I spent last Saturday at Ngorongoro Crater in northern Tanzania and it was incredible. And even more incredible for me to think of was that this was my third visit to this amazing spot.
Hands down, among the biggest “perks” of my job are these kinds of opportunities. Some people enjoy company cars or airplanes, memberships at clubs or season passes to famous ski resorts as a result of their jobs. For me, because much of my work at Compassion has included hosting visitors to the countries where we work, I get to see some of the great sights our world has to offer.
I’ve gone fishing for piranhas on the Amazon, wandered through Mayan, Aztec and Incan ruins, seen the sights of world cities like Bangkok and Calcutta, rummaged through the stalls at dozens of interesting local markets, and seen the ocean from numerous beaches on both sides of Latin America, as well as in the Caribbean, Asia, and East and West Africa. Perhaps my favorite though, I’ve been able to see Africa’s animals up close and personal on several occasions. (On a day in 2005 after an especially close encounter with a cluster of giraffes, I returned to the hotel to find an email from my dad, who knew I was on safari, entitled “Have you kissed a giraffe?” I wrote back, “I didn’t, but I could have.”)
And I get to do all this in the name of work.
After a week of all-day meetings, as we headed to the Crater this time, I looked forward to the day with expectation, knowing how gorgeous that spot of earth is. But adding to my enjoyment was the fact that I had a special guest along this time -- my Compassion sponsored child, Godlisten. Fast approaching his 14th birthday now, Godlisten was just seven years old when he and I met on my first trip to Africa in 2001 a few weeks after I became his sponsor. We’ve managed to see each other a few times through the years, meeting for dinner or a day at a park or ice cream or, when all else failed, for a few minutes together at the Compassion office in Tanzania.
Phoebe & Godlisten -- this is, if I remember correctly, our fifth visit together. Godlisten doesn't realize that most Compassion children never have an opportunity to meet their sponsor. For him, it's just normal for me to show up every 12-18 months.
A few years ago, Godlisten had gotten to spend a few hours on a short safari close to home that Compassion arranged for his entire student center, and in the intervening years at various points in his letters he had mentioned how much he liked seeing the animals of his homeland. So when I realized I had an opportunity to take him with me to the Crater, I jumped on it. Early as it was when we departed Arusha, Godlisten headed out on this new adventure with his big beautiful eyes wide open, ready not to miss a thing.
A very happy Godlisten looks out the top of our safari vehicle moments after we got to the bottom of the Crater.
And what a view we got. In my opinion, Ngorongoro is a stunning place in any weather and at any time of year. But this particular visit may have spoiled me forever. As we began to descend into the 100-square-mile Crater, we were at first swallowed in a fog that kept us from seeing much beyond the deep green of the very closest trees and plants. But turning a bend, we were suddenly met with sunshine and very soon after, the sight of an incredible landscape below us. Tanzania is coming to the end of its rainy season, and so every surface was lush and green from the moisture.
What I did not know until this visit, though, was that at this time of year most of the valley boasts mile upon mile of wildflowers. Yellow, royal blue, pink, white -- it was absolutely incredible. And then among all the flowers, there were countless gazelles, zebras, wildebeests, hartebeests, buffalo, elephants, ostriches and numerous other types of birds. The lakeshore was so densely populated with flamingoes that there were stretches of solid pink, broken up only by the occasional flapping of the birds’ large wings. All this made it easy to understand why Ngorongoro has been nicknamed the Garden of Eden.
There were lots of babies everywhere -- zebras, baboons, wildebeests and more -- trying to keep up with the rest of their families and herds.In a day filled with breathtaking sights however, two stood out. In six years of safaris, I had previously never seen a rhino, save for a black dot I once viewed through binoculars while a guide said “that’s a rhino.” But on this day, as we were driving along we suddenly came on a massive rhino, perhaps 60 meters from the road, nonchalantly munching on the wildflowers and paying us no mind at all.
My first rhino sighting! They have a reputation for staying far away from people in Ngorongoro, but this one was not at all phased by our presence.
Not long after, we came across two different pairs of lions, even closer to us than the rhino. In each case, a male and female lion lounged together among the flowers, for all the world looking as though they were enjoying a lazy afternoon on holiday. The moment we spotted the first pair was perfected as Godlisten, with eyes wide and jaw dropped, said “simba” (Swahili for lion) under his breath. He told me later it was his favorite sight of the day.
Mr & Mrs Lion on holiday... I know I have a lot of lion photos here, but I just couldn't get over the scene and wanted to include as many as possible.
From the first day I met Godlisten, when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up he always answered “a driver.” He has always been fascinated with cars, but coming from a very poor background has ridden in them only a few times. I still remember that when I headed out for a day of story gathering on that 2001 trip and invited Godlisten to come along, he was ecstatic. Not because he was going to spend the day with me so much as because we would be going from place to place in a taxi, and it was his first time in a car.
During his years at the student center, Godlisten has been encouraged to continue his education for as long as he can and to dream big about what he might do with his life. He has listened to this advice, but it has never changed his love of cars, and somewhere along the way, perhaps two years ago, he began saying that he would study tourism so he could become a safari driver -- quite a good career in an area of his country termed the Safari Capital for East Africa.
I think our day together, bumping along in an old Land Cruiser with the sun and the wind and all that incredible beauty all around us, only solidified his dream. When I asked if, perhaps 15 years from now, I could count on him to take me and my family on safari, he didn’t even have to wait for my question to be translated into Swahili. With his big wide smile he said -- in English -- a resounding “yes.”
Two Phoebes! For the first time in my life, I have another Phoebe around. Up to now, at no point had I ever shared my name with anyone at school, university or any job I've had. But now that I've moved to Africa, there is another Phoebe working with me in the region. She is from Burkina Faso and is such a dramatic, smiling, laughing person and I love to be around her. Though after years of never writing my last name on anything and always knowing that if someone said "Phoebe" it was me they meant, I will confess that it's an adjustment to stop and confirm which Phoebe is being spoken to at times.
This picture is one I took a few years ago in Uganda, but I thought it was an appropriate introduction to this post. For today's purposes I'll call it "Practicing"...
Yesterday, as I was driving to work I saw a man hauling a fairly good-sized bundle of wood by resting it on the seat of his bicycle and walking beside it steering the bike. I’m not talking short lengths of firewood either. I’m talking full-size lengths of something along the lines of 2x4s. He was obviously working hard, and I was impressed.
This type of transportation is very typical. In fact, in Uganda, where bicycles are the most ubiquitous of any African country I have visited, I have either seen personally or been told about by friends who witnessed it, a myriad of (impossibly) large, heavy objects being hauled by bicycle. Among the things that have made it into what I will call my “bicycle haul of fame” are a washing machine and a sofa -- put on end, so it reached far into the air.
Another photo from Uganda a few years ago. Of all the bundles I've seen hauled on bikes over the years, this was by far the cutest. Don't be too alarmed -- he wasn't actually sitting there while his dad pedaled the bike. Instead, he somehow shared the seat with his father (which is perhaps equally incredible). This was just where he waited while his father conducted his business.
