There are other aspects of life that I miss from one place when I’m in the other. Now that I am back in Texas, I am reminded that I love to drive. I enjoy my shower and hot and cold running water. I am especially happy to sleep in my bed again. I like being more in control of what I eat.

But there is another complicated part of Rwandan life that I miss very much: house facilitation. This is the politically correct term for household help, commonly known as “house boys” or “house girls.” I’m torn on the issues surrounding house facilitation, and this post in an exploration of multiple perspectives.

First, some background: In Rwanda, house facilitators are very common. Working adults most often employ a house facilitator. If there are children in the household, sometimes there is more than one facilitator. Even single working adults have a facilitator. In general, the facilitator shops, cooks, cleans, and watches over the house. They have a room for themselves, though often this is rudimentary. They are fed and earn a low wage.

Facilitators can have a variety of backgrounds. I have had experience with some who are completely illiterate, an unfortunate long-term result of the Habyarimana regime which did not educate many Rwandans. Some of these facilitators spend their earnings on drugs or alcohol. However, I’ve also known facilitators who use the position to transition into a more productive life: some have gone on to trade school or into the formal education system and are now in careers that enable them to earn better wages.

I’ve never observed a facilitator being treated in ways that would violate their human rights, though I assume that this is a possibility. These types of human rights violations are illegal in Rwanda. I have seen some “bosses,” as they are known, who have been uncaring, which of course falls into grey moral and legal areas. Employers are supposed to care for facilitators’ health, but there are differing standards for care. For example, the facilitator of the other house in our compound had taken ill in July, and needed medical attention. I don’t know the full story, of course, but I do know that Julius’s household took responsibility for getting this young man, probably in his late 20s, to the hospital, where he stayed two nights. We had our facilitator stay overnight with him and bring him meals. We also bought him sheets and a blanket for his hospital bed and paid for his medical expenses. When he felt stronger, he took his severance pay and travelled home to another province.

So especially because facilitators are part of a vulnerable underclass, I am especially grateful for them. I couldn’t live on my own in Rwanda because I don’t know how to navigate a charcoal stove and have trouble wringing out my own jeans, much less bed sheets.

But here’s also what I know: Although I could learn these aspects of living in Rwanda, my time and energy are better spent on other activities, ones that are less common. My skill set, what I can bring to Rwanda, includes editing, strategic planning, resource management, research, and writing.

The painful paradox is that I can share these skills more when I rely on the system of household facilitation.

And here in the US, a large part of me wishes that I could afford household facilitation so that I could expend my energies on the same less common skills that I share in Rwanda. In other words, I wish I could afford to pay someone else to cook and clean my house so that I could write, study, teach, and research more.

Frankly, a large part of me is horrified at myself: Really? If your life isn’t simple enough to maintain on your own, then, girl, you need to make some big changes. You don’t even have a big house. How can you be so lazy? Put that computer down and go wash some dishes already.

But there is another voice, too, one that sounds less critical. It’s my writer self, the part of me that emerged last December out of fear that I wouldn’t complete my dissertation and therefore the PhD. This part of myself, my heart of hearts, emerged and demanded space in my life. So I pretty much stopped cooking: my boys and I eat decently healthy prepared meals and a lot of sandwiches. And my house? A friend used to describe my mother as a casual housekeeper, and I am following in mom’s footsteps.

But not only does writing and the other higher skill set give me greater pleasure, but this voice reminds me that it might be a more responsible use of my education. So I write now, and glance over to the suitcases that need to be put back into storage, the clothes that need to be washed, and the sinkful of dirty dishes that won’t wash themselves.

Is this elitism? Entitlement? Ya, maybe. Is it resource management? Ya, that too. In an economic perspective, you shouldn’t pay a Vice President of Communication to proofread reports; you pay copyeditors to do that. And of course, these less-skilled employees should be treated fairly, morally, and helped to develop their own higher level skills.

On a personal level, these issues get entangled with gender construction and what it means to be a woman and what “women’s work” is. They also grind against what kind of mother I choose to be.

