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!