In Ethiopia, I’ve witnessed similar hauling projects by taxis. Although usually pretty rickety-looking, these vehicles should obviously be able to carry more than a bicycle, and so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see furniture, stoves, refrigerators, etc, strapped to the tops of these cars. I think what I find interesting is that the taxi drivers agree to it! Can you imagine, in New York City or London, or Colorado Springs, for that matter, hailing a cab only to tell the driver you’d like to load your new washing machine on top to take it home?
The fact is that in the West, we’ve been conditioned to believe that every project or task must have it’s own special process, tool, gadget or gizmo. No taxi driver would ever agree to haul a refrigerator because we all know that businesses offer delivery on these things, right? Never mind that we will usually pay an additional $50-$100 for this service.
I lived in dormitories, townhomes and apartment buildings for nearly 15 years before moving here. It had been a long time since I had a lawn or trees or plants to take care of. Now I have this beautiful little lawn and garden and I found myself worrying for a couple of days because in addition to being very difficult to come by, things like lawn mowers are prohibitively expensive.
So I was greatly relieved to find out that Baptiste, who helps me at my house, is actually not only willing to use a simple hand-held tool (called a “slasher” in Uganda, but I’m not sure of its name here) for cutting the grass but actually prefers it. Nor do we need a rake. A short, handmade stick broom is more than adequate for tidying up both the grass and the brick areas of the property. I think all in all we spent less than $50 getting the various tools for cutting, trimming and cleaning my little lawn and garden.
Let’s move to the kitchen. Contrast me, who sliced my hand open just trying to use a knife rather than scissors to get into a package, with Baptiste who easily opened two cans of tomato paste for me with that same knife without a second thought. I come from the world of Williams-Sonoma and Crate & Barrel, where I’ve learned that one should have a special tool for slicing tomatoes, eggs, mangoes, avocados, grapefruit, etc. Now I live in a place where mangoes and avocados are often coming out our ears, and if I showed one of those gadgets to Baptiste, I have a feeling he would laugh.
Lest you think I’m demonizing those types of stores I mentioned above, let me pause to assure you that I’m absolutely not. I love wandering around kitchen gadget shops and seeing all the new fun things that can make cooking and baking easier. Before I moved I made more than one Crate & Barrel run and spent lots of time in Target’s kitchen utensil aisle.
Many of the cool gizmos available are actually pretty practical. There’s a lot to be said for having just the right tool for the job. All I’m saying is that it’s easy to start thinking of those things as necessities, when in fact they’re luxuries. One can do a lot with fairly basic items. A bicycle. A taxi. A slasher. A stick broom. A knife.
I love having people over for dinner. I enjoy cooking but am much less likely to do more than grilled cheese or the occasional pot of soup when I have only myself to feed. However, at the moment I’ve been reticent to invite people over. Literally the only piece of furniture in my house other than the bed has been a chair that I borrowed from Chantal.
It was one thing to tell someone like Mandi who was here volunteering that she could join me for a floor picnic on Easter Sunday. She was young and game and far from home and it was Easter and having dinner with someone on the floor was better than spending the day alone. But saying “Hey, I’d like to have you over, but, um, do you mind sitting on the floor?” to someone who lives here and could enjoy dinner in the comfort of their own home where they actually have … well … furniture -- that’s a different matter.
Still, tired of spending most evenings alone, I decided to go ahead and make this funny invitation to Chantal and Mbanda, who have been so kind and hospitable to me since I arrived. Rather than laughing at me when I extended the invitation, they even postponed plans they had for Wednesday evening to say yes. And they offered to bring over a couple folding chairs so we could be really radical and not sit on the floor.
We had fajitas, and let me just say that I was very proud of how my first attempt to make tortillas by myself turned out! The food was tasty -- having all three lived in Colorado for a long time, we regularly crave Mexican food -- but what I want to talk about was the funny and fun process of maneuvering the pans and dishes in order to prepare and serve everything.
First, make the tortillas. That’s an easy decision. They can be kept warm in the oven while other things are cooking. Then wash that pan because it’s the same one needed to cook the meat and vegetables in. Cut up tomatoes and cheese and put them into two coffee mugs. Mash up the avocado in a bowl, then transfer it to a little saucer because that bowl will be needed for dessert. Melt a little chocolate bar I splurged on and add some milk so we could have the sauce over ice cream (another splurge but it was a special occasion -- my first “dinner party”).
Having no serving dishes, we served ourselves off the stove and carried our food on trays -- I have one and Chantal brought two more -- to the dining room. I only have 2 sets of flatware, but thankfully because it was fajitas, I could offer those to the guests and if they noticed that I was only using my hands they were polite and didn’t point it out.
Chantal and Mbanda were gracious and complimentary and lingered over their meal as though we had all the normal comforts of things like tables. Dessert time came and I used my two bowls to serve up their ice cream. I even offered to make coffee in the coffee press Joe brought me when he came to Uganda (coffee, I must admit, is one of the staples of my breakfast diet and my noble intentions of doing without it till my belongings arrived faded away quickly) and Mbanda accepted the offer. But all the mugs and glasses were tied up at the moment so I took quick stock. The cheese was almost all eaten. I transferred what was left onto the cutting board, washed the mug, and voila!
“Aren’t you having dessert?” Chantal asked as I delivered the coffee. I told her yes I was, returned to the kitchen to wash the mug I’d been drinking from, and served myself. She smiled big when I returned eating my ice cream from the same mug that had held my juice moments earlier.
We had a nice visit and eventually they said goodnight and headed home, generously telling me to hold onto the folding chairs until my furniture arrives. It was a very fulfilling evening and I was very happy I’d gone ahead and extended the invitation rather than waiting until I could entertain “properly”.
Don’t get me wrong. I will be absolutely thrilled when my things arrive -- hopefully in another three weeks or so. But I also appreciated the reminder this week that I don’t actually need them. I have a bed. I have a stove and refrigerator and washing machine. I now have three chairs. I have a few pots and pans, plus five cups, two plates (I borrowed the third one), two bowls and a handful of flatware. And all of that is more than enough to actually live on -- and even entertain company!
Disclaimer: Usually I tell stories, and so that is probably what you have come to expect. This week, I suppose I am feeling more philosophical. Perhaps this is partly due to the fact that as of today, I have been granted my visa and work permit and am now officially a resident of Rwanda, making the permanence of my move a little more concrete for me.
Humans were meant to live in community. It’s a concept that I’ve heard so many times in my life that I’ve come to consider it cliché. But I realize the truth of this idea in a way now that I have not understood perhaps at any other time in my life.
I recognize that I am a fairly gregarious, social person. One of those who tends to test as “extrovert” on assessments like the Myers-Briggs. So some of you more introverted people might argue that I feel this way because I am the type of person who “gains energy from other people.” But I want to make a challenge to us all that, regardless of psychological test results, part of being created “in the image of God” means that we need to have others around.
Technically I live in Rwanda now, but because of my travel, prior to this week I have not really been meeting people. I have good relationships with many of the people that I work with around the region. Some I have known for 6 or 7 years and we work well together and respect and love each other. I appreciate my times with these amazing people, but the truth is I always know that we will say goodbye in a few days, and it may be some months before I will see them again.
In Colorado, I said goodbye to an amazing group of people. In addition to my family, whom I love with a depth that I can’t put into words, I also have the privilege of knowing a group of women and men whom I admire and love and have allowed to know me to an extent that I, as a fairly self-sufficient and independent person, did not previously believe was possible.
