Our First Week

 

Our first week in Rwanda has been a very exciting and exhausting experience.  We often find ourselves with information overload, which is wonderfully invigorating and of course overwhelming at the same time.  Each day has been so full that it feels like we have been here for 3 weeks already.  Yet it is still surreal at times.  During our first 48 hours, we would randomly look at each other and say “Can you believe we are actually HERE?!”  Even though our environment is drastically different, it is still hard to believe we are starting our Ubuzima in Rwanda.

When reflecting back on our first week in Kigali, three words come to mind: STARVATION, ENGAGEMENT, and GRATITUDE.  Most of you know that Michelle cannot go too long without food or adequate meals and when it comes to knowing where to eat, what to eat, or how to even ask for food, we are in the dark.  However, we bond over the excitement of learning new things.  Every day we have a choice to engage in the culture around us and though there are times we want to hide inside to avoid the attention of being a white person, we find ourselves taking the risk and putting ourselves out there.  Most importantly, our hearts are overflowing with gratitude despite the struggles and discomforts.  There is much to be thankful for in Kigali! 

When we first arrived in Kigali last Tuesday night, we immediately made connections to other folks in the airport.  Our travel companion and Nate’s co-worker, Meredith, lived in Rwanda last year and is one of the friendliest people we have met.  As soon as we landed, she started connecting us to other friends of hers in the airport and to new friends she met on our flight.  The first person we met was Stewart, the American Ambassador in Rwanda.  He was a very extroverted man that knew everyone of course.  Then we met a girl named Amy who is helping out at an orphanage and school outside of Kigali.  She is from Georgia (Maria, she went to school in Athens) and this is her first time to Rwanda.  We then met Sarah, as in Doctor Sarah from Partners In Health (PIH).  This was an especially fun connection for Michelle since she has heard all about Dr. Sarah from Grace King who traveled to Rwanda in November with her mom and brother.  Grace is one of our 6^th grade friends from fifty6 (at Trinity) and Grace’s mom Lesley worked with Michelle at Trinity Church.  She is on the Board for PIH and shared pictures with me from their trip in November.  After our introductions we met up with a driver named Banner, who drove us to our temporary home.  We were SO grateful for Banner because we quickly learned that there are hardly any street names or house numbers to tell taxi drivers where to go.  You are just supposed to direct them to your destination, which for us is basically impossible at this point.  Not to mention we were delirious from our lack of sleep during our travels.  Once we arrived at the house, we met Katie and Shanel who live there.  They were very kind and had our room all set up for us.  Our main challenge at their place was the slow internet connection and therefore we weren’t able to send emails.

The rest of the week was focused on some basic necessities for getting settled in Kigali such as finding a place to live, setting up our cell phones, getting an address at the Post Office, etc.  As you might imagine things are not as efficient in Rwanda as they are in The U.S.  There are no realtors to help you find a home to rent.  Meredith had been searching for homes for 3 weeks before she came to the states in December and hadn’t found anything close to our price-range that would be suitable.  But she starting asking anyone she talked to like taxi drivers, employees at hotels, or friendly people on the bus.  So your best bet is word of mouth and then you spend ALL day getting to different parts of the city only to arrive and then wait for the landlords to show up.  This is where Michelle’s starvation comes in!  We didn’t have any groceries so we sparingly ate bananas and bread from Katie’s house for breakfast and then would be out literally all afternoon meeting up with people and looking at houses for rent.  It was not unusual to sit down to eat a lunch of sorts until 3pm in the afternoon.  Plus, we would walk miles to save on taxi fares, which I kid you not, would be $6-$8 a ride (one way) to the next neighborhood in the city.  When you add up all the transportation costs in a day it easily gets to be $20 a day.  But we were at their mercy since we don’t know the bus system yet and we have to get around somehow in order to get things done.  The other challenge with getting food was not knowing where to go once we were hungry.  Everything is negotiated in Kigali and all prices are inflated for white people because it is assumed that you are rich so it is best to have a Rwandan friend negotiate for you.  However, when we are on our own that’s not possible and then we are stuck with not having the money (literally Rwandan Francs) to pay for the food.  This lasted for about 4 days until we went grocery shopping for the first time.  We can’t remember the last time we felt this hungry for an extended period of time.  It did however make some of the local food (i.e. Goat Brushette) taste amazing even though it was very chewy and a low quality meat.  It has been amazing to know the limits of our bodies though.  Now, we can confidently say we have a learned a lot about food (where to go, how much to spend, and what to get) so the coming weeks won’t be so painful.

The biggest highlight of our week was finding our home!  We met up with a man named Parfait at the Serena Hotel (we think it is the only five star hotel in Kigali) through Meredith’s connection.  His cousin has a house in Kacyiru (ka-cheer-oo) ready to rent that is furnished but a little higher than our price-range.  The location is PRIME being a 12 minute walk from the Ministry of Education (the office building Nate will be working in) and American Embassy.  Location is our biggest priority considering transportations costs are so high.  We want to be able to walk as much as we can.  Our neighborhood is very safe considering the Police Headquarters are just down the street and there is a little mart that sells fresh milk right across the street from our house.  It is a quaint home with 3 small bedrooms, 1 full bath, 1 half-bath, a dining area, and a detached kitchen.  There is also a gazebo in the front yard, which is so random but a nice touch.  One of the things we are most excited about our home is the guard or house-boy named Esron.  It is very common in Kigali for all the homes to have a man live on the property and manage the house.  This has definitely been a challenging dynamic for us as we never intended to have a “servant.”  We are trying to be open and have been eager to learn more about this part of the culture so that we know how to navigate the delicate line we feel is present.  We have learned that this is more of an opportunity for employment rather than a lower class system where he has fewer rights.  Esron only speaks Kinyarwanda and we of course are just learning so communication is rocky considering we interact with him all the time.  He is our go-to-guy for everything related to the house but our landlord, Grease speaks English very well which is comforting to know things are not lost in translation when signing a contract like a lease.  Most of our engagement has been with Esron as we are actively learning Kinyarwanda and teaching him English at the same time.  It has been really exciting to pick up the native language and to know we are helping Esron out too.  Knowing how to speak English for a Rwandan could be a major life change as it opens up doors to better employment.  We will write more about our friendship with Esron later as there is way too much to cover in this post.

Lastly, our gratitude is what has carried us through our first week.  We are grateful for the smell of the air, the warm weather, safe travels, friendships that we miss from back home, new friends that help show us the ways in our new world, provisions like housing and food, prayers before meals, the breathtaking Scenery, and each other.  Moving forward, our biggest sadness is being so far away from our family, friends, and community.  There is definitely something missing in our lives without that love and yet the pain from that absence reminds us we are blessed.

Imana ibarinde kandi ibahe umugisha.