Day 17, Part 2: Last Look

At the gate of the Kigali Airport, I took one last photo through the open window of the lights of Kigali below. For a city so densely populated, there is very little light; homes and lives are swallowed up by heavy, thick night, and all that remains are a few pinpricks of electricity in a warm and breathing sea.

When we boarded the plane, Rwanda was lost behind and beneath us, invisible and small and dark and needy and loved.

Day 17, Part 1: Goodbyes and Gifts

Our last day of teaching at the Learning Center was less about teaching and more about celebrating. There was some dancing, there was some speech-giving, and then there were lots of pictures.


And suddenly, our time in Rwanda was coming to a close. But one more thing to do - give out the rest of the dolls. So we went to the Women for Women compound, to give dolls to the babies of the women in the program. Back at home, the dolls looked like this:

But in the hands of women and babies, the dolls looked more like this:

They were much more alive. I do not doubt that they will be loved and treasured and cherished for years to come.

Lovely L. had also given us a group of hand-knitted baby hats, which we distributed with pride and which were received with gratefulness.
Then, hands and hearts empty, we returned to the orphanage and spent our remaining hours reflecting on our time and zipping up our suitcases, full now of gifts and souvenirs.

Day 16: Students and Orphans

When we returned to Kigali we had to move all of our things to the SOS Orphanage boarding house about a half mile on unmarked roads away. We approached the new living arrangements with trepidation, but were pleasantly surprised to find clean, quiet, spacious rooms. Shared bathrooms were the only downside, but our group was growing smaller by the day so it wasn't an issue.


We taught in the morning - our second-to-last-class - and gave the students a set of soccer and basketballs.


Then we had the afternoon free. M and I decided it was time to hand out the dolls that a group of students at my school, some other volunteers, and I had made. Since we were staying at an orphanage, we figured it would be a good place to start....




We also gave the kids a bunch of beanie babies (thanks M.M.!)... but over all these children seemed pretty happy, well-adjusted, and taken care of.

We spent he rest of the evening packing and getting ready to leave the next night...

Day 15: Relaxing in Akagera

We had scheduled a boat ride on the lake - hippos and crocodiles to be seen - but M and I decided against it. The adventure of the day before, and the accumulation of early mornings and late nights and so many experiences made us need a day off. So we slept in. And, yes, we even used the pool.

In fact, the wildlife came to us...

And these beautiful blue birds, with iridescent feathers, that I could never quite capture with my camera.

And then our drive back to Kigali - my last glimpse of remote and rural Rwanda - the distinctive red dust and warm afternoon light and green banana trees and bright people providing all the subject material I could ever need for a beautiful photo.

Day 14: The Akagera Safari

We were up exceptionally early to do the full-day safari.
The breakfast was pleasant but early. We got shown the baboons that live around the lodge (during the genocide, the lodge was abandoned and the baboons took over... now they are sometimes confused as to who lives inside and who lives outside).

Then, in the SUVs we had driven from Kigali, we picked up a registered guide and hit the bumpy, dusty, rutted road. 4 people to a car, plus driver and guide - meaning two in the way back.

Within the first ten minutes, we saw 2 warthogs

a baboon

two monkeys

and even a hippo.


The next six hours were somewhat less exciting. Although we did get attacked by horseflies, which was the most entertaining/exhausting part of the day.
and we found some zebra...
a few antelope...
and even a couple of giraffes!
Our safari took us all the way to the Ugandan border, on which we saw some amazing cows. They all have these exceptionally huge and majestic-looking horns.

And even in the farthest reaches of wilderness, at the edge of the national park itself, in the driest and most barren land, you can't escape the reality of humanity in Rwanda; people are the country, and no matter how many circles you drive in across empty savanna, people are walking and living and somehow surviving in every corner and empty stretch.

Day 13: Rwamagana to Akagera

We started out teaching as usual,




then hit the road early on, heading north to Rwamagana where we visited a clinic. As it was a national holiday, the clinic was empty. But the facilities - clean, sparse, understocked - were a source of pride for the community.

We drove for hours, continuing to the northeast corner of Rwanda: Akagera National Park. The leaves on the banana trees lining the road were red with dust. Our two-day safari was about to begin. We arrived just before sunset, when the red sun began to drop over Lake Ihema.

