“So…you’re white too?” “Yeah…” “Huh. Me too.” “Yeah…”

I went to an international food fair at the U.S. ambassador’s residence today. I didn’t meet the ambassador,and I stupidly did not take advantage of the use-the-restroom excuse to see a part of the house. But the grass was really nice.

There were eight or ten tents, a la a New York City street fair, offering cuisine from around the world. The food was serious: the Russians made five or six dishes, brewed two special drinks, kept trying to lop more on your plate. The Canadians had maple fudge. That’s right. Maple fudge. A big block of powdered sugar and butter with real maple syrup swirled in. (My response was so positive that a woman assumed I was Canadian–and, like the other Canadians I met that day, forgave me for my citizenship even before I had a chance to apologize for it, which somehow made me feel understood.)

There were Belgian waffles. Dutch gouda. Hamburgers and brownies (which I lusted after not at all, following my own miraculous victory baking some severely good brownies in a pot meant for boiling pasta, in an oven I had to be shown, like a child, how to work.) Crepes. Caviar. (Caviar. Which, no matter how exactly right it is, I think must inevitably taste strange in Kigali.)

And somehow, all I wanted was the cassava leaves and ground nut stew from Burkina Faso, hoping it might taste as good as it did in Sierra Leone. Something about the heat of the day, the heaviness of a waffle, the richness of a piece of fudge (that I did indulge)…

The scene reminded me of a suburban block party, transplanted–and, of course, much more diverse. That should’ve made it feel familiar, but it somehow made the whole thing seem more strange. What were we all doing here, anyway? Working? Biding our time? Having an “adventure”? Running away from something or someone? Or toward?

And then there’s the whole idea of what you do at these things. The number of gatherings I’ve been to where the crowd has almost nothing to hold it together is pretty high at this point in my life; go through enough degree programs, and you get good at the “welcome to our school”/”So what major/concentration are you?” social.

No one really wants to do the, “So what do you do in Kigali?” conversation again–I met a woman who’s been having that conversation for eight years–but that’s what you have to do, when you’re strangers. And sometimes, once you’ve done that, there’s just nothing left. Except for the fact that you’re white. And he’s white. So there must be…something still to say?

Sometimes. And sometimes…not.

I’ve been avoiding the expat scene*, for reasons I don’t entirely know and which are probably lame. Lame because a girl needs some friends. Lame because I met some really interesting people today. And lame because there is something nice about a conversation that transpires in a familiar cultural context. You can lapse without thinking into sarcasm, be oblivious to non-verbals, let down the guard a little bit. It’s more than comfort: There is some weird, immediate trust between people who don’t belong in the place where they stand.

But it’s a trust I don’t trust. It just doesn’t make sense to me; shouldn’t there be more between a pair of people than a shared sense of alienation? And a desire to consume things with more creamy fat in them than we can find on an ordinary day in Kigali?

Then again, I never really got over the fear and confusion that manifested itself in my earlier days as shyness, and people, in general, often don’t make sense to me. Maybe these are actually exactly the things we should have in common. I mean, my best friends all wedged their way into my heart after countless conversations, over a few too many pints of Ben & Jerry’s, about things that confused us.

So maybe eating maple fudge, and atoning for being American, is not such a bad start.

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* note without which I would feel irresponsible: If you think about ‘expat scene’ from the perspective of Rwandans, it’s got way more than white people in it. Not to mention that every American expat is not necessarily white. Also, there were way more than white people at this little food fair–there were, in fact, quite a number of Rwandans (one of them a damn fine guitar player). And the awkward conversation knows no cultural or national boundaries, of course. It’s just that my awkward conversations today happened pretty much with white people.

Also, somewhere in here, you laughed. So you’ll forgive me for glossing over the sociological nuances of the group my humbled homeland calls “resident aliens” for the sake of a good (and still true) little story.