And as a Rwandan friend noted, this issue is rooted US immigration policy as well: He said that there are so many foreigners who would jump at the chance to use household facilitation as a stepping stone to a better future. By extension, when the US restricts immigration so tightly, one of the results is that we put a stranglehold on the highly educated and skilled middle class who, like me, can’t afford the luxury of household help.

It’s not easy to resolve any of these issues. The best that I can do now is to do what I can with what time and energy I have. There’s just never enough, and something always gives.

There are many aspects of my life here that I can’t write about publicly, and these all have to do with my Rwandan family. Some parts of life should and will be private. So if you’re related to me by blood or by choice, your presence here is limited.

This has been my third trip to Rwanda. I’ll always be able to say that I was in Rwanda when men holding hands in public was very common. This beautiful outward expression of friendship is slowly caving into the unfortunate perception that such a gesture is sexualized. I see the culture here inexorably Westernizing, and this is heart-breaking.

The capital has developed so much in the last three years, and my life has changed along with it. My relationship with this country grows more and more complex. I keep reminding myself that knowing a place means knowing all about it, its strengths and weaknesses, the ways it brings me sublime pleasure, and the ways it breaks my heart. And by “a place,” I mean people here. And by “people here,” I mean my loved ones.

This trip has been focused on two of my strengths: planning and communication. (Of course there’s loving, but that is always a focus.) These strengths—all three, really—have gotten quite a workout here. Strategic planning, project planning, stop-gap planning, life planning, research planning—take your pick; I’ve done them all in the last month.

Communicating here is sometimes a challenge with my limited Kinyarwandan. But I love African English. I love the way that here the long a is not as sharp, not as closed in the throat as it is in the US. I love that today, in an ordinary conversation with a Rwandan colleague, he used the verb avail. Making myself understood is sometimes a syntactic challenge; I follow the constructions of Rwandan English most of the time here, and then I forget how to speak my own native English. And weird sayings come to mind: is it lickety split or lickety spit? Who cares? And why does this phrase pop into my mind here in these last few weeks?

One could argue that sometimes, communication is not my strength.

But when it comes to important aspects of communication, especially some of the rhetorical aspects, I’m on top of that.

And in the past ten days or so, Rwanda does not seem exotic. Instead, it just feels like where I am, like home. I forget to notice the differences in the colors of people’s skin; I forget to notice how strange Kinyarwandan sounds to my ears. If I really know the context, I can get most of what is said anyway (surprising some people). And I slip into we and us when I talk about some aspects of Rwandan society. This last part is something I keep an eye on—over-identification is probably just as dangerous as neocolonialism.  It’s just that life here sometimes feels ordinary, even while I know this is an extraordinary experience.

Part of me feels so much at home here, as I’ve written about before. This relationship with Rwanda and Rwandans continues to puzzle, challenge, and motivate me.

Is it possible to have one foot in Texas and the other in Rwanda? Watch me.

We’ll start the project focusing on ten of the most vulnerable families in two villages in the Nyabihu district. These would likely include child-headed households. After the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, the extraordinarily high number of orphans resulted in constructed families: children organized themselves into families and chose a mother and father from within this family group.

Imagine being elected mom when you’re a child yourself with no mother.

Other types of vulnerable families could include those headed by women or with members who have disabilities or illness.

The first phase of the project will educate and sensitize the families about sanitation and hygiene. HLR will provide small jerry cans for boiled water. Because the available water must be boiled and stored safely in order to drink it, a small container will encourage families to drink clean water and reduce water-borne illnesses. Each jerry can costs about $2.50 in US dollars.

HLR will also ensure that each of the families has a kitchen utensil draining stand. This is basically a table that allows pots, pans, plates, and utensils to air dry after being washed. Kitchens in these villages are outside and fairly rudimentary and towels are a luxury. Like small jerry cans, these stands can help reduce water-born illnesses. The stands will be built out of locally available materials by volunteer youth who will be coordinated and trained by HLR. The cost of these stands? Zip. Zero. Nada.

