Hospitality...Rwandan style

Allow me to paint a little picture for you.  It's about three o'clock in the afternoon and Benjamin just woke up from a nap that, in my opinion, was way to short!  I hear a knock on the door and take a deep breath.  I never know what or who I am going to find when I go to the door or the gate of our compound.  Sometimes I find a neighbor who has come to ask for help...again.  Sometimes I find a little old man carrying a dirty sack, collecting whatever anyone is willing to give him.  Sometimes I find a familiar friend stopping in to say hi and chat.  More often than not, I find a little, or big, group of children who want to come play at Mama Benjamin's house (everyone here calls me Mama Benjamin).  This particular day I find a couple from our church who have come to visit.  They are a welcome surprise and I quickly extend the Rwandan greeting of a hug followed by touching our cheeks together, right side, left side, right again.  I ask them to come in and as they do, they give me a large bag filled with four beautiful pineapples!  We make small talk for a bit and I try to call Appolinaire, who has gone over to the new house we are building, to let him know we have guests.  Of course his phone is not working and I am out of prepaid phone minutes so I have to get creative and keep the visitors entertained until I can send our worker, Oliver, over the neighbor's house to tell my son, Ivan, to go tell Daddy (all of this done only in Kinyarwanda, of course).  After that, I quickly send Oliver to a nearby iduka (small shop) to buy some fanta (soda) for our guests.
Visiting is very important in Rwandan culture.  It is an extremely relational culture and visiting is seen as a sign of caring or loving someone.  It is quite different from the American culture that I was used to and I had to quickly become accustomed to this new way.  Visiting is typically not something that is planned ahead of time, it usually just happens and you drop whatever you are doing and visit with those who have come to your door.  Sometimes visitors come and stay.  I am learning how to try to be as prepared for this as possible.  The fun part is that sometimes they come and stay and don't even tell you how long they will stay (this is usually only true of those who come from a distance, not neighbors).  I try to guess by whether or not they have a bag with them and what size bag, but that is hard to judge because sometimes they come with very few clothes and just wash them while they are here.  And I have been told by my husband that it is not appropriate to ask how long they will stay so they just stay and we adjust what is needed to make them comfortable until they decide they have stayed long enough, usually not much more than the weekend or two to three days.  This is what I call hospitality, Rwandan style :)  It means being flexible, opening my home, feeding lots of people, attempting to hold conversation in another language, and serving tea...lots of tea!
This day our visitors from the church stay and chat for awhile and finally, just before dark, we escort them part of the way to the taxi station.  Escorting, is also a big thing here.  You rarely just say goodbye at the door.  It is expected that you will walk at least part of the way to whereever the person/people are going, whether to a nearby house or to the taxi station.  Sometimes you are even expected to give the person the money they need to get home, though I have found this to be sort of an unspoken rule.  After our visitors leave we sit on the porch for  few minutes as a family just taking in the cool evening air.  Soon the gate opens and reveals some neighbors who have come to visit.   And soon after that some other neighbors join the "party".  I quickly fall into my role as hostess and go to the kitchen to make tea.  Finding that we have no hot water in the thermos (we try to keep it full exactly for this reason) I start heating water right away.  Benjamin is not happy and wants to be held so he follows me around the kitchen whining.  He tries to sit on the little bar between the table legs and fallsbackwards, hitting his head on the cement floor.  Can I just say how much I don't like having a toddler and cement floors!  So now I am holding my crying boy and pouring hot tea at the same time (I don't recommend that) and the electricity goes out, which it often does.  At this point I start to laugh because it is just getting kind of funny and I know that if I don't laugh I might start to cry.  We scramble around trying to find some candles so that our visitors don't continue to awkwardly sit in the dark. 
I have to say, it turned out to be a fine evening after all of that and we enjoyed a nice visit.  God is constantly teaching me how to be a gracious and flexible host and I am so glad that people sense they are welcome in our home.  My prayer is that our home will always be open and always be a blessing to all who enter!