The Day John Came into our Lives

I happened to be in the garden by the front gate when I heard the familiar knock.  When door bells don’t exist, hitting a small stone on the metal gate seems to work well.  I found a young man waiting to tell his story.

John explained that he was a genocide orphan and had been able to finish high school by himself but now needed work.  I looked at this young adult and wondered again why I had thought genocide orphans were all babies.  These were the people who needed help but how I wondered could I give him work when we already had all the help we needed?  I told him to return in several weeks and that I would ask around for anyone who could use help.  As I turned to go, he said, “Madame, you see I am hungry”.  I had heard this story over and over and I longed to find John a job.

One week late, John was back.  This time I told him I could give him a job for one day.  He was delighted and so he came into an empty bedroom where our crate boxes and all the storage paper had been dumped.   Hours later I checked on John to find the room was wonderfully organized.  He grinned when he saw my delight.  Lunch was served to the household and he ate a huge bowl of stew.  As he was leaving, he saw the large basket of ironing.  When he offered to iron, I knew I could have him come on a regular basis.

Little did we know then but three weeks later, we were using the same boxes for moving across town.  John was needed daily for almost two weeks and we needed so much help in the new house.

It is common and tender for the African people to refer to older people as Mommy and Daddy.  Somehow, it softens my longing for our family for at least I hear someone call my Mommy.  So it was that I got the text from John this week,”Mommy, I got a scholarship!  Can I come to show you?”

John came early to show us all that his name was in the newspaper as one of the national scholarship recipients, which would be in the math, physics and chemistry track.  At lunch we all surprised him with a celebration party.  As we all gathered around the table for grace, Cal asked for God to bless John in this new adventure.   John turned to Cal and asked,”Daddy, are you proud of me too?”   I slipped away to cry at the poignancy of such a question. Cal had already told him how proud he was of John, but John, who had raised himself, needed fatherly affirmation  so deeply, and he had to hear it again.

Tomorrow is ironing day, John will again be here with his broad smile.  We have been so blessed to have him in our lives.   

Evicted, but not Homeless!

First of all, I want to apologize for the information gap this past month!  So much has been going on that we have not had the time to eat or write.  But we are now seeing an end to the busyness, and so want to fill you in on all the amazing and sometimes frustrating times we have encountered.

I had previously briefly mentioned that we had been served an eviction notice by the new owner of our funky but wonderful house in the Rugando area.  Our landlord had been leasing the home from the new owner’s brother for the past 8 years, and had sub-leased to us under very generous terms, but we discovered only recently that this new owner had been trying to take control of the house for at least 6 years, and had finally won the long court battle.  His motives for evicting us were unclear, but we were given 2 weeks (to March 18) to be gone.  We initially assumed that he simply wanted to renegotiate the contract, but after 1 week of unsuccessfully trying to even contact him, we realized that we had to find a new home, now with only 1 week to go.

So, we began packing up our household items, not yet knowing where we were going to put it.  This is when we began to see some wonderful events that could only have been orchestrated by our Heavenly Father.  First of all, our current landlord, who was living in India as the Rwandan ambassador to that country, was called back to Rwanda to meet with the President and his cabinet the very week that we were to be leaving the house; with our eviction his contract was also voided and he would have to move out all the furniture that we had been using.  Secondly, we were offered the use of a house just 3 doors away which had been leased by a Baptist mission group in preparation for a new missionary, and although it was anticipated that we would be able to use it for only a few weeks before the new missionary family arrived, it gave us at least a temporary place where we could lay our heads.  Then, two days before we were to move, our realtor took the listing on a newly constructed house very near our colleagues the Millers, and convinced the owner to lower the price almost $700/month to meet our budget.  Finally, the ambassador/landlord asked us to take any of his furniture we could use to the new house, and offered to refund all of the rent which we had pre-paid through September 2011; which he was entitled to keep by the terms of our Rwandan contract. 