I think I didn’t realize until this week that there has been a part of me that was reticent to search out new people in my new home because I have highly doubted that I can find another group that is as worth knowing as these individuals I have left behind. While the wonders of internet and Skype and mobile phones mean that I don’t have to completely give up meaningful communication with these lovely people, I’m understanding as the days go by my spiritual need for a local community as well.
Over the last few days, I have had the opportunity to begin to get to know two very interesting women from Belfast and Glasgow, a group of women from across the US who have become a close-knit band, and a kind medical-doctor couple from Madagascar along with their two children. In all honesty, I guess I don’t know how many of these people I will still know a year from now. That’s one of the intimidating aspects of trying to create community for oneself in a completely new place. At 18, heading off to university, it was a big adventure, part of the fun of the whole experience. At 32, sometimes it just feels like work.
But I’m learning to appreciate the process all over again. I feel fortunate to have met so many interesting people in such a short time, and at the same time recognize that many people are worth getting to know -- have interesting stories and lives and ideas and dreams -- if we just give them the opportunity to show us.
My friend Katy from Compassion in the States (hi, Katy!), when I described this international group of friends I have begun “collecting,” said that she thought it sounded like what she pictures heaven being like -- people from all over the world living together in community. I agree with her.
I made spice cookies a couple of nights ago and as soon as they were cool enough to move, I put some on a napkin and took them out to Baptiste, who works at my home. Thinking I was coming out to ask him to do something, when he realized what I was doing he smiled and said, “Thank you. Thank you very much.” Baptiste has begun to learn some English words and phrases since coming to work with me, and I have noticed that “very much” is one of his newest vocabulary phrases. He only seems to use it when I have suddenly surprised him by doing something that helps him that he wasn’t expecting.
I like to think that under any circumstances I would have taken Baptiste some cookies, but I realize that it is this longing for community -- to know and be known -- that made this moment of connection important for me.
Sunday marks the 14th anniversary of the day the Rwandan genocide began. 100 days in Rwandan history when the understanding of the need for community was forgotten and the hatred that seems to come too easily to our fallen natures took over. Here, next week will be a week of mourning as people remember those they lost during that horrific time. But as Rwanda moves forward, there is also an emphasis of forgiveness and hope as this beautiful country continues to grow and learn and look to the future.
As I learn to live within the community of my new home, I encourage my friends and family back in the West to also take a moment to remember Rwanda this weekend.
As I think I've mentioned previously, I won't have any furniture until late April or early May. So for Easter dinner I just spread a blanket on the floor of my empty dining room and Mandi (a volunteer for Chantal's homes) and I enjoyed a floor picnic of homemade spaghetti and chocolate chip cookies -- both a special treat!
Saturday marked my second full month living in Rwanda. At the moment, I feel like it’s a bit of an overstatement to say I’ve been “living” in Rwanda because of the number of days spent on the road in the last few weeks. I’ve been home exactly 12 days in March, causing one of my coworkers to ask me on Friday why I am bothering to rent a house right now. I was sort of wondering the same thing.
Since I last wrote, Spring arrived in the West, most places celebrated Easter (I say most because Ethiopia won’t celebrate Easter until sometime in April and for all I know there are other countries with different schedules as well), and I visited Tanzania and Kenya. I was supposed to be in each place for about 3 days but got stuck in Tanzania for 2 extra days. I love Tanzania, but I was only going to have a very short time at home between there and Kenya before the glitch and so was a bit frustrated to spend my Good Friday and Saturday trekking back and forth from the airport, leaving me at home for only about 36 hours before heading out again.
Now I am settled in back at home and am looking forward to about three straight weeks without travel, which will be very nice. I spend a large percentage of my travel time in meetings, and while the meetings are often productive and worthwhile, I struggle to find an interesting way to write about those! But in all my comings and goings, I’m continually noticing or experiencing things that make me wish someone else was there with me so we could commentate on them. Things such as…
the woman really needed her coffee
My last morning in Ethiopia, the hotel dining room was very busy. A UN peacekeeping group from Uruguay had stayed in the hotel the night before and they were all trying to get their breakfast so they could get on the road again toward wherever they were going. Things were hopping and the dining room staff were running around frantically. Among the guests was also a North American woman who did not seem to be what one would call a morning person.
One of the wait staff came near and she called out loudly to him, “Can I get some coffee?” The man nodded and headed off, ostensibly to get the coffee. Approximately 45 seconds went by. Another staff person happened to pass near the table. “Um, I need some coffee!” the woman said again. Again, the person nodded and headed in the same direction as the first one. Another 45 seconds or so passed, and yet a third staff member happened to be near the woman’s table. She marched up to the person and said, “This is the third time I’ve had to ask for coffee. Is anyone ever going to bring it?”
The new woman headed off, only to be greeted at the kitchen door by the other two staff, both carrying coffee. They evidently sorted out among themselves what was going on and the woman “finally” got her coffee. It just made me think about how often all of us say things that are true strictly speaking, and yet don’t really accurately represent the situation.
Incidentally, I got my coffee instantaneously. It seemed that coffee-fetcher number two had a coffee that no one needed...
pronouncing each and every the other letter
The languages of all the African countries I have visited so far are basically phonetic. So when people learn English, they can find the spellings a bit of a challenge at times. This leads to words such as clothes having two syllables rather than one, and a personal favorite: “froo-eet joo-eese” (fruit juice). A Ugandan friend of a friend of mine refers to this as “pronouncing each and every the other letter.”
Another favorite for me is the word “because.” Often a pivotal word in sentences as a person explains something, the word can be dramatically drawn out and every letter gets its turn. Several of my friends and co-workers across the region are especially good at this, transitioning into their explanation with a nice long “be-cah-oose.”
please madam...
Internet problems have been a nearly constant part of trying to get work done in the office ever since an electrical storm knocked out our connection within my first week or so of arriving in Rwanda. When things get especially bad, I have the option of going to the Rwanda field office, about 10 minutes away, to download emails.
On one particular day, I had left to have some lunch and came back to find that the IT person had left a sticky note for me at my desk that read: "Please madam it is advisable that you go to the Rwanda office where connection exists. The equipment has failed."
Frustrated as I was by the ongoing connection issues, this note made me smile.
caution: high waters ahead
Waiting for my ride in the lobby of the Impala Hotel in Arusha, Tanzania, I sat watching people go to and fro. This is actually something I do a lot when I’m traveling -- in airports, lobbies and hotel restaurants, since I pass many hours by myself sometimes.
As I watched, a cluster of three or four people walked by. Among them was a tall, somewhat portly gentleman. He was dressed for business in fairly typical trousers and a button-down shirt. But what made me notice him was that his trouser cuffs sat a good two inches above the tops of his shoes. I glanced up at the waistline of the trousers to find them -- yep -- hiked up nicely to mid-torso. As the group walked by, the gentleman, engrossed in conversation, grabbed hold of his waistband and pulled them up even farther.
random shoes
Driving from my house to the office, I pass a very busy spot where there is a petrol station and three roads converge. There is always a hubbub of pedestrian activity and I very often see people dart across the road when it’s questionable at best whether they had time to make it before a car, bus or motorcycle taxi ran them down.
