First month, by the numbers

1 home, 1 sweet home: a good house, big enough, comfortable, ours, as luxurious as to be ashamed, for the local standards,though nowhere near the typical westerners’ houses.

2 sick boys / 2 boys getting better quickly (one after the other, of course, what a lovely week!); nothing serious (though Sam’s amoeba is not a laughing matter either), just a good excuse to test the health system, first time with Sam, in a big clinic in the city centre, for rich people, like us; second time with Michele in a smaller but still clean and professional clinic, very close and way cheaper. Anyway, only a few days home, not to leave Daddy feel lonely in the morning, while Mum is at work.

3 workers, slaves, helpers, employees, time-wasters, friends, members of the extended family, intruders… ?

4 VISAS: we have them, we are not coming back tomorrow (the entry VISA lasts 30 days)! Not too hard, not easy, it just took some time, between visits to the Immigration Office, the Italian Consulate, the bank… but we’ve done it!

5 days (mornings) at school: Mum completed her first week, happy to have started, shocked by the level of the teachers, overloaded by ideas about what needs to be done, loved by the children.

6.00-6.10am: waking up time (5.55 for the grown-ups) / 6.40am school-bus.

7 days a week we thank God for sending us here.

8 lessons (2 hrs each) of Kinyarwanda, still a long way to go (such a complicated language!), but Mattia is getting the hang of it and is starting to try it out more and more, drawing a lot of smiles from the locals (are they happy he tries or are his attempts so laughable?)

9 = icyenda: at least we’ve learnt to count (and up to hundreds of thousand!)

10/10: the mark for the two boys, as to adaptability!

11 street kids: maximum but quite standard number attending Mattia’s English lessons/snack/group time in the afternoon, just for a short time (after language lessons, before the boys come back), but it’s a good beginning.

Dozens of birds, to be heard, listened to, waken up by, admired, photographed…

13.00-15.00: language lessons; perfect time to feel tired after the early rise, weary because of the noon heat... in a word, sleepy!

16.35: the bus brings the boys back from school.

17x10 minutes: duration of the Sunday morning service, in Kinyarwanda; the saving grace is the music and dance, by various choirs, or Sunday School, if we are asked to help with that.

18.00 mosquito-time: “boys, put on your long clothes, close the windows (Daddy starts gasping for breath), put in the new mosquito-mats in the vapour machines, come for the spray”

19 hours spent writing this blog and the Italian version?

20 days in school for Michele&Sam: they’re happy, their teachers are happy, we too; they’re doing well and the school is very good, from all points of view.

           

21/01 first (and only) outing on the tennis court for Michele and Dad: Wednesday the boys have a half-day, so it’s going to be our family/sport day afternoon.

22 minutes: time Michele managed to stay in the pool, for him still cold; it was mid afternoon, the sky was cloudy, so the water was not very warm, but for Dad it was fine (Mum was home with Sam, already a bit sick, before the bad week); we’ll try again.

23/01 first day of after-school football for Sam: a success!

24/7 we know God sent us here, so everything is and will be OK.

1/25000: the chances of anything happening to us when we go around town, for the country is particularly safe and white people are even safer, quite a long shot from most of other capitals in developing countries.

26/01 meeting with Bishop Samuel and other bosses, to discuss our plans: they are not pushing us to start, they are happy with some ideas, slow to react to others…

27 smiling faces at the Amizero Centre (special needs school) singing “My God is so Big” led by Elena.

28 nails, screws and hooks already hammered-driven in the walls by Mattia, so as to hang things all around the house, both to decorate and to make up for the few pieces of furniture and our many possessions.

29 Days when we all tasted at least one delicious local fruit (bananas, mangoes, passion fruit, pineapple, tree tomato, avocados, papaya…)

30 times wealthier than many people here, more or less… shameful, anyway.

31 warm days

First Sunday away

After two home services, it was time to move. Emmanuel, the Head of the Education Commission of the Methodist Church in Rwanda, during one of a few meetings with his new aide-employee, Mattia, told the story of how, just last year, he generously built a church for two communities in the outskirts of Kigali (his full story will be posted shortly, don’t miss it) and invited us to join a sort of official opening service for the new congregation. So on Monday morning, at 8.00, we left with Eraste, director of Amizero, the special needs school where Elena works, and also one of the Church’s pastor, who was going there in an official capacity. For the first time (apart from August), we had a taste of travelling (and driving for Mattia) on the dirt roads: once we started to cover the car in red dust, Michele&Sam revealed that their school-bus takes a dirt road too, but just a short stretch, while we went on for 20km, through villages which were getting smaller and smaller, poorer and poorer. This was already a great experience for the boys, who up to know have had only a few glimpses of poverty, in Kigali.

After some 45 minutes we reached the church, a short walk from the road, in the midst of fields and trees, with a wide view on hills and valleys, as we had driven up a good bit. The building is simple, but the size and conditions are good and the mud bricks outside point to the future development plans, especially for the toilet block, badly needed when looking into the hut with just a few boards on the ground.

Emmanuel is both proud and ashamed of his project, as he shows to us westerners, but we help him to move the balance towards the first feeling and at the end of the service, well attended and as loud, passionate and musical as ever, he’s beaming, and with good reasons: in July there was just a small prayer group, now a church with over 100 people, eager to expand into a proper parish.

For us, the service is always hard (as it is linguistically bewildering) and long (especially for the boys, but they were good, anyway), but fun and engaging for its musical-dancing side: it is really inspiring to see how joyful and lively is their worship and though it could all be mistaken as a love for partying, it sounds instead compellingly relevant, an expression of a living, lively faith, which we’ve got a lot to learn from.

