Esron: Our beloved inshuti (friend)

When we first met Esron on Thursday, Jan. 14th, we had an immediate affection for him.  His eyes were kind and his smile was warm with hospitality.  He was dressed in a collared shirt and nice pants when he greeted us at the gate to let us in.  He had just come from town and quickly showed us around the house while we waited for Grease (the landlord) to show up.  He laughed easily but sincerely and had a brightness to his spirit that we were drawn to.  Knowing he didn’t speak a word of English and hardly any French was a selling point for this home.  We know we will be more apt to learn Kinyarwanda if we are pushed to communicate our needs in a new language.

Friday the 15th was our first night with Esron.  When we arrived at 7:30pm, we saw that Grease had dropped off a packet of words and phrases translated in English, French, and Kinyarwanda to get us started. Shortly after getting our bags inside, Nate had a planned phone call with his co-worker, Savannah, to report back on how things were going.  Esron seemed just as eager to communicate with us as we were with him so Michelle and Esron spent about an hour going back and forth with words in the others’ language, explaining the meaning through charades.  It was quite fun but mentally exhausting.  After a long day of running around on little food, we were ready to call it a night and get some personal space.  Unfortunately we were at a loss for dinner so we ate our last two LaraBars from home and went to bed hungry.

A snapshot of his living quarters:
Esron sleeps in a very small bedroom on the right side of the kitchen in the detached building.  Basically, there is approximately a 5 ft space between the back of the house and a long cement rectangle building.  It feels like a narrow alley since the roof overlaps the two buildings, blocking out the sunlight.  The cement building is only about 4 ft in depth but its length is the width of the property.  The first room you come to is our modest kitchen including a small walk-in closet size pantry.  Next to the pantry is Esron’s bedroom, which makes our UCONN dorm rooms seem luxurious.  The only thing that fits in his room is a single, foam mattress.  He has about a 2 ft wide floor space next to his bed when you enter his room.  His clothes are scattered around the perimeter of his bed and the walls are covered with calendars and posters, which makes it feel very cozy and personable.  One day he showed Michelle a child’s baseball hat and a pair of worn kids shoes from under his bed.  He has 4 kids so we wondered if they were for him to hold on to as a way to feel closer to them or if he bought them to send his sons (who live in Kibuye).  Next to his bedroom is a larger room that is 2.5 the size of his bedroom.  The only two things in that room are a double bed and a large African drum.   Michelle tried to inquire about the use of the room and encouraged him to switch but she quickly learned that’s not how it works since he is the house-boy and his living quarters are set.   Finally, next to the empty bedroom there is a tiny bathroom that he uses. By tiny we mean 4 ft by 5 ft.  From the outside it is only a door.

The first morning in our new home was very memorable.  Michelle woke up early because she wasn’t sleeping well.  She kept herself busy by catching up in her journal entries for the week as she chose to “hide out” in one of the other bedrooms.  There is a door that separates the bedrooms and our bathroom from the dining area so it made it easy.  It took so much energy to communicate with Esron and she was too hungry and tired to endure such a task.  After about 3 hours, Michelle woke up Nate in desperation for food and familiar company.  When we made our way out from our hideaway, we were met with a wonderfully ironic surprise!  Esron had bought a few groceries for us and even set the dining table for two.  There was a full bunch of small bananas, a loaf of bread, margarine, and a thermos full of hot water for tea.  Needless to say, Michelle felt pretty silly and certainly humbled by the whole thing.  Esron was in the kitchen making lunch at the time and saw us through the window.  He immediately came in and greeted us with a BIG smile.  We could tell that it made him happy to extend such kindness.  Our hearts felt soft as we devoured a new kind of breakfast.

The next half of the morning makes us laugh every time we remember it.   Be forewarned, this story might include more information than you want to know.  Esron ended up joining us at the table while we ate.  Once we had some caloric energy to run on, we were able to engage more authentically in the communication process.  We chatted for about 45 minutes before the tea went into effect and Michelle quickly excused herself to the bathroom.  It ended up being a natural break in the conversation because Esron had to return to his cooking in the kitchen.  As Michelle focused on the task at hand, she had failed to remember their toilet paper dilemma from the night before.  We only found one roll of toilet paper that was at the end of its life.  We were determined to make the last few pieces last until we bought groceries at the insoko (market) the next day.  Of course we had planned on heading out to the market earlier in the day but it was almost 1pm at this point and now Michelle was s*** outta luck!! ;-)  In the span of 5 minutes, things turned chaotic.  The bell rang at the gate for Esron to let someone in.  Michelle was yelling to Nate from the bathroom that the toilet paper ran out which spun Nate in a second search around the house while simultaneously leafing through our minimal phrase books for the word toilet paper in Kinyarwanda.   He wasn’t having any luck and now Esron was preoccupied with a customer.   After 5 minutes of searching, Nate threw Michelle a second vocabulary source in hopes that both of us searching would release her from the captivity of the toilet sooner. We finally found the word we needed “urupapuro rw’isuku” (for those keeping track at home) and Nate rushed to tell Esron.  If you could have been a fly on the wall, you would understand why Esron responded the way he did.  He smiled and repeated the word back to Nate with the appropriate pronunciation.  You see, we have been doing this ALL morning so he probably thought Nate was simply sharing another word he learned in Kinyarwanda with him.  After a failed attempt at getting his point across, we went back to the books to find the verb: to need or at least the word “for” so he could say “Toilet paper for Michelle?” NEITHER of the books had those words in Kinyarwanda so we were stuck.   Then we looked for the word “now” so that Nate could try and get around the dynamic of reciting words back and forth by saying “toilet paper now” but no dice.   It turned out that Esron didn’t have any toilet paper in his bathroom either and he wasn’t in a position to go out and get some at the moment with a customer waiting on food. At this point, we were running out of options so Nate decided to take his chances at the mini mart across the street. Meanwhile, Michelle has been sitting on the toilet for a half an hour feeling helpless.  Nate walks into the mini mart and musters up his best Kinyarwanda as the 4 people in the shop stare and burst out laughing.   He smiled and was just grateful to receive the treasured roll of TP that the laughter didn’t bother him one bit. Much to Michelle’s delight, her liberator came through in the clutch.

