14 October 2008

The past three days I have been with a team from Watermark Church in Dallas, Texas. The group is composed of six lawyers who are meeting with local leaders in Rwanda and Congo over six days. The group members names are: Rick, Scott, Mary, Cyndi, Shara and Jeff.


After meeting the group at the Kigali airport, we traveled directly to the Northwest corner of Rwanda on the northern edge of Lake Kivu to a village named Nyagahinika. Local leaders identified and selected by ALARM-Rwanda were invited to a three day leadership conference led by Rick and the team. They spoke on various topics from forgiveness & reconciliation to dealing with grief.

In the afternoon, we would all eat lunch together. The first day at the conference I ate the usual rice, beans and potatoes, which I had also eaten for the past two weeks at the ALARM compound in Kigali. The second day, however, the lunch menu had a new exotic dimention to the culinary cuisine: liver, tongue, and intestines.

There is a PBS program called Globe Treker that airs every Saturday evening. Inveribly, the host willl try some kind of local food that is apt to make westerners' stomach turn. Well, this time I got to try something new.

I took a couple of looks at the meat before I decided that I would partake and try the intestines. They were cooked well, so it was not very chewy; it desolved in my mouth fairly readily. The taste, however, was not exactly to my liking. The flavor was very strong and tasked like dirty sox. I tried to eat as many beans and rice as I could to cover up the revolting flavor and drank a glass of Coke to wash it down. My American compatriots did not join me in the culinary adventure.

The last day of the conference in Nyagahinika, I decided to join Mary and Shara and go into the local village. Along the way I met gigly girls gawking at the Americans while walking into town after school was let out. I tried to greet them with the little Ki-Rwandan I had learned over the past week. Fortunately, they spoke good English. As we all entered the village, there were many people out for the day probably going to buy food, since there were women presenting their produce to sell at the open market at that time. I tried to get a little more language learning practice with the locals while I was there.

It was amazing to see the reactions of the Rwandans when I Mazungu (white person) like me begins to converse with them by saying amakuru (How are you?). Some are so surprised they stop trying to speak for a few seconds to adjust to a Mazungu speaking their language. Others keep trying to speak English until they realize I am not the typical westerner and then they begin to respond with Ki-Rwandan. Most times I get a smile or a laugh in reaction to my attempts to connect with them. I think they are genuinely surprised at my attempts to speak their language.

While in the village, I was surrounded at one point by a group of locals watching me talk with a women selling her potatoes who was apparently angry with me because I was not buying her goods. After I told her she was very intelligent, smart and would do well in her business, I got a smile out of her. The perceived manipulation by Rwandans to get money from me is sometimes threatening at first. But I try to focus on them personally and engage them in conversation about who they are--ask their name and such. I think they want reliationships with westerners, but only expect white people to just give them stuff without really caring about their family or people on a personal level. I hope I can show Christ in this way.