BSCC graduation

One nice thing about living so close to Bethel, as well as being part of a congregation that has quite a number of Bethelites, is that you get invited to special theocratic occasions from time to time. So it happened that a brother named Clément who works in the Service Department--and who incidentally let me know about a town 2 hours from here where there are a lot of Chinese, but unfortunately I haven't made it there yet (sorry, Clément)--invited me to the graduation of the Bible School for Christian Couples on Sunday, June 22, at the Kigali Assembly Hall. I was told there are 4 such occasions a year held here, including also the Bible School for Single Brothers (although that will now all change).

I'm not sure how I ended up with this privilege, but no doubt someone wants me exposed to as much as Kinyarwanda as possible, because that's the language the program was to be in. I attended a similar graduation before and, remembering that it is a very emotional experience for friends and family of the students, prepared myself to embrace and get all misty-eyed over people I am meeting for the first time. (In a way, that reminds me of a custom in Malawi, which also exists in Rwanda: someone in a wedding party can invite you to attend the wedding and the reception, even though you don't know either the bride or the groom. Hey, why not?) But the event turned out to be relatively modest in the tearjerker department.

Fortunately, I arranged to sit next to Philbert, so that he could type a bit of interpretation on my tablet so as not to disturb any of those sitting around us. The open-air Assembly Hall was about a third full, which meant there were about 500 in attendance.

The class had 12 couples, for a total of 24 students. Three of the students had previously graduated from the BSSB. The average length of time in full-time service was 17 years.

First on the program was an interview of Assembly Hall committee members, who described some of the preparations that had to be done in advance of the school. Then some students explained how they benefited from the course. Finally, each of the two instructors gave some parting encouragement, and then the assignments were handed out. Most of the assignments involved substitute circuit work and special pioneering.

Watchtower Study, with students as participants

Interview of students

Receiving assignments!

Queueing up for refreshments afterward

Three sisters with Chinese dresses!?

Afterward, I had the opportunity to meet one of the instructors, whose name is Luc. He is a circuit overseer in the French circuit, but in September will be changing to a Kinyarwanda circuit. Someone said that years ago when offered the opportunity to attend university, he turned it down, which is quite remarkable in a place like Rwanda, in order to enter the full-time service. So he has enjoyed many theocratic privileges ever since.

I returned home very tired but happy to be able to witness this event. By the way, on an unrelated personal note: During a water cut, I successfully took a shower with about 3 gallons of water from a bucket! Yes, it can be done!

Living like the locals

Last Saturday, I moved into my new place, which is a house in a compound containing two other houses, about a 10-minute walk from the Kingdom Hall. Whereas my former place was in a furnished apartment in a complex with many other foreigners, this new neighborhood feels like I'm really in Africa now! I haven't yet seen any other non-Africans, so I tend to stand out.

The compound is owned by a brother who is a commuter Bethelite. He had the walls painted and baseboards sealed just before I moved in, so there is a strong paint smell, but with windows open most of the time it will eventually dissipate.

OK, so I have a living (sitting) room, a bedroom, and a bathroom--at the moment with unfinished concrete floor, so I need to get some mats, and a mirror in the bathroom (very important). A brother will be coming to fix the broken sink, soon, as well as the towel rack, which just fell off the wall. There is a gaping hole in the bathroom ceiling. The shower and the toilet work maybe half of the time, which is why I need to have a jerry can on hand for those occasions when the water is cut.

The congregation let me use a table and 4 chairs previously donated to them, but unfortunately the table was too large to fit through the doorway. So now I have just the 4 chairs with everything stacked on them.

Hey, it feels like camping...

Front gate (very secure)

The compound

Entrance to house

Just moved in, with all my material possessions!

At least I have a bed! (just made by a carpentry school)

OK, much better, with mosquito protection

Bathroom, where everything almost works

The toilet outside, if (and it's a very big IF) I ever need to use it

Two advantages of this new place: One, it's very quiet, except for some occasional music and kids crying next door. Second, because there's no competition for the Internet, my signal is very strong! (200-300Kbps) So now there's rarely any buffering during the playing of videos. That settles the burning global question I have asked myself for some time: Which is more critical to life, Internet or water?

