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...