Kigali and Rwanda are both beautiful, but there are certain sacrifices you make living here.
In Rwanda, the word for water, amazi, was one of the first Kinyarwanda words I learned.
Running water here is inconsistent. In my homestay, I would often turn on the faucet to be met with a choking, gurgling sound, but no water.
And even if the running water is consistently working, it’s never safe to drink. The most we can do with it is wash our hands or brush our teeth. But never drink.
The ease of clean drinking water is one of those luxuries we don’t even think about in the United States and also one that I didn’t think would be that big of a deal here. There would surely be bigger things to deal with. Having to buy water every day wasn’t one of them.
And in the beginning, at my homestay, I wasn’t even responsible for buying water, so I would always come home to a big clean jug.
Now that I’ve moved out of my homestay into a house with three roommates, I’ve realized just how difficult a usually simple thing has ?become.
Imagine the typical, four-person house at IU. In such a place, you might argue about who left the empty milk jug in the fridge or who forgot to buy toilet paper.
Now imagine four college students sharing a house in Rwanda, and now we have to get up from the couch and walk up the hill because we want a drink of water and no one remembered to buy it.
We’re college students, after all. It’s a struggle.
Kigali has many resources for the typical Western foreign visitor wanting a bit of the comforts of home. There are coffee shops, what I call “Muzungu central,” because they’re usually packed with white people on their Mac computers, using the Wi-Fi and pretending they’re at Starbucks.
There’s a plethora of Muzungu coffee shops, plus a Chipotle-style Mexican restaurant and a bagel delivery service. But the one thing Rwanda never has is clean tap water.
Like many aspects of living in Rwanda, I’ve found that I can adapt to things I didn’t think I could.
Not only that, but I don’t feel like I’m making personal sacrifices on these things. They’ve just become part of everyday life.
When Rwandans today ask me what the differences are between America and Rwanda, sometimes I can’t even think of anything, at least not anything of great importance.
I’ve become part of Rwandan culture now. I almost consider myself Rwandese.
I’m just very much aware of what a blessing it is to have clean water constantly at your disposal. In retrospect, my whole water situation in general is much better than it could be.
Some women, especially in rural areas, have to walk miles to the nearest tap to carry clean water jugs back on their heads. It takes up most of the day and most of their energy.
I can handle drinking cooled boiled water that tastes like charcoal.
I can handle the runs to the store at 10 p.m. or carrying a five-liter jug on the bus with seven water bottles stuffed in my backpack.
But when I get home, the first thing I’m going to do is stick my head under the faucet and take a nice huge gulp of clean water, knowing just how amazing that actually is.
