Chasing Chaos: My Decade In and Out of Humanitarian Aid by Jessica Alexander Page A

know me. I had scores of new friends! I also noticed that in addition to their salutation they repeated the same phrase, “
Mpa amafranga
.” I imagined it meant something like, “Isn’t this a beautiful Rwandan day?” But when I discovered that it meant “Give me money,” I was deflated and a little heartbroken. These children saw me as a walking ATM, nota friend. Newly cynical, I learned how to say “
Nt amafranga nfite yokuguha
”—I have no money to give you. Within a few days, I was walking home alone.
    Loneliness followed me into the nights. Gloria was often out to dinner, networking and fundraising for her organization, and Lawrence usually worked late, so I was left with Betty who, although lovely, could only communicate silently, through smiles and nods. It was dark by 6 p.m. and without a car, without friends, I had nowhere to go but bed, where I would read and listen to the same twelve CDs again and again. The monotony of those nights was unbearable. The hours passed slowly, like honey dripping off the back of a spoon.
    At the office I would overhear Katrin on the phone making plans for the night—“Yeah, I’ll see you there. Tell Mark to come! I haven’t seen him for ages!” She’d walk out with Susan, reminding me to lock up before I left. I felt right back in seventh grade, when Elise Levine sat me at the unpopular table at her Bat Mitzvah.
    I’d usually eat lunch by myself at a local restaurant down the street from the office. After a few days the Rwandan waitress, a gorgeous, slender, tall young woman who dressed in clothes much more stylish than mine, took pity on my palpable loneliness. She already knew what I was going to order—a Diet Coke and a plate of rice and stew—and would have it prepared for me when I arrived.
    I was so desperate to speak with people that oneafternoon, in a fit of bravery—as if loneliness had suddenly been converted into courage—I approached an expat woman who looked about my age sitting at the table across from me.
    “Hi, I’m Jessica.”
    “I’m Nisha,” she said, looking up from the papers she was reading.
    “Sorry to disturb you, I just moved here and …”
    “It’s hard at first,” she said, smiling.
    I laughed. “Yeah.”
    It turned out Nisha was as friendly as she looked. She smelled of sweet perfume that I got a whiff of every time there was a slight gust of wind. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. She had been here six months working for an NGO, she told me, and lived in a house downtown with her husband.
    “Hey, I’m having a dinner party tomorrow night. Why don’t you come over and I’ll introduce you to a bunch of people?”
    I almost got out of my chair and hugged her.
    “Sure! But, I don’t have a car. I don’t even have a phone!”
    “Well, don’t worry, I can pick you up here after work—I pass right by here on my way home—if you don’t mind coming before the other guests get there. We can cook together!”
    I would have scrubbed her floors if she asked me.
    “Thank you so much! What time should I be here?”
    “How about six?”
    “Perfect. See you then!”
    I almost skipped back to the office, thinking about what I’d wear to my first dinner party, what I should bring, whom I would meet.
    The next evening, Nisha pulled up to the restaurant right on time and I piled into her beat-up Jeep. We arrived at her house, which sat at the bottom of a steep drive, and I tried not to gasp as she showed me around. The place was palatial, her sunken living room with its high ceilings felt larger than Gloria’s entire house. Every room was a museum to the places she’d traveled: African masks of different shapes hung on the wall, waist-high wooden giraffes stood in the corner, colorful tapestries were used as tablecloths, African designs dotted the salad tongs. It was an impressive display, and you got the sense she wanted to impress. I’ve been to
all these places
, the artifacts said.
    We entered the large