On three occasions now, I have seen a lone shoe sitting right in the middle of the road at that spot. While I have no idea what is the real cause of these random shoes, when I see one I always get a mental image of someone running across the street with a vehicle bearing down on them, losing their shoe in mid-stride, and continuing on to safety with only one shoe.
which side of the road?
While Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania all drive on the left-hand side of the road, Rwanda and Ethiopia both use the right-hand side. Since our regional team represents all the above countries, discussions arise sometimes when we are all together about which side of the road is really the “right” one to drive on.
The last time we talked about this as a group, one of the gentlemen said that there is only one appropriate answer to the question of which side of the road do you drive on. The correct response? The side that the pothole isn’t on.
the real world
Last Monday, I needed to catch a flight to Kenya. A taxi was supposed to pick me up from the office at a set time. Twenty minutes after he should have arrived, I asked the person who had arranged it if she could find out what was going on. “Oh, he probably is just running an errand first,” she said, as though this was a valid reason to be late. “He shouldn’t have committed to the job if he wasn’t going to be able to get here on time,” I responded. At which point the individual smiled, shook her head and said, “Oh Phoebe, we live in the real world.”
Whatever world the taxi was in, I needed to catch my real flight and asked for another taxi to come. By the time the new taxi came, loaded my luggage and we headed out, the real world taxi had still not bothered to complete his errand and get to the office.
friendly checkpoints
The hotel I stayed at in Kenya is directly across the street from the Israeli embassy. As a result, security on the street is very, very tight. In fact, driving on the road is somewhat akin to driving through an obstacle course. Large barriers are placed at regular intervals so that a car has to weave in and out of them. Once these are cleared, several sets of tire-ruining teeth are also strategically placed and must be maneuvered through as well.
These barriers mean that for certain stretches, traffic can only go one direction at a time, further slowing down one’s progress. Evidently fully aware that such a street does nothing for the drivers’ patience, there are signs with cartoonish smiley faces reminding everyone that these are “friendly checkpoints.” When one finally clears the last barrier, those same funny smiley faces appear again, this time with the message “Thank you for visiting Nairobi’s safest street.”
continuing my key saga
Well, it had been a few weeks since I got locked in or out of anywhere so I guess that streak couldn’t last forever. This most recent key adventure may have been the best yet. While visiting the Kenya office, one day I excused myself and headed to washroom. I went in a stall and turned the key.
When I was ready to leave again, the key wouldn’t budge. I wrestled with it for several minutes to no avail. It was lunchtime and even if I hadn’t been extremely embarrassed at the thought of yelling at the top of my lungs to get someone’s attention, the possibility of anyone hearing me was slim anyway.
I looked up at the cement walls surrounding me and realized that the stall walls didn’t go all the way to the ceiling. Standing on the back of the toilet, I could just stretch one leg up to the top of the wall, pull myself up into that narrow space, and jump down on the other side. It was, however, extremely dusty up there and so when I showed up back in the meeting room with my clothes covered in dirt, I had some explaining to do.
It turns out that that particular lock has a history of deciding not to work from time to time, and I was not the first person to ever get trapped inside. I was evidently the first victim to decide to scale the wall, however, and the country staff were quite impressed with my skills.
Update: I mentioned a few weeks ago that I helped a neighbor, Rafa, get her small son to the hospital with a dangerously high fever. The little boy ended up spending the better part of the week there, but is now home and doing very well. Rafa and I have only succeeded in talking by phone so far, but hope to meet up for tea and a less panicky visit this evening so that we can get to know each other a bit under less stressful circumstances.
I’ve just returned from Ethiopia. For four years in high school I had a good friend whose parents had come to the States from Ethiopia as young people and had ended up staying there to raise their family. This friend and his entire family were brilliant, striking and interesting. This friendship probably made Ethiopia the first African country that I started to understand as its own unique country and culture, rather than just a name of a place on a continent where I vaguely thought there was mile upon mile of sameness.
Eight years after I last saw this friend, I took my first trip to Africa and began to fall in love with the people, the culture, the diversity of the various countries I visited. But still I had never made it to Ethiopia. That took nearly another eight years.
My Ethiopian friends tell me now, however, that it didn’t take me quite as long as I thought. Proudly declaring that they have “13 months of sunshine,” Ethiopia’s calendar runs separately of the calendar I have always known. This past September, the country celebrated the millennium. The typical jokes they receive about running very late are countered with a reminder that we should be very glad to know that in Ethiopia we are 7 years and 9 months younger than usual.
Using this same logic, we figured out that since my first visit to Africa occurred when I went to Tanzania in 2001, and it is right now 2000 in Ethiopia … well, my first country to visit in Africa was Ethiopia! Are you sufficiently confused?
Among the Ethiopian people you find a wonderful range of skin tones, from a light yellow-brown to stunning purple-black. And everywhere you see big, open, friendly smiles that are in pleasant contrast with their soft-spoken, gentle, deferential demeanors.
Coming to Ethiopia after visiting and learning about many other countries and cultures over the last decade, I find myself using these others as a reference to describe what I found there. Soft-spoken voices, striking traditional clothing, spicy sauces and an emphasis on education that bear strong resemblance to India. Music, dance and language reminiscent of the Middle East. The wide white smiles of East and West Africa. Independently courting and marrying a spouse of one’s choosing (and often waiting till one’s late-20s to mid-30s to do so) like so much of the West -- and so UNlike almost all their neighbors.
All these comparisons served to help me at once contextualize this culture I was visiting and also appreciate how unique and “other” this beautiful country is – as indeed every country is, if we only can take the time to recognize it. Much as I have grown to enjoy the familiarity and understanding that comes with going back to places like Uganda and Tanzania and now Rwanda again and again, this trip also allowed me to remember how much fun it is to experience a new place as well.
English is quite widespread in Ethiopia, which I find extremely impressive. The Ethiopian alphabet is a series of characters -- with the same roots as Arabic and Hebrew -- called Amharic. As I understood the description, the alphabet consists of twenty-something consonant-type starting sounds, each with seven possible vowel-type following sounds. Combined, these make up all the possible sounds of the language, so Amharic is entirely phonetic.
In the good schools, by seventh grade the students’ day is entirely in English. Which means that by 13 these children have learned not only a whole new alphabet, but an entirely different spelling and pronunciation system. Trying to fill my head with Kinyarwanda at the moment, I found that I could never really get past “salam” -- or “hello” -- in my Amharic lessons on this trip.
I did learn one other … well, not word exactly. I guess you’d say I learned one more sound. I remember traveling to India a few years ago and being a bit confused when I asked questions only to get a response of head-bobbing that was a sort of a cross between a US “no” and “so so,” accompanied by a verbal “yes.” After a few days I realized that this was how they nodded yes in India. I thought of this again during this past week in Ethiopia.
Within my first few hours there, the person to whom I was talking had a quick intake of breath. I paused for a moment because it was the kind of sound I often make when I’ve suddenly thought of something that I forgot to do. However, she seemed to be waiting for me to continue and so I did. Only to have her gasp similarly several times through the rest of the conversation, making me decide that she was having hiccups.
