Our New Normal

One of the most interesting (and funniest) things about living here is observing our own reactions to cultural norms here that strike us as strange, funny, or just plain wrong. It’s important to be culturally sensitive and follow the local customs, but there are limits.  I’ll let you be the judge of the following anecdotes.

Hissing

So, to get someone’s attention – a friend, a waiter, anyone, it is the practice here to hiss loudly at them. I don’t know about you but a strong HISS is not the most pleasant sound, and certainly less so when it is being used to summon you. I waited tables in high school and it was hard enough dealing with tough customers without having all the tables hissing at me. It’s particularly repulsive when driving down the road at night on a pleasant warm evening, windows down, enjoying the smell of blooming night jasmine in the air, when suddenly all these hisses are coming at you out of the dark from the prostitutes on the side of the road. Charming. (I accelerate).

Leisure Time

 Here’s an example from our local swimming place – a sort of hangout in our neighborhood. Setting: Saturday afternoon driving home with kids passing a local place – Mamba Club House

Kids: Dad, we’re bored – do something with us.

Me: How about I take you swimming at Mamba Club House?

Ava: Yeah! Pause… I hope there are no naked boys in the pool this time.

Me: (a bit startled). Don’t we all, Ava, don’t we all.

Taking Ava to a playdate at a nearby friends

Customer Service

So another unfortunate reality is the loss of power and water on a pretty regular basis. A week or so ago it was particularly bad, going out for extended periods from 4 – 7 hours at a time every day for four days running. The fourth day it lasted over 24 hours. Now, lack of electricity you can suffer through, but when the water is shutoff its starts to get bad. Fortunately, we have a small pump that pushes the water from the storage tank into the house (for situations when the water is shut off). Unfortunately, the pump requires power, so when electricity and water is out, we are really not having a good week. Of course, the pump is burned out anyway (again) so it hardly matters It’s been replaced and then repaired twice in the three months we’ve been fully living in this house.

Anyway, I made 75 calls to the power company call center to report the outages. Of the 75 attempts I either had no answer or they answered, I listened to breathing on the line, etc and then they would hang up. So, finally I drive there to find someone to raise the issue with. With a big audience of Rwandans in the waiting room, they usher me to the front (funny how the Mzungu effect works sometimes) to talk to the manager.

Manager: “What number were you calling? (I tell him.) “Oh – (big laugh joined by everyone) that’s the emergency call center number.

Me: “Well… yeah (puzzled) that’s why I used my phone to call the CALL center.” ( What am I missing? My expectations are low in the developing world but wow).

Manager: “They’re no good.” Me: “Don’t they work for you?” Manger: Yes. (end of conversation).

p.s. as of the time of this writing the power went on/off 9 times today – new record.

It takes a village….(to deliver a beating)

Another accepted practice is to “encourage” a child to do the right thing by delivering strong, repeated blows to the face and body. It’s quite something to drive along and see a twelve year old on the ground who had apparently taken something from a nearby store and now was surrounded by 6 – 8 adults hitting and kicking him, encircled by a crowd of onlookers. Unfortunately Ava was with me and pretty concerned, as you can imagine. That’s a hard one to explain to your 8 year old – although I’m pretty sure she isn’t going to be shoplifting anytime soon!

Don’t get sick

Maybe this example should go into the “Customer Service” category – I’ll let you decide.

Our guard became very ill last month late one night. It seemed sufficiently serious so that I took him and his wife to emergency room. I was double parked and so dropped them off and then headed back home to bed. The next morning I get a call from the hospital that I need to come in and pay his bill for treatment, tests, etc that they want to run. When I went to get him from the hospital, they had been afraid he would leave without paying, so they had put an IV into his wrist and left it in for twelve hours without dispensing any medicine, fluids, etc. No pre-pay, no help. It was basically a medical handcuff to keep him in the bed until some money showed up! Wow.

Needless to say, I rescued him from there and took him to a clinic we use where the price was five times less than what the hospital requested and he was taken care of in about an hour. Side note: It’s always disconcerting when the international community unanimously says, “whatever you do, if you fall ill or injured – don’t go to the hospital here!”

Losing a friend

We had a very sad occurrence with the death of a 30 year old Rwandan man that we all had come to know and love. His name was Emmanuel and we called him Manny. He was the driver for some of our good friends here and was a very funny guy – full of life and always with a story. Within the space of three weeks, Manny found out that he had HIV (a crushing revelation), and then developed complications which put him in the hospital, where he ultimately died in a few short weeks.

I still have great guilt that I never went to see him while he was there. It was always on my list of things to do, but work and other priorities kept me too busy. None of us had any idea (including the doctors) how critical he had become, so I was expecting to see him out and about any day. A huge lesson to always prioritize the relationships first. That’s what really matters.

Some of my favorite Manny quotes:

• “If you get amoebas, make sure you only drink Mutzig beer. They hate Mutzig. Whatever you do, don’t drink Primus beer! They go crazy for Primus and you will never be rid of them!”
• To a friend who left an Iphone on the roof of his car while at a job site: “You can’t leave an Iphone out in the open with people around! It’s like cheese!”
• Why New Years Eve is such a big celebration in Rwanda: “We go out dancing, and go really crazy, sometimes even shooting guns in the air, because we are just so amazed and happy to be alive for another year!”

