Home to Butare

After 2 days of travel I finally arrived in Butare Rwanda on Saturday evening, this is the city which I will call home for the next few months. My initial impression is that its busy and seems to be a commercial hub for Rwandans living in the south.

Upon arrival, I knew nothing about my living conditions other than that I would be sharing a house with a Guy named Lenar, who teaches at the National University here in Butare. This was a leap of faith on my part, however, arriving at the house I realized that any trepidation I may have had was unjustified.

My house, or fortress rather, is surrounded by a 7 foot wall with glass shards protruding from the top so as to keep out any unwanted visitors. This wall also comes complete with a solid metal gate controlled by a security guard. This is a little excessive for my taste, however, one can never be to secure. I live in a three bedroom three bath house and have 3 roommates.

Lenar - Is a 31 year old dutch gentleman, who is here for 6 months teaching atomic physics at the university. He speaks perfect English and has been my running buddy for the last week. I owe a lot to Lenar because he has taken it upon himself to show me Butare and make me feel at home, we have become fast friends.

Gi(Gee)- My second roommate, is from Korea and is employed by the university handling much of their accounting. He is also a nice guy, mostly keeping to himself, I have not had much interaction with him.

Israel- Our live in Rwandan or as I like to refer to him, "my man Friday". Along with a gate keeper I also have a domestic helper. Israel is in charge of cleaning, shopping and any other domestic chores we see fit to have him do. When he is not domestically helping Israel spends much of his time studying English, as he sees it as his ticket to a better life.

Me and Lenar have spent many evenings over the past week engaging Israel in conversation, both to help him out but also learn about Rwandan culture and the local language, I don't think my experience here would be as rich without Israel around.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the guard. The guard is a lush most of the time, leaving me to wonder if he is really capable of guarding anything. In Saint Vincent we would refer to him as a crazy man. In my experience however, it is better to have a friendly crazy man guarding your house because he typically has a re pore with the people who would be daring enough to scale my wall.

I have spent many hours sitting on the porch this week playing Pictionary with the guard. Meaning that, he would try to engage me in conversation speaking KinyaRwanda, the local Language. Because no one in my house besides Israel can speak this language, our conversations usually consist of hand gestures, leaving me to sit there and guess what he is trying to communicate. I would like to think he is telling me something pretty profound, however, I doubt that's the case. I know its something about the army, Israel and trousers as far as the relation, I have yet to figure that out.

***** I am trying to upload pictures but the internet connection here is less than slow, so ill keep trying and get some on this blog ASAP. ******