A Christmas Gift

We have been to enough Christmas pageants and seen enough nativity scenes to picture that first Christmas.  We know that the child born that night grew into a man that started a radical movement.  He broke norms and shattered stereotypes.  The new way He chose to live was spunky and truthful enough that others joined Him.  They continued to live in this new way even after Jesus left them.  They weren’t sure what they were doing at times.  They learned from and leaned on each other.  They became what we in English call the church or in Kinyarwanda itorero.  

For some, the idea of the church might make them cringe and perhaps for good reason.  We (the church) have excluded and loved conditionally.  We have let our mission get clouded by politics and petty drama.  Throughout history the church has been as messy and messed up as the people that make it up.  This has caused some to turn away thinking that their faith was better off on their own or perhaps putting aside their faith altogether.

Yet I am thankful for this gift Jesus left behind for us.  And I don’t say this blindly.  I see the problems and the ugliness of my church, churches in America, churches in Rwanda, and probably every other church out there.  But this year I have been welcomed into a new church.  Being an outsider has given me new perspective about what it means to be a church and why it’s important to struggle through and celebrate faith together.  I have seen a little boy bring his siblings to church each Sunday, telling me that after his sister died this was the place he felt happy again.  I have seen this church collect a second offering for a woman who wasn’t a member of the church but who couldn’t pay her children’s school fees.  I have experienced the much needed welcome and invitations to lunch that are needed when one is far from home.

I have also found myself missing my church at home, the congregations of both my hometown and my college campus.  This too has brought perspective.  I enjoy Sundays here in Rwanda.  I love the energy of the African songs and fellowship after church.  In the singing and dancing and clapping I still find the sense of peace that can only be found on the Sabbath.  But worshiping in a foreign language leaves something to be desired.  I miss worshiping with other in songs I know, reflecting on scripture in words I understand, and reciting the liturgy I grew up with.  I feel these gaps that church has usually filled in my faith and I now have to try to fill them in new ways.

Faith, as I am learning more and more, is communal.  God is overpoweringly capable on His end of the relationship.  But our end?  Not so much.  Thankfully Jesus left us with a church, comrades on this journey called faith.  We mess up a lot yet God keeps filling in our gaps and using us to fill up the gaps in others.  And that, my friends, is a pretty sweet Christmas gift.

Myself and a fellow church-goer 

Fun Fact:  The word “itorero” in Kinyarwanda refers to the people that make up the church.  The word for the building that is the church is “urusengero.”  Cool distinction, huh?

Celebrating Life

I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.  - Psalm 27:13

The email said, “Come all to celebrate life and express thanks to God for life and the earth he/she has given us.”  It was an email from Pastor John, one of the local pastors, inviting my fellow YAGMs and I for a weekend of camping.  After two months of adventure and struggle in our various homes throughout Rwanda, nothing sounded better to me than some time with these dear friends.

John’s land sits overlooking Rusumo Falls which churns the silt-laden waters of the Kagera River into a milky brown.  The river cuts through the land to divide Rwanda and Tanzania.  Everywhere I turned I found a view worth a picture.  Even the door-less outhouse had a mountaintop view.  Now, during the rainy season, the hills of Rwanda pulse with an emerald green color that the American Midwest only sees in jewel-toned story books.  The clouds hang low making this land seem as if it has been tucked just a little extra close to heaven.  Don’t be fooled though, the equatorial sun reaches between the heavy clouds to burn any pale neck in reach.

Shortly after arriving, we were greeted by the hill’s native inhabitants.  The curious baboons snuck shyly through the trees, proceeding with more confidence once we began tossing bananas their way.  (This in hindsight may not have been the best decision because the baboons had difficulty differentiating between the bananas we brought for them and the bananas we were saving for our breakfast.)  Once the baboons grew tired of us, John brought us over to see the goats.  A young boy led a bull goat by a rope.  John chuckled as he told us that he knew we were probably not accustomed to being presented with our dinner while it was still alive.  He explained that in Rwanda it is customary to present the animal to one’s guest before it was slaughtered.  So we greeted our goat and thanked him for his sacrifice.  Hours later we shared a delicious meal around the fire.

The next morning we helped John plant some trees.  John has planted well over 40,000 trees on this land.  He has worked hard to make this little corner of the world a place of life-giving celebration.  He does this by planting trees and bringing friends together for fellowship.  He does this with decided intentionality because not that long ago these hills and the river winding through it carried death and bitter sorrow.

