My Host Family

Host families are given to almost every single Peace Corps trainee during their training period.  In most cases, the trainee lives with the family for the three month training period.  Our training group is not living with our host families; instead, we are living in group houses with LCFs (language coordinator and facilitators, which is a Rwandan that speaks fluent English).  The reason for group houses instead of living with host families is largely due to the logistics of housing a huge training group living with seventy different families. 

Typically, we go to our host families twice a week for dinner.  If there are any family events (dowry ceremonies, weddings), we usually attend these too.  Most of the trainees have been to their host family’s church and visited distant host family relatives.

The purpose of having a host family is to adjust the trainees to the family life, culture, cooking, and language of Rwanda.  The Peace Corps believes that the best way for trainees to learn and adjust is through complete immersion.  The family is the cornerstone of this cultural training. 

My host dad, Alexis, is a principal for an elementary school.  This elementary school also hosts a Protestant mass on Sundays, and holds my dad’s three cows and multiple rabbits.  Typically, it takes about an hour to walk from his house to the school.  Every day, he walks one hour up and down various hills to go to school, and then walks one hour back to home.  This doesn’t include walks into town or to the markets.  I estimated that Alexis walks at least seven miles per day.  Furthermore, Alexis’s daughters walk almost daily to the school to milk the cows, and return to the house holding two five-gallon containers of milk for the entire walk back.  Impressive.

Alexis has a wife, Soranje, who takes care of the children and house.  Together they have three boys (Marcel, Billy and Viki) and three girls (Esperanz, Reyez, and Bela).  Six children is a lot in post-genocide Rwanda, but not an unusual number of children. 

The two pictures are of me with Soranje and Alexis at a wedding, and me with Alexis and his cows at his school.  I milked the cows rather unsuccessfully, but it was a great time.  Enjoy.