We arrived in Kigali, Rwanda around 3pm on Tuesday, October 13. As we pulled up to the bus station, we had no idea what to expect. We got off the bus as a team and I began to walk around to ask if anyone knew who Pastor Muyimba Fred was. The first man I asked quickly pointed to the left. I turned and saw a tall man, who reached out his hand to welcome me – it was Pastor Fred. We greeted each other, grabbed all of our bags, tossed them in the back of his truck and we were off. He told us the drive was not long, but who knows with African time, not long can sometimes mean an hour or more. Luckily, it was not African time, it was only about a 20 minute drive.
We had no idea what our living conditions would be or whether we were living on our own, with the pastor’s family or someone else. We pulled up to a big gate, Pastor Fred honked the horn a few times and then the gates were opened up. Pastor Fred’s English is a little broken, so it took us a minute or two to make the connection that this was his house and family. He parked the car, opened the doors and we all piled out. We were greeted with hugs as we were welcomed into our home for the month. Pastor Fred showed us to two bedrooms. One with a queen size bed for two of us and another with a king size bed for three.
We split up the rooms and began to unpack. It wasn’t long before Alexa and I realized we had not been shown to where the restroom is. On the World Race the type of restroom you get is always a surprise. You can get very lucky and have a western toilet or in the worse case scenario you can have what is called a latrine, which is a flat floor where things just slowly wash out through a gutter on the ground by the walls. Alexa and I walk out and ask Joshua, the 8 year old, if he could show us where the restroom is. He walks us out back to a freestanding building and opens the door. He then walks away, leaving Alexa and I with our mouths wide open in complete confusion. We stood there for at least a full minute…..
“Do we really have a latrine for the month?”, “This is not going to be fun”, “This can’t be real”
There was one bucket in the “latrine”, so the next question was, “is there a hole under the bucket?!”….”nope”.
….after we became unfrozen, I spoke up and said “let’s be optimistic, there’s got to be at least a squatty potty around here.” Now squatty pottys are the most common sort of bathroom in Africa. They are literally a hole in the ground that you squat and go in. Normally, this is not something you would be hoping for, but in this case, we would have been thrilled to find anything other than a latrine. So we made our way to the side of the building where we saw a closed door…
Alexa and I inch our way up to it…she slowly reached out her hand and began to open the door. As we began to get a glimpse inside, it was like we heard a choir of angels singing “ahhhhh”.
…sitting in the middle of a cement box was a beautiful, pearly white western toilet.
It’s amazing the little things that we take so much comfort in. We are fortunate to once again be living in a beautiful home. And to top it off, we have been welcomed into Pastor Fred’s home as family.
We are living with Pastor Fred, his wife Mary, and six of their nine kids. They have all been wonderful and a blast to get to know and do life with. There are four girls, Natasha (24), Sharon (21), Eve (18), and Linda (16) and two boys, Prince (9) and Joshua (8) in the home. We get home cooked meals three times a day from Mary and I, who have never had sisters, now have four Rwandan sisters!
Month two is off to a good start!
