June 16 - Homestay

June 16, 2013

I returned from my homestay this morning and am glad to say that I had a wonderful experience.  The other student that went with me was Elke, she’s originally from Cameroon but has lived in New York City almost her entire life because her parents work for the United Nations – in short, she’s awesome.

My family had two daughters. Aroma is 14 and Melody is 9.  The father, Eugene, is an elder in the church – African New Life.  The mother, Rose, works with women at the church who were widows after 1994 and younger girls who were forced into prostitution as a result of not having family members around after 1994.  From what I could tell, they have been living in Uganda for the past 10-ish years (not 100% sure, but I think) and they had just recently moved back to Rwanda.  They were in the middle of building a new house when we stayed with them. When we got there Thursday night the lights in the guest room where we stayed weren’t working but within the hour they had them on for us.

The parents were so sweet.  They were very interested in American culture and loved the gifts we brought for them (UNC apparel and country ham from me, and I love NY t-shirts and mugs from Elke).

The first night before dinner we were all sitting around and talking and Rose started to tell us about her work with the women at the church.  She told us that she works with widows and former prostitutes at the church.  She was telling us about a 9-year-old girl that was forced into prostitution that she is currently working with. Nine years old. I was literally in shock.  I can’t imagine working with girls like that every day. I think it would break my heart.

The next day we briefly met a girl from Oregon (she looked around 25) who works at the center with Rose.  Eugene told us that she had been there for a year and even had a Rwandese boyfriend.  There are so many organizations and opportunities for humanitarian work and the more I think about it, the more I think I would like to take a year or two after undergrad and spend some time somewhere in Africa doing something like that.

Rose was very confused about how some (maybe most) parents don’t let their children live with them (rent-free) after they have went to college or gotten a job.  I told her that I didn’t think my parents would let me live with them full-time when I was done with college, and that I had a lot of friends whose parents felt the same way.  She didn’t really understand it and said, “If it were up to me, my girls would live with me until they were 60!” I tried to explain that it was so that the children didn’t become dependent on their parents and never move out, but I still don’t think she understands it.

At dinner the second night (Friday) Rose told me and Elke that she and her family prayed for two nice American girls and God brought us to their family.  Like the majority of Rwandans, our family was Christian and seemed very pleased when I told them I go to a Baptist church at home.

On Saturday me and Elke took the girls to Kigali City Centre (basically downtown Kigali) to go shopping and hang out.  We were surprised when the parents let both their daughters come with two American girls who didn’t know the way to town (we had to get a bus).  But, the trip was successful and we saw a cool art gallery by the Union Trade Center.  Young men were basically free-handing it and making these amazing pieces of artwork.  I even got to play the guitar for the first time – a crowd gathered to watch the muzungu who had no idea what she was going.

When we got back that afternoon, Eugene’s sister, her husband two of their children were at the house.  David, who is 23, was very interested in what we were doing here and what we were studying.  He jokingly (I think) asked us if we wanted to meet Paul Kagame while we were here and told us to hit him up.  Darlene, who is 16, was so awesome and chill.  She and Aroma are very close and we spent most of our time that night with them listening to music and watching movies and goofing off.

There was one thing that I found particularly interesting that we talked about with other students this morning and we all came to a general consensus.  The children were not spoiled materially, but the youngest one especially got away with a lot of whining and complaining that my parents would have never put up with.  A lot of students on our program had similar experiences with the children in their houses as well.

I am so glad that we got the experience of living with a Rwandan family and seeing what they live like firsthand. I was kind of surprised at how similar it was to the American lifestyle. Our family asked us to come back and have dinner with them again before we leave so hopefully that will happen sometime within the next 2 weeks.