Expanded meeting arrangement

Here is the latest:

As you may remember, we became an official group in September, right before I went on a 2½-month vacation to the U.S. The brothers wanted to wait until I returned before making a decision about Chinese meetings (although I told them they didn’t have to), so now that I am back, we will be holding, as of January 29, 2017, the full meeting every Sunday in Chinese—Public Talk and Watchtower Study! Of course, the Public Talk will still be video most of the time, but once every other month there will be a live one. I have agreed to give the first two live talks, so as to give the other brothers (Benjamin, Innocent, and the other Benjamin) enough time to work up theirs later in the year. They are a bit intimidated by the thought of speaking Chinese nonstop for an entire half-hour, but hey, I can identify with that. Sometimes you just have to jump into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim. Of course, there is a difference with talks in a foreign language—Jehovah makes up for our lack by means of his holy spirit (which I don’t think applies to swimming, unfortunately).

In any case, Benjamin and Innocent, the two special pioneers, will have plenty of time to ponder this because they are presently on a bus for three days traveling to Lusaka, Zambia, where they will be attending the Language Instructors’ Course taught by Brother Cotton. I was invited to this course also, but declined because I’ve been to it twice already, the secular version in 2004 and the theocratic version in 2009. There are a total of 10 brothers from Rwanda attending this course in Zambia. Additionally, Benjamin and Innocent have promised to attend a Chinese meeting in Lusaka during the weekend. Amazingly, there are four Chinese congregations in all of Zambia, two of them in Lusaka. So no doubt the two brothers will be encouraged to see other Africans learning Chinese to expand their ministry.

Finally, this Sunday, January 1, I give a French public talk! So, in the interests of good preparation, perhaps I’d better close here….

Reminiscences of Malawi

Sitting here in California, where all I’m doing is eating, sleeping, preaching, and visiting friends, I can’t help thinking that life here is a world away from Rwanda.

On the other hand, when I first arrived in Rwanda two-and-a-half years ago, I thought, this is luxury compared to Malawi.

Yes, that was 10 years ago, in the pre-blog era. It’s a shame that I didn’t record experiences from that time, because some of them are real doozies. Such as…

There is this superstitious belief in Malawi (based on witchcraft) that if you boil and eat the genitals of a white person, you will gain strength and other positive attributes. Sadly, this belief has occasionally resulted in the attacking of foreigners for this very purpose.

Even though, strictly speaking, I am not a “white” person—African opinion notwithstanding—it should have behooved me to be constantly on guard. Unfortunately, one evening, a few months before I left Malawi for good, while walking at dusk I was attacked by three young guys who jumped out from the bush, grabbed my shoulder bag, and took off running. I made the mistake of chasing them, and then they stopped in their tracks and started beating me. Somehow, after what seemed an eternity—but was probably less than two minutes—they quit and left. So, they got my cell phone and money, but thank goodness that was all they wanted, if you know what I mean.

Occasionally, this business of trading in human private parts makes it to the front page of the newspaper, as in this one case where, directly in front of the Lilongwe Hotel (where I had a swimming pool membership, by the way), the police made a raid on the trunk of a car containing a bag filled with private parts. Several people were arrested and taken to prison. I don’t think they even got a trial, especially when caught red-handed with the “goods,” so to speak.

But then there was a situation a little closer to home. I had started a Bible study with a Congolese guy in our territory, who shared a room with some of his friends. One day a new friend moved in, and I took the opportunity to start a study with him. That study had only progressed a few short weeks when one day I didn’t find him at home at the appointed time. His roommates told me, he has been arrested. For what? I wondered. Well, it turned out that the charge was ‘selling private parts out of his refrigerator.’ These guys didn’t even have electricity in their house!

The fact is that when Congolese move into an area, sometimes the neighbors, in a fit of xenophobia, concoct completely untrue stories and then report to the police. Anyway, my poor Bible student was detained for about a week, during which time he suffered due to the deplorable conditions in the prison. (You don’t ever want to find yourself in a Malawian prison or, for that matter, a hospital.) With no evidence to prove the original charge, they finally let him go, but his health had been adversely affected.

So, you friends in America, take heart! If someone threatens you over your expensive, top-of-the-line running shoes, just remember that shoes can always be replaced….

Official Chinese group!!

Yes, we have received word from the branch that we are now an official Chinese group! This is the exciting news we have been waiting for! It means that now we can have weekly meetings, as well as other arrangements.

By the way, I gave the first live public talk on Sunday, September 4—up to that time we only had recorded video public talks from Taiwan. That meeting was attended by 7 Chinese persons, basically two families.

The makeup of the Chinese pre-group has fluctuated over the last year and a half, with constant coming and going of publishers. This is one reason why the Chinese language class has stretched over two years. However, our becoming a group now will, as the saying goes, ‘separate the men from the boys.’