HLR will also provide treated mosquito nets for all the family’s beds. These are necessary to sleep under because malaria-laden mosquitoes feast at night. Rwanda is making great strides in reducing malaria, and nets are an inexpensive preventative measure to cut down on this debilitating and often deadly disease. Each net costs about $5.

Even with these measures, people still get sick, so HLR will also help pay for the household’s medical insurance for a year. Here, the national, collective health insurance covers basic illnesses, and it costs about $5.

You’re waiting to hear about the goats, right?

The second phase of this project provides a great reward for those families who improve their family’s sanitation and hygiene: HLR will provide a breeding goat that can make a substantial improvement in the family’s economic situation. The goat manure can improve the soil in the family’s garden plot, for example. The first kid produced by the goat will be donated to another vulnerable family in a type of pass-it-forward strategy. Subsequent kids, however, are the family’s to sell or to use at their discretion. Even one goat can provide the family with money, and for many of these families, it could be the only income. Each breeding goat costs about $25.

A coordinator in the village will visit the families and communicate with HLR leadership to ensure that implementation is effective. The project coordinator will receive a bicycle ($100) and a mobile phone ($25).

It’s incredible to me that around $50 can substantially improve the health of a really needy family.

If you’d like to help, please let me know. You can email me at the address on the Contact page.

Thanks in advance!

—Jen

Things are a bit different here in Kigali.

Rwanda sits about 2° South. And here, the day is just 15 minutes over 12 hours. Basically, the days and nights here are equal length.

It’s surprising how much this simple geographic reality affects life.

For example, when the electricity goes out in the evening, which is not all that unusual, studying becomes difficult if not impossible. One night last week, the secondary school student whom Julius supports (someone I’ll call E) was studying for a difficult math test he was going to take the next day–then the electricity went out, plunging the house into real darkness.

As we waited to see whether the outage was a momentary blip, the boy turned on the weak flashlight device on his mobile phone. I was writing, and I finished whatever thought was in process and closed my laptop because it doesn’t run long on battery power.

As the minutes lengthened, however, it became apparent that power might be out for awhile, so Joseph the house facilitator went out to buy some candles. He came back in with one already lit and tilted it so that a few drops of wax fell onto the corner of the living room table. Then he held the base of the candle in the wax until it hardened and could support the six-inch taper.

And here’s the hard reality: E leaned into his notebook, close to the candle, and kept on studying. I don’t know how he could see the numbers and letters in his book, but he somehow managed.

After a long while, Joseph came in with another candle and was in the process of standing it on the table close to me. I stopped him and insisted that it be placed closer to E so that he could see better. E took it from Joseph and stood it up close to his notebook. It seemed to help just a little, but was not any comparison to the bright two-foot fluorescent bulb that breaks our darkness on most nights.

Fortunately, these sometimes long nights haven’t held E back, and he makes very high grades in school.

I wonder how these outages affect business and industry in urban areas, and I’m especially curious about the rural areas of Rwanda (and the developing world) that have little or no power. What a challenge to development and education.

The equality of Rwandan days and nights also affects language. The morning greeting is mwaramutse, but this is used only in the very early morning hours. By ten a.m., the appropriate greeting changes to mwiriwe, loosely translated as good afternoon or even good day, since it is also used in the evening. It occurred to me recently that this linguistic shift out of morning that occurs fairly early in the day really isn’t early in the day here. It’s four hours after sunrise, but by then a third of the day is gone.

I’ve always taken days—the time the sun is up—for granted. And in the summer, yes, the day is longer. But now I question what I do with those two extra hours. And I wonder how does a night that lasts two hours longer affects how a country develops.

As a result, I’ve stayed at home quite a bit. Well, it’s actually Julius’s home, which he also shares with a young man whose education he sponsors. And there’s Joseph, the house facilitator. Julius’s family also drops in regularly, as does my Rwandan son.

TV plays an interesting role in the house. It’s likely that the TV is a status symbol (and Julius’s is bigger than mine at home—what’s that about boys and their toys? Might be universal…). But the TV has useful purpose as well.

It’s fairly unusual not to have it on if someone is home or visiting—and certainly if anyone is in the living room.

