Creepy Crawlers

The first night I arrived at my new home in Kigali, Rwanda, I was privileged the rare sight of animals only rarely seen in the kitchen of my prior school at Moody Bible Institute, and definitely a rarity not viewed in Washington State. Low and behold, there were two large cockroaches crawling in the kitchen. One was a nice reddish tan color that Pippa (my roommate) unmercifully murdered with bug spray, and the other managed to escape her wrath by hiding behind the cupboards. Nevertheless, he peeked his head out again as I was walking barefoot in the dark. Luckily my bare foot narrowly missed squashing the poor soul. Since then, we have set up cockroach poison around the house, consisting of a natural remedy of baking soda and sugar in bottle caps. Hopefully they will taste the bittersweet concoction of death soon.

Last night I also discovered I had company sleeping with me in bed. My nights have definitely not been lonely, as I have woken up to seeing dark objects in my bed (maybe seeing things?) and then actually captured a long worm creature with hundreds of legs (sound like a centipede? Think again).

Okay, beyond the silly news. My time so far in Rwanda has been packed with overseeing the construction of our new home, learning the ropes of being executive director, continual long visits to the bank (credit cards and checks would make life so much easier here), and spending time with the boys.

The boys have grown so much in the last year it is incredible. We also have 5 new boys that have been accepted into the HFLM program since I was last here. One of the boys, Djuhudi had a very hard time on the streets and became so malnourished his home switched from the streets to the hospital for 2 months. When we first accepted Djuhudi into our program, the nurses and doctors at the hospital had given up hope on him surviving- they thought he would surely die because of how sick he was. Now, he has almost doubled in weight and is doing very well at the home. He is such a sweet boy, and is one of the largest shareholders (little Emmanuel refuses to be bought out) of holding my hand. When we go on walks to places, the little boys like to fight over who gets to hold my hand.

In other news, I am becoming a skilled moto driver (others may not agree) and have been driving all around Rwanda. It is quite handy having my own mode of transportation. Most the Rwandan’s find it quite the spectacle to see a muzungu (white person) girl driving a moto- especially when I cart large men around behind me.

We will be updating our HFLM blog (www.hopeforlifeministry.blogspot.com) soon, so check it out as well. I am yet to take pictures, but will soon do so and share them on my blog. Until next time...

p.s. We have a tally of who kills the most mosquitoes. My roommate Laila was starting to catch up with me, but tonight alone I killed 6.