In a bit, I was conversing with someone else. Same thing. I would be sharing some detail only to have them respond with that sudden “hhhhp.” More hiccups? Next I overheard one side of a phone conversation and there it was again. And I finally realized that this is a sound of agreement. It’s a “right, I’m listening, I’m right there with you” sort of sound. Even once I figured this out though, it still caused me to pause at times, waiting for them to say something like “I forgot to turn the oven off!”
Another one of those funny language/interpretation differences right here in Rwanda is the word for no: oya. It is pronounced almost exactly like the US informal “oh yeah” — in other words, “yes.” It can get especially confusing among people who speak what I’ve decided to call Kinyarwenglish, which is fairly common due to the number of people who have returned to Rwanda after years in the US, Europe and neighboring English-speaking countries like Uganda and Kenya. Tone becomes essential in figuring out if they are agreeing or disagreeing.
Much as I enjoyed my time (and the people and the coffee and the food) in Ethiopia, I found myself looking forward to returning to Rwanda. Each time I travel somewhere and then return here once again it seems to help this feel a little more like home. My house is still empty, but as I write this I am sitting on the front veranda of my little house, looking out at the trees and flowers and shrubs of my own place, and the hills of Kigali stretching out beyond my gate. The air is pleasant and the view is beautiful and I’m happy to be here.
I know, I know -- two posts in one week! The mind reels. But truly, the last 72 hours have been such a sequence of crazy, sometimes dramatic, sometimes humorous events that I feel like I have to put them down on “paper”.
I will start back on Tuesday night, which as I mentioned before was my first night in my new house. What I did not mention before was what I managed to do during my first half hour in the house. I’m going to tell about it now because it seems to be the moment when the week started going, as Joe would say, all pear-shaped.
Because I don’t have most of my things at this point, I’m continually making due with not-quite-the-right-tool for various jobs. One thing I did not have (and needed) on Tuesday night was scissors. So I was using a knife to open some packaging. Some of you may be already starting to cringe as you see where this is going.
I will spare you the details, but suffice to say that I cut myself rather badly across one of my right-hand fingers. Unsure where to even go to see if I needed stitches, I washed it as thoroughly as I could and went in search of my little first aid kit. Remember that I had just hauled all my things over to the house and because I was only moving a few minutes away, I hadn’t bothered to pack with much of an organizational plan. Meaning that I really had no idea which bag I had thrown the first aid kit into.
So there I was trying not to bleed all over everything, having the use of only one hand, looking through every single suitcase, plastic bag, etc, in search of some antibiotic ointment and a few bandaids. I did eventually get myself bandaged and the mess cleaned up. Though I’m staying away from knives for a few days and now have a pair of scissors at home. (Let me pause here to say that after a couple of swollen, sore days, the finger is healing quite well now -- just so you’re not left wondering…)
Wednesday morning was humorous and slow as I tried to get ready for work still with only the use of my left hand. But otherwise it was uneventful. In the evening, I went to buy a surge protector/extension cable for my electric oven, since the plug couldn’t quite reach to the outlet. It will become evident in a bit how ironic the word “protector” is in the previous sentence.
I then spent a bit of time with Chantal making a list of Kinyarwanda words with their English translations. I’ve been wanting to do this since I arrived but finally got desperate enough to make it a priority when I moved into my house. You see, Baptiste, who I told you a little about previously, decided to join me at my new house when I moved. He helps around the house and garden a bit, but more importantly provides security since I live alone and travel frequently. Baptiste does not speak English, so we’re quite a funny pair at times. Since my learning of Kinyarwanda is driven by necessity my vocabulary is probably a bit funny at the moment – “rubbish” (umwanda, if you’re interested) was among the first words I learned.
Wednesday night I set about making dinner, excited to cook my first real meal in the house. Only to realize that the tomato paste I had bought required a can opener to get into it. And I don’t have a can opener. Now, I know cans can be opened with knives but we know my history with those at the moment, so I was reticent to try. But I also wanted to eat. So I stood there looking at the knife and at the tomato paste. Thankfully at that moment I was rescued by Baptiste (of course this whole knife thing does nothing to help his view of my kitchen abilities…) who opened the can effortlessly.
Thursday rolled around. I worked. I drove home. Baptiste was out running an errand so I parked the car outside the gate, got my key, opened the little door in the gate and opened the gate. This was my first time to do this by myself and I was very aware of how much amusement I was providing for the security guards across the street as I attempted to look nonchalant and experienced as I struggled through the process. Successfully got the gate open only to find that I had locked the keys inside the truck. Sheepishly, under the stares of those security guards, I wrestled the gate closed again.
Thankfully, my phone was not in the truck so I was able to ring a man called Samuel, who had a spare key, to come rescue me (I am borrowing a vehicle at the moment, since I won’t have one of my own until April). That is not a fun phone call to make though, especially when it is dinnertime for the person you’re calling.
Waiting for Samuel, I decided to work on dinner myself. “Why not test out my oven?” I thought, and got some toast ready to put under the grill. The instructions said to let the grill heat for 10 minutes before using it. During those 10 minutes, Samuel arrived. We visited outside for a few minutes, he unlocked the truck, and I pulled it inside the gate.
Walking back into the house, there was a funny smell. I walked into the kitchen to find smoke. Thinking it was just caused by using the oven for the first time, I opened the oven just to make sure there was nothing wrong. When I suddenly realized that the smoke wasn’t coming from the oven at all, but from the cord of the surge “protector”!! Quickly unplugging and moving things, we got the smoking cord out of the house, and miraculously there was almost no damage to anything else.
Friday (today) rolled around. About 10 minutes after I awoke, my phone started ringing. Barbara, with whom I work, had tried to come into the office early but was locked out -- due to a string of circumstances I won’t go into here. After my little episode last night I was hardly in a position to be upset about it, so threw on some clothes and headed out the door, trying to gesture to Baptiste that I wasn’t leaving for the day, but would be back momentarily. To the office I went, dropped off my key (the one that only works from the outside, if you recall…) and was back home again.
At lunchtime, I had arranged for someone to come to the house to look at something they're working on. Chantal was also meeting me there. Moments after arriving at the house, there was shouting in the street. It was a security guard from one of the houses a little ways down from me. Chantal translated that a child from that house was very ill and they had no transportation to the hospital.
We ran down to the house, where I met my first neighbor, Raffa. Her family is from Madagascar and thankfully she speaks English so we could quickly confer. Within a couple of minutes she and her small son were in my truck and we were headed to the hospital.
Raffa’s husband had been called from work and he was able to meet us there just a few minutes after we arrived. I left them there with their little son in a bed and the doctors talking with them and examining the child. I hope to stop by their house tonight to find out his status, so I will try to give an update soon.
Now I am finishing things up at the office before I head to Ethiopia tomorrow for a week. Next week I won’t be cooking, arranging the house, or driving, so maybe things will be a bit calmer. Incidentally, after my lunchtime experience today I know where to go if I ever need stitches.
This photo doesn't have anything to do with this post, but I just loved the look on Arienne's face. At 18 months, she and Dorcas (in pink) are always very busy.
here a president…
Well, friends, I had intended to say hello again before now but I found myself without an internet connection for most of last week while I was visiting Uganda. Then I got back and was catching up on email so still no blogging for me. So here I am now, but some of my news is perhaps a little old.