During the 1994 genocide, when over one million people were killed in one hundred days, five hundred thousand people fled across the Rusumo Falls Bridge to Tanzania.  As the exodus took place on the bridge above, thousands of dead bodies tumbled down the falls below.  Brutal killings were taking place across the entire country.  Bodies were thrown into streams and rivers.  With most of Rwanda’s rivers flowing into the Kagera, many bodies collected at these falls.  When the conflict subsided, no one wanted to purchase the land that had witnessed such horrors.  Some thought John crazy for buying it.  But John saw the hope and life that the land still held.  

Everyone Kuvumba Now!

So I crashed a wedding last weekend.  I ended up being in the wedding.  And I may or may not have almost gotten married... 

Let me start from the beginning:  Last week I spent a few days in Rwanda’s capital city, Kigali, to attend the Global Leadership Summit, a faith-based leadership conference.  Because I was in town, I thought I would go visit my Kinyarwanda teacher, Peter.  When I called, he told me he was going to a wedding.  Seeing it as his responsibility to have me practice my Kinyarwanda skills and introduce me to more Rwandan culture, Peter invited me to tag along.  Normally, my Midwest American upbringing would have caused me to hesitate, not wanting to intrude on someone’s special day.  Luckily, I am in Rwanda where people are not only expected but invited to crash a wedding.  They even have a word for that: kuvumba, which translates to “to take food or drink when not invited to a party.”  And the people that do the kuvumba-ing are called abavumbyi.  Rwandans don’t worry about the number of places to sit or the number of meals to prepare, rather they truly believe “the more, the merrier.”

Upon arriving at the wedding, a friend of the bride took me by the arm and helped me don the traditional dress.  Now, I must confess I still don’t really understand the entire marriage ceremony here in Rwanda.  It can take several days and there are many parts.  The day I attended was the gusaba and gukwa, the negotiation and presentation of dowry.  Traditionally, the dowry was always cows.  In rural areas this is still true.  In fact, during my first week in Rwanda, a man offered my father forty cows if I would marry his son.  I did kindly decline, mostly on the grounds that my dad would have no idea what to do with that many cows.  (I think the day a man does come seeking my hand in marriage, he is going to have better luck offering a dowry more suited to my father's tastes, such a water-skies or Snickers Blizzards.)

There was no exchanging of cows at this wedding.  Instead they exchanged beer, wine, and other gifts.  If you speak Kinyarwanda, the negotiating is fun to watch.  The uncles or fathers of the families banter back and forth, exchanging jokes and friendly teasing as they decide the dowry price.  The father of the bride will eventually concede to giving up his daughter.  Often though, as a joke, he will bring out the wrong daughter.  Then the banter will continue until the groom wins the bride he is after.  At this wedding, however, someone thought it would be hilarious if instead of bringing out the bride, they bring out a tall American girl who clearly looks nothing like the bride-to-be.

So before the ceremony began, Peter pulled me into the back room where the wedding party was waiting.  And at just the right moment, someone escorted me out to the negotiating families and the bride’s family presented me to the father of the groom.  Everyone had a good laugh and I enjoyed playing along.  Thankfully, the groom’s family kept negotiating for the bride they wanted. 

What if they would have settled with me?

That would have made for an awkward phone call home to Mom and Dad.

My "father" about to present me to the groom's family

Presenting gifts to the couple

The bride (center) with her new husband

Celebrating the couple with a traditional dance troupe 

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? 

The Discipline of Letting Go

One day a disciple came to his master and asked, “Master, what can I do to become enlightened?”  The master replied, “As much as you can do to make the sun rise.”  Confused, the disciple replied, “Then of what use are all these disciplines?”  The Master said, “So that when the sun begins to rise, you do not miss it.” 

         –Spiritual Literacy by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

When I said yes to this call to go to Rwanda, I knew that the year would be less planned and much more uncertain than I had a remained in Minnesota.  But I was okay with that.  I was more at peace with this unknown call than the predictability of my own plans.  I found certainty in the call if not in the experiences that would fill it.  But now, here in Rwanda, I have found that each day I have to again reconcile with the unknown.  Because although I tried to come without my own agenda, I have found it hard to not have some kind of expectations about what may days will look like; how I should be feeling; and how, when, and with whom I will form relationships.

Much of my life up to this point has been very planned, scheduled, and structured.  During college, my weeks were full of scheduled classes, meetings, extracurriculars, and work.  I would make plans with friends for the weekend and mentally map out when I would fit in homework, a run, and a few extra hours of sleep.  Here in Rwanda, I am slowly learning the discipline of giving up control.

