St. Patrick’s Day.

Le 17  mars   In the United States, everyone is some percent Irish. At least it feels that way.

In Rwanda, everyone is Rwandan. Or, if they are not originally from Rwanda, they may be from the Congo or Belgium or France or – who knows, maybe even Argentina.

Needless to say, I was not expecting to be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day this year.

And then I got a call yesterday from Kyle, my American friend doing service in Kigali. His cousin and her friend are in Rwanda and the three would be passing through Gisenyi on Thursday.

“Kyle, don’t you know that’s St. Patrick’s Day?”

“Absolutely, I do.”

So I asked Sr. Gisele if I could meet up with my American friends in town for a bit after I finished my work – no problem. In the midst of hurrying through my tasks, I got a text: “Oh, and I found green food coloring.”

When I met up with my three fellow Americans, they’d already created quite a tizzy for their waitress. She had no idea what they were putting into their beer or why. St. Patrick’s Day isn’t known around here and the whole green beer thing is hard to explain.

A bit later after a change of locale, some brochette and bananas, a few friends came to join us.

“WAIT wait wait! Hold on…” And in went the food coloring into the unsuspecting Rwandan’s drink.

So we had to explain to our Rwandan friends and our waitress who didn’t know a word of French, English or even Kinyarwanda (which Kyle has been picking up like a champ), so she was completely befuddled by our peculiar actions. She was probably thinking, what strange people, those Americans.

I was going to let St. Patrick’s Day pass unsaid this year, besides my green sandals and necklace to celebrate, but that’s not what was meant to be. God’s Irish, you know.