Day 12: Ubuntu Edmonton

We spent the morning teaching, then scooted off to visit a project developed by a Canadian woman, Nicole Pageau, from Edmonton. She came to Rwanda, adopted a village in Kigali, settled down, and created a haven of relative health and happiness around her. Her energy, vitality, and love of the people around her is outstanding - a true hero.
Visit her Ubuntu Edmonton website to learn more.
Every month there are food staple handouts for the families in the area. The women have learned to sew and are developing a line of pajamas. They also have just started making beautiful cards.
Beautifully beaded pens are made by young women. A school for mechanics has just started in a tent off of the main building.

Massage and counseling services are also available for residents of the area, massage being very popular for women to relax mind and body.

We also visited the daycare center, a converted chicken coop that, sadly, does not have capacity for all the children of the village. (We came during nap time and riled the kids up. They were so excited to have visitors!)

Recognizing the need to expand, new land has been bought and a new community center, complete with daycare program, mechanical and electrical school, and health clinic is in the works. Money is, of course, the issue.

Near the new property where construction is beginning, young Canadian volunteers have been organizing a summer camp. The children of the camp - and the children in the daycare - were the happiest, most well-taken-care-of children we saw on the entire trip. The enthusiasm and love which Nicole and her volunteers exude is infectious, and these children are the grateful recipients.

But a block from the current base of the operation, in the middle of the village, is a prison. Pink-outfitted prisoners watched casually through the chain-link fence as we drove by. There was a very obvious hole in the fence. Nicole explained that prisoners often left the confines without an issue before returning at night.

Also an inspiration at the Ubuntu Edmonton project was an older, retired woman who currently spends her years traveling to places like India, Vietnam, and of course Rwanda to work on different projects. She was lithe and energetic - simply bouncing into the room. She does long 1000+ km walks to raise money for her causes. In Rwanda, they call her "Madame Bisou" because to every child she encountered she would give a kiss, or often two.
Later that evening, our group went out to dinner and we brought the Canadian women with us. The restaurant was called "Heaven" and there was Jack Johnson playing the background. The soft lights of Kigali spread out below us.

Day 11, Part 3: Naming Cows

This is the road we drove on for hours.
This is the type of banana grove we passed by.
These are the children who ran behind us.
These are the people who stopped to stare.

This is the old woman who now has a cow for her family.

This is her family.These are her two granddaughters.

This is their community.These are the hidden children.
But, brightly smiling, they stand out to me amongst the banana leaves.

Day 11, Part 2: Giving Goats

The Canadians raised the money to donate a bunch of goats to a group of women. The goats were dusty and plump. The children were dusty and ragged.



The shirt of the girl in the green reads: "Give Children Opportunities for Leadership Potential."
I wasn't sure if it was ironic or sincere. Or maybe a bit of both.

Day 11, Part 1: Rwanda's Women for Women

We were tired from our gorilla adventure, it's true, but we pushed on - teaching again in the morning.
Then, we had some touring to do. First we visited Peace Ruzage (of Women for Women International). Her home is currently the site of a new project. Starting out as an informal neighborhood gathering and support group, the program has grown in size and in importance. Now, women come to her veranda to learn crafts, take classes, and find solace.

Postponement

Well.. the last few days have involved a failed safari, too much schlepping, two new places to stay, and a lack of internet service.
Our current place of our residence - an orphanage, no less - is devoid of internet.
So, I am postponing any more posts until I return to Santa Barbara and have a chance to sit down at my computer with its trusty Ethernet connection, take a deep sigh, and process the information, photos, and experiences that I've had.

Until then - remember Rwanda!

The Rwandan Dream?

(sorry for the bad photo quality... pollution + dust + dirty car window = foggy picture)

Day 10, Part 3: Projects in Ruhengeri

When we reached the jeeps at the bottom of the hike after seeing the gorillas, we were met with a village destitute and dirty. The children peeked. The men and women stared. The guards stood stoically around us.
We said goodbye to the two British women who were going all the way back to Kigali in order to catch a plane, and then we loaded up and drove away from that tired town.


Our first stop was a boarding school for deaf children. A study had shown a high rate of deafness in the area, often as a result of meningitis, and deaf children were considered worthless and mistreated. The new school included a classroom, a building with beds, and a dirt-floored latrine. We were able to donate school supplies and sports balls to the teachers.


The neighborhood children watched with solemn curiosity.

Then we drove to the compound of the Fair Children Youth Organization. We met five beautiful young women who are orphans of genocide and who are between 15 and 22 years in age. They have formed informal orphan-headed households, and do the best they can to make ends meet. At the compound, which is stretched for funding, they are beginning to learn English.

