The Business of Getting Settled

This morning we needed to be at the Rossington’s house around 7 am in order to ride into town with him when he took the kids in the carpool to school. Mark set his alarm for 6 so we’d be sure to be ready to go. The alarm went off and I thought it was strange that it was so quiet outside and so dark but went ahead, got dressed and went out to put breakfast on the table. I looked at the clock in the dining room and looked again, thinking I was really tired and not able to read the clock. Nope. It still said 5:30! I went in and told Mark and he checked his clock and then realized that he had not changed it from Kenya time, which is an hour different. Oh, bother. Here we needed sleep and we were up an hour too early! Fortunately we didn’t show up at Rossington’s at 6 am!

I forgot to mention that we were awakened in the middle of the night sometime by very loud talking at our neighbor’s house next door. We found out the next morning that our neighbor’s adult daughter, who had been ill for some time, had died that night. It seems that was what the commotion was about. There were comings and goings all day long at that house.

After dropping the kids off at school, Bruce took us to the Rwandan Immigration office to tell them that we were in the country and to find out what we needed to get our residence visas. The fellow we spoke with hemmed and hawed a bit and wrote down a list of documents we needed and stated that some we had brought weren’t good enough because they weren’t notarized, etc. He also said that we had four days to complete the process and since we had arrived on the 6th we had to have it all turned in by the 9th (which is tomorrow!!). We reminded him that the 6th was a Saturday and that in fact we had come on the first available business day so he said it was okay and we had until Thursday the 11th. The odd thing about the documents which were needed was that the immigration website lists specific documents which are needed. He told us some that were on the list, omitted some that were on that list and added some which weren’t on the list (like the diplomas that we didn’t have).

After that visit we went to the bank and spent quite awhile setting up our new bank account complete with internet availability. We then went to a phone store and got our new Rwandan phone numbers. We also stopped by a service station and got the hole in Bruce’s tire fixed.
We had a nice lunch with the Bonvallat family. They are a Swiss family who first went out to work in Zaire in 1996, right when all the missionaries were evacuated. After working in Nairobi for a time and then later in DR Congo (and being evacuated eventually), they have been in Rwanda for a few years and are trying to start a ministry with the youth. They have 3 boys – only the oldest one speaks English. The middle boy took Emily into his room after lunch to show her around and chatted and chatted away in French. She had no idea what he was saying other that an occasional: “Tu comprends?” (do you understand?) She thought he was very cute.

Mark spent time this afternoon working on paperwork and I tried to unpack and stay awake. We went over to the Bonvallats again to walk over to their neighbor’s house with them. The neighbor, Godfrey, has a very large house he is currently living in but he also owns a house somewhere else in town that he wants to move into. He is getting the one next to Bonvallats ready to rent out and so we thought we’d take a look at it. It has 6 bedrooms, 2 living rooms, 2 bathrooms and a dining room but no indoor kitchen! He is constructing another building in the back with 2 more bedrooms, a small bathroom, a storage room and a kitchen. Traditionally the Rwandans don’t have their kitchen in the main house. He did say that he would be willing to transform the smaller living room into a dining room and make the dining room into a kitchen. The layout allowed for that and it would be an easy fix. He also wants to rent it completely furnished and he had quite nice furniture. Unfortunately he will be asking $1000 / month which is way over the mission budget. If it was half that price, we maybe could use it as our house and run a guest house for visiting teachers or construction workers who come out to help us. It’s a bit higher up the hill and has a great view of the city.

This evening the group of people who have arrived at the neighbors for the wake have multiplied and spilled outdoors. There is a lot of talking and singing. I hope it doesn’t go on all night.

Good Night!