September 2 Post

Hello out there

Right now i am sitting outside of our new home which consists of one room smaller than a dorm room and a sorry excuse for a bathroom seperated by a door that looks like it was kicked in by a swat team and left with no handle, no lock, only the door that used to hold them there. The room has a bed made of wood and a matress made of cheap foam wrapped up for the most part by cheap, old tattered cloth and a mosquito net, something that i never understood the value of until now. Also there is a rickety desk with a matching chair of equal quality. The Toilet in the bathroom does flush but only about once an hour, which we know is a luxury in and of itself. There is a shower and a sink! But, there is no running water with which to shower or wash hands or brush teeth. Thankfullly the room came with two old vegetable oil jugs full of water which we use in place of the shower and sink. I pulled the chair out side and am drinking coffee now which has given me much hope and endurance as of late. Now that you see a little of where i am let me catch you up on the last week or so.

Julianna and I safely arrived in Rwanda on the 25th of August. The trip here was not bad at all. We were hardly bothered by security or TSA requirements, there were no missed flights, the food was decent and overall we were pretty laid back for the majority of the time. My Parents dropped us off at the airport after saying goodbye to some of our siblings and neices and nephews. Though we were sad to leave our friends and family we left feeling somewhat numb. Our best guess is that we have been so busy getting married, finishing school, visiting family, getting immunized, planning our travels, closing certain accounts and opening others, putting our lives on hold for a year stateside, etc that we have just begun to move and pay and hug and shake hands hardly stopping long enough for reality to sink in. Now after 9 days I believe that reality is sinking in, but i will say more on this later…

We traveled for roughly 24 hours straight trying to take as many naps as possible whenever we could. When we finally arrived in Kigali, Rwanda’s capitol, we were disheartened to find that the airline decided that my checked bag would need to be left behind in Brussels because there was not enough room in the cargo hold for it. All of the others made it so we checked with the officials and they said to call back in a day or so and it should be there. In the end it took six days of waiting and calling and three visits to the airport to get it. I was quite relieved when i actually had my other clothes among many other necessities. Bishop Alexis and several others met us at the airport and took us to a town Gahini about one hundred kilometers from Kigali where we stayed at the beautiful Seeds of Peace Center (a similar ministry as ours run by Bishop Alexis) for two days in order to rest and recharge from the traveling. The next day we hadwith five key players in the ministries of Seeds of Peace and Seeds of Hope. There we discussed the expectations they had for Julianna and I in Rwanda as well as our expectations of them and of our own time here. In summary the expectations for me are three-fold:

To manage the Seeds of Hope Conference Center

To assist in the english service at the local church

To institute some sort of ongoing outreach ministry to the university students nearby

As for Julianna she is expected to help assess and improve the Morning Star Primary School in Nyagatare.

Those are some of the expectations as far as our work goes but in order to survive here we are forced to adapt to a completely new and different culture. Our time sensitive nature is completely irrelevant here and we are constantly having to change our way of percieving thinking, and communicating. Since we have been here, God and Africa have worked together to painfully strip us of that numbing film that covered our hearts and have forced us to be exposed to the harsh elements of lonliness, frustration, illness, insecurity, and exhaustion. Honestly i wouldnt describe this as fun so far. I have had a difficult time being out of my comfort zone. I feel as if I am a fraud here and they are going to find me out sooner or later.

Just the other day the bishop held a meeting with me, Julianna, and the staff of the conference center, hotel, and restaurant. In this meeting the Bishop told everyone that I was the boss and that they needed to do whatever i said… I have never felt more awkward in my life. Seventeen pairs of disgruntled eyes were casting their cynical feelings directly at me. Since then I have had three or four employees actually smile at me and the rest just look at me like i am some cocky mzungu (white person) on a power trip. I have no idea what to do.

Julianna and I have talked about this and are clueless because we dont know how this culture works. We dont know how they think. Are employees happy to have a job and automatically respect their boss because of his possition or do they think freely judging for themselves whether to be friendly or not? Should I tell people what to do? Or should I let them do what they have always done? How do I do anything when I know only about 20 words and phrases in Kinyarwanda? I am constantly thinking of how I would feel if I were working at the farm again and my boss suddenly hired someone from around the world with no farm experience, no formal training, no clue how anything worked on that farm, and that could not speak English, to be my manager. And basically told me that i was to do whatever he told me? I need to first be a student of this culture before I become an instructor. I am constantly praying for wisdom and patience in this awkward, confusing, annoying situation.

After communicating how difficult it is to run a conference center, hotel, and restaurant without being able to communicate with the employees, and honestly having no idea how the place runs to begin with, they delievered an interpreter to us. Oddly enough, as we found out, this “interpreter” does not speak more than ten words of English, and is sick and leaving us soon. So we are back at square one.

I have been doing what I can, walking around with the phrase book trying to figure out all kinds of different ways to ask simple questions, when most of the time our questions are taken as commands and they go and do something. We have been making an inventory of all the things needed to bring up this place to a working and functioning centre. There are some things that we can fix without money, but the majority of the things we need to do in order to generate enough profit to first of all pay the employees, then eventually get out of debt, and finally to make profit for the church, will take money. We are getting a particular inventory list and taking it to the bishop to discuss what can realistically be done.

Until next time, please pray for Julianna. She is very sick. Not with malaria and nothing life threatening just what the doctor thinks is a severe flu like sickness. We went to the “hospital” and she was tested and given medication and now is resting but still needs to recover because the flu is never fun, especially in Africa.

Thanks for reading, hopefully the next one will be shorter and with pictures : )

Drew