Here is a photo of the group, taken when we all went out to celebrate at a restaurant:

(from left to right) David, Fernand, me, Innocent, Odile, Benjamin G., Nicole, Benjamin M., Lyevin, Blaise, Heritier

Typical day at the cart: earthquake, medical emergency, Chinese (finally)

OK, we’ve been doing the Chinese cart for over a month and a half now, and most of the time it has been uneventful: Chinese people may take a quick glance at our cart and then move on.

But this particular day, September 10, was definitely one to remember. First, about an hour and a half into our stint, I noticed that the sign on the building we were standing in front of was shaking. I pointed this out to Benjamin, my partner, adding that it was probably a plane flying overhead. No, he said, it is an earthquake. What! An earthquake?

It turns out he was right. It was indeed an earthquake, one of magnitude 5.9 with an epicenter in northwestern Tanzania that killed several people and was felt in all the East African countries. It should be noted that earthquakes are a rare occurrence in the Great Rift Valley.

Then, as we were discussing this, a dramatic thing took place across the street at the hotel. The second floor of the hotel (or first floor, for anywhere outside the U.S.) has a room where a bunch of people were watching a soccer match originating in the U.K. Every so often you would hear loud cheers coming from the room, which opened out onto a balcony with the overflow crowd. Then, suddenly, dozens of African guys spilled out on the street, some wearing nothing but underwear, and shouting in a language that Benjamin said was definitely not Kinyarwanda. There was mass confusion that went on for several minutes, until a van pulled up containing a group of Europeans (which caused me to believe there was going to be a riot), and then finally another van into which one of the Africans was carried. It happened that this guy fainted as a result of the earthquake, and his friends didn’t know what to do until someone finally got a vehicle and carted him off to a hospital.

As if this were not exciting enough, a few minutes later three Chinese men approached our cart and began to ask questions! We had a good discussion with them, and they ended up taking literature. This was the first time any Chinese people had come to the cart!

This experience is worth writing home about, wouldn’t you say?

Can an astronomical phenomenon be an answer to a prayer?

Answer:  Yes!

Of course, it happened in Joshua’s time.

But let me relate my experience, and you be the judge.

It was awfully hot here in Kigali the last few weeks of August. This is typical of the weather in July and August, and fortunately, many pioneers are close to finishing their hours for the service year, which was my situation also. So during this time I was just conducting studies and otherwise not doing much else.

In hot weather I don’t have a lot of energy, so even just getting out of the house to get lunch took effort. So I asked Jehovah, “Come September, when I have to get serious again, is there any way you can give us some weather that is cooler?” Usually the first of September I try to put in a full day of preaching, morning to evening, and I wondered how I would last all day in the heat, since hmmm…when was the last time I put in a full day?

Well, guess what. On September 1, I was preaching all day with my friend Jacques from the Remera French Congregation, and we noticed in the morning how cool it was. It seemed, in fact, that the sun was less intense than usual, less bright and less hot, though there were no clouds in the sky.

It turns out, when Jacques checked his phone for news, that there was a solar eclipse that day! The eclipse’s path cut through a wide swath of central and southern Africa, and reached totality in Gabon, Congo, and Madagascar. So in Rwanda, we had a partial eclipse. But even in cases of 80% totality (which is what we had), you can’t see the moon blocking the sun—because the sun is so bright—but the reduction of the sun’s intensity is noticeable.

We finished the day after 8½ hours of preaching, and the weather was pleasant and bearable.

So was this the answer to a prayer?

First ever English regional convention in Rwanda

It was a milestone, a history-making event. We had, for the first time in Rwanda, an English regional convention!

Since there are only two English congregations in Rwanda, both located in Kigali, obviously we didn’t have the wherewithal to put on the 50 or so parts needed for a regional convention, though circuit assemblies are not a problem. But in the past, most of the publishers just attended a Kinyarwanda convention, leaving only a few (including me) to find a way to get an English program. Here are some possibilities: travel to Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, the U.K., or the U.S. But there is expense involved in doing that.

But only a few short weeks ago, it was announced that from August 19-21 we would be having a streamed (recorded) program in English! We would use the double Kingdom Hall in Nyamirambo, where one of the two English congregations is located. This was a logical choice, because although in Remera we have two auditoriums, the parking area in Nyamirambo is far larger.

There were two screens set up in each Hall. The program, from what I understand, was recorded from the Jersey City Assembly Hall, U.S.A., back in May—three months earlier—and featured almost all speakers from Wallkill Bethel, which is why I didn’t recognize many of them. So we got top quality! And everything with an American accent!

