One Sunday Afternoon

I walk onto the bar patio with a pair of half-worn blue jeans and an untucked grey button down. The sun beats down, but a chilly wind in the shade presages a coming storm –the first in months. Two men languidly drink beers in front of me, a third sips a Fanta, is younger than the other two, and holds his forehead in that awkward way of a boy just scolded. He might just be drunk. There is no reason why I should feel pressure but I feel it anyway –the idle tension that builds up in places where people stare at you twenty-four hours a day. I feel like a caged orangutan.
The largest of the three says something quick –I catch only “beer.” My friend translates. He wants to buy me a Mutzig. I sit down. My friend meanders towards the t.v. area. There is a football match on. It’s the reason I’m here but it will not start for another hour –my friend got it wrong, the end result in a place where time is fluid but Premier League matches are not. The man introduces himself. Anastase is a bank manager but not in Congo Nil. I’ve seen him before at District meetings. He reminds me of Corleone, a man with no immediate job but treated like the mayor. He buys me two beers. The other mumbles. I think his name is Claude. He works for a bank near Sur, a town an hour and a half west down into the valley. He owns a moto. The third is tepid company and talks in that demure, barely audible mumble internalized by younger Rwandans among men of a higher tax bracket. It’s that same irritating soft, luke warm, uncommitted murmuring that I fight against in my classroom. The boy grunts goodbye and shuffles off. I’m not displeased to see him go.
Two women enter the patio. One catches Anastases’ eye. She’s the taller of the two and wears a white sash gown I see at religious ceremonies. She greets him and the two women take their seats along the balcony booths. Anastase finishes his beer and says goodbye. A few minutes later, he joins her. She’s his wife, Claude tells me.
Claude’s sick. He buys my third beer and a cold citrus Fanta for himself. The waitress brings out a bottle of gin ubiquitous in Rwanda; distilled in Uganda and rough enough to induce gagging just by being in its presence. I look at him. It’s my medicine, he says. We clink glasses.
A woman jogs out of the barroom. She runs like most women here, slightly bent at the waist kicking up her calves –the byproduct of a lifetime spent in ankle length skirts. She’s wearing pale gray sweat pants, a black t-shirt, and a dark chambray jacket. I know her as a waitress here. Claude curves his hand at the palm, palm faced down, and makes an in and out motion. She’s a prostitute, he says.
She’s probably not but I nod disinterestedly. The likelihood she rejected the advances of a gossip is high. In a land where bars are boys clubs, virginity jokes color non-alcoholic drink choices, and even well educated people believe inchoate, pejorative rumors with frightening immediacy anything is possible. I let the comment die.
I finish my beer, buy a fourth, and take a call from my father. Soon the game starts and Claude decides to leave. He’s knocked back a few but he walks with the candor of a man who’s uninterested in such things. I hear the engine start and watch as the soft yellow-white of the motorcycle’s dim headlight disappears into the night, the dark netherworld of an unlit dirt mountain road. I catch the cheers of the crowd as I turn to join the audience.