Drama In The Jungle...

7-21-2010

Jarod here…So, in usual fashion, this week has presented its fair share of awkwardness and now drama. This story may take awhile so hang with me. Also, I want to preface this by saying that before Rwanda, I would have never in my life considered having a house lady or “umukozi”. Sarah and I had decided we didn’t think we would even need one. Well, when we arrived in Rwanda, both our perspectives changed. We quickly realized that to get any work done, you must have…well…time to work. And, time is few and far between when you have to wash clothes by hand, draw water from a well 10 minutes away, cut fire wood to attempt in building a fire to cook or boil water to drink…not to mention all the other things that Rwandans deem important, like having clean shoes (which in the dry season requires washing them every couple days), keeping the weeds pulled, washing the floors, washing dishes, etc. Also, having a house lady in Rwanda is not seen as an occupation that is looked down upon by any means. It is simply a means to an end like any other job. Also, we took it as a chance to help out a family that we knew deserved it and could use the money. Okay…continue…

As you may already know, we recently let our first house lady go to hire another one because we knew that her family could much more use the money. Also, the new house lady has done this type of work for 7 years and is very good at what she does while the old one had no idea what she was doing. She was pretty much placed at our house and told to work and we had no say in the selection. Plus the new house lady had been building herself up to us since we arrived. She would sometimes come over and tell Sarah about all the plants in the yard, what vegetables were doing well and what ones wouldn’t produce, how much she enjoyed cooking, cleaning and washing clothes, etc. She also mentioned on a few occasions that our current (at the time) house lady didn’t know all these things like she did. Needless to say, we could see that she really wanted to work and both of us really wanted her to work as well So, we let our current one go on good terms and brought on Betty. Although we had sensed a tiny hint of something mischievous about Betty, we new she was well qualified and would be an excellent worker. 8 days into the Job Betty was an all-star house lady…everyday she would teach us something new or find a way to impress us and go beyond our expectations. She found lemon grass growing nearby that Sarah had mentioned she loved but didn’t have it here in Banda. Betty quickly plucked some out of the ground nearby and before you knew it, she had cooked us probably the best tea I have ever tasted (outside of good southern sweet tea of course). She was happy, always laughing and cutting up with us. She was more of a friend than a house lady although she worked very hard each day. It wasn’t uncommon for her to be at the house from 7:30 to 8:00 that night. We gave her the option of how often she wanted to work and she said every day, all day. I told her that she must take Sundays off for church but that she could work the other days if she wanted. We also quickly raised her salary by nearly 50% in the first week because of how good she was doing and hard she was working. Plus, Betty’s 63 year old father had volunteered to watch our house every night even though we told him that wasn’t necessary. He is the most precious man.

Anyway, things were going great until a couple nights ago when we noticed some things were moved around and out of place. No big deal, we have American food and I am sure she was just curious and wanted to see all we had. Then the next night, we noticed that she tried to sneak an empty bottle of water out and we said nothing trying to give her the benefit of the doubt (oddly enough, empty bottles are a hot commodity here and if you have one every child in the village will ask you for it). I mean why would she steal from us, we already increased her salary tremendously, constantly gave her things like American food, Sarah gave her some shoes, anything that she asked for or we thought she needed. Then came yesterday. At this time Sarah was very curious and concerned about Betty stealing from us while I tried to stay optimistic (some might say that I am the definition of naïve but I say that I just always hope for the best in people until they prove me wrong).

So, yesterday we had a visit from our Peace Corps Assistant Country Director as she made her rounds on site visits. She seems pleasantly surprised to see our site and seemed very happy about the work we and the organization are doing in the community. Upon arriving back home is when things got sticky. As we walked in the house, Betty quickly picked up a rag that was lying on the table. Sarah noticed that two plastic baggies fell out and that she tried to scoot them out of site with her foot. She then put the bags under table and proceeded to tell us she found the bags in some other bags while cleaning. The problem was what was inside the bags. The bags were clearly PC medical pill bags and had our names, the medicine and dose amount typed on it. So, we called the APCD and asked if they had left some Mefloquine (malaria meds) for us. She said she hadn’t and had no idea where they came from. Also, the pills in the bags weren’t mefloquine pills so something was up. Finally Sarah pieced it together and realized she had taken some vitamin pills from the bottles and put them in bags (which was not smart to begin with because she has no idea what the pills were). So, at this point, Sarah was furious because she knew now she was stealing from us and also lying about it. So, I went to get our counterpart so we could have a talk and we could tell her effectively what we wanted through him. After much time, she finally caved and admitted to taking the pills. She said that her period pains her and thought they might help.

Ohh…what to do know? My initial reaction was okay, you are done, you can go now. We explained how disappointed we were and how tough this was for us because we loved her and wanted her to be there. Sarah explained to her that she rarely trusts people (a trait I can only imagine passed down by her father) and that she was one of the few people she really felt she could trust. Now, it would be very hard for her to trust again. After all, we would leave and Betty would be at the house all day with our stuff. She could take anything at anytime. But, stealing and lying is just unacceptable. She apologized many times and we could see from the look on her face that she was very ashamed of herself especially when she found out how disappointed Sarah was. After much scorning and what I can only imagine for her was humiliation it got even worse for Betty. We called her father in to the house so that he could know what was happening. Our counterpart explained the whole ordeal to him and you could see the disappointment come over his face. Then her father explained how disappointed he was, how nice of people we are to come here and work, we greet everyone, have fun with everyone and to know that his daughter would steal was unacceptable. Then it got weird. Her father insisted that she, in traditional Rwandan history, kneel before each of us and apologize. We told our counterpart that it was unnecessary and would be a little weird but that we wanted to be sensitive to Rwandan culture and if the father insisted, we would allow it. So, Betty kneeled before us and apologized sincerely with tears in her eyes. This whole thing was especially hard on Sarah because she absolutely loved Betty and Sarah was devastated. At one time she had to leave the room because she couldn’t stop crying.

Betty proceeded to ask our forgiveness and said she wanted to continue to work for us and that she deserved a punishment. After much thought, and probably against everything a normal couple would do, we decided to let her stay after reducing her salary back down to what it started at with the possibility to grow once we feel we can trust her again. We really feel and hope this was a changing moment for Betty and that she will never try something like that again on us. Call us stupid, naïve, gullible or just plain foolish but we wanted to give her another chance. Besides that is what forgiveness is all about.

On another note, while Sarah was feeling concerned that Betty was stealing from us, that same morning, before all this happened, she opened up the Bible to the passage she was scheduled to read for the day. It was the passage where Peter asked Jesus how often you should forgive a person who sins against you…7 times he asked, thinking he was already going beyond the norm and was being gracious…to which Jesus replies no, 70 X 7 times. So, this decision to keep her just seemed right. We all deserve another chance sometimes right? Nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes…big or small.

Anyway, sorry that story was so long but thought you might enjoy it. We will continue to keep you updated on the status of Betty throughout our two years of service. Be blessed!

The Rings