You may have heard that on Tuesday, February 19, President George Bush was visiting Kigali, Rwanda. I had heard he was touring Africa, but hadn’t thought much about how it might have anything to do with me. What I didn’t realize is that in a country the size of Maryland, such a visit would affect everyone.
That morning, I got into work by the skin of my teeth before they closed the road outside the office in preparation for the motorcade from the airport to the U.S. Embassy. Mbanda, who I work with, was a couple of minutes behind me and not quite as fortunate. He was forced to take a bumpy detour to get to the office the back way.
I sat at my desk and watched out the window as dozens of Suburbans, Land Cruisers, press buses, police vans, trucks full of Rwandese soldiers and various other vehicles drove by. I tried to decide which one of them the President was most likely to be inside. The ones with flags? Too obvious? The procession drew quite a crowd, both inside the office and along the street.
I was flying to Uganda that evening, so headed home in the early afternoon to pack and prepare for my trip. I was supposed to meet the taxi at my office at 4:30 PM. I hadn’t thought to ask the President about his schedule when I made these plans. At 4, I decided to head to the office (usually a 5-minute drive) to check email one last time before flying out. Only to find that the road had been closed for the President’s return to the airport. The next half hour was a mini-adventure on a narrow, very rutted dirt road that I was sharing with entirely too many cars, not to mention swarms of people, all trying to go about their business without the use of the main road.
As a fan of “West Wing,” I knew all about Presidential motorcades (in the same way that I know all about medicine because of “ER” and all about how to take a case to trial from “Law & Order”…). But what they never showed on “West Wing” was what was happening on all the side streets and how it affected all the lives and schedules of the people who would usually be on that road.
…there a president
I did successfully make my flight to Uganda, where I spent a nice week with my regional team (we’re scattered across 7 countries so we’re not all in the same place very often) -- as well as Joe! I won’t go into the long explanation of why he was invited, but suffice to say it was wonderful for me to get to share a bit of Uganda with him. If I’m counting correctly, this was the sixth country we’ve met up in during the last year -- aren’t we quite the international pair?
On our last day in Uganda, Joe had joined some people for a little sightseeing and I was having a late lunch meeting with some of my team. Security had been heightened during the previous 24 hours as rumors of a visit from Uganda's President Museveni made the rounds of the hotel.
I headed down the steps from lunch just a few minutes ahead of the rest of my group only to be met by an entourage of about 50 people -- led by Museveni himself! It took me a moment to recognize him outside a photograph, and perhaps it wouldn’t have clicked if he hadn’t been looking very closely at me with an expression that said “how did you get there?” I’m fairly certain security was not supposed to let me down the steps just then and I’m fairly certain that the look on my face also said “how did I get here?”
It was an interesting moment.
home sweet (empty) home
I spent my first night in my new house last night! Because the floors are tile, the walls cement and the ceilings a bit high, I’ve been wandering around singing loudly and enjoying hearing it reverberate off everything. On the flip side, at the moment the only room I can successfully talk on the phone in is the bedroom, where the bed and my clothes absorb some of the echo.
Chantal helped me piece together a bed, some sheets, towels, pots and pans to last me until my own belongings arrive in mid-April. Since I bought my stove, refrigerator and washing machine on arrival, at least I can cook and wash clothes in the meantime. Yesterday I bought buckets and mops and rags and all the other things that aren’t very fun to spend money on, but which are sort of important nonetheless.
After being in a variety of hotels and temporary housing since I left Colorado, I keep having to remind myself that I’m finally home. That I likely won’t be packing all these things up and shifting them again for a good long while.
As I work at setting up my life here, I find myself often comparing and contrasting the experience with what it would be like had I just moved to another US town, rather than across the world. There are challenges: hunting all over town for a used, empty gas tank to buy for the stove so that I can trade in my “empty” for a full one. Making me realize how amazing it is that there’s just a line that comes into the house in the West without anyone having to think about where the gas is coming from or whether it’s getting low.
There are also benefits. The plumber was at the house fixing another issue yesterday when he noticed I needed a longer pipe for the washing machine and gave me a very reasonable price for which he could fix it for me. By lunchtime today it was fixed, and cost me exactly what he’d said it would. No setting up an appointment a week from now and giving me a 3-hour window of time in which they would show up, and then adding on various and sundry costs that somehow hadn’t been included in the estimate.
And while Mexican food, which I love, may be hard to come by here, mangoes and avocados the size of melons are not hard to come by. And I love those too.
I ask you, who can resist a face like that?
As day 20 in my new country gets under way, I find myself amazed that I’ve already been here for that long. While in some ways I feel like I’ve already been away along time – for instance, it seems like ages since I’ve seen those I said goodbye to in Colorado – at other times I feel like I still just got here. So the fact that we’re already headed toward the end of February is a little crazy to me. (I realize there is still more than a week left in the month, making me sound perhaps a bit like my dad, who we tease sometimes because at 6:15 he will tell you it’s almost 7:00, and about 2 weeks into a new year he’ll tell you there are "only" 11.5 months left. Hi, Dad!)
This week was a little rough at times. It wasn’t actually that anything bad happened. It was more just all the little things that added up over the week that reinforced my realization that “we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.” I’m in that strange place of knowing that my residence is now Kigali, Rwanda, but feeling like most of my life is still back where I came from. Supposedly, two weeks after a move is when homesickness and culture shock can really set in. And much as I hate to just be a statistic, maybe they know what they’re talking about.
Lest anyone worry about me, I really am fine, and overall, very excited by all that is happening. And by the weekend much of the melancholy of the week was already gone. It’s just an interesting process, to be able to stand back and analytically identify the “why” of how you're feeling without being able to subsequently just stop the feeling itself.
Anyway… that’s far more than enough psychoanalysis for one post.
So many babies, so little time... Seemed like a waste to hold one at a time when I have two arms!!
On Monday afternoon, we had a fairly spectacular thunderstorm. So spectacular that it knocked out our router and we struggled with a lack of internet connection for the rest of the week. Thankfully I had the option of driving over to the Rwanda field office from time to time to download messages and send out replies. For those in the office with desktop computers this wasn’t an option and since much of our work is interacting with offices in other countries, it was a pretty frustrating week for them. They handled it with a lot more grace than I think I could have.
These situations do have a way of altering our perspective though. Coming from the high-speed connections of the States, previous to the storm I’d been tapping my toes a bit impatiently at times waiting for pages to load or documents to send. But after a week of no connection, I find this connection to be just fine! Tempted as I am to pat myself on the back, I figure I better see how long my new-found patience lasts before I get too carried away.
On Saturday I finally got myself properly oriented with where a lot of things are in this city. I was tired of just dipping my toes in the kiddy pool – I decided to go for broke and dive into the deep end. (How’s that for mixing several tired metaphors?)
Two co-workers – Alemayehu from Ethiopia and Amy from the States – were in town, and we decided to meet for lunch. After several attempts to find out exactly where their hotel was located, which left me more geographically confused than ever (street signs do not abound in Kigali), we settled on having them take a taxi to a place we all knew, and I drove us to the restaurant from there.
After a nice lunch, Aleymayehu needed to go back to the hotel to collect his bags and head to the airport. Rather than putting him back in a taxi, I asked if he thought he could direct me back to the hotel and he said yes. So off we went, twisting and turning our way (it was every bit as confusing as it had sounded). We got there just fine. I had the distinct feeling, however, that I couldn’t repeat the process.
