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.