Friends

K, M and D (2.6.12)

Last Monday I met up with two very special people, K and M, who I originally met during a two and a half week humanitarian trip to Kigali Rwanda in the winter of 2006-2007. All three of us now work in some piece of the education field, M in Beijing for the time being with the company he started, and K and I in suburbs of Boston. We met up in Harvard Square and walked over to a little Mexican spot called Boca Grande for burrittos and reminiscing.

I often think about how people come into my life and have a very hard time figuring out what makes them stick. M and I, for instance, had not seen each other in over 5 years prior to meeting up by a T stop thousands of miles away from where we first met at the Che Rose guest house in Kigali. We hadn't even spoken by phone since that time, but there is no doubt in my mind that I will consider him, and most of the people I took that trip with my senior year of college, a true friend. When I think back to my memories of M from Rwanda, they are often very quiet, or very loud. In my loud memory, he was once my shower buddy. I knew that would get your attention.

At the last place we stayed at in Rwanda, there were these open bathrooms with a bunch of shower stalls to use, kind of like a pool house, with lots of centipedes and cockroaches and other buddies, and the faucet water was always freezing. We'd all try not to shower, but it was a hot and humid climate, so after two days, we'd reek, and into the shower we'd need to go. The water was so continously cold that the only way to survive a shower was to put on your game face, walk in your stall of choice, and, upon turning on the water, scream for the entirety of the ordeal. This, with no others "campers" to support you or sound equally as stupid as you, was highly embarrassing. I was lucky that one evening when I really needed to shower, M was also stinky. So instead of being a wimp all on my own, M and I, in different stalls of course, took excuriating showers in a solidarity of screeches.

In quieter times, we visited so many genocide memorial sites, so many mountain vistas, and other achingly beautiful places. M is an absolutely genius photographer, so often times he was behind a lens capturing all of this. He was a shadow of a person letting the real souls of these places come to life. In my quiet memories of M, whenever he wasn't taking pictures, he was looking down, letting it all sink in. Excepting those Rwandans who accompanied us on these trips, it was always hardest to look at M during these times, because out of all of us, he seemed to carry the tragedy with him from each place.

So this makes me stop and think about how M became my friend, and how he remains my friend, having shared a burritto with him in Cambridge and a shower in Kigali. How other people who have known me longer and see me more will never get me like he does. Once you share so much in such a short time, I guess you're just connected.

It makes me wish we all had an M or two in our lives. Someone you don't share a lot in common with. Someone you don't run to with you secrets, or your successes, or your fears. But someone who reminds you how real each moment in life can be, and that we should never take them for granted.

Thanks for being my friend, M.