During the next week, we spent a lot of time with Esron. We met his friend Pascal who works next door for an Indian family. Pascal can speak English fairly well so when he is around, we can ask more detailed questions about Kinyarwanda. We also learned about Esron’s family who live in Kibuye (key-boo-yea) which is a town on the western part of the country. It rests next to the largest lake in Rwanda called Lake Kivu (key-voo) and is suppose to be stunningly beautiful. He has a wife and 4 kids, 2 of which are twin boys. We don’t have the vocabulary yet to ask him if he misses them or when he saw them last, but we look forward to hearing more about his loved ones as our language skills develop.


From what we gather, Esron works for Grease in Kigali in order to support his family by sending money home to them. To put this in perspective, he makes the equivalent of $60 a month. That is only $2 a day! Can you imagine living off of $2 a day, let alone supporting a family of 6 on that salary?!! I know it might seem irrelevant since our economy back home seems so different compared to Rwanda, but Nate and I have already struggled to conserve money here with transportations costs being so high and food being moderate but not cheap. Plus the cost of not living with the people you love is more than I would ever want to bear. On top of that, I have never seen someone work so hard for such little pay. It is a different world for sure.


Grease pays him to look after the house and cook for her employees at the three shops she owns in Kigali. People come to pick up food on a daily basis so he is busy in the kitchen almost every morning. This has been particularly fun for Michelle as she spends most mornings watching him prepare meals and learning how to cook on an open fire. He is a wonderful cook but uses way too much oil for our taste. Part of our contract is to split the $60 with Grease since he offers cleaning, laundry, and grocery services to us in addition to maintaining the property.  As I mentioned before, we aren’t fully comfortable with him serving us to that extent and yet we want to support him in his job so we are trying to find the balance. So far, our MO is to learn alongside him.  That means we are cooking, cleaning, and washing with him rather than expect him to wait on us hand and foot. Our preference is a team dynamic rather than hands off service where he does all the work for us.  We are just taking it slow and will see how it goes.  People have told us that washing clothes takes all day since you hand wash everything in a bucket line and hang it out to dry in the sun.  When we start working more structured hours through our jobs, we might run into time conflicts where needing help with laundry might actually be necessary.

Some of our most endearing moments with Esron have been praying together before meals.  When we sit down to eat a meal together and he always bows his head and prays out loud.   We don’t know the full extent of what he is saying but we are picking up more and more as our ears become more attentive.  He truly has been a source of joy in our lives and we look forward to the memories to come.  My first prayer request since I have been here is for his health.  Sadly, Esron had to go to the Hospital 3 times this week because he contracted Malaria.  The first day he waited all day to get a blood test to assess what was wrong.  He had come down with flu like symptoms very quickly so he went to the doctor right away.  The second day he went back to the hospital to have a follow up visit after the blood work confirmed his malaria and to pick up his medication.  The poor guy was terribly weak and could not cook or do anything for the past 3 days. On Sunday he went back to the hospital after waking up with a strange rash on his back left shoulder.  We still don’t understand what it was from but out best guess is a reaction from one of the 3 pills he is taking.   Please pray for him to recover fully and quickly.  It is hard not being able to communicate our care and concern for him during this time.

On a brighter note, yesterday was Esron’s 29th Birthday! We have been really looking forward to his birthday since we found out this past Saturday. It has been exciting for us to have an excuse to celebrate one of our dearest Rwandan friends. Now, some creativity and gathering information was in order. There were no “Happy Birthday” phrases found in either of our two limited Kinyarwanda dictionaries and we haven’t been here long enough to know any Rwandan Birthday traditions.  We decided to do our best and celebrate the “American way.”

Luckily, he started feeling better yesterday morning as he felt well enough to cook his meals. We discovered that Birthdays in Rwanda aren’t a big deal but we wanted to pass on some TLC for Esron especially given the past few days.  We picked up a cake and candles while we were in town so we could sing to him.   We also bought him a Kinyarwanda-English dictionary as a gift.  Books are actually a rare thing in Rwanda.   We learned that there are only a handful of bookstores (including libraries) in the whole country!  Apparently Rwandans don’t read like we do so the book stores really cater to muzungus (white people).  When we got home, Esron was sleeping but woke up once he heard us walking around.  You could tell that he was rallying but as always, his great smile shone through.  We told him we had a surprise so we brought out the cake and sang.  He was absolutely delighted and immediately lit up with joy. After eating the very dry, almost bread-like cake (without icing might I add), Nate went to our room to wrap our gift in newspaper and bring it out.  It was a touching moment for us all.  Esron opened it with curiosity and then gasped.   He hugged Nate and cried in his shoulder for a few minutes as he repeatedly said “Thank you! Thank you. Blessing from God.” Or “Praise God!”   At least that is what our limited Kinyarwanda knowledge says. =)  We would both agree that in this case, the “giver” walked away with as much joy, if not more than the receiver. Our hearts were so moved as we shared in that vulnerable moment with him. It was a night we will never forget.

Imana ibarinde kandi ibahe umugisha.