Our days in Rwanda are amazing and full of life. Rwanda is made up of hills, bumpy roads and lots of greenery. Our home this month is surrounded by corn fields, avocado trees, banana trees, mango trees, potato fields, cabbage fields, flower bushes and so many other greeneries. We live in the outskirts of Kigali, in a city called Busanza, where the climate is mostly warm without much breeze and there are random rain showers. You will catch us constantly praying for specific weather and it’s a beautiful thing that every time God answers. With these answered prayers we have seen overcast, thunder and windy days as well.
This month our host is Pastor Moses, called P Moses by us, who is in charge of Gospel Center Ministries. He runs a school and is in charge of 5 churches in Kigali. We live in the back house of Pastor Moses’ home but we still experience “community living” by having 5 little children come into our living space. They’re Pastor Moses kids: Laurie, Deborah, “Master” Jay, Josiah and Isaiah. We loved watching movies with them or playing card games like Spoons. Our host would treat us like one of their kids by calling us favorite or telling our parents how many cows they could get for us. Dowries of 3-5 cows are what’s expected when getting married. However, P Moses told my parents he could get 7 for me, he would keep 2 for his help of course.
In the back house there is 2 rooms and 4 beds; my team of 6 live in this cute homey space that has a living room connecting the 2 rooms. I get to share a bed with my teammate Diane; the beds have mosquito nets, that keep you extra toasty at night; malaria is prevalent here. As is usual in the race, we sometimes have indoor pets like cockroaches and the mice that live above us. Other times we have visitors like our wasps’ friends; one of which stung Diane one night. We take bucket showers because we didn’t know better. The pastor has 3-100,000 liter plus tanks that collect water from the rain. We didn’t know that one was connected to our bathroom so we have been filling buckets to shower in our restroom. We wash our clothes by hand with the same water that is collected on rainy days. The rain collected water also helps us flush our western toilet that is not hooked up to running water (again, because of our misunderstanding! haha). We each are assigned to fetch 2 buckets of water each day to fill up a tub in our restroom for the basic necessities. If you were wondering, we still get the squatty experience at church.
Mornings normally look like having breakfast anytime from 8-8:30 a.m. with a spread of fruit, bread and tea or coffee. From Tuesday through Friday we teach English to little ones ranging from the ages of 3-6. My class has about 24 village students of 3 and 4 year olds. I look forward to going to school to see the little ones everyday. Our walk up to the school goes up a dusty steep hill that is filled with greenery all around. Farmers surround our walk up to the school so everyday we have people waving by and children coming up to hug us. As we walk to school we hear people say Mzungu which means “white person”. We wave and laugh. Our host gets called a Mzungu too; he’s “white” by association.
At the school there are 3 classrooms and lovely children constantly singing silly songs. I’ll write those for reference at the bottom. The school doubles as a church in the evenings for the village community. We teach, laugh and play with the kiddos until it is time to come home for lunch. When school is done we hold hands with the kids and get walked down all the way to our home (even if it means going out of the way for them). Even when we leave before them, because their older sibling hasn’t arrived to pick them up, they run up to catch up with us. This second week we have been able to train the teachers that volunteer for the school on school management, pronunciation and games for the children.
After school we are served lunch which is the same options as dinner. More about that later. Our meals are made by the host except for off days when we head to the city to talk to our family and friends; off days are Mondays and Saturdays. It takes us about 2 hours to get into the city based on the waiting of the bus, transferring busses or hoping on a moto to get to a hotel that has “good Wi-Fi” so we only go to the city once a week. Side note: I was burned by the exhaust of a moto on one of these days.
In the evenings we preach at one of two churches: one is small with about 30+ member and the other has about 50+ members. The small church has 3 choirs: witness choir, light choir and hope choir. The choirs sometimes share some of the same members. Church lasts a minimum of 3 hours with lots of singing, lots of thanksgiving, lots of praying, lots of joy, lots of laughter and a short preaching given by us. There is never a set schedule when it comes to church. Praise and worship can last over an hour.
My favorite thing about the Rwandan church is seeing how they give. There are three bowls for the time of offering: one for thanksgiving, one for offering and one for tithes. The small church has mostly farm workers so we have seen how some members give tithes through their crops (i.e. beans).
On Sundays we get split in groups of three. At the big church one of us gets to preach while two of us get to give Sunday school. They do “sports” aka exercises which normally look like dance moves done during praise and worship. We teach them a song and tell them a story about the bible after they get their wiggles out in “sports”. We get to pray for the sick when Sunday school ends because like most low-income communities the children can’t afford to go to the doctor. God is their doctor.
Rwandans have 2 names; a Kinyarwanda name and a Christian name. The Christian name is an English name while the Kinyarwanda name is in their native tongue. We had to earn our Kinyarwanda name by dancing for the big church. We kept “messing up” by not stopping when the pastor asked us to stop and not dancing as talented as our Rwandan brothers and sisters do. They kept asking us to “repent” a word often used by our host to poke fun at us when we do something wrong. They must have finally given up on us because after our third dance or so they gave us names. My name is Ngabire (In-Gah-Bee-Reh) which means divine gift.
When we come back in the evenings from church, we enjoy tea time, as we wait for dinner. It’s normal to have dinner after 8 p.m. in Rwandan culture. Dinner varies every night; we get a variety of veggies (carrots, cauliflower, cucumbers, peas, green beans), rice or pasta with red sauce. Sometimes we get a meat ball or meat (we think it might be goat), mashed potatoes, soft potatoes or fries. Every night we get served with a smile of our host bringing in the dishes of food.
I have been thankful for this month and all it has offered. My team surprised me by celebrating my half birthday on the 9th of this month and blessed Laurie with a birthday cake with candles that look like fireworks. We were blessed to go to the market and buy clothes that will remind us of our friends in Rwanda. Most importantly we have realized that we get to do this type of living! We get to walk to ministry on a hill that takes our breath away (literally), we get to go on this adventure with Jesus (with new NAMES), we get to do hard things for the sake of the gospel, we get to be in crowded buses to get back home, we get to be thankful for the small moments of achievement, we get to see life through different lenses, we get opportunities to not complain but rejoice over the gift of a “tough life”. Whenever our minds try to trick us and put us in a funk; we remind ourselves that we get to do this LIFE. It’s all about PERSPECTIVE. Thanks for letting me do this life & partnering with me in Kingdom work. This is only possible by God and your support!
