If our family got frequent flyer point for toilet visits…

We’d by on our way to London First Class by now.

First Hannah, then Catherine and now William have got the dreaded trots. I’m still waiting for my turn, but the family is definitely in survival mode this week.

Our house and garden is becoming gradually more ‘finished’ and I’ve had a frantic week preparing the postgraduates for some medical exams which were scheduled for next week, but now have, mercifully, been postponed.

I’ll write more in a few days.

Some exciting developments…

We are now in our house at the hospital. Yay!!!!

We never expected a freshly renovated home but it is a very welcome surprise. The hospital has done a really lovely job. It has white floor tiles (that are white for about 10 minutes each day as the garden is currently mostly mud, to the children’s great enjoyment), cream paint and black doors throughout. A sitting/eating area near the front door, two bedrooms and a lovely big bathroom with a bath (which our muddy children enjoy too!) at the back of the house:

 

  

a kitchen with a stove (Tim’s been baking scones already!), fridge and large larder off to the side.

  

The garden is huge (about 1100m2, over a 1/4 acre) and is being worked on daily. The hospital is building an outdoor washing and cooking area, has re-pointed the brick outhouse (around the pit toilet), made a path through the centre, and areas for lawn and vegetables. There are 3 big trees and we have plans for a cubby house for Will’s upcoming birthday! The local children and garden workers are enjoying the tyre swing at least as much as Will and Hannah. We are very comfortable and most grateful.

 

We also have a lovely houseworker, Emovine. She is 19, gets along with the kids, and is an excellent cook. Her uncle is an Archdeacon in the church diocese, so when we asked him to suggest someone he thought of her. There is a lot more work in keeping a house here (washing by hand etc.) so I am very grateful for Emovine’s help! She calls me ‘Mum’ (culturally appropriate and kind of nice actually). (N.B. I’m getting used to being made aware of my age here and the idea that it’s something to appreciate rather than shy away from.) Here is Emovine with Hannah, preparing lunch.

  

So, we are in a new community (not just a house) and have been excited to get to know some of the neighbours. Our house is one of a couple of dozen on the hospital grounds inhabited by various staff and their families. There are plenty of kids around, and Will has made a special new friend; Kenny. Kenny is 4, speaks mainly French (although can converse in Kinyarwanda, Swahili and a little English if need be) and they were inseparable today. We are so excited about this new relationship, Kenny included! Kenny’s house is a few metres away but is separated from ours by a track and our side fence (although the boys currently squeeze through a hole in it).

We call Kenny’s father ‘friend’ already, and look forward to getting to know him and his wife even better. Dr Pierrot spent a couple of afternoons at our place this week chatting. Rwandans say he and his wife are Congolese, and the Congolese say they are Rwandan, so like us they are outsiders of sorts, and ones who plans to settle here long-term. They have a 7 month old son who has never been well. Please pray for him.

Our most direct neighbour shares a wall of our house. Dr Tindaho came to dinner this week. He is a Ugandan grandfather, and travels home every month to see his family. He is very friendly and works closely with Tim, being a radiologist. He told us he doesn’t cook. He eats all his meals in town, so I think we will invite him over regularly!

We are so glad to have ‘arrived’ in our community, and are praying that God will open doors to sharing Him and life with many more people. We’ve been investigating starting a Bible study group, encouraging Dr Pierrot to accompany us to (Anglophone) church as he cannot understand Kinyarwanda fully, and Tim has been considering his next move with postgraduate teaching.

On another note, I have heard from a number of local and foreign doctors just how much difference it is making to the hospital, having Tim there. It seems his clinical and teaching skills are filling important gaps. Providing education that improves medical practice in Rwanda is the goal God put on Tim’s heart; it is exciting to be part of His plans and see them bear fruit. One of the students, previously terrified by neurological examination, which he’d tried to learn from a book, spent the whole evening after his exam grinning and chuckling, because he had got 2 neurological cases! The staff’s confidence in and trust of Tim seems to be growing weekly…

Our garden is a bit of a mess at the moment but Tim’s spent Sunday afternoon measuring it and drawing a scale diagram. Next step is to plan what we want in it and where…How many trees of bananas can our children eat each week?

