sept 17

i still have so many stories i haven't written about rwanda...but i am having so much trouble getting them out of my head.
in the meantime i have started some new projects...i am very excited about and will be updating about shortly.

more about the week

one of the classes hadn't gotten to play bowling yet...so the p3 and p4 classes had an hour plus of bowling and craziness. i really am still surprised how much they loved the bowling game.

on thursday at EDD i worked on directions with the p1 and p2 classes...luckily Alphonsine (the p1 teacher) was in my class today because the boys were not understanding me at all. i think at this point too my teaching skills were at a minimum because all i wanted to do is play and spend time doing fun stuff with the boys. plus throughout the trip i didn't have much confidence in my teaching skills. i much preferred to do crafts and teach games and take pics with them because that is when i saw them the most happy. BUT i was so excited for the staff 2 class because i was going to have them draw recipes of how to make different rwanda dishes and explain to me...but only 3 staff showed up so i learned how to make a sauce, beans and omelette...none of which i really remember other than the beans take at least 4 hours everyday! yes, everyday!!!

Friday the 28th was a very lazy day at EDD...it ended up being a full picture day. for every class i took pics and for the staff class i took pics of the staff and we had so much fun. the staff posed and primped for every pic and the p1 and p2 classes came out and posed with their teachers. it was a bitter sweet day because as i took pics and posed for pics it was really sinking in that this was my last full day at the orphanage. i teared up quite a bit and perfected my nda kookoonda (i love you in kinyarwandan). and i also realized that my life has been changed because of the experience these wonderful people have given me. I stayed late that day to spend more time with all of them and I went to Josiann and Roses house after work. They live in a house that is on the campus of EDD. The house was lovely and Rose had made me Rwandan peanuts, tea and an omelette...it was all delicious.
Josiann showed me the few pics she has of her cousins and uncle and told me her story of surviving the genocide. Josiann is one of the women I have met in my life who has an absolutely pure heart. she truely wants the absolute best for everyone and understands how to make each person feel special and loved. she lost her entire immediate family in the genocide but still was able to triumph over all she has been through. she has finished university studies and does an amazing job at a job she loves. she loves being with the kids and it shows every minute with her interactions with the boys and the staff. they all love and respect her so much. she took care of me like a big sister even though she is much younger than me and she would consistently teach me new things about the center, the boys and rwanda. i am so appreciative of her. and i am so humbled by her as well. as a gift to remember her by she gave me the jewelery she had worn for her university graduation. i have never felt so honored or loved by a friend in my life. i cried but tried to stay strong because her and rose both giggled at me for being so touched. it is a normal thing to give but it isn't normal for me to be given such meaningful and priceless gifts. their friendship was enough for me but her jewelery is something i will absolutely cherish for the rest of my life and hopefully pass on to someone who will find it just as important and priceless.
i ended up leaving josiann's house pretty late on friday and she, rose and josiann's cousin all walked me down to the road to get a moto...josiann was going to a going away party for one of the 2 people she had survived the genocide with. her friends little brother was going back to school in europe the next morning.
on my moto back to the guest house it was pitch black out and i was very sad. i looked out into the countryside lights and it was actually a chilly night and told myself over and over that i am the luckiest person in the world to have been able to visti rwanda and to have met hte people at EDD.

wed the 26th

some of the boys were disappointed that they were not able to have penpals. so on tuesday night i decided to have the rest of the boys write thank you letters to the people who helped me with donations. and they loved it! stickers were a huge hit and every one of them took pride and special attention to the letter they wrote. they are so willing to share and show appreciation that it is so humbling and such an honor to witness it. they asked so many questions about who helped donate, the ages, marriage status, about their children, so many questions. i have letters to send to all of you and share with you that helped all of us so much.

