and addresses me in German. If I was here for holidays. I answer very shortly. I am not ready to speak German yet. I have lost Bob out of my sight during check-in, but now he takes a seat not far to me. We don’t have to wait for a long time. First, the passengers going to Brussels leave and then the flight to Amsterdam is called. I follow Bob out of the building, across the field to the aircraft. We enter the aircraft, one after the other, but it would have been too good to get seats next to each other. My spot is next to a big American man from North Carolina while Bob proceeds to the back of the plane. Too bad. I look out of the window. It is already dark. Suddenly I realise what is going on. I am leaving Kigali. I am leaving Rwanda. I didn’t even take a last breath of African air. I was so fixated on Bob that I simply forgot. Now it is too late. I brush away the thought of going back to the plane’s door.
I close my eyes. When I open them again, I think we are already in the air because I can see the small lights of the city. It takes some moments until I realise that we are still on the ground, but it looks as if the plane was in the air already because we are on a hill. Then we depart. I am so tired that I sleep a little bit, but I am interrupted by drinks and snacks that are distributed. We fly through bad turbulences that make the babies on board cry. The plane drops and a small girl screams. Someone close to me cheers. The first stop is at Entebbe in Uganda, where some passengers leave and new passengers enter. I watch how cargo is unloaded and new cargo is stored in the plane’s stomach. The plane is refuelled, the cabins cleaned and then the new passengers take their seats and we depart.
The night is clear and the sky full of starts, but I can’t watch them for a long time. It looks as if we were not moving. I can’t see anything on the ground. I want to sleep more, but I am too uncomfortable in my seat. Time passes slowly and I follow the flight on the screens. The American guy next to me tries to talk to me and find out what I did in Rwanda. I answer his questions, because I don’t want to be impolite, knowing that he is my neighbour for the next eight hours, but he probably notices that I am not eager to have a conversation and stops asking. He tries to start a conversation with a lady on his other side who is looking at pictures on her laptop, but she is not very responsive either. He watches a movie and then sleeps. Suddenly I think the sun is rising. Isn’t it way too early for that? Then I understand. It is lights from cities down there that shine on the clouds. That is what light pollution means. We have reached Italy and when the cloud cover breaks, I can see how the cities spread out on the ground. It looks very different to Africa from above. We follow the coastline. In the North of Italy, we cross big gatherings of clouds. Not far from us, the clouds suddenly light up in bright whiteness. There must be a thunderstorm. I watch how the lightnings illuminates the dense clouds every few seconds, until we have passed the storm. Slowly, the sun really rises now. Europe is crossed and we reach Amsterdam ahead of schedule. I see Bob as I leave the plane and he looks at me, but he is at the back and I have to hurry to my connection flight. It is is actually quite far to that gate, but I arrive on time, shortly before boarding time. The plane is rather empty and I have a complete row to myself. On the other side of the aisle are a brother and a sister, I guess from Kenya. The boy has a hairdo similar to that of Chameleone.
In less than an hour we arrive in Stuttgart. The bags arrive quickly as well. As I want to leave the baggage hall, a guy from customs takes me to the side. I see that they picked the two African siblings, too. Where do I come from? What did I do in Rwanda? Do I carry anything from someone else with me? Did I bring drugs? This is ridiculous, but I answer his questions. I don’t ask if he considers coffee as a drug and he lets me go. I am back in Stuttgart, at home.