The result was that we had a peak attendance of 198. With three baptized! This included my student David Minani. In August 2015, David started studying with a brother named Bosco in the congregation, since the two were classmates in school. Bosco completed the Bible Teach book with David, but since Bosco is new in the truth himself, and hadn’t even started the God’s Love book, he wanted someone with more experience to study the second book with David. So that is how I ended up with this study. So now Bosco is about one chapter ahead of David in the God’s Love book. So this means that David got baptized a year almost to the day from the time of his first study! That is something you don’t commonly see these days. David is making remarkable progress, even having privileges such as helping to put together the territories for search work and setting up the Chinese witnessing cart. Oh, I should also mention that he is part of the Chinese pre-group. We told him he couldn’t participate in the cart activity until he is baptized. Well, now he can. Also, he wants to be a regular pioneer at the first opportunity. The sky’s the limit!

The three baptism candidates. It was somewhat strange to see them answering the questions of a recorded baptism talk speaker. The speaker even said after the first question, "I didn't quite hear that answer." So they had to say "yes" twice to that question!

Bosco, David, and me

Public witnessing cart...in Chinese!

Yes, we now have a Chinese witnessing cart! This was something our circuit overseer recommended some time ago. So one Saturday Benjamin and I scouted out areas downtown that could be suitable for the placement of a cart. An important location is the Chinese supermarket called T2000.

Though many Chinese shop there, we decided that in front of T2000 would be too crowded. So we turned our attention to the hotel called T2000 (same ownership) around the corner, and especially across the street from the hotel entrance, which is in front of a hardware store.

We found the landlord of the building and had a nice discussion with him in his office. At first he wanted to charge us “rent” if this was going to be a regular thing, every week, but after we told him that we give our publications for free and never ask for money, he was willing to let us place our cart without charge, adding, “Anything that helps people learn about God and the Bible is good.” Yes, unlike in the western world, here in Rwanda people do appreciate spiritual things.

So now we have a standing arrangement: every Saturday from 1:00pm to 4:00pm! (including umuganda) This has been in effect since the end of July. In several weeks' time, a number of Chinese people have looked at the cart from across the street or from a passing car, but we have yet to have a Chinese person approach. A few Rwandans have come up, asking why we don’t have anything in their language, so we usually have some Kinyarwanda tracts on hand. Or we might direct them to a nearby cart that has their language.

Slowly but surely, Chinese people will get to know our regular presence at that location, and so we have to be patient!

Gisenyi, Congo, Lake Kivu (the Great Adventure)

The weekend of July 22-24, my Bible student Mucyo and I took a trip to Gisenyi, in the northwest part of the country, and on the border of DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo). (As an aside, Gisenyi is also called Rubavu—many cities in Rwanda have two names due to the fact that the names were changed a number of years ago by the present regime. So Butare is also called Huye, Ruhengeri is also called Musanze, etc. However, longtime habits die hard, and people still use the old names; even many of the street signs have not been changed.) By the way, two weeks ago, Mucyo completed the Bible Teach book. He wants to continue making spiritual progress. Great!

I had two objectives: one, I wanted to visit Goma, the town just across the border in Congo; and two, I wanted to swim in Lake Kivu, but on the Rwandan side. Mucyo had the intention of attending the wedding of a distant relative in Gisenyi on Sunday, or at least make an appearance. So we set out on Friday afternoon in Mucyo’s little red Mercedes. (Yes, Mercedes makes cars that small.)

Speaking of Congo, the usual tourist visa fee for Americans is $175 (ouch!), but because I have a residency permit from Rwanda, for only $7.50 I could get what is called a “laissez-passer”—also known as CEPGL—for the purpose of visiting any of the countries in the Lake Kivu region (namely, Burundi and Congo). So why not visit these places? Well, after the weekend experience we had, I might have decided to stay home. But that’s the way adventures are sometimes.

You may remember from a previous post that on my last visit to Gisenyi for a Kingdom Hall dedication, I took a very discreet photo of the border crossing, but that’s as far as I got. This time we managed to cross the border, but let me give an explanation, which will unfortunately not be a simple one. However, let’s back up a bit….

First, we arrived in Gisenyi on Friday evening after four hours of driving on winding roads. Mucyo has many relatives in Gisenyi, so he has visited there many times, and he normally stays at this Catholic-owned hotel. So that’s where we went. The place is clean, quiet, and safe, and aside from the icon of Jesus hanging on the cross on the wall, I had no other objections.

However, backing up the story once more, I should mention that I woke up on Friday morning extremely tired, and as the day wore on, I started to feel very sick. This culminated in diarrhea, and then on Saturday morning, nausea and vomiting. This was while Mucyo was driving me around Gisenyi to show me some of the so-called major tourist attractions of the town.

Now, Saturday was the day we had planned to go into Congo for a short visit, so I thought that maybe by afternoon after a few hours of rest I would be fit enough to do that. We didn’t want to take the car into Congo because (1) the roads are bad, and (2) who knows what could happen at the border with the car. So we left the car at the hotel and took motorcycles to the border, which is called “petite barrière.”

You don’t realize what effect bouncing around sitting on the back of a motorcycle has on your digestive system, so by the time we got to the border I was feeling worse. But that’s not the end of it!

