Finding Love in Rwanda

            I never expected to find the love of my life in Rwanda. But sometimes life surprises you. In my case, that surprise was a four-year-old boy named Francois d’Assisi.

          
           A bit of background: I’ve never really been the kind of girl who’s dreamed about her future kids a lot. And I’ve been known to roll my eyes just the slightest bit when friends post a billion pictures of their kids on Facebook. Don’t get me wrong, I love being around kids. I’ve worked at summer camps, I’ve been babysitting since I was about 12, I enjoy a good game of hide and seek, and Disney movies are still my favorite. But at this point in my life I’m more of a “1,000 Places to See Before You Die” kind of girl and less of a “Good Housekeeping” one.

          This little boy changed everything for me. I can’t really describe him to you. There are hundreds of adorable children in my village, but he is different from any other kid I’ve ever met. He has a problem with his legs and runs like a little airplane, arms stuck at a bizarre angle so he can balance on his tiptoes. D’Assisi sometimes wears little leg braces, and he has a problem with his eyes. But he has this excitement about life that’s contagious. He loves to play the drums and dance, anywhere anytime, even when he falls down half the time because of his legs.

D'Assisi interrupting the high school dance team's practice

He'll play for HOURS on this thing. Seriously.

              My heart feels like it’s going to burst when he airplane-runs over to me, laughing and shouting “Inshuti Yanjye!” (My Friend!) every day when I come home from work. We sing songs, color, read “Goodnight Moon” every night, play Candyland, go for walks with him riding on my shoulders (which other people in the village think is totally bizarre), and he helps me take care of my growing avocado tree nursery, even though it takes him about five times as long to water them as it does for me.

Francois D'Assisi's "airplane walk"

             D’Assisi wakes up excited about each day, and he almost always has a huge goofy grin across his face. It's funny, I think he's given more love to people than other people do their entire lives. He's certainly taught me more than I can ever teach him. Maybe it’s the fact that D’Assisi has grown up with seven nun-moms, but he’s always thinking of other people first, and he almost never has tantrums or even whiney moments. He’s a three-foot wonder kid.

His Sunday best

               But I also worry so much about him, more than I have about any other person, myself included. I worry about his health. I worry about his future. I can’t bear the thought of leaving him. When I leave Peace Corps, what if I never see him again? What if he doesn’t even remember who I am? What if I come back to Rwanda and I can’t find him? 

New school uniform. I die from cuteness overload. 

         

   Right now he is so, so full of joy and curiosity about life.

            But more than anything, Francois D’Assisi has taught me to live in every single moment. A few nights ago, he was riding on top of my shoulders, in our little courtyard and we paused to look up at all the stars. It’s the rainy season here and it’s often too cloudy to see any stars at night. But that night, the Milky Way was out in all its glory, and there was an amazing lightning storm going on in the distance. We just stood there, watching the lightning flicker across the sky and feeling the gentle night breeze on our faces.

             It was one of those moments where the universe just seems to slow down, and you’re fully conscious of every sensation and every emotion. It was like a dream. And all my worries about him seemed to fall away. It was just the two of us, breathing. 

 “Ndagukunda” I whispered to him. I love you. “Nanjye, ndagukunda.” Me too, I love you. “Turi kumwe.” We are together. I can’t predict the future. Neither of us knows what the future will look like a few years down the road, or where I will be. But I know that right now, we are both here,  and the love we’ve shared is real and nothing can take that away.

D'Assisi, thank you for all that you have given me.