Of course we were introduced and welcomed, Mattia was asked to pray on the offerings (with translation) and at the end were also fed, with very typical boiled corn cob, to be eaten by hand after removing the leaves: despite the initial refusal, even the boys had a few bites, while they were playing outside, trying to make friends or at least spend some time with the local children, actually much harder to relate to than their city counterparts, but still nice to our kids.

If you want to get a clearer picture, go to the gallery page.

Weather (and drinks)

Last Friday afternoon was very hot, while yesterday we had our first experience of serious raining, with a 30 minute deluge shortly after the service, so we thought it is high time we gave you an overview of Rwanda’s climate, which is shaped by two factors: latitude and altitude.

We are just a tad below the equator (check “contacts” for more precise details), so it should be very hot and humid, but we are at approx. 1500mt, which means it’s never too hot and not very humid; all in all… one of the best climates on Earth!

Basically a constant summer, or late spring, depending on your standards: temperatures average between 30 during the day (32 is very high) and 19 at night (16 when it’s “cold”). There are two rainy seasons: one goes from October to November, the other is starting soon (just started?) and will last a couple of months, so we arrived in the short dry season; however, it won’t mean 2 months of monsoons, simply a few hours of rain nearly every day.

As Italian citizens, it’s not really hot, but 7 years in Ireland, i.e. a lifetime for the kids, have changed our perceptions, so at times we feel slightly roasting, especially during those 2-3 hours around noon, if we're outside, but in those cases we are relieved by seeing some local people walking under the shelter of umbrellas: they feel it too!

On the other end, when the morning is cool, maybe after a rainy night, with the sky still cloudy, and the locals, wearing jackets or other unusual warm items, ask us if we don’t feel cold, we answer that in Ireland those 22-3 degrees are just one step below a heat-wave…  

On the whole, we really like it: nice and warm, you just need to drink a lot, and sugary drinks help, which means we use a great deal of delicious local fruit juices, like pineapple, passion-fruit, mango, strawberry (the best are the concentrated ones, buy 1 litre, make 5); unfortunately, we’ve also fallen in line with the local customs and the two adults can’t go a day without their coca-cola, coming in cheap 300ml glass bottles, very eco-friendly as you give them back to buy more (you can buy “new” ones only in the big supermarkets in the city centre, while in the mini-shops around the city you must bring your empties, or buy coke in plastic, which is nowhere near as to taste and definitely harmful to the environment, giving the total lack of recycling facilities).

Language curio: they call them all “Fanta”, regardless of the real content (Coca-Coal, Fanta Orange, Fanta Lemon, Sprite).

Latest weather update: this morning, while we post this, one of Kigali’s many hills has disappeared from our view: a big white cloud (or is it fog?) has shrouded the whole place, making it quite surreal, as the view can be more or less clear depending on the days, but the hill was always there…

First time in action!

On our second Sunday we were asked to lead one the Sunday School groups and though a little surprised by the request, as we hadn’t talked about anything like that up to then, we were happy to be at last involved in something, apart from finding out how things work, where shops are and fitting the house, so we accepted the invitation and chose the younger group, 5-8, so as to be with our boys, who this way would have the opportunity to enjoy an activity in English rather than waiting bewildered for a generous hint at translation here and there… Moreover, given that it will take us a long time before being able to follow prayers and sermon, it would be a good excuse to flee the church at the right time.

They had just done some Christmas related activity the previous week, so we went for the Wise Men: after reading the story (English first, then Kinyarwanda, not us!) and after attempting to teach them a song in English (not easy, despite Elena’s talent), Mattia lead a discussion/analysis of the passage, relying on Ildephonse (one of the leaders, and our night-watchman) for translating to the rest of the children, as very few could understand English, which created some funny moments when Michele&Sam were already giving the easy, straightforward answers (yes, no…) while the others were listening to the question in their language; anyway, it worked nicely. In the meantime, Elena was preparing a long banner with a picture of the Wise Men visiting Jesus on one side, so that all the kids then drew themselves, with their names, as our gifts to the new born King. Another song, one of the few they know in English, then led us to the nearby lawn, where we played a “bring-the-gifts” relay game, after some time spent in splitting them in groups and explaining the rules…

They seemed to enjoy the hour and something we spent together, at least they pretended well and gave us some good cheering and clapping at the end. Our boys enjoyed it too and once again they had been quite good, Michele especially, at staying in the kids’ area in the first part of the service.

We don’t know when we’ll be doing this again, but at least it was a good start!

Kind and serious family request, to all of you

Our house is really nice and now well fitted, too; we brought with us, between luggage and air-freight, over 250kgs; the main house issue in our mind is what kind of furniture to buy in order to store kids’ stuff and other things; the bank account is not empty, the ATM is around the corner and the supermarket in the city are stacked to the roof with every possible thing, from food to house material…

Outside the church compound, instead, families haven’t got that kind of furniture issues, many kids have no toys whatsoever, kitchens are basically empty and the other rooms (room?) as well; shoes don’t go on the shoe-rack, because there’s just one pair each.

Lesson to be learnt: we are already ashamed enough, we do not need absolutely any objects, not even small, cheap, symbolic, “just a thought”... nothing at all, not even sweets (there’s even Cadbury aplenty, if we wanted).

This doesn’t mean that the brand new PO BOX (5114, Kigali, Rwanda) must stay empty, on the contrary: it eagerly waits for postcards, letters, cards, pictures… we miss you, not things!

Deal? Thanks a million for your understanding (and for your coming post!)

P.S. Please do not start thinking this is hard on the boys: they are doing well with the lot they’ve got and they realize pretty well how things are, maybe better than us. They are going to grow very well, with a conscience better that ours: let’s not make it harder or confusing with the wrong inputs.