Also, across the courtyard is where a brother named Bernard, and his wife, Claudine, live. (Bernard is in one of the photos above.) He commutes to Bethel 5 days a week as a translator, and she works 3 days a week at Bethel as a housekeeper. They have been very helpful to me in setting up house. They are willing to teach me Kinyarwanda, in exchange for some English and guitar lessons.

So, all in all, the place is livable, though I will need to adjust to some things. I'll try to get a picture of the interior once I get it fixed up!

News on the home front

Good news: After almost 3 months, I finally found brown rice, plain yogurt, and tofu here in Kigali!

OK, this is not quite as significant as, say, finding a job. But there is something to be said for eating healthy, particularly in a developing country.

Of course, everywhere there is white rice. You can get basmati rice from Pakistan, or a really nice variety from Tanzania. But brown rice? Both Rwandans and Chinese have the same distaste for brown rice, despite the fact that it has more nutrition than white rice. But one day recently we were working business territory and came across the offices of a rice company. At first I thought they were simply wholesalers, but no, you can buy almost any type of rice--including brown--from them directly. So I got a 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) bag for $3! Same price as the white rice! What a deal! I made my partner carry it in his bookbag until we got home (well, actually he offered to, and I didn't refuse).

The same thing applies to yogurt. Almost all yogurt here is sweetened and flavored, with other things added for texture. For a long time I thought the plain variety didn't exist, until this guy named Gilbert at the Elim Supermarket I shop at close to home, with whom I'm on friendly terms (and, additionally, he is very eager to study the Bible), said he would ask the boss to order and stock some plain yogurt for me, just for being such a good customer! When a shipment came in, he actually texted me about it. So now I'm probably the only one buying it, since everyone else doesn't like the sour taste, which is fine with me.

Finally, on the question of tofu, there is a lunch buffet in town that in addition to the standard fare has braised tofu in tomato sauce. One day my friend asked them where they get their tofu, and they said, at Simba. (For extra credit: What does "simba" mean, and in what language? Think very hard, back to a Disney film.) Simba is a big supermarket in town that has a good variety of local and international products.

Although tofu is something difficult to describe to Africans (even exactly what a soybean is), they do understand the concept of a food that is basically tasteless and has to be mixed with something or spiced up to be enjoyed. Think ubugali (Rwanda), ugali (Kenya) or nsima (Malawi), which is a porridge made by mixing corn meal with boiling water.

Finding these made my day!

Now, about accommodations: My free lease on the current place expired on June 2, which was the day I was scheduled to fly back to the U.S. Only, I didn't take the flight, and decided to stay here. So now I had to look for another place. My original Rwandan contact owns a compound with four residences, and offered me one at a reasonable price, but only after the present tenant gets married and moves out in the middle of June. It's a decent place, but I will have to buy all the furniture, including bed and appliances. It also has a metal roof, which means the heat is trapped inside and you bake. I guess I have been spoiled by the places I have lived in thus far, with high ceilings and non-metal roofs. So I will have to experiment with leaving the windows open most of the time, balancing that with the problem of mosquito entry.

The last week of May was the visit of the substitute circuit overseer, Brother Ricardo Braz from Canada, which was very encouraging. (He and his wife are missionaries in the Kinyarwanda and Sign Language fields.) Brother Braz actually accompanied me on my Chinese Bible study at the Beijing restaurant on Thursday afternoon. Beforehand, I sent him by Bluetooth (amazing that I was capable of doing this!) the 3lines.org Bible Teach book material, so he could follow along, more or less. He enjoyed the experience, and I hope that a good word will be put in to the appropriate parties about the Chinese field!

Finally, on Sunday after the meeting of the circuit overseer's visit, I went with a Bethel brother in one of the Kinyarwanda congregations to the house of a Chinese man he had met while doing door-to-door work. The man, Mr. Lu, invited us in, said he has been here for 3 months, and will be staying in Rwanda for 5 years working on an agricultural project, which involves training locals how to plant and cultivate bamboo. (This is the basic idea I got, anyway.) First of all, I didn't know that bamboo had to be cultivated. I always thought it grew wild, and that you can't keep it from reproducing even with a blowtorch. But that shows you how much I know about this subject.

Anyway, we showed the 4-minute video, placed the Lasting Peace brochure and a set of the May Chinese magazines (by the way, Epimaque got me 51 sets of this issue in Nairobi!), and promised to return the following week.

