Issue 2: December 2006 News
Posted Dec. 24th, 2006
Dear Friends & Family,
Now we have been in Rwanda for about a month and it is beginning to feel like home. Last night our bedtime routine got a little late, so we carried the boys out in their pajamas to look at the stars. Though we are on the edge of a moderate size city, the night sky is something to behold. As we stood next to our large Avocado tree, Aaron showed David a few of the constellations, and then pointed to a whole half of the sky we rarely see in the Northern Hemisphere. We have a new view of the sky and a new view of the world here in Rwanda; so much is new to us that we are like children once again learning the names for the objects of daily living, learning our manners, learning to cope with the minor frustrations that often seem major when everything is so new.
Aaron and I have started language study in earnest, as we both delve into intensive Kinyarwanda until the month of March. Like almost all the languages of Sub-Saharan Africa, Kinyarwanda is a Bantu language. Apparently, it is in the top twenty of the most difficult languages in the world. Instead of having gender agreement like many romance languages, Bantu languages have approximately 10 categories of nouns. And each word in the sentence changes depending on the category the subject noun is in. It is a completely different way of thinking about language. We are using a language method called Pilat, that involves mastering a small number of nouns and verbs at a time while absorbing sentence structure through comprehension and repetition activities. It seems to be working really well for us so far. So now we spend our days alternating time with private language tutors/helpers, and spending time with the boys/ overseeing the household.
Figuring out how to run a household in Rwanda has been no small task, even with lots of help. The electricity is off for periods of time almost every day due to severe energy shortages throughout East Africa, so one of the boys’ favorite things about Africa are using flashlights and candle-lit dinners. We have also learned where to get kerosene for the lanterns and where to buy wicks. While we have running water, there is a lack of infrastructure, so we only get water unpredictably once or twice per week. We have a large water tank that fills when the water comes, but this runs out after a couple of days, at which time we pay someone from the neighborhood to carry water by hand. We also collect rainwater in buckets, and fill large basins from the tap, whenever we have water. We are getting skilled at bucket baths, washing hands with a cup, and reusing water wherever possible. Even trash disposal is a challenge, because there is no space for landfills in this tiny, most densely populated country in Africa. Most people burn their own trash in their yard. Alternately, there is a central location that people can bring trash to where it is then burned. We got several different opinions in the beginning about what to do with our trash. We first dug a hole for burning which the landlord was not happy about, so now we pay someone in the neighborhood to collect it for us.
Another thing that has been a huge blessing, but is taking some getting used to, is having household workers. In Rwanda almost everyone has at least a cook, and usually a night guard too. As one of my colleagues put, if you earn even $20 per month, you are expected to have a worker. It is considered selfish not to give employment to others, so even our cook, Mama Bovary, has several workers in her home. Thanks to Mama Bovary, we are eating simple, but delicious Rwandan food everyday, which consists mostly of sautéed tomatoes, onions, and vegetables, and beans served with rice or potatoes. The boys are even beginning to eat their vegetables!
We have a babysitter who started several weeks ago named Mama Ivan. Recently David explained to his grandmother, Tse-tse, on the phone how names work here in Rwanda: “Parents are named after their children, so Mama Ivan is the mother of Ivan.” (Aaron and I are usually called Mama David and Papa David.) Some mornings Mama Ivan brings her 7-year-old son, Ivan, with her to work. He and David enjoy playing together without words, and David feels proud as he offers his favorite toys to Ivan. Mama Ivan is also Kinyarwanda teacher to the boys along with all the neighborhood children. David and Eli have picked up so much already and learn new words every day. Today David spent a long time allowing Mama Ivan to read his children’s bible to him in Kinyarwanda. He was so proud that he recognized when she said Moses, and that he learned the word for spear! On a more typical 5-year-old note, David’s triumph of the day was washing his own hair by himself for the first time -- an accomplishment made much more challenging by the little plastic tub we use here for baths. While David had a hard time adjusting the first few weeks and his behavior was slightly out-of-control, he is finally returning to his old, kind, cheerful, eccentric self, and we are breathing a sigh of relief. He has even learned to go to the corner store to buy bread and other small items, using Kinyarwanda to communicate what he wants.
Today I went to visit the home of an elderly widow, Therese, who struggles to provide for her five orphaned grandchildren. I met her at the seamstress shop at the end of our dirt road a couple of weeks ago, and her smile lit up my day as she greeted me warmly and embraced me. This afternoon I went with her and a translator to visit her home and family. We walked for about twenty minutes to the edge of our urban neighborhood and then across some fields and down the hillside along a forest footpath before she welcomed us to her earthen home. Many poor families in this area live in houses built from adobe bricks fired in handmade ovens, and topped with corrugated metal roofs. In her case, she and her family live in a very small two-room house with sturdy doors and a roof. The Friends Church helped her to build this house right beside the tiny outbuilding in which the family used to live. Her two teenage boys welcomed me into a small, stark room with mud-plastered walls. The only objects in the room were 5 wooden chairs around a tiny wooden coffee table, and a small wooden bench along one wall.
The family began to tell me their story. The children in the home are all children of her adult son and daughter, now dead from disease; they do not say so, but most probably the son and daughter died of AIDS. There are very few families here in Africa that remain untouched by the devastating reality of AIDS. Like many other women of her generation, Therese is left in her old age as the sole provider for a large number of children, because an entire generation is dying. One of her children is a young woman who is eight months pregnant and clearly very ill. She has not seen a health care provider at all during her pregnancy, and the family does not foresee any way to have an assistant for the birth. Therese used to sell bananas and other produce in the neighborhood, but she explained to me how she had to feed the last of her produce to her family. Now she has no capital to continue her business. The entire family is clearly suffering from extreme hunger.
Aaron and I are reading a book right now called The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs (highly recommended!). It is hopeful account of how it is possible to end extreme poverty in our time by one of the world’s foremost economists who has advised countries throughout Latin America, the former Soviet Union, and Africa. He is also a champion of debt relief for the developing world. He goes into great depth about the interconnection of persistent extreme poverty and diseases like malaria and AIDS. There is a growing consensus that the causation between the two is mutual; poverty causes disease, and disease causes poverty. This interconnection has always been true in Sub-Saharan Africa -- by far the most impoverished region in the world and the region with the most resistant and dangerous strain of malaria -- but is intensifying exponentially due to the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
When Therese tells her family’s story, it is not hard to see how AIDS leaves the poorest of the poor teetering at the precipice, but it is hard to know how to face such extreme poverty on a day-to-day basis. It often feels like the only thing to do is look away; the need is so immense so what can we do? But one of our hopes for our time here, borrowing the words of one of our MCC orientation speakers, is simply “to be in relationship with the poor.” As I sat in Therese’s family’s small, stark living room and listened to their story, I too shared a feeling of helplessness. But as I watched her smile light up the room, as I followed her old, but amazingly strong and nimble body along the forest path, as I prayed with her and her family, I saw Christ in her. This Christmas season, as I marvel at the awesome gift of God coming to us in the humble form of a human baby, for me Therese’s lined, smiling face, is the face of Christ among us. Even in the midst of extreme poverty, I see in her such an incredible wealth of spirit.
Friends, as we celebrate Christmas far from home, thank you for sharing our journey. We’d love to hear from you! Peace be with you, and Merry Christmas!
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