"for when I am weak, then I am strong"

[note: the following is from September 13th....so much more on the way...who knows when...because the internet is lamesauce with a side of grossness :( I promise I'm writing emails back to everyone who's emailed me; it just might be a matter of time before you actually get them. For now, enjoy este!)

Picture this: it’s almost 8:00 PM, and I’m standing in the middle of a dirt road with a tumor-of-a-book bag on my back and a flashlight-cell-phone (no really, it has a built-in flashlight) in my hand… and the taxi driver taking me home from school is bounding over a grassy knoll to this random house that he insists is mine, until he comes bounding back—“no, it is not yours”—and by this point, I’m looking up at the stars, in awe of how lost I am, and it hits me like a frying pan to the face:

I am in way over my head here.

Other frying-pan moments: Staring down a bucket of lukewarm water this morning trying to assess how exactly to shower with it (ended up washing my hair upside down, face in bucket, so graceful)...Realizing how heartbreaking my studies will be this semester (which I realized when I saw a Cornell sweatshirt among the ‘remains’ at the Genocide Memorial in Kigali and pictured my brother there)… And everything about my first 36 hours with my new homestay family.

Those 36 hours started at 5:45 on a Sunday morning, when I was awakened by some intense knocking on my bedroom door. Enter my new little brothers, Kenny and Kayvon, two of the most adorable children I have ever, ever seen. Seriously, if I upload any pictures on this puppy, the first will most definitely be of Kayvon, age 4—i.e. the cutest 4-year old in the entirety of Rwanda, Africa, the whole world even??? Anyway, they both come rushing in, waking me up with hugs and kisses, and I’m like, “Oh man, I don’t even mind that the sun isn’t up yet, because your faces are now the sunshine of my life!”

Ohhhhh how naïve I was…

 By 8:00 AM, my bed was broken, feathers and foam from my pillow were everywhere, my Purell hand-sanitizing wipes were stuffed in strange pockets around the house, my suitcase was in absolute shambles, furniture was disassembled, newspaper was floating around the room, numbers 1-68 were penciled on my wall, and Kayvon was crying on my floor. No, we were not attacked by a tornado, terrorists or a Tyrannosaurus Rex…those two little cuties are just amazingly capable of invading personal space, and wildly incapable of listening to “No, that is not a good idea.” This may be largely because they speak little to no English, and I speak little to no French… I spent the greater part of the day trying to reason with them in Spanish (which I optimistically said in a French accent hoping they’d catch on) but to no avail. I can honestly say I’ve never felt so frustrated, alone, disrespected and ironically—adored in my life. It was so bipolar: one second I would be in a panic, trying to discipline these kids so that they would hand over my stuff, and then Kenny would be curled up on my lap and Keyvon would be petting my face and playing with my hair. It sort of killed me.

I think I scared my SIT group this morning when I unloaded about the baby-brother catastrophe, because leaving school tonight, I had a hefty handful of SIT-ers send me off with “Stay strong!” “You got this!” and “Text us and we’ll come get you!” Granted, I might take them up on those offers of rescue…but to be fair, there were some bright moments in all the insanity of my new fam. Like when my not-obnoxious brother, 16-year old Morris, was sitting with me on my newly-repaired bed going through my iTunes, and when he started playing “I Like to Move It” from the Madagascar soundtrack (yes, that’s in my iTunes) Kenny/Kayvon busted some sweet moves that made me die—with laughter! Also, they insisted we all watch the telenovela “Ciudad con el Angel,” which was dubbed over in English…Listen, I have never seen anything so funny…I’m pretty sure all of the guys were dubbed over by the same actor, who sounded like Christian Bale’s Batman, and the actual dialogue….was priceless. But my brothers took it pretty seriously—Kenny calls it “vedy good”—so I had to hold in all my laughter…until I straight-up exploded with cough-laughs at certain parts. So much fun. Lastly, my two little brothers (plus Rwandans in general) do the most wonderful thing…instead of nodding when they want to gesture “yes,” they raise their eyebrows… Sort of like a quick “oh hey, I see you ovah dere” eyebrow flick, and it is too precious. It is vedy good.

Still, “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Not gonna lie, it’d be swell if I mastered bucket showers and crazy children and public African transportation. But I think it’s still sweet that everything can go amazingly wrong and still be a good gift from God. I can mess up everything and still, his grace is sufficient. And who knows? If I didn’t feel so weak, would I really know God’s strength? If I wasn’t completely in over my head, would I really know what it feels like to have a Savior? To be rescued from deep waters and set on a solid rock?

I think being stripped of so much—all security, normality, self-sufficiency— has shown me that really, I only need one thing. Jesus Christ. And for that, I love Africa.

Maria.