Our Week in Rwanda

Where to start? We have not had access to internet and phone service has been hard to come by so I haven’t been able to blog and now there is so much to say! We arrived in Gisenyi last Thursday and immediately went over to the Ndengera Foundation to meet the orphans and see the programs they have there (sewing room, card making room, bead making etc). We were immediately surrounded by kids and they grabbed our hands and followed us everywhere. I was overwhelmed by emotion as I looked down at their eager faces, covered with dirt looking up at us with bright excited smiles. They wore tattered stained clothes and many had no shoes. I wanted to burst out sobbing but held it together so that I wouldn’t scare the sweet little girls holding my hands. Simon Pierre ( the pastor of the church in Gisenyi who started the foundation) has done great things to help provide for the over 800 orphans and widows/grandmas who live in Gisenyi. They have trained the women to make bead necklaces out of paper and the older orphans make gift cards out of banana leaves to sell for income. They also give them food, sponsor kids to go to school and give them uniforms, sports equipment and school supplies. There are several women we met who have AIDs and are both caring for 10 kids (their own and others that were orphaned).Through donations the church has been able to buy them some homes to live in. The homes here are made out of mud bricks and if there is a roof it is corrugated tin. The floors are either cement or dirt, depending on how much money the people have. Most homes are about the size of a storage shed with one extra room. One widow we visited has 8 kids she has taken in and she has no roof. The 3 small rooms in her house were completely bare with only one corner containing their belongings: one dirty sleeping bag, a small pot and a few mismatched flip flops. As a team we decided to pitch in towards a new roof for her. By Thursday this week we finally finished building the playground for the nursery school at the church. It is the 1st playground ever in the town of Gisenyi. The kids had no idea how to play on the equipment, we had to demonstrate how to swing, use teeter totters etc. They still don’t want to walk on the balance beam and insist on using it as a bench. I am so proud of John for designing and overseeing the building project. He was amazing! The swing set alone is a work of art and the playhouse looks great. The team had to do most things by hand: dig out all the rocks, saw the huge wood beams, hammer nails.. we had occasional power and spent a lot of time waiting on supplies. We definitely learned that things are on a different time schedule here. The people are so helpful though. When we ordered the lumber we were a bit frustrated when after 4 hours they hadn’t delivered it yet. Little did we know they were “hand-delivering” it.. pushing 400 Lbs each of wooden beams each on a hand made wheelbarrow over pot holed filled unpaved roads for about 2 miles. Wow! We had a new appreciation for the work ethic here! I will have to write more later about our funny moments: riding on the back of motorcycle taxis through the dusty streets (all 15 of us in a line!), 21 of us packed into a small van with wild music jamming, the Game refuge tour with baboons , giraffes, zebras etc.., taking sponge baths every night without power or hot water, the meals etc.. So many good memories!