Since a driver was already arranged to take Aleymayehu to the airport, we said goodbye there and with instructions regarding how to get to a nearby artisan market, Amy and I headed out again. After successfully bargaining for a few things at the market, we went in search of coffee.
Coming to an intersection, I turned vaguely in the direction I thought we had come from earlier. “Do you know where you are?” Amy asked. “No,” I said, “but I think I’ve been on this road before.” It didn’t sound convincing, I realized, but we continued on and I was relieved when I suddenly saw the first supermarket Chantal had taken me to, a couple of weeks ago.
I wasn’t positive where it was in relation to other things, but it was a start! Amy was a wonderful sport and kept me company for the next several hours as I worked out how to get from there to the community where I’ll be moving once my house is ready, to a coffee shop I’d visited the week before, and so on. By the end of the day, the city had begun to make sense in my head and I was even able to get her back to her hotel and myself back home from there. So thanks for the moral support, Amy!
Tonight I head to Uganda for several days of meetings. After months of crazy moving logistics, I find myself planning for this trip as nonchalantly as I previously would have done for a jaunt from Colorado Springs down to Pueblo to visit my sisters for the weekend. I have traveled to Uganda often – it is a place I love and know quite well. So after three weeks of constantly new experiences, perhaps it’s the next best thing to a quick visit home.
I feel like I’ve rambled on and on this time, so I don’t blame you if you gave up somewhere along the way. This is what happens to me when I don’t have Skype for a week, I guess!
If I have time, perhaps my next “hello” will be from the Pear – oops, I mean the Pearl – of Africa! Until then…
So, as many of you know, my favorite photo subjects are almost always children. There are plenty of beautiful little faces around me, so you'll probably be seeing a lot of them!
These two friends, Fabiola (L) and Maria, live at the first New Hope Home started by Chantal and are two of the oldest children.
refrigerators and bank accounts
Another week! Among the week’s notables was the fact that it was the first time I worked from the office every day in at least five months and possibly longer. I’m not a very good cubicle-dweller, so this might be an event to mourn, rather than to celebrate – ha!
As I was getting ready for my move, I spent a lot of time going to offices and businesses during the day to take care of various moving details and then doing my work and answering emails late at night, thanks to the wonderful world of telecommuting. So going into the office for eight hours and then going home and not working until the following day has been a novelty.
Among the other things I did this week: going to see the house where I’ll be living – very exciting! I’m especially excited by the nice big yard around the house. I also bought a refrigerator and stove, as well as a couple of plates and cups, so that even before the rest of my things arrive from the States I can at least eat – priorities, you know.
Chantal and her sister-in-law Joiesse (again, I’m guessing at this spelling) took me shopping for my appliances, which helped tremendously. While I’m actually fairly good at bargaining, having no idea what the going rate for an item is makes it a bit difficult to bargain. And I set up a bank account. This isn’t really exciting, I realize, but again it was the novelty of the situation. The bank was open for regular business hours on Sunday so that’s what I did after lunch yesterday.
This beautiful little girl, Deborah, also lives at the first home.
As the oldest infant at the second home, Mbabazi (approx 9 months old) is Queen of the Babies.
And here she is with her royal subjects: (L-R) Daniel, Moses, Prince (yes, Prince), and one more young lady whose name escapes me as I write this...adventures in the kitchen
I also did a bit of cooking. I enjoy cooking and have done quite a bit of it over the years. Though I’m not sure I’m ever going to convince Baptiste of this. Baptiste is a very kind, soft-spoken, smiley man who helps out around Chantal’s home. We can say hello and how are you to one another and then his English is exhausted so we mostly communicate through signs and pointing.
The one time I tried to say a word to him in Kinyarwanda, he smiled and said, “You speak Swahili?” In my defense, I knew it was a Swahili word I’d used, but I thought it was also used in Kinyarwanda. I was wrong. All in all, we get on quite well. He just doesn’t trust me in the kitchen. Perhaps deservedly if you look at the facts from his perspective.
One day I’d had a quick bite of lunch and decided I’d wash my few dishes up. There was a rag and a sponge in the sink. I picked up the rag, added a bit of soap and started washing, just as Baptiste walked in. With a big smile he started gesturing that he would do it. I told him it was no problem. When I insisted, he came over, took the rag out of my hand and placed the sponge in it instead. He also picked up the soap bottle and squeezed some on, just to be on the safe side, I think.
It turns out that I was washing the dishes with the rag he only uses for wiping the counters. Baptiste is a use-only-a- sponge-for-washing-dishes kind of guy, evidently. I walked away from the encounter fairly certain that Baptiste thought that was my first experience washing dishes.
Fast-forward to breakfast the next morning, when I decided to scramble myself a couple of eggs. When Baptiste saw me get out a skillet, butter and two eggs, he walked over and got a small bowl and a fork, so I could scramble them. I realize that might be the most traditional way to scramble eggs and if I’d just gone ahead and done it that way, perhaps I could have reassured Baptiste that it wasn’t my first time cooking.
But the truth is, I prefer melting a little butter, breaking the eggs directly into the skillet and letting the whites whiten a bit before starting to scramble them. I thanked Baptiste for the bowl, then stubbornly pressed on and gestured that I was going to do it differently. He smiled at me, shrugged a little, and opened the drawer to get the crazy woman in his kitchen a spatula so she could stir her strange eggs.
Add the fact that I’m still learning where items are kept in the kitchen, still getting used to the gas burners I’m cooking on, etc, and none of this has done anything to help convince Baptiste that I can find my way around a kitchen. Now, when I start anything, he stands at my shoulder for the first 10 minutes or so, to make sure I can find things, know how to turn things on and off – and perhaps to make sure I don’t burn the house down.
This one is here just because I love it. The infant is Baby Sarah, from last week's post. I had been taking close-ups of Sarah just previous to this photo, while her "Mama" held her.
Then one of the aunties suggested I take a picture of both of them. The mama hesitated but then agreed. So here they are: the youngest and oldest members of New Hope Home 1, together.
Several of the children and babies, one of the mamas, Chantal (standing on right), one of the aunties, and another friend all enjoy one of the newly finished sitting rooms.fresh paint and brownies
In spite of Baptiste’s doubts, I did successfully make a couple batches of brownies that we took to Chantal’s kids on Sunday afternoon. Chantal and I had been talking about things we’re familiar with from the States that can easily be made here. (Incidentally, you can buy almost everything here – it’s just a matter of how much you’re willing to spend. The price tag on anything that has to be imported can be shockingly high.)
I told her about a brownie recipe our family has always used and we discovered that we had everything we needed to make them – yea! So she suggested we make some as a treat for all the children. Of course, we kept some for ourselves too…
Over the last week, both current homes as well as the new one have been getting fresh coats of paint on the walls and floors and the children have gamely allowed themselves to be shuffled from room to room and house to house as this happened. While the paint finished drying, Chantal and I spent much of Saturday afternoon arranging furniture.
The brownies were in part to celebrate the fact that after several days of upheaval, the kids were all back in their own beds and able to go freely from room to room in their homes. They were a big hit.
