A New Home

My first home in Rwanda was Auberge la Caverne. It is a cute little guest house cached on the side of a hill overlooking the valley, 5 minutes from the center of town. The Auberge had good coffee every morning, hot water on occasion and friendly staff who worried if I got home too late. It was nice, but I had a 30-60 minute commute to work, and I was jealous of Betsy who had moved in with a Rwandan family and was thus enjoying the friendship of a few 30-something women, and the attentions of a 6 year old girl. Sure there was no hot water, or lock on the bathroom door, but the experience of living with a middle class Rwandan family was worth it, and it was incentive to go to the gym (which, incidentally, has the best hot water and water pressure in town).
This week the stars finally aligned and I moved in with a host family. One of our friends is friends with The Ambassador, who spoke with a colleague named “Hope”, who invited me to stay with herself and her family. I could stay for free if I speak English with her family, most importantly, with her boys who are 8 and 6 years old. The first night Hope and I sat on the couch talking about our families and playing with the 1 year old as the boys peeked around corners and hid from the white person (yup, that’s me). Hope kept calling them, in English, then French and finally Kinyarwanda to come out and meet me properly, but the boys were shy and contented their curiosity by peeking around the corners and racing away as soon as I caught them.
Later I took out my pictures of my family. Here is my Mom in her garden, my Dad on his sailboat, my Big Brother (he’s an engineer, and getting married in 2 weeks in Thailand), my Little Brother (this is from his graduation, isn’t he handsome?), my Little Sisters (yes, she really is tall, and the other one, she’s adopted), and this is my Littlest Brother, yes he plays football (read soccer in America).
Football! What is his name? How old is he? That’s a cool uniform! Who are his favorite teams? All of the sudden the boys had something to talk about. My real little brother is the new hero to my host little brothers. And yesterday when I got home and they were all shy again, the boys would hide in the hall, or their rooms and holler out “Alana!” and then “Jesse!” But they didn’t come out and sit with me until the football game started.