As an observation (not that the following comments are necessarily any reflection on the countries themselves), Rwanda has a very modern-looking immigration building, with nice, clean, tiled floors, fluorescent lighting, computers, etc. The road in Rwanda leading up to the border is well-paved and well-maintained.

However, once you cross the border, you ask yourself, where is the Congolese immigration station? There are many small, dirty, squalid huts on both sides of the potholed, rocky road but no clear indication of where you are supposed to go. What happens is that someone approaches you—and you have no idea if this person is even an immigration official—who directs you to someone else, and on and on it goes until someone finally stamps your documents. And of course you are surrounded by a thousand other people, many of whom are carrying loads of merchandise on their backs, trying to cross the border also.

The road leading into Congo

Well, I passed Rwanda and Congo immigration without any problem, but Mucyo got pulled aside in one of the huts for what appeared to be a long discussion. I don’t want to get into the details of what the problem was—and the conversations were totally in French—but let’s just say that after sitting there for a while with him and two officials (one of whom claimed to be a pastor—yeah, right!) I was starting to feel severe stomach pains and nausea and wondering how I was going to survive in Goma, especially looking down the road at that third-world environment and imagining what the toilets were like. At that point Mucyo asked me to give him all the US dollars I had, after having already turned over all his Rwandan and Congolese money. Then, some more paperwork was filled out, and he said, “Don’t worry, Brian. You can go back to the hotel. I will resolve this.”

This was somewhat of a relief, so I went back through Congo and Rwanda immigration again, took another motorcycle back to the hotel, rushed to the bathroom, and then changed clothes for what I thought was going to be a rest for the remainder of the day. But then, Mucyo called me and said, they won’t let me go until I give them more US dollars, which you can find in my backpack in the car. So can you please come back as soon as you can? Groan.

So I went through the process of finding the money, taking another motorcycle back to the border, going through immigration again, but this time a lady official, before stamping my CEPGL, asked me, why are you coming through here again on the same day? I said, my friend is having a problem and I need to bring him money. Her only question was, how much? When I told her, she called someone and got the story. So I was allowed, after some delay, to return to Mucyo in the same room, give him the money, and then they let us leave. That was after they returned his belt, which is taken—in case you didn’t know—as evidence of being “arrested.”

Oh, but just before we left, one of the officials asked, so are you planning to spend the night in Goma? What are you going to see there? Yeah, after what you put us through, why should we even visit your country? What other surprises do you have in store?

Well, the truth is that Mucyo didn’t do anything illegal. But because he made the mistake of showing them a certain Congo-related document in addition to his Rwandan passport, this was their opportunity to extract money from him. Additionally, they accused him of being a “spy” bringing in a rich Chinese-American businessman. This is how they operate: once they get you into one of these rooms, they refuse to let you go until you pay. Even on the slightest pretense. If you were to tell me that corruption in Congo is rampant, I would not disagree with you.

So perhaps it’s just as well that in my sickened condition, we didn’t get to Goma. The next day, I was feeling much better, so we had breakfast at the hotel—my first food in two days—and then Mucyo dropped me off at the beach of Lake Kivu while he went to his wedding. I swam for about an hour, relaxed, and then shortly after noon we headed back to Kigali.

What happened is that I got food poisoning. But it was here in Kigali, not during the trip. So at least Congo is exonerated from that. And after Sunday I was mostly fine. But this trip is one more of those that gets burned in your memory. One day—but not immediately—we will both probably laugh about this.

Living a simple life

I’m still in Rwanda, living it up!

And yet, for the weeknight meeting part “Keeping Our Life Simple Helps Us Praise God,” this is what I wrote under “Ways That I Can Simplify My Life” (had to think long and hard about this):

No more meat

Use an outhouse

No more buses

Take a shower only once every 3 days

Use a charcoal fire instead of this:

Just kidding!

Actually, aside from visiting my family and having certain ethnic foods, I don’t miss the Western world very much.

This is because:

You can have loads of Bible studies (10+).

The Chinese pre-group is progressing well and is soon to become a group.
The English congregation here—one of two in the country—now has 100 publishers, including 34 regular and special pioneers, and a number of Bethelites.
We will be having our first English regional convention, via delayed streaming, in August.

And where else can you get geckos crawling up your living room wall? Life in Africa is great!

CO’s recommendations, secular work

We just had the visit of the circuit overseer, and this is the latest. He recommended that we set up a public witnessing cart in Chinese (yes!). In response to his inquiry I suggested that it could be placed in town, close to the T2000 building (which has a Chinese supermarket and restaurant), perhaps on Saturday morning or afternoon, because that is when the Chinese come to town to do their shopping.

Also, we meet the requirements for becoming a group, except that we don’t yet have a weekly meeting in Chinese, but that can easily be handled by starting a Watchtower Study every Sunday. So the body of elders needs to write to the Service Department (which basically means my coordinator, since he works there) across the street at Bethel. We are moving ahead!

