This and That

20 May 2013

On Friday I shared a budget spreadsheet with our housekeeper, Regina. Together we filled in the regular expenses. She will keep track of the occasional expenses and plug them in at the end of the month. She does not have a concept of saving monthly for large expenses looming ahead, so she operates from panic mode. I think seeing it all written out helped her accept the reason we gave her for our necessity of cutting back her work hours. We just don’t have money in our budget to pay her at the current rate! This will also encourage her to find new employment before she runs out of money again. It was a relief to get through this process and help her see that we are still friends and that we appreciate the high quality of work she does for us and others.

My friend, Amani, is the man who has taught English at IWE since 2008. He worked on his BA in law during the same time.  Sarah took his position full time when he graduated and moved on to a legal position with the Rwandan government! We enjoyed a short visit one evening when he stopped in Rwamagana on his way home from a business trip last week. He filled us in on his family’s difficulties: many years ago, they moved to Congo to escape persecution in Rwanda. Now the Congolese are fighting the many Rwandan’s who moved there as refugees and have become successful herdsmen and farmers. His mother is going to stay there with his sister and her family, but his brother, Nuru, had to seek shelter in Rwanda. The schools here will not let him begin attending mid-year so he will take English lessons from us in preparation for the new school year in January. He has a basic knowledge of English, but has never spoken it. I must speak very slowly, but he is picking it up very well. We will meet regularly on Fridays.

Our landlord sent a technician to repair the rain gutters and he did an excellent job. I just hope it rains again before the rainy season begins again next September!

Bosco was the village sponsor for Charissa when she served in the Peace Corps. He called me on Wednesday to let me know he was in to Rwamagana for a funeral of his wife’s family  and wanted to meet with me. We talked at length over a bottle of Fanta about his family and Moses’ family. Compassion had purchased a second mattress for Moses’ family as well as six new cooking pots. Moses’ father sold everything for beer money! Then while he was drunk he walked to the Compassion office and yelled at the personnel to give him money to buy medication for Moses’ and his sister, Mbabazi’s, impetigo. Compassion had purchased Medical insurance for the family so all he had to do was take the children to the medical clinic for treatment. The truth is he wanted the money to buy more beer! Bosco will introduce me to the church pastor who is the local link with Compassion and oversees the distribution of finances to Moses’ family. He will need to be extra diligent! World Vision organization has bought some property and built a house on it for Moses’ family. It is almost ready to move into but Father does not want to move so far away from the bar!!! Bosco and I will need the wisdom of Solomon to work out a solution! It is sad that there is no treatment program for alcoholics in Rwanda. That is what he needs most.

I met the Rwandan family which hosts Sarah when she stays in Kigali. They work for the Good News organization which is a support group for widows and orphans from the genocide. They are a wonderful family and are doing a great work. They had a special speaker for their bi-monthly meeting on Sunday, which I attended.  Dr. Phil Cotton is an Englishman married to a Scottish woman. Their home is in Glasgow, but they have traveled the world doing charity work for various groups. He is now in Rwanda to reorganize the university system, so that there will be a uniform model of teaching methodology and course requirements. He lives near Green Hills Academy where Charissa taught for the last six months she was in Rwanda after she finished her Peace Corps commitment. He lives there with his son in a large house with many bedrooms. He has offered to host me anytime I need to spend the night in Kigali! Lack of housing has been a problem which has kept me from coming to Kigali since I arrived in country!

I also heard from Charissa’s friend and co-teacher at Green Hills, Madie, who came to Rwanda to begin the first program for special needs children. If I am well enough to travel this week, I will spend Friday with her and travel to Cyuru on Saturday to deal with Moses’ father; then stay with Madie to attend church on Sunday.

Apparently my gut is very susceptible to bacterial disruption. I ate beef on Sunday morning which I had cooked on Friday and by Sunday night was hearing disturbing noises. Monday morning I suffered the inevitable results. God was gracious to me as I rode a moto-taxi to Stella bus station, made it to a clean latrine, bought a ticket for an hour-long bus trip to Rwamagana, rode a moto-taxi home just in time to use my own bathroom. I was dreading asking the bus driver to pull over on the highway for me to use a gutter! I have put myself on the BRAT diet again and have begun taking medication, but I did not try to teach. I stayed home in bed.

While on my precarious Stella bus trip from Kigali to Rwamagana, I sat next to a man in a business suit. I introduced myself to him and told him that I was an English teacher in Rwamagana. He asked if I was a volunteer, because I reminded him of a volunteer he knew from Cyuru named Clarissa! I explained that I was her mother! (I did not explain to him that he had misremembered her name!) He told me that he now lives in Kigali and works as a consultant, but that he returns to Cyuru to visit old friends. Did I know his friend, Bosco? God uses my bus trips to arrange for divine appointments!

Below are two pictures from my trip to visit Moses, one with his whole family, other with just the two of  us.