Moving Day!

Today is moving day! In case you don’t remember, when we came here we moved into Keith and Margaret Ferdinando’s house because they had left suddenly in September for health reasons. It has been really nice because we have been using their furniture and dishes and we haven’t had to buy anything major yet. Well, Keith had bypass surgery in January and now they are returning to teach at FATER on June 2. So we need to move out of their house in order to get it cleaned up and ready for their return.

There is another family, Patrick and Valerie Finnerty and their two boys who live 4 houses down the street. They are not with AIM but with the Vineyard church in Canada, although Patrick is Irish. Valerie is Canadian. Anyway, they had scheduled a furlough from May – January and wanted to keep their house in tack so we are moving in there! We still don’t have to buy furniture and appliances and stuff, yet.

We spent about 2 – 2 ½ hours this afternoon and got 95% of our stuff packed up and ready to move (we don’t have much…). Mark said he wanted to have a cup of coffee before putting things in the car and I thought that sounded like a good idea. Well, seeing as how this is Africa and rainy season no less, while we were enjoying a short break and a storm came in and now it is DOWNPOURING outside. So, I decided I’d write a quick note. It’s almost dark now so I don’t know if Mark will want to move still tonight or not. However, we would be very culturally Rwandan if we move after dark! We’ve been told that because of trust issues, they don’t want the neighbors to see what they own so they move their stuff after dark.

Once we get our stuff over there, we’ll probably be pretty well settled by Monday. That’s the goal anyway. We also hope we’ll have better internet connection over at the other house. They have a different system, which I haven’t tried to understand the difference, but Mark is hopeful that it will be more consistent.

Yesterday we decided to go into town to get some sewing supplies for our curtains. We brought out some of our curtains from the US but the curtain rods are different here so we need have an adjustment made to them in order to use them in the new house. Anyway, we took “our” car. It’s not in our name yet, nor have we paid any money for it but we have it in our driveway and Mark has done a lot of work on the electrical wiring. The part of downtown that we went to is very “African” in that the road is more narrow and there are a lot of small shops all lined up side by side and lots of people spilling out on the sidewalk selling things – fruits, vegetables, tablecloths, phone cards, lots of stuff. It’s not really an area with many “wazungu” (white folks). After we found a shop selling what we needed and headed off to our next stop, we were driving up this crowded road, dodging pedestrians, motorbikes, cars pulling out of parking spots, etc. and Mark honked the horn. He looked a little funny and then honked again. I asked him if was doing that on purpose and he said, “No!”. Then he realized that if he turned the steering wheel a little bit, the horn would honk. All of a sudden it started honking and wouldn’t stop! There was nobody in front of us but it appeared that this “muzungu” (singular form of wazungu) was in a big hurry! Everybody started looking at us, some started motioning for Mark to stop honking the horn, and basically everyone got out of our way! Mark was trying to keep the steering wheel steady so it wouldn’t honk but at the same time was trying to find a place to pull over. The street was jammed with parked cars but finally he found a spot with a small car and he scooted in beside it, still sort of in the road but at least other cars could get around him. The horn was blaring away! Several guys ran up to us to “help” as Mark got out of the car. Mark popped the hood and one guy started to open it but stopped when Mark told him he could take care of it. The guys all stood around and watched as Mark disconnected the horn and finally the blaring stopped! Mark made a comment about the “crazy muzungu” driver and they all laughed. Then we were on our way again. Mark worked on it today and figured out what had broken which caused the horn to stay on like that. I’m sure there will be more adventures with this car until Mark gets all the kinks worked out. Overall, it is a decent car, though.

We were able have someone take the curtains today to sew the tape on them that is needed for the curtain hooks. Hopefully we’ll be able to hang them on Monday next week. The house has curtains, we just thought it would be nice to use ours since we brought them.

Well, the rain has stopped and it is time to get supper on the table. Talk to y’all later.