At the beginning of this month (June) I got this secular job teaching Chinese to Rwandans at a place called Creme College in town. It would be three nights a week, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., with the addition of two hours of roundtrip bus commute time in rush-hour traffic. I ended up with six students in my class, but not all of them have shown up at the same time. And like most other language classes I’ve taught, there are students who catch on quickly, and others who appear clueless. So it proved to be a challenge going at a pace that the slower students can follow and at the same time keeping the sharper students interested.

They gave us this room, not more than 20 square meters, with a very small freestanding whiteboard. The door of the room has a sign above it that says “Administration.” And because the walls don’t reach to the ceiling and the room adjoins Reception, you hear all kinds of noise and talking. That includes the ranting and raving of this live preacher on a radio station right across the hall.

OK, I thought, the job doesn’t pay tremendously, but it gives me something to do for the next few months at the end of the service year, when pioneer hours are not under pressure. Also, my having this job might be good when the time comes next year to possibly renew my residency permit at immigration.

Well, all went fine for a while, but at the beginning of the fourth week, the director called me and said that he would be cancelling the class, or at least that I wouldn’t need to come and teach any longer. The reason? The students complained that they didn’t understand my English, even though I tried to speak slowly and simply. This is the same problem that the teacher prior to me had, namely, that the Chinese class was taught using English. The students were expecting, if you can believe this, that they would have a Rwandan person teaching them Chinese using Kinyarwanda. The irony is that some of these students are businessmen who deal with Chinese regularly, so the question is, don’t they use English to communicate with them? Also, two of the students have plans to attend universities in China, where they will study subjects such as computers and economics in English. So just try to figure this out.

My understanding is that now the college is in the process of interviewing a Rwandan teacher of Chinese, but according to the director, “we don’t know how good he is because we don’t know Chinese.” Oh, well.

Another interesting thing is that when I went to the college to collect my salary for three weeks’ work, they gave it to me in cash, which is rather suspicious. So it may be just as one of the brothers in the congregation said: this is called a college, but in reality it is just a private venture masquerading as a college.

To be honest, it has been a relief not to have this job any longer because working in the evening, including the hassle of the commute (e.g., standing in a 100-meter line of people for a half-hour wait to board a bus to return home), I discovered, is very tiring.

So now I’m back to my normal life of free evenings to study, watch videos on YouTube, and listen to my neighbor kids whooping it up.

By the way, here is the finished Kigali Convention Center (the “egg house”) in all its glory.

This building was originally handled by a Chinese construction company, which had as many as 500 workers, but then due to slowness of progress and reports of fraud, the Rwandan government cancelled the contract with the Chinese and gave it to a Turkish company to finish the job. So now, believe it or not, we have an order in the congregation for Turkish literature!

Mucyo and Patrick

This is the tale of two English-speaking Bible students, both of whom are progressing very well.

The first is named Mucyo (pronounced “mucho”), who started studying with me in October as the result of a “Please Follow Up” slip I got from the secretary. Mucyo is a Rwandan who went on a six-month work-related trip to Tokyo, Japan. While there, he was contacted informally by an African-American brother named Kenichi who is in an English congregation in that area, and they began Bible discussions. Mucyo had so many questions that Kenichi actually didn’t get into the Bible Teach book at all. He also attended some meetings with Kenichi. When Mucyo returned to Rwanda, we began in the Bible Teach book, and seven months later, we are up to chapter 16, at the rate of two studies per week. He comes to the Sunday meetings.

Mucyo’s wife, Denise, hasn’t joined us yet on the study because she has a full-time job, in addition to trying to achieve her master’s degree. However, she asks Mucyo a lot of questions about the Bible. He finds himself witnessing not only to her, but also to his work colleagues, who aren’t particularly receptive and sometimes ridicule him.

Mucyo has a Catholic background, and was baptized as a Catholic. Then, later, when he was about to get married, he got baptized in his fiancée’s Protestant church. But, now, he wants to be baptized as a Witness and this time, “it will count.”

Mucyo (left), Kenichi (right), and Kenichi's wife (center)

Another student is Patrick, a Ugandan who came to Rwanda about a month ago due to a job. He started studying with a brother in Kampala and was referred to me to continue the study during his stay in Kigali. Patrick also wanted to study twice a week, and an entire chapter each session. We have studied chapters 8 to 12 over the past four weeks, and he has always been well prepared. He has also expressed the desire to get baptized this year.

The job was supposed to last for three or four months, but due to some problems at the job involving his work colleague, he decided to cut the job short and return to Uganda after only a month.

Both Mucyo and Patrick faced the challenge of honesty at their workplace. They both have shown remarkable integrity.