I just love the "Sunday afternoon picnic" feel of this photo. Rosemary and Enosa decided to make themselves comfortable while they ate their brownies. Enosa just arrived at the home on Thursday, but judging from this photo he seems to be settling in just fine.
By the way, the brownie recipe, for those who are interested, is:
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter (I did not say they were healthy brownies)
2 eggs
6 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of salt
2 cups flour
Bake in a 9x13 pan at 350 degrees (F) for about half an hour. Enjoy!
I'm continually thinking of all my family and friends who I left in Colorado -- as well as the many of you who are scattered all over various other parts of the world! I end this sending lots of love to all.
This will be a post of several random stories that aren’t necessarily connected. Little bits and pieces that I noticed or that amused me in the last few days. The things that happen that I’m always wanting to tell someone about and don’t quite get around to it. It will probably get long, so I’ll divide them by subject so you can leave off reading whenever you need to.
1) The first item is not actually connected to Rwanda specifically but to East Africa generally. In my role, I get copied on hundreds of emails every week about the various trips and stories and activities that I’m at least loosely involved with or connected to or overseeing in the field offices. Today, I read a very kind email from a US staff person who had recently been to Uganda and was following up on some issues from the trip. The greeting said that the person hoped all was going well in the Pear of Africa.
This individual meant, of course, the Pearl of Africa – Uganda’s nickname – but the typo made me smile and laugh and shake my head because it was so representative of the type of (mis)communication that is continually happening in this work that we do, where thousands of people from dozens of cultures are interacting and trying to meaningfully work together. So often, when we are trying our hardest to be significant and relevant, we have our silliest moments.
I’m very happy to say that on February 23 I will travel to the Pear of Africa for some meetings.
2) Sunday I went to church with my hostess, Chantal. She is a beautiful, amazing woman whose family fled Rwanda before she was even born but who is finally as an adult living out her dream to return to her homeland. I am boarding at her house until my permanent housing is available in March.
Chantal looks after me, drives me around, gives me advice, warns me, supports me, tells me stories, laughs. She is 6 feet tall and is the shortest person among her husband and 3 children. Her husband is the VP for Compassion Africa. She runs incredible homes for orphaned and abandoned children because she “wanted to be doing something significant. Not just be the wife of someone doing something significant.”
We went to a church service entirely in Kinyarwanda (Rwanda’s native language), which I don’t yet speak, so I had plenty of time to watch people and think. The music and dancing were wonderful, the children were beautiful, the women were dressed in their absolute best and then some. There was an earthquake in western Rwanda during our service. We didn’t really feel it, but we did lose power as a result. The pastor’s wife said it was just God telling us he was there.
The chairs were laid out in a sort of horseshoe so I could watch everyone directly across from me without even appearing to be staring. Which is how I came to see the man reading all the Scriptures. It seemed to be his designated job. He was wearing this amazing suit reminiscent of men’s suits when they were on holiday in the 1920s. It was linen (I think) and made up of wide white and beige stripes. He was tall and lanky and loved to dance during the singing. I couldn’t stop watching him.
3) Also at the service, they asked for all visitors to stand. My immediate family and close friends know the dread this instills in me. I can’t give a good explanation of why. I realize I’m generally an outgoing person. But something about telling everyone to greet the visitors or asking all the visitors to identify themselves at a church service has always given me a brief feeling of panic.
Over the years, my defense mechanism became just ignoring the request. I would sit there and smile and try to look like I belonged while all the visitors stood. However, in a service of several hundred where I was the only white person, this was not really an option.
“They’re asking all the visitors to stand,” Chantal translated for me. “No,” I said before I realized what I was saying. “Yes,” she said, and smiled. And she must have seen the flash of terror across my face because she firmly pushed me upward by my elbow and said, “You can do this.”
And I could do it, of course. The doing is never as bad as the dreading. And there were plenty of other people who also stood. But all the same, I was pretty sure I was glowing as I stood there for the required 20 seconds.
4) I got locked into my office yesterday. I’ve been told there is a book about Africa called The Man with the Key Has Gone. I have no idea exactly what the book holds, but the title is fabulous.
If you’ve ever spent time in a developing country, you may be familiar with this key phenomenon. One could think of many possible reasons why this is the case, but whatever the reason, anything resembling an office – or for that matter, any room that might possibly hold something that someone might, at some point, want – gets locked.
If you think I am kidding or exaggerating, let me only say this: the bathroom stall that Barbara (the only other female in my office) and I share must be locked when neither of us is in it. I dutifully take the key from its nail, unlock it, lock myself in, take care of my business, unlock myself and lock the door back. I’m not clear about what would happen if I didn’t lock it. Compassion is the only office on that floor of our building.
Somehow, the person with you is never the person with the key. Inevitably, the person with the key must be hunted down. Searched for. Called. Waited on.
Last week they gave me a key to our office door with strict instructions to lock it behind me if I were ever leaving the building when no one else was around. I put the key in my work bag and didn’t think much more of it. This brings me to today.
Barbara had left to run an errand. The only other person in the office was a young man called Tisian (I am guessing at the spelling). Tisian came over to say that he was leaving for a bit, so he would lock the door if I had my key. “It’s okay,” I said, “I am leaving in 5 minutes, so I can just lock it behind me.” Tisian insisted that the door must be locked for those 5 minutes however. From my office I cannot actually see the door. And he didn’t want someone coming in and “doing whatever” without me knowing.
The 5 minutes passed and Chantal arrived to take me to my appointment. I heard her knocking, grabbed my key and went to the door. The key did not work. I started laughing. I have to admit that this was funny to me only because I knew how nearby help was. Otherwise I’m afraid I may not have felt so gracious.
I called upstairs to the East Africa office – not to be confused with the regional office where I work, which deals with East and West Africa – and told the assistant, Alice, that I was locked in. She laughed, apologized and hurried down with a key, and Chantal and I made it to the appointment on time.
It turns out, incidentally, that my key DOES work from the outside. But not from the inside. I don’t know how this is possible. Neither does anyone else, it seems. Regardless, I’ve asked Tisian to please never lock the office when I’m inside anymore, just to be safe.
5) I will close by telling you a little about Chantal’s homes, where the picture at the top was taken. Her significant, beautiful, inspiring homes. In the photos, I’m holding Sarah, who, at two weeks old, is currently the youngest member of the homes. Her mother died in childbirth.
Chantal has named them New Hope Homes. Each one houses 10 children, 4 “mamas” and “aunties” and one grounds/gatekeeper. The children have all been orphaned or abandoned. The women are widows who were in need of a job. Chantal said the idea was to take the command to care for the “widows and orphans” literally.
There are currently two homes running and just in the 5 or 6 days I’ve been here I’ve witnessed massive strides in the progress of the third home, which is set to open the beginning of March. A month out, there are only 3 of the 10 spots not yet spoken for. Future residents include a tiny newborn even younger than Sarah who also lost her mother. The new children will squeeze into the other homes until their new quarters are ready.
I already know that I’ll have dozens of stories about the children at New Hope Homes in the coming months and years. But for now, I just wanted to say that in this first week living in Rwanda I got to go hug the children and hold the babies and it was wonderful.
These little ones need and want all the hugs they can get, and I – maybe especially because I had to say goodbye to my 2.5-year-old and 7-month-old nieces when I moved here – need and want some kids to hug on. So it works out well for all of us.
