One Week Down

It's a beautiful Saturday morning in Kigali, and we've been here for one week.  As Caleb has said, it feels like a lot longer... so much newness and so many big and small hurdles and excitements each day.  How am I feeling about all of this?  A lot of relief... that we've successfully made it through this first huge adjustment and that everyone is doing so well so far.  While Caleb has been an enthusiastic and supportive co-pilot in this whole endeavor, we all understand that I'm the one driving this ship and dragging everyone away from the home and community we love.  I've done this because I'm convinced that we'll all benefit from this experience in ways we can't fully anticipate, that we'll leave here stronger and more compassionate and more connected to our beautiful and complex world.  From my own lifetime of travels and moves, I know how life-changing and resilience-building it is to land in a new place and have to reorient, to see things and meet people that break down our stereotypes and force us to look at ourselves and our home from different perspectives.  It's not easy... the dis-ease of it is the point.  And yet, even believing all of this so deeply, there have been many, many moments of doubting whether this is worth it, whether it's fair to yank everyone up from our roots, what we're doing here.  Our first night here was really rough, watching Mazie be so miserable and seeing everyone so wobbly and disoriented.  I know there will be more of those moments ahead.  But we made it through that one, and seeing my girls' smiling faces and conversations with classmates when we pick them up at school has made me so happy, and so grateful to all of them for going along on this journey.  I'm excited about what's ahead for us, and I'm also still grappling with doubts and questions about my and our purpose here.  But this morning I'm mostly just content to be right here, with some of the weight I've been carrying for the last several months lifted.

Caleb's Log v.4

This is day 6 for us.  Feels like we've been here for a month.  So much happens every day and we're constantly settling in and discovering new things.

Shall I talk about golfing or driving?  

Let's go with driving.

Our experience with the rules of the road started with our ride from the airport to our home.  Fabrice helped us load up in his van and I was bold enough to immediately attempt to get into the driver's seat.  At least that's how he saw it when I opened the door on the right side of the car to get in.  I was a little confused when he told me I should go to the other side.  I said, "you want me to drive?"  He laughed and then I looked inside and the steering wheel was on the "wrong" side of the car.  We all laughed and I got in as the passenger on the left side.  Katie and I were really surprised, because we didn't know that Rwanda was a left-side-of-the-road driving country.  Well, it isn't.  He just has a car that was made for Tanzania or another British colony.

So, off we go in the van and we get to a traffic circle as we leave the airport.  Cool, you've all been in a traffic circle.  It's a little chaotic as cars to the left cruise through, you look for a good time to enter and then become the one with the right of way as you go around.  You then have to get yourself to the exit you want and peel out of the circle.  There were lots of cars and several motorcycles, but we got through fine.  What I was not prepared for was that every intersection works this way.  NO RULES.  Then as Fabrice kept driving, I started to notice the quantity of motorcycles and their aggressive style of driving.  In Kigali, motorcycle taxis are VERY popular.  If you've ever been to a big city with Lime scooters, it's similar.  They are everywhere and slip in and out of pedestrian/vehicle realms.  These lime scooters have drivers because labor here is VERY cheap.  (you don't clear your table, pack your groceries, open your door, choose your parking spot, pay a parking meter, clean your own house, kiss your own wife, etc.  There is always a person to do those things)  The motorcycles are a little like ants or a swarm of bees.  If you stop in traffic, you'll be overtaken on the left, right, across the front, behind you.  They're everywhere.  As Fabrice continued to drive us through different neighborhoods I was trying to learn how it all works for when I get a car.  What are the rules? How do you maneuver through the chaos?  My theory was that you just have to be bold and obvious and then others will adjust.  He was doing things like turning right in front of an oncoming motorcycle and everyone seemed cool with it.  Horrifying.

We rented a car and I finally got the chance to try it out.  I haven't explained yet, that there are no street signs.  No stop signs, yield signs, stop lights, etc.  So when you get to an intersection (that isn't a circle) it's up to you to figure out how to get through.  That might seem crazy, but it's like the intersection in a hallway at your old high school.  Somehow you get where you need to get without running into anyone.  And, if someone comes sprinting down the hall, everyone just kind of gets out of the way.  Asshole.  Fortune favors the bold and those who act, move.  Katie figured out pretty quickly that the only rule of the road seems to be, don't hit anyone or anything.  

This is my kind of driving and I've really enjoyed the combination of go-cart racing and on-the-fly problem solving.  If I were to sum it all up and help you get the best picture of driving in Kigali it would be with this PERFECT analogy.

Your car is a boat in a river.  The streets are a river bed.  The motorcycles are the water.  The other cars are rocks.  The pedestrians are fish.

