Meet Mose

If I made a list of all the blessings I have been witness to here in Rwanda, Mose would most certainly be on that list.  And if my life were a movie, he would definitely be played by Morgan Freeman.  I would like to introduce you to Mose.  His real name is Bonaventure but here in Rwanda “Mose” is a title of respect for older men, so that’s what we call him.  He is our night guard.  In the quiet, banana-tree-filled town that I live in, having a night guard for your compound is just a common part of the culture.  So every evening Mose arrives to keep watch over our house.  But this is not why I am so fond of him; it is his patience, kindness, and comic relief he brings that has made our house feel like home.

On the days that I come home from school late, I am always greeted by Mose’s big smile and his friendly “Mwiriwe, Sarah!”  He speaks very little English but I have found that he makes for an excellent Kinyarwanda teacher.   He waits patiently as I struggle to find the right words and corrects me when I don’t say something quite right.  He speaks slowly so that I can understand and isn’t afraid to animatedly pantomime when I don’t (often bringing with it some good laughs).  A conversation with him is a good way to turn around a long day.  He helps us in our garden and gives us advice as we begin our amateur attempts to grow things.  He chases away little kids who make a game of ringing the bell at our gate.  And lately, he has been our rescuer from the critters who try to make a home with us…

As I stood over the sink washing my face before bed, out of the corner of my eye I saw something flop to the ground.  I turned and saw a big black bat lying on the ground.  My first instinct was to scream, alerting my roommate that we had company.  My second instinct was to make my mammalogy professor proud and indentify the genus and species of the bat.  I succeeded at the former but failed at the latter.  My roommate came running to my rescue.  What does she do? She runs and gets her camera so that our bat wrangling fiasco could be properly documented.  So what do I do? I grab the closest thing to me: the book of devotions sitting on our coffee table.  So there we were, shrieking and laughing and waving around the Word of God to scare the bat out of our house.  Then enters Mose to our rescue.  He looks at us and chuckles.  “Mfite bat! Mfite bat!” I exclaim. “Agacurama,” he corrects.  “Mfite agacurama! (I have a bat!) Mfite agacurama!” I clarify.  Mose then walks across the room and calmly picks up the bat before turning to Becca for a picture.  What a guy!

I Am Muzungu

"I am responsible for the house which I did not build but in which I live."  - Dorothee Soelle

As I continued up the dirt path, I came upon a little girl, dust-covered and adorable.  Her eyes lit up when she saw me.  She broke into song.  She pranced around, clapping her hands, singing “Muzungu, muzungu, muzungu!”  Had it been another day, I would have slowed to talk to her.  I would have tried to ask her name or how old she was.  But today I just forced a smile and said hi.  She followed me down the path a ways, continuing her enthusiastic song, her innocent excitement almost contagious.  But today, I was just trying to hold back tears.

Earlier on my walk home, an old woman crossed the road to greet me.  I smiled, shaking her hand, rambling off all the greetings I knew.  Then she started asking me for money.  My Kinyarwanda vocabulary is still small but I know the words for money and hunger.  I pretended not to understand.  She pointed to her stomach and to her mouth.  I understood.  I understood perfectly.  She began to get frustrated with me.  I wanted to be anywhere but there.  I really wished I couldn't understand her.  She became angry and I walked away.

That day wasn’t really all that different from other days.  I am often greeted with excitement and I am often asked for money.  Here in Rwanda, to those who don’t know me by name, I am muzungu.  White person.  Or more literally translated: rich person.  For the most part, I appreciate the attention.  In fact, I need the attention.  I have moved 8,000 miles away from my family and friends, so I long for relationships with those in my new community.  I need my neighbors to reach out to me, to recognize me as new, and welcome me.  And they do.  They call out muzungu in warm welcome.  And I am so grateful for the warm handshakes and the friendly, inquisitive Kinyarwanda conversation.  These interactions are often the highlight of my day.

But that day I was tired.  And when the old woman became angry, something inside me cracked.  First, I wanted to cry out of the selfish desire to just fit in.  I wanted to pass through the crowded soccer field without everyone staring.  I wanted to be greeted only as Sarah and not as muzungu.  I wanted to immerse myself in this culture and not from the outside.

But what hurt the most was the frustration I felt towards the systems that have created the separation between the old woman and I.  I wanted to sit down on the side of the road and cry.  I wanted the old woman to sit down and cry with me.  I was angry at the world for creating a system where my new neighbors could look at the color of my skin and correctly assume that I had more money than they did.  I thought back to a conversation I had had with a small congregation near Uganda.  We were discussing community organizing and development.  A woman asked my fellow YAGMs and I how our country became so rich.  She asked this without any bitterness but simply out of the desire to empower her country and better the future of her children.  I wanted to tell her that it was just that way when I was born and that I had nothing to do with my country’s wealth.  I had as little to do with the establishment of my country's wealth as this young mother with her country’s lack of wealth.  But she wasn’t going to passively accept that her country is poor, nor should I passively accept that my country is wealthy.  This dichotomy was not our doing yet bridging the gap is her right and my responsibility.

But what do I do? In the old woman’s anger, did she recognize that my country’s wealth existed at the expense of her country’s poverty? Should I have reached in my pocket and handed the old woman a few coins?  Or would that have only supported our separation as beggar and benefactor?  Instead of satisfying her immediate need for a few coins, is there I way I can get rid of her need for good?  Is there something better I can do?