tuesday 25th

today was the day i found out which of the boys stole my money. it has been over a week now and i am still so hurt by the whole thing. the boy and i have made up and all is forgiven but i am sad that it changed the dynamics of the rest of my days with him.
this was the same day that claire called me at the last minute to distribute some more of the donations i had brought. we went to gahanga where i was orginally supposed to be placed at. the drive was lovely but pretty far from the city. i met a couple of the teachers and they raved about suzi and lisa the previous volunteers fva had placed with them. it is a beautiful campus there and the children were so excited to see another muzungo on the campus.
i went back to work after dropping off the donations. that afternoon the 12 boys picked to be penpals were writing their letters. i had chosen with the approval of the EDD staff 12 boys to correspond with 12 us kids. i had 11 us girls and 1 us boy. only 2 of the rwandan boys wanted a boy so i had abraham and mj choose a number between 1-10 and abraham was closest so he got the boy. all the rest wanted girls and seemed to fall in love instantly with each of their letters. i tried to match it up by age wise but most of the rwandan boys chosen were 13-16 and most if not all the US girl were 7-14. the boys took forever to write their letters. they were so serious about what to say and how their writing looked and sounded. they each decoreated their letters with stickers and some added gifts ( a leaf off the tree outside the classroom door, one added a balloon, and one added a pipe cleaner ring he had made). i would say 1/2 of the letters were more appropriate than others by US standards and the other 1/2 i will need to include explanations regarding rwandans being very open and loving toward everyone. there were some "me and you forever" " i love you always and forever" "i want you" type writings in the letters that could possibly be misconstrude...but it is all innocent and from extremely grateful hearts of these boys. i am very excited to see how many of them keep in touch. and i would like to get more of the boys involved and hopefully will be able to find a classroom here in the states to get involved with the boys there. at the end of the writing extravaganza....mj sat down next to me and asked me if i knew his penpal personally. i explained i had met her and thought she was lovely and he replied with one of his huge smiles and a sigh " i love her so much already" it was one of the most rewarding statements i heard the whole time in rwanda. it still makes me smile so hard to hear him say it in my head. i am proud and happy for all the boys at the center but those 12 boys i am a bit extra proud of for the hard work they put into their letters and the genuine care and joy they got out of writing.

funny story

at lunch on monday aug 24 noel had said to me "hey heather i like your underpants". i wasnt sure i heard what i thought i heard so i just sort of smiled and stared at him and he said it again...and he was on the other end of the table so everyone was listening...i could feel my face get hot and red and still i didn't really say anything. so he started to explain that because in rwanda few people where pants or skirts that show their knees or above. i had capris on that when i sat down they showed my knees....he meant to say he liked my shorter pants not my underpants so i explained the difference between under and short in terms of clothing. it was quite funny and something i ended up teasing him about the rest of my time in rwanda.
on monday the 24th i also decided to teach the kids and staff about bowling. i filled empty water bottles with some rocks and got one of the homemade garbage bag footballs from the boys. it was a huge huge hit. they all absolutely loved it. even the staff had a great time and got really competitive with it.
i told the staff at lunch about the penpal letters i had from the kids in the US and they wanted to have penpals too. so all the staff gave me their emails and info on what type of american penpal they would prefer. i am pretty excited to get them all matched up with one or more people in the states. i felt bad because i didn't think of asking the staff prior to that and i think they were hurt at first that they had to bring it to my attention. ends up they are so excited about it and couldn't stop talking about it the whole week. on friday the 28th i spend over an hour with the staff posing and taking pics for them for their penpals. it was really fun! and they loved getting their pics taken and figuring out tons of new poses.

jumbled

since the internet was basically down for over a week i have lots to still write about...i made notes so i would remember all the things to write about but my time table is a bit jumbles so these stories may be out of order....

stephanie left on wed the 26th her and i went out to chez londo for drinks that night to say our see you laters and such. we saw the icky old white men at the place but they didn't have their local prostitutes with them instead they were sharing pics of women from around the world on one of their laptops...nasty! i realize there are gross people in the world but to literally sit in the middle of a restaurant/bar and share pics like that for anyone to see is sick. those are the kind of people the world does not need!!!

earlier that day i had taken a motorbike to work and i swear the guy tried to kill me....he wanted 1500fr for a ride to the orphanage. normally i pay 700 to 800 and i told him no thanks and started to walk away...he agreed to 800 and then proceeded to kill me on the way to work. he talked on his phone, he fixed his shoes, he fixed his pants, he jumped the slowbumps in the road, he sped faster than any of the bikes i had been on thus far...but i stayed cool and did not panic...it some weird way it was fun that i survived the ride. as i walked the last bit of the way to work i wondered if that was a small inkling of what the rwandans felt like...things are out of your control so you just try to survive...i know my motorbike situation is nothing near what they went through but my point is at what point does someone in a life or death struggle turn off their senses in order to survive? does time stand still or does it move in ways most of us could not even imagine? do you conciously turn off your thinking or does your brain take over to protect you? i know there is lots of research out there on so many different subjects regarding all this but i really can't seem to believe this is a natural pattern that anyone would be able to figure out and write a thesis on and find answers.
most of us don't even like the sight of blood and to try to imagine finding your own family members chopped with a machete or raped and left for dead ...i just don't know how to find words.