Patrick and me

Increase at the Memorial

After having the Memorial for the past two years at our Kingdom Hall, and recognizing the problem (though good) of increasing attendance, we decided this year to rent a conference room at the Sports View Hotel in Remera. This venue would also give us more room for parking, thus alleviating the somewhat chaotic situation experienced in previous years.

Of course, there are pros and cons to every location. One big “pro” was, judging from the reaction of people during our invitation campaign, the familiar Sports View Hotel would be a big draw. But, no, we had to explain to people, there would be no involvement with the gym, the swimming pool, or other hotel amenities and, in response to someone’s question, no food (at least not the kind they were thinking of).

The “cons”: Could we trust the hotel’s sound system? What about the 25 nonfunctioning lights in the room we would be using? What about the quality of the toilets? We also had to bring our own speaker’s stand (note to locals: it is not called a “platform”), which a brother in the congregation kindly sanded and varnished.

Well, we needn’t have worried too much. The management replaced the light bulbs—though an hour before the start of the program—the sound system worked fine, and the result was that we had an attendance of 242. This was about an 11% increase over last year!

And look at the floor of our Kingdom Hall, all shiny and new! We weren’t there to enjoy it, of course, on Memorial evening, but the French and Kinyarwanda congregations did.

Observations of a polar bear

Okay, I have to admit that my last post, concerning rain, was a bit dramatic. But now let’s discuss the effect of cold weather, relatively speaking, on the population.

When it rains here in Rwanda, the temperatures are cooler than normal. This place is not like a tropical jungle, where rain turns the landscape into a steaming sauna with humidity so thick you can cut it with a machete (or panga, using a local term). No, because Rwanda is at a high elevation—over 5,000 feet—rainy days can be actually cold. Much like Northern California.

But coldness is relative. So when people ask me, Brian, aren’t you cold? Where’s your jacket? I reply, I don’t get cold. I don’t need a jacket. I didn’t bring any sweaters or jackets when I came to Rwanda. They don’t understand this at all. To them, 20˚C (68˚F) is cold. Anything below 15˚C (59˚F) is freezing, life-threatening. In that temperature range, people are bundled up in thick jackets and gloves. Good reason to stay home from work or school. Fortunately, it doesn’t get this cold very often—except in the middle of the night, when nobody notices anyway. And the population manages to survive.

But, as a polar bear (and to Africans, what is that, anyway?), I find myself running hot most of the time. Unfortunately, there is no ice floe around here to retire to. Not even a meat locker to step into every once in a while. And air conditioning? What’s that?

Speaking of ice, it is hard to get it in a drink except at the fancier restaurants. That’s because people don’t like cold, even in a drink. So if you order soda or beer, the server will ask, do you want that cold? That’s because the normal, sane person who is a non-foreigner will take soda or beer warm. Automatically. Now, in America, I cannot imagine anyone having beer that is not ice-cold. It would be like drinking spit (pardon the graphic comparison). But, hey, to each his own.

To be fair, they do have ice cream here. And it is indeed cold. But ice cream has not caught on too well in Rwanda. I have thought, wouldn’t it be great to open an ice cream shop here—probably the only one in town—but then you would have to overcome a huge cultural bias. Sure, it’s sweet and creamy, but it’s cold. Yuk. So there goes that idea.

Rainy days and Tuesdays

Here it is: a Tuesday, a day that is normally reserved for preaching from morning to evening, but from the get-go, the rain started falling, and fell all morning, and, alas, from the looks of it, will continue to fall all afternoon also. So it looks like my Bible study at the construction site in Gacuriro—the one that requires a half-hour of actual study and two hours of travel time—is cancelled today. Unless I go in my swimming trunks, which would not be appropriate for the occasion, not to mention uncomfortable.

When it rains in Rwanda, it rains. This is no mere drizzle, but often an experience of Noachian-era proportions. From a warm and secure environment (if not always completely waterproof), a glance out the window can be blinding. Even the cockroaches run for cover. There is lightning! And thunder! The downpour is deafening. The rain falls off the edge of the metal roofs in huge sheets, resulting in large, muddy pools. And life everywhere completely shuts down. (Compare Job 37:6, 7.)

People in Rwanda are, shall we say, afraid of rain, even in the slightest amounts. There is this prevailing notion that if you are exposed to rain you will get sick. Somehow this substance called water, which is perfectly harmless when used to cook or bathe oneself, suddenly becomes noxious when it falls from the heavens, a sure sign of divine displeasure. So everyone huddles in the shops. Or under the shelter of bus stages. They wait, expectantly, for the moment when the rain completely and unequivocally stops, because—heaven forbid—one cannot conceive of risking one’s life and health just to go to work or school, or to attend an important meeting with the President. If you have to keep him waiting for four hours, so be it!

