The Peanut Gallery: Our Kigali Home 2.0

We've moved! Here are some pictures and a tour of our new house!

Front of house & gardens

View from top of driveway

Dining room/office, looking into living room

Big kitchen!

House Tour!

Saturday marked our 3 week anniversary here in Kigali, and one of our big weekend events was our move to the new house. We brought most of our stuff over on Friday afternoon, watched Mazie's first football/soccer game (not great... it's a very different game than she's used to), moved the rest of our stuff over, and spent our first night there Friday night. It's been great so far. The only small issue over the weekend was that they were installing a second water tank and there were some water and power interruptions, but that finished up on Sunday and everything seems to be working great. We've been settling in and making small changes (like switching out some light bulbs for brighter ones) and are feeling pretty comfortable a few days in.

The house is quite a bit roomier overall, with more living spaces, a bigger kitchen, a master bath with an enclosed shower, desks in a couple of the bedrooms, and even a walk-in closet! The garden / yard is lovely, with fruit trees (we've got some avocados ripening in a bag in the kitchen!) and vegetable plants (I cooked up some sort of leafy greens for dinner last night). There are two "helpers" - Theo is the security guard and groundskeeper, who lives in a detached building behind the house, and Violetti is the cleaner who comes during the day. We're definitely still adjusting to this level of help, but it's clear that this is an important employment sector, and I'm not going to lie, having someone do our dishes and laundry and clean our floors daily is very nice. I'm trying to keep working on my Kinyarwanda to express my appreciation, and thinking about what/how we can give back to these people who are so helpful to us. Ephrem, our helper at house 1.0, seemed sad to see us go, and also very excited about the 10K RFR (Rwandan Franc) we gave him as a thank you when we left. (As Caleb has explained, someone with his job probably makes somewhere in the ballpark of 30K RWF or less than $30 USD/month, so 10K is a lot even though it seems like so little....)

Another big difference between House 1.0 and 2.0 is the neighborhood. 1.0 was in a quiet area with all gated homes and few people out & about, while 2.0 is close to a bustling main street and the dirt road leading up to our house has several small shops, many "normal" houses, and lots of humans going about their lives. There are non-gated homes alongside and behind ours, and our driveway seems to be a meeting spot for a group of 10 or so neighborhood kids, who have been very intrigued and excited about the new muzungu (white) family that just moved in. Alexa has made friends quickly, sharing her toys and jump ropes with them, and apparently directing a whole dance-gymnastics routine at one point? (Caleb witnessed it, I just heard about it after the fact.)

We love this and have been trying to figure out how to navigate the issue of The Gate: how can we allow/encourage interaction with our neighbors across this big physical barrier? (One particularly cringy moment over the weekend: Lexi on her belly on the inside of the gate, handing out toys under the gate to all of the kids lined up on their bellies on the other side.) Caleb has been musing a lot about The Gate... all the "nice" houses have them. The implication is that you need a Gate to be "safe" and that safe = separate. If The Gate went away, everyone (all the un-gated people?) would just come in an start taking all your stuff. Which... maybe so, given this huge wealth gap we've seen between haves and have-nots, but it seems unlikely somehow. It certainly doesn't feel unsafe outside the gate, at least to us. It seems to me that The Gate is largely a status symbol - it's not possible to have a Nice House and not have a Gate. If it were just us at the house, we'd likely keep the gate open a lot of the time and let the kids come and go. But Theo's the security guard and is in charge of making sure we are safe behind the closed Gate, and our language skills aren't at the level to have a nuanced conversation with him about what safety really means and how we can figure out a solution that helps us all feel safe and comfortable.

It's a lot. Just another example of how we're trying to navigate our foreign and privileged existence here. Kids' excitement at seeing muzungus (pointing, running up to us to touch us and give us high fives and hugs) admittedly feels good in some ways (I'm exciting and welcome here!), but also feels really f***ed up and makes me think again and again about the studies (cited in the Brown vs Board of Ed US Supreme Court desegregation decision) showing how both white and Black kids, at very young ages, would point to the white baby doll as the "good" baby, and the Black baby doll as the "bad" baby. Is that the story these kids have in their heads? Are they simply excited about my difference and otherness, or have they been taught (subtly or overtly) to see me as better, as a savior? What do we do with that? How can we carry out our non-mission mission of forming genuine human connections and learning about this place and its people and, hopefully, eventually, once we've learned enough, being helpful and supportive of Rwandan-led efforts towards equity and justice? Should we even be here?

Wow, that got heavy. Caleb is sitting across from me at Question Coffee writing about the genocide for his post today so... sorry everyone. We're having a lot of fun here too, I promise. Here we are on a fun date night to a nearby rooftop bar on Saturday night.

And here we are at our new closest coffee shop after walking the kids to school on the new route yesterday morning. It's no Question (no decaf and no espresso), but they did make a nice spice tea for me.