My Farm Family

I feel that it’s only appropriate that this blog is written on family. I have not been feeling well these past 2 weeks. Last night, I decided to go to sleep at 6…so then I woke up at 2…at lease I got 8 hours of sleep! At first I tried to go back to sleep, but I just laid there. After a little while I got up and brought my laptop to bed. I got to talk to my sister, both my parents, my brother (for the first time since coming to Rwanda!), and my uncle Marvin! It felt so great to talk to family and hear the tales from home. My uncle Marvin told me that many people in my family were over to his house last Sunday for father’s day…this made me really miss everyone and wishing I was there. I’ve been thinking lots about family recently…mine at home and the different ones that I belong to here.

As I wrote in earlier blogs, family is defined differently here than I studied in school. It seems that everyone and anyone can be family. In the Agahozo Shalom family I find myself in 2 families…Family 7 and the farm worker family. I find myself pulled between my 2 families many of the times. I wish I had lots of time to spend with each. I love them both so much! The family that I want to talk about in this blog is my farm family.

I didn’t realize how much I was a part of this family until a couple of weeks ago when 2 brothers who work on the farm had a sister that died. When it was time for the funeral, Solomon couldn’t find me so I missed it…I was very upset that I missed the funeral. I asked Solomon what I should do since I was not at the funeral and what’s the custom here to honor the family. I told Solomon about the Jewish custom of sitting shiva for a week and honoring them by going to their house. Solomon explained that there’s not the time to sit that long because maybe of the people are very poor and need to return to work as soon as possible. He explained that its customary to visit the family one time. It can be the day of the funeral or in one month. It’s just important to pay your respects. You wish the family patients in getting through their pain…they also drink LOTS of banana beer. Solomon suggested for me to buy the family banana beer and invite over all the workers. He also advised me to get a gift for the mother to help her be patient….we both went to Rubona and bought some fabric for her to make into a skirt.

The house of the family is right across from the village. We arrived and everyone sat around drinking the beer. Solomon kept insisting that I give the gift to the mother when everyone was there. I told him that I wanted to wait until it was private but I finally gave into his insisting (he said that it’s important for everyone to see their boss doing good things…I didn’t realize until this have much everyone looks to me as the big boss…more on this later). I gave a speech (in true Rwandan fashion) and then presented the gift. The mother was very grateful and I have enjoyed to get to know her. This past week the worker whose sister died invited Solomon and I over again because his father-in-law was visiting (they are expecting a baby this week!)
5 days ago the wife of the man who works with the chickens had a baby. I was so excited today when I got to go over and visit!