Hello my Family, Friends, Students, and Donors!!!!
Hope you all are doing wonderfully!!! Things are going incredible here. I am having the time of my life and really trying to make the most of my time here. Hardly a day goes by that something crazy, incredible, exciting, shocking doesn’t happen. I feel so lucky to be here, and am so grateful for these experiences and for meeting these people. I really do feel like the luckiest girl in the world, and that I quite literally have the world in my hands.
I wish I could update this more, but the internet is really horrible. So I have had an absolutely incredible/indescribable (but I am going to try) week. I had some neat service experiences, followed by a weekend trip to Kigali, Rwanda. Because of time, I am only going to give the update on our trip to Rwanda…
So Lugazi’s Town Council set us up with a man named Richard to show us around Kigali and sort of “host us”. Richard is the general secretary of this national committee over all Rwandan Town councils called RALGA. He is a pretty big deal in Kigali, but dropped everything to help us, and was the one of the nicest men I have ever met.
So, here is what our trip entailed…
Day 1: So the bus rides to and from Rwanda were pretty hysterical. It takes around 8-14 hours to drive to Rwanda. So when we finally got on the bus and were driving for about 3 hours, the clutch decides not to work. And so we sat in the middle of nowhere Africa while all the men on the bus tried to get the clutch to work. They ended up tying banana fiber around a part, and wala..it was fixed. Scary? Haha…uhhh YEAH. We made it to Rwanda safely, and pretty much Rwanda is the most beautiful country I have ever seen. I didn’t anticipate it being so beautiful and different from Uganda. When we reached the bus station, Richard picked us up and took us to dinner (where we waited about 2 hours for our dinner:) and then went to our hotel.
The second day we had breakfast at the hotel, then Richard picked us up and drove us around town to see the city—When I think of Rwanda, I did not think of what we saw . Because of the events of the genocide, I was expecting it to be in worse conditions than Uganda… and it was quite the opposite..it was really beautiful, clean, organized, and I almost felt like I was in America. It was surprisingly really developed. Then Richard took us to Kigali Genocide Memorial Site, where tens of thousands of bodies are buried in mass graves on a hill overlooking the city. They bought a bouquet for us to place on one of the mass grave tombs, and had a Tutsi lady by the name of Beatrice show us around. Beatrice survived the Genocide. When we asked if she was Hutu or Tutsi..she responded “I am Rwandan”. They don’t talk about their race anymore in this country. . She also told us how bodies are still being turned up weekly.. and that almost every week they find new bodies in latrines, and they add them to the mass graves. It is really, really heart-wrenching. It was incredible being in Rwanda and talking to the Rwandan people about the history of the genocide…it is something I teach to my students, and I have read a lot about it, but actually being on the ground where it took place was almost peircing.
Then we went to Hotel Mille Colline (the hotel in “Hotel Rwanda”) , and Richard had arranged for a survivor that stayed at the hotel during the genocide to come talk to us about what he endured while staying at the hotel. He had a wife who had a baby at the hotel during the genocide. The scene in the movie where a truckfull of people leave the hotel and get stopped by a road block…his wife was in that actual truck. It is a lot different than the hotel in the movie—the movie makes it look like it is outside of town and a little more challenging to get to….not so.. it is located right in the middle of town with only a bush serving as the fence, but no one came because the UN flag was placed at the top of the hotel. 1,000 people came here and not one person died. They told us about the swimming pool water and how it saved their lives, and gave us a tour around—all of this Richard provided for us. Then we went home and went to bed
On the third day, Richard picked us up and we drove two and half hours away to go to the Rwanda National Museum (interesting and full of history), to see “peace baskets” be made, and then to another genocide site. This sight is called Murambi—it is on a lone hill in the middle of the beautiful countryside. During the events of 1994, a school was being built at the top of this hill. The French occupied it at the time and told 50,000 neighboring Tutsis that if they came, then they would stay safe. Not so—they all came, and the French would count them, and say it was to figure out how much food to give them, but really they were figuring out how many soldiers needed to come in to kill all of the Tutsis that gathered. They had them starve for a while here, and then soldiers killed all 50,000 of them except for 4 survivors. They arranged to have 2 of these survivors come and talk to us and tell us their story. This was absolutely one of the most incredible/heart wrenching moments I have ever had in my life. Before we spoke to the survivors they took us around to the 24 different classrooms. I wasn’t really prepared when walking into these classrooms and didn’t know what to expect. I thought I would find them empty, but they were full of dried up skeletons of thousands and thousands of bodies. It was really hard to walk through. For history to be that real is really hard to swallow. This history became real to me as I entered those rooms, and smelled the rancid stench of decaying bodies, and the scene was really quite hard to handle. I entered another room, and it held the remains of children and babies that were murdered on the night of April 20, 1994. I couldn’t keep the tears from running down my face. My uncle works for the Military, and has told me horrible stories of him having to go in after the genocide and take pictures of such sites, and I remember him describing what he saw to me…. And I feel like I saw what he saw..just ten years later.