What of umbrellas, you might say? They have several drawbacks, which the original inventor(s) no doubt failed to take into consideration. First, they cost money. Then, they have to be carried, which can be a nuisance. And there may be a certain gender-related stigma attached to the practice. (From my observation, about 15% of the population here carry umbrellas, and the majority of these are women. Except that those who use umbrellas against the sun are all women.) Much easier, it can be seen, for people to just slip into a bar with friends when it starts raining and order beers. The longer it rains, the more beers.

Well, I, for one, do use an umbrella. I would rather get somewhere and accomplish something, even if it means getting stared at. But there are certain days—today being one of them—when even the sturdiest umbrella is helplessly reduced to a shell of its former self. It will be about as effective as covering yourself with a newspaper, except that the newspaper will not, as it is flailing in the wind, stab you in the eye. So, this Chinese-American-Rwandan has decided, along with everyone else, that today is a washout (!). But there is a positive side. The natural vegetation loves days like this. And the six kids living next door, who normally would be kicking a soccer ball against my wall and shouting at the top of their lungs, are forced inside. And this is good preparation, I suppose, for the month of April, when we will get a whopping six inches of rain on average, the highest for any month during the year. So let us steel ourselves for the inevitable. Meanwhile, the most pressing question is, with only a bag of brown sugar in the house, what am I going to eat for lunch today?

Speaking of water, though, my freestanding water tank in the bathroom has sprung leaks in several places, keeping the floor nice and moist for microorganisms. So I have had to place a bucket under the leaks. I would use my three large basins (blue, green, red), but they are presently full of water. Yes, since the beginning of the year, we have had water on a fairly regular basis now, which is great cause for celebration, so maybe hoarding water is not such an issue. Nevertheless, until the brother comes to repair the tank, it is a matter of getting used to hearing the sound of leaking water all night long. One might think this is soothing, but you know how the power of suggestion works? I already have to get up in the middle of the night once or twice as it is, more after having had ikivuguto (fermented milk) earlier that evening. Life does have its challenges.

3rd Chinese meeting, special pioneers

Here are the latest developments in our Chinese pre-group:

The branch assigned two special pioneers, Benjamin and Innocent, to our congregation to work in the Chinese field. Of course, they are Rwandans and don't know a lick of Chinese, but my job is to teach them! So far we have had a few class sessions independent of the class I teach on Sundays with the rest of the group.

They both graduated from the School for Single Brothers and served in different parts of the country, Innocent in Kinyarwanda and Benjamin in Sign Language. They seem eager to learn, and we hope their presence will give impetus to our Chinese field.

Benjamin and Innocent

Then, this past Sunday, we had our third Chinese meeting. Attendance was 18, including 8 Chinese people (4 adults and 4 kids). Progress is being made!

Chinese demonstration and 2nd meeting

This past weekend was quite the busy one! First, on Saturday we had our English circuit assembly (with branch representative). I was part of a demonstration during the circuit overseer's part about following the apostle Paul's example in preaching to people "of all sorts." The circuit overseer explained how we can use the tools provided by Jehovah's organization to preach to people who speak a different language. One of these is JW Language App. So the demonstration showed a sister using this app to learn some phrases in Chinese. Then, she preaches to a Chinese-speaking householder (namely, me), and ends up showing me a video, giving me an invitation to the meeting, and getting my phone number somehow! The audience thought this was fairly amusing, but we hope that this will motivate some to use this tool and others, or even to learn Chinese! The circuit overseer even displayed a Chinese sign that we are going to use in our metropolitan cart witnessing work.

The next day, Sunday, we had to repeat the demonstration, but this time it was at the Kicukiro Assembly Hall, in front of a Kinyarwanda-speaking audience! Here is a photo of that.

Then, later that day, we had our second Chinese meeting! Because there was no English meeting—due to the assembly the day before—we used the main auditorium, as well as the congregation's new projector to show the video public talk. The attendance this time was 20, including 6 Chinese people! I was not expecting too many Chinese people to come, considering that this was the day before Chinese New Year's, when most Chinese are busy with guests or are out of the country. However, the Han family all came, even though Mr. Han was leaving for China the next day.

And David Nzayituriki, one of the Rwandan brothers in the Chinese class, was chairman. I wrote out a script for him, and though he sweated bullets through the experience, he did a great job!

Uganda

One of my objectives has been to visit the neighboring country of Uganda to check out the Chinese population there. Additionally, I have been told, several times, that Brian is a common given name in Uganda (but not in Rwanda). So what more reason to visit the place?

I came mentally prepared this time, after my adventure—to put it mildly—in Burundi. Because of my resident status in Rwanda, I could enter Uganda without paying the single-entry tourist visa fee, which is $100 for Americans (ouch) as of six months ago. Yes, I am a true African now!

So on Wednesday, January 13, I boarded a Jaguar bus at 8:30am for the 9½-hour trip (including 45 minutes at border control) to Kampala, the capital of Uganda. The moment we crossed the border, there was a time advance of one hour, placing Uganda at +11 hours in relation to California—almost like night and day.