I like sitting out there most of the time and that’s where we take meals, so over the last couple weeks, whenever Joseph saw me sitting on the couch, even though I was working on my laptop or writing or reading, he turned on the TV. I had to resort to turning the volume down way low after he left, although Joseph kept “fixing” that when he came back in. Maybe he wanted to hear it all the way out to the kitchen, but it’s pretty far away.

(Did I mention that Joseph speaks not one word of English? And that my Kinyarwanda is slim to none? We sometimes manage to communicate with gesture, although he’s been picking up a few words, as have I.)

So I’ve been watching (sometimes half-watching) lots of Rwandan TV. I should clarify here that Julius doesn’t have satellite, so we get just the national Rwanda TV channel.

The programming is a mix of news, education/public service, and entertainment—and probably heavier on the first two.

(Each of these bears further description, but you’ll hear about my new vices—soccer and soaps—in a later post.)

The Rwandan news is broadcast in Kinyarwanda, French, and English. Each has its own program, and the reporting is essentially though not exactly the same. All start with the top three stories, then do in-depth stories on a number of items. Business news, weather, and international news are also addressed. The quality seems to me to be high; all stories are longer than those on local American news.

Some of a recent night’s news focused on the crash of a Congolese airliner, the 25% increase in price and subsequent shortage of big bottles of Primus beer, a single-vehicle crash involving a mechanic who was testing out repairs he had made to a car but was DUI and didn’t have a license or insurance, and the birth of the first baby born in South Sudan—who was named Independence.

BBC news is also broadcast, and there have been stories shown about government policies or practices that have been unpopular, exactly the kinds of news that critics of this government have said don’t get reported.

The education and public service programming is really interesting, and not only because I’m an educator. There are many types of educational programs from different countries (Japan, US, Britain, for example), but my favorite is broadcast live on Saturdays. It uses the very popular roundtable format where a moderator and guests with particular expertise gather. Sometimes the shows take calls, but program teaches English grammar.

A week ago, the teachers focused on past perfect tense, and last weekend taught future perfect. This show has taught me that “revise” here means to study or to learn, to “go over.” It also acculturates my ear to African English, which sometimes stresses different syllables. Here, for example, one hears “par TI ci ple” instead of “PART i ci ple” and “sechurity” rather than “security—” a different rhythm in the music of language.

The public service programming is both taped and live. The taped segments report on government initiatives and rather than cynics’ view that these are broadcast to bolster public opinion of Rwandan leadership, I believe that this type of programming strives to demonstrate what the government is doing and where and how money is being spent. Transparency is as important here as anywhere, and Rwandans can see their government working. These programs sometimes frame the information as “Your right to know.”

This type of programming is more like technical communication than any other genre. Often budgets details appear onscreen, for example, and the presented information sounds more like a technical report than journalism.

Journalism is a controversial aspect of Rwandan society; radio played a major role in not only desensitizing Rwandans and fostering dehumanizing perspectives before the genocide but also in directly instigating specific violence during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

Rwanda is slowly constructing a culture of reading (and writing, hopefully) that will in the future support active problem-solving and critical thinking skills throughout Rwanda’s population.

In the meantime, Rwandans who have access to TV at least keep informed about the country’s development, relations with international partners, and a few more educational opportunities than in the past.

So don’t be callin’ it a boob tube, ya hear?

With that, you can handwash, rinse with the least possible waste of water, hand wring, then hang your clothes on a sunny clothesline. This takes some practice. Normally, the house facilitator does almost all of the laundry.

Everyone washes his and her own skivvies though.

I don’t hang these little things outside on the line. Muzungus already create enough ruckus.

I’ve done my own laundry since about fifth grade, and most of what I brought to Rwanda can’t be wrung too energetically, which is lucky, because it matches my physical capacity. I might get to the point, though, where I’m happy to hand over my jeans to Joseph the house facilitator’s capable hands.

This household uses a white powder that I’m pretty sure is bleach-laden, so I bought some washing powder in town that is supposed to be gentle. I used it the other day on said skivvies and was having trouble getting the powder to dissolve in the cold water. I was so happy then when Joseph saw what I was doing and quietly put a dark blue bar of soap next to me.

