Day 4 - School, Kigali, and Skip

Hi, it’s Vicki & I’m writing the blog for today. It’s the dry season here in Rwanda, and it rained ALL night last night, ALL day today, and is still rainy tonight! It was also laundry day, we have a wonderful woman named Mama Chasi who does our laundry, and it is all dripping wet on the line! Anyway, I say this all with a smile on my face, because the rain all night was such a blessing for the exhausted, jet lagged team, who slept wonderfully to the soothing sound of the beating rain. It is also such a blessing for the people here, since the dry season can often be very hard on their crops.

We got up at 6am this morning to walk the kids to school (about 4 miles round trip.) I was expecting the walk to be down a road, but it’s funny how reality is often not quite what one pictures! The walk to school starts through a field of cow grass, sorghum, coffee plants, and banana trees. It’s a narrow path & it’s all uphill. At the top we met up with a ‘road’ (basically a rough, rutted field road that was most likely carved by hand. ) Scattered along the road were houses (mostly made of mud bricks), and outside of most of them stood a family staring at the muzungu (white people.) This road, which seems to be in the middle of nowhere, was crowded with people walking and some people carrying huge loads on pedal bikes, and a few on scooters. The people were all so friendly, and smiled and loved to hear us say, “Mwaramutse” (good morning.) There was one little boy in particular that Sadie fell in love with. He was about 2 years old and he shyly pointed at her & said so sweetly, “muzungu!”

After breakfast, we presented Isaac & Serena with the 8 suitcases full of wonderful gifts and supplies from Bloomsburg Christian Church. They were so grateful to be able to replenish their supplies and have wonderful gifts for the children.

We headed to the Kigali Memorial Museum for the day, something we wanted to do first to help us to get a deeper understanding of everything that our Rwandan brothers & sisters went through during the genocide in 1994. Most of us agreed, while the entire museum was tough to stomach, the Children’s Memorial Section was the toughest. Looking at children, some only infants & toddlers, and reading about the horrific ways they were murdered, was absolutely heartbreaking.

We got to have our first dinner with the kids tonight, rice & a vegetable sauce was served and it was actually very yummy. I got to talk to all of the kids at my table, some knew English & some did not, but it was loud and I had a hard time understanding many of them. The only names I could pronounce were the English ones, like Andrew & Stephanie! Ed had the kids laughing hysterically, by purposely pronouncing their names wrong.

Skip & I did a presentation on Pennsylvania at family time tonight, with the help of a sweet 12-year-old boy interpreter named Aaron (pronounced Airone.) The kids loved coloring their Pennsylvania maps (and were still carrying them around 2 days later!) The especially loved the gift bags from Rhame, Sherri & Kody Eyer & the bouncy balls from Mitchell. They loved the candy so much, that some of them ate the wrapper & all! EVERYBODY was chewing gum on the walk Wednesday morning!
We wrapped up the evening talking about the museum, and I called it a night around 9:45pm.

A FINAL NOTE: So far Skip is the winner for the best quotes in Rwanda. Before I go any further, I need to mention the showers here. They call them the ‘”widow makers.” Picture electrical wires going into your shower head! In order to get a hot shower, you have to turn on the water & flip a switch on the showerhead, all while risking a shock! So with this in mind, please enjoy some great quotes from Skip:

“My heart started beating properly after the shower.”

“We saw the lights dim and it looked like someone was going to the electric chair.” --After Isaac came out of the shower.

“Just hang on & get juiced up for the day.”

“Instead of vitamins, just take a couple jolts.”

“The water heater made a believer out of me!"