                                                                                               (Kenny’s house is here)

Prayer works!

Thanks to all of you who have been praying for us.

Mid last week, when we sent our regular monthly CMS prayerpoints (chuck us an email to tcwalker@cms.org.au if you’re not on the list and would like to be) life was feeling pretty tough. Our house still looked like not being ready for 2 weeks or so, as it had looked for about 2 months. Our car was impounded in customs in Kigali, with no license plates and little realistic prospect of getting some anytime soon. My dad had just got out of hospital, and was still looking very ill (via Skype) and facing the prospect of more tests and maybe surgery. Even our plans to get our things to Rwanda were looking a bit shakey, as we discovered we need to have them here inside of a couple of months, and our previous shipping plans would not work. And finally, our financial support from Australia was less than half of what it had been the previous month.

We were in culture shock, had had 95 days in one room together and were getting sick of all the stress, bureaucracy and bother. I wasn’t sleeping, waking at 4am each morning with my head churning from all of the above. Catherine was understandably sick and tired of spending 24/7 in a guesthouse room with 2 small children. Only our language lessons were going well, but with 9.30pm finishes every weeknight, even those were draining.

We were praying, but feeling very low. Sending our monthly prayer points seemed one more job to do, in the midst of many. We did it, an act of discipline but not a joy.

Of course, if we’d been a little more perceptive, we might have remembered that the same thing happened last month, and many things fell into place the following week. We might have remembered that our heavenly Father delights in giving us what we need . We might have counted that task a privilege.

Within three days, my dad had had a scan showing great improvement in his illness. The newly appointed Minister of Infrastructure looked favourably upon our letter regarding the car (he may approve it on Wednesday). A Belgian company with a Rwandan office has given us a good quote to move our things here by air (they weigh half what we thought they might) and finally, WE ARE IN OUR HOUSE. I’m sitting here writing this at our new desk, in our new bedroom, with the lights on, as our kids are asleep in ANOTHER room.

So thankyou for your prayers, all you pray-ers. We are being blessed God’s (and your!) love and faithfulness.

 

Will and Hannah enjoy their new room

A paradox

One of the most striking things about our first three months of life in Rwanda has been the conflict and paradox apparent between being, on the one hand, constantly tired, houseless, car-less and living very close to our limits because of constant adaption and change; and on the other, realising how fortunate we are to have what we have: a comfortable and safe place to live, a faithful and loving God who has called us here, great opportunities for work and cultural and language learning, so many more material possessions than most people here.

In one way, we are still in limbo. Our house, while mostly complete inside, needs some basic furniture, like beds, and kitchen cupboards, before we can move in. These have been put out to tender by the hospital, a byzantine process that may take a fortnight or more to procure them. Our car is still stuck in customs, and this week has been a rollercoaster ride of bureaucracy and advice as we seek to “unlock’ the process to re-register a right-hand drive vehicle in Rwanda. So far, the hospital, a customs clearing agent, the British High Commission, the customs office, the Ministry of Infrastructure and about six well-connected friends have been consulted: on Thursday it looked impossible as we were told that such a registration was forbidden flat-out by a Presidential Decree. Now it appears that the Minister of Infrastructure has discretionary powers, so our letter of appeal is before him at the moment. It is just possible we may be able to keep this car,but the odds appear stacked against us.

On a positive front, the kids are adapting well and we are all in good physical health, if a little tired. Every week brings us closer to moving into our house, and the car situation will eventually be resolved, even if we must re-export it.We have also begun evening language classes with a Christian medical student here, Fidele. Each weekday evening, from 8pm once the kids are  asleep, we are learning in the guesthouse lounge from him. The lessons have been fantastic; he’s motivated, well-organised, a gifted teacher, and a font of Rwandan cultural and linguistic knowledge. Fidele has the added advantage of knowing specialist Christian and medical vocabulary, which should be a great help as these are the areas we need additional language skills.