The ambassador gave us in cash the balance of our prepaid rent on the evening of March 17, and on March 18 we both moved to the new house and signed an 18 month contract with our new landlord, giving him the cash we had received the night before as a deposit.  We selected and took with us almost 2/3 of the ambassadors furniture, including some large sofas, a carved wood dining table with matching chairs, 3 poster beds with mosquito netting, and multiple other smaller items.  Our new house, pictured below, has 6 available bedrooms, a wonderful flow-through traffic pattern in the living/dining/veranda area, and several levels for multiple activities; in short, the same possibilities for hospitality that we had enjoyed in the vacated house.  In addition, it is new; we are the first to live in it, and should have fewer maintenance issues than the older house. 

There were some issues to be dealt with – the new house lacked cabinets and closets, which meant that the kitchen was an empty room.  However, using our deposit, the new owner was like a kid in a candy shop – asking us to choose the cabinetry and improvements “to make it our home”!  This meant 10-14 workmen at the house almost continuously for the past 2 weeks, plastering, painting, installing the kitchen and bedroom closets, and even putting in a rainwater collection system in addition to the city water.  We became the construction supervisors, which was hectic and nerve-wracking, but we are very much enjoying the flexibility and enthusiasm of our new landlord.  The beautiful thing is that we have been able to continue hosting guests throughout this entire process – a British medical couple who now view our home as their own, a visiting friend from Jordan, a Rwandan pastor who needed a bed for a night, and multiple groups of Rwandan young people and expat families who come for dinner.  

Enjoy the pictures below, which will give you an idea of our new dwelling place!  I had to smile when a University of Colorado doctor I was talking to in the U.S. asked what kind of house we had in Rwanda, essentially wanting to know if we lived in a hut with a grass roof.  As you can see, this is far from a thatched hut, and we thank our God for this!

The Joys (??) of a Big House in Kigali

As we mentioned before, the house we are renting in Kigali is large, but wonderful!  It is easy to find (which means a lot in a city where there are no street names or addresses), has reliable water and electricity, and multiple rooms grouped into small suites of two bedrooms and a central bathroom.  Mimi and I have adopted one suite on the second floor, with a large bedroom and adjoining room we converted to an office, which leaves us with basically five free bedrooms and two hide-a-beds!  Even with this space, all beds were filled to capacity just last week with visiting doctors, an Anglican priest and his wife, and a drop-in hospital director.  Mimi was in her glory!  One wonderful feature of all of this is that the living spaces are varied and large - a large covered veranda on both floors, a large living room and dining room, and a family room on each floor as well. 

All of this comes with some downsides, which we have also been experiencing in spades these past weeks.  First of all, each door and many cabinets have a separate lock, which means that we are the proud custodians of at least 150 keys, all unlabeled!  A locked door means trying each key until one is found that opens the door.  So far, we have had about an 80% success rate in finding the proper key, which means that there are still some mysterious locked cabinets and rooms! 

Another feature of a large, old house in Kigali is that we are the custodians of 4 water heaters, 7 toilets, and very makeshift wiring, much of which was not working when we moved in.  So, over the past month, we have become very good friends with an affable plumber, who listens patiently to our tale of woe and is generally available within a few hours.  We have have at least 3 minor inundations from plumbing failures, and currently replaced one burst water heater, adjusted 3 more, repaired almost every toilet, and replaced a pressure regulator and shut-off valve in the outside water reservoir.  The sinks in one large bedroom are still waiting for major repairs.  In addition, we have a roofing contractor here for the 3rd time to try to deal with major leaks in 3 different bedrooms, and we keep a bucket and scoop available for each tropical innundation, which during this rainy season means almost every other day.  With all of this unexpected water on our floors, we have been very grateful that there are few carpets, and that the floors are all composite cement which simply needs to be mopped. 

However, in spite of this, we enjoy the flexibility and space, and the freedom to use the house for multiple guests and events.  Mimi has made the house into a cozy home, and we are loving it.  We were just informed that there is a new owner of the house, which apparently invalidates previous leases under Rwandan law, and so we are waiting to see what this development will bring.  We are learning to live a day at a time, just as the Rwandans do, and so we will continue to enjoy this house a day at a time.  Below are a few pictures to give you some visual impressions.

                                          Cal and Mimi in Kigali - January 2011

                                          Hundreds of Keys!

                                          One Half of the Veranda

                                          Upstairs Family Room (with John Pitzer relaxing)

A Busy (but Wonderful) Week in Lake Kivu District!