We drove back to Kigali enthralled by our encounter with the mountain gorillas but also sobered by our experiences in the mist-covered hills of the north.

Day 10, Part 1: In the Northern Heights

We were up at the crack of dawn (actually, before dawn... no birds were singing yet), dressed in our warm Patagonia gear, ready to eat a quick breakfast and experience the gorillas.

First we drove, in the cold grey morning, to the meeting place of gorilla tourists.
Then we were divvied up into gorilla groups - 8 people per group, 7 groups total, with 1 guide, 2 porters, and 2 soldiers per group. We ended up in the "shorter trek" group (not by choice, just by chance). After waiting for our guide to verify the position of our gorilla family with the trackers who spent the night in the mountains, we hopped into cars again and rode for 30 minutes into a remote village area.
We got out of the cars and began the upward trek. The pictures that follow are the people and places we met and saw on our way up to the forest.



These people were destitute subsistence farmers. The fertile land was terraced all the way up to the stone wall separating the forest from the farmland. The air was cold, the huts were mud, and the children were bright and friendly. But they were very poor.

Finally, pausing for breath in the high altitude, we reached the outer part of the forest. The stone wall sliced the wild from the cultivated. We left the people - and the many, many children - behind.

Day 9: Visits and Drive-bys

After teaching in the morning, we all ate a big lunch, grabbed our bags, and loaded into a bus for the drive to Ruhengeri to see the gorillas.
But first, we visited two organizations in Kigali.
Our first stop was the WE-ACTX / Manos de Madres co-op. It is comprised of women who have learned to sew beautiful, brightly-patterned bags of all shapes and sizes. Our group snapped up many of their items...

Check out their website: www.manosdemadres.org

Next, we stopped by Cards from Africa. The organization employs mainly genocide orphans to make hand-made greeting, holiday, and other cards. They use recycled paper and natural dyes to make their own papers.
They have really beautiful papers in their store room of all different colors.
And they have a large selection of beautiful cards.

Their website is: www.cardsfromafrica.com

We hopped back into the bus and were off to Ruhengeri, a 2-hour drive through the most stunningly lush and mountainous region of Rwanda. It was intensely frustrating to be driving past thrilling vistas too fast to take proper pictures. All the ones I have came out blurred, and all the people were just flashes of color... I think you just have to come here to appreciate the landscape and the people.

For instance, in this one the house is in focus... but everything else is blurred (and it's through a window so it has a sort of fog in it). My apologies...

Gorilla trekking...

We leave for Ruhengeri this afternoon, spending the night at a little hotel before getting up early to hike up in the mountains to see the gorillas.

Blogging will resume Wednesday! Stay tuned for LOTS of pictures.

Day 8, Part 2: Gifts of Renewal

They are beautiful children.
They live in a village of orphan-headed households in the hills outside Kigali. The houses, built by SURF, have turquoise-colored walls inside and rust-red stucco outside. The view is serene and the gardens are pleasant.
Our group met the head of the village, an orphan himself, in his house as all the children crowded up to the windows and at the door.

They are all orphans, many from AIDS. They are lucky, though; they have a home, a cow, and each other. Two girls in particular had attached babies to their hips.

We came to them to hear their stories, and also to give them gifts, which they wholly deserved. The Canadians brought frisbees; we brought soccer balls and volleyballs (thanks D!) and beanie babies (thanks M.M.!) The gift distribution was hectic, as everyone crowded around.
Then, we all got to playing.

Three heads-of-house joined us, as did an old friend; the girl on the far right, an orphan, survived with the others but has not received a house. Instead, she moves from relative to relative, taking housekeeping jobs that pay about $1/day. She has completed only 2nd grade. For most of these men and women, this is the standard situation - getting tossed around house to house, taking menial labor jobs, and never having a chance for education. They want to start a cassava flour business, but they don't have the capital to begin. They want to attend school, but they don't have the fees and they must put food on the table. Meanwhile, the land of their mothers and fathers is too dangerous for them to return to and lies fallow.

It was wonderful to see these young adults - who have given up their childhood to care for others, and who work hard each day to ensure the continuing security of their adopted siblings - having a chance to laugh and play. For a few hours, they didn't have to be parents.
As we walked back to the vans, the female head of house slipped her arm around my waist. The children ran along down the rutted road beside us. "Murabeyho!" (Goodbye) I kept repeating; they said "Bye bye!"
I do not know Kinyarwanda, but I know what they meant in their smiles, and that is why I smiled along with them.