One uncomfortable situation arose when the funeral fell on Ava’s birthday and her entire class of 15 kids was coming over to the house for games, cake, the usual birthday stuff. Our friend and driver, Afrika, just couldn’t understand why we didn’t cancel the party due to Manny’s death. This was a tough cultural difference to bridge. In Rwanda, children are not the first consideration, and the fact that Ava was not really associated with Manny the way we adults were doesn’t really play into their thinking. So, I was left with the decision to try to explain to Ava that instead of a party she had been looking forward to for many months, she was now going to a funeral. I chose not to go that route.

Ava turns 8 - party at home with her classmates

Fortunately for Kristen and I, we were able to pay our respects at the gravesite and visit the family the next weekend, since in Rwandan culture the death, funeral and burial process continues for a full week after the burial. We miss him and I still can’t believe he’s gone.

I tend not to cover too much work related stories here since I give those updates in our Karisimbi Business Partners newsletter. But I can’t help providing my more “casual” thoughts and comments about some of those adventures as well. Here is a fun one:

Dano and I were hired by a friend and fellow ex-pat working on development here in Rwanda, to come up to Musanze district and do a quick assessment of a cement company he was considering investing in. It is owned by a neat Rwandan man who is trying very hard to get this business up and running amidst very tough competition and the traditional challenges of doing business in the developing world.

Dano and I get up early to make the two hour drive to ensure we have the full day and can get back to Kigali later that night. It takes us three phone calls once we arrive in the vicinity to get directed to the right dirt road turnoff, and another two calls while on that horrible road because we keep thinking – There is no way this ‘goat trail’ could be the road used by a cement company to get their product to market.

At one point we came to a bog crossing the “road” and we just sat there looking at it, debating whether we just try to floor it through and hope we make it to the other side without sinking, or we four wheel down an embankment and up the other side. Such is my “commute” these days – a far cry from the challenge of 520 bridge traffic in Seattle.

We opted for the “floor it” method, targeting a section that looked a bit more stable than the center of the mud. On the plus side, we were right about it being more stable and we made it through. On the down side, we made it through while listening to the bottom of the vehicle be mangled by the rocks and other debris under the surface, and then limped along to our final destination where a mechanic had to be called to straighten the now bent struts. Good times!

These kind of things don’t really phase us anymore – its “normal” now, and so we jumped out ready to go. At this point the guy who had commissioned us for this project let us know that the owner was “on the way coming” from Kigali. Of course! Also “normal” for us. So our 9:00 a.m. start time became 12:00.

So, we started with a tour of the place. It was like touring a medieval castle under construction. Pictures don’t do it justice. It is made of stones and is four levels built against the side of a hill.

Note the log being used to maneuver this heavy machinery into place, over a 4 story hole. Hard to watch.

Narrow scaffolding of trees and planks - OSHA regulations clearly NOT in effect

After the eventual arrival of the owner, we started our meetings. He didn’t speak English so it was another fun meeting of French and Kinyarwanda translated into English for Dano and our client. I had one of those laugh out loud, is this really my life moments during our discussion as:

1. We are in the “conference room” with cracked concrete floors, peeling paint, dirty old couches and an old coffee table, with a tin roof overhead
2. Open wires that somehow allow us to plug in a laptop and the projector we brought
3. It begins to rain (HARD) and it sounds like we are inside a waterfall when it hits the roof
4. I am trying to be heard and almost yelling to be understood in French
5. The roof is leaking and I have a steady drip passing in front of my face as I sit across from the owner, and the water narrowly misses the computer

In all seriousness, it was awesome. It was one of those funny, I know I’m making a memory right now, kind of moments. And it really brought home the importance of our work here, and doing what we can to help bring businesses to a place where they can build and grow and provide for the future.

The owner is living on site with his family in this very grim environment. His wife cooked us lunch and it was another humbling experience to know how difficult this life is for them. He has put everything into this business, and wants to have success not just for himself and his family, but for his country, and the people in the district where he has lived all his life.

Weston has been clamoring for a puppy every since we transitioned to this new house which has space for animals. He also has had the name for his dog, Dagger, picked out since he was four in Paris and a big pirate and weapons fan. Some street boys had been bringing mangy puppies to the gate every week or so that were either far too young to be away from their mothers or just didn’t fit the bill for other reasons. Ironically, Dagger was one of the puppies they brought by that was much too young and looked like he was going to die on the driveway. Kristen insisted they take it back to its mother. Apparently they did, and came back with him about four weeks later and he was much improved. The kids and I bargained with the boys and ended up paying 5,000 francs for him (about $8.50), and I’ve somewhat regretted it ever since! Puppies are trouble. We’ve had two family meetings already about whether he stays or not given that he: chases the cats, tramples the garden, pulls clothes off the line, eats homework, chews cushions, socks, your ankles, pretty much everything. Other than that he’s a great dog.

We’ve just celebrated Thanksgiving (in 80 degree weather while our friends in Seattle had snow) and we are struck as always by how much we have - compared to the vast majority of the world’s population. It’s a very humbling experience to share the Thanksgiving meal with family and friends here, with severe poverty literally right outside the door or gate.

We are still anxiously awaiting the processing of our adoption dossier.  It is so tough to be out at the orphanage with the children and stay patient waiting God’s timing on the process…

I wish everyone a good holiday season and challenge you to consider what you might do to give to those with little resources and limited opportunities. After all, if you can help, how can you not?