Searching through the rain. a capella Amazing Grace and a few musings

We’ve been in Rwanda 5 days now, and I thought that as it’s 9.30am on a Sunday and we’ve already been to church and Catherine has the kids entertained with a game, it might be a good chance for a bit of an update.

The long rains are underway here, and the last few afternoons it’s bucketed down, in the way it only can in the tropics (and Eastern Australia it seems!) We have a great view from the upstairs balcony in the guest house down one of the valleys surrounding Butare and watched one of the storms begin.  Great sheets of rain roll in, visibility drops to almost zero, lightning tears the sky, thunder echoes through the valleys, and the deep drainage ditches along the roadsides stream with water. William does NOT like thunder, but the rest of us rather enjoyed the show.This morning it was almost cold, and we all wore jumpers to church (maybe more to combat African concerns of our children developing sore flanks from the cold than from any real need).

In the midst of this storm, the appropriately named Aimable, a local businessman, arrived in his car to take us to show us the apartments he rents out. Catherine reluctantly succumbed to the children’s urgent desire for 5pm feeding, and I was left to venture out alone in my waterproofs. His apartments are at the opposite end of the town, near the Museum, and thus a bit of a trek from the University, Hospital and town centre. After solicitously escorting me round, we sat at the kitchen table, and got down to business. Out came the pen and paper, his manner changed, and we were debating rents and dates, utilities and gas bottles. My reluctance to commit to a rental before seeing what the hospital had found worked in our favour, and the price promptly dropped 20%. I was driven home with a promise to call on Monday after viewing the alternatives. We rang Zafa, the coffee shop waitress who had introduced us, to thank her for her help and to reassure her that all had gone well, before a dinner of pasta with capsicum and tomato which the kids inhaled as if they’d just run a 100 metre race, and a “late” 8pm lights out.

This morning we attended the English language Anglican service 20 metres away at the Cathedral at 8am. We were the only white faces, and had the only children present, which meant we had no reference frame for the acceptability of the kids’ intermittently exuberant behaviour. About 30 Africans, mostly students but also John, a paediatrician at CHUB, and several other older folk, worshipped following a traditional prayerbook service. Great classic hymns were sung, mostly a capella due to the PA being mostly non-functional for reasons unclear.

I was particularly moved by the opening processional rendition of Amazing Grace, and it stuck me what a powerful account of the transforming and uniting power of God’s grace was given by these word s, written by a reformed slave trader who had trafficked in African lives, and sung here, in the interior of Africa, by his African Christian brothers and sisters. The sermon ranged across Jeremiah 30 and Acts 6, from God’s care for his refugee people, through the appointing of deacons to serve the poor, and finally challenging us to be as suitable as those who were chosen: “filled with the Spirit and with wisdom.” We both felt very ministered to by all present. We were given the opportunity to stand as a family and introduce ourselves at the end of the service, and the worship leader even took charge of our children during the sermon to enable us to listen!

I feel I am beginning to reach even keel from the initial splash of landing. I’m under no illusion that our journey here has really even started, but as the jetlag fades and the basic pieces of life here begin to take shape, our perspective on the world is already changing. We have taken less than 10% of what we had in Australia, yet  we have maybe 50x as much as most people here. The sum the Australian government will pay me for a day’s work in Australia is an unimaginable one to most Rwandans, far more than they will ever see in their life. The injustice of this is striking and compelling; how to best respond is less clear. We pray that God will keep our eyes open to these contrasts over the coming months and years, even as we build relationships, and acquire the cultural understanding and wisdom we need, to chart our course here.