Day 8, Part 1: Reminders

The genocide museum in Kigali seems out of place amongst the bustle of a Sunday-morning city. Set slightly below the main dirt road, it offers a cool blue fountain and serene landscaping with a clean, modern, air-conditioned building.
The museum documents Rwanda's history - before, during, and after the genocide - and also has exhibits on many of the other recent genocides in human history (the Holocaust, Cambodia, Namibia, and Serbia, to name a few).
There were videos and photos and descriptions. There was cool silence, broken only by a woman crying.
But one cannot fail to notice - indeed, one is supposed to notice - the messiness of genocide and its patterns. Rwanda in 1994 was not an isolated incident. There are precursors and indicators to genocide. And then we see that genocide is both a modern invention (the word, its politics) and an ancient ideal (ethnic cleansing, tribalism).
One leaves the museum subdued and pensive, disappointed in humankind perhaps. But also confronted with the vivacious realities of Kigali, and the exceptional resilience of people.

Day 7: Saturdays in Kigali

Today was a decompression day.
We spent the morning teaching - class sizes were small and there was a relaxed familiarity in the way we worked with one another.


After lunch, we all climbed into the vans and spent a subdued hour visiting the memorial to the Belgian UN soldiers who were attacked and died in Kigali. The grave stones are tall obelisk-like columns. Flowers are strung through the series of horizontal clefts that mark the age of the victims.
Inside the bullet-pocked building, a small and thoughtful museum on the history of world genocide and Rwanda's genocide was laid out.
The thoughtful, straightforward display was meaningful, and in this case, my pictures speak louder than words:

Day 6, Part 2: For Love of Country

The Rwandan countryside is so green and lush and beautiful, with its terraced hillsides and banana trees and patchwork farm plots, that it is difficult to imagine horrors occurring here. That ironic juxtaposition - the beautiful and the atrocious, the peaceful and the brutal, the vivacity now and the death then - would continue to impress itself upon me throughout the day. It is difficult to see genocide in the faces of laughing children who run along with the car, yelling and waving. But it exists in the color purple, in memorial signs, in scars both visible and ragged within.
And yet.

As the day progressed, we visited another widow's home. Her two sons also received the gift of a soccer ball to replace their own handmade one.

Next, we approached the most rural village yet. Children sat in front of their houses, watching the world go by (as it rarely did on this dirt road).
As soon as we clambered out of the cars, the seemingly empty road became filled with people; young men watched from a distance as children, unendingly curious, came to play. We looked at the house of a young woman met her sisters; then, the fun of picture-taking began.



Finally, we donated a soccer ball... this time to a girl. We were thrilled, and so was she. Her name was Louise.

It is an honor to give joy.

Day 6, Part 1: Rwanda as a People

We started out on the long drive to Butare, in the southern region of Rwanda. Everywhere along the road, women and men and children walk. They carry, with perfect posture, yellow jugs of water or bundles of bamboo or sacks of grain on their heads. They seem at ease.
We stopped once at a bustling market in a busy village. But we never made it to the market itself... instead, we became objects of attraction. With careful gesturing and reassuring smiles, I was able to take a picture of this local woman. She is carrying two babies: 1 in front and 1 in back.
The market was filled with chickens, and some of the people were carrying them. I surreptitiously snapped a shot of this boy; another woman in our group was mobbed as soon as she started taking photos, and I just wanted the natural scene. For a while, we stood on the side of the road and faced a sea of stares - until a local policeman asked us to step farther into the market, as we were becoming a traffic hazard. All around me, bright eyes of all ages gazed down. I was intimidated, but never threatened. I was a curiosity. It was too difficult to take pictures; but it was the most interesting sensation, as I turned around to greet each face with equal gravity.
As we clambered back into the vans, this boy ran to keep up with us.
Here is a picture through the car window of the remaining crowd as we departed. The rest had returned, reluctantly, to their shopping.
Our next stop was a small village in which we saw the rehabilitated house of a widow. Crowds began to gather, first of children...

And then of adults, peering in through the bushes
at this widow's house and the strange white people who had come to visit her. In order to make ends meet, she brews banana beer.
In her back yard, everyone gathered to see the spectacle as we distributed 2 soccer balls to the widow's 4 sons.

This is the home-made ball they had been using...With our first gift complete, we hopped into the vans with the smiles of the children and the widow still flashing in our hearts.