My work at the hospital continues to go well. The interns are very motivated to learn, and are thriving with the additional clinical teaching. One of the current interns took me aside when I commented on how well they were doing, and made a special point of expressing how much they valued my teaching, which was a special moment. Some of the first bunch I taught, who are now doing paediatrics, still come back for my tutorials and seem to have adopted me as a mentor. The other day, after teaching the interns ECGs, the postgraduates found me and asked me to repeat the tutorial for them; this is the first time they’ve sought specific teaching from me as group and is a big breakthrough as they often seem to prefer silence to asking questions.

William seems much happier in the last couple of weeks, and is growing older and more helpful by the day. His imaginative play is just a delight, both on his own and with other children. Hannah is finally mostly following our instructions, after much work and discipline, after before usually ignoring us or doing the opposite. She loves to bring things to us, mostly when we ask for them! She walked all the way from home to the hospital yesterday, a distance of some 1km, insisting on holding William’s hand not her monther’s, and stopping only at the end to rest with her head on the road, and her bum in the air. Not a bad effort for 13 months old! Both kids love visiting “our house’ at the hospital and are looking forward to being in their new room.

So, life has challenges. But, God is faithful and there is much to celebrate!

Feeling overwhelmed…then a lurch in perspective.

We hit a low yesterday. It felt like we had a lot to deal with already; culture adjustment, living in one room for almost 3 months, feeling the hospital house will never be finished, issues over payment of our bill at the Guest House (now sorted), and Tim’s dad in hospital for the week with a still undiagnosed problem while we’re unable to help on the other side of the world. Then Tim got a phone call about the car, saying that after a month of long, tiring trips to Kigali, paperwork and bureaucracy they will not register the car in our name because it is right-hand drive (despite Tim having asked this question in the office there a number of times and being told it would be fine). We may have to export the car and sell it elsewhere, probably losing money, then begin the process again with another car. We had no emotional reserves left to deal with this blow, and took it hard. We sat around feeling overwhelmed, sad and wanting to just leave. We sent out a prayer request, prayed, and tried to remember that God had brought us here and that following him is our priority. We continued to feel overwhelmed and had trouble concentrating on anything.

The children, of course, played on as usual. After a while, Will asked if his friends from behind the back ‘fence’ could come and visit. We had never visited them before – they always just turned up to play. I hoped I wasn’t making any cultural mistakes as we slipped out the side gate, and walked along the little dirt track that follows our back garden wall around the corner. There are five little houses perched side-by-side on the green slope there filled with diocese employees. The last is occupied by a Pastor and his family with four children; William and Hannah’s friends. Two were at school, but the oldest and the youngest were there, and their mother greeted us kindly. We were welcomed into the sitting room, and she took me along the hallway to find her one-year-old son waking up in bed. I realised that they were in a house of four very small rooms (pictured below, the house to the left that is facing the camera), with a very small area of playable garden outside for the four children to enjoy due to the slope and use of the garden for growing food. Their mother apologised that she didn’t have any tea to offer me, a little embarrassed. After her son was dressed we walked together with the children up the dirt path to our side of the wall, as she politely accompanied us home in the Rwandan fashion, then the four children and I ducked through the gate and we said goodbye.

We walked onto our spacious back lawn, big enough to play soccer, which our kids enjoy every day. We sat in the shared sitting room and watched the Royal Wedding while the smaller kids played with Duplo and dolls. Suddenly, my perspective lurched and I realised that we were very comfortable, and had much to be thankful for. We have a charming house being prepared for us. Meanwhile, we have a comfortable place to wait surrounded by friendly people. Even the problem with the car, although eating up time and energy, could be looked on with rose coloured glasses. We are able to buy a car. And Tim’s Dad is receiving the best medical care. His hospital bills will be paid and he is able to access everything available to assist him (unlike the majority of Rwandans). Actually, we have much to be thankful for. And little reason to feel hard done by.

This morning’s Bible reading was also on-topic:

Philippians 4:4-9

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things. Whatever you have learnt or received or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”