I was picked up at the bus station by Brother Ting Lim, who is ethnically Chinese but from the Philippines and married to a Filipina sister. They have a 20-year-old son, Justin, who happened to be in the Philippines for a few months getting an operation. (The Lims visited Kigali about a year ago, which is where I first met them.) So, it was great timing: I ended up staying in Justin's room. Also in the Lims' large house are several relatives, and a circuit overseer and his wife who were staying for just a week.

Well, I can say this: Kampala is a city larger than Kigali, and more chaotic too, due to the greater laxity in traffic law enforcement. (Let's face it: Rwanda is one of the safest, cleanest, most orderly countries in Africa, which makes traveling outside it a bit of a shock.) There were traffic jams, the kind associated with big cities in the Western world, except that Kampala has no expressways or freeways, just two-lane or four-lane roads. Most intersections are uncontrolled, so as far as the cars, motorcycles, bicycles, hawkers, beggars, etc., are concerned, it's 'everyone for himself,' pretty much. (Yes, people are selling their goods right in the middle of the street.) The motorcyclists cut between the cars whenever they see the chance, which makes for some narrow misses. Hardly anyone wears a helmet, though legally they are supposed to. Then, add to this the fact that Ugandans drive on the left side of the road, and I decided, early on, that I would never want to attempt getting behind the wheel here, thank you very much.

OK, there are pros and cons to every place. Even though life in Kampala is less orderly and clean than in Kigali, the cost of living is lower. That applies to almost everything: food, housing, and consumer goods. (Public transport may be somewhat higher, though.) So basically, in Rwanda, you have a stricter, cleaner place, but you are paying for the privilege.

Compared with Rwanda, there are considerably fewer publishers in Uganda and yet three times the population. Nevertheless, Uganda had a 6% increase last year, which isn't too shabby. They also have a lot of "need greaters," most of whom are in English congregations. English is one of the principal languages of Uganda, so all the signs are in English, and nearly everyone on the street speaks English. Yes!

Work or residency permits are harder to come by in Uganda because of the cost and requirements. For example, to get a business visa you have to start a company and then pay $2,500 a year. (Though I learned later about a "volunteer" visa, which costs only $250 a year and involves secular teaching less than 10 hours a week.) And most of the "need greaters" have a student visa, which costs $100 a year, but you have to take classes, and you're not allowed to work.

I attended the meetings of the Bukoto English and Northeast congregations. In the latter, there is a brother named Brian, who is an elder and a pioneer. I snapped this photo of him and his Bible student, also named Brian. Of course, I had to get in the picture too! Unfortunately, I didn't get the word that it was striped-shirt day....

The three Brians!

Northeast Congregation's Kingdom Hall (also the first Bethel building)

So for the nearly two weeks I was in Kampala, it was just relaxation and...eating! Yes, the Lims fed me royally—it was home-cooked Chinese and Filipino food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. (Examples: tilapia, Nile perch, brown crab, beef stew, salt-fish pork)

We also went to this Korean restaurant called Miso and an Indian buffet (35000UGX = US$10) at a place called The Great Indian Dhaba. This buffet is really an all-you-can-eat place—different from buffets in Rwanda—but the food was so rich and spicy that after one plate I couldn't eat any more!

OK, I did do some Chinese preaching also....

One day, Sister Lim took me to a couple of places where Chinese people frequent. These include a place called the 5 Star Supermarket and the Nanjing Hotel. We met a very nice Chinese couple in the Nanjing Hotel's supermarket (the right entrance in the photo) who speak decent English. All in all, we preached to about 20 Chinese people in two days.

We also met a sister named Elisabeth from Sweden who has been in the Chinese field near Stockholm. She was in Uganda for six months, single-handedly preaching in Chinese. But she will be returning to Sweden in March or April.

So the upshot is: there essentially is no organized preaching or group in Chinese in Kampala. And there are many more Chinese in Kampala than in Kigali, due to the greater business opportunities here. So that got me thinking....

Anyway, I gave the contact information for the Chinese people we met, as well as the rest of my Chinese literature, to Sister Lim. I told her, you can follow up on these people. Even though the Lims can speak only a little Chinese (both of them were born in the Philippines and took a few Chinese classes, but it was quite some time ago), at least they have Asian "faces." And some of these interested people can speak a bit of English.

Another day we went to visit Bethel. Surprisingly, Uganda has had a branch only since the year 2007, which is quite recent.

One nice feature of Kampala is its location right on the edge of Lake Victoria. Except that to my great disappointment, I was advised not to swim in the lake. There is a certain kind of tiny snail in the water containing a parasite that can penetrate your skin, causing disease and death (in that order). This problem exists only in the waters on the shore at Kampala, but outside the city, the lake is OK for swimming.

Finally, close to the end of my stay, we went to a typical Ugandan crafts market. This is where I got my cool African-design backpack.

All in all, it was an eye-opener of a trip!