Well, it’s been a busy week in Lake Kivu district!  Cal spent most of the week on the road visiting three rural district hospitals where we are training Family and Community Medicine doctors.  One of them has a long-term doctor who is taking charge of the training, but the other two require regular visits.  A typical day includes arriving about 9:30 AM after a 1.5 – 2 hour drive, following one or more of the resident doctors through their rounds in the hospital ward they are overseeing (which alternates between Ob, Medicine, Surgery, and Pediatrics), and then having more extended discussions or short teaching sessions with the group of residents in the afternoon.  The cases are fascinating – most are severely ill with long-standing illness such as liver failure, kidney failure, chronic osteomyelitis (infection in the bone), heart valve disease with heart failure, or chronic malnutrition.  Interestingly, there are almost no cases of malaria in any of the hospitals, which is a marked change from only 2 years ago when almost 30% of all patients were ill with malaria.  Many think that this is due to the widespread free distribution of insecticide-treated bednets and the widespread use of a new anti-malarial drug for those infected, which more effectively kills the parasite.

Mimi has been thoroughly enjoying herself making our house a home.  We were blessed with a visit from John and Kathi Pitzer, neighbors from Denver and long-time friends, for the first two weeks of January, who helped immeasurably with the initial organization, curtains, and moving things around.  They also spent a week teaching at a School for Deaf Children run by a group of nuns, introducing classes in sewing and carpentry. 

One major goal of the Pitzers was to help us unpack our shipping container which had been sent in early September, the container had not arrived in Rwanda by the time they had to leave.  It did arrive last week however, and two days ago, on a Friday afternoon, a truck pulled up to the house with the largest Christmas event ever!  We now have a refrigerator, freezer, washer and dryer, gas stove, and box after box of items we had totally forgotten about!  God still provided assistance however – we are hosting three men from Denver who came to participate in a Church meeting in Rwanda and then move on to Uganda to check some projects in which they are involved there.  They had two free days to help us unpack, and they worked steadily with us to distribute the goodness in the boxes. 

We currently have two visiting doctors with us (a husband-wife team) from the University of Colorado, one of whom is teaching birth control to Ob and Family Medicine residents, and the other who is working with the clinical instructors at the main teaching hospital to help develop their teaching skills.  They are both avid cyclists, and last weekend took a 180 km. trip with a staff member of the Rwnadan Cycling Team.  One of the memorable moments with them came from a planning session with the Head of the Ob/Gyn Dept, who attempted to moderate their ambitious teaching plans with the statement, "You Americans wear the timepiece, but we Rwandans have the time!"

Settling In

Although Mimi and I feel relatively comfortable in Rwanda and have many friends and acquaintances here because of our past 5 years of intermittent visits, we are finding that it is still a new experience to "settle in".  Since our container of household items sent in early September has not yet arrived (it is still being processed at the point of entry to Africa, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania), we are using the very generous supply of household items left by our landlord together with the items we had brought in our personal luggage over the past 3 visits.  This includes the basics of kitchen items, bedding, personal toiletries, and even includes a tiny dorm-type refrigerator, microwave and Kitchen-Aid mixer (which came in our personal luggage!).  It does not include a washing machine, freezer, iron, working oven, or more than 6 drinking glasses!  So, there are some things that still feel like camping.  For example, we had some American friends (and neighbors) for dinner last week, and for dessert, Mimi fixed brownies camping style - the batter was put into canning jars (supplied by the neighbor) and "baked" by inserting the jars into a pot of boiling water.  Absolutely wonderful!

Our New Year's Eve was quietly spent taking our colleagues (Michael and Amy Miller and family) to the airport for a month of R & R in the U.S., watching a movie, and settling into bed.  However, we discovered that the New Year celebrations in Rwanda are the highlight of the year, even eclipsing Christmas in many respects - almost all night we were treated to amplified dance music from various quarters, along with the impassioned preaching of a local Pentecostal church - until about 6 AM.  We may welcome the new year with a nap today!

