FAQ

Over the past month or so, as we started to turn our attention towards home-going, Caleb and I talked about how excited we were to reconnect with friends and family… and also how hard it was to imagine how we’d respond to people’s questions about our experience.  We know that all of you (and, even more so, those who haven’t faithfully read our blog for the past five months) will be curious and want to know a lot of things about our trip.  But we’re still figuring it all out and making sense of what we’ve experienced, and probably will be for a while.  But ALSO, we really DO want to engage and connect, so answering “I don’t know” or “I don’t really want to talk about it” isn’t what we want to do either.  SO – we thought we’d try to anticipate some potential questions and think about how we want to answer those.  With some time on our hands during our plane ride home, Caleb and I took turns coming up with what we’re sure will be Frequently Asked Questions and drafting some responses.

Q (Katie): So, how was Rwanda?

A (Caleb): I get that you don’t think that’s a loaded question.  It sounds like, “How was Florida?”  But the right answer to that question is, “It was great!  And how was YOUR spring break?”  But we just spent 5 months immersing ourselves in a new culture in a new part of the world with our 3 kids.  So, to me, the question sounds more like, “How was childhood?”  You get that you’ve just asked a BIG question.  So… what kind of answer are you looking for?  Option 1: “Rwanda was great.”  Option 2: “Read the blog.”  Option 3: “It was an absolutely incredible experience, with lots of complicated emotions that we’re still processing. In short, we set out on this adventure with some really generic hopes & plans, and I think we had a lot of successes.  There are so many unknowns still, today, but I think our kids ended up with a really positive experience that will open up their minds and hearts to the world.  There’s not one ounce of my body that regrets our decision to take this trip. We’re excited to keep thinking about it and sharing more as we go.  Thanks for asking.”

 

Q (Caleb): What was your favorite part?

A (Katie):

Version 1 [Too snarky]: I’m not sure.  That’s like asking me who’s my favorite child.

Version 2 [Simple brush-off answer]: The gorillas.

Version 3 [Simple but true]: Meeting people.

Version 4 [More complete]: My favorite part was being there long enough to collect a whole bunch of different moments that add up to an entire, complex, deep, life-changing experience.  There are so many wonderful memories: going on safaris, driving through the country and seeing so many breathtakingly beautiful hilly, tropical landscapes, watching our kids engage with their school community and making friends, spending time with our neighborhood kids, meeting so many different people from all walks of life.  I’m grateful for all of the parts and I think there are many that will be my “favorite” at different times as we look back on all of it. 

 

Q (Katie): What was the biggest surprise?

A (Caleb): Golfing?  I mean, I brought golf clubs all the way to Rwanda so golfing wasn’t a surprise.  But I think my plan was to golf on Wed mornings as some sort of escape from the reality and difficulties of our trip, a chance for me to treat myself to something fun after 4 hr middle of the night council meetings.  One of my concerns, though, was that I didn’t really want to meet other golfers, because golfers are the worst.  But what ended up happening for me is that I made lots of friends by joining random groups and playing with different people each week.  Eventually, no one was random anymore – we were scheduling times to golf together.  What I started to realize over time was that these moments on the golf course were not an escape from Rwanda – they were absolutely another immersion into another part of Rwanda.  I think I expected all the golfers to be like me – white expats.  But it was actually a sweet community composed of mostly well-off Rwandans.  I was happy to meet people from that walk of life as well – it helped me to better understand the complexities and injustices and possibilities contained in this place.  True story: the Kigali Golf Club hosted its first two fundraising tournaments (one for mothers of the genocide and one for victims of the May floods) while I was there, and I was given some credit for that because I approached the director about the concept of a “Golfers Who Give” tournament.  So the surprise is that what was intended to be an escape turned out to be a deeper connection with the complex community we were living in.

 

Q (Caleb): Oh my god, were you SO excited to come home?  You must have been DYING to get back!