Then we learned that when French gathered them, they left the day of the killing so it wouldn’t look like it was organized by them, and then the Hutus started the killings. When the French returned after the killings, they dug huge mass graves with Caterpillars, and then flattened the soil and made a volleyball court out of it and played on it. After the Genocide, many of the people were not ok with that, and they dug up the bodies and put them in the classrooms to let people know how real the genocide really was, and then buried the remaining in mass tombs.
Then the survivors came to us and told us their stories while someone translated them into English for us. The first survivor was shot in the head and was tossed into the pile of dead bodies because they thought he was dead…but he wasn’t. He hid amongst the bodies until the hutus left, and then fled at night. During nights, he would travel towards the Burundi border. In the day he would hide. His story was absolutely incredible, and I couldn’t believe I was listening to him talk about such a horrible horrible experience, on the very ground where he experienced it.
The other Survivor was a Hutu that married a Tutsi—but because of this, they wanted to kill her as well . Both of these survivors lost all their family and friends and everything they had. It was incredible to me the willingness they had to openly discuss their experiences with complete strangers. Their response to that is that they want to educate people so that nothing like that will ever happen again in the history of mankind.
We said our goodbyes and gave our sincere gratitude. They told us that we are now “ambassadors of Rwanda” …and to share to everyone what we heard and what we experienced in our short stay in Rwanda.
So then the next morning we left at 5am…. And oh boy was that an experience!!!! First of all within the first hour, someone turned on the bus and peed on my friends foot… I KID YOU NOT!!! Out in the open, in the middle of the bus… and played it off like it was no big deal at all. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. These buses don’t have bathrooms on them, so when people have to go to the bathroom, they tell the bus to pull over and everyone pops a squat on the side of the road. Apparently the bus driver didn’t stop when he had to go. So then… (im sure you love hearing about our bathroom experiences), the bus did pullover for a bathroom stop, and so me and 3 other girls went behind some bushes and tall grass, and apparently one of the girls squatted too low, and the bush and tall grass gave her a horrrrrrrrrrrrrible allergic reaction, and broke out into a terrible burning which lasted about 3 hours. That girl may or may not have been me:) hahahah. Not something I wish to happen to anyone again. Whew!
So then we get to the Rwandan border, and we did not know our Uganda Visas were single entry visas--- and in order to get back into Uganda, we had to pay 50 a person, and there were 11 of us. We didn’t now have that much money on us, and buses don’t wait for you out here… so in the midst of trying to put together enough money…the bus starts to leave us…and I literally had to sprint alongside the bus, and jump on. We ended up leaving 3 of the people with us at the Border…. With no money or ATM in site. Talk about CRAZYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. They ended up finding a taxi, and had to travel quite osme distance to find an ATM, and eventually made it into Kampala at about 10pm and met us there.
And that was our trip to Rwanda:)Absolutely crazy and incredible.
8 new volunteers came this past week, including 3 of my really good friends. Lindsi Sullivan and her family came out who is one of my very best friends, and also Tory Griffith and Stephanie Christensen came out who I grew up with in Virginia. I love having them here.
Also, this week I had another opportunity to visit those soccer fields and girl soccer teams out here. I talked with the little boy that doesn’t have any feet, and he is like the best goal keeper in this league. The directors of this league really want me to bring some of my team out next summer to be advocates and examples of female sports and the benefits of being involved in it. I wish I could tell you more about this league…it is incredible. I will include some pictures.
I am going to Tanzania this Saturday for a whole week. Stay tuned for more craziness from my sideJ
And again--- Students that donated materials for the children out here: thank you so much!!! I will send you another email with pictures with the kids using it all. You guys are awesome! I hope you are having an awesome summer so far!!
Above are the pics that go with all these stories...
Us on our hike.
Apparently I was the only one that got the "ok smile!!" memo..haha
This is us stomping clay to get it ready to fill an adobe stove...
This is the garden we modeled then told them that they could make it cheaper by using more local materials..... After handing out the seeds to the women, a few weeks later we came back and went to their homes where they built their own gardens. We were SOOOO excited to see them!! This is what they looked like:
It was awesome because they used super accessible materials that were way cheap... banana stock! Genius!!!
Us making our model sq. ft. garden.
Teaching all the women the benefits of having one of these gardens...
Still teaching the group..
Handing out seeds to all the women that attended the Sq. ft. garden training...
This is Honorable Fred, the Member of Parliament that set us up with Rose and Pauls' Children's home. On the right is Warnder Woodworth, the founder of HELP International who came out for a site visit.
These are two of the older orphan boys that helped us pick out clothes for Sliver so we bought them soccer jerseys. 
One evening we took the orphan kids at Capstone to go play soccer......so fun! There were some way good kids!
The kids at the orphan home.
Mallory and I were the first to hold the twins..... and cleaned them and all. The whole experience was pretty ...uhh... completely insane??
The mother and the babies. This is the matress she delivered on...no sheets, no drugs, and no one else in the room....I can't even imagine... well nevermind, I guess I could imagine b/c I was there to see her go through it.
Little African babies look white when they come out....
So precious!!
This was a little girl that Mallory and I both worked with. She got really sick when she was a little girl which left her mute. We would work with her and try to get her to talk or respond verbally in any way possible. She was sooo dang cute and sweet as anything.
