A Love Letter

Dear Rwanda,

Baby, I love you, you're the best.  Your president is brilliant, a visionary who is proving the world and history wrong.  When a policeman stops my company's car, it's not to demand a bribe but to check that our seat belts are on.  The soldiers that purposefully walk the streets are polite and say, "Good evening, ma'am" when I pass.  I'm not afraid they'll hassle me or give me a hard time.  When I email someone at the Ministry of Health - Pharmacy Division, he emails me back with the information I need in ten minutes.  In a meeting with the Permanent Secretary of the MOH, she puts two NGO people in their place, is tough as nails, keeps the meeting on track, and ends on time.  When I go to run at the national stadium, the elderly guard asks me what I need and I tell him I'd like to "faire l'exercise".  I'm afraid he'll send me away (it is the national stadium after all), but he breaks into a smile and says, "Of course!  The stadium exists for that - run until you get tired.  Spend the night if you like."  The next week, I go again, but this time there's a game going on.  A different guard says, "No problem, I can keep your bag safe for you.  Feel free to run."  More than an hour later, the game is over and thousands of people have exited the stadium gates.  When I ask the guard for my bag, he retrieves it from inside his own bag and everything is exactly as I left it.  At the bank, I stand in line for no more than two minutes before the teller happily greets me.  I'm in and out in five minutes.

I know I had that small dalliance with Burundi but baby, I swear it meant nothing to me.  It was a one-time weekend thing.  You have no idea how happy I was to be back on your clean, well-lit streets on a sidewalk with working traffic lights.  Where I can go running at night through the local neighborhood and not worry for a second about whether I'll make it home.  There are no barbed wire police checkpoints here, because when the cops say stop, people stop.  They calmly ask for my ID, and would never ask if I'm an Arab.  I don't know why they asked that in Burundi, baby, I really don't.

Sometimes, my love for you scares me.  No one else can compare to you, baby, and what will happen when I have to go out into the world without you?  Say you'll always be mine and won't ever leave me, baby.

Love,
ali