Since we have about 5 available bedrooms in our spacious rented house, Mimi is preparing for lots of hospitality.  Last week we were treated to the arrival of John and Kathi Pitzer, neighbors and friends for the past 30 years, who will be with us for about 2 weeks.  They will be launching a new program of crafts for the children at the national School for the Deaf - woodworking for the boys and sewing for the girls - which it is hoped can help with some income and eventual employment.  This week we will be hosting a missionary physician from a hospital in the north of Rwanda who we can offer a place to stay while in Kigali, the Director of Mission for Centura Hospitals in Denver who is bringing an orthopedic team for reconstructive surgeries in several rural hospitals, and an Ob/Gyn from the University of Colorado who will be training our family medicine and Ob/Gyn residents in the country over the next month.  In about 10 days we will be hosting a visiting Anglican bishop and two colleagues who is here for the inauguration of the new Archbishop of Rwanda.  Even without our shipment, we still have 3 beds available, and so Mimi is making the best use of what we have with her own homey touches, like fresh flowers from our garden. 

With my colleague Dr. Miller in the U.S., Cal will be visiting the medical school and at least 3 district hospitals on a rotating basis every week to spend time with the family medicine residents in training, and to lay the foundation for classes to be taught over the next few months.  So far, we are having a ball tackling the challenges and enjoying the country.  We are already "legal" here, having been granted a long-term visa in less than a week - so they must want us to stay!  When our container arrives, it will be like Christmas all over again!

Musings - "I'm Going to be President!"

During our last visit to Rwanda in October, as we were preparing for our move, Mimi found herself surrounded by curious children as she was waiting in the car.  They started conversing, mostly trying out their few English words.  However, one young girl, perhaps about 10 years of age, seemed to be very fluent in English and was translating for several of the others.  In an attempt to compliment her, Mimi said "Your English is perfect!  You should be an English teacher some day!"  The girl responded, "I'm not going to be a teacher; I'm going to be the President of Rwanda some day!"

This one comment encapsules much of what we love about Rwanda.  There is a keen sense of the value of women, who are generally treated with great respect.  Rwanda boasts a 55% majority of women elected to Parliament, and many of the cabinet ministers are women.  But more importantly, when a poor farm girl can proudly set her sights on becoming president of the country, she demonstrates the hope and vision for the future that has made this country one of the most dynamic populations in Africa.  Change has been in the air since the country as a whole decided to put the horror of a genocide behind them by reconciling murderer and victim, and re-develop almost every social and governmental institution.  There is still the weight of grinding poverty and a stratified economy, but there is also the hope that one of today's bright children will become tomorrow's elected president; a hope that is very much lacking in much of the rest of Africa.

Just Arrived in Rwanda

We had an uneventful flight to Kigali, even arrived not feeling totally wasted!  We were able to move into our rented house within two days, and have spent the past week just getting settled.  Although large, it is turning into a very comfortable place, with lots of areas and nooks for several simultaneous activities.  We have already had our first drop-in visitors (the pastor of the Anglican church that we attend here, who is becoming a great friend), and had our first party – our annual “Scrooge party” where we have a light buffet dinner followed by watching “A Christmas Carol”.  There were about 20 people; some local missionaries, and a couple newly arrived to Rwanda.   The following night we hosted about 10 of the 12 new Family Medicine residents, some of whom took a 2 hour bus ride to get here.  What a sharp bunch of doctors - all eager to learn, to become fully competent, and truly improve the health of the average Rwandan.

I have already started work – a couple of major workshops related to health system improvement, and am already writing a paper on the results of one of these workshops.  I spent a day with Michael Miller (my colleague here) with the family medicine residents in one of the district teaching hospitals, and plan to have all of the residents to our home for a Christmas dinner tomorrow evening.  Michael will be spending the month of January in the U.S., so I will be carrying the majority of the teaching load, as well as hosting 3 different teaching couples who will be visiting in January.

Mimi has done well, working steadily and happily getting the trunks unpacked and the house in shape.  In addition to reconnecting with many previous friends, she had a luncheon with the American ambassador’s wife yesterday, and then went to a local school Christmas production with her today.  We will be celebrating Christmas with embassy staff on Dec. 23, and have been invited to Christmas dinner at the home of a local missionary for Dec. 25.

So, we are beginning to feel settled.   It has helped to have a number of relationships around the country that we can build on, which is one of the primary goals of our prolonged stay here.   I'm including a couple of pictures of our house (the front and back garden) and one of my favorites of the Rwandan countryside - the "Land of a Thousand Hills". 

Stay posted!