...on sunday aug 23 stephanie made sugar cookies with the guest house staff...it was really fun to watch...i doubt any of them had made sugar cookies before and they seemed to enjoy themselves quite a bit. and they liked them so much i think most if not all were gone by the end of the day. after stephanie and i walked over to kimironko market. i needed to get some fabric for some bags i had made. i meant to buy for 2 and walked out with 4. some of the fabric there is so beautiful and i couldn't resist...it is basically $4us for a sheet of fabric. we got back to the house ate some lunch and i took stephanie to the orphanage to play with the boys...our plan was to bowl, maybe play baseball, have some 3 legged and wheelbarrel racing but much to our surprise...when we got there the boys were in cleaning mode. they had volunteers coming from south korea...an entire busload of neon yellow vest wearing south koreans. the afternoon was an ablsolute blasgt. AND the boys danced inturo traditional dancing and drumming as well as the koreans drummed, danced and tae kwon doeded (i know that is not a word).
the best part of the day for me was one of the erics wrote on his balloon that he loved me and thanked me for being there and it still makes me tear up thinking about it. i will keep that balloon forever! i also tried to beat box for the boys and i was horrible as expected but they all thought it was hilarious that i got up to try to do it.
i think being there that day was a turning point with me and some of the boys as i hadn't gotten as close to. i really felt that so many boys came around and really let me into their lives that day. and now in retrospect of that day i know it really was a meaningful day to quite a few of them.

story 2 of the last week

yesterday javid, danny and i tagged along with george to the volcanoes. george was doing the gorilla trek and we were going to do the dian fossey and gorilla graveyard trek...but when we got there we found the prices had changed quite a bit. so javid, danny and i decided to hike around the villages while we waited for george. it turned out to be a fabulous time. we hadn't even walked 10 minutes when we had a set of 4 kids following us and talking with us. one of the boys spoke english quite well and translated what the others were saying. one of the boys was so clever he had a strip of film negatives as sunglasses. he had a string tied to each end and then tied around his head...the boys followed us for a bit and told us of their school and football. then some older boys came and asked us a lot of questions and pointed different areas of the village and surroundings out to us and then asked us if they wanted them to show us around. it was fabulous. they took us to the edge of the mountains through diffrent farms through the village and all over. the views were absolutely spectacular. and the weather was perfect. as we trekked all over we were met by lots and lots of kids and goats, cows and sheep. there were a few young young kids that were terrified of us...especially danny because i assuming because he is the whitest of all of us...so we caused some heavy screaming and crying and even a couple kids to run away in terror. we also met adults who were so friendly and excited when we spoke kinyarwandan to them. the most bizarre experience was danny or javid had taken a picture toward the mtn area and then we heard outrageous screaming from some women...she started toward us and when she met us she started dancing and yelling and singing and it was quite initmidating to say the least. the boys we were with explained she wanted money for a picture and we think she was dancing and such to give us a type of action shot or something...she even got down on all fours and was dancing and it was quite akward. danny was the only one who had change so he gave it to her and we moved on...we were told by one of the boys that her and her family were pygmies but i am not sure if we understood correctly because they were not small. anyways, so after that we were a bit nervous to take any photos and it was funny to watch us look around and be cautious of who may be watching when before we didn't have a care in the world. at the end of the trek the boys brought us to their village and we met one of the boys little brothers and his little sister...so cute...we stopped at one of the drinking holes ( a tiny room) which sold sodas, beer and cigarettes and that was it...we had a fanta and as we sat down goerge texted us that she was on her way back so everything worked out perfectly that day. george had an amazing time gorilla trekking and her pics were unbelievable...she saw a family of 7 gorillas and one was a baby. at one point they were about a meter away from one of the males and she said it was incredible. i definitely will be doing the trek next time i am here. i was going to do it this trip but decided i need to save some to do stuff for next time :)
on the way home from the mtns we all fell asleep in the car...we were all so tired. we got back and ate and napped. danny left to go back to the eastern provence where he works during the week. in the evening we went for dinner at flamingos the local chinese restaurant and had a great time. we took motorbikes and they decided to race to the restaurant andit was a bit crazy but at this point i am pretty much adapted to the crazy motorbike driving and like it in a weird crazy adrenaline sort of way..