Yesterday I was waiting for a friend in town, and I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting at Bourbon Coffee just to bide time and read my book. So instead, I sat in the roundabout. It’s a huge roundabout, with a massive but waterless fountain in the middle, and very well kept. One day, I’ll show you a picture.
The thing is, no one sits in the round about. So there’s no way to cross the road, and the passers-by who realized what I was trying to do laughed at me. “It will never be possible,” one told me in French. I laughed and at that very moment, the Kigali rush hour traffic–which is as serious as rush hour traffic almost anywhere, except Manhattan–parted, and I was given the chance to strut my belief in the improbable.
So I holed up behind the fountain with my book, trying to lead the city by example into believing that this space could qualify as something useful and public. I wanted this roundabout could be the Bryant Park of Kigali.
But no one even saw me, I don’t think–the circumference of the thing is massive, and I am a little person.
So the message was lost, but I learned something useful: sitting in the middle of the roundabout, around which all this rush hour traffic rushes, turns out to be the quietest place to be at 5 p.m. in Kigali.
At first I thought, “What is she talking about? What does she mean by roundabout?” Because you couldn’t possibly be talking about the roundabout of a road, and then “oh wait, she is talking about a roundabout in a road!” Awesome. I should try this, we only have two roundabouts in my city, I think I’ll go for the one on the road right in front of my doctor’s office…