Rwandan Rendezvous

August 23, 2023

Special to the Palisadian Post

I don’t recall exactly what I said to my parents after receiving my birthday gift at 8 years old, but I remember being livid as I read them my childlike riot act. I had been asking for a Game Boy for months. How could they be so cruel to get me something that barely counted as gift?

The gift in question—an envelope—was not really a present at all. When I opened the envelope, staring back at me was a picture of a young kid about my age and a letter from a Christian nonprofit called Compassion International, headquartered in Colorado.

As I sounded out the words one at a time, I learned that the boy’s name was Daniel, and that he and I were to be pen pals. Confused, I put down the letter and pulled out the last item from the envelope: an 8.5” by 11” sheet of lined paper, split in half to accommodate to Daniel my note and the Kinyarwanda (the official language of Rwanda) translation to be provided by the nonprofit.

I can’t say I was very enthused about writing that first letter. Where the heck was Rwanda anyway?

I hastily scribbled something out, slipped it into the envelope and mostly forgot about Daniel for the remainder of the summer. But in late August, a few days before I started third grade at Calvary Christian School in Pacific Palisades, an international letter addressed to me arrived.

For an 8-year-old who had never received a piece of mail before, this was a big moment. All of a sudden, someone from across the world was writing directly to me.

“Dear David … ” began the letter, and in the next few paragraphs, Daniel told me about his family (he has three sisters and two brothers), his village in the Lukomo district of Rwanda’s northern province and his favorite pastimes (shooting marbles, playing hide and seek, and group activities at church). He even listed his favorite sport as soccer, which instantly made him “cool” to a kid who lived and breathed the AYSO Region 69 All-Stars soccer program.

Over the next 10 years in the Compassion International program, Daniel and I exchanged dozens of letters (164, to be exact), slowly but steadily developing a unique yet genuine long-distance friendship.

Our experiences and upbringings were diametrically opposed, but our shared values and hobbies provided a foundation upon which our friendship grew. My parents, for their part, made a monthly donation that allowed Daniel’s family to purchase medicines, school supplies, and the occasional goat or chicken.

When Daniel turned 20 years old in 2016, he aged out of the child sponsorship program, which would no longer provide the necessary administrative and translation services to facilitate our communication with each other.

I was seriously troubled by the thought of losing touch with Daniel and—after facing a few hurdles when I reached out to the program coordinator asking for Daniel’s contact information, and with Daniel’s consent—we decided to begin our correspondence via email.

At first, his responses were slow and sporadic, but fortunately his English was sufficient that we could actually carry out a conversation. As time progressed and Daniel moved from the village of Lukomo to the capital city of Kigali to pursue better work opportunities, we moved our communication to Facebook Messenger, and in June 2020 we exchanged numbers on WhatsApp.

In 2022, when my family began planning a trip to Kenya with my grandma, I immediately wondered if it might be possible to actually meet Daniel in person. Kigali, Rwanda, was only an hour flight from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya.

I broached the subject with my family, and then with Daniel via a WhatsApp video call. Both parties seemed open to the possibility and we moved forward with the plans to allow us to finally meet.

So, in August 2023, my father, my middle brother Matthew and I boarded a RwandAir flight to Kigali. All three of us felt the significance of the opportunity we were being given and discussed the upcoming encounter with great anticipation.

We met Daniel and his brother, Jean-Pierre, at the Magnificant Café in the Nyamirambo district of the capital city. Immediately upon entering the restaurant, we were enveloped by an emotional bear hug from Daniel, 17 years in the making.

His English seemed to have improved dramatically since the last time we spoke on the phone several weeks before. Meeting him in person was surreal—we already knew so much about each other. But for the first time, our conversations included body language and uninterrupted flow due to technical issues. It was as if I was meeting a brother that had been separated from me at birth. We felt a deep connection, but also a new and unfamiliar relationship.

Over the next two days, our group (me, my father, my brother, Daniel, Jean-Pierre and his roommate) traveled around Kigali, visiting museums, eating “local” food (Rwanda pizza), and visiting Daniel’s neighborhood and tiny single-lightbulb apartment in Kigali.

It was enlightening and deeply impactful to witness Daniel’s reaction to our adventures. There were parts of the city that neither he nor his roommate had ever visited, and going to dinner at the relatively nice restaurant was clearly a special and almost uncomfortable experience for him and his siblings.

Forty-eight hours in Kigali flew by in the blink of an eye. We finished our time together riding bikes through Kigali’s beautiful eco-park, watching the sun set over the “Land of 1,000 Hills” and trading music suggestions in the car as we headed toward the airport.

And just like that, Daniel walked away to catch a motorcycle taxi home, and with him went the energy and emotions of the previous two days. I was emotionally drained—our time together had given me so much to contemplate, mostly beautiful memories but also a few more serious musings.

Had I done the right thing coming here? There were moments throughout our time together where I noticed that Daniel, normally talkative and wearing an effervescent smile, would become more subdued, particularly when we visited or dined in places that could only be afforded with a salary well beyond what was available to him in Kigali.

And what was our relationship going to look like going forward? It didn’t feel right to go back to texting and the occasional video call. I wanted to be more involved in Daniel’s life, and I wondered if he felt the same way.

The future of our relationship will only be revealed with time. But after years of letter writing, emailing and WhatsApp texting, I feel appreciative to live in an era when two kids, one from the California coast and the other from a mountain village in Rwanda, can develop a friendship and ultimately have the chance to meet in person. I’m praying this is just the beginning of our story.

And—I guess my parents actually knew what they were doing when they decided against getting me that Game Boy all those years ago.