I don’t know what’s in this little blue bar, but it’s awesome!

I suspect it contains something like lye and bluing, but whatever it is, nothing has a chance against it. It erases the dark orange African dirt and everything else you would want gone.

Some blue bar soap just might be coming home with me.

A few mornings ago, I was feeling strong and another issue was coming to mind as well. Last week, Joseph the house facilitator needed a couple days off to take care of something, but embarrassingly for me, I can’t function here in an ordinary house by myself. Julius was working in the field up north, so Joseph had to make other arrangements because I don’t know how to cook with charcoal. I could eat out, but I remain clueless about dealing with water or electrical issues that come up often.

So I am trying to learn as much as my Rwandan family will let me about how really to live here.

One step was doing a bunch of my own laundry myself—my dark clothes and a couple pairs of pants. Small items are one thing, but pants are something else altogether.

And I suck at doing my own laundry.

I used as little water as possible but I think it was still too much. I couldn’t get the rinse water to be anything other than darkly muddy. So…the clothes are cleaner than they were.

I think.

I wrung them out not nearly as dry as Joseph gets them, so they dripped for a long while out on the line and finished drying overnight slung around my room.

One small step for acculturation; one giant leap for a muzungu.

For the last couple of days (as certain ones of you already know), I’ve been jonesing for a salad and beer. That’s a strange combination, I know, but it is what it is. I was hungry for fresh, cold food so tantalizingly close because of the market, but still rare on our table. And the beer? Probably craving extra calories but not such a fan of soda.

That’s what I was ravenous for, just like I know that when I get home to Texas, I will crave chicken and grapes.

But last night, beautiful last night, I got just what I wanted. Picture an entire dinner plate of composed salad: finely shredded cabbage and carrot, half moons of sweet white onion (my favorite veg), and wedges of tomato and hard-boiled egg. Then there was a dressing of yogurty, herby deliciousness.

And yes, I had a couple of cold Primus petits.

It was sublime. I could have cried with pleasure.

It couldn’t get any better. Until it did.

I also had a brochette, but not one I’ve ever seen or heard about before. This brochette was on a larger skewer—12 inches—and was threaded end to end with inch-and-a-half cubes of firm, delectable grilled fish.

I’m on to Julius’s not-so-secret plan of making me fat, but I was happy to have some of his fried green bananas, which turned out to be the perfect accompaniment to the fish.

We shared food and so much more over a couple of hours, reminiscing, planning, laughing, greeting the three very young children who came over for a moment.

Salad. Beer. Fish. Rwandan night. Good friend. Great conversation.

My cup runneth over.

Sign me up!

The modem cost 19,000 Rwandan francs (about $32) and each 30 days of access cost 21,000Rwf (about $35). So for about $100, I can get internet wherever in Rwanda. I’ll leave the modem with Help Life Rwanda when I leave so that they can make use of the remaining unlimited days. After the 60 days are up, internet time can be bought from the MTN street vendors. Access is the same for mobile phones: cost is determined by use per second—so phone conversations are short!

Internet speed is pretty good and so far the modem has been trouble-free. It’s a far cry from 2008 when I could get internet going well enough to make a Skype call home for a few minutes in the evening using the spotty wireless in the office.

On this trip, the modem has already more than made up its cost because the Norton Antivirus download to my Rwandan son’s netbook took about an hour.

Of course, this access is a privilege few Rwandans can afford. Rwanda is striving to increase internet availability throughout the country, and the thriving capital is definitely on its way. It will be interesting to see what’s going on in rural areas.

All that said, posting to the blog takes some patience: dashboard loads incredibly slow, but perhaps that’s because of the time of day.

Optimism always.

So far, I’m working on helping to edit and lay out a booklet of Rwandan student essays on how Commemoration can promote healing here. There’s also a goat project in the works. I’ve also visited Kigali’s best-kept educational secret, and it has to do with some excited little children. Much more on all these in later posts!

As always, I welcome your comments. It’s good to hear from you!