A (Katie): There was definitely so much I missed and was excited to come home to… friends and family, my comfortable home, my kitchen, good lighting.  I was excited to work normal hours and see co-workers in person instead of spending hours on Zoom every night.  I was excited to be back where I felt like I belonged and had a shared history with people.  That’s one of the benefits of this type of experience – helping to appreciate what we have and to affirm what we value.  But it was also hard to come back, and there were a lot of things I was nervous about returning to.  It was really wonderful to mostly ignore US politics for a while, for example.  Our pace of life also slowed down in a lot of ways – Caleb and I got to spend a lot of time together during the day when the kids were at school and we weren’t working, which was really wonderful, and we had tons of family time and adventures on the weekends.  I’d like to figure out how not to go back to being completely overscheduled all of the time, and how to make more time to just be with all of the people I love.  So yes, I was excited to come home, but I also want to be thoughtful about how we come home and re-shape our lives back here.

 

Q (Katie): What’s one thing they have in Rwanda that you wish we had here?

A (Caleb):

Version 1: Chili sauce and toothpicks.  Wait, that’s two things.

Version 2: Gorillas.  I want to say wildlife, but obviously CO has wildlife too.  But it wasn’t just the gorillas.  It was the elephants and rhinos and hippos and zebras – so much diversity of wildlife that I’ve never seen outside of captivity.  So, to be fair, I’m excited for Anaclet to come to Colorado to show him all of our beautiful nature and wildlife.  But my time with those special animals in Africa is something I’ll never forget.

 

Q (Caleb): What’s the food like in Rwanda?

A (Katie): In general, Rwandan food is pretty simple stuff – not a big foodie culture.  Some very common things are brochettes (meat skewers), with goat being the most traditional/cheapest option and chips/French fries (they do these really well – crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside).  Also common street foods: samosas (beef or vegetable) and chapati (kind of like a very thick & oily tortilla).  Another big highlight is the fruit: bananas, mangoes, pineapple, and passionfruit are all very common.  Those are the basics.  At the same time, Kigali has a TON of very diverse and very good restaurants with all types of cuisines from around the world.  We ate out a LOT and some of our favorite places were Khana Khazana (Indian), Brachetto and Sole Luna (Italian), Sakae (Korean/Japanese), Kultura (Asian Fusion), Meze Fresh (Mexican), and Pili Pili (Rwandan + pizzas and a variety of other stuff).  In addition to the yummy food, most of these restaurants had lovely outdoor patios with beautiful views thanks to Kigali’s many hills, so we really enjoyed our eating experiences while we were there.  Cooking at home was something I never really got completely comfortable with – I really love cooking at home, but both our kitchen/stove options and limitations on the ingredients we could get made it hard to come up with a set of things to cook that everyone would enjoy.  Potato soup was one thing that was easy and a big hit.  I made tortillas and beans from scratch early on too – that was fun.  But I kind of wish I’d figured out how to do more with all of the fresh and less familiar stuff that was there, like these tiny green eggplants… Ok, now I’m rambling.  What was the question?

 

Q (Katie): If you could do this trip over, what would you do differently?  Or: what advice would you give your pre-Rwanda self about how to do this trip?

A (Caleb): I don’t really live this way.  I'm really happy with our trip and everything we learned from it, and if we'd done it differently that would have been different.  One thought we've had is that it would have been good to hire a translator earlier so we could have better conversations and connect with people earlier on.  But also, it was interesting to connect with people without language.  That was an important part of our experience.

Here's a different way to think about this.  If we were to do a trip like this again, what might we do differently next time?  Some things I've thought about are things that might have helped us be less confused upon arrival.  Like, we could fly there and check things out ahead of time to scout things out, figure out where to live, etc.  But again, all of that navigating was part of the experience.

Maybe we could have leaned into hiring people and paying for services available.  Most people in our position had drivers, cooks, nannies... it felt really bougie and we didn't fully embrace it, but it's an important part of the economy, employing people.  So maybe we could have done more of that.  

I haven't come up with anything yet that I can really point to as something that I would have done differently.  It was what it was and I'm really happy with the experience.