Latest on Bible students: Mr. Liu, who has been studying twice a week, has read the Bible from Genesis to Psalms in only 2 months, and whom I basically cannot keep up with, has gone to China for a month due to an illness in his family. So now I get a breather, which allows me to catch up on my preparation. But I will be ready for him when he returns!

Mr. Han, the one who works at the motorcycle manufacturing place, on my recent visit showed me how he downloaded the New World Translation in Chinese on his laptop. He has been reading Genesis and has many questions. In fact, he had so many questions that I recommended him to download (which he did on the spot) My Book of Bible Stories, which will not only give him some background on Bible characters but also be good material for his two small children. (They are going to school and learning English, by the way.) He then explained that he has been thinking lately about his life working practically 7 days a week and what the purpose of it all is. Sure, he's feeding his family, but could there be more to life than this? I said, YES, do you know what Jesus meant at Matthew 5 about our "spiritual need"? He didn't know, so I added that it concerns our inner qualities, our relationship with our Creator, and understanding the answers to such questions as, Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? What does the future hold?

So I recommended that if he wants to satisfy that spiritual need, he needs to set aside time each week to systematically study the Bible. This time needs to be inviolable, which means, no answering the phone, no addressing clients who may come in. (Because during our discussions we frequently have these interruptions, even on Sundays.) If he has additional questions, I will be happy to send him some information by e-mail. So now we have agreed to study earlier on Sunday mornings at 8:00am, when there are fewer interruptions, although this now means I will have to get up super early that day! But also we will have plenty of time, and I won't have to rush off to the meeting as I have in the past.

When I got home, I sent him 6 articles on the subject of why people in Bible times lived so long, whether it is possible to live longer, even forever, etc. Hey, one day we will get the Research Guide in Chinese and that will be a great boon!

It is so gratifying to see these Chinese people who are so hungry to know, to get answers to questions about life. Being available to help them is what makes the experience of living here so worthwhile.

The conclusion of the matter, everything having been heard, is...

OK, folks, the verdict is in: I'm staying here in Rwanda. For a year, or two, or maybe more.

I originally planned this as a 3-month "investigative" trip, to see whether I would like living in Rwanda, and whether the Chinese field would be fruitful. But, to be frank, I gave myself an 80% chance of staying here longer. (Well, now it's 100%.)

Placing such high odds on staying somewhere that I had never visited in my life was based on my experience in Malawi. If African culture appealed to me then, why wouldn't it now, even though it's a different country?

So the upshot is that I had to "eat" my return flight to the U.S., which was scheduled for June 2. Because my round-trip ticket was so cheap, it had quite a few restrictions, one of which is that I can't change the return trip to any date past July. So now if I want to return to the U.S., I have to buy another flight.

But what about the question of visa? In the absence of any other type of recognized visa, how long can one be a "tourist," leaving and reentering the country? This worked in Malawi for quite awhile, until the situation became more and more problematic at the border.

However, with regard to Rwanda, Wikitravel states: "If you are a resident of the US or EU, keep in mind that you can avoid paying for an expensive residency permit simply by declaring yourself a tourist upon arrival and then traveling outside of Rwanda once every 90 days for the length of your [stay]. Your 90-day tourist visa (automatically granted upon entry) will be renewed each time you leave and reenter the country."

I was informed that Rwanda welcomes Americans due to the good relationship between the two countries, so if the above information can be relied on, there should be no problem exiting and reentering as many times as I want, for as long as I want.

Having to leave the country only 4 times a year isn't that burdensome. It's not like having to leave 12 times a year and travel 2,000 miles round-trip each time, like some have to do in another country (which shall remain unnamed). The nice thing is that Rwanda is such a small country, you can drive a few hours in any direction and you will be in another country.

What clinched my decision to stay here, however, is the positive response from the branch to start something in the Chinese field. This means the distinct possibility of a Chinese class and Chinese group! With the number of Bible studies presently being conducted, as well as excellent prospects for studies, I would find it hard to justify leaving at this point.

So that sealed the matter! I managed to sell my car in California. There is an investment that hopefully will be producing something soon, and the possibility of a teaching job. Sometimes I have the sensation of falling, wondering whether is a safety net. But Jehovah can take care of things, no problem!