A Different Kind of Reconciliation

I wake up to my 2 and 4 year old siblings screaming and wailing, probably demanding more honey on their bread or a different colored shirt to wear. I look at my clock: 6:30am. That means my body has finally overcome the roosters crowing that began at 4:30 but that my host parents have been up since 5:00 when my siblings impatiently entered their room, demanding to hear how the night was.

I go to the bathroom to wash my face. No water. No problem, it makes little difference to me. The only difference is that my bucket shower will be lukewarm today instead of ice cold, so I’m actually relieved. Still I know Valence, the security boy who has been up all night patrolling the compound, has been carrying buckets of water up the giant hill so that my face can be washed. I’ve him sleep at most a few hours during the day, working tirelessly the other 20 hours for his 1$ a day salary.

On my way to work, I walk down the hill to the valley where some men wash cars at the start of the day. Sure enough, a large group of people is gathered around the water pipe flowing into the stream to fill their yellow buckets of water for a days worth of washing clothes and cooking. I pass through. The old men greet me in French, the young greet me in English, and the ones who’ve seen me enough to know I prefer Kinyarwanda will greet me with “muraho” or “mwaramutse.”

A group of children in matching blue uniforms and blue crocks pass me. Their parents were able to afford school fees this year, I think. They usher a polite “Good morning.” Later this evening at 6:00pm they’ll use the same greeting, thinking it is irrelevant to time. On my way up the massive wall of a hill I pass by a different group of children in old, brown, torn clothes carrying up buckets of water that I shamefully realize are 4 times the weight of my backpack. No money for school fees. I think about how their day will be full of manual labor as they help their family, while mine will be sitting at a desk while another boy who couldn’t afford school fees makes my lunch for me.

I pass through the last part of the “neighborhood” area. Houses surrounded by high walls and metal gates indicate the typical middle class home in Kigali, just like mine on the other side of the hill. In between are shacks of houses with narrow passageways glued together from last night’s rain. Women sew outside their in-home shops while chickens and roosters take the term “free-range” to a whole new level (to this day I have no clue how these chickens are fed or how they know to stay in one place, but they apparently have a complex system of claiming their territory in Kigali).

I cross the street that suddenly becomes paved and enter NGO Row (my term), the perfectly kept mile-long stretch that is home to every NGO on earth: World Vision, Care International, Partners in Health and more. This road runs parallel to the slightly busier Embassy Row. These two streets are the reason this hill has fewer blackouts and less days without water. This is where the money is.

Someone once referred to Kigali as the “Disney Land of Africa.” Walk down NGO row and it is. Spend thousands on a gorilla safari and it really is. Find all the ex-pats at the local coffee shop and you can be convinced it is. Still, poverty coexists with wealth, and need is apparent among luxury. In fact, for most middle-income houses with house help, poverty lives among the wealthy. 

I was explaining the concept of house girls to my parents in America and how they all come from poor families in the village. My dad asked, “What’s their way out?” I thought about it. I thought about Josephine, our house girl in charge of cooking and cleaning and my best friend here (I’ve learned friendship does not require a shared language). She is an orphan from the genocide and possibly AIDS as well, and has never gone to school in her life, although she is the brightest person I’ve ever met. In the villages, there’s been a shift where the girl’s family has to pay the boy’s family her dowry, instead of the traditional method of the boy paying her family. So for Josephine, I wonder how she’ll ever save enough money to pay for her dowry on her 1$ a day salary and no parents to help pay.

In America, our hope for the poor to have a better life is in the idea of opportunity. So what about Josephine? Her life will continue to be paid for through hard labor. On the other hand, my host parents were refugees 20 years ago and hopeless after the genocide, but now have a house, 2 kids and decent jobs. It seems the American Dream has found a way to reside in Rwanda next to poor, just as it does in America.  

Technically, I’m supposed to be “giving up” my white, wealthy, American privilege, but instead it just follows me wherever I go. This privilege is the shadow that accompanies the blessing of a good education and supportive parents. I don't have to take care of babies at 5am, I don't have to haul my own water from the valley stream, and I don't have to leave my family's home to work 24/7 in another family's home without a day off.

I will always desire more comfort. I still find myself dreaming of when I’ll come back to America. But I will never be satisfied unless I start making some serious mental changes, and even then I need God's grace for the strength to do so. So I choose to accept the life God has given me now. I choose thankfulness in the small things and praise for the big things. I choose to make efforts to reach beyond the comforts of Kigali and befriend the unexpected, knowing Jesus left his sweet home in heaven to befriend beggars and prostitutes.

Physically, I don't live in poverty in Rwanda. But everyday I realize that while it is incredible to witness reconciliation post-genocide here in Rwanda, God’s transformation in my life begins with reconciling my own poverty of spirit.

The walk home from the office