It's your job as the driver of the boat to get down this river.  You better avoid the rocks, ignore the fish, and go with the flow of the water.  If you run into a rock, you're fucked.  If you hit a fish, that's kind of on the fish, honestly, and you can't hit the water...it just moves with you.  You go left, it goes left.  You slow down, it flows around you.  There is no escaping the water, but you don't have to pay attention to it either.  Yes, the fish are above water and are real human lives and yes, the rocks move with you as you go.  Fuck off, it's a PERFECT analogy.

While it is a little unnerving there is comfort in the fact that everyone is following Katie's rule of don't hit anything.  Other drivers adjust to you and you'd have to be trying to hit someone to get in an accident.  The lack of rules (lights and stop signs) actually make everyone really attentive and thoughtful while they drive.  There are no distracted drivers in a go-cart race.

I'm off to the bank now to try for a third time to get a username and password for my new bank account so that I can actually use that bank account.  On the positive side, I really have made some friends there.  They think my wife is BEAUTIFUL and they like me for that.

Here's a video

 

Walking Home from School

I made this TikTok video of our walking route home from school. I'm not great at TikTok. Enjoy. Walking Home Video

Caleb's Log v.3 (from Wed 1/9)

Hello Everyone!

Last night for you all and this morning for me, I had my first 3:00am City Council meeting.  It was fine.  I failed to go to bed early, woke up at 2:30 to get ready and went back to sleep from 6:00-7:30am.  Got the kids off to school and dropped Katie off at her OFFICE.  She's got a desk at Lambert's office, who is one of her colleagues on the Bridges to Prosperity project.  It's really fun to see Katie getting to engage with local researchers and you can tell that she'll be in the field in no time.

I drove from her office to the Kigali Golf Course.  That's right!!! I'm gonna be a golfer.  I got a membership this morning and now I get unlimited golf for the rest of my trip.  The idea is to go every Wednesday morning after my council meeting ends to get out, exercise, decompress, reward myself, meet new people, and really just have a selfish moment.  I haven't golfed yet, but it will definitely be a story.  I'll save that all for another day.

I'm going to use the rest of today's post/journal entry/email to talk about my girls.  

As you all clearly understand, this is a huge adjustment for them.  They miss their friends and their pets.  They miss their cousins and their comfy home.  They miss their normal food and their daily rhythm.  

However, they are absolutely amazing.  They have great attitudes about almost everything, including the 25 minute walk up and down hills on dirt and mud roads at 7:30 in the morning. And, on THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, they walked home alone, just the three of them.  They got a little lost, but backtracked, figured it out, and got home.  They've all made some friends and seem to have someone to lunch with.  Alexa is already planning her birthday party with an extensive guest list of classmates whose names she does not know.

I'm just blown away by how seamlessly they seem to have adjusted and engaged in this community.  Of course, there will be struggles in the future and breakdowns are bound to happen.

They are just remarkable 3 days into school and 5 days into our trip.  They are kind to each other and to their awful parents and they seem to be having a great time.  Alexa is signed up for after school gymnastics and Athena is signed up for football and band, I think.  Mazie's electives aren't available yet, but we're planning on football and cooking.

Enough for now.  I'm gonna go back to that bank and hang out with my friends for a few hours.

Caleb

We did it.

It's Thursday morning and I'm sitting at Question Coffee, up the hill from our house.  The kids are at school.  (Caleb and I were planning to walk them there, but when we came outside they had already left.  Watched them walk up the hill across the valley from our house.)  Caleb is playing golf.  It's 11:48 pm back home.  No one needs anything from me right now.  It is a very strange feeling, especially after months and months of planning to make this happen and a hectic last week of travel and settling in.  It's... done.  We're here.  What next?

Green Hills Academy

 

The kids started school at Green Hills Academy yesterday. To start the day they each had to take a written assessment which took about an hour.  They handled it well - Lexi reported that she wrote a whole page about mac & cheese (in response to a prompt asking about her favorite food), and Athena wrote a journal entry about an imaginary hot air balloon ride. After that was done, we went over to get the much-anticipated uniforms. There are a few different options (trousers, skirts, shirts, sweaters, gym clothes - Athena apparently got instructions about when to wear which outfits, but Mazie thinks it's kinda whatever you want and wore her gym outfit on day 2).  

 

The campus is huge and beautiful.  Lexi is in the Primary School, Athena is in the Middle School, and Mazie is in the High School. Lots of big trees and even a swimming pool!  

The kids all seemed pretty happy after day one. Lexi reported that she played with multiple new friends at break time. Athena said she had a swarm of kids showing her around all day. Mazie was a little less effusive but said she talked to other kids and it was fine. All in all, a successful start to the school experience.

Lexi with her teacher, Ms. Loice

An Update about Trees

Before we left home, we had friends and family give us "curious questions" about Rwanda and our trip. Our goal is to answer as many of these as we can while we're here. Today on the way to school, we saw some trees that made Lexi think of her friend Calvin, so we made this video for Calvin AND also to answer her friend Teddy's tree-related question ("Are there palm trees?").