I have been in my new home here in Rwamagana for less than two weeks.  Just settling in and still unsure of how to spend my time, I didn't have any plans for my weekend.  So when school got out Friday afternoon, I headed home for what I thought was going to be a quiet few days.  However, on my way I came across a group of little girls practicing a traditional dance.  There were people drumming and clapping along.  These little girls in their dusty school uniforms, probably no older than ten years old, danced with such grace and confidence to the pulsing drum.  Thankful for nowhere to be, I stayed and watched.

When the dancing stopped, I began towards home again and soon my cell phone rang.  It was one of the local Lutheran pastors who I had not yet met, announcing that he would like to come visit... like right now.  Well, I thought, now is my time to practice some of the African hospitality I had been learning.  When he arrived, I offered him tea.  It was nearing dinner time and I knew I should offer him something to eat.  My roommate Becca and I looked in our pantry.  It was pretty empty because we had planned to go to the market the next morning.  We had some rice, half a cabbage, and an eggplant.  Becca graciously cooked what we had.  We ate with our guest and talked about his new congregation.  After a few bites of our quickly thrown together meal, he suggested that he come back on Monday with his sister and she would teach us how to cook like Rwandans.  I smiled and said that would be nice.

Saturday Becca and I wandered around a craft expo that was in town for the weekend and then joined our students for a game of basketball.  A friend texted us and said he would come over that night and teach us how to make chapatti (a fried Indian flat bread).  I sent him a text back: Yes, that would be great.

Sunday morning I ventured off on my own to the local Lutheran congregation for worship.  My students sat by me and invited me to stay for lunch afterwards.  “Yes,” I told them, “I would love to.”  On my way home my phone buzzed again, this time a text from another friend asking me if I would like to go out for dinner.  “Sounds great,” I replied.

My weekend did not go as planned.  And I am so grateful for that.  I am slowly learning how to let go of my expectations, my need to plan, and my desire to be in control.  The experiences and enlightenment that this year will bring cannot be planned.  Letting go is easier said than done.  But if we don’t stop trying to be in control, we might miss the sunrise.  Or a beautiful display of dancing.  Or a dinner guest.  Or a game of basketball.  Or chapatti…

... I had planned to sit down and blog earlier today.  But my computer was dead.  And the power was out again.  My instinct was to be frustrated but then I sat back and smiled.  Yes, Lord, I’ll let go.

Museums, Cows, and Kinyarwanda

On Wednesday morning Lars, Emily, Luke, Jake, Ryan, and I will depart for various placement sites throughout the country.  We have spent the last three weeks together in Kigali.  Our fearless leader and country coordinator, Kate, has been guiding us as we learn more about the culture, the language, and how God is at work here.  Here are some of the highlights of the past few weeks:

The Kigali Memorial Museum provided powerful and humbling insight into the country’s past.  It is hard to imagine a genocide taking place in a country that today is so full of life and optimism.  We met a few youth that were part of a campaign to collect one million messages of hope in remembrance of the genocide that took place twenty years ago.

We took an excursion to Kigali’s second largest city, Huye, where we visited a couple of Rwanda’s national museums.  We toured a replica of a traditional home of a Rwandan king.

Cows are an important part of Rwandan culture.  Traditionally symbols of wealth and beauty, cows were decorated for weddings and celebrations.  These cows at the museum were “the royal breed” of the past kings.  They looked rather majestic with their long horns.  The cows must have felt pretty special too because they even had their own royal cow singer to keep them happy.  Here's a picture of the cows being serenaded.  I think one of them is smiling. 

One of our new friends, Frank, taught us how to dance like a cow (which is much more elegant than it sounds) with arms spread wide to mimic the giant horns.

Saturday morning, we joined the youth at the church to help clean the church grounds.  Afterwards, they shared Fantas with us and showed us some of their dance moves.

Uyu ni umwarimu wacu, Peter.  Yigisha Ikinyarwanda.   This is our teacher, Peter.  He teaches Kinyarwanda.  Much of our past few weeks have been spent trying to learn the language.  Kinyarwanda has proved to be a difficult language but everyone seems eager to help us learn:  A man on the bus taught me how to count.  The guest house staff helps us practice; the conversations getting a little longer each day.

When we were learning basic greetings and conversation starters, Peter taught us how to say we are working as partners of the Lutheran Church.  So next time I'm making small talk and someone asks me what I do, all I have to say is, "Nkora k' urusengero rw' Abaruteri nk' umufatanyabikorwa."  Try saying that fives times fast.