Road to Rwanda----Every Day Happenings

 

I have not written in months and months.  For one thing I am tired teaching.  I still LOVE it and am not going to quit, but it takes more energy every year….not because of the kids, but because of me.

Another aspect is the longer you are in a country, the more things just become “normal” and you don’t realize people might find them interesting.  Take last night for example.  Three of us teachers in the secondary school were taking the 8 high honor roll kids out to fancy eat, as we have each quarter all year.  The instigator of this has tried to make each quarter a bit more posh.  (He decided not to pursue the most expensive restaurant in the city which would have ended up costing almost $1000 USD for the night) but had identified a nice place.  Then the fun begins.  He had made detailed arrangements earlier in the week to have a venue outside of the bar (remember these were MS/HS kids) that would be set up elegantly.  He also had sent the menu to each student so they could peruse the choices and have made their decision ahead of time (experience taught that this could be problematic for some.)  We arrived at 5:30 to find none of this had been accomplished, either on the part of the restaurant nor on the part of the students.  We were ushered into the bar to wait, which was something we had been trying to avoid.  After about 45 minutes, the venue was set up. It was very nice with full complements of silver and glass ware….which many of us did not need with our pizza orders.  After another half hour of waiting we had given our orders and then waited another hour and half for our meal.  This means that we got our food close to 3 hours after we had arrived at the restaurant.  (The only ones who seemed disconcerted by this were the two of us who were foreigners….you can tell it is time for furlough when this kind of thing becomes REALLY  frustrating, usually you just go with the flow.)  At this point it is getting late, past my time to get home to Rick, and I needed to return phone calls to my kids.  I excused myself, took my pizza to go, and hopped on the first motorcycle taxi to get the 3 or 4 miles home. Half way there the moto ran out of gas.  The man had me get off.  He tipped the moto on its side and shook it which gave him enough gas to take us to the nearest petrol station.  At this point I am only 2 blocks from home. It is 9 at night, but this country is safe and there were literally 100’s of people walking the streets so I paid my 30 cents for the ride and walked home.  When I got there, I ran over to the neighbors to wish them God’s speed on their trip home to Zambia for the summer…expected of me.  Then I could finally get home to Rick and make my phone calls.

I don’t know.  Is this interesting to you? Does it help you understand and pray for missionaries worldwide?  Is it worth putting into writing?  I could easily find similar situations on a daily or at least weekly basis….but it is truly just life.

We fly out June 3 for our 2 months in the States.  We will travel many miles while there and see many people, most importantly our children.  On August 5 we return to start our 4^th year in Rwanda.  God is so so good in supplying replacement teachers for the dear friends who are leaving and we even have a possibility of a principal!!!