Wheels
AH ambassador
With this being the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, some of us will be reliving memories. My memories may be from a slightly different perspective than most who watched it on TV.
My parents were on holiday with their three youngest kids, me being the oldest of the three. We stopped for the night at a small inn, in Kigali Rwanda. The inn was made up of 5-10 rondavels, one being the office and home of the 80+ year old Belgium lady that owned and ran the inn.
We knew about the goal of landing on the moon, but had no time frame of the planned events, as we were out of radio frequency where we lived and when we read newspapers they were normally a few weeks old.
The next morning I went with my dad to pay and check out. The Belgium lady was very excited and animated. She spoke French and Kinyarwanda. We spoke English and Kiswahili. She knew some German words and my father knew some German from the war. She had the radio on, but we didn't understand what was being said. At first dad was concerned war had broken out. The DRC had serious problems at the time. Uganda was a mess. An assassination attempt was about to take place on Milton Obote and Idi Amin would over throw him in two years. We were living in Tanzania where a couple coup attempts had taken place since independence. Then of course there had been issues in this part of Africa between the Watusi and the Bahutu for centuries. With relief we finally determined that it wasn't war she was trying to tell us about.
Finally after a few minutes of pointing at the ceiling and doing charades, my father figured out that man had walked on the moon. It would be another year before I would see a recording of the events of July 69, but my memory of the event will always be of this old Belgium lady jumping up and down doing charades and speaking French like an auctioneer.
My parents were on holiday with their three youngest kids, me being the oldest of the three. We stopped for the night at a small inn, in Kigali Rwanda. The inn was made up of 5-10 rondavels, one being the office and home of the 80+ year old Belgium lady that owned and ran the inn.
We knew about the goal of landing on the moon, but had no time frame of the planned events, as we were out of radio frequency where we lived and when we read newspapers they were normally a few weeks old.
The next morning I went with my dad to pay and check out. The Belgium lady was very excited and animated. She spoke French and Kinyarwanda. We spoke English and Kiswahili. She knew some German words and my father knew some German from the war. She had the radio on, but we didn't understand what was being said. At first dad was concerned war had broken out. The DRC had serious problems at the time. Uganda was a mess. An assassination attempt was about to take place on Milton Obote and Idi Amin would over throw him in two years. We were living in Tanzania where a couple coup attempts had taken place since independence. Then of course there had been issues in this part of Africa between the Watusi and the Bahutu for centuries. With relief we finally determined that it wasn't war she was trying to tell us about.
Finally after a few minutes of pointing at the ceiling and doing charades, my father figured out that man had walked on the moon. It would be another year before I would see a recording of the events of July 69, but my memory of the event will always be of this old Belgium